Dr Paul Allen

Something momentous happened this week. The Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches (GSFA) announced they no longer recognize the authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury as “first among equals.” What’s more, they say that in adopting “innovation in the liturgies of the Church and her pastoral practice” in order to bless same-sex sexual relationships, the Church of England has “departed from the historic faith passed down from the Apostles” and has thus “disqualified herself” from leading the Anglican Communion. In choosing to move closer to the wishes of politicians and revisionist church leaders in the United Kingdom, the Church of England has signalled that her desire to stay as a “wife” to the state is greater than her desire to remain a “mother” to the worldwide Anglican Communion.  Perhaps the fear of disestablishment and divorce from the state is greater than the fear of losing “the kids.” But here’s what’s strange.  If you read the headlines or peruse the news ar...

With all respect to the responsibilities carried by the leadership of the Church of England, and in recognition of the history of this branch of the universal Body, I make this heartfelt appeal. Just as Elijah the prophet urged the people of Israel to stop wavering between two opinions, I urge you to stop wavering between the Word of God and the spirit of this age. As Elijah said, “If Yahweh is God, serve Him. If Baal is God, serve him.” (1 Kings 18:21) It can only be one or the other. A Hopeless Compromise Your current decision to “bless” same-sex unions while at the same time forbidding your churches from hosting same-sex weddings is not just a deep and fundamental departure from the biblical faith. It is also a hopeless compromise, seeking to play both ends against the middle in a way that can only frustrate, if not infuriate, the principal parties involved. How can you bless something that you will not sanctify? How can you invoke God’s favour on something at which you cannot offi...

  The Church of England’s bishops descend into utter nonsense After years of study, bishops of the Church of England have announced that they will not allow same-sex marriages within their churches, nor allow their clergy to perform them, but they will allow their priests to “bless” same-sex unions after a civil marriage. In other words, they lack the courage to go ahead with same-sex marriage as a rite of the church, but their backup plan, for now, is to allow clergy to bless the unions they cannot approve. The Church of England was famously born in compromise, but at least it once produced bishops like J. C. Ryle, definite statements of doctrine like the Thirty-Nine Articles, and theological achievements like the Book of Common Prayer. I am an unrepentant Anglophile, though certainly not an Anglican. Nevertheless, a portrait of 16th-century Archbishop Thomas Cranmer hangs in my library. I can only imagine what bishops like Ryle and Cranmer would say to their contemporaries today....

If  you read the Bible cover to cover, you’ll see there is no ambiguity when it comes to extra-marital sex. Simply stated, it is forbidden. Sex before marriage is called fornication. Sex outside of marriage is called adultery. And marriage is defined as the lifelong union of a male and a female. That’s how Genesis defines it and that’s how Jesus defines it. Church standards throughout history would reaffirm all these points. All sexual relations outside the confines of marriage (which, to repeat, has always and only been the union of a man and a woman) are considered immoral and sinful. But in today’s morally confused society, right is now wrong and wrong is now right, to the point that the Church of England has apologized for reaffirming basic, biblical morality. “We are Very Sorry” Say Archbishops After Issuing a Pastoral Guidance About Biblical Sexuality As reported by CNN: Top archbishops in the Church of England have apologized for guidance issued by the church ...

One of the most devastating attacks on the life and health of the church throughout all of church history has been what is known as the ecumenical movement—the downplaying of doctrine in order to foster partnership in ministry between (a) genuine Christians and (b) people who were willing to call themselves Christians but who rejected fundamental Christian doctrines. In the latter half of the 19 th  century, theological liberalism fundamentally redefined what it meant to be a Christian. It had nothing to do, they said, with believing in doctrine. It didn’t matter if you believed in an inerrant Bible; the scholarship of the day had debunked that! It didn’t matter if you believed in the virgin birth and the deity of Christ ; modern science disproved that! It didn’t matter if you embraced penal substitutionary atonement; blood sacrifice and a wrathful God are just primitive and obscene, and besides, man is not fundamentally sinful but basically good! What mattered was one’s...

The  editorial  in  The Age  last month could scarcely contain its enthusiasm that the Andrews government in Victoria had recently decided to end Special Religious Instruction (SRI) in school hours and replace it with lectures on domestic violence and respectful relationships. The editor writes: "At last, classrooms in the government school system in this state will be used for what they were intended: academic teaching and not religious instruction. Some 143 years after Victoria's Education Act made clear that education must be free, secular and compulsory, the Andrews government has committed to abolishing special religious instruction classes during school hours. That is as it should be. The Age has consistently argued over decades that, beyond reading, writing and arithmetic, there should be room for lessons about various belief systems and for discussion about ethics and social awareness. But the school hours funded by the taxpayer should not be used...

Jesus is considered by scholars such as Weber to be an example of a charismatic religious leader. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Religious people are always profoundly disturbed when they discover that they are not, and never have been, true Christians. Does all of their religion count for nothing? Those hours in church, hours spent doing good things, hours involved in religious activity—do they not count for something in the presence of God ? Do they not enable me to say: "Look at what I have done. Don’t I deserve heaven?" Sadly, thinking that I deserve heaven is a sure sign I have no understanding of the gospel. Thinking that I deserve heaven is a sure sign I have no understanding of the gospel. Jesus unmasked the terrible truth about His contemporaries. They resisted His teaching and refused to receive His Word because they were sinners —and slaves to sin. Some years ago, the British media reported that a Presbyterian denomination had pulled fifty thousand pri...