Saturday blogsweep

A blog I enjoy has for some months been sharing excerpts from a book called Choosing civility by P M Forni which I have enjoyed and been learning from. Looking on twitter and following the media this week some Christians commenting on Women Bishops may do well to put this on their bedside tables over the coming weeks and months. It's certainly going on mine.

After the vote (links pieces by Tom Wright and Frank Field MP)

'“But that would be putting the clock back,” gasps a feckless official in one of C. S. Lewis’s stories. “Have you no idea of progress, of development?”

“I have seen them both in an egg,” replies the young hero. “We call it Going bad in Narnia.”

Lewis nails a lie at the heart of our culture. As long as we repeat it, we shall never understand our world, let alone the Church’s calling. And until proponents of women bishops stop using it, the biblical arguments for women’s ordination will never appear in full strength.....' from Tom Wrights article [Essential reading] in the Times- read it here.

Grace, truth and Synod

......not all evangelicals are against women taking on leadership roles. In fact the Evangelical Alliance survey in 2010 of 17,000 evangelical Christians found that 71 per cent thought that women should be eligible for all roles within the Church.

Why we have to make a better case for gender equality in the church

As I listened to the arguments online this morning, (late afternoon in the UK), I was struck by how few—on either side—appealed to Scripture to make their case. I couldn’t help but wonder what the apostle Junia would think of all of this!

After the Bishop's vote I am ashamed to be part of the Church of England

Remember, the anti-politics lot say sweetly, Jesus said we ought to love our enemies. To which my response is to point out that he certainly didn't say we ought not to have any.

Moving forward

Tonight is pain and grief and puzzlement and lament. Perhaps in the morning I will head across the Thames and join the Eucharist at St Paul’s Cathedral. It will be good to sit with men and women, probably a good mix of people I agree with and disagree with, and just do a simple Anglican thing. If we can share the representation of Christ’s sacrificial victory for us, surely it is not beyond our grasp to work out how to walk forward together?

The Defeat of the measure: Some preliminary reflections

It surely has to be recognised that the power to produce a formula for compromise has, for some considerable time, rested largely with those who have supported the introduction of women bishops. Where simple majorities have counted, that have had the controlling hand. But  this must therefore suggest that had they been willing to concede just a little more, then we would not be where we are today.

Tim Keller on how to read the Bible

Therefore, to say that the Bible is about Christ is to say that the main theme of the Bible is, ‘Salvation is of the Lord’ (Jonah 2:9).