Liberal Anglicans defend diversity - MCU Council meeting report
by Mary Taylor
from Signs of the Times No. 32 - Jan 2009
The council of the Modern Churchpeople's Union (MCU) met November 6 2010 in London's Docklands to develop a strategy for the defense of liberal theology.
Firmly opposed to the proposed Anglican covenant, the group plans to extend its network beyond England, improving links with the Episcopal Church, building branches in Ireland, Scotland and Wales, recruiting a range of ages and denominations, and increasing support among bishops and academic theologians.
Liberalism when it's liberal
by Jonathan Clatworthy
from Signs of the Times No. 32 - Jan 2009
The current debate about women priests and bishops has generated renewed accusations against liberals. One of the more persistent is that liberals can be quite illiberal about their beliefs. Is this a fair criticism? Are liberals inclined to be just as dogmatic as their dogmatising opponents?
Certainly liberals, like everybody else, often fail to understand the logic of beliefs they do not share. Much of the opposition to women priests and bishops has its conceptual roots in a particular view of sacramental validity, according to which priests are only priests if they are both validly ordained and also the correct kind of person – i.e. male. Bread and wine consecrated by a woman priest is invalidly consecrated and is not therefore the Eucharist, but at least the faithful can work that out by looking at the shape of the priest’s body. Women bishops, on the other hand, raise the spectre of a male priest invalidly ordained because the ordaining bishop was female. Unless his stole is embroidered with the words ‘I was ordained by a woman’, the Resolution C faithful have no way to distinguish between valid and invalid Eucharists.
Cosying up to Kaspar
by Jean Mayland
from Signs of the Times No. 32 - Jan 2009
The recent extracts from the biography of Rowan Williams printed in The Times and the Church Times give a picture of our current Archbishop of Canterbury as a dark bearded young man, who was obviously an object of fascination to young ladies and who himself was fascinated by Rome.
Fortunately an earthed, scholarly but practical young lady attracted his attention and became his wife. He in turn decided to remain an Anglican - mainly we are told because he found the doctrine of papal infallibility unacceptable. Yet since he became Archbishop it has been clear that the fascination with Rome still holds him.
The economic impact of immigration: House of Lords maiden speech
by John Saxbee
from Signs of the Times No. 32 - Jan 2009
Can I express gratitude to the Noble Lord, Lord Wakeham for this Report and for the way he has introduced it.
It is usual for Maiden Speeches to be non-controversial. So whilst with regard to the Report before us I could challenge some of the data, conclusions and recommendations – especially insofar as they relate to immigration trends and economic realities with which I am most familiar in those parts of Lincolnshire dependent on migrant labour and guest workers for the efficient conduct of agricultural and food processing operations – I will in fact restrict myself to offering the least controversial of all possible contributions to this debate: immigrants are people, human beings, made as much in the image of God as any of us here.
Yes we can!
by Adrian Alker
from Signs of the Times No. 32 - Jan 2009
In years to come our grandchildren may ask us where we were and what we were doing on the night that Barack Obama was elected the president of the United States of America.
Across the world and across the generations, races and religions, there has been an emotional outpouring of excitement and joyous anticipation of the new ‘world to come’. Of course conservative southern Baptists in the USA are not well pleased, nor is the Iranian leadership. But rarely in recent decades has there been such an affirmation of a political leader and such hope expressed that change is on its way, that the prejudices around class and race are being confronted, that the overwhelming problems facing our planet, of climate change and inequality might at last receive serious attention from the world’s most powerful state.