The Colorado Gazette reports Grace raid affidavit details claims that Armstrong misused church funds:
The Rev. Donald Armstrong funneled money earmarked for “single, unmarried seminarians” from a Grace Church trust fund to pay for his two children’s college tuition, according to Colorado Springs police investigators.
That accusation was contained in a affidavit supporting a search warrant used by police in a November raid on Grace Church and St. Stephen’s and its offices in a next door Victorian home known as the McWilliams House at 601 N. Tejon St.
The affidavit, returned by detective Michael Flynn to the court Tuesday, outlines the 18-month police investigation from May 2007 – when they were notified by the Episcopal Church, Diocese of Colorado that it suspected financial wrongdoing by Armstrong – and Nov. 25, when a judge signed the warrant authorizing the search…
Once again, there is an exhaustive set of links to earlier reports on this story already available at Episcopal Café.
The previous TA article on this case can be found here.
14 CommentsEpiscopal News Service reports:
In a landmark ruling that could have national implications, the California Supreme Court on January 5 upheld an earlier court decision that buildings and property do not belong to dissident congregations but to the Diocese of Los Angeles and the general Episcopal Church…
See California Supreme Court rules disputed property belongs to general church by Pat McCaughan.
The full text of the opinion is a PDF file available here.
There are many more links to related stories at Episcopal Café both here, and also here.
24 CommentsEpiphany gives us three stories of showing forth, when you bring the Eastern and Western traditions together, three stories in which the nature of Jesus is revealed in surprising and unexpected ways.
Today we start with the story of the wise men following a star to find the new king. The first visitors to the infant Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel are the wise men. Whoever they were, they were Gentiles. So, even though Matthew puts Jesus very much in a Jewish framework and his infancy stories are about portraying Jesus as the new Moses, Jesus is manifested first to foreigners. And that says that Jesus is for us too, all that he was, all that he did, all that he taught, was for us, for those who come because they have enough wisdom to follow the light and make the hard journey to come and kneel before the true king.
Then we get the story of the baptism of Jesus. The accounts show God proclaiming that Jesus is his son, and he is the Beloved, and God the Father is very proud of him. In all four Gospels, the baptism manifests Jesus’ divine origins.
And the triptych is completed with the story of the wedding at Cana, when the wedding feast, the messianic banquet, is enlivened by the new wine. Jesus is the one who transforms the ordinary water of our worship into better wine that you have ever tasted. Jesus brings in the kingdom of God which is fulfilled in the heavenly feast.
Three images, three stories which proclaim Jesus and make him known; three stories which shape what we think of Jesus and how we relate to him. All of them would have shaken the assumptions of those who first heard them.
But of course, Jesus is made known in so many other stories, in the lives of the apostles and other saints, in the gifts and kindnesses of humble folk, in the pursuit of justice and reconciliation, every time we present the word made flesh, every time we follow the way in faithfulness, proclaim the truth and reveal the light.
For example, in 2009 falls the 200th anniversary of the birth of Darwin and the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species. There is an extensive programme this year to celebrate Darwin, including a series on BBC Radio 4 this week. I would argue that the search for scientific truth reveals Jesus, the Logos at the heart of creation, in whom all truth resides.
This works if you make the framework big enough, if you believe that this is God’s world and everything about it reveals God in some way.
So I invite you to open your eyes and ears today and look for manifestations of Jesus all around you. And allow yourself to be surprised.
11 CommentsThe Diocese of St Asaph has elected a new bishop.
See the official Church in Wales press release.
A senior adviser to the Archbishop of Canterbury was today elected as the next Bishop of St Asaph.
The Rev Canon Gregory Cameron, 49, who is Deputy Secretary General of the Anglican Communion Office in London, was chosen by members of the Electoral College of the Church in Wales meeting at St Asaph Cathedral.
The announcement was made by the Archbishop of Wales, Dr Barry Morgan, at the west door of the cathedral on the first day of the meeting.
Canon Gregory Cameron will be the 76th Bishop of St Asaph, an area covering the north-east corner of Wales – the counties of Conwy and Flintshire, Wrexham county borough, the eastern part of Merioneth in Gwynedd and part of northern Powys. His election follows the retirement in December of the Rt Rev John Davies who served as Bishop of the diocese from 1999.
A Welshman who was ordained in the Diocese of Monmouth, Mr Cameron has been involved in the ecumenical relations of the Anglican Communion at global level for the past five years. Previously, he served as Chaplain to the Archbishop of Wales, then Dr Rowan Williams.
Married to Clare, the couple have three sons, aged 11, nine and six…
The first press report is here.
14 CommentsUntil Francis of Assisi came along and subverted it all, the most popular scene in Christian art to be drawn from the infancy narratives was the adoration of the magi. The reasons, as often in church history had less to do with theology or devotion than with more earthy matters. Art was, by and large, commissioned by rulers, and such men had a natural interest in having the infant Jesus portrayed as a king among kings. Even in pictures of the mother and her child we see no vulnerable human baby but a miniature sovereign, often with crown and sceptre, enthroned on Mary’s lap. The message was clear, if Jesus is like your earthly king then your ruler is like Jesus – treat him accordingly. Maybe it was under such pressures that legend had transmuted Persian astrologers into royalty in the first place.
The irony lies in that, in doing so, the church had made a bulwark of human authority out of the very tale that was intended to subvert it. For each of the three gifts offered by the magi strikes a blow directly into the heart of the traditional imagery it employs. Gold for a ruler; incense for a divinity; myrrh for a death, as the hymn puts it, Jesus is greeted as “king and god and sacrifice”, but each of them is the very opposite of what it seems.
Centuries earlier prophets had cautioned the Israelites about kings, warning that they would rule over them more for their own personal benefit and aggrandisement rather than for the wellbeing of the people. By that first Epiphany in Bethlehem a thousand years had proved it all too true. As Herod accurately observed, Jesus was there to undermine and supplant his authority. But not simply to supplant in name, replacing one tyrant with another as the devil would tempt him thirty years later. Jesus offers a new way of being king that has its roots in service, in love, in self-emptying and will blossom in healing and in teaching. Meanwhile each earthly empire, from ancient Rome via Victorian Britain and the Soviet Union to 21st century USA, remains satanic; serving the powerful and their interests before anyone else.
Likewise, Jesus seeks to deconstruct our familiar notions of divinity. He brings no set of dogmas for unthinking assent; no comprehensive list of unchallengeable moral precepts. He comes instead with a fund of simple stories and a natural critique of all that passes for human behaviour. He lays down not “what” to believe and to do but “how” to live and “why” it matters. Arguable as to whether it’s enough on which to pin a couple of creeds and a handful or so of sacraments, it’s the very opposite of the efforts his followers continue to make to separate, exclude and anathematise each other.
Finally he turns the whole concept of sacrifice on its head. Instead of the one to whom sacrifice is to be made, God becomes himself the victim. It’s a notion so challenging to conventional wisdom that, from catholic Eucharistic theology to the concept of substitutionary atonement beloved of the more firm Protestants, many Christians have sought to restore the natural order rather than root themselves in the one who gives himself not simply for us but to us.
So, as metaphorically we travel with the magi today on the final leg of their journey to Bethlehem, remember this: Epiphany is startling. It overturns what society, secular and religious, is comfortable with. It’s as shocking as the notion that God should be revealed as a Jewish baby to the gentile followers of religious practices condemned by the Old Testament.
Enjoy!
13 CommentsGeoffrey Rowell writes in The Times about Dancing in time to a divinely ordained rhythm of life.
Gerald Butt writes in the Guardian about flying.
Andrew Brown wrote at Cif:belief about Mr Algie’s honesty bucket.
Alan Wilson has written Blowing bubbles in Hard Times?
Giles Fraser wrote in the Church Times Longing for the truth of glory.
Two weeks ago, Jeremy Morris wrote in the Church Times that A learning Church is healthy.
Added later:
Michael Reiss has written in The Times that Darwinian thinking clarifies and deepens religious faith.
Christmas is the time of year when, due to various bits of travelling and visiting, I get to sample services in churches I don’t otherwise attend. Over the past three or four years during the last week in December, I have attended services in places like Santa Barbara, London, Hull, Mullingar (Ireland), and others, and the denominations have included not just Anglicans, but also Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans and Roman Catholics; in addition to my own ‘home’ parish of the St Bartholomew, Dublin, where I will always be for the Midnight Mass (which indeed is so described, unusually for Ireland).
In these visits, I have been able to observe two things. First, there appears in some clerical circles to be a growing level of discomfort with the Incarnation — one member of the clergy suggested in a sermon that the Incarnation as a theological concept is ‘a disaster’. I might be tempted to explore that a little further, but perhaps that is for another time.
My second (and for this piece main) observation is that the idea of a liturgical church is under threat. And no, I am not talking about the Methodists and Presbyterians particularly, but the whole experience across the denominations. Of course, as my own wandering attendance around Christmas shows, services at this time of year tend to have an above-average number of visitors and strangers in the pews some of them on a break from their normal places of worship like me, and some making their annual or suchlike visit to a church, any church. It is quite possible that clergy faced with such congregations feel that they must offer them more easily digestible fare. At any rate — server and liturgical pedant that I am — I have tended to find plenty to make my hair stand on end.
Of course the polite thing to do is to show no sign of noticing anything untoward, and that’s the route I follow. But I nevertheless find myself sinning gravely by allowing my mind to drift into a state of irritation. I need to get a hold of myself.
But I do wonder whether the idea of Anglicanism as a liturgical movement is coming to an end. The movers and shakers of the new fundamentalist Anglicanism growing out of places like Sydney do not, I think, bother their heads much about liturgy. And every so often when, in various discussion groups, I raise liturgical issues, someone will invariably pipe up and say that liturgy simply does not matter when set against hunger, starvation, dictatorship and other evils. It is, I have to admit, easy to be bullied into submission at such moments.
And yet, it seems to me that liturgy matters. It is there at the moment where we come to worship God, and how can we say that how we address and speak with God doesn’t matter. It is how we in part express our faith, and it is how we allow God to touch us. And when it ceases to be familiar to the people, a lot of what we believe in theology can also become distant.
When I first became a liturgical Anglican, it was universal in churches I would attend for Christmas to bow, genuflect or kneel at the ‘incarnatus’ in the creed. Right then, it is a meaningful way for us to express something about the Incarnation. But, it seems, not so much any more. I notice that fewer and fewer people do it, even amongst the clergy.
Maybe I am just too old-fashioned. Or maybe, we are losing our way just a little.
84 CommentsThe Church Times has a news report: Legislation drafted for women bishops.
Comment is free has published an opinion article by Judith Maltby Women bishops: get over them.
In the press release, Women in the Episcopate draft Measure published, which was linked previously, there is a further link to the December 08 House of Bishops Summary of Decisions document (.doc format) which contains the following:
49 Comments4. Women in the Episcopate
The House of Bishops considered the draft report, Measure, Amending Canon, Code of Practice and Explanatory Memorandum prepared by the Legislative Drafting Group. It made a number of detailed suggestions for the Bishops of Manchester and Basingstoke to report to the group for consideration at its final meeting. The House welcomed the careful and thorough work that the group had carried out in accordance with the mandate given by Synod.
In discussion several members of the House expressed support for further work to be done to explore approaches for those who could not receive the ministry of women priests and bishops which would either permit a diocesan bishop to confer jurisdiction by operation of law rather than by delegation or would provide a measure of cohesion and assurance through the development of a new, recognised religious society.
The House concluded that it would not be timely for it to commission further work of this kind at this point. It noted, however, that individual bishops would be able to lend their support to attempts to amend the draft material in these and other ways once Synod had resolved to commit it to the revision process. It was important that members of the House played their part in ensuring that the proposals were carefully scrutinised during the synodical process and alternatives duly tested.
The House acknowledged that it would continue to have a special responsibility for seeking to help the Church of England, through the legislative process, come to a conclusion that built trust and enabled as many people as possible, as loyal Anglicans, to remain members of the Church of England, notwithstanding their differing theological convictions on this issue.
The Church Times review of 2008 is now available online.
The main news review is here.
There are several other pages, including this press review.
0 CommentsIn my childhood, a shadow lay over the days after Christmas, the shadow of the thank-you letters. Until these had been written, to grandparents, godparents, uncles, aunts and family friends, we were not free for untrammelled enjoyment of our new acquisitions. I still have one contemporary and a god-child who are exemplary in writing their thanks, but it’s a practice which has very largely disappeared, at least among my friends and family. Maybe it went with the general decline in letter-writing, but it doesn’t seem to have been replaced by text, email, or even phone calls. I don’t doubt that those to whom I gave presents are, on the whole, pleased that I did so, but gratitude, it seems, is now to be assumed, not expressed.
There seems to be a parallel withdrawal from an articulated sense of gratitude within our collective church practice. Explicit thanksgiving to God is, of course, part of our liturgies; it is vocalised at the beginning of the Eucharistic prayer and is the very heart of that prayer, and it is part of our post-communion response. I can’t, however, remember the last time I said in public worship any form of the General Thanksgiving, so painfully learned at school, and Common Worship has specifically omitted thanks to God from the forms of intercession. A number of our local leaders of intercessions still use the introductory form from the Alternative Service Book: ‘Let us pray for the church and the world’, they say, ‘and let us thank God for his goodness’. Nine times out of ten, however, we are drawn, often eloquently and movingly into the needs of the former, but the latter, the thanksgiving, is entirely absent. When, from time to time, we open intercessions to all comers, so that we can pray with them for whatever they wish to bring before us and before God, we rarely move from need to thanksgiving; just occasionally voices, mainly from Africa and the Caribbean, will be moved to recount and give thanks for God’s blessings.
The absence of gratitude can be seen as a healthy development within the wider culture, the growing understanding of the essential value of each human being and their corresponding entitlement to freedom, justice, education, work, family life etc. Much that was once seen as a generous gift, from those who had to those who had not, is now accepted as a matter not of grace but of right. A properly less deferential society may also be a less grateful one, and if thanks are to be offered with a tugged forelock, then there is little to mourn in their absence. Also at work is a theological change, a move away from a strongly interventionist understanding of God; if the parking place is available by chance rather than as a response to prayer, we are less inclined to offer thanks to the deity who might lie behind the chance.
But to live thankfully, and to articulate those thanks, need not indicate either deference or a god of the parking spaces. Grace said before a meal reminds us of those on whom we rely for the production and preparation of our food, it reminds us of our interconnectedness and interdependence.
‘Thank-yous’ for the presents we received at Christmas brings to our minds those who have invested time and thought and money in us, even when the investment (like so many this year) may have been misdirected into something which seems to have little intrinsic worth. Becoming conscious of occasions for gratitude prompts us to emphasise relationship rather than autonomy; gratitude demands an object outside ourselves, an other who has played some part in our lives. Practised as a habit, gratitude makes us aware of how we are linked to our neighbours and ultimately to God.
So, Pollyanna-ish as it may seem, I bid you, as you say good-bye to the Very Bad Year of 2008, and look forward to the gloom and despondency of 2009 — count your blessings!
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