Rev Jeffrey John (1953- )… centre of controversy in the Anglican Communion… shall he be made a bishop? Rowan Williams wishes it so! What does that say about John Behr and SVS? Behr gushed all over Williams and allowed him to write a preface for a book published by SVS… birds of a feather flock together!
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The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, approved a list of candidates for the post of Bishop of Southwark, and amongst them is a well-known gay priest. This week, he will decide on whether to refer Rev Jeffrey John, the Dean of the Cathedral of St Alban, as a candidate for final review by the British Prime Minister, David Cameron. Mr Cameron, in an interview in 2009, criticised the Church of England for its overly rigid attitude towards homosexuality. According to the newspaper The Daily Telegraph, most expect that a nomination of a gay priest would gain approval… then, it would only need final permission from the Queen for the Church of England to have its first openly- homosexual bishop. However, the appointment of Rev John would exacerbate the split in the Anglican community, of which Elizabeth II has repeatedly expressed deep concern. In 2003, Rowan Williams forced Rev John to drop his candidacy as the Bishop of Reading, as it was known that he was part of a civil same-sex union.
Mayor Boris Johnson of London expressed his readiness to lift the ban on the legalisation of same-sex unions in the UK. Recently, Mayor Johnson took part in London’s Gay Pride parade. At the march, he announced the necessity to lift the ban, according to Peter Tatchell, a spokesman for the British gay movement. “I told him (Mayor Johnson ) that the Conservative Party does not support gay marriage, and he replied that they should support it”, Mr Tatchell said, as quoted by a British newspaper, The Daily Telegraph. According to the London mayor’s office, Mr Johnson “supports same-sex civil unions and believes that with a coalition of Liberal Democrats and Conservatives, anything is possible”. Earlier, reports indicated that the coalition government of Great Britain was going to allow the civil legalisation of same-sex couples that had gone through a religious ceremony.
5 July 2010
Interfax-Religion
http://www.interfax-religion.ru/?act=news&div=36312
http://www.interfax-religion.ru/?act=news&div=36314
Editor’s Note:
Reports such as these are causing many Anglicans to question their continuing as members of the Anglican Communion. Some have come into Orthodoxy, where Renovationists have advanced them too rapidly… you can see the sorry results in Jonas Paffhausen, Chad Hatfield, Frederica Matthewes-Greene, and Patrick Reardon.
We must speak frankly. Anglicans do not come to us because they love Orthodoxy. They are with us because they hate what is happening in the Anglican Communion… a beast of QUITE a different colour, no? One could see this in such actions of Jonas Paffhausen as the signature of a pact with a seminary of the TEC, the signing of the Radical Protestant “Manhattan Declaration”, his kissing up to an “Apostle” of the Mormon sect, and his enthusiastic participation in the so-called “Lumen Gentium” conference in DC (don’t forget John Behr’s fulsome fawning over Rowan Williams with JP’s approval).
There are only about 10,000 former Episkie disgrunts amongst the approximately one million Orthodox in the US (we don’t count those who aren’t connected with a parish in some way or “Oriental Orthodox” (they’re not in communion with us)). You can trick this out by taking the number of subscribers to Again magazine (3,000) and multiplying it by the number in a standard household (2.5), which makes 7,500 all told. Let’s round it up so that we’re not accused of deliberate undercounting, so, one comes up with 10,000. This is only some 1 percent of all Orthodox in this country. However, there is a disproportionate number of clergy in that number, and the laity tend to be loud and active posters on the Internet… so much so that they have crowded most “native” ethnic voices off the Net (especially in such venues as the Orthodox Forum and ocanews.org). Don’t forget… the Bolshies were no majority, but they did seize power at the Centre (which the Episkies are attempting to do in Orthodoxy).
There is no major movement to Orthodoxy… otherwise, one would see it reflected in the general religious press, and it’s not there. In short, Reardon, Honeycutt, Matthewes-Greene, Hatfield, JP, and all the rest are lying to you.
WHY?
They want to turn Orthodoxy into a sanitised version of Anglicanism with a VERY thin Orthodox liturgical veneer. You can see this in some OCA parishes and some others in the AOCANA. They make much noise… but you find that the average convert conventicle has only about 100 members (or less!)… this was something that Fr Alexander Lebedeff noticed in ’07 before the MP/ROCOR reconciliation. He was more of a curmudgeon about it than usual… but that’s OK… it was necessary. In short, ROCOR let the loudmouths go… despite all the noise, I think that most breathed a sigh of relief when certain sorts were gone.
Shall we have the guts to let the former Episkies adrift to go, as they will? I hope so… they’re not one with us, and it’s about time someone said it. It’s all the sad legacy of Alexander Schmemann’s Renovationism and Philip Saliba’s ambition. I wish all Anglicans well… I merely warn them that Orthodoxy is not Anglicanism, there is no similarity whatsoever, and that they have to jettison all of their preconceptions in order to live amongst us successfully. That is hard to do… I have seen no former Episkie in the OCA or AOCANA do it yet. It is better to stay an Anglican than to become a half-baked “Orthodox”… I shall be lambasted for saying it, but that’s the way it is, and nothing can change it. God have mercy on us all.
BMD
Voices from Russia 
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