Anglican Covenant, Australian primate’s diocese demurs; New Archbishop of Uganda; Anglican Communion Weekly Review; US National Cathedral convenes Christian-Muslim summit in Beirut; Anglican Overseas Aid’s Ethiopian partner wins International Humanitarian Award; Melanesian Brotherhood Commemorates founder; NZ Youth to lead synod welcome; Lutheran federation panel denounces armed conflict in Colombia; Tanzania churches oppose uranium mining; WCC forum focuses on poverty, wealth and ecology; US Southern Baptists elect first black president
On Anglican Covenant, Australian primate’s diocese demurs
The Diocese of Brisbane, which is led by Archbishop Phillip Aspinall of Australia, a key player in Anglican Communion politics, has passed up a chance to support the proposed Anglican Covenant. Jonathan Clatworthy has the story gleaned from the Australian Catholic discussion board:
Just came from the Brisbane synod vote [Saturday 23/June] on approving the Anglican Covenant. Rather than approve or reject it, they took the ‘Welsh Option’ and instead passed the following motion which acknowledges that the process has been somewhat overtaken by events.
That this Synod recommends to the General Synod that it:
Affirm the commitment of the Anglican Church of Australia to the Anglican Communion.
Affirm its readiness to engage with any ongoing process of consideration of the Anglican Communion Covenant
Request clarification from the 15th meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council as to the status and direction of the Covenant Process in the light of the position of the Church of England.
Urge upon the Instruments of Communion a course of action which continues to see reconciliation and the preservation of the Communion as a family of interdependent but autonomous Churches.
Aspinall himself spoke in favour of the covenant, but his argument did not prevail.
The Rt. Rev. Stanley Ntagali Elected 8th Archbishop of the Church of Uganda
ACNS – On 22nd June 2012, at a press conference the Rt. Rev. Nicodemus Okille, Dean of the Church of the Province of Uganda, announced that the Rt. Rev. Stanley Ntagali was elected the 8th Archbishop of the Church of Uganda. The election was held during a meeting of the House of Bishops on Friday, 22nd June, 2012, at St. Paul’s Cathedral, Namirembe.
Anglican Communion Weekly Review
ACNS: This edition includes…
· This week’s Anglican Communion news
· Anglican Life – Archbishop Makgoba launching initiative
· Anglican Life – “We feel the pains inflicted on Christians” – Nigeria’s Muslim leaders
· Anglican Life – Taking the lid off a violent can of worms
· Anglican Life – English diocese looks again at parish share
· Anglican Life – Rotorua conference on abortion
· Anglican Life – Presiding Bishop’s alternative budget
· Video – Mission to Seafarers’ videos for Day of the Seafarer
· Digital Communion – E-discipleship scheme a hit
· Digital Communion – Flip through Communion newsletters online
· Bookshelf – The predictable surprise of Christian suffering
· Communion receipe – You too can make Stuffed Brinjal
· The coming week’s Anglican Cycle of Prayer.
http://www.anglicancommunion.org/acns/news.cfm/2012/6/22/ACNS5127
US National Cathedral convenes Christian-Muslim summit in Beirut
Episcopal News Service – The Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem, a former Episcopal bishop of Washington and four Iranian Shi’ite Muslims, two holding the rank of ayatollah, are among the religious leaders who’ve traveled to Beirut, Lebanon, for the second Christian-Muslim peace summit organized by Washington National Cathedral.
The three-day conference, which opened June 18, is taking place against a regional backdrop that includes the conflict spilling into Lebanon from nearby Syria, the chaotic Egyptian elections, the threat of nuclear strikes between Israel and Iran, and following the 45th anniversary of the 1967 war that ended in the occupation of the Palestinian Territories.
The highest ranking clergyman of the Iranian group, Ayatollah Seyyed Mohammad-Ali Taskhiri, invoked the sense of near-emergency felt by many of the delegates, as he urged the dozens of religious leaders – representing nearly all strains of Christianity and Islam – to envision “the heaven and passion of coexistence,” adding that “dialogue was born with humanity itself.”
The international peace summits – two more are planned – were organized at Washington National Cathedral by the Rt. Rev. John B. Chane, 8th bishop of Washington, D.C., and the Rev. Canon John L. Peterson, director of the cathedral’s Center for Global Justice and Reconciliation.
Information on the previous summit is available on the Cathedral’s website.
http://episcopaldigitalnetwork.com/ens/2012/06/19/landmark-christian-muslim-peace-summit-opens-in-beirut/
Anglican Overseas Aid’s Ethiopian partner wins International Humanitarian Award
Australian nurse and midwife Valerie Browning, head of the Afar Pastoralist Development Association (APDA) in Ethiopia has won “The One” International Humanitarian award, a project by Rotary which recognises an individual whose extraordinary services and activities exemplify the Rotary ideal of Service Above Self.
http://www.aco.org/acns/digest/index.cfm/2012/6/20/Anglican-Overseas-Aids-Ethiopian-partner-wins-International-Humanitarian-Award
Melanesian Brotherhood Commemorates founder
The biggest Male religious order in the Church of Anglican the Melanesian Brotherhoods (MBH) celebrated the day of their founder on the 6th of June at Maravovo village West Guadalcanal.
ex.cfm/2012/6/20/Melanesian-Brotherhood-Commemorates-founder
Youth to lead synod welcome
Youth will take centre stage when leaders of the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia meet in Fiji next month.
http://www.aco.org/acns/digest/index.cfm/2012/6/20/Youth-to-lead-synod-welcome
Lutheran federation panel denounces armed conflict in Colombia
Speakers on a keynote panel at the Lutheran World Federation’s (LWF) Council meeting in Bogota, Colombia from 15 to 20 June criticized the state’s role in decades of sustained conflict between the military, paramilitary and guerrilla groups
http://www.eni.ch/featured/article.php?id=5745
Tanzania churches oppose uranium mining
Protestant churches in Tanzania have cautioned the government against extracting uranium deposits recently discovered in the East African country, noting that Germany plans to close its nuclear power stations by 2022 and the Japanese city of Fukushima is still recovering from the 2011 earthquake-caused nuclear disaster.
http://www.eni.ch/featured/article.php?id=5741
WCC forum focuses on poverty, wealth and ecology
ENInews – Participants at an international forum meeting in Bogor, Indonesia from 19 to 22 June are studying concepts of economic and ecological justice that lie at the heart of Christian ethics, according to a news release from the World Council of Churches (WCC).
http://www.aco.org/acns/digest/index.cfm/2012/6/20/WCC-forum-focuses-on-poverty-wealth-and-ecology
Southern Baptists elect first black president
Running unopposed, Fred Luter, is the newly-elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention, the first African-American to hold the post. As the AP reports,
Seventeen years earlier, Luter was one of the authors of an SBC resolution that apologized to African-Americans for its past support of racism and resolved to strive for racial reconciliation.
Since that gesture, the denomination has grown its non-white congregations from only 5 percent in 1990 to 20 percent in 2010. But its leadership has not diversified as rapidly as membership.
…
Lifeway Research President Ed Stetzer said [that] faced with declining membership … the 16-million strong Nashville-based denomination will have to be deliberate about its efforts to diversify. “I think they thought racial diversity would happen … now they realize they have to make it happen,” he said.
http://www.episcopalcafe.com/lead/other_churches/southern_baptists_elect_first.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+episcopalcafe+%28Episcopal+Cafe%29