ARCHBISHOP’S ‘PASS’ WAS SOLD BACK IN 1991

The Archbishop of Canterbury’s now infamous Mastermind response to a question about gay bishops one day being allowed to have partners simply reflects the culture of the institution Dr Williams leads.

Damian Thompson draws an unfavourable comparison with Roman Catholic clarity on the issue:

Yes, he really did say that (‘pass’ to the question from Times interviewer Ginny Dougary ‘does the Archbishop hope that one day gay bishops can have partners?’). Now, you may regard Roman Catholic teaching on homosexuality as wrong, amounting to a declaration that it’s OK to be left-handed but not to write with your left hand, but it is at least clear. It’s inconceivable that Benedict XVI would produce the game-show reply “Pass” to a question about sexual morality.

But the bishops of the Roman Catholic Church did not produce a document back in 1991 called Issues in Human Sexuality.

This House of Bishops document argued that it is acceptable for the laity to form faithful and stable same-sex relationships but not for the clergy. This reasoning was of course thoroughly unbiblical. Pastors are meant to set an example that is to be followed by all of us who profess Christian faith. The Apostle Paul urged Timothy, whom he had put in pastoral charge of the church in the sex-crazed city of Ephesus, to

set the believers an example in speech and conduct, in love, in faith, in purity (1 Timothy 4v12 – RSV).

The practical fact is that an ecclesiastical institution that makes such an unbiblical distinction between clergy and laity in personal morality will reap what it has sown. Clergy are taken from the ranks of the laity, and bishops from the ranks of the clergy. An institution that has legitimised same-sex relationships for people before they get ordained and consecrated is surely going to find it near impossible to enforce a different standard at a later stage.

Christ was grossly dishonoured by Issues and that’s why “pass” is the word 20 years later.

BRITONS SHOULD BE FREE TO CRITICISE ISLAM

No civilised person should condone the exhibitionist and gratuitously provocative act of the Tyneside men in filming themselves apparently burning copies of the Koran on September 11th. But the fact that they were arrested 'on suspicion of inciting racial hatred' represents a chilling threat to free speech in the United Kingdom.

This threat results from the growing official tendency to link the public expression of politically-incorrect religious opinions with racial incitement.

It is important to remember that the Christian street preacher Dale Mcalpine was arrested by Cumbria Police for a 'racially' aggravated public order offence when he upheld biblical teaching about sexual morality in Workington town centre in April.

In a Christian-influenced Parliamentary democracy, Her Majesty's subjects, irrespective of their ethnic origin, should be free to criticise Islam and should not be accused of racism for doing so.

They should be free to say that Islam is a religion that tends towards violence in its proselytisation and its treatment of those who convert from Islam to other faiths.

They should be free to say that it is a religion that tends to oppress women.

They should be free to point out its appalling record on religious liberty in countries it dominates.

They should be free to say, if they are Christian, that its scripture, the Koran, is completely wrong about the nature of God the Holy Trinity and about Jesus Christ, God Incarnate.

The joint statement by Northumbria Police and Gateshead Council is disturbingly illustrative of the politically-correct ideology that almost led to a religious hatred bill being passed into law under the last Labour government. It links an apparent attack on Islam which involved no violence against any individual with a threat to community relations:

Our community is one of mutual respect and we continue to work together with community leaders, residents and people of all faiths and beliefs to maintain good community relations.

How long will it be before a Christian is arrested in the UK for 'inciting racial hatred' because he or she peaceably but publicly exposed the theological errors of the Koran?

COULD BROADCAST DEREGULATION BOOST CHRISTIAN ORTHODOXY?

All of us who are orthodox Christians and licence fee payers have an interest in the BBC's coverage of our faith. And the fact is inescapable that the coverage of the Pope's robust comments about aggressive secularism, the dictatorship of cultural relativism, and the marginalisation of Christianity showed just how liberal-dominated the BBC's religious affairs offering normally is.

During the pre-visit negotiations between the BBC and the Vatican, the Pope was offered a slot on BBC Radio 4's Thought for the Day. The Vatican's rejection of this proposal, made earlier this year when the Pope's State visit was expected to be an embarrassing flop, proved a very wise move indeed.

If the Pope had agreed to be slotted into Thought for the Day, that would have put him on a par with the religious liberals who normally dominate that platform. His voice would have been lost in the hubbub.

As it happened, by using the platforms that he did, the Pope took the initiative and ensured that his counter-cultural statements got maximum broadcast coverage. The state broadcaster had no choice but to allow him to set the agenda.

But now it is back to business as usual with the innocuous homilies of the Radio 4 slot and the bland platitudes emanating from a cheery vicar or vicaress on Radio 2 amidst the frivolous banter with the presenter. We the listening public are never told the truth that we are great sinners in desperate need of a great Saviour. Which raises the question: how would the cause of Christ fare in the broadcast media if the BBC were broken up and its constituent parts sold to private enterprise?

If commercial media groups were granted greater access to terrestrial analogue and digital broadcasting, would the moral content get significantly worse than it already is on BBC1 or 2 or on the corporation's digital channels?

The liberal Oxbridge elite who revolutionised the ethos of the BBC in the 1960s were crusaders for the permissive society. They were not persuaded by Rubert Murdoch's Sun newspaper superciliously to dismiss Mary Whitehouse’s Christian-inspired concerns about the deteriorating moral content of the corporation’s output.

If the coalition government were to make a public service educational provision a condition of the sale, that could open up a tremendous opportunity for Evangelicals. Media groups that own newspapers as well as TV stations have a vested commercial interest in programming that promotes reading. Evangelicals share that concern as well, not in the cause of Mammon but because literacy enables Bible reading.

What are the chances of a programme ever appearing on the BBC written and presented by the Anglican Evangelical Principal of Wycliffe Hall, Dr Richard Turnbull, based on his new and quite excellent biography of the 19th century Evangelical social reformer, the Earl of Shaftesbury?

As for the argument that deregulation would open up the airwaves to crackpot fundamentalist ranting and donation-soliciting as in the US, the fact is that there is not a market for that sort of thing in the UK. Furthermore, liberalisation would summon up a beefed-up broadcasting standards authority with sharper legal teeth.

Cranmer's Curate may be naive in thinking this, but he believes new commercial broadcasters entering the market could be significantly more open to programmes produced by robustly orthodox Christians than the subsidised media monolith currently spewing out political correctness.

This piece by Cranmer's Curate about business as usual in PC Britain post-Pope appeared on the US-based orthodox Anglican news service VirtueOnline:.

HARVEST FESTIVAL FOR A NON-CHRISTIAN FRIEND

With many churches around the country combining Harvest Festival with Back to Church Sunday, Cranmer’s Curate would be very pleased to invite a non-Christian friend to a service with the following features:

• The church building is decked with tins of baked beans, fruit ‘n veg, cereal packets and flowers, revealing a pro-active Christian community that has pushed the boat out for its Harvest Festival, if it has chosen to hold one. You can go over the top with the ‘we are no longer an agrarian society’ line. A photograph display featuring a woman in a hard hat and a man baking a cake just doesn’t make the same impact as a home-grown pumpkin occupying an end-pew – even and perhaps especially in an urban area.

• A clear message via the hymns, the prayers, the Bible readings and the sermon that the God being thanked is not the father and/or mother of everyone irrespective of what they believe, but the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ and of believers in Him. With the cultural pressure to promote ‘faith’ in a general sense, a church service that proclaimed the significance of the Faith in the one true and almighty God would be a breath of fresh air.

• The inclusion of ‘We plough the fields and scatter’ and the Book of Common Prayer’s General Thanksgiving (in a modern English version). Why that prayer is not more widely used is a mystery to cc. It prays the Gospel. Here it is in its 1662 version:

Almighty God, Father of all mercies, we thine unworthy servants give thee most humble and hearty thanks for all thy goodness and loving-kindness to us and to all men. We bless thee for our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life; but above all for thine inestimable love in the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ, for the means of grace, and for the hope of glory. And we beseech thee, give us that due sense of all thy mercies, that our hearts may be unfeignedly thankful, and that we shew forth thy praise, not only with our lips, but in our lives; by giving up ourselves to thy service, and by walking before thee in holiness and righteousness all our days; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom with thee and the Holy Ghost be all honour and glory, world without end. Amen

Your curate would be more than comfortable inviting an unchurched, non-Christian friend to a Harvest Festival that does what it says on the tin.

POPE’S CLARITY HIGHLIGHTS FAILURE OF ANGLICAN ESTABLISHMENT

The clarity and certainty about the value of Christian faith, which Pope Benedict expressed in his sermon at the Mass in Glasgow yesterday (16/9), are at once hugely heartening and deeply embarrassing.

It is heartening that he told the truth about the devastating effect of cultural relativism upon Western civilisation:

The evangelisation of culture is all the more important in our times, when a 'dictatorship of relativism' threatens to obscure the unchanging truth about man's nature, his destiny and his ultimate good.

To counteract those "who now seek to exclude religious belief from public discourse, to privatise it or even to paint it as a threat to equality and liberty", the Pope issued a clarion call for "clear voices which propose our right to live, not in a jungle of self-destructive and arbitrary freedoms, but in a society which works for the true welfare of its citizens and offers them guidance and protection in the face of their weakness and fragility."

The conclusion of the sermon is likely to become famous:

Finally, I would like to say a word to you, my dear young Catholics of Scotland. I urge you to lead lives worthy of our Lord and of yourselves. There are many temptations placed before you every day – drugs, money, sex, pornography, alcohol – which the world tells you will bring you happiness, yet these things are destructive and divisive. There is only one thing which lasts: the love of Jesus Christ personally for each one of you. Search for him, know him and love him, and he will set you free from slavery to the glittering but superficial existence frequently proposed by today's society. Put aside what is worthless and learn of your own dignity as children of God.

What can any Christian of any denomination do but praise God for a man with the guts to tell the truth?

But the Pope’s words are also embarrassing because they highlight the failure of us Anglicans to speak out with such prophetic clarity to our own nation.

In its foundational doctrine the Church of England is much more faithful to the Holy Scriptures than the Roman Catholic Church. The Protestant Church of England is biblically right about the occasion, namely a Mass, at which the Pope spoke his famous words. In the words of Article of 28 of the 39, 'Of the Lord’s Supper':

Transubstantiation (or the change of the substance of Bread and Wine) in the Supper of the Lord, cannot be proved by holy Writ; but is repugnant to the plain words of Scripture, overthroweth the nature of a Sacrament, and hath given occasion to many superstitions.

So a church with sound doctrine is put to shame by the prophetic courage of the leader of one with deficient doctrine. That is humbling indeed and should galvanise those of us who believe the biblical doctrine of the Church of England to campaign even harder for its recapture for Christ.

WHY THIS PREACHER WOULDN’T SUE AFTER A NIGHT IN THE CELLS

It was disgraceful that a Christian street preacher was arrested for expressing biblical convictions in Workington town centre, Cumbria. But is he right to sue the police? This preacher would suggest not.

In its latest update, The Christian Institute reports on the decision by the preacher, Dale Mcalpine, to pursue a civil action against both the arresting officer and the Chief Constable. Mike Judge’s excellent report also recaps on the incident back in April:

Dramatic video footage of Mr Mcalpine’s arrest was captured on a hidden camera and has been viewed over 23,000 times on the internet.

The video shows Mr Mcalpine behaving calmly and reasonably, appealing for police to consider his free speech rights.

But police officers are heard saying they are ‘pretty sure’ it is a crime to call homosexual conduct a ‘sin’ and wrongfully arrested Mr Macapline for a ‘racially’ aggravated public order offence.

Mike Judge’s report continues:

He was held in a police cell for several hours and charged with committing a crime, even though his comments were not illegal.

The charges were dropped after lawyers paid for by The Christian Institute sent a strongly-worded letter to the Crown Prosecution Service.

Why wouldn’t cc sue?

· There is plenty of mileage for the gospel in pursuing the grievance through the Independent Police Complaints Commission. A high profile case such as this one, which has attracted significant media interest, already has momentum behind it. The publicity surrounding the progress of a formal complaint to the IPCC ensures that police officers and indeed the public are better educated about the growing politically-correct threat to Christian freedom of expression. And such an approach does not involve any possible compensation payment by the UK taxpayer. If the police fail to take satisfactory action, an ongoing, philanthropic campaign keeps the issue of Christian free speech in the spotlight.

· Suing panders to the burgeoning victim culture in post-Christian society. Your curate certainly would not enjoy a night in the cells but Christ’s Apostles rejoiced that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonour for Christ’s Name (cf Acts 5v41). Paul and Silas suffered grievous bodily harm when they were wrongfully arrested in Philippi. A night in the cells, whilst no fun, is pretty tame in comparison to the severe beating they suffered.

· The 19th century precedent in England of Bible-believing Christians using the law courts over religious issues is an unfortunate one. Evangelicals seeking to suppress the growing tendency towards ritualism in the Church of England came off badly in the public perception for using the law courts.

Suing the police would appear vindictive and self-serving whereas a campaign for Christian free speech by an individual who has suffered an injustice surely better serves the gospel of the Suffering Servant.

QUALITY BRIEFING ON GOD’S IMPASSIBILITY

‘Does God feel our pain?’ asks Australian Evangelical magazine The Briefing in this month’s issue. A brilliant theological essay by Mark Baddeley addresses the question of God’s impassibility, the doctrine that He is without ‘passions’ and so does not experience suffering.

Impassibility, Mr Baddeley points out, is a doctrine in the dog-house in the modern world firstly because of the Holocaust; secondly because of the optimism about humanity which, with the odd interruption, has been building since the Enlightenment; and thirdly because the way we think about emotions has changed profoundly since the words ‘impassible’ and ‘passions’ were first used.

The conclusion of Mr Baddeley’s essay ties up his argument in favour of God’s impassibility superbly as a conclusion should:

Impassibility is the ugly duckling in theology today, attacked as a philosophically driven rejection of the Bible’s emotional language to describe God. In an era where ‘to feel is human’ is almost our slogan, any hint of weakening emotions in God is met with staunch resistance. But God’s impassibility is not the extinguishing of genuine emotion from God, merely the disciplining of how Christians read Scripture, and then think and speak about God on this topic. It drags our interest back from God’s inner world, which he has never invited us to interrogate, and focuses squarely on how God is in his relationship with us. It does this with the assurance that how God relates to us is grounded in his own nature and essence. The divine emotions that Scripture testifies to and that we experience are real, even though they are not changes in God’s mental state forced on him by our actions. Even more, impassibility upholds two of the most important biblical truths: that God acts in love and grace when he creates, commands, and saves; and that the cross is not merely the revelation of things that were true anyway, but fundamentally changed matters by redeeming us.

This sort of high quality, accessible and soundly Evangelical theological reflection is honouring to Christ and of huge practical cash value in front-line parochial ministry.

DAILY MAIL COLUMNIST UPHOLDS CHRISTIAN VALUES AT GREENBELT

Cranmer's Curate once attended the Greenbelt 'Christian' rock festival as a youth in the mid-1980s. He remembers listening to Dr John Stott deliver a soundly Evangelical address in a flowery shirt and recalls a general ethos of orthodoxy on Christian faith and morals, albeit not one as carefully guarded as it needed to be.

But this once rather civilised and recognisably Evangelical youth event has now transmogrified 25 years later into a show-case for soul-destroying false teaching and politically-correct posturing. Reading the Church Times report of the 2010 Greenbelt, which took place at Cheltenham Race Course over the August Bank Holiday weekend, it is clear that Peter Tatchell was very far from being the most worrying speaker present - from an orthodox Christian perspective.

At least in his address, in which he attacked orthodox Anglicans, Mr Tatchell made no claim to be a Christian himself, was pictured wearing a tie, and defended free speech.

The one diamond in the dung-heap would appear to have been an address by the Daily Mail columnist Peter Oborne. According to the Church Times (September 3rd, p24), Mr Oborne, whose wife is ordained in the Church of England,

argued that 'good in our nation is derived from Christianity and Christ's teaching', and included among the list of virtues in a politician 'moral fearlessness', kindness to people lower down the social system, not abusing the power of office, and acting for the 'the common good, not for personal or factional advantage'.

Very few politicians behave in such ways, he said, and linked the decline in moral standards among politicians to the 'decline in Christian values in the British state'.

Thank the good Lord for a tabloid journalist with the moral courage to tell the counter-cultural truth, even if he chose a rather eccentric venue at which to do it.

'IMPROPER' IS THE WORD BUT NOT IN THE EYES OF MODERN CONSERVATIVES

William Wilberforce would approve of the integrity and courage the Conservative Foreign Secretary William Hague has shown in defending his marriage against rumours of an 'improper relationship'.

The Evangelical politician and anti-slave trade campaigner, about whom Mr Hague wrote a definitive biography in 2007, would also be in absolute agreement that any sexual relationship outside heterosexual marriage is indeed 'improper'. But that is not the view of the modern Conservative Party, which has adopted the homosexualist agenda of Tony Blair's New Labour.

That is clearly evident in the fact that a junior Conservative minister in the coalition government was able to leave his wife with impunity on the ground that he has been experiencing same-sex attraction whilst during the general election campaign a candidate in Scotland who upheld Christ's teaching on heterosexual marriage against the homosexualist agenda was immediately dismissed.

Mr Hague has received support for his stand from colleagues in the government and indeed from Labour strategist Alastair Campbell, who handled Tony Blair's media relations when Mr Hague was Conservative leader. Such support would be forthcoming if Mr Hague were accused of 'infidelity' outside a cohabiting relationship or a civil partnership. It amounts to support for Mr Hague personally against malicious behaviour by elements in the media. As such, this support is welcome and reflects a Christian ethos but it does not amount to support for the God-created institution of heterosexual marriage.

As part of our service to the temporal city in which we spend the time of our earthly exile, Christians need to keep on praying and working for the day when 'improper' will once again become the word for sexual relationships outside the God-given context. The institution of life-long, monogamous, heterosexual marriage is of vital important to the spiritual, moral, social and economic health of the country. The suicidal assault on it since the 1960s has done unquantifiable damage.

Mr Hague dedicated his biography of Wilberforce to Mrs Hague. The Book of Common Prayer blessing said by the minister of Christ at Wilberforce’s wedding in 1797 to Barbara is most appropriate for all men and women wanting to uphold the value of God's gift of marriage:

Almighty God, who at the beginning did create our first parents, Adam and Eve, and did sanctify and join them together in marriage; Pour upon you the riches of his grace, sanctify and bless you, that ye may please him both in body and soul, and live together in holy love unto your lives’ end. Amen.

ACTS' COMBINATION COMES ALIVE IN INDONESIA

If a picture of a Muslim with a noose around his neck were placed outside a church, that would deserve the unequivocal condemnation of the Christian community in that country and internationally. If it happened in the West, church leaders would rightly rush to condemn any association of Christianity with such bullying.

The following news story from the latest edition of Barnabasaid, the magazine of the Barnabas Fund, illustrates the hostile conditions Christians face in Muslim-dominated countries compared with the more benign situation Muslims enjoy in the Christian-influenced West:

On 3 July, in Bekasi, West Java, Indonesia, a banner showing a Christian man with a noose around his neck was hung outside a mosque with the following words: "This man deserves the death penalty!"

Andreas Sanau, 29 (the man on the banner), and Henry Sutanto have been accused by the Islamic Defender Front (FPI) of organising mass baptisms. The accusations came after 14 buses full of people arrived on 30 June at the home of Sutanto, the President of the Mahanaim Foundation, a Christian organisation that helps the poor.

The Foundation stated that they had no intention of carrying out baptisms. But according to Murhali Barda, the local leader of the FPI (a radical Islamic group known for violence against religious minorities, especially Christians), "Sutanto must be killed; he wants a mass baptism."

The report concludes:

The Regional Leader of the Indonesian Muslim Forum, Bernard Abdul Jabbar, said, "They (the FPI) will guard the Islamic faith and preach the right path to the people." According to Barda, "We are doing this because we want to strike fear in the hearts of Christians who behave in such a way. If they refuse to stop what they’re doing, we’re ready to fight" (p23, Barnabasaid, Hope and Aid for the Persecuted Church, September/October 2010).

The report carries a ring of authenticity, with the claims and counter-claims over the baptisms. In an atmosphere of fear, the situation is bound to be messy and the exact truth difficult to determine. But 14 bus-loads of people arriving at the home of this Christian leader certainly indicates that Christianity is making a pro-active impact on that community, in a manner that puts back-foot Western Christianity in the shade.

These faithful servants of Christ in Indonesia seeking to bring His word of life to the poor are experiencing that combination of explosive church growth and violent persecution which we read about in the Acts of the Apostles:

Then they (the Apostles) left the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonour for the name. And every day in the temple and from house to house, they did not cease teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ (Acts 5v41-42 - ESV).