24 hours, give or take

I expect to be off line until about this time tomorrow. Prayers for my medical team gratefully received. My new knee and I will be back soonest possible. FWIW jimB

A simple button moving the church

Visit our web site or blog for resources explaining why a no vote is vital to the communion.

Politics Ugly

The news is interesting. Mr. Romney made what can only be described as an amazingly ugly, pandering, and dishonest speech in Virginia. He spoke at the commencement ceremony of Liberty University. Liberty is a relatively young school, it was started as, "Liberty Bible College" by the late Jerry Falwell as a training school for "ministers," by which he meant as near as I can tell, an indoctrinated sales force pushing his very poorly constructed theology.

Over time the school has morphed into a "university" offering secular courses of study, but only one unified world view. How a university can impose mono-chromatic thinking is beyond me. My school expected me to learn to think, not to learn what to think.

As I read its catalog, Liberty is, aggressively creationist, heretical (advocating the "End times" and "Rapture" lunacy,) and a proponent of a self styled "inerrant view" of the Bible. Mr. Romney seems to think this is fine if they vote for him.

There is an issue here. Liberty indoctrinated, or as they might prefer educated, students and staff do not really think of Mormons as Christians. This puts the LDS in good company, they take the same exclusionary attitude towards Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, Lutheran, Presbyterian, and other normal Christians.

Romney's speech was devastatingly evil. He announced that what he called the, "Christian Conscience" is the highest form of judgement, that marriage must be between one man and one woman (a valid religious view perhaps, but clearly neither Mormon nor Biblical.) He pandered to the triumphalist, homophobic, misogynist, and anti-semetic all in one speech. I suppose that is an achievement of sorts.

In his "etch-a-sketch" world this is something he will try to recall only when addressing "Christian Right" audiences. He appears to think other voters are idiots who will not remember what he said in Virginia. I hope Mr. Obama and the Democrats will make sure that he does not get to walk away from what he said.

It appears to me that there is nothing, no matter how ugly, that Mr. Romney won't do to get elected. If he is, to achieve his no taxes on the wealthy vision, he will let the worst of the Republican radicals impose their undemocratic agenda on the pessants voters. His vision for America can be seen in Michigan where the Republicans have deprived urban votes of their governments, Virginia and other forced medical rape States, Arizona where it is now not malpractice to lie to a woman about her test results, and Wisconsin where the governor has led a full-on assault on freedom.

These people are dangerous!


FWIW
jimB

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I should note that Etch-a-sketch is a fine toy, made by a good company. I have several in my youth, loved them. I bought them for my sons. There is nothing wrong with the toy. There is something very wrong with the way the Romney people use its shake to clear ability to describe how to lie to voters.

It is different when it is me.

My dear friend Fr. Jonathon has a blog, St. Laika in addition to his original "Of Course I Could Be Wrong" that among other things has a dedicated prayer page. On the prayer page, he posts the requests for prayer he either receives from around the world, or lovingly writes. In the later category, he has noted that I am going through "pre-surgical testing" which will we expect, lead me to a date with what a medic once called, " a knife wielding humanitarian."

This particular surgeon will in fact be wielding a Black & Decker power saw. I am going to get a prosthetic right knee to match my left.

Any surgery, especially anything involving bone, is gonna hurt. And any surgery carries some risks. One aggressive bacteria penetrates the knee and there are a ton of problems. And I have another almost immediate date with a specialist for eye surgery. And yet, well, this is all what is termed, "Elective surgery." That is, with decreased mobility and vision, I will not die if this is not done. It is covered by Medicare so that my costs will be relatively low.

All of which is to say that as I read the prayer list, I see those whose needs are so much greater. In the grand Episcopalian tradition, I want to say, "Oh that is alright, I do not want to cause any trouble."

Ummm. no.

It is wrong to say that when someone loves you, cares, and wants to ask God to keep an eye on you. It is wrong to not seek and offer prayers for any and all troubles.

But it is different when it is me. I do not want to think of myself as needy in this way. I do not want to consider the ugly things that could go wrong. I want this to be rather routine and to simply expect good outcomes. Jesus asked his disciples to pray for him. Can I do less than be grateful when someone offers prayers for me?

Fr. Jonathon has built a world wide ministry and cyber community. Literally anyone can join it and I hope you explore his web sites. He ministers to his flock in a real and caring way. This week his prayer list is a compendium of suffereing and hope. In a real sense it is an electronic parish of caring folks. I commend his work to you.

Oremus! Let us pray!

North Carolina Vote

One of the things that can be counted on: North Carolina is on the wrong side of justice and history. They amended their constitution to prohibit integration of schools, to prohibit "inter-racial marriage," and now to prohibit recognition of any lesbian / gay unions. That should actually give progressives hope. If North Carolina prohibits something, it is coming soon. FWIW jimB

Can we all say, "schism" now?

Update: 27 April 2012

The FCA conference has ended. As is as predictable as lamentable, they have published a communique. I had intended to comment on it when it became available, but it is so evil, I find myself unable to do so. You can find it at this site.
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Update 24April 2012:

The keynote address to the gathered "FCA leaders" is now available on line. It might well be titled, "England's Turn" although it is not. The money quote is:

Since 2008, we have acted, perhaps not always as quickly or as clearly as we should, but there has been action. In accordance with the Jerusalem Declaration, the GAFCON primates sponsored the Anglican Church in North America as a new province and ceased to be in communion with The Episcopal Church of the United States and the Anglican Church of Canada.
.....
Last year, it became clear that provision need to be made for England too. The Anglican Mission in England was formed last June after four years of discussion with senior Anglican leaders in England had failed to find a way in which those genuinely in need of effective orthodox oversight in the Church of England could receive it.

Note the sequence. First the FCA primates judged the North American churches, then the established AMiA, then they withdrew fellowship from the North American Churches and began to establish their own congregations. Now the Church of England has been judged, and a new "AMiE" called into existence.
And then I found this in a Telegraph article by John Bingham.

Speaking at the weekend Archbishop Jensen said it would be wrong to consider the Archbishop of Canterbury as “leader” of the Anglican church, something he said represented an “Anglocentric view of the world”.

I wonder how long it will take for the next two shoes to drop? Ah well, here is the original post.
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At this link you can find the "media release" that announces a meeting of the FCA, that is the "Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans." This is the group of (formerly) Anglican churches and their new, "incursion" bodies¹.
Claiming to be the true church, these folks lie about the Anglican Communion or at least parts of it in their release. But that is not what is most interesting to me. The FCA primates are meeting in London. Can you imagine the outcry where TEC or for that matter the Anglican Communion to announce a leadership meeting in Nigeria without consulting with Archbishop Okoh? There would be a lot of very angry press at the least. But here we have a group of archbishops supposedly part of the Communion, completely ignoring the prerogatives of the bishop of London and the Archbishop of Canterbury.
During the meeting, it is likely, they will vest and celebrate in contravention of English canon. Presiding bishop Katherine carefully did not wear her miter when she celebrated at Salisbury Cathedral, but then she acted as though fellowship with Canterbury meant respecting Dr. Williams' jurisdiction. Not the FCA bishops!
When do we admit that the GAFCON / FCA bishops, many of whose churches boycotted the last Lambeth Conference, left the communion some time ago? It is one thing to hope for eventual reconciliation: it is another to play the fool.
TEC reached out to the Reformed Episcopal Church which formed in 1873 in opposition to the Oxford Movement as recently as the 1990's. REC is now part of ACNA, itself part of FCA and GAFCON, so outreach clearly failed. But no one in TEC pretends that the REC remains a part of it! Time for the Communion and Canterbury to make the same decision.
There is potential good that might arise from saying "Schism" now. If the ACC staff announced that the processes that remove a church from the Anglican Communion Conference and formal fellowship with the church of England were being activated². At least some of these churches or at least their hierarchies, value their relationships with the Anglican Communion. One can see that valuation operating by observing the splinters within the incursion community working frantically to establish (at best tenuous) connections to the communion as they splinter. Were Canterbury to act, the effect on FCA might be profound.


FWIW
jimB




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1) "ACNA," the self-styled, "Anglican Church in North America," "AMiA," and "PEAR-USA" maintain links to FCA or member churches. The on-going internal schisms, organizations, and re-organizations of these groups make precise description of how those relationships work difficult. I think it is fair to say that at this writing, none of the claimed relationships to the Anglican Communion are recognized by it. None-the-less, the participants continue to claim they have some sort of membership in the Communion.
2) This is possible now it does not require the Covenant. In fact it is easier now without that flawed document.

This is 5 minutes well worth your time. In this press conference response to a question, the mayor nails some fundamental American truths.