Posted on 03/03/2012 5:04:13 PM PST by bruinbirdman
The Church of England is facing a damaging rift over the appointment of gay bishops.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has given his backing to a deal intended to prevent a split between the Church’s traditionalist and liberal wings, by effectively preventing openly gay clergy from becoming bishops.
However, last night the proposed Anglican Covenant stood on the brink of failure, after worshippers and clergy rejected it in votes up and down England. Two bishops voted against it.
Supporters of Dr Williams said that a defeat would be a “devastating” blow to him after he staked so much of his authority on the Covenant.
When Dr Williams unveiled the document in 2010, he urged the church to endorse it or risk seeing the “piece-by-piece dissolution” of the Anglican Communion.
The Bishop of Sherborne, the Rt Rev Dr Graham Kings, warned that rejection of the Covenant would cause the worldwide church to “disintegrate”, and added: “Rowan Williams has put his whole weight behind this ... For anyone in his position it would be devastating [if it failed].”
In 2003, a split in the church emerged when Gene Robinson was appointed as the first openly gay Anglican bishop, elected by the liberal-leaning Episcopal Church in the US.
Conservative clergy, including Anglican leaders in Africa, protested against the move, leading Dr Williams to set up a commission to find ways to heal the divisions.
The 2004 Windsor Report recommended that ties between Anglican churches around the world should be made “explicit and forceful”.
The Covenant, drafted in 2009, does not deal explicitly with the question of gay bishops, but says branches should take into account the views of the wider Anglican church when doing anything that “may provoke controversy”.
Under the proposed regime, a branch of the church
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
“The ridiculous situation we could be in if it doesn’t go through the dioceses is that the Communion could agree to the Covenant while the Church of England doesn’t.” “
It’s Rowan’s own gay clergy that are refusing to accept this ‘compromise’. They want the whole enchilada and will probably get it.
The Covenant is losing badly.
Why does this Archbishop of Canterbury doggedly insist on not upholding the faith he is the representative of but rather undermining it? He knuckles under not only to the gay agenda but also to the Muslim one. He’s creating one giant schism in his own church, while (funny enough) healing the one between Anglicans and Catholics. What does he think his purpose in life is?
Isn’t the Church of England kind of a joke at this point?
I mean, does anyone take it seriously anymore?
To be Papa Benedicts BFF?
The term coined by Bonhoeffer when he visited liberal “Christian” churches in America was the appropriate term—”religionless Christianity”. It is what he saw happening to the majority of so-called Christian churches Hitler had an easy time usurping and turning into the Reich Church worshipping Satan.
Advocating “Sodomy is Good” ends any “Christian” church-—they become the Temple of Baal.
I agree with you. What is hilarious is he is ordaining gay priests. But, he wants to prevent them from becoming Bishops. He has already sold his church for a mess of pottage with the ordaining of gay priests.
Time to cross the Tiber.
Williams deserves a few devastating blows given what he’s done to Christianity single-handed.
By ordaining those “gay” priests he is basically destroying Christian Ethics and saying the Bible is wrong, and, thus, establishing the Temple of Baal.
It is intentional—to destroy Christianity from within, with these pseudo-Christians as priests or archbishops or whatever. Marxists destroy the meaning of all words and “Christian” shouldn’t be allowed to be mentioned in his organization. It is just a matter of time for the disintegration of these so-called churches and they will be the same as all the pagan temples where there was infanticide and homosexual orgies with children.
I had my sister visiting from the east and found out she was associated with the Epicopalians and wanted me to donate to planned parenthood. How sad for me.
There is no church left to save.
What does “BFF” mean?
He looks like Gandalph on a bad hair day. There’s all too much “Church Stuff” going on and not enough Christianity.
To be honest why keep a communion together when there is absolutely no unity in the truth of the Gospel. Let it fall and maybe something that actually believes in Jesus may rise from the ashes.
Mel
You have a daughter? Ask her what BFF means. :)
Best Friend Forever.
Thanks.
Best friends forever!
They don’t know what they do. Constant brainwashing in the MSM and the control of language which controls all perceptions.
Your sister “perceives” she is doing good, when she is doing evil.
But wisdom, understanding philosophy, takes time and work and desire, and people are too busy or lazy to take the time and effort.
So many people do not understand “worldview” and that you have to have certain moral principles (Virtue) . That these principles are absolute!!! You can NEVER compromise these absolutes-—it is always a slippery slope.
Our culture has been destroying Moral Absolutes since the 1900’s....and if we don’t turn around the schools, there will be no one left who believed like our Founding Fathers. They will think “up is down” and “evil is good”. The Bible predicted this.
The UK wants to be Sodom or Gomorrah?
Indulged in this for a time, error goes on to assert equal rights. Truth and error are two balancing forces. The Church shall do nothing which looks like deciding between them; that would be partiality. It is bigotry to assert any superior right for the truth. We are to agree to differ and any favoring of the truth, because it is truth, is partisanship. What the friends of truth and error hold in common is fundamental. Anything on which they differ is “ipso facto” non-essential. Anybody who makes account of such a thing is a disturber of the peace of the church. Truth and error are two co-ordinate powers, and the great secret of church-statesmanship is to preserve the balance between them.
From this point error soon goes on to its natural end, which is to assert supremacy. Truth started with tolerating; it comes to be merely tolerated and that only for a time. Error claims a preference for its judgments on all disputed points. It puts men into position, not as at first in spite of their departure from the Church’s faith, but in consequence of it. Their recommendation is that they repudiate that faith, and position is given them to teach others to repudiate it, and make them skillful in combating it." (pp. 195-196)
From: “THE CONSERVATIVE REFORMATION AND ITS THEOLOGY as represented in the Augsburg Confession and in the history and literature of the Evangelical Lutheran Church” by Charles P. Krauth, D.D. (1871). [Note date]
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