Homosexual activist speaks at ‘Christian’ festival in UK

Leading homosexual activist Peter Tatchell appeared at the Greenbelt festival on 28 August to speak about “the struggle for queer freedom in Africa,” reports Christian Concern for our Nation.

Greenbelt, a controversial ‘Christian’ festival, drew over 21,000 visitors this year. The festival is sponsored by Christian Aid, CMS, the Church Times, the Church Urban Fund and the Mothers Union.

Prior to the weekend, Mr. Tatchell had told Ekklesia that he was “looking forward” to the weekend and that, while not a Christian himself, “we have more in common than divides us”. In his talk he spoke about homosexual rights and the church, and accused the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, of “colluding” with the persecution of homosexuals in Africa.

Anglican Mainstream encouraged people to boycott Greenbelt because of Mr. Tatchell’s presence on the programme. Spokesman Lisa Nolland said that “Greenbelt, ‘the UK’s largest Christian festival’, is sending out a sub-text that is totally at odds with a Christian understanding of sexuality by including Peter Tatchell on its programme.”

“Young people who attend Greenbelt and hear Peter Tatchell are given false assurance that Peter Tatchell is the sort of person they should be listening to. Greenbelt has enough respect for Peter Tatchell as a public figure to place him on the platform …….thus, there is a de facto legitimisation of the plausibility of his views across the board.”

Mr. Tatchell is well known for his view that the age of consent should be lowered to 14 for homosexuals. On his website he states that if children under 14 have consensual sex, and if there is no greater than a three year age differential, there should not be a prosecution.

Mr. Tatchell is also a strong advocate of pornography which he believes is good for people. In his book “Safer Sexy: The Guide to Gay Sex Safely” he writes approvingly of sadomasochism, bondage, infidelity, orgies and public cruising for sex.

On 12 April 1998 Mr. Tatchell was prosecuted for leading an OutRage! protest which disrupted the Easter sermon by the then Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, with Mr. Tatchell forcing his way onto the pulpit to denounce what he claimed was George Carey’s opposition to legal equality for homosexuals.

Andrea Minichiello Williams of Christian Concern for our Nation said: "We wholeheartedly support the statements of Lisa Nolland and the brave stand that Anglican Mainstream has taken. We are living in a time when the church at large has been deeply compromised by a failure to stand for the truth of the gospel and has allowed itself to be strongly influenced by current fashionable political trends."

Report from the Christian Telegraph

Anglican leaders around globe decry ordination of lesbian bishop

In response to an openly gay woman being ordained a bishop in the Episcopal Church on Saturday, Anglican leaders from around the world decried the action as “gravely concerning and wrong,” with some adding that the move has “hurt and alienated” many within the Episcopal community, reports Catholic News Agency.

Fifty-five year-old Mary Glasspool, an openly parterned lesbian, was ordained a bishop at Long Beach arena on May 15. Some 3,000 people attended the ceremony which featured a procession with liturgical dancers in bright colored outfits, costumed dragons and drums, according to Virtue Online.

This recent move by the Episcopal church in the U.S. has caused tremendous controversy within the global Anglican church, prompting Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams to issue a statement of caution when the announcement of Glasspool’s ordination was first made last year. He urged church leaders at the time to consider the “implications and consequences of this decision.” Archbishop Williams wrote in March that the Episcopal leaders’ later confirmation of Glasspool’s election as bishop-suffragen was “regrettable.”

Several world leaders within the Anglican community denounced Saturday’s ordination.

“The decision of the Episcopal Church of the United States of America to consecrate as a bishop a woman in a sexually active lesbian relationship is gravely concerning and wrong,” said Rev. Dr. H. William Godfrey, bishop of the the Anglican Church of Peru on May 15.

“It is impossible,” he added, “to know by what authority the Episcopal Church is taking this action. It is disobedient to the Word of God, to the teaching of the Church, and deeply hurtful and damaging to their Christian brothers and sisters.”

“It appears,” the bishop observed, “that their decision is being taken in accord with their instincts and feelings, and the ways of the liberal society in which they live, and that they have forgotten the moral values and teachings of the Holy Scriptures and their Church.”

A coalition of Evangelical Anglicans in Ireland issued a joint statement expressing support for those within the Episcopal community who feel “hurt and alienated” by Glasspool’s ordination.

“Many Christians of all traditions and denominations will share our sorrow and see Mary Glasspool’s consecration as a defiant rejection of pleas for restraint and, even more importantly, as a rejection of the pattern of holiness of life called for in Scripture and endorsed by believers over the centuries,” they wrote on Sunday.

Rev. Robinson Cavalcanti, Bishop of the Diocese of Recife in Brazil, said in a statement on May 15 that the ordination was “lamentable” and that it has caused “a de facto rupture” within the Anglican community.

The bishop of the Diocese of Caledonia, Rev. William Anderson, added that he “can only hope that the Archbishop of Canterbury will finally accept that bishops and national churches who choose to willfully ignore the teaching of the Anglican Communion and Holy Scripture, ought to suffer the natural consequence of choosing to go their own way – which is to say, that they ought to be considered to have left the Anglican Communion.”

Report from the Christian Telegraph 

Church of England moves towards ordaining women

Over the weekend, the Church of England introduced draft legislation putting the country’s Anglican communion on the fast track to allowing women’s ordination, reports Catholic News Agency.

On Saturday, May 8, the Church of England’s revision committee published a 142-page review in favor of draft proposals that support women being consecrated as bishops and priests.

According to Reuters, the church’s revision committee also proposed safeguards for more traditional parishes who have expressed opposition to ordaining women, including the right to request that a male bishop perform blessings and ordinations. However, the committee proposals did not meet the requests by these parishes for new dioceses or a special class of bishops.

“After much discussion the Committee rejected proposals aimed at fundamentally changing the approach of the legislation for those unable to receive the ministry of female bishops,” wrote Church of England officials in a statement Monday.

The draft proposals will now go forward for debate at the Church’s General Synod, in July in York, Northern England. If passed, the Church of England will hold the same position on female ordination as the Anglican Communion in the United States and New Zealand.

Monday’s statement also clarified that the “earliest that the legislation could achieve final approval in Synod (when two-thirds majorities in each of the Houses of Bishops, Clergy and Laity will be required) is 2012, following which parliamentary approval and the Royal Assent would be needed.”

The statement added that “2014 remains the earliest realistic date when the first women might be consecrated as bishops.”

This move is likely to increase interest among traditionalist Anglicans in the Pope’s recent invitation for Church of England members to become Catholic. Last November, the Holy Father released “Anglicanorum coetibus,” a motu propio which offered Vatican guidelines for Anglican groups to enter into communion with the Catholic Church.

The Sunday Telegraph in Britain reported on May 2 that several Anglican bishops recently met with Vatican officials to discuss the process of converting to Catholicism.

Despite the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams reportedly urging them not to leave the Church of England, several bishops are looking to break from the Anglican Communion over their opposition to the introduction of women bishops and priests.

According to the British paper, Bishops John Broadhurst, Keith Newton and Andrew Burnham, from the Dioceses of Fulham, Richborough and Ebbsfleet respectively, all met with senior Vatican officials last week.

Report from the Christian Telegraph 

Church of Sweden Ordains First Openly Lesbian Bishop

By Thaddeus M. Baklinski

STOCKHOLM, November 11, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Sweden’s Lutheran church announced it had ordained its first openly homosexual bishop on Sunday, less than a month after it gave its ministers the right to "marry" same-sex couples in church.

The Church of Sweden, which was the state church until 2000, had backed the parliament’s adoption of the same-sex "marriage" law, which took effect on May 1. Its synod approved homosexual church "weddings" on October 22.

Eva Brunne, 55, was consecrated as the Bishop of Stockholm in a ceremony at Uppsala cathedral, just north of the Swedish capital, the Church of Sweden said in a statement.

Brunne is in a civil union partnership with another woman, Gunilla Lindén, who is a Church of Sweden pastor. Together they are the guardians of a three-year-old child.

"It is very positive that our church is setting an example here and is choosing me as bishop based on my qualifications, when they also know that they can meet resistance elsewhere," Brunne told the Associated Press.

Anglican bishops from England and Northern Ireland in fact refused to attend the ordination.

Five bishops from various levels within the Anglican Church, including Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, decided not to attend the November 8th ceremony, the Dagen newspaper reports.

"The Anglican Church has a moratorium right now concerning the ordination of bishops who live together with someone of the same sex," Alan Harper, a bishop from Armagh in Northern Ireland, told the newspaper.

Swedish Archbishop Anders Wejryd, who conducted the ordination of Brunne, disputed the claim that the Church of England was boycotting the ceremony.

"That’s not true at all," he told the Kyrkans Tidning newspaper. "We send invitations to those with the highest rank. That’s why the Archbishop of Canterbury received an invitation, but no one expected him to say yes."

According to Wejryd, the international invitees who declined to take part in the ordination included "many who generally never come."

Other invitees who declined to attend, according to Swedish news service The Local, were bishops from the Lutheran churches of Iceland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, as well as the World Lutheran Federation.

This Report from LifeSiteNews.com

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ANGLICAN PRIEST APOLOGIZES FOR “MARRYING” FELLOW GAY CLERGY

The Anglican minister who undertook to perform a much publicized “marriage” ceremony for two of his fellow clergy in a Church of England parish last May has expressed regret for his actions, which were in direct defiance of Church of England rules, and is being let off with a slap on the wrist, reports Thaddeus M. Baklinski, LifeSiteNews.com.

Rev. Dr. Martin Dudley officiated at the homosexual “wedding” of two homosexual clergy at St. Bartholomew the Great church in London, using a slightly modified version of the Church of England’s marriage ceremony. The modified form began, “Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God to join these men in a holy covenant of love and fidelity.”

The ceremony occurred at a particularly sensitive time for the Church of England – in the immediate and heated leadup to the decennial Lambeth Conference, an event that numerous traditional Anglican priests and bishops ultimately boycotted due to the Anglican Church’s increasingly brazen rejection of Christian sexual ethics. Rev. Dudley’s actions were immediately condemned by bishops in the traditional Global South.

The Most Rev. Henry Orombi, the Archbishop of Uganda, called the ceremony “blasphemous” and called on Rowan Williams to take decisive action, warning that the Anglican Church could “disintegrate.” Archbishop Orombi added, “What really shocks me is that this is happening in the Church of England that first brought the Gospel to us.”

The Bishop of London, the Right Rev. Richard Chartres, ordered an investigation into the proceedings, which involved “a series of frank discussions with the Rector,” a diocesan statement issued yesterday said.

In his letter to Dudley, dated 18 Jun 2008, Bishop Chartres said, “You have sought to justify your actions to the BBC and in various newspapers but have failed more than two weeks after the service to communicate with me.”

“The point at issue,” continued the bishop, “is not Civil Partnerships themselves or the relation of biblical teaching to homosexual practice. The real issue is whether you wilfully defied the discipline of the Church and broke your oath of canonical obedience to your Bishop.”

Bishop Chartres concluded by warning Dudley, “St Bartholomew’s is not a personal fiefdom. You serve there as an ordained minister of the Church of England, under the authority of the Canons and as someone who enjoys my licence. I have already asked the Archdeacon of London to commence the investigation and I shall be referring the matter to the Chancellor of the Diocese. Before I do this, I am giving you an opportunity to make representations to me direct.”

In a letter to the bishop dated July 21 but not released publicly until posted on the London diocese web site today, Rev. Dudley promised that he wouldn’t do it again unless church policy changes.

In it Rev. Dudley said: “I regret the embarrassment caused to you by this event and by its subsequent portrayal in the media. I now recognise that I should not have responded positively to the request for this service.”

“I can now appreciate that the service held at St Bartholomew the Great on 31 May 2008 was inconsistent with the terms of the Pastoral Statement from the House of Bishops issued in 2005,” he said.

“Nonetheless, I am willing to abide by its content in the future, until such time as it is rescinded or amended, and I undertake not to provide any form of blessing for same sex couples registering civil partnerships.”

The diocesan statement then concluded that both sides had agreed to put the incident behind them: “As a consequence, the Rector has made expressly clear his regret over what happened at St Bartholomew the Great and accepted the service should not have taken place.

“Bishop Richard considered the matter and has decided to accept the Rector’s apology in full. The matter is therefore now closed.”

Report from the Christian Telegraph

UK TRADITIONAL WING OF ANGLICANS TO LEAVE CHURCH OF ENGLAND

There are effectively two religions being practised in the Church of England, a leader of the evangelical or traditionally Protestant wing of the Anglican Church said this week, reports Hilary White, LifeSiteNews.com. On one side are the theologically ultra-liberal leadership who support not only women’s ordination but homosexuality, while on the other are those who hold to traditionally Christian and biblical principles.

The Rev. Rod Thomas was speaking to the annual conference of the Reform movement in London this week. Thomas said that at least twenty-five parishes, representing up to 3000 practising Anglicans in the UK, are already seeking alternate oversight from bishops not associated with the ultra-liberal theological trends that dominate the Church of England.

“We are actively going to take forward the agenda of alternative episcopal oversight. We are no longer able to sit back and wait to see what happens,” Rev. Thomas said.

“The most radical scenario which I don’t discount, but neither am I saying we are pressing for, is where you have a shortlist of names and ask overseas persons to consecrate them so they cater for individuals in this country.”

The Reform movement was founded in 1993 to oppose the ordination of women as clergy in the Church of England and represents the established Church’s traditional protestant or “evangelical” wing.

Thomas urged support from Reform Anglicans for the Fellowship of the Confessing Anglicans, a body set up by the bishops who attended this summer’s Global Anglican Futures Conference in Jerusalem.

Thomas said that the group believes in remaining within an “an Episcopal church for good theological and pragmatic reasons.”

“However, where the teaching and actions of a bishop promote an unbiblical way of thinking, then we simply have to look elsewhere for a bishop.

“If we fail to do this then our congregations will not see us taking New Testament teaching seriously and the process of accommodation will continue,” he said.

This summer’s Lambeth Conference issued instructions for Anglican congregations not to continue to seek “cross-border” oversight from bishops outside traditional Anglican episcopal boundaries.

Meanwhile traditionally Christian congregations in the US are winning their cases in courts to retain their parish properties while at the same time removing themselves from oversight by the Episcopal Church of the US (ECUSA). In the Diocese of Virginia this week, a judge ruled that a parcel of land given by Christ the Redeemer Episcopal Church was properly deeded to Truro Church, a traditional church, and that the diocese has no claim to it. The diocese has recently lost three times in lawsuits to retain some dozen church properties.

Conservative Anglican writer and commentator David Virtue wrote, “The Anglican Communion is coming apart at the seams while Dr. Rowan Williams tells a London reporter that he admires the atheist [Dr. Richard] Dawkins.” Dr. Williams, the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, was reported to have recently said about Dawkins, “There’s something about his swashbuckling side which is endearing. I invited atheism’s high priest and his wife to a Lambeth Palace party last year. They were absolutely delightful.”

Report from the Christian Telegraph

SHARIA COURTS OPERATING IN BRITAIN RECOGNISED BY BRITISH LAW

Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury and head of the Church of England, said he was shocked at the furor that arose after he told an audience earlier this year that he thought it “seems unavoidable” that some accommodation for Islamic sharia law would be implemented in Britain. However, Williams’ statements evidently were prophetic, as a report in the Sunday Times has revealed that the Islamic law is already operating in Britain, not only in domestic disputes, but also in criminal cases, reports Hilary White, LifeSiteNews.com.

The Times said this weekend that the government had officially accepted the existence of sharia law courts to officiate in Muslim civil cases. The rulings of a network of five sharia courts, in London, Birmingham, Bradford and Manchester with the network’s headquarters in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, are now enforceable “with the full power of the judicial system, through the county courts or High Court.”

Sheikh Faiz-ul-Aqtab Siddiqi, a barrister and head of the Muslim Action Committee, told the Times that the Arbitration Act 1996 allows rulings by his Muslim Arbitration Tribunal to be enforced by county and high courts.

“The act allows disputes to be resolved using alternatives like tribunals. This method is called alternative dispute resolution, which for Muslims is what the sharia courts are,” he said.

Siddiqi said he expected the courts to handle a greater number of “smaller” criminal cases in coming years as more Muslim clients approach them. “All we are doing is regulating community affairs in these cases,” said Siddiqi.

The Times said that these Muslim courts started operating in August 2007 and have dealt with more than 100 cases, ranging from Muslim divorce and inheritance cases as well as six cases of domestic violence, normally a criminal procedure under British law. The Times quoted Inayat Bunglawala, assistant secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, who said that since Jewish tribunals operate in Britain, parity should be given to Islamic courts.

Dominic Grieve, the opposition’s shadow home secretary, told the Times that courts operating in criminal and family law cases outside the regular system would be “unlawful.” “British law is absolute and must remain so,” he said.

Melanie Philips, writing on her blog at the Spectator, wrote that “confusion abounds” over the report, because there is “nothing new here at all” and said that the story is “overheated and misleading.” Decisions of sharia courts, she said, have always been enforceable under the Arbitration Act.

But, she said, this does not “dispel the serious concern about the spread of sharia law and the scope of these courts.” Philips is the author of “Londonistan”, a book that examines the incursions of violent Islamic extremists into British society with the assistance of British government and courts.

She said the comparison between Islamic courts and Jewish tribunals were misleading, since the latter operate completely within the framework of British law and do not seek to set up an alternate judicial system.

Moreover, she said, “given the inferior status of Muslim women under sharia, any sharia arbitration in respect of domestic violence can hardly be viewed with equanimity.”

“The key point,” she said, “is that sharia law is not compatible with English law or the principles of equality and human rights that it embodies. The result … is that Britain is allowing the development of a de facto parallel legal system in Britain, thus destroying our society’s cardinal principle of one law for all.”

She added, “Indeed, if this continues Britain will break up as a unitary state governed by one law for all … This is the way a society fractures – and then goes under.”

Damian Thompson, the editor of the Catholic Herald, wrote on his blog at the Daily Telegraph website that he not only agreed with Dominic Grieve that the idea of a parallel Muslim system of law was “unlawful”, but that it is an “outrage.”

“There’s something creepy about the way the police allow sharia ‘courts’ to persuade women to withdraw allegations against their husbands.”

A BBC Radio 4 report found that the cases covered by these tribunals are not restricted to domestic disputes. Radio 4 quoted a Somalian youth worker who lives in London who said that in one case a group of Somali youths were arrested on suspicion of stabbing another Somali teenager. The victim’s family told the police it would be settled out of court and the suspects were released on bail. The matter was considered settled when an unofficial “court” ordered the assailants to compensate the victim’s family. Scotland Yard said they had no record of the incident.

In his book Islam in Britain, Patrick Sookhdeo, director of the Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity, wrote, “Sharia courts now operate in most larger cities, with different sectarian and ethnic groups operating their own courts that cater to their specific needs according to their traditions.”

Report from the Christian Telegraph