27 September 1999: There was a story in the newspapers in Australia last week about a bishop caught in a sex scandal. We at Anglicans Online made the editorial decision not to run the story here because we are quite weary of news about sex and sexuality. We figured that the story would quietly go away, and that you would be none the worse for not having heard about it here. But the story did not go away, so we think we ought to tell you about it. Sex scandals seem to have the property that, given enough time or enough distance, people stop caring. No one really seems to care any more whether or not an archbishop who died in 1841 was involved in a sex scandal, but we suppose that you do need to care that a bishop who had not died yet was involved in one. So, here are the particulars. The Sydney Morning Herald carried this story on September 27; The Age also carried the story. The web page for the Diocese of Canberra and Goulburn carried an official announcment.

On October 2 The Australian ran a story titled "Hushed support for bishop in exile." It says, for example, "If the three bishops who spent 18 months investigating the complaint thought their parishioners and priests were not going to contest the decision, they now know how seriously they underestimated the bishop's popularity." The Australian does not seem to keep back issues online, so we can't link you to it, and it's a Murdoch paper, so we daren't make a local copy. But, well, you get the idea.

27 September 1999: We just can't get away from these pesky sex scandals. The Pan African News Agency reported on 20 September 1999 that "The Anglican Church in South Africa has been rocked by allegations that one of its priests allegedly raped a woman at St George's Cathedral in Cape Town."

26 September 1999: The Episcopal News Service reports that the Rev. George Packard has been elected suffragan bishop for the U.S. Armed Forces.

26 September 1999: The Times has published a series of Top 20 lists in its edition of 26 September 1999. It's listed on the front page as "the 500 most powerful people in Britain;" see "Top 20 spiritual leaders." Several of the people who are mentioned regularly in the News Centre are on that list.

25 September 1999: Last year at this time, it seemed that all of the news was about sexuality. This year it seems that it's all about the Archbishop of Canterbury. At least the Archbishop isn't blending them, in the style of Bill Clinton. Victoria Combe writes in The Telegraph that the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr George Carey, appealed for greater power yesterday as leader of the Anglican Communion. However, sex always finds some way to get into the news; The Times reports, in the Britain section for 26 September 1999, that the Church of England is facing a new row over revelations that clergy are knowingly marrying transsexuals. That same issue reports that a leading cleric (the former Bishop of St Andrews) has called for the resignation of the Archbishop.

25 September 1999: The Times (London) reports in the Britain section of its edition for 25 September 1999 that St Paul's, Knightsbridge, is looking for a new vicar. This is international news because of the standing of that parish; it includes some 60 acres southwest of Hyde Park Corner, such as the exclusive Belgrave Square. Within its boundaries are three clubs including the Caledonian, and 14 embassies or high commissions.

24 September 1999: The Letters section of today's Telegraph has several letters in response to the marriage issue (see below for 21 September). The first letter is about missile testing, but don't let that deter you; scroll down.

22 September 1999: The Anglican Consultative Council's 11th meeting has ended, and there has been a blizzard of press releases from it. We at Anglicans Online have not yet had time to read them, digest them, and comment on them, but you can read the press releases at the source if you are in a hurry. We find ourself unable to resist forming an opinion about the ACC having issued a press release about technology. We had previously assumed that there would be a run on the world's supply of cloth ribbons for Royal typewriters in the preparation of these press releases. We presume that something like this was written when Westminster Abbey first got indoor plumbing.

22 September 1999: The Telegraph (London) reports that "The Archbishop of Canterbury, famously touchy about his media profile, has taken exception to a recent attack on him by a journalist - with the unprecedentedly absurd upshot that he has cancelled his family subscription to Church Times." We at Anglicans Online don't want the Archbishop to go cancelling his subscription to our publication, but we don't think he'll mind us quoting The Telegraph here. This issue relates to the news story reported below for 9 September 1999.

21 September 1999: The Church of England is thinking about relaxing its ban on divorced people being remarried in a church. Article in The Guardian by James Meek; Article in The Telegraph by Victoria Combe. BBC News Online article by Alex Kirby; another BBC article on a similar topic, also by Alex Kirby. A BBC online survey of reader opinion on this topic is still (27 September 1999) taking votes. And The Times carries an article on this topic by Ruth Gledhill (Britain section of The Times for 21 September 1999); see our instructions for reading articles in The Times. Another article in the Guardian, published a few days later, is a profile of Andrew Spurr, a divorced and remarried priest. And Victoria Combe writes in the Telegraph that the Church of England admitted publicly yesterday that all English dioceses already allow second weddings at times.

20 September 1999: The Telegraph carries an article by Michael Paterson reporting on an essay by George Carey appearing in the same newspaper. The Most Rev George Carey is of course the Archbishop of Canterbury.

19 September 1999: The BBC reports that "Senior Anglican leaders from around the world have met behind closed doors for a discussion on human sexuality - but they left without saying a word." One of the groups that presented to this meeting, the Lesbian and Gay Christians, has said a word, they said it in a column in The Guardian.

19 September 1999: Canada's National Post reports that the Anglican Church of Canada has been held liable in court for sexual abuse at an Indian residential school. The judgment itself (a legal document, hence not easy to read) is also online. This seems to have taken place in the Diocese of Cariboo, whose web page says they have 11 full-time clergy, 13 part-time clergy, and 17 parishes. Canada's Anglican News Service also carried the story.

12-19 September 1999: The Anglicans Online server computers were out of service for this week. We were too busy doing computer maintenance to notice much news.

10 September 1999: The Jewish festival of the New Year, Rosh Hashana, started today; it is the beginning of the season of High Holy Days.

9 September 1999: Some people admire Andrew Brown and some people despise him, but nearly every person interested in church news reads what he writes. In today's Daily Mail (London), a tabloid newspaper with no web presence, Andrew Brown has written an article that is short, savage, and analytical entitled "Is he the worst Archbishop we've ever had?" Since the Daily Mail has no web page, we have taken the liberty of scanning this article in so that you can read it. Anglicans Online is not endorsing or condemning this article by republishing it; we are simply trying to widen its availability so that people can at least agree on what they were arguing about. We feel that the photograph that the Mail included with the article is needlessly unflattering and not relevant to the article itself, so we have not republished that. We note that both the left and the right like to redistribute things written by (for example) Bishop Spong; there is precedent in our church for reprinting things without endorsing them. Andrew Brown is a writer; you can form an educated opinion about him by reading what he writes, some of which is on his web page. George Carey is an Archbishop; you can form an educated opinion about him, have you not already done so, by reading his sermons and his press releases, some of which are on his web page.

26 August 1999: The Most Rev Edin Curtis has died. He was the first Archbishop of the Province of the Indian Ocean, and before that Bishop of Mauritius. The Telegraph has run the only obituary that we can find.

26 August 1999: The Church Times reports that Religious Education has increased sharply in its popularity among English schoolchildren.

25 August 1999: Southern Cross has a nice piece about Anglican church attendance in Nigeria.

23 August 1999: It is common for religious news stories to be about marches or pilgrimages. You know the formula well. A group of people associated with some church or faith is trying to influence public opinion, so they gather a lot of people and march. The most elaborate such pilgrimage was New Zealand's Hikoi of Hope. In this month's edition of The Witness, Bill Wylie-Kellerman writes a thoughtful piece about A politics of pilgrimage. Read it now, while there are no pilgrimages in the news, so that you can better understand the next one you read about.

21 August 1999: The World Wide Anglican Assembly is scheduled to meet in Scotland. The Anglican Communion News Service writes about it. The Most Rev Moses Tay, Archbishop of the Province of Southeast Asia and Bishop of Singapore, has announced that he would not attend, since "Scotland is a heretical province." We expected to find opinion pieces to refer you to in the major reactionary web news circles; surprisingly there is nothing as of AO press time (midnight Sunday, California time).

21 August 1999: Episcopal Life, the news magazine published by ECUSA, has run a delightful piece on St Paul's K Street, a famous high-church parish in Washington DC. If you think we're competing with catfish this week, you should see the news stories that the UK secular press ran in their weekend religion columns.

2 August 1999: As expected, the British press is all over the story mentioned two paragraphs below. The Telegraph says "Archbishop says his Church has let down Jesus". The Independent says "Carey: Miracle is hard to swallow." The Times probably says something, but their ISP is misbehaving and we can't reach their web site. You possbly can, in which case you could read what they had to say.

1 August 1999: Russia didn't switch to the Gregorian calendar until the 20th century. It may well be that a future writer can say "Great Britain didn't switch to the real date of Easter until the 21st century." The Telegraph reports on an exotic story about the calculation of the date of Easter.

1 August 1999: Wire services are reporting that "Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey, leader of the world's 70 million Anglican faithful, has triggered a religious storm after questioning the resurrection of Jesus Christ, a report in the Mail Sunday said." As Anglicans Online goes to press this week, the English newspapers do not seem to have picked up this story yet. We trust that they will; tune in next week.

31 July 1999: Paul Handley, editor of The Church Times, has written an opinion piece for The Independent on the subject of miracles. And gold fillings. And James Meek, Relgiious Affairs editor for The Guardian, has written an opinion piece for his newspaper called "Morality tales." Both make interesting reading. We always enjoy Paul Handley's writing, but we are assuming that he found the time to write this by borrowing from the time used for oversight of his production staff: for the third week in a row, the Church Times web site has an unviewable photograph on the front page (you can only see it if you use Microsoft Internet Explorer on a PC platform). As usual, we have fixed the problem in our copy of the Church Times.

31 July 1999: Most of the core audience for the Spice Girls has graduated and gone to high school, and their younger sisters are buying tickets to see B'Witched instead. But when Victoria Adams, Posh Spice, got married last month in Ireland, it was one of the most extravagant weddings seen there in a long time. The groom was a famous football player, David Beckham, and the Bishop of Cork is a fan of Manchester United, his team. Now the Church of Ireland Gazette has published an article that is rather negative of Bishop Colton for having participated in this event. The Telegraph covers the story.

30 July 1999: The Seattle Times reports that St Mark's Episcopal Cathedral in Seattle, in the Diocese of Olympia, has elected as its sixth dean a South Africa native whose ideas of what it means to be Christian were first formed in the fight against apartheid. The Rev. Robert Vincent Taylor is also the first openly gay man to be chosen as dean of an Episcopal cathedral in the United States.

30 July 1999: So often these days we read stories of Anglican churches closing, consolidating, or shrinking. So we are always delighted to find about the opening of a new church. The Illawarra Mercury reported today on the opening of Fairy Meadow Anglican Church, presided over by Sydney Archbishop Harry Goodhew. Well, it may be consolidation: the parish sold 3 church properties to get the funds to buy this one. Illawarra is an hour's drive south of Sydney, in New South Wales. As far as we can tell from studying the maps, it's in the Wollongong deanery of the Diocese of Sydney.

30 July 1999: The Church of England has released a report on how churches can play a role in integrating sex offenders back into society after they are released from prison. The UK press has of course jumped on the story, writing headlines like "Church of England welcomes sex offenders" (BBC), "Abusers target church youth" (Independent), "Churches told to welcome paedophiles" (Telegraph). Only The Guardian seems to have written about this in a non-sensationalist fashion: "Anglicans curb child abusers." And of course the Church Times got it right: "Report tells churches how to cope with sex offenders." We also recommend that you read the Church Times editorial statement about dealing with sex offenders.

30 July 1999: The Telegraph reports that the Children's Society has "further distanced itself from its traditional Church roots by lifting the ban on gays adopting and fostering children in its care." Stories about sexuality do seem to sell newspapers; we are surprised that none of the other UK papers has picked up on this story. The Church Times also covered the story, as did the BBC.

29 July 1999: 25 years ago this day, the US Episcopal Church ordained 11 women in Philadelphia, breaking new ground and opening new battlegrounds. The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote this 25th-anniversary news story about it. There have been various remembrances of it, with those who are glad it happened and those who are angry that it happened using the event to reflect on past and future. Oddly enough, both sides are using the same material to emphasize their point of view. Those in favor of the ordination of women and those opposed to it are both distributing the text of a sermon by Barbara Harris, Suffragan Bishop of Massachusetts. Clearly, whether your love her or hate her, Bishop Harris can evoke a reaction in people.

29 July 1999: Animal Rights campaigners and Diocese of St Edmundsbury fundraisers are feuding; The Guardian carries the story. Note that the cathedral organist has participated neither in the hunt nor the protest, which probably explains why this was covered only in one English newspaper.

28 July 1999: A popular English bishop, the Rt Rev Gordon Roe, retired suffragan Bishop of Huntingdon, has died. The Guardian carries his obituary.

27 July 1999: The Sydney Morning Herald reported this morning that the manufacturer of Vegemite did not know if the product contained genetically modified ingredients.

27 July 1999: There is so much conflict over sex and sexuality in the church that we are surprised it took us a week to find this story. The new CEO of the Mother's Union is a man. Story by the Anglican Communion News Service; the story will tell you what the Mothers' Union is if you don't already know.

17 July 1999: The Church of England is having a Synod this week. If you've ever had a Synod, you know that there is no real cure; you just have to wait for it to end. While this one progressed, there was a torrent of news stories:

Asian bishop joins House of Lords (BBC).
Church of England questions [NATO] air campaign (Guardian).
Church restores heresy trials for priests who defy doctrine (Telegraph).
BBC version of that story.
C of E to confront racism (BBC).
C of E urged to seize moment on racism (Church Times)
Bishop attacks racism in Church (Telegraph).
Bishop upbraids 'white' Church (Guardian).
C of E has priorities wrong, say worshippers (Telegraph).
Brewery share ban lifted (Telegraph).
Appeal to ring in Millennium (Telegraph).
Tackling lure of money, power, and sex (Telegraph).
Church to offer atheists a 'baby blessing' service (Telegraph).
Virgin Mary debate still to be resolved (Telegraph).

And of course there is coverage in The Times: Future of C of E in the balance as attendance falls (11 July, Britain). Church of England has ended its ban on investing in the brewing industry (13 July, Britain). Church to bring back trials for heresy (13 July, Britain). Church accused of racism (14 July, Britain).

17 July 1999: The Church of the Province of Southern Africa is having a Synod this week too, and they are doing a much better job than the English of keeping the public informed through official channels. We suppose that if the South African press paid as much attention to the CPSA as the British press pays to the C of E, that perhaps the South Africans wouldn't do such a good job. But they are. Remember that the CPSA web server is physically in southern Africa, and there is not a lot of communication capacity in and out of that region of the world, so be patient.

17 July 1999: The Primate of the Anglican Church of Australia, Archbishop Keith Rayner, has made his first public comment on "The Gift of Authority," which document was released on 12 May 1999. The Sydney Morning Herald had this to say about it. This is the sort of document that one would expect to find on the Anglican Church of Australia web site, but we couldn't find it. If you can't get to the SMH web site, the article begins "Anglicans may be prepared to accept the authority of the pope to teach infallibly on matters of faith and morals, but not without changes in the style of papacy. If Papal authority is a gift to be shared, the idea poses as many challenges for Catholics as it does for Anglicans."

17 July 1999: Make sure you read the article by Ruth Gledhill in The Times entitled "Stirring the lion in all of us." It's in the Faith section (part of Weekend) for 17 July. It begins "The image of a lion waking from a long sleep is one that could be applied not just to the Church of England, but to the Archbishop of Canterbury himself" and notes that the Most Revd George Carey, Archbishop of Canterbury, has begun using some of the power that comes with the role he assumed eight years ago.

17 July 1999: The "news" section of the Church of England web site hasn't been updated since June 26. No wonder you've turned to Anglicans Online for your news.

17 July 1999: Alastair Campbell, press secretary to the British Prime Minister, has written a short letter to the editor of the Church Times insisting that some of the facts were wrong in an article in The Times to which we referred you on 4 July and from which the Church Times repeated some statements. We sincerely doubt that anybody who didn't already know who Alastair Campbell was would have any interest in this topic, but we include this item in the interests of fairness.

16 July 1999: Peter Owen reports for Anglicans Online on the new Church-Search service launched by the Church of England.

16 July 1999: The Rt Revd Richard Harries, Bishop of Oxford, has written a fine piece in The Tablet about NATO and Kosovo, entitled "Nato's deadly mind-game."

16 July 1999: The Church Times reports that the new Archbishops' Council has published the first results of its public surveys, and that the results are, on the surface, quite negative. Make sure you read the Church Times' leader story about this, too.

13 July 1999: Two of the biggest stories to come out of the Church of England Synod (see above) are the dispute over the reference to the Virgin Mary in the Nicene Creed, and the assertion that the C of E plans to bring back heresy trials. Besides the news stories linked above, The Guardian has a commentary: Heresy trials for sceptic priests could split the Church. The BBC has a depth piece "The vicars who don't believe in God". The odd problem with all of this is that Anglicans Online had a reporter on the scene at the Synod, and what he saw taking place was somewhat unrelated to the contents of these news reports. It is useful that we don't pay our reporter, so he doesn't have to worry about writing to sell more newspapers. He filed this story on the Nicene Creed issue and will file one next week on the issue of the heresy trials. While you are waiting for next week's Anglicans Online story, you might read Ruth Gledhill's report in The Times (17 July, Britain section) that "One third of clergy do not believe in the Virgin Birth."

13 July 1999: The Archbishop of Canterbury has delivered his response to the Stephen Lawrence Enquiry. In February 1999 a UK commission released a report about the handling of the murder case of a victim named Stephen Lawrence; this story consumed the British press for two weeks. The BBC's coverage of it was and is the broadest. Coverage by the Church Times and the BBC merits your attention.

13 July 1999: The Rt Revd John Hind, Bishop of Gibraltar in Europe and diocesan Bishop of Europe, and the Rt Revd Richard Chartres, Bishop of London, went to Kosovo and towards Belgrade. Bishop Hind filed this report. They were not allowed into Belgrade.

13 July 1999: The retired bishop who involved himself in the parish dispute in Brockton, Massachusetts was once the Bishop of South Carolina. His hometown newspaper, the Charleston Post and Courier, sent a reporter to Brockton to see if he could figure out what was going on, and he filed this report. We believe that this is the same reporter who wrote the article that was reprinted two weeks ago in the Charlotte Observer that has since been found to have demonstrable errors of fact, but it may be that, having gone to the scene in person, he was better equipped this time. Decide for yourself. If you are convinced that the Brockton issue is about sexuality, then you will probably enjoy reading the reports of combat over sexuality that are reported by the Prayer Book Society of Canada.

12 July 1999: The Anglican Communion News Service reports that the Presiding Bishop of the U.S. Episcopal Church has made his first official visit to Russia and to the Russian Orthodox Church.

4 July 1999: Today is a U.S. holiday, Independence Day. It is also, arguably, the most important day in the formative history of the Anglican church, for it was on that day that the governance model of the church was forced, if not formed. It was 4 July, 1776, when 56 English subjects signed a petition of independence from their government. Most of them were members of the Church of England. In the ensuing warfare, five were captured and executed as traitors, nine died soldiering, three had children killed in the war, and twelve were bankrupted. They were not predisposed to have warm thoughts about England. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are universal and transcend countries and wars, but the church and its governance are of people. The intertwinement of the English church with its government created a rule of law against an English bishop consecrating anyone who would not swear an oath of allegiance to the British Crown, so there were no bishops in the newly-independent United States. For eight years there were no bishops in the United States; ordinations requried a sea journey. The requirement that the Church in the United States be free from control by the Church of England forced the creation of a governance model in which there is no central control. If you link in to the Anglican Timeline in 1776, The Origin of ECUSA, you can find more to read about what happened next.

4 July 1999: Two articles in The Sunday Times about separation of church and state. One in the Britain Section, by Christopher Morgan (a journalist at The Times) and another, in the News Review section, is by The Rt Revd Colin Buchanan, Bishop of Woolwich. Bishop Buchanan urges the church to shed the godless machinery of politics. Mr. Morgan reports on this continuing push for disestablishment. Your News Centre editor, after several months of reporting the arguments for separation of church and state in the UK, has just this moment realized that he may get a chance, for the first time in his life, to use the word "antidisestablishmentarianism" in a sentence and actually mean it. His elementary-school teachers would be so proud.

4 July 1999: "Dead men tell no tales" was one of the catch-phrases of the Wild West. In today's Sunday Telegraph, Jonathan Petre (in no way a dead man) tells the amazing tale of "Hume attacks Vatican from beyond grave." In a video recording for American bishops, not screened until the day after his death, the Cardinal expressed concern over many Vatican policies and actions. There have been few people in the world with the stature to attack the Vatican without being ignored as a lunatic, and Hume was one of them. Our coverage of his death and many obituaries is in our News Archives. This is definitely going to be interesting. We remain certain that if Cardinal Hume had had his way, he would not have died before releasing this opinion; this was not at all a sniper attack.

3 July 1999: The Rev Canon H. Boone Porter, noted liturgist, educator, author and former editor of The Living Church, died June 5 in Southport, Connecticut USA, where he had lived since his retirement in 1990. He was 76. Canon Porter was one of the primary architects of the ECUSA 1979 Book of Common Prayer. The publication that he edited for nearly a quarter of a century, The Living Church, has published a fitting obituary.

2 July 1999: The Charlotte Observer, of Charlotte, North Carolina, USA, reports that the Rt Revd Christopher FitzSimons Allison (retired Bishop of South Carolina) is dismayed that no disciplinary action will be taken against him for joining the fray in a dispute between the Diocese of Massachusetts and one of its parishes. This dispute is so contentious that the two sides even disagree about what they are arguing about; the very act of explaining the feud requires one to take a stand for one side or the other.

1 July 1999: The Rt Revd Christopher Herbert, Bishop of St Albans, has written an interesting piece on clergy salaries in England.

30 June 1999: The Archbishop of Wales, the Most Rev Alwyn Rice Jones, has been the primate of The Church in Wales for eight years. He retired today. The retirement was covered by the BBC, but we can't find any coverage of it on the Church in Wales' web site.