ANGLICAN COMMUNION STARTS TO FRAGMENT
The General Synod’s decision to offer blessings to same-sex couples may be the final straw for international Anglicanism.
The C of E has broken from biblical sexual ethics
his global Church (Credit: Roger Harris/Wikimedia)
The Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches (GSFA) will now “disassociate” from the Church of England. The Guardian explained that “the leaders of Anglican churches in some developing countries, including South Sudan, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, have said they no longer recognise Justin Welby… as the head of the global Church.” In a statement, the GSFA said that the C of E had “departed from the historic faith”. Allowing clergy to bless same-sex couples was “contrary to the faith and order of the orthodox provinces of the communion whose people constitute the majority in the global flock”.
The group said it “breaks our hearts” that the Church of England has “disqualified herself ” from leadership by breaking from biblical sexual ethics.
LifeSiteNews also reported that the Anglican archbishop of Kenya, Jackson Ole Sapit, says his church may now ignore the Church of England’s decisions and pronouncements.
Covid ‘lab leak’ theory gains increasing recognition
This newspaper first told the British public about the ‘lab leak’ theory for the origin of Covid-19 at a time when it was suppressed by international scientists, politicians, national news agencies and social media giants. Now it has become serious mainstream opinion.
Anyone supporting the idea in the early days was accused of misinformation or conspiracy theories, but as we last reported in our October/November 2022 issue, even a professor working for the leading medical journal The Lancet, Professor Jeffrey Sachs, was “pretty convinced it came out of US lab biotechnology” being carried out in China, with US funding.
This newspaper first told the British public about the ‘lab leak’ theory for the origin of Covid-19 at a time when it was suppressed by scientists, politicians, news agencies and social media giants
Now FBI director Christopher Wray has told Fox News that the virus “most likely” came from a Wuhan laboratory, and a report from the US Department of Energy has concluded that Covid probably came from Chinese experiments.
Wray said: “The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan… So, here you’re talking about a potential leak from a Chinese government-controlled lab that killed millions of Americans,
and that’s precisely what that capability was designed for.”
The natural origin theory still holds sway among many scientists and some of the media, but the lab leak proposal can no longer be dismissed as ‘fringe’. It is now known that staff at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) fell ill in October 2019 with symptoms exactly like Covid-19, and the lab’s virus database was taken offline on 12 September 2019, as well as 22,000 coronavirus samples. The same day, security was increased and an order was given to replace the lab’s air-conditioning system.
The Chinese Communist Party said nothing about the incident in the vital early weeks of the ‘pandemic’ and allegedly both a Wuhan lab scientist and other whistleblowers were “disappeared”.
It is also reported that there was a massive purchase of coronavirus test kits in Wuhan in late 2019. China’s co-operation with the later World Health Organisation investigation was also questionable.
What may be most telling is that, according to MercatorNet, the February 2020 letter in The Lancet in which 27 scientists rubbished the lab leak theory was organised by the president of EcoHealth Alliance, a major recipient of American grants for bat research at the Wuhan lab.
A Covid origins hearing in the US House of Representatives had begun as we went to press. Both theories were to be considered.
New York pays $250K to adoption agency it tried to close
After trying for years to shut down Christian adoption agency New Hope Family Services, the state of New York has been ordered to pay the agency $250,000.
The state “needlessly reduced the number of agencies willing to help vulnerable children”
The payment covers NHFS’s legal fees and costs after defending itself for four years against New York’s Office of Children and Family Services, which had targeted NHFS because it refused to place children with same-sex couples and unmarried co-habitating couples.
Representing the agency, Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) Senior Counsel Roger Brooks said: “The state’s attempt to close New Hope violated its core rights protected by the First Amendment and needlessly reduced the number of agencies willing to help vulnerable children.
“New Hope is a private religious ministry that doesn’t take a dime from the government. Further, New Hope’s faith-guided services don’t coerce anyone and do nothing to interfere with other adoption providers who have different beliefs about family and the best interests of children.”
New Hope’s Executive Director Kathy Jerman said: “Every child deserves a home with a loving mother and father who are committed to each other.”
In the UK, Christian adoption agencies were forced to either close or place children with gay couples.
Parliament considers assisted death for kids
A Canadian parliamentary committee has recommended that the country’s assisted suicide laws should be extended to cover children.
The Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) says that “mature minors” and “individuals whose sole underlying medical condition is a mental disorder” should be allowed an assisted death.
MP Mark Strahl said the Government “should focus on offering treatment and help, not assisted death, to those who are suffering.”
The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition warned that helping children to commit suicide would “give Canada the most permissive euthanasia law in the world”
Gay marriage not a ‘Human right’
Panama’s Supreme Court has decided not to legalise same-sex marriage, upholding the country’s law supporting traditional marriage and families.
According to LifeSiteNews, the Court declared in February that same-sex unions are not protected by the constitution and aren’t a “human right”.
The Court said its Family Code has been “objectively and reasonably justified in the general interests of giving precedence to those unions capable of establishing families, giving continuity to the human species, and therefore, to society.”
Panama is a majority Christian country – 49 per cent Catholic and 30 per cent Evangelical Protestant
according to the US Department of State in June 2022.