Saturday a batch of new posts -- 1 p.m. EST
Saturday Press Conference Notes from Tanzania
February 17th, 2007 posted by kendall at 1:10 pmPlease note – these are raw notes fresh from the conference. So there may be some errors in grammar and sense–KSH.
Spokespersons – Archbishop Ndungane of Capetown and Helen Wangusa the Anglican Observer at the United Nations.
Archbishop Aspinal is on the drafting committee. They are a session behind.
The topics for the day were Episcopal Church and the Windsor Report. Theological Education in the Anglican Communion.
Archbishop Ndungane spoke on his presentation on the conference to be held in South Africa next month.
There was a lively session on economic justice. The Anglican Communion has given attention to this over the years. The rich are getting stinkingly rich and the poor getting desperately poor. 120 million children ( of whom 60 per cent girls) do not go to school. This is sin and evil. Wars, conflict, famine, drought and floods have caused our continent to be a continent of orphans. By 2010 we are talking about 50 million orphans in Sub Saharan Africa.
How can we as Anglicans respond to these giants to make the world a better place for all. How can we ensure a sustainable livelihood for all – to ensure that everyone could have access to all these things. To do this the AC has organised an international conference by Johannesburg Airport from March 7-14 to discover how Anglicans can contribute to making the world a better place for everyone and how to respond to the Millennium Development Goals to halve the number of people in abject poverty by 2015. Also to look at how to respond to the scourge of HIV/Aids. At Kanuga Archbishop Gitari said I do not know how to handle HIV Aids. So I was commissioned to set up a conference to address this in record time. We will be looking at how the best practices in Africa can be shared widely.
Helen Wangusa I sat in a primates meeting for a first time. What was striking for me was the interest in the Millennium Development Goals. The challenge was to work through those goals. Dealing with the United Nations. It is a democratic institution. It creates a forum for us to engage. For us as Anglicans that tells us that if one part of the body is sick, the rest is enough. Christ got people together – he fed all the hungry people. There’s a minimum that we can do but we need to go beyond that. We need to go beyond that to trade. We need to go beyond open markets to revisit the trade rules and practices. When we look at environmental issues – if today bottled water is more expensive than Coke what shall the poor drink? In recipient countries where is the hole, is it corruption?
Policy reversal so that everyone can live a life that is dignified.
Ndungane. I am the founder and president of the African Monitor, an independent civil society organisation. It is monitoring what the donor governments actually give; what African governments do with this aid, and what does it do on the ground. We are hoping that we will produce accountability. African voices for African development.
Questions
Tim Morgan. Two strategies for AIDS. Condoms or Abstinence. Both are important. The question of abstinence is important. We are working for a generation without Aids and need to ensure that people have a proper understanding of their bodies and sexualities. The young people said they needed skills to negotiate life through childhood to adulthood. We have engaged a peer education system. This is one area of our strategy. For the greater good, yes to condoms. If one party is affected it is irresponsible to deny condoms. We go further in availability of treatment. If people have the right drugs people can live longer lives.
Garry L’Hommedieu. What portion of the agenda on Millennium Goals. 70% and the rest on Theological Education.
UN Observer. The Anglican empowerment movement is meeting in the girl child.
What about people who are between girls and women.
Question. Archbishop Gomez said the Anglican Covenant would be a statement of classical Anglicanism. How does the faith of the millions of Anglicans in Jesus as saviour and Lord who forgives their sin contribute in any way that makes a contribution beyond those of governments, NGOs and civil society organisations to addressing these goals?
UN Observer: The contribution that Christians can make – that we go beyond the targets of other groups because of our biblical basis and commitments.
Our listening involves listening to those issues which are spiritual and moral. Those are the areas which we should address because the governments do not have the mandates to address these areas.
I provide materials that shows a reflection on gender and financing.
From the Telegraph: Dr Williams will find little comfort
February 17th, 2007 posted by kendall at 1:04 pmOn the face of it, the conservative Global South group, led by the Primate of Nigeria, Archbishop Peter Akinola, should wield considerable influence because it represents not far short of half the primates. It is also the most coherent bloc, having met in a nearby hotel earlier in the week to agree a common strategy.
But the group is by no means guaranteed to get its way in the meeting, the dynamics of which have been made more unpredictable by the presence of 13 new primates and the absence of several old hands.
A number of the conservatives are likely to moderate their views once they are in the same room as the Presiding Bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori, the head of the liberal American Episcopal Church.
A symbolic moment in the meeting will occur tomorrow, when all the primates are due to travel out together by boat to the Muslim-dominated island of Zanzibar, where Dr Williams will preach at the Anglican cathedral.
The cathedral, built in the 1870s on the site of a former slave market, is now crumbling and in urgent need of funds from wealthy Anglicans - a perfect example, say officials, of the continuing worth of the 70-million strong worldwide Communion.
But most attention will be focused on how many of the primates climb aboard the boat. If a number are missing, it could spell trouble.
Whatever the package that Dr Williams achieves by Monday, he will then have to sell it to his own increasingly restless clergy, whose loyalties are becoming strained.
A Revisit of an Interview with Kendall Harmon
February 17th, 2007 posted by kendall at 12:17 pmAll I attempted to say was that the expectations of some reasserters were out of touch with reality and that Archbishop Rowan Williams was playing the long game. I was in some cases severely chastized but at least I tried, let the record show.
And I agree with what Kevin Kallsen and George Conger said just below that it is not over until it is over.
Kevin Kallsen and George Conger Discuss the Latest Tanzania Developments
February 17th, 2007 posted by kendall at 11:55 amPlease note, the bishop-elect of South Carolina is Mark Lawrence, not Mark Harris (I believe Mark Harris would be surprised were this the case!), and the diocese to which Kevin refers who nominated a finalist for bishop who is in a non-celibate same sex partnership was the diocese of Newark.
An Episcopal Priest on Rites & Wrongs of Passage
February 17th, 2007 posted by kendall at 11:48 amThe funeral was in the chapel of a navy base, conducted by a retired Episcopal priest of, I believe, Southern middle-of-the-road churchmanship. While the service was not without reverence and the priest was genuinely considerate of the sadness of the loss, he seemed to be trying to keep the service casual.
For the homily, he came out from behind the altar and leaned on the end of it rather than going to the pulpit. When he prepared the vessels on the altar for Communion, there was no formality to his actions: He might just as well have been getting dishes out of the kitchen cupboard for lunch.
There were awkward pauses at several points while he flipped through his book, apparently looking for his place. He also seemed rushed. Since the service was lengthened by the inclusion of Holy Communion, one began to wonder whether he was afraid it would run too long, making us late for the committal at the cemetery.
The deceased was a retired Marine Corps Reserve officer, and, at the request of his widow, the Marine Corps provided pall bearers, as well as a detail for the rifle salute and taps at the interment. This took place in a nearby Veterans Administration cemetery. There the priest first conducted the committal service.
Then the marines took over. Everything they did was deliberate, well practiced, careful, unhurried. It was pure ritual. It was clear that they took seriously what they were doing. Every movement had been considered, and, I assume, drilled ahead of time. It was to be done correctly in every detail, with dignity and honor, without regard to time: Seemingly this was all that mattered to them.
The precision and dignity was a matter of honor. At the end, the flag was presented to the widow by the commander of the marines on the base. He could easily have sent a junior officer to deal with a reserve officer’s burial, but chose not to. It was all profoundly moving, as a number of mourners remarked after the services.
The care and dignity of the military rite put the Christian rites to shame. I don’t believe that the priest was intentionally irreverent or unprepared. But by comparison with the marines’ reverent ritual, the chapel service and the committal seemed slapdash.
The contrast says several things….
From the Anglican Church of Canda News–The Primates: Moving to a more serious level
February 17th, 2007 posted by kendall at 11:31 amThe Primates took a break in the afternoon when the Archbishop of Canterbury went to visit President Jakaya Kikwete of Tanzania. He was quoted as telling the President that “Tanzania has been a symbol of hope and stands for what can be achieved through democratic development.”
Two other events related to worship were significant on this Friday in Dar es Salaam. Feb. 16,2007 marked the 20th anniversary of the death of Janani Luwum, African martyr and former Archbishop of the Church of Uganda, who was murdered in 1977 under dictator Idi Amin’s regime.
The current Ugandan Primate Henry Orombi led a prayer service commemorating the anniversary and the Archbishop of York, Dr. John Sentamu, who escaped Amin’s rule in 1974, read two prayers. Both archbishops had been under the pastoral care of the martyred Primate.
The other worship related matter concerned the celebration of the Holy Eucharist and a number of Primates refusing to receive Holy Communion. Seven archbishops refused to receive Holy Communion with their fellow Primates saying that they were “unable to come to the Holy Table with the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church because to do so would be a violation of scriptural teaching and the traditional Anglican understanding.” The statement was posted on the web site of the Church of Nigeria.
This is in sharp contrast to the previous meeting of the Primates in February, 2005, in Northern Ireland when as many as 19 Primates refused to attend Holy Communion because of the presence of former Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold and our Canadian Primate Archbishop Andrew Hutchison.
When asked about this and how a covenant for the whole church might proceed given these difficulties Archbishop Gomez identified three groups of provinces in terms of responses to actions of the Episcopal Church.
“The first group of provinces has made no formal statement and that is probably the largest group. The second is made up of provinces that have declared themselves to be in impaired communion,” the group with which he identified his own province of the West Indies.”
The third group, he said, “has received the most attention in the last three years – the group that has declared it is in broken communion and it is those Primates who have chosen not to attend Eucharist with the Presiding Bishop” of the Episcopal Church for the last two gatherings of the Primates.
He also commented that the “difficulty of broken communion is more perceived than real.”
Anglican primates visiting Zanzibar tomorrow
February 17th, 2007 posted by kendall at 11:28 amThe Anglican Church primates from across the globe who are now in Dar es Salaam will visit Zanzibar tomorrow for special prayers.
Zanzibar Anglican church Diocese Secretary Nuhu Sallanya said yesterday that the primates would visit here for prayers as part of their first mission conference in Africa.
He explained that they will also visit former major slave market in commemoration of 100 years of abolition of slavery.
“They are coming tomorrow…they will pray for sustenance of the prolonged religious harmony in the Islamic majority Zanzibar and also commemorate the abolition of slave trade,“ Sallanya said.
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