As thick as a Biblically illiterate former Archbishop could be

 Most of us could not give a hoot about the search for a new Archbishop of Canterbury because the last two were disasters and there is no reason to expect a different outcome given the current state of the Organization (formerly known as the "Church") of England.

The last Archbishop over there showed his true colors  and the likely direction for his sect the other day according to Premier Christian News, 

Most Rev Justin Welby, former Archbishop of Canterbury has said he was “thick” not to recognise that faithful and committed same sex relationships are a "huge blessing”.

Speaking to the Cambridge Union, Most Rev Welby said “When they fall in love, and when they live out that love faithfully and with stability and caring for others, it is a huge blessing for them and for society; and I have seen that in so many places that, in the end, even I began to realise that I was being thick.”

I think he is pretty dense because he was supposed to defend the apostolic faith not oppose it.

I know a thick book he needs to open up and study more carefully. 

Woe to the Revised Common Lectionary editors

This Sunday the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL) used in many churches makes another startling edit by removing verses 12-15 from Luke 10:1-11, 16-20. I have highlighted the missing verses in red. Readers if this blog should be able to see right away why the editors deleted Jesus' words.

 After this the Lord appointed seventy others, and sent them on ahead of him, two by two, into every town and place where he himself was about to come. 2 And he said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; pray therefore the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. 3 Go your way; behold, I send you out as lambs in the midst of wolves. 4 Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and salute no one on the road. 5 Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace be to this house!’ 6 And if a son of peace is there, your peace shall rest upon him; but if not, it shall return to you. 7 And remain in the same house, eating and drinking what they provide, for the laborer deserves his wages; do not go from house to house. 8 Whenever you enter a town and they receive you, eat what is set before you; 9 heal the sick in it and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’ 10 But whenever you enter a town and they do not receive you, go into its streets and say, 11 ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off against you; nevertheless know this, that the kingdom of God has come near.’ 

12 I tell you, it shall be more tolerable on that day for Sodom than for that town.

13 “Woe to you, Chora′zin! woe to you, Beth-sa′ida! for if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. 14 But it shall be more tolerable in the judgment for Tyre and Sidon than for you. 15 And you, Caper′na-um, will you be exalted to heaven? You shall be brought down to Hades.

16 “He who hears you hears me, and he who rejects you rejects me, and he who rejects me rejects him who sent me.”

17 The seventy returned with joy, saying, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name!” 18 And he said to them, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. 19 Behold, I have given you authority to tread upon serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing shall hurt you. 20 Nevertheless do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you; but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”

Time and time again we have seen the Bible treated this way. I guess that Jesus' references to judgement, Hades, and especially Sodom cannot be shared with the Sunday pewsitters because they might make Jesus look bad.

I say, "Woe to you, RCL editors!"

ACNA grows as the Episcopal organization shrinks

From The Living Church, 

Attendance in the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) is up by double digits for the third consecutive year, according to congregational report data released June 19 during the denomination’s Provincial Council meeting at Trinity Anglican Seminary in Ambridge, Pennsylvania.

“We’ve grown in every category that we track,” said Dan Hassler, director of administration and operations. “We are at highest attendance and membership of all time.”

The denomination in 2024 reported a net increase of 14 congregations to a total of 1,027, an increase in membership of 1,997 (+1.5 percent) to a total of 130,111 and an increase in attendance of 11,354 (+13.4 percent) to a total of 96,148.

“It is humbling and incredible,” Archbishop Steve Wood said of the numbers in his opening address to the council. “And it makes me eager to see what the Lord is up to next.”

Provincial Council is the annual governance meeting of the ACNA, comprising a bishop, elected clergy, and two elected lay members from each of 28 dioceses, alongside delegates from a half-dozen ministry organizations with an official status.

The council is charged with producing a provincial budget and electing members to trial courts and the Executive Committee (a smaller governance body that meets monthly). Canonical changes are also reviewed and passed before they can be brought for ratification before the larger assembly, which convenes less frequently.

Hassler said leading indicators, including baptisms (+207, or 5.6%), confirmations (+656, or 15.8%), and weddings (+104, or 17.4%) are also up. These metrics are regarded as signaling the direction of future membership and attendance numbers. For the first time, 27 local churches now have an average attendance exceeding 500, up from 16 surpassing that number the year before.

Conversations with council delegates indicated different sources of growth, among them a post-COVID return, as well as an increasing number of people specifically seeking Anglican worship.

The Rev. David Drake of Church of the Resurrection in Timonium, Maryland, in a June 20 concluding panel interview with Archbishop Steve Wood, discussed the Asbury Outpouring, 16 days of continuous prayer and worship that began at Asbury University in Wilmore, Kentucky, on February 8, 2023.

Nearly all 41 churches in the Diocese of the Mid-Atlantic have grown in the past two years (Resurrection’s attendance grew 38% ). The Baltimore-area rector said the guidance and direction of the Holy Spirit was responsible for the growth. Provincial Council organizers highlighted 1 Corinthians 3:7 (“So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth”).

Provincial finances also improved—2024-25 is the first fiscal year since its 2009 inauguration that the ACNA has operated fully within financial sustainability, reporting a budget surplus of $435,000, Executive Director Deborah Tepley said. The Provincial Executive Committee will determine how to spend surplus. Tepley said it may go toward decreasing a $175,000 debt, establishing cash reserves, or investing in missional priorities such as church planting, leadership development, or the Common Life Commission (CLC).

The latter exists to address overlapping jurisdictions, work toward regionalization, and help mediation/training of diocesan leaders. Bishop Steve Breedlove, the CLC’s chairman, said the commission’s goal is for dioceses to not step on each other’s toes, work together in creating missionary dioceses that work collaboratively, and provide resources to one another “against a scarcity mindset.”

Note the amazing 73.9% attendance rate for ACNA members. 

We don't have 2024 data from the Episcopal organization, but 2023 numbers looked grim. From Juicy Ecumenism,

Membership

2013: 2,009,084

2022: 1,584,785

2023: 1,547,779 (-37,006 or 2.3% since 2022, -461,305 or -23% since 2013)

Attendance

2013: 657,102

2022: 372,952

2023: 410,912 (+37,960 or 10% since 2022, -246,190 or -37% since 2013)

Baptisms (Children)

2013: 28,509

2022: 15,272

2023: 16,924 (+1,652 or 10.8% since 2022, -11,585 or -41% since 2013)

Baptisms (Adult)

2013: 4,484

2022: 2,147

2023: 3,323 (+1,176 or 55% since 2022, -1,161 or -26% since 2013)

Receptions

2013: 6,970

2022: 4,106

2023: 7,567 (+3,461 or 84% since 2022, +597 or +8.7% since 2013)

Marriages

2013: 10,394

2022: 5,562

2023: 4,886 (-676 or 12% since 2022, -5,508 or -53% since 2013)

Burials:

2013: 29,605

2022: 25,905 

2023: 24,878 (-1,027 or 4% since 2022, -4,727 or -16% since 2013)

Open Parishes & Missions

2013: 7,115

2022: 6,789

2023: 6,754 (-35 or half a percent since 2022, -361 or -5.1% since 2013)

Note a 26.7% attendance rate for Episcopalians. Compared with the 73.9% rate for ACNA.

More burials than baptisms is not a good sign either. 

Church Times Gets Used

Over in jolly olde England they have a publication called "The Church Times". In light of a recent letter from two Church of England (CofE) priests in which they tried to show that same-sex relationships are Biblically okay. The letter is here. There is nothing new in their arguments. We've heard it all before during the American wars of Episcopal separation, but you can read it for yourself. 

Julian Mann, who had a blog that I used to follow when he was a vicar in the CofE, wrote a good response which I quote below. He did not point out one error the two priests made when they asserted that the ancient people did not know about committed same sex relationships,

"...in the ancient world, such activity was invariably exploitative and oppressive, while lifelong, exclusive, and loving same-sex partnerships were unknown."

That has been well debunked by Dr. Robert Gagnon. 

 Now, on to Julian Mann's response at Anglican Mainstream,

Cavalier treatment of the Bible in Church Times ‘Open Letter to the Church of England’

The treatment of the Bible in an article in the latest Church Times by two prominent London clergy is highly revealing of the state of the Church of England.

The Revd Dr Sam Wells and the Revd Lucy Winkett wrote “an Open Letter to the Church of England, in the light of plans for a separate structure made by those who reject the validity of same-sex relationships”.

The piece entitled “Separate structures put the Church of England in danger” has the feel of an Ad Clerum, a letter a diocesan bishop periodically writes to his or her clergy. Wells is Rector of St Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square. Winkett is Rector of St James’s Piccadilly. Both are contributors to the Thought for the Day religious slot on the BBC Radio 4 Today Programme.

Their letter begins: “We are two incumbents in central London. Some neighbouring parishes have announced their intention to form a separate structure, perhaps a new province, within the Church of England.

“This has been prompted by the modest steps that the House of Bishops has taken to enable clergy to affirm civil partnerships liturgically, as part of the Living in Love and Faith process. Headline aspects of the announcement include withholding parish contributions to dioceses and the commissioning of lay people to lead churches, in many instances following the principle of male headship.”

Their open letter includes a section on marriage which is breathtaking for the liberal arrogance with which it dismisses centuries of Christian orthodoxy:

“The Old Testament offers various portrayals of human partnership, including kings with multiple wives and concubines. This was an era in which children were a necessity, and large extended families were a blessing.

“The New Testament also has diverse notions of faithful partnership; but the central emphasis is on singleness in the face of God’s impending in-breaking realm. While there are analogies relating marriage to Christ and the Church, there is also Jesus’s insistence that following the way of the cross disrupts family life and upturns all relationships.

“The notion that monogamous heterosexual marriage is foundational as a consistent scriptural portrayal of God’s relationship with humankind, and accordingly constitutes the definitive form of relationships of humans with one another, is, therefore, not plausible.”

They make no mention of the divine creation of the institution of monogamous heterosexual marriage in Genesis emphasised so strongly by Jesus in the New Testament when he quoted Genesis 1v27 and Genesis 2v24:

“But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female,’and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate” (Mark 10v6-9 – NIV; see also Matthew 19v4-6).

And they make just a cursory mention of “the analogies relating marriage to Christ and the Church”, so prominent in the final chapters of Revelation and emphasised by the Apostle Paul in his teaching on marriage in Ephesians in which he also quoted Genesis 2v24:

“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansingher by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church – for we are members of his body. ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’This is a profound mystery – but I am talking about Christ and the church” (Ephesians 5v25-32).

The Anglican Book of Common Prayer’s marriage service makes no such omissions, beautifully distilling the Bible’s teaching on marriage: “Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God, and in the face of this Congregation, to join together this man and this woman in holy Matrimony; which is an honourable estate, instituted of God in the time of man’s innocency, signifying unto us the mystical union that is betwixt Christ and his Church; which holy estate Christ adorned and beautified with his presence, and first miracle that he wrought, in Cana of Galilee; and is commended of Saint Paul to be honourable among all men…”

How do Wells and Winkett get away with such cavalier treatment of the Holy Scriptures in their prestigious London churches? One can only conclude it is because the modern Church of England has a very high level of biblical illiteracy in its pews.

The CofE is either not educating their priests in sound Biblical theology, or they are educating them in unsound theology, or they are doing a little of both.

The BBC is giving false teachers an open microphone (no surprise here).

The CofE is not correcting the false teachers in their midst.

The Church Times is complicit in the spread of false teaching and was "used" when it published such rubbish.  

Don't Look Back

 This Sunday's reading is from Luke 9:51-62,

When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. And he sent messengers ahead of him. On their way they entered a village of the Samaritans to make ready for him; but they did not receive him, because his face was set towards Jerusalem. When his disciples James and John saw it, they said, ‘Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?’ But he turned and rebuked them. Then they went on to another village.

As they were going along the road, someone said to him, ‘I will follow you wherever you go.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.’ To another he said, ‘Follow me.’ But he said, ‘Lord, first let me go and bury my father.’ But Jesus said to him, ‘Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.’ Another said, ‘I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.’ Jesus said to him, ‘No one who puts a hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.’

Once you are committed as a follower of Jesus, your life is changed forever and there is no looking back. 

Humility Month Quotations 4

 When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom. (Proverbs 11:2)

The sinking of the swine

This Sunday's reading is from Luke 8:26-39,

Then they arrived at the country of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee. As he stepped out on land, a man of the city who had demons met him. For a long time he had worn no clothes, and he did not live in a house but in the tombs. When he saw Jesus, he fell down before him and shouted at the top of his voice, ‘What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me’— for Jesus had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. (For many times it had seized him; he was kept under guard and bound with chains and shackles, but he would break the bonds and be driven by the demon into the wilds.) Jesus then asked him, ‘What is your name?’ He said, ‘Legion’; for many demons had entered him. They begged him not to order them to go back into the abyss.

 Now there on the hillside a large herd of swine was feeding; and the demons begged Jesus to let them enter these. So he gave them permission. Then the demons came out of the man and entered the swine, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned.

 When the swineherds saw what had happened, they ran off and told it in the city and in the country. Then people came out to see what had happened, and when they came to Jesus, they found the man from whom the demons had gone sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind. And they were afraid. Those who had seen it told them how the one who had been possessed by demons had been healed. Then all the people of the surrounding country of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them; for they were seized with great fear. So he got into the boat and returned. The man from whom the demons had gone begged that he might be with him; but Jesus sent him away, saying, ‘Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.’ So he went away, proclaiming throughout the city how much Jesus had done for him.

The Gerasenes were obviously not Jewish based on the pig farmers being there. 

Biblestudytools.com has this to say about the location of the Biblical account, 

1. Country of the Gerasenes:

The town itself is not named in Scripture, and is referred to only in the expression, "country of the Gerasenes" (Mark 5:1; Luke 8:26,37; see Westcott and Hort, The New Testament in Greek, Appendix, 11). This describes the district in which Christ met and healed the demoniac from the tombs, where also took place the destruction of the swine. It was on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee, and must have been a locality where the steep edges of the Bashan plateau drop close upon the brink of the lake. This condition is fulfilled only by the district immediately South of Wady Semak, North of Qal `at el-Chucn. Here the slopes descend swiftly almost into the sea, and animals, once started on the downward run, could not avoid plunging into the depths. Many ancient tombs are to be seen in the face of the hills. Gerasa itself is probably represented by the ruins of Kurseh on the South side of Wady Semak, just where it opens on the seashore. The ruins of the town are not considerable; but there are remains of a strong wall which must have surrounded the place. Traces of ancient buildings in the vicinity show that there must have been a fairly numerous population in the district.

2. History:

The great and splendid city in the Decapolis is first mentioned as taken after a siege by Alexander Janneus, 85 BC (BJ, I, iv, 8). Josephus names it as marking the eastern limit of Peraea (BJ, III, iii, 3). He calls the inhabitants Syrians, when, at the beginning of the Jewish revolt, the district round Gerasa was laid waste. The Syrians made reprisals, and took many prisoners. With these, however, the Gerasenes dealt mercifully, letting such as wished go free, and escorting them to the border (BJ, II, xviii, 1, 5). Lucius Annius, at the instance of Vespasian, sacked and burned the city, with much slaughter (BJ, IV, ix, 1). From this disaster it appears soon to have recovered, and the period of its greatest prosperity lay, probably, in the 2nd and 3nd centuries of our era. It became the seat of a bishopric, and one of its bishops attended the Council of Chalcedon. Reland (Pal, II, 806) notes certain extant coins of Gerasa, from which it is clear that in the 2nd century it was a center of the worship of Artemis. It was besieged by Baldwin II, in 1121 AD. Mention is made of the strength of the site and the mighty masonry of its walls. William of Tyre calls the city Jarras, and places it 16 miles East of Jordan (Hist, xii, 16). The distance is about 19 miles from the river. It was conquered by the Moslems in the time of Omar (Guy le Strange, Palestine under the Moslems, 462). The sultan of Damascus is said to have fortified it; but there is nothing to show that the Moslems occupied it for any length of time. (More at biblestudytools.com)