Category Archives: Individuals

Michael Reid and his bulldog

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This may well come out as post number 500 on this blog. But it is not really my 500th post – in fact only the 448th published post. I don’t know why there is such a discrepancy. So I won’t mark this in any special way as I have in the past with such milestones.

My rather quickly written post on The fall of Bishop Michael Reid has unexpectedly proved to be one of my most popular, attracting 1365 hits so far and so putting it in third place behind Pope Benedict, Bible scholars, and the Antichrist (6420, almost all in three days) and Why is Easter so early this year? (2798). Many of the Michael Reid hits have come from Google searches. There is obviously a lot of interest, especially here in Essex, in what has happened to this long controversial and now disgraced pastor. But there is not much information available.

The Michael Reid Ministries website is still working under that name but is now just a synonym for the site of Reid’s former church, Peniel in Brentwood. There is now no mention, except in the page header, of Reid or his resignation. Even the Peniel College URL now links to this same page, but the Peniel Academy, Peniel TV and Michael Reid Publishing sites are unavailable. (The last four links were found in a Google cache.)

The Michael Reid Miseries site has not been updated recently. Among the few bloggers to report this story are Chris Lazenby of Midlands Bible College and Divinity School, Richard Bartholomew, and Simon Jones whose post which I mentioned before sparked a long and sometimes vitriolic comment thread. The most recent posts are those of Johli Baptist (John Race), part 1 and part 2.

The most informative site about the situation is the Reachout Trust forum. Most of the discussion is in one long thread, 29 pages, at Reachout Trust. This thread was closed on 1st May, because it was going off topic and allegations were being made about Reid which are, it is said, being investigated by the police. Of course it is right to avoid passing on potentially libellous allegations, but in some ways it is even worse to hint that some are being investigated without giving any details. It is reported that Reid is back in the UK, but also that there is a court order preventing him from returning to church property including his former home. There is some more recent news on this thread at the same site; see also this thread.

The boredom of the long Reachout Trust thread was broken by this charming story from former Peniel member Jacob:

Back when I was a humble student and first visiting Peniel, I remember on one of my first visits when I was just getting to know ‘his nibs’ :lol: (so I got to see his ‘nice’ side…. the bit the security guards need to be wary of). On one of my earliest visits he was in bed sick (at least I assume that’s what he was doing in bed… after recent revelations, who knows!!) :lol:

As I said, my only encounters with Reid at that point had been friendly, I was a visitor – and he didnt know much about me either at that stage. So I suggested to some of the other young people that I had been getting to know that we get him a get-well card, we happened to be in town, and while I was in the card shop in Brentwood high street, I spotted a soft toy – in fact, I think it was spotting the soft toy that inspired me to get it for him as a ‘get well’ present, with a card.

It was a bull dog, wearing a T shirt with the slogan ‘be reasonable, do it my way’. It was interesting the response of the other young people…. they obviously knew the ‘other side’ of Reid, and were a bit nervous about getting something so very cheeky – but I was quite a confident, witty chap back then (nothing’s changed as you can tell from my posts… I’m back to my old self…. Peniel tried to knock it out of me but it survived 19 years!).

So I bought it, and the present was delivered…. and we heard nothing back.

However years later, when I was at Testimony House for some reason, I got to peep into the hallowed bedroom – and was very gratified to see the toy there, complete with T shirt, occupying pride of place beside the bed! Obviously the great man like it…. who doesnt like a bit of a cheeky joke… especially when it’s true!

So for all his faults the man has a human humour-loving side.

A Lambeth riddle

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Ruth Gledhill has had the interesting experience of interviewing both Bishop Gene Robinson and Bishop Greg Venables in the last few days. Her interview with Bishop Gene is available on YouTube; sadly the one with Bishop Greg is as yet not, or not linked to. But she does break the unexpected news that Venables, as well as Robinson, will attend the Lambeth Conference. As Venables has been invited, although perhaps not expected, he will be an official delegate. But Robinson will not be. Also, his “bridegroom” Mark will be in Canterbury only for the first few days of the conference, so it will not be as much of a “honeymoon” for them as I once suggested.

Ruth then gets poetic with her thoughts on the two bishops at Lambeth, including these lines:

He uninvited and he not disinvited will both be tried and found wanting.
They’ll hang either side of the leader who tried to unite them and failed at the asking.

Rowan Williams as Christ between the two thieves, indeed? According to Rev George Pitcher in the Daily Telegraph, linked to by John Richardson,

Dr Williams considers the See of Canterbury as not just his calling, but his cross to bear. He’ll not be driven from it short of illness or an act of God.

It may be the cross from which his body has to be taken down at the end of the Lambeth Conference, and with no guarantee of resurrection. But to which of the two thieves will he say “Today you will be with me in paradise”? There is no Anglican paradise with room for both of them.

UPDATE (6.40 pm): Ruth Gledhill has now posted her interview with Bishop Greg Venables, in written form.

Gene Robinson's Gay Rite

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Controversial gay bishop Gene Robinson has responded to my post about him being a June Bride, in his new book, of which The Times has published an extract. Well, he hasn’t responded explicitly to me, but he has referred to how, after he said “I always wanted to be a June bride”,

Within hours, those eight words had made it around the world, thanks to conservative bloggers and the magic of the internet. …

I’ll be the first to admit that it would have been better if I’d never uttered those eight words – not because they aren’t true, but simply because they gave the conservative forces something else to use against me.

I was one of those bloggers who reacted quickly to those words, and I admit that I used them against him. But I also wrote at the time:

if he will not give up his gay union, it is best that he formally acknowledges it and pledges himself to being faithful to his partner.

And I reiterated this as a general principle earlier today. So I agreed then and still agree with Robinson’s main point in this article in The Times, that it is a positive step for him and Mark to contract a civil union, now that this option is available to them

But I am concerned that Bishop Robinson sees his intended union as an example to

a gay boy or a lesbian girl who will read about it and know that they, too, can aspire to a healthy, whole life with a person of the same sex – and that they don’t have to give up their faith along the way.

It is one thing for Gene and Mark to do what they do between consenting adults. It is quite another for them to promote their practices among impressionable boys and girls whose sexual orientation is still in flux.

My attitude to this of course shows there is still a huge gulf between Robinson’s position, apparently that homosexual relationships are morally equivalent to heterosexual ones, and mine, which is that homosexual practice within a committed relationship should be tolerated only as “the lesser of two evils”, that is as preferable to the greater evil of homosexual or heterosexual promiscuity.

Packer leaves the Anglican Church of Canada

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It was perhaps inevitable considering the action being taken against him, and indeed many may have thought it had happened months ago. But, according to a report from today’s Vancouver Sun posted by Suzanne, it is only this week that J.I. Packer has officially announced that he is leaving the Anglican Church of Canada and joining the Province of the Southern Cone, under Bishop Gregory Venables. Packer’s church, St John’s Shaughnessy, voted in February to affiliate to the Southern Cone. Now Packer is personally making the same move.

Michael Daley’s Lambeth Conference Canada blog has more background on this story. The announcement seems to have been first made on Monday in a press release which Daley apparently posts in full. The press release quotes from a response by Packer and ten other priests and deacons to their former bishop Michael Ingham, in which they deny the charges made against them, and write:

We have… determined that in order to uphold our ordination vows, we must leave your jurisdiction, and by this letter, we hereby relinquish the licences we hold from the Bishop of New Westminster. Each of us will receive a licence to continue our present parish ministries from Bishop Donald Harvey, who, as you know, is under the jurisdiction of the Primate of the Southern Cone. In this way, we will be able to continue our Anglican ministry within the Anglican Church, under the jurisdiction of and in communion with those who remain faithful to historic, orthodox Anglicanism and as part of the Anglican Communion worldwide.

Oddly, Daley mentioned neither Packer nor leaving the Anglican Church of Canada in his post title, and did not post this on his main Lambeth Conference blog. Anglican Mainstream reports the same story with more detail, noting that David Short is also among the clergy who resigned, but again without naming Packer or referring to resignations in a post title; in another post reporting the resignation of the eleven clergy, Packer is not named at all.

So, bizarrely, it seems to have taken Suzanne and a secular newspaper to make this internationally important news break outside Canada. Well, Hugh Bourne here in England did pick up the story on Wednesday, but has received (or allowed) no comments or pingbacks on it. And already on Tuesday Babyblue in Washington D.C. had clearly reported the story. But strangely it didn’t get into the corner of the blogosphere which I inhabit.

The Archbishop, the Pope, and the Holy Grail

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From the latest edition of Clare News, the magazine for alumni of my Cambridge college:

When the Archbishop of York met Pope Benedict XVI in Rome recently, he gave him an unusual gift …: a special, one-off beer called ‘Holy Grail’ …

Holy Grail beer bottle

For a fuller version of this story see this page on the brewery’s website, which also has a picture of the beer bottle, and its full name:

MONTY PYTHON’S HOLY GRAIL Tempered with burning witches

– with the “GR” crossed out.

Clare College has a strong theological tradition, numbering among its past members Prof Charlie Moule and Archbishop Rowan Williams. But in this case the link with the college is not the Archbishop, nor the Pope, but the head brewer.

Fast and pray, or pray fast?

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My post about Bishop Michael Reid has attracted a lot of interest. Simon Jones’ post which I linked to has attracted even more, to judge by the number of comments.

Well down the comment thread on Simon’s post a discussion has started on fasting. The issue was raised by Dr Raj Patel, and the discussion continued by John, a preacher from here in Essex, who reports the following:

Reid taught that it was not right to fast because the Lord, the bridegroom, is now with us and we do not need to fast. He even stated at a meeting for pastors that “fasting is heathen.” This is clearly false teaching, especially in view of Acts 13:2-3.

Raj continues with

You are absolutely right, Reid has totally contradicted Scripture on the issue of fasting. Indeed, some might say say he has blasphemed on this point, as the New Testament tells us that Jesus taught his disciples to ‘pray and fast without ceasing.’ … It looks as if the ‘bishop’ thought he was so important and authoritatative that he could contradict the teaching of Christ himself !

Strange, these quoted words don’t appear in my New Testament. Can anyone tell me where they come from? It is not Reid but whoever first attributed these words to Jesus who “thought he [or she] was so important and authoritatative that he [or she] could contradict the teaching of Christ himself”. For when we look at what Jesus actually taught about fasting, it is by no means that his followers should fast. He did not condemn fasting, but, in Mark 2:19, laid down a general rule, which Reid faithfully taught, that they should not fast “because the Lord, the bridegroom, is now with us”. So, according to commenter John,

Reid also used to say that we should not fast and pray, but pray fast.

Excellent advice! Fasting may be helpful for some in certain circumstances, but in his teaching Jesus, without condemning fasting, repeatedly teaches on the importance of prayer. Not fast prayer in the sense of babbling words or getting it over quickly, but praying fast in the sense of being quick to turn to prayer when there is a need, and of holding fast to God in prayer.

I agree that Reid went too far in saying that “fasting is heathen.” This is indeed false teaching, as are large parts of what Reid taught. But he should be condemned for what is false, and for his adultery, and not for this teaching which is correct, and explodes a long held myth about fasting.

No doubt some of you my readers will want to point me to Matthew 17:21 and Mark 9:29 (see also 1 Corinthians 7:5) in KJV and NKJV, in which Jesus appears to commend prayer and fasting. But if you look for this teaching in almost any modern Bible translation except for NKJV, you will not find them. Matthew 17:21 is not in these translations at all, and there is no mention of fasting in Mark 9:29 or 1 Corinthians 7:5. In each of these cases the wording with “fasting” is found only in later manuscripts in the Alexandrian and Byzantine traditions; the scholars of the biblical text who produced the UBS 4th edition Greek New Testament judge that in each of these three cases “the text is certain”, referring to the version without “fasting”. It seems highly probable that the variants with “fasting” reflect the growing prominence of this practice in the 3rd and 4th centuries, and not the actual teaching of Jesus and the apostles. These readings found their way into KJV through the Byzantine manuscripts of the New Testament on which the “Textus Receptus” is based, but are now almost universally (except by “KJV-only” people) rejected as later additions.

Since Jesus is with his church, the bridegroom with his bride, I can agree with Reid, as reported by John, that as a general rule

Christians should be feasting and not fasting.

Not the Wright letter

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This is not really anything to do with my last post …

Ruth Gledhill and John Richardson report on a video message which Archbishop Rowan Williams has sent out to the bishops of the Anglican Communion. The Anglican Communion Office has not only published the transcript but also put the video on YouTube!

Ruth suggests that this is

that ‘Lambeth letter’ that Bishop Wright talked about.

But if this is the same letter that Bishop Tom spoke about, he was badly misinformed about its contents. In Wright’s speech to Fulcrum he claimed that Archbishop Rowan was

writing to those bishops who might be thought particularly unsympathetic to Windsor and the Covenant to ask them whether they were really prepared to build on this dual foundation … having already not invited Gene Robinson to Lambeth, … suggesting that some others might absent themselves as well. But this is what he promised he would do, and he is doing it.

But there is nothing in the Archbishop’s video message to suggest that any bishops should absent themselves from the Lambeth Conference. Although there is some mention of discussions of the Anglican Covenant, there is no hint that agreeing to discuss this is in any sense a condition of attendance.

I wrote before that

Williams’ letter is far too little, far too late.

And that was on the understanding that the letter was going out more or less as described by Wright. Well, perhaps Williams has realised that sending out a letter of the kind described by Wright at this stage would be pointless. Or perhaps he actually has sent out this kind of letter to accompany the video message. If so, no doubt at least one of the 800 or so recipients will be sufficiently upset by it to publish it. So we will soon find out.

But my challenge to the real Bishop of Durham, if he doesn’t want to be confused with any American “Free Universalist Interfaith Bishop”, is to let us know exactly what is in the package which he and his fellow bishops receive from Archbishop Rowan, and whether it includes a letter anything like the one he described to Fulcrum. If not, he should correct his claim that there is

No skullduggery involved either at Lambeth or with me.

Wrong Bishop of Durham

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I thought for a minute that Jim West had a scoop for me, that Bishop NT Wright had started a blog. But it turns out that this blogger is not the Church of England Bishop of Durham, England, but, from his “about” page,

Tom Wrong, the Free Universalist Interfaith Bishop of Durham, North Carolina.

So not to be taken too seriously, I think.

However, he does have a good point about dreams in this post. In the ancient world dreams were taken much more seriously than they are today, and this understanding is reflected in the biblical text. But if Bishop Wrong is intending to suggest that the biblical authors wrote up what they had dreamed as the biblical text, he should offer some evidence for this, for here he may indeed be Wrong.

Packer on Pentecostalism

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I tend to associate J.I. Packer with a kind of Reformed evangelicalism which values intellectualism more than experiences and is suspicious of any kind of manifest activity of the Holy Spirit. So I was interested to read at Pentecostal pastor Brian’s blog sunestauromai – living the crucified life an extract from an interview Packer has just given to a Pentecostal periodical. Here is most of what Brian quotes from Packer, apparently with Brian’s emphasis, and the periodical’s American spelling:

The Pentecostal emphasis on life in the Spirit, which became a big thing at the turn of the 20th century, was absolutely right. It was an emphasis that hadn’t been fully grasped by other evangelicals for a long time. The up-front quest for fellowship with God that grabbed the whole of the heart and therefore had emotional overtones and the openness to a recurrence of some of the signs of the Kingdom was right. …

It’s simply a marvelous work of God that when the Pentecostal version of the gospel has been preached all around the world for the past half-century there has been a tremendous harvest. It’s a wonderful work in our time, which we can set against the decline of Christianity in North America and Western Europe. Most notably in Africa and Asia, Christianity has been roaring ahead through the Pentecostal version of the Christian message and life in the Spirit. I celebrate it and thank God for it. There have been older evangelicals who have set themselves against distinctive Pentecostal emphases as if there’s something wrong with it. I have not lined up with those folk and indeed have argued that their attitude is mistaken.

Now I am not a Pentecostal by denomination; like Packer I am an Anglican. But I am one of many Anglicans, and people from other “traditional” denominations, who over the last 40 years (for me personally, for nearly 30 years) have embraced what used to be considered the distinctive Pentecostal emphases, on the gifts of the Holy Spirit. True, many of us have rejected, as I think Packer did, the Pentecostal teaching about the necessity of a specific “Baptism of the Holy Spirit” experience evidenced by speaking in tongues. But we hold that such experiences and gifts are good and to be desired, and that these gifts should be used, with proper safeguards, in the life of the church.

This is of course a summary of what is known as the Charismatic Movement. Perhaps in some ways the movement is dead, as some have alleged. But if so, it is not because its distinctives have been abandoned, more because they have become more and more acceptable in the life of the church and are no longer charismatic or Pentecostal distinctives.

But these Pentecostal and charismatic distinctives have often been viewed with great suspicion by British Anglicans of the Oak Hill tradition who look up to Packer as one of their Christian heroes. Perhaps Packer can help to persuade them that the good things in the Pentecostal tradition are good for reviving not just Pentecostal churches in Africa and Asia but also Anglican churches in North America and Western Europe.

Wright and right on shifting the balance of power in the Anglican Communion

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John Richardson quotes Bishop NT Wright criticising those who are calling for a boycott of the Lambeth Conference. Wright sympathises with the plight of orthodox Anglicans in North America who are

vilified, attacked and undermined by ecclesiastical authority figures who seem to have lost all grip on the gospel of Jesus Christ and to be eager only for lawsuits and property squabbles.

But he goes on to say that

these situations have been exploited by those who have long wanted to shift the balance of power in the Anglican Communion and who have used this awful situation as an opportunity to do so.

I have great respect for Wright as a theologian. But, as I pointed out in a previous post, he is a man of his time and background who seems to have a blind spot, along with many of his fellows in high positions in the Anglican Communion, about recognising that African and Asian bishops have an equal right with British and North American bishops to a share in authority within the Communion. Perhaps they have even more right, in fact, as on average they each represent a larger number of committed Anglicans. Yes, they want to shift the balance of power, but in a completely right way, away from those who are illegitimately hanging on to it as a relic of colonialism and racism towards being more representative of the Anglican churches as a whole.

I read on a blog somewhere recently (and not just at Doug’s April Fool – don’t take my comment there seriously) that Rowan Williams should be replaced as Archbishop of Canterbury by Wright, because he would be best placed to hold the Anglican Communion together. Sadly he would not be, because if he tries to lead it with this attitude he will never be able to reconcile the Africans and Asians with the North Americans.

Meanwhile, as John Richardson and Babyblue report, Bishop Wright in the same talk mentioned some letters which Archbishop Williams has sent to certain bishops. Apparently Williams is trying to persuade bishops who don’t support the Windsor Process and the Anglican Covenant, that is, the least conservative bishops, not to attend the Lambeth Conference. Wright said about this

I am well aware that many will say this is far too little, far too late.

Well, on this point he is a prophet: I for one do indeed say that Williams’ letter is far too little, far too late. The only way of sorting out this mess now is for Williams to go, and to be replaced not by Wright but by someone like Archbishop Sentamu of York who has a chance of gaining the respect of the African and Asian majority in the Anglican Communion.