Given the Primates' Meeting this week, the following piece from +Josiah Idowu-Fearon, published 31 December, 2010, in the Church Times, is well worth reading:


'The lessons from these [ecumenical] Councils are clear:

1. Bishops with opposing views — be they theological, doctrinal, or even political — made the effort to get their voices heard at the meetings.

2. Presence at these Councils did not imply agreement: on the contrary, the Councils were called precisely because people disagreed. Dear Primates, where would the Church be today if “orthodox” bishops had stayed away from the main Councils of the Church?

3. Importantly, these bishops had arrived at their clear theological positions in their sees, they made sure they attended the meetings, and they were able to defend what their dio­ceses stood for.'


Read…

Do you know who the first Anglican saint was? Here’s a hint: it wasn’t Henry VIII. The title of this article says it all, but don’t feel embarrassed if you are unaware of King Charles the Martyr. Since the founding of the Episcopal Church (USA), Anglicanism’s first and longest-loved saint has been curiously absent from our province’s liturgical calendar — and this despite repeated and growing calls for his reinstatement.


Sadly, the American case is not unique. Anglicans today pay scandalously little attention to the saint whose cult fueled the Anglican imagination for centuries. Yet King Charles the Martyr witnesses to important facets of the Anglican heritage, especially the Anglican Counter-Reformation and the importance of martyrs, miracles, and relics. If it is true, as many now claim, that Anglicans are out of touch with their history and tradition, then the life and legacy…

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is the latest to make news in the sexuality wars, and I am quite happy to let them have the limelight for a while. It was a little eerie to follow the story, as they were meeting at the Minneapolis Convention Center, where General Convention pulled the switch on Anglicanland's ongoing roller-coaster ride in 2003. I was there then, so I could picture the environment in my mind's eye. It is also eerie to read first reports of how the ELCA's decision is playing among those Lutherans who dissent from the majority position of their Churchwide Assembly. The refrains are all too familiar.


We are at an impasse. At certain levels, of course, the majority has spoken clearly and, as they say, "elections have consequences." But if we either zoom in or zoom out from either the Churhwide Assembly…