Daily Readings for Week of September 5th -11th

Date: 9/3/2010

Proper 18
Week of the Sunday closest to September 7

Sunday	63:1-8(9-11), 98	103
	Job 25:1-6,27:1-6	Rev. 14:1-7,13	Matt. 5:13-20
Monday	41, 52	44
	Job 32:1-10,19-33:1,19-28	Acts 13:44-52	John 10:19-30
Tuesday	45	47, 48
	Job 29:1-20	Acts 14:1-18	John 10:31-42
Wednesday	119:49-72	49,[53]
	Job 29:1,30:1-2,16-31	Acts 14:19-28	John 11:1-16
Thursday	50	[59,60] or 93, 96
	Job 29:1,31:1-23	Acts 15:1-11	John 11:17-29
Friday	40, 54	51
	Job 29:1,31:24-40	Acts 15:12-21	John 11:30-44
Saturday	55	138,139:1-17(18-23)
	Job 38:1-17	Acts 15:22-35	John 11:45-54

Daily Readings for Week of August 29th - September 4th

Date: 8/26/2010

Proper 17
Week of the Sunday closest to August 31

Sunday	148, 149, 150	114, 115
	Job 11:1-9,13-20	Rev. 5:1-14	Matt. 5:1-12
Monday	25	9, 15
	Job 12:1-6,13-25	Acts 11:19-30	John 8:21-32
Tuesday	26, 28	36, 39
	Job 12:1,13:3-17,21-27	Acts 12:1-17	John 8:33-47
Wednesday	38	119:25-48
	Job 12:1,14:1-22	Acts 12:18-25	John 8:47-59
Thursday	37:1-18	37:19-42
	Job 16:16-22,17:1,13-16	Acts 13:1-12	John 9:1-17
Friday	31	35
	Job 19:1-7,14-27	Acts 13:13-25	John 9:18-41
Saturday	30, 32	42, 43
	Job 22:1-4,21-23:7	Acts 13:26-43	John 10:1-18

The Manhattan Declaration

Date: 1/15/2010

Manhattan Declaration: A Call of Christian Conscience

Drafted on October 20, 2009

Released on November 20, 2009

 

Preamble


Christians are heirs of a 2,000-year tradition of proclaiming God's word, seeking justice in our societies, resisting tyranny, and reaching out with compassion to the poor, oppressed and suffering. 

While fully acknowledging the imperfections and shortcomings of Christian institutions and communities in all ages, we claim the heritage of those Christians who defended innocent life by rescuing discarded babies from trash heaps in Roman cities and publicly denouncing the Empire's sanctioning of infanticide.  We remember with reverence those believers who sacrificed their lives by remaining in Roman cities to tend the sick and dying during the plagues, and who died bravely in the coliseums rather than deny their Lord.

After the barbarian tribes overran Europe, Christian monasteries preserved not only the Bible but also the literature and art of Western culture.  It was Christians who combated the evil of slavery: Papal edicts in the 16^th and 17^th centuries decried the practice of slavery and first excommunicated anyone involved in the slave trade; evangelical Christians in England, led by John Wesley and William Wilberforce, put an end to the slave trade in that country.  Christians under Wilberforce's leadership also formed hundreds of societies for helping the poor, the imprisoned, and child laborers chained to machines.

In Europe, Christians challenged the divine claims of kings and successfully fought to establish the rule of law and balance of governmental powers, which made modern democracy possible.  And in America, Christian women stood at the vanguard of the suffrage movement.  The great civil rights crusades of the 1950s and 60s were led by Christians claiming the Scriptures and asserting the glory of the image of God in every human being regardless of race, religion, age or class.

This same devotion to human dignity has led Christians in the last decade to work to end the dehumanizing scourge of human trafficking and sexual slavery, bring compassionate care to AIDS sufferers in Africa, and assist in a myriad of other human rights causes - from providing clean water in developing nations to providing homes for tens of thousands of children orphaned by war, disease and gender discrimination.

Like those who have gone before us in the faith, Christians today are called to proclaim the Gospel of costly grace, to protect the intrinsic dignity of the human person and to stand for the common good.  In being true to its own calling, the call to discipleship, the church through service to others can make a profound contribution to the public good.  

 

Declaration

We, as Orthodox, Catholic, and Evangelical Christians, have gathered, beginning in New York on September 28, 2009, to make the following declaration, which we sign as individuals, not on behalf of our organizations, but speaking to and from our communities.   We act together in obedience to the one true God, the triune God of holiness and love, who has laid total claim on our lives and by that claim calls us with believers in all ages and all nations to seek and defend the good of all who bear his image.  We set forth this declaration in light of the truth that is grounded in Holy Scripture, in natural human reason (which is itself, in our view, the gift of a beneficent God), and in the very nature of the human person.  We call upon all people of goodwill, believers and non-believers alike, to consider carefully and reflect critically on the issues we here address as we, with St. Paul, commend this appeal to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God.

While the whole scope of Christian moral concern, including a special concern for the poor and vulnerable, claims our attention, we are especially troubled that in our nation today the lives of the unborn, the disabled, and the elderly are severely threatened; that the institution of marriage, already buffeted by promiscuity, infidelity and divorce, is in jeopardy of being redefined to accommodate fashionable ideologies; that freedom of religion and the rights of conscience are gravely jeopardized by those who would use the instruments of coercion to compel persons of faith to compromise their deepest convictions. 

Because the sanctity of human life, the dignity of marriage as a union of husband and wife, and the freedom of conscience and religion are foundational principles of justice and the common good, we are compelled by our Christian faith to speak and act in their defense.  In this declaration we affirm: 1) the profound, inherent, and equal dignity of every human being as a creature fashioned in the very image of God, possessing inherent rights of equal dignity and life; 2) marriage as a conjugal union of man and woman, ordained by God from the creation, and historically understood by believers and non-believers alike, to be the most basic institution in society and; 3) religious liberty, which is grounded in the character of God, the example of Christ, and the inherent freedom and dignity of human beings created in the divine image.

We are Christians who have joined together across historic lines of ecclesial differences to affirm our right - and, more importantly, to embrace our obligation - to speak and act in defense of these truths.  We pledge to each other, and to our fellow believers, that no power on earth, be it cultural or political, will intimidate us into silence or acquiescence.  It is our duty to proclaim the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in its fullness, both in season and out of season.   May God help us not to fail in that duty.

Life
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. Genesis 1:27 

I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. John 10:10 

Although public sentiment has moved in a pro-life direction, we note with sadness that pro-abortion ideology prevails today in our government.  The present administration is led and staffed by those who want to make abortions legal at any stage of fetal development, and who want to provide abortions at taxpayer expense.  Majorities in both houses of Congress hold pro-abortion views.  The Supreme Court, whose infamous 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade stripped the unborn of legal protection, continues to treat elective abortion as a fundamental constitutional right, though it has upheld as constitutionally permissible some limited restrictions on abortion.  The President says that he wants to reduce the "need" for abortion - a commendable goal.  But he has also pledged to make abortion more easily and widely available by eliminating laws prohibiting government funding, requiring waiting periods for women seeking abortions, and parental notification for abortions performed on minors.  The elimination of these important and effective pro-life laws cannot reasonably be expected to do other than significantly increase the number of elective abortions by which the lives of countless children are snuffed out prior to birth.  Our commitment to the sanctity of life is not a matter of partisan loyalty, for we recognize that in the thirty-six years since Roe v. Wade, elected officials and appointees of both major political parties have been complicit in giving legal sanction to what Pope John Paul II described as "the culture of death."  We call on all officials in our country, elected and appointed, to protect and serve every member of our society, including the most marginalized, voiceless, and vulnerable among us.

A culture of death inevitably cheapens life in all its stages and conditions by promoting the belief that lives that are imperfect, immature or inconvenient are discardable.  As predicted by many prescient persons, the cheapening of life that began with abortion has now metastasized.  For example, human embryo-destructive research and its public funding are promoted in the name of science and in the cause of developing treatments and cures for diseases and injuries.  The President and many in Congress favor the expansion of embryo-research to include the taxpayer funding of so-called "therapeutic cloning."  This would result in the industrial mass production of human embryos to be killed for the purpose of producing genetically customized stem cell lines and tissues.  At the other end of life, an increasingly powerful movement to promote assisted suicide and "voluntary" euthanasia threatens the lives of vulnerable elderly and disabled persons.  Eugenic notions such as the doctrine of lebensunwertes Leben ("life unworthy of life") were first advanced in the 1920s by intellectuals in the elite salons of America and Europe.  Long buried in ignominy after the horrors of the mid-20^th century, they have returned from the grave.  The only difference is that now the doctrines of the eugenicists are dressed up in the language of "liberty," "autonomy," and "choice."

We will be united and untiring in our efforts to roll back the license to kill that began with the abandonment of the unborn to abortion.  We will work, as we have always worked, to bring assistance, comfort, and care to pregnant women in need and to those who have been victimized by abortion, even as we stand resolutely against the corrupt and degrading notion that it can somehow be in the best interests of women to submit to the deliberate killing of their unborn children.  Our message is, and ever shall be, that the just, humane, and truly Christian answer to problem pregnancies is for all of us to love and care for mother and child alike.

A truly prophetic Christian witness will insistently call on those who have been entrusted with temporal power to fulfill the first responsibility of government: to protect the weak and vulnerable against violent attack, and to do so with no favoritism, partiality, or discrimination.  The Bible enjoins us to defend those who cannot defend themselves, to speak for those who cannot themselves speak.  And so we defend and speak for the unborn, the disabled, and the dependent.  What the Bible and the light of reason make clear, we must make clear.  We must be willing to defend, even at risk and cost to ourselves and our institutions, the lives of our brothers and sisters at every stage of development and in every condition.

Our concern is not confined to our own nation.  Around the globe, we are witnessing cases of genocide and "ethnic cleansing," the failure to assist those who are suffering as innocent victims of war, the neglect and abuse of children, the exploitation of vulnerable laborers, the sexual trafficking of girls and young women, the abandonment of the aged, racial oppression and discrimination, the persecution of believers of all faiths, and the failure to take steps necessary to halt the spread of preventable diseases like AIDS.  We see these travesties as flowing from the same loss of the sense of the dignity of the human person and the sanctity of human life that drives the abortion industry and the movements for assisted suicide, euthanasia, and human cloning for biomedical research.  And so ours is, as it must be, a truly consistent ethic of love and life for all humans in all circumstances.

Marriage
The man said, "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, for she was taken out of man."  For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. Genesis 2:23-24 

This is a profound mystery - but I am talking about Christ and the church.  However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. Ephesians 5:32-33 

In Scripture, the creation of man and woman, and their one-flesh union as husband and wife, is the crowning achievement of God’s creation.  In the transmission of life and the nurturing of children, men and women joined as spouses are given the great honor of being partners with God Himself.   Marriage then, is the first institution of human society - indeed it is the institution on which all other human institutions have their foundation.  In the Christian tradition we refer to marriage as "holy matrimony" to signal the fact that it is an institution ordained by God, and blessed by Christ in his participation at a wedding in Cana of Galilee.  In the Bible, God Himself blesses and holds marriage in the highest esteem.

Vast human experience confirms that marriage is the original and most important institution for sustaining the health, education, and welfare of all persons in a society.  Where marriage is honored, and where there is a flourishing marriage culture, everyone benefits - the spouses themselves, their children, the communities and societies in which they live.  Where the marriage culture begins to erode, social pathologies of every sort quickly manifest themselves.  Unfortunately, we have witnessed over the course of the past several decades a serious erosion of the marriage culture in our own country.   Perhaps the most telling - and alarming - indicator is the out-of-wedlock birth rate.  Less than fifty years ago, it was under 5 percent.  Today it is over 40 percent.  Our society - and particularly its poorest and most vulnerable sectors, where the out-of-wedlock birth rate is much higher even than the national average - is paying a huge price in delinquency, drug abuse, crime, incarceration, hopelessness, and despair.  Other indicators are widespread non-marital sexual cohabitation and a devastatingly high rate of divorce.

We confess with sadness that Christians and our institutions have too often scandalously failed to uphold the institution of marriage and to model for the world the true meaning of marriage.  Insofar as we have too easily embraced the culture of divorce and remained silent about social practices that undermine the dignity of marriage we repent, and call upon all Christians to do the same.

To strengthen families, we must stop glamorizing promiscuity and infidelity and restore among our people a sense of the profound beauty, mystery, and holiness of faithful marital love.  We must reform ill-advised policies that contribute to the weakening of the institution of marriage, including the discredited idea of unilateral divorce.  We must work in the legal, cultural, and religious domains to instill in young people a sound understanding of what marriage is, what it requires, and why it is worth the commitment and sacrifices that faithful spouses make.

The impulse to redefine marriage in order to recognize same-sex and multiple partner relationships is a symptom, rather than the cause, of the erosion of the marriage culture.  It reflects a loss of understanding of the meaning of marriage as embodied in our civil and religious law and in the philosophical tradition that contributed to shaping the law.  Yet it is critical that the impulse be resisted, for yielding to it would mean abandoning the possibility of restoring a sound understanding of marriage and, with it, the hope of rebuilding a healthy marriage culture.  It would lock into place the false and destructive belief that marriage is all about romance and other adult satisfactions, and not, in any intrinsic way, about procreation and the unique character and value of acts and relationships whose meaning is shaped by their aptness for the generation, promotion and protection of life.  In spousal communion and the rearing of children (who, as gifts of God, are the fruit of their parents’ marital love), we discover the profound reasons for and benefits of the marriage covenant.

We acknowledge that there are those who are disposed towards homosexual and polyamorous conduct and relationships, just as there are those who are disposed towards other forms of immoral conduct.  We have compassion for those so disposed; we respect them as human beings possessing profound, inherent, and equal dignity; and we pay tribute to the men and women who strive, often with little assistance, to resist the temptation to yield to desires that they, no less than we, regard as wayward.  We stand with them, even when they falter.  We, no less than they, are sinners who have fallen short of God's intention for our lives.  We, no less than they, are in constant need of God’s patience, love and forgiveness.  We call on the entire Christian community to resist sexual immorality, and at the same time refrain from disdainful condemnation of those who yield to it.  Our rejection of sin, though resolute, must never become the rejection of sinners.  For every sinner, regardless of the sin, is loved by God, who seeks not our destruction but rather the conversion of our hearts.  Jesus calls all who wander from the path of virtue to "a more excellent way."  As his disciples we will reach out in love to assist all who hear the call and wish to answer it.

We further acknowledge that there are sincere people who disagree with us, and with the teaching of the Bible and Christian tradition, on questions of sexual morality and the nature of marriage.  Some who enter into same-sex and polyamorous relationships no doubt regard their unions as truly marital.  They fail to understand, however, that marriage is made possible by the sexual complementarity of man and woman, and that the comprehensive, multi-level sharing of life that marriage is includes bodily unity of the sort that unites husband and wife biologically as a reproductive unit.  This is because the body is no mere extrinsic instrument of the human person, but truly part of the personal reality of the human being.  Human beings are not merely centers of consciousness or emotion, or minds, or spirits, inhabiting non-personal bodies.  The human person is a dynamic unity of body, mind, and spirit.  Marriage is what one man and one woman establish when, forsaking all others and pledging lifelong commitment, they found a sharing of life at every level of being - the biological, the emotional, the dispositional, the rational, the spiritual - on a commitment that is sealed, completed and actualized by loving sexual intercourse in which the spouses become one flesh, not in some merely metaphorical sense, but by fulfilling together the behavioral conditions of procreation.  That is why in the Christian tradition, and historically in Western law, consummated marriages are not dissoluble or annullable on the ground of infertility, even though the nature of the marital relationship is shaped and structured by its intrinsic orientation to the great good of procreation.

We understand that many of our fellow citizens, including some Christians, believe that the historic definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman is a denial of equality or civil rights.  They wonder what to say in reply to the argument that asserts that no harm would be done to them or to anyone if the law of the community were to confer upon two men or two women who are living together in a sexual partnership the status of being "married."  It would not, after all, affect their own marriages, would it?  On inspection, however, the argument that laws governing one kind of marriage will not affect another cannot stand.  Were it to prove anything, it would prove far too much: the assumption that the legal status of one set of marriage relationships affects no other would not only argue for same sex partnerships; it could be asserted with equal validity for polyamorous partnerships, polygamous households, even adult brothers, sisters, or brothers and sisters living in incestuous relationships.  Should these, as a matter of equality or civil rights, be recognized as lawful marriages, and would they have no effects on other relationships?  No.  The truth is that marriage is not something abstract or neutral that the law may legitimately define and re-define to please those who are powerful and influential.

No one has a civil right to have a non-marital relationship treated as a marriage.  Marriage is an objective reality - a covenantal union of husband and wife - that it is the duty of the law to recognize and support for the sake of justice and the common good.  If it fails to do so, genuine social harms follow.  First, the religious liberty of those for whom this is a matter of conscience is jeopardized.  Second, the rights of parents are abused as family life and sex education programs in schools are used to teach children that an enlightened understanding recognizes as "marriages" sexual partnerships that many parents believe are intrinsically non-marital and immoral.  Third, the common good of civil society is damaged when the law itself, in its critical pedagogical function, becomes a tool for eroding a sound understanding of marriage on which the flourishing of the marriage culture in any society vitally depends.  Sadly, we are today far from having a thriving marriage culture.  But if we are to begin the critically important process of reforming our laws and mores to rebuild such a culture, the last thing we can afford to do is to re-define marriage in such a way as to embody in our laws a false proclamation about what marriage is.

And so it is out of love (not "animus") and prudent concern for the common good (not "prejudice"), that we pledge to labor ceaselessly to preserve the legal definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman and to rebuild the marriage culture.  How could we, as Christians, do otherwise?  The Bible teaches us that marriage is a central part of God's creation covenant.  Indeed, the union of husband and wife mirrors the bond between Christ and his church.  And so just as Christ was willing, out of love, to give Himself up for the church in a complete sacrifice, we are willing, lovingly, to make whatever sacrifices are required of us for the sake of the inestimable treasure that is marriage.

Religious Liberty
The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.  He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners. Isaiah 61:1 

Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's. Matthew 22:21

The struggle for religious liberty across the centuries has been long and arduous, but it is not a novel idea or recent development.  The nature of religious liberty is grounded in the character of God Himself, the God who is most fully known in the life and work of Jesus Christ.  Determined to follow Jesus faithfully in life and death, the early Christians appealed to the manner in which the Incarnation had taken place: "Did God send Christ, as some suppose, as a tyrant brandishing fear and terror?  Not so, but in gentleness and meekness..., for compulsion is no attribute of God" (Epistle to Diognetus 7.3-4).  Thus the right to religious freedom has its foundation in the example of Christ Himself and in the very dignity of the human person created in the image of God - a dignity, as our founders proclaimed, inherent in every human, and knowable by all in the exercise of right reason. 

Christians confess that God alone is Lord of the conscience.  Immunity from religious coercion is the cornerstone of an unconstrained conscience.  No one should be compelled to embrace any religion against his will, nor should persons of faith be forbidden to worship God according to the dictates of conscience or to express freely and publicly their deeply held religious convictions.  What is true for individuals applies to religious communities as well.

It is ironic that those who today assert a right to kill the unborn, aged and disabled and also a right to engage in immoral sexual practices, and even a right to have relationships integrated around these practices be recognized and blessed by law - such persons claiming these "rights" are very often in the vanguard of those who would trample upon the freedom of others to express their religious and moral commitments to the sanctity of life and to the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife.

We see this, for example, in the effort to weaken or eliminate conscience clauses, and therefore to compel pro-life institutions (including religiously affiliated hospitals and clinics), and pro-life physicians, surgeons, nurses, and other health care professionals, to refer for abortions and, in certain cases, even to perform or participate in abortions.  We see it in the use of anti-discrimination statutes to force religious institutions, businesses, and service providers of various sorts to comply with activities they judge to be deeply immoral or go out of business.  After the judicial imposition of "same-sex marriage" in Massachusetts, for example, Catholic Charities chose with great reluctance to end its century-long work of helping to place orphaned children in good homes rather than comply with a legal mandate that it place children in same-sex households in violation of Catholic moral teaching.  In New Jersey, after the establishment of a quasi-marital "civil unions" scheme, a Methodist institution was stripped of its tax exempt status when it declined, as a matter of religious conscience, to permit a facility it owned and operated to be used for ceremonies blessing homosexual unions.  In Canada and some European nations, Christian clergy have been prosecuted for preaching Biblical norms against the practice of homosexuality.  New hate-crime laws in America raise the specter of the same practice here.

In recent decades a growing body of case law has paralleled the decline in respect for religious values in the media, the academy and political leadership, resulting in restrictions on the free exercise of religion.  We view this as an ominous development, not only because of its threat to the individual liberty guaranteed to every person, regardless of his or her faith, but because the trend also threatens the common welfare and the culture of freedom on which our system of republican government is founded.  Restrictions on the freedom of conscience or the ability to hire people of one's own faith or conscientious moral convictions for religious institutions, for example, undermines the viability of the intermediate structures of society, the essential buffer against the overweening authority of the state, resulting in the soft despotism Tocqueville so prophetically warned of.¹  Disintegration of civil society is a prelude to tyranny.

As Christians, we take seriously the Biblical admonition to respect and obey those in authority.  We believe in law and in the rule of law.  We recognize the duty to comply with laws whether we happen to like them or not, unless the laws are gravely unjust or require those subject to them to do something unjust or otherwise immoral.  The biblical purpose of law is to preserve order and serve justice and the common good; yet laws that are unjust - and especially laws that purport to compel citizens to do what is unjust - undermine the common good, rather than serve it.

Going back to the earliest days of the church, Christians have refused to compromise their proclamation of the gospel.  In Acts 4, Peter and John were ordered to stop preaching.  Their answer was, "Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God's sight to obey you rather than God. For we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard."  Through the centuries, Christianity has taught that civil disobedience is not only permitted, but sometimes required.  There is no more eloquent defense of the rights and duties of religious conscience than the one offered by Martin Luther King, Jr., in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail.  Writing from an explicitly Christian perspective, and citing Christian writers such as Augustine and Aquinas, King taught that just laws elevate and ennoble human beings because they are rooted in the moral law whose ultimate source is God Himself.  Unjust laws degrade human beings.  Inasmuch as they can claim no authority beyond sheer human will, they lack any power to bind in conscience.  King's willingness to go to jail, rather than comply with legal injustice, was exemplary and inspiring.  

Because we honor justice and the common good, we will not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia, or any other anti-life act; nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality and immorality and marriage and the family.  We will fully and ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is Caesar's.  But under no circumstances will we render to Caesar what is God's.

 

¹Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

 

Drafting Committee

• Robert George         
  Professor, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence, Princeton University
• Timothy George 
  Professor, Beeson Divinity School, Samford 
University
• Chuck Colson 
  Founder, The Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview (Lansdowne, Va.)

 

 

-30-

 

 

The Jerusalem Declaration

Date: 7/10/2008

The Jerusalem Declaration

In the name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit:

We, the participants in the Global Anglican Future Conference, have met in the land of Jesus’ birth. We express our loyalty as disciples to the King of kings, the Lord Jesus. We joyfully embrace his command to proclaim the reality of his kingdom which he first announced in this land. The gospel of the kingdom is the good news of salvation, liberation and transformation for all. In light of the above, we agree to chart a way forward together that promotes and protects the biblical gospel and mission to the world, solemnly declaring the following tenets of orthodoxy which underpin our Anglican identity.

1.    We rejoice in the gospel of God through which we have been saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. Because God first loved us, we love him and as believers bring forth fruits of love, ongoing repentance, lively hope and thanksgiving to God in all things.

2.    We believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God written and to contain all things necessary for salvation. The Bible is to be translated, read, preached, taught and obeyed in its plain and canonical sense, respectful of the church’s historic and consensual reading.

3.    We uphold the four Ecumenical Councils and the three historic Creeds as expressing the rule of faith of the one holy catholic and apostolic Church.

4.    We uphold the Thirty-nine Articles as containing the true doctrine of the Church agreeing with God’s Word and as authoritative for Anglicans today.

5.    We gladly proclaim and submit to the unique and universal Lordship of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, humanity’s only Saviour from sin, judgement and hell, who lived the life we could not live and died the death that we deserve. By his atoning death and glorious resurrection, he secured the redemption of all who come to him in repentance and faith.

6.    We rejoice in our Anglican sacramental and liturgical heritage as an expression of the gospel, and we uphold the 1662 Book of Common Prayer as a true and authoritative standard of worship and prayer, to be translated and locally adapted for each culture.

7.    We recognise that God has called and gifted bishops, priests and deacons in historic succession to equip all the people of God for their ministry in the world. We uphold the classic Anglican Ordinal as an authoritative standard of clerical orders.

8.    We acknowledge God’s creation of humankind as male and female and the unchangeable standard of Christian marriage between one man and one woman as the proper place for sexual intimacy and the basis of the family. We repent of our failures to maintain this standard and call for a renewed commitment to lifelong fidelity in marriage and abstinence for those who are not married.

9.    We gladly accept the Great Commission of the risen Lord to make disciples of all nations, to seek those who do not know Christ and to baptise, teach and bring new believers to maturity.

10. We are mindful of our responsibility to be good stewards of God’s creation, to uphold and advocate justice in society, and to seek relief and empowerment of the poor and needy.

11. We are committed to the unity of all those who know and love Christ and to building authentic ecumenical relationships. We recognise the orders and jurisdiction of those Anglicans who uphold orthodox faith and practice, and we encourage them to join us in this declaration.

12. We celebrate the God-given diversity among us which enriches our global fellowship, and we acknowledge freedom in secondary matters. We pledge to work together to seek the mind of Christ on issues that divide us.

13. We reject the authority of those churches and leaders who have denied the orthodox faith in word or deed. We pray for them and call on them to repent and return to the Lord.

14. We rejoice at the prospect of Jesus’ coming again in glory, and while we await this final event of history, we praise him for the way he builds up his church through his Spirit by miraculously changing lives.

 

 

Jerusalem
Feast of St Peter and St Paul
29 June 2008

Our Core Values

Date: 7/9/2008

WHAT WE BELIEVE AT HOLY APOSTLES ANGLICAN CHURCH

 

The following statement is meant to serve as a Confession of Faith for Holy Apostles Anglican Church.  It forms the basic theological and ethical standard for our common life as we serve Jesus Christ as Christians in the 21st Century.

 

 

A COMMON CONFESSION OF THE GOSPEL

 

TO THE GOSPEL AND THE TRIUNE GOD:  We rejoice in the grace of the Triune God, who has forgiven our sins and given us redemption in Jesus Christ. We proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ, fully human and fully divine, who became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, lived a life of perfect obedience to his heavenly Father, died on the cross to atone for the sins of the world, and rose bodily in accordance with the Scriptures. God the Holy Spirit draws us to faith in Jesus Christ, through whom alone we are justified and found acceptable by God the Father.

 

TO CHRISTIAN OBEDIENCE:  We confess Jesus as the Lord to whom all authority in heaven and earth has been given by the Father. We commit ourselves to follow him and love him above all else and to conform our lives to his example and teaching by the grace of the Holy Spirit.

 

TO HOLY SCRIPTURE:  We believe all Scriptures were “written for our learning” (Romans 15:4; 2 Timothy 3:16), that they are “God’s Word written,” and that we are to “hear, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them.” We commit ourselves to regular Bible study and to preach and teach only that which is in accordance with Holy Scripture.

 

TO CONGREGATIONAL LIFE:  We hold corporate worship, discipleship, sharing, and mission to be interconnected and indispensable aspects of our response to God as he revealed himself to us in Jesus Christ. We are committed to being sacrificially involved in all four aspects of congregational life.

 

TO MISSION AND MISSIONS:  The Risen Lord Jesus commissioned his disciples to preach the gospel and to follow his commandments. The mission of the Church includes both evangelistic proclamation and deeds of love and service. We commit ourselves and our resources to this mission, both locally and to the uttermost parts of the earth. We affirm our particular responsibility to know, love, and serve the Lord in our local settings and contexts. Since the biblical pattern of witness moves from the local to the global, we will endeavor to be well-informed about our local communities and active in church planting, evangelism, service, social justice, and cross-cultural, international mission, with particular concern for the poor and the unreached peoples of the world.

 

CONTEMPORARY IMPLICATIONS OF THE GOSPEL

Christian mission is rooted in unchanging Biblical revelation. At particular times, however, specific challenges to authentic faith and holiness arise which require thoughtful and vigorous response. We therefore speak to the following issues of our time and culture.

 

FOR THE UNIQUENESS OF JESUS CHRIST: While religions and philosophies of the world are not without elements of truth, Jesus Christ alone is the full revelation of God. In and through the Gospel, Jesus judges and corrects all views and doctrines. All persons everywhere need to learn of him, come to know and believe in him, and receive forgiveness and new life in him, as there is no other name given under heaven by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12).

 

 

TO HISTORIC FAITH, ECUMENICAL VISION: We affirm the Faith of the Anglican Church as it is set forth in the Nicene and Apostles' Creeds and in the classical Prayer Book tradition, including those documents contained in the “Historical Documents” section of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer (BCP, p. 864f). We further affirm the principles of the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral (BCP, p. 876) as an expression of the normative authority of Holy Scripture and as a basis for our present unity with brothers and sisters in the Anglican Communion and for the future reunion of all the divided branches of Christ’s one Holy, catholic and apostolic Church.

 

FOR CHURCH AND STATE: Biblical social commandments and Christian ethical principles are foundational to the well being of every society. Recognizing the call of Christians to be faithful witnesses and a challenging presence in society, we are committed to seek ways to express these commandments and principles in all spheres of life, including the public life of the nation.

 

FOR THE SANCTITY OF LIFE: All human life is a sacred gift from God and is to be protected and defended from conception to natural death. We will uphold the sanctity of life and bring the grace and compassion of Christ to those who face the realities of previous abortion, unwanted pregnancy, and end-of-life illness.

 

FOR TRUE INCLUSIVITY: In grateful response to Christ Jesus, in whom there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, we will extend the welcome of the Church to every person, regardless of race, sex, social or economic status, sexual orientation, or past behavior. We will oppose prejudice in ourselves and others and renounce any false notion of inclusivity that denies that all are sinners who need to repent.

 

FOR MARRIAGE, FAMILY, AND THE SINGLE LIFE:

God has instituted marriage to be a life-long union of husband and wife, intended for their mutual joy, help, and comfort, and, when it is God’s will, for the procreation and nurture of children. Divorce is always contrary to God’s original intention, though in a fallen world it is sometimes a tragic reality. The roles of father and mother, exercised in a variety of ways, are God given and profoundly important since they are the chief providers of moral instruction and godly living. The single life, either by call or by circumstance, is honored by God. It is therefore important for unmarried persons to embrace and be embraced by the Christian family.

 

FOR HUMAN SEXUALITY: Sexuality is inherent in God’s creation of every human person in his image as male and female. All Christians are called to chastity: Husbands and wives by exclusive sexual fidelity to one another and single persons by abstinence from sexual intercourse. God intends and enables all people to live within these boundaries through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and in the power of the Holy Spirit.

 

Adapted from The American Anglican Council’s A Place to Stand for Holy Apostles Anglican Church, Elizabeththown, Kentcuky. Affirmed by Holy Apostles Anglican Church Council on April 8, 2008.

 

 

OUR CORE VALUES

 

The following core values represent who we are, and what our priorities are, as a Church:

 

1) Biblical Authority    God has spoken to us through the Bible and we recognize it as the final authority in our lives and church.

2 Timothy 3:16.

 

2) Vibrant Relationship with God    God desires an intimate relationship with each of us and has provided the way to know Him through Jesus Christ. 

John 17:3; Matthew 7:22.

 

3) Meaningful Worship   Our worship of God is more an habitual reciting of the liturgy and hearing a sermon; it is entering into the Presence of Almighty God and declaring His Praise.  Psalm 48; Hebrews 13:15.

 

4) The Power of Prayer   God has instructed His People to be people of prayer interceding on behalf of others and themselves to accomplish the will of God in our world.  

1 John 5:14.

 

5) Significant Ministries     Every ministry of the church is designed to be significant and relevant in advancing our mission of sharing the Gospel to its target audience. 

Romans 12:3-9.

 

6) Caring Communities   Accountability, belonging, agape love, pastoral care and spiritual growth occur best when believers know and relate to one another in small groups. 

Acts 2:42-47.

 

7) Spiritual Service   Spiritual gifts have been given by God to His people to serve Him in the Church and in the world and are a primary motivating factor in our service to Him.            1 Corinthians 12:4-11.

 

8) Discipleship   We have a responsibility to pass on to others the spiritual knowledge, skills, and the opportunities which have been entrusted to us.

2 Timothy 2:2.

 

9) Servant Leadership   The objective of the leaders in this church is to serve the congregation to help them fulfill their mission and ministries in the Church and in the world. 

1 Timothy 3:1-11; Titus 1:5-9.