PRESIDING BISHOP'S STATEMENT ON PRIMATES MEETING

January 24, 2011

I look forward to greeting many old friends at the Primates Meeting in Dublin, and I look forward to meeting those who have been elected in the past two years. I am deeply grateful that we may begin to focus on issues that are highly significant in local contexts as well as across the breadth of the Anglican Communion. Certainly issues of serving our brothers and sisters, offering good news for body, mind, and spirit, are the central ones in our province. The Episcopal Church is urgently focused on rebuilding in Haiti, seeking increased ways to bring good news to the poor in indigenous communities, inner cities, and expanding and depopulating rural areas in all the nations in our province. Across the globe, in partnership with Anglicans and others, we seek to serve the least of these, bringing light in the midst of darkness, peace in the midst of war and violence, and hope in the face of devastating natural disasters and the growing reality of climate change. We own our domestic responsibility to change our habits and ways of life that contribute to environmental damage and destruction. In all we do, we seek to recognize the face of God wherever we turn, realizing that the body of God’s creation will only be healed when all members of the body of Christ are working together.

The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori
Presiding Bishop and Primate
The Episcopal Church

H/T to Jim Naughton at The Lead.

STORY OF THE DAY - OLD CAT

Sometimes I think I'm going to end up
all alone in a cold apartment living on
cat food from a can but I guess that's
not so bad since I'm a cat after all.

From StoryPeople.

PRAYER FOR THE PRIMATES' MEETING...

...from the Most Revd Dr Thabo Makgoba, Archbishop of Cape Town.

Lord Jesus Christ, you washed your disciples' feet,
and called them to follow your example.
Bless the leaders of our churches as they gather at the Primates' Meeting.
As they take counsel together, give them grace to grow in prayer and fellowship,
so they may bear one anothers' burdens and share one anothers' joys,
and find mutual support in their heavy responsibilities of servant leadership.
Refresh and encourage them as they meet,
and empower them to lead your people
in lives of faithful worship, witness and service,
that bring your redemptive gospel to this broken and needy world.
Amen

The meeting will take place in Dublin, Ireland, January 25-30.

H/T to Torey Lightcap at The Lead

DEFINE THE LIMITS OF THE ANGLICAN COMMUNION?

From Anglicans United comes a report on the Mere Anglicanism Conference in Charleston, SC.

In the "About" link on the home page of Anglicans United is the following:

Purpose: to grow a faithful church for the promulgation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, while forming Christian disciples in the evangelical, catholic and reformed Anglican way.

Anglicans United traces its roots to the 3R’s Conference held in Winter Park, Florida in January of 1986. The conference brought together evangelicals, charismatics and broad-church traditional Episcopalians who shared a growing sense of alarm at the continuing moral and doctrinal slide of their Church.

Opposed to moral and doctrinal relativism, the conference highlighted the Revelation of God in the Scriptures, and called for the Renewal of God’s people. Alarmed by trends within the denomination, everyone saw the need for Reformation. The conference ended with the issuance of a 3R’s Statement and publication of a book, “The Gospel Conspiracy in the Episcopal Church”, written by the Rev. Charles Irish and the Rt. Rev. Michael Marshall.

Alarm! Alarm!

This is the first I hear of Anglicans United, or, if I have heard of them previously, I've forgotten. Perhaps, I'm derelict in not knowing or remembering.

The Mere Anglicanism conference appears to be sponsored by the Diocese of South Carolina. (Note the absence of "Episcopal" in the name of the diocese.)

The theme for the 2011 Mere Anglicanism Conference, which will be held January 20-22 is "Biblical Anglicanism for a Global Future: Recovering the Power of the Word."

At the conference, Abp. Mouneer Anis, Cairo, Egypt, the Primate of Jerusalem and the Middle East and the Diocese of Egypt, gave the main address, titled “Recovering the Power of the Word for the Anglican Communion”. The entire text of the address may be found at Anglicans United.

The archbishop spoke first about the recent New Year's Eve bombing in Alexandria.

This year the bomb happened in the New Year’s Eve service 2011, as they were coming out of the church this bombing took place. It shook the nation, as well as the moderate Muslims as well. We are not used to this. We are a peaceful nation and this happening is upsetting many Christians. Something good may come out of this. Many moderate Muslims condemned this and speak of the right of the Christians to be there and worship. I want you to pray that the Church will continue to speak in love. The Church in Egypt was founded on the blood of the martyrs. Pray for us. We are not afraid and are ready to die for the sake of Jesus Christ in Egypt.

Yes. Please pray for peace between Christians and Muslims in Egypt and other countries in Africa and the Middle East.

Then, Abp. Anis spoke about faithfulness to the Word of God, meaning the Bible. He says the following in reference to the Lambeth Conference 1888: Resolution 11.1 “The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as “containing all things necessary to salvation”:

We were formed as a Biblical Communion. We are commanded to read and interpret Scripture together in order to define the limits of Anglican Communion in regard to the interpretation of Scripture. I believe we are far from that. If we followed what our predecessors decreed since 1888, we would not be an impaired, dysfunctional Communion today.

Um - no. To set limits to who is in the family of the Anglican Communion, and who is out, according to a certain group's ideas of the proper interpretation of Scripture seems quite un-Anglican, if one knows even a little of the history of the Anglican Communion.

Later, in the Q&A period, Abp. Anis gave the following response to a question about the upcoming Primates Meeting:

With the regard of the upcoming Primate’s meeting, (Dublin, Ireland Jan 25-30, 2011) we are not boycotting. Many have said that we are boycotting this meeting. We however are not attending.

Why? Because we did ask the Archbishop of Canterbury to follow up on the recommendations of the previous meeting (Dar es Salaam, 2006; no meeting was held in 2008 because of the Lambeth Conference). At that meeting we discussed, decided and recommended actions. This was never done. It is time for decisions after comprehensive discussion.

For this meeting, we received an invitation to sit in 2 separate rooms: the revisionists in one and the Global South in another. This is a joke. We were not given a chance to affect the process and have some ownership of the meeting. When we are given that opportunity, we will attend.

Can the invitations really have gone out inviting the Primates to meet in separate rooms?

Back in October of 2010, David Anderson of the American Anglican Council gave the following opinion on the arrangements for the Primates Meeting:

Dr. Williams is being advised that numerous provinces won't attend the Primates Meeting if Jefferts Schori attends. Having booked the venue, he might as well have the meeting since he is committed to paying for it, but without the orthodox Primates in attendance it could be a dangerous meeting, giving opinion and credence to teachings and beliefs that are not representative of orthodox Anglicanism.

If asked my opinion, I would strongly advise the orthodox Primates to 1) organize before the Primates' meeting, and 2) attend and remove by force of numbers the Presiding Bishop of the American Episcopal Church (not physically, but by either voting her off the "island," or recessing to another room and not letting her in). The meeting is a place to gather and potentially to settle some of the issues that are pulling the Anglican Communion apart, and to begin to restore health to a most wonderful communion.

Can it be that Abp. Rowan Williams took David Anderson's idea of meeting in separate rooms and ran with it? I don't have the answer, but I'd like to know.

And the bishops are not boycotting the Primates Meeting; they are just not attending, because Abp. Williams has not followed through on recommended actions. I'm guessing Abp. Anis refers to actions not taken by Abp. Williams to discipline certain member provinces of the AC. And it seems that Abp. Anis was offended, rather than appeased, by the invitation to meet in separate rooms - if such is the case of the invitations going out as the archbishop describes them.

If this post seems rambling, bear with me. I'm writing in part to try to get the groups and their shenanigans straight in my head, and I'm not sure I succeeded.

H/T to Simon Sarmiento Thinking Anglicans.

PLEASE VOTE FOR MATT'S TREES EVERY DAY

Thank you.

SWEET EMMA - "I AIN'T GONNA GIVE NOBODY NONE..."

Enjoy! I did - Sweet Emma Barrett live in Preservation Hall in New Orleans - back in the early 1960s, before the babies started coming.

LOUISIANA'S GOV. JINDAL IS SLIPPING IN THE POLLS

From Arjun Jaikumar at Daily Kos:

Polls for the Louisiana Governor's race slated for fall 2011 have been rare so far, with conventional wisdom dictating that incumbent Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal is the runaway favorite in this red state.

A new poll is out, however, from Republican pollster Market Research Insight (though it appears to have been conducted for "a group of business people", and not the Jindal campaign).

The poll shows decent but unspectacular numbers for Jindal:

Market Research Insight (R) for "a consortium of business interests". 1/10-14. Registered voters. MoE 4%.

Reelect Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) 49
Prefer someone else 40
....

So this poll isn't wholly surprising...unless you compare it to Jindal's once-stratospheric approval ratings. While pollsters once had Jindal's approval in the mid-70s, his current numbers indicate he's slid back to being a generic Republican.

Which, in Louisiana, isn't a bad place to be. It's just not completely safe, and it might be a touch early for Jindal to start burnishing his credentials for his expected 2016 presidential run. Rather, he might want to prevent his home-state approval from falling any more than it already has.

A good many folks who strongly supported the governor in the last election became quite disenchanted with our peripatetic chief executive for being absent from the state, raising money for Republican candidates in the 2010 election, when we faced a budget crisis here in the state where Jindal was elected to govern.

Some of us hoped that Jindal might be appointed to head the RNC to replace Michael Steele, thus moving him permanently out of the governor's office, but - alas - it did not happen. Now Jindal travels around the state and the country to raise money for his war chest, which already holds $7 million, for the next gubernatorial election.

Meanwhile, the state budget deficit is projected to be $1.6 billion. The governor needs to focus on finding rational solutions to the budget crisis, but he won't. Since Jindal will not entertain the idea of raising taxes, the budget must be balanced by deeper and more painful cuts than have already been put in place. As is usually the case, I fear the least amongst us will bear the brunt of the cuts.

Jindal seems to enjoy running for office and raising money for campaigns, his own and other politicians' campaigns, but he does not seem to savor doing the job he was elected to do. Yet, he will probably be reelected without much of a struggle, because Louisiana becomes more Republican with every day that goes by.

JESUS AND MO

Click on the strip for the larger view.

From Jesus and Mo.

BYE, KEITH, I WILL MISS YOU

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

From the New York Times:

Keith Olbermann, the highest-rated host on MSNBC, announced abruptly on the air Friday night that he was leaving his show, “Countdown,” immediately.

The host, who has had a stormy relationship with the management of the network for some time, especially since he was suspended for two days last November, came to an agreement with NBC’s corporate management late this week to settle his contract and step down.

In a closing statement on his show, Mr. Olbermann said simply that it would be the last edition of the program. He offered no explanation other than on occasion “all that surrounded the show – but never the show itself – was just too much for me.”

Mr. Olbermann thanked his viewers for their enthusiastic support of a show that had “gradually established its position as antiestablishment.”

I will miss Keith as a counter-voice to Faux News, which is nothing more than an arm of the Republican Party, and, all too often, featured the extremists as representative of the party. Keith sees himself as antiestablishment, and that's quite true, but I can't deny that his show was a forum for progressive politicians and issues, perhaps a needed balance in these times when we see or read little of what could be called objective news reporting. I'll say this for Keith: I never heard him lie, and when he made a mistake he publicly acknowledged his mistake, which I cannot say for the faux "reporters" on Faux News.

Josh Marshall appeared in the opening segment of the final Countdown show and posted a rather poignant account at TPM of his surprise when he received the news release about the finale of the show. Josh says:

I'm sure we'll be hearing soon enough what on earth happened here. But color me stunned. And really disappointed.

Was it the coming takeover of NBC by Comcast that brought an end to Countdown? Again from the New York Times:

NBC executives said the move had nothing to do with the impending takeover of NBC Universal by Comcast. With viewers and fans of Mr. Olbermann suggesting that Comcast was responsible for forcing Mr. Olbermann out, Comcast also released an official statement late Friday night:

“Comcast has not closed the transaction for NBC Universal and has no operational control at any of its properties including MSNBC. We pledged from the day the deal was announced that we would not interfere with NBC Universal’s news operations. We have not and we will not.”

We shall see. I've heard that song before from the executives of companies who take over news organizations.

THE LATEST ON KATZIE, MARK'S CAT

From Mark at Enough About Me:

Dr. Carrie ran a scope Thursday, to see if it might be polyps in the throat causing the coughing. No polyps, but . . . swollen tonsils and a raw throat.

Now, Katzie is on prednisone (sic) and an antibiotic. Yesterday, there were no coughing fits. We're watching this weekend to see how it goes, and, if the coughing is gone through meds, the ekg takes on less urgency.

At this point, the bill stands at $392.10 and we have $150, which is a huge help in itself.

Thank you, and keep praying that this "gets" it.

I think of Katzie as our Blogland's cat. Let us pray that the latest medication "gets it".