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February 15, 2008
UK Church vows to tackle Bible shortage
The Church's General Synod has voted to ensure that every visitor to a church should have "easy and unfettered" access to the Word of God.
Church vows to tackle Bible shortage
By Jonathan Petre, Religion Correspondent
Last Updated: 7:23pm GMT 14/02/2008
Telegraph.co.uk
The Church of England has admitted that there is a shortage of bibles in the country's churches and has vowed to make the Good Book more easily available to worshippers.
Many churches have failed to make Bibles readily available
The Church's General Synod has voted to ensure that every visitor to a church should have "easy and unfettered" access to the Word of God.
Opening a debate on the issue at the Synod this week, Tim Cox, from Blackpool, said that many churches failed to make Bibles readily available.
Canon Marilyn McCord Adams, the Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford University, said she had grown up the American Bible Belt "on the choruses of Jesus Loves Me! This I Know, For The Bible Tells Me So and The Bible, Yes, That's The Book for Me."
She said Bibles should be in churches so that people in the pews could object to interpretations of it by the "higher ups".
The Archdeacon of Malmesbury, the Ven Alan Hawker, said that at the Reformation, the Bible had been chained to the lectern, but it was at least there.
It was "critically important" that the Bible was in church buildings and available for people to use.
Support also came from Brigadier Ian Dobbie, from Rochester, who said that if the Bible was read in church, it was more likely to be read at home.
In a Synod briefing paper, Mr Cox, an officer in the Boy's Brigade, complained that churches sometimes locked their bibles away in a cupboard.
"The saddest thing about this is that whilst our churches fail to make available the scriptures, hotels, prisons, schools, hospitals and even offices can often be found too have a Gideon's Bible available for each and every visitor," he said.
He added: "One church, whose parochial church council had previously provided Bibles, chose to remove them on the grounds that 'they were too difficult to dust'."
In 1536, Henry VIII made it a legal requirement for an English version of the Bible to be placed in every church, and they proved so popular with the public that they often had to be chained to the pulpit.
Gideons International placed nearly a million copies in this country last year, more than half of which had gone into schools.
In a separate paper, the House of Bishops recommended seven versions of the scriptures, including the Authorised Version or King James Bible, the New Jerusalem Bible and the Standard English Version.
Posted by latimer at 09:11 AM | Comments (0)
November 20, 2007
Leader of evangelicals 'unChristian' say secularists
Dr Edwards said: "These groups have perceived that I am so intolerant that they will not tolerate my place on a body negotiating the choppy waters of 21st century tolerance."
November 14, 2007
Leader of evangelicals 'unChristian' say secularists
Ruth Gledhill Religion Correspondent of The Times
Secularists have condemned the leader of Britain's evangelicals as "unChristian" after he accused them of exhibiting intolerance of his religious views.
The National Secular Society has attacked Dr Joel Edwards, leader of the Evangelical Alliance, for remarks made at the end of an address by Chief Rabbi Dr Jonathan Sacks on the need for religious tolerance.
The row gives just one insight into the future difficulties of enforcing legislation against incitement to hatred against homosexuals and against incitement of religious hatred.
Dr Edwards, who has been appointed a commissioner on the newly-formed Equality and Human Rights Commission, has been accused of making a career out of "opposing equality for homosexuals". After news of his appointment emerged, secularists described his organisation as "one of the most homophobic in Britain, sheltering extreme anti-gay groups."
After the Chief Rabbi finished his address on the need for religious tolerance, Dr Edwards said: "These groups have perceived that I am so intolerant that they will not tolerate my place on a body negotiating the choppy waters of 21st century tolerance.
"The timing could not have been more perfect. These comments go right to the heart of the debate that we are launching with Dr Sacks’ address: where does religious conviction fit in to society’s balance of rights, responsibilities, diversity, equality and multi-culturalism? The secularist would of course answer 'it doesn’t', but this would be to betray history. As Dr Sacks has so brilliantly said, the roots of liberalism and the new found tolerance that went with it were in fact religiously inspired."
Only a few weeks ago the Evangelical Alliance was among the organisations that celebrated 360 years since the Putney Debates, which pioneered the liberal democratic settlement, where the Levellers called for equal rights irrespective of status or property, although not gender. Dr Edwards said: "It was to Genesis and the Gospels that they turned to justify their demands. "
And some of the Levellers' prayer meetings lasted for five hours, which in the Jamaican Pentecostalism from which Dr Edwards has emerged would be referred to as The Preamble.
Dr Edwards said: "To remove religious conviction from the public square is as sensible as removing the engines from an aircraft in flight. For a while the plane may glide and to all extent seem fine, but before long the altimeter will only be headed in one direction, by which time it is too late to start remembering how it was you got airborne in the first place.
"A tolerance which calls for the removal of conviction is no tolerance at all. If modern day politics seeks to silence or exclude voices, be they religious, gay or atheist, then a key pillar of an open society will have been destroyed and we will be the poorer for it. It is our task in this debate to persuade society that tolerance is not the absence of conviction, or even of conversion. It is the absence of coercion. In a liberal democracy it is more intolerant to disallow religious views based on secular prejudice: after all, secularism is just another religious position."
Keith Porteus-Wood, of the National Secular Society, told The Times that Dr Edwards' remarks were not an accurate reflection of what is going on and accused him of being "unChristian" in his attack on secularism.
He pointed out that the Evangelical Alliance website has a report on it entitled Faith, Hope and Homosexuality which reads: “We opposed moves within certain churches to accept and/or endorse sexually active homosexual partnerships as legitimate form of Christian relationship.” The report also says: “We do not accept that to reject homoerotic sexual practice on biblical grounds is itself homophobic.” And it encourages evangelical congregations to welcome gay people – only on the understanding that they are seeking to “renounce same-sex sexual relationships.”
Mr Porteus-Wood said his objection was not to Mr Edwards’ religious convictions, but to his seeking to impose them on to a commission that is there to serve everyone – not just Christians.
Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society, said: “Joel Edwards’ definition of tolerance, rights and homophobia are very different to those of the body on which he serves. He seems to think religious freedom means the freedom to take rights away from other people. He must not be permitted to remain on this commission in a role that will allow him to compromise its aims.”
In his address, Dr Sacks warned that society was in danger of losing its great traditions of tolerance.
He said: "We are witnessing the death of respect and you see it everywhere from road rage itself, to football hooliganism, to street crime, to the fact - I find almost unbelievable - the number of teachers who get assaulted by pupils or nurses by patients. This is an age in which people speak without listening, condemn without understanding and even the media sometimes seem unable to understand anything more complicated than a sound bite.
"This new intolerance is threatening Christian societies on campus, people who wear crucifixes and happen to work at airports, there are bans on public displays of Christian symbols and sometimes even Christmas itself is the festival that dare not speak its name.
"How did this happen? We were supposed to be so tolerant so open minded, so accepting of diversity. How come we are measurably a less tolerant society than we were 20 years ago?"
He suggested it was because of the loss of a shared moral code. "What then happens when two views clash? The answer is the loudest or the angriest voice wins. If I can’t refute you then I can ridicule you, I can intimidate you and even, if need be, ban you. That is how the old tolerance which made Britain so special and so beloved to all of us has mutated into the new intolerance, or as I called it in my book in one of the chapters, ‘the death of freedom in the name of freedom’."
Dr Sacks said: "That is why I believe that all of us Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Christians and Sikhs must work together to recreate a tolerant society on the religious base that tolerance was born in this country three and a half centuries ago."
Posted by latimer at 01:30 PM | Comments (0)
July 25, 2007
Archbishop of York: Exclusive interview
A Plea for Unity: "I want to say to both sides, you would do well to come to the Lambeth Conference for us to hammer out our differences."
Archbishop of York: Exclusive interviewBy Jonathan Petre, Religion Correspondent
Last Updated: 2:26am BST 26/07/2007
For complete interview: www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/07/25/nsentamu125.xml
Extract:
A plea for unity
Inevitably, questions over the future of the worldwide Anglican Communion surfaced, and Dr Sentamu, a close ally of his counterpart at Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, issued a plea for unity.
He warned the leaders of the conservative Global South group that they would be in danger of putting themselves outside the worldwide Church if they carried out their threats to boycott the Lambeth Conference next year.
He said: "The thing that unites all Christians is our faith in the God and Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ, and what makes us Christians is that we participate in the death and resurrection of Christ.
"The other thing to remember is that we are all sinners in need of God’s grace.
"As long as someone does not deny the very basic doctrines of the Church - the creation, the death, the resurrection of Christ and human beings being made in the image of God - then the rest really helps but they are not the core message.
"And I haven’t found that in Ecusa or in Canada, where I was recently, they have any doubts in their understanding of God which is very different from anybody. What they have quarrelled about is the nature of sexual ethics."
He nevertheless emphasised that Dr Williams does expect those who attend Lambeth to abide by the decision-making processes of the Anglican Communion.
"The Archbishop of Canterbury is very clear that he still reserves the right to withdraw the invitations and that those who are invited are accepting the Windsor process and accepting the process about the covenant.
"But in another sentence, he said that attending Lambeth is not also a test of orthodoxy.
"Church regulations and Church legislation should not stand in the way of the gospel of love your neighbour.
"You are members of one body and therefore you should listen to one another and find a way out.
"I want to say to both sides, you would do well to come to the Lambeth Conference for us to hammer out our differences.
"It will be no good for either side to say, it doesn’t matter now, we can just do anything we like."
Posted by latimer at 11:35 AM | Comments (0)
November 22, 2006
UK - Christian Union under Threat, Students Prepare for Legal Action
Christian Unions across Britain are preparing to take legal action as they face increasing persecution from university authorities which deem them 'too exclusive'.
www.christiantoday.com/article/christian.union.under.threat.students.prepare.for.legal.action/8379.htm
Posted by latimer at 09:57 AM | Comments (0)
August 03, 2006
Gay UK Anglican priests get married
Jeffrey John, dean of St Albans, entered into the civil partnership with Grant Hollings, a Church of England chaplain, in a ceremony at a register office in southern England last week, the activists told Reuters.
NZ Herald: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/topic/story.cfm?c_id=500818&objectid=10394152
UK Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/08/01/nlesb201.xml
Posted by latimer at 12:06 PM | Comments (0)
July 26, 2006
UK Liberals may split from Canterbury over homosexuals
Liberal clergy in Britain are preparing to turn to America's Anglican bishops for leadership in a move that could produce "civil war" and destroy the Church of England, The Sunday Telegraph has learned.
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/07/02/ngay02.xml
Posted by latimer at 04:29 PM | Comments (0)
March 01, 2006
Moral Climate Change and Freedom of Speech by NT Wright
... But it is only these late-modern shibboleths, I believe, which are preventing us from realising that healthy religion and healthy public life do truly belong together and that the attempt to keep them apart leads to a dangerous vacuum which may well be filled by unhealthy styles of religion and by unhealthy forms of public life.
A speech in the House of Lords, UK, February 9 2006
www.ntwrightpage.com/Wright_HOL_Moral_Climate.htm
Posted by latimer at 12:22 PM | Comments (0)
Faith plays a part in health of teenagers
Young people with no faith have such low self-esteem that one in four have contemplated suicide, new research has revealed.
CofE Newspaper: http://tinyurl.com/gbzmt
Posted by latimer at 10:10 AM | Comments (0)
November 15, 2005
Muslim nations pressed over rights of religious minorities
ProminentIslamic groups are pressing Christians living in Muslim countries to accept major reductions to their civil liberties the Bishop of Rochester, the Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, will reveal.
CofE Newspaper: tinyurl.com/avv5c
Posted by latimer at 02:44 PM | Comments (0)
October 21, 2005
The Martyrdom of Bishops Latimer and Ridley
16 October 2005 marked the 450th anniversary of the martyrdom of Bishop Hugh Latimer and Bishop Nicholas Ridley. It was Latimer who, as the faggots were lit, famously said “Be of good comfort Master Ridley, and play the man. We shall this day light such a candle by God’s grace in England as I trust shall never be put out!”.
EV News: www.evangelicals.org/news.asp?id=217
CofE Newspaper: tinyurl.com/dfser
Christian History Institute:
chi.gospelcom.net/DAILYF/2003/10/daily-10-16-2003.shtml
A Brief history:
www.tudorplace.com.ar/Bios/Latimer,Ridley,Cranmer.htm
Posted by latimer at 11:08 AM | Comments (0)
May 27, 2005
Mission to the Non-Churched
"To understand Mission-shaped Church is to see a more radical but more biblical agenda for mission. It brings us into contact with a group among the under 45’s who are six times more than those in church." by George Lings
http://tinyurl.com/cbsne
Posted by latimer at 01:48 PM | Comments (0)
Carey Urges Christians to be Stronger in Defence of their Faith
Lord Carey has warned that a tendency to appoint bishops with little parish experience will undermine its efforts to halt a decline in church attendance.
The former Archbishop of Canterbury said that society has been badly damaged by “strident secularism” and urged Christians to be stronger in defence of their faith.
Delivering the Spital sermon, Dr Carey stressed that the Church must become more united in its evangelism and give greater recognition to the success of growing churches.
He urged that bishops needed to pay more attention to the role of strong churches, but said that too many do not understand how to be “missionary bishops”.
“If bishops have not had a decent record as ordinary parish priests how may they truly be leaders in mission? How may they manage growth?”
Speaking at Christ Church Spitalfields, he questioned whether they could understand the pressures placed on clergy today if they have not spent “substantial time at the coal face of ministry and mission”.
He argued that a missionary church must have a majority of bishops who have had proven success in growth, although he said that his successor as Archbishop, Dr Rowan Williams, and the Bishop of Durham, the Rt Rev Tom Wright, were exceptions as they “exercise a significant role as missionary theologians”.
There has been an increasing separation and independence in the growth of networks alongside the structures of the national church, which almost exclude the diocese.
This failure to pull together has worrying implications, Lord Carey commented.
He said that the Church must be strong in its mission if it is to challenge the rise of secularism, but blamed General Synod for failing to support his vision for the Decade of Evangelism.
Over #6 million was raised from wealthy donors to the Lambeth Partnership in setting up Springboard. “Sadly, the Church through General Synod never matched this in any way and thus we never fully grasped the opportunity that the Decade of Evangelism presented,” he said.”
Dr Williams has established a new mission board, Fresh Expressions, but Lord Carey warned this could also fail if it is limited to interest groups or age and culture-specific groups and neglects the regular ministry of the Church on Sundays. Being ‘in thrall’ to the pursuit of novelty is a graver danger than being trapped by the past, he said.
“We Christians have been weak in our defence of the Christian faith in the face of such forms of secularism.”
He said that the weakening of faith had consequentially led to more crime, broken families, the acceptance of cohabitation instead of marriage and less social cohesion. “I am very worried by secular assumptions that undermine the very values that have underpinned our nation.”
Lord Carey’s sermon marked the return of the tradition of The Spital sermon to Christ Church for the first time since its Pulpit Cross was destroyed in the days of Charles I.
http://www.churchnewspaper.com/news.php?read=on&number_key=5770&title=House%20of%20Bishops%20revisits%20Just%20War%20theory
Posted by latimer at 01:33 PM | Comments (0)