O Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, who didst devote thy life and thy death to our most plenteous redemption: Grant that what thou hast wrought for us may also be wrought in us: that, growing into thy likeness, we may serve and share thy redeeming work; who livest and reignest in the glory of the eternal Trinity now and for evermore.

—A Procession of Passion Prayers, ed. Eric Milner-White (London: SPCK, 1952)

#rain #darksky and #dàffodils #FridayVibes #loveukweather #lincs pic.twitter.com/vFuDHUsgB3

— ianW (@ianwillson14) March 31, 2023

“Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Do not let your prophets and your diviners who are among you deceive you, and do not listen to the dreams which they dream, for it is a lie which they are prophesying to you in my name; I did not send them, says the Lord.

“For thus says the Lord: When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfil to you my promise and bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me; when you seek me with all your heart….

–Jeremiah 29:4-13

Good morning 🌎 Happy Friday to all , have an excellent end of the week , lots of laughter and fun I wish you all 💫🙏✨🥰🍾🍻👌 #goodmorning #friday #photo #photooftheday #happyFriday @StormHour @ThePhotoHour pic.twitter.com/0CD17vDT0p

— Dr.P_78Glasgow (@AbhaPaulina) March 31, 2023

The Coronation is a chance to bring the nation together in a commitment to service, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York have said, as charities around the country hope for a boom in volunteering.

In a pastoral letter published on Wednesday afternoon, Archbishop Welby and Archbishop Cottrell shared their “hopes, desires, and prayers” for the Coronation of Charles III.

“The Coronation will be a historic moment in the life of our nation; a time to reflect on our history, reflect and celebrate something of who we are, and look forward,” they write.

“It is, of course, part of every Christian’s witness to commit joyfully to a life of service to God and one another; a commitment the King has exemplified throughout his life. We pray this would be a moment for all to encounter afresh the person of Jesus Christ — the servant King — and be renewed in our calling to serve Him by serving others.”

On Thursday, representatives from faith groups joined a webinar about the Big Help Out — a volunteering initiative led by the Together Coalition — to learn about how organisations can use the Coronation as an opportunity to increase engagement and showcase the work they already do in the community.

Read it all.

The Coronation is a chance to bring the nation together in a commitment to service, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York have said, as charities around the country hope for a boom in volunteering.https://t.co/9jE0BRtb6F

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) March 30, 2023

Here’s the good news: there are several ways to define sex precisely. It just takes some work. Any good definition will capture the central concept of biological sex—the orientation of male and female bodies for reproduction. It will also refer to what happens under normal development while accounting for disorders. Finally, it will accommodate the fact that organisms have and do different things at different stages of development.

For instance, a female human embryo does not menstruate or get pregnant—nor does a woman who has passed through menopause. A male embryo very early in development does not (yet) have a penis or testes.

The definitions provided in Montana’s SB 458, for instance, account for both disorders and development. A human male is, minimally, a member of the human species who, under normal development, produces relatively small, mobile gametes—sperm—at some point in his life cycle, and has a reproductive and endocrine system oriented around the production of that gamete. A human female is, minimally, a member of the human species who, under normal development, produces relatively large, relatively immobile gametes—ova—at some point in her life cycle, and has a reproductive and endocrine system oriented around the production of that gamete.

The phrase “under normal development” does a great deal of work in these definitions. We grasp the existence of distinct animal taxa (species, genera, families, classes, etc.) intuitively. “Human” refers to our species (Homo sapiens). We also distinguish abnormal from normal development without much effort.

Read it all.

Why States Must Define Sex Precisely @DrJayRichards https://t.co/OCS8bVPq00

— Public Discourse (@PublicDiscourse) March 30, 2023

On her daughter’s sixth birthday party, Sarah Pieper did what she has grown accustomed to as a mom of four kids. She held it together, masking the devastation she felt after getting life-changing news just a few hours earlier.

Pieper, a 33-year-old stay-at-home mom living in Summerville, kept busy during the party. Navigating through the maze of rambunctious 5- and 6-year-olds, she wondered what her world would look like and how the child gestating in her womb would be affected by it all.

Earlier that morning, doctors at Trident Medical Center diagnosed Pieper with stage 3 squamous cell carcinoma, a rare form of head and neck cancer that affects the tongue.

She was 14 weeks pregnant with a baby boy.

“It was probably the hardest thing for me to do,” Pieper told The Post and Courier.

Read it all.

British scientists have discovered an “ultramassive” black hole with a mass about 30 billion times that of the sun.

Physicists from Durham University were able to find it and assess its mass by analysing how its gravity distorts light travelling past it through space. It is the first time a black hole has been detected by analysing its gravitational effect on the light from a distant galaxy.

Researchers believe it is close to the “upper limit” of how massive black holes can become. They said the manner of its discovery could open the door to many more, describing it as “an extremely exciting” find.

Massive objects with strong gravitational fields, such as black holes, galaxies and galaxy clusters, can act as cosmic magnifying glasses, a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing.

Read it all (subscription).

British scientists discover one of the largest black holes ever detected – an "ultramassive" black hole at the centre of a galaxy

They found it by detecting the way its gravity "lenses" light passing by https://t.co/Bc9wFhs5LZ

— Kaya Burgess (@kayaburgess) March 30, 2023

Holy Immortal One, who didst bless thy people by calling Innocent from leading thy Church in Russia to be an apostle and light to the people of Alaska, and to proclaim the dispensation and grace of God: Guide our steps, that as he didst labor humbly in danger and hardship, we may witness to the Gospel of Christ wherever we are led, and serve thee as gladly in privation as in power; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who livest and reignest with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, to the ages of ages. Amen.

“Easter Procession of St. Innocent of Alaska” (2010) by Mikhail Shankov. pic.twitter.com/dQu01Q0Dyc

— Jason ☦️ (@baqlavas) September 12, 2020

Almighty and most merciful God, who hast given thy Son to die for our sins and to obtain eternal redemption for us through his own blood: Let the merit of his spotless sacrifice, we beseech thee, purge our consciences from dead works to serve thee, the living God, that we may receive the promise of eternal inheritance in Christ Jesus our Lord; to whom with thee and the Holy Ghost be honour and glory, world without end.

Happy Thursday ☺️#goodmorning #sunrise #Dublin pic.twitter.com/Sp6IL1e9CG

— The Wild Massy 🌳 (@TheWildMassy) March 30, 2023

A Song of Ascents. Of David. O LORD, my heart is not lifted up, my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a child quieted at its mother’s breast; like a child that is quieted is my soul. O Israel, hope in the LORD from this time forth and for evermore.

–Psalm 131

Good morning ☕️❄️☀️ pic.twitter.com/FCHPHEqc0C

— Mårten Björkgren 💙💛 (@MartenBjorkgren) March 30, 2023

The Church of England Evangelical Council (CEEC), a group comprising 14 organisations, has released a “declaration” outlining why they feel “compelled to resist” moves to bless same-sex couples.

A statement published on a new website, declaration.ceec.info, includes an apology for “the times we have failed and continue to fail to love [LGBTQ+ people] as God loves them”.

The statement continues: “Sadly, however, we cannot accept central features of the bishops’ proposed way forward.” The move to bless same-sex couples, and to allow priests to be in same-sex marriages, “represents a departure from the faith which is revealed in the Holy Scriptures and set forth in the catholic creeds and to which the historic formularies of the Church of England bear witness”.

The CEEC is inviting those who agree with the declaration to register their support on the website, which also includes a range of “supporting resources” about the CEEC’s position.

Read it all.

Evangelical group calls for declarations of resistance to same-sex blessings https://t.co/jsDBNWW21z

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) March 29, 2023

The baffling senselessness that we feel at a time like this—which lasts a few days for the world and years for those close to it—should not lead us into resignation and cynicism, where we shrug our shoulders in an attitude of “What can you do?”

Instead, it should bring a flash of recognition that this is not the way it’s supposed to be. What we are seeing is a mystery of iniquity so great that it should rattle us—prompting us to put aside our theatrical hatred of one another long enough to ask, “How can we stop this?”

But that will require genuine discussions on public policy, justice, and safety. It will also mean asking ourselves why so many people will forget about Nashville—and the terror faced by those children and teachers—in a matter of days, just as we’ve forgotten all the other towns and cities that have been torn apart by this kind of murder.

The time we live in is not normal, and it is not leading us anywhere we want to go. The first step to stopping these hate-driven crimes is to recognize that fact.

Read it all.

“The time we live in is not normal, and it is not leading us anywhere we want to go.”

From @drmoore: https://t.co/KT8dZUnLUO

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) March 29, 2023

As part of his job as fraud detector at biomedical publisher Spandidos, John Chesebro trawls through research papers, scrutinising near identical images of cells. For him, the tricks used by “paper mills” — the outfits paid to fabricate scientific studies — have become wearily familiar.

They range from clear duplication — the same images of cell cultures on microscope slides copied across numerous, unrelated studies — to more subtle tinkering. Sometimes an image is rotated “to try to trick you to think it’s different”, Chesebro says. “At times you can detect where parts of an image were digitally manipulated to add or remove cells or other features to make the data look like the results you are expecting in the hypothesis.” He estimates he rejects 5 to 10 per cent of papers because of fraudulent data or ethical issues.

Spandidos, based in Athens and London, accepts a large volume of papers from China, with around 90 per cent of its output coming from Chinese authors. In the mid-2010s, independent scientists accused Spandidos of publishing papers with results that recycled the same sets of data. As part of its response to the allegations, the publisher is using a team of in-house fraud detectors to weed out and retract fake research.

Over the past two decades, Chinese researchers have become some of the world’s most prolific publishers of scientific papers. The Institute for Scientific Information, a US-based research analysis organisation, calculated that China produced 3.7mn papers in 2021 — 23 per cent of global output — and just behind the 4.4mn total from the US.

Read it all (registration or subscription).

China’s fake science industry: how ‘paper mills’ threaten progress https://t.co/ajIYXluYA9

— FT China (@ftchina) March 28, 2023

Elon Musk and a group of artificial intelligence experts and industry executives are calling for a six-month pause in developing systems more powerful than OpenAI’s newly launched GPT-4, in an open letter citing potential risks to society.

Earlier this month, Microsoft-backed OpenAI unveiled the fourth iteration of its GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) AI program, which has wowed users by engaging them in human-like conversation, composing songs and summarising lengthy documents.

“Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable,” said the letter issued by the Future of Life Institute.

The non-profit is primarily funded by the Musk Foundation, as well as London-based group Founders Pledge, and Silicon Valley Community Foundation, according to the European Union’s transparency register.

Read it all.

A group of artificial intelligence experts and industry executives is calling for a six-month pause in developing systems more powerful than OpenAI's newly launched GPT-4.
Their open letter cites potential risks to society and to humanity. https://t.co/whnM8yn94A

— CBC News (@CBCNews) March 29, 2023

New every morning is the love
our wakening and uprising prove;
through sleep and darkness safely brought,
restored to life and power and thought.

New mercies, each returning day,
hover around us while we pray;
new perils past, new sins forgiven,
new thoughts of God, new hopes of heaven.

If on our daily course our mind
be set to hallow all we find,
new treasures still, of countless price,
God will provide for sacrifice.

Old friends, old scenes, will lovelier be,
as more of heaven in each we see;
some softening gleam of love and prayer
shall dawn on every cross and care.

The trivial round, the common task,
will furnish all we ought to ask:
room to deny ourselves; a road
to bring us daily nearer God.

Only, O Lord, in thy dear love,
fit us for perfect rest above;
and help us, this and every day,
to live more nearly as we pray

Grant, O God, that in all time of our testing we may know thy presence and obey thy will; that, following the example of thy servant John Keble, we may accomplish with integrity and courage that which thou givest us to do, and endure that which thou givest us to bear; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Today the Episcopal Church celebrates John Keble, Priest and Poet, 1866 https://t.co/BmTmViXUHn

Image: Photo by Robert Hawker Peniel Preston, mid 1860s, in the National Portrait Gallery, CC BY-NC-ND, via https://t.co/s2j8rIY9UC pic.twitter.com/I8lSBbbf4o

— The Anglican Church in St Petersburg (@anglicanspb) March 29, 2023

Thanks be to thee, O Lord Jesus Christ, for all the benefits which thou hast given us, for all the pains and insults which thou hast borne for us. O most merciful Redeemer, Friend and Brother, may we know thee more clearly, love thee more dearly, and follow thee more nearly, now and for evermore.

"The Aurora Tree" pic.twitter.com/uBTEhMquIj

— simon c woodley (@simoncwoodley) March 29, 2023

But how are men to call upon him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without a preacher? And how can men preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach good news!” But they have not all obeyed the gospel; for Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?” So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes by the preaching of Christ.

–Romans 10:14-17

Good morning 🌎 Have a wonderful Hump day all ✨💫🥰 , leave you with this capture from the most West Point in Skye 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Neist Point #goodmorning #photo #skye #scotland #photooftheday #humpday @VisitScotland @StormHour @ThePhotoHour pic.twitter.com/Hl3MTtA4Xk

— Dr.P_78Glasgow (@AbhaPaulina) March 29, 2023

Now a crunch is coming. The churches that make up 45 per cent of our Grade I listed buildings cannot be looked after in perpetuity by the dwindling band of faithful who worship in them. We need, as a nation, to work out how they can be preserved and allowed to thrive.

Churches don’t have any particular right to survive. St Bartholomew the Great can claim to be the oldest surviving extant church in the City of London only because all of those older foundations burned down or got bombed over the years.

We came close — in 1830 the timber store in the nonconformist chapel caught fire and took the whole south side of the church with it. It took decades for the church to be restored. This is the nightmare that haunts every parish priest: that your time in office might be short, but might also be fatal.

Which means we need, as a society, to decide what we want to do with these treasure-houses. How much do we really want them to survive and, if we do, what we want them to do and to be? Or will we decide to let them, rent-free to rain and sheep?

Read it all.

Five of the victims were transported to Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital, about four miles away, but were pronounced dead on arrival.

“The children … started their morning in their cute little uniforms,” Rachel Dibble, who was at the Baptist church with the waiting families, told the Associated Press. “They probably had some Froot Loops, and now their whole lives changed today.”

At Woodmont Baptist, not long after they heard the sirens whir by, pastors and staff read reports of a shooting at Covenant. When they saw on Twitter that their church was named as the reunification site, they didn’t question it—they just put on their nametags, met police in the parking lot, and prepared to open their doors to buses of surviving children and parents desperate to see their kids safe and sound, senior pastor Nathan Parker told CT.

The children gathered in the fellowship hall, where the student minister handed out coloring sheets and began processing the shooting with them. Parents waited in the sanctuary through the slow reunification process, not yet knowing the extent of the attack.

“As pastors, we are supposed to have the words. Today was one of those days that words didn’t come easy. If they came, they came from the Spirit,” Parker said.

Read it all.

The adult victims were head of school Katherine Koonce, 60; substitute teacher Cynthia Peak, 61; and custodian Mike Hill, 61.

The three students killed were each 9 years old. https://t.co/zb9zQjrEbr

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) March 28, 2023

The portion of American hospital beds occupied by children with suicidal or self-harming behavior has soared over the course of a decade, a large study of admissions to acute care hospitals shows.

An analysis of 4,767,840 pediatric hospitalizations by researchers at Dartmouth, published on Tuesday in the medical journal JAMA, found that between 2009 and 2019, mental health hospitalizations increased by 25.8 percent and cost $1.37 billion.

The study did not include psychiatric hospitals, or reflect the years of the coronavirus pandemic, suggesting that it is a considerable undercount.

Especially striking was the rise in suicidal behavior as a cause: The portion of pediatric mental health hospitalizations involving suicidal or self-harming behavior rose to 64.2 percent in 2019, from 30.7 percent in 2009. As a proportion of overall pediatric hospitalizations, suicidal behavior rose to 12.7 percent in 2019 from 3.5 percent in 2009.

Read it all.

American hospitals are increasingly crowded with children brought in for self-harming behavior, an analysis of 4.7 million hospital stays found. “You have a whole system failure here that is registering itself in suicidal kids” one doctor said. https://t.co/waLeoQVMTl

— NYT Science (@NYTScience) March 28, 2023

A last bastion of privacy, our brains have remained inviolate, even as sensors now record our heartbeats, breaths, steps and sleep. All that is about to change. An avalanche of brain-tracking devices—earbuds, headphones, headbands, watches and even wearable tattoos—will soon enter the market, promising to transform our lives. And threatening to breach the refuge of our minds.

Tech titans Meta, Snap, Microsoft and Apple are already investing heavily in brain wearables. They aim to embed brain sensors into smart watches, earbuds, headsets and sleep aids. Integrating them into our everyday lives could revolutionize health care, enabling early diagnosis and personalized treatment of conditions such as depression, epilepsy and even cognitive decline. Brain sensors could improve our ability to meditate, focus and even communicate with a seamless technological telepathy—using the power of thoughts and emotion to drive our interaction with augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) headsets, or even type on virtual keyboards with our minds.

But brain wearables also pose very real risks to mental privacy, freedom of thought and self-determination. As these devices proliferate, they will generate vast amounts of neural data, creating an intimate window into our brain states, emotions and even memories. We need the individual power to shutter this new view into our inner selves.

Read it all.

Brain sensors could improve our ability to meditate, focus and even communicate, but they also pose very real risks to mental privacy, freedom of thought and self-determination. | Analysis https://t.co/BDeqplwldb

— Scientific American (@sciam) March 28, 2023

O God, the font of resurrected life, draw us into the wilderness and speak tenderly to us, so that we might love and worship thee as did thy servant James Solomon Russell, in assurance of the saving grace of Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

O God, who by the example of thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ hast taught us the greatness of true humility, and dost call us to watch with him in his passion: Give us grace to serve one another in all lowliness, and to enter into the fellowship of his sufferings; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end.

I lift up my eyes to the hills. From whence does my help come? My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth. He will not let your foot be moved, he who keeps you will not slumber.

–Psalm 121:1-3

William Taylor says: ‘The bishops of the Church of England have walked away from us.’ St Helen’s annual clergy review will now be led by Archbishop Foley Beach of the worldwide orthodox Anglican grouping, GAFCON.

Meanwhile, Richard Moy, Resource Church Lead at ‘Christ Church W4,’ says of the meeting between 180 clergy and their London diocese bishops: ‘It was extraordinary. The meeting was called with expectations that [just] the “usual suspects” would turn up but had to be relocated when it was clear that there were more than a couple of dozen people coming.’

Moy says the bishops were told that the whole leadership of one charismatic church plant had told their minister: ‘Of course we’re leaving the C of E.’ This was echoed by four or five other charismatic churches with Global Majority Heritage congregations from across several networks.

A clergyman believed to be the longest serving in the room said he had been ordained 47 years, in the diocese for 40 years and that there had always been rogue or renegade bishops. However, this was the first time that the House of Bishops had collectively gone against the majority view of the Anglican Communion, Anglican doctrine and Biblical authority, Moy reports. At this, those present erupted into ‘rousing applause’ after which the bishops were reported to look as though they were in ‘shell shock’.

Read it all.

The head of the Evangelical Alliance, Gavin Calver, believes the organisation may see a growth in membership as the Church of England moves ahead with divisive plans to bless same-sex couples.

In an interview for the Religion and Media Centre’s Big Interview podcast, Calver said it was “too early” for the EA to tell Anglican evangelical congregations what to do because the Church of England is still in the process of formulating new pastoral guidance on the blessings.

However, he said that the EA was ready to be a place of support and a “port in a storm” for evangelical congregations dismayed over the Church of England’s direction of travel.

“We’ll probably find that a number of Anglican churches join the Evangelical Alliance, because it’s actually a time where they want to be in unity with wider evangelicals, as well as continuing in their space, which is challenging,” he said

Read it all.

Social care is facing a “very, very distressing situation”, the Archbishop of York has told Parliament as he urged Government action to tackle the crisis.

Speaking at Westminster, the Most Rev Stephen Cottrell painted a bleak picture in the region he represents, with vulnerable people not receiving the support they need, while recruitment and retention of staff was “appalling”.

The senior church leader raised his concerns as ministers were also pressed over reports that a promised £500 million investment in the adult social care workforce could be at risk.

Read it all.

“In the cities of Hull and Middlesbrough, which I serve, I see so many people in need of care+not receiving it.

“I discover recruitment+retention R appalling. I find care workers having 2 use food banks so they can feed their families" https://t.co/A7GECquy24 #socialcarecrisis

— Kendall Harmon (@KendallHarmon6) March 27, 2023

In 1899 a relatively obscure priest working in a City Mission in the slums of South Boston was compiling a book on prayer from articles he had written for the Saint Andrew’s Cross, a magazine of the recently established lay order of the Protestant Episcopal Church known as the Brotherhood of St. Andrew. Seven years before, this celibate priest had left the Order of the Cowley Father’s whose House was just across the Charles River in Cambridge. Although he left the order over a dispute between his superior, Fr. A. C. A. Hall and the Order’s Father Superior in England, the young priest never left the inward embrace of the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience—even less did he leave behind the spiritual disciplines of the religious life he had learned so well under Fr. Hall’s steady hand. Somewhere between his pastoral and social work among the sordidness and squalor of the South End—replete with red light district, street waifs, immigrants and vagrants— and his late night vigils of intercessory prayer or early mornings spent in meditation, not to mention the full round of parish duties, he found the time to write. In the final chapter of his little book, With God in the World, he wrote words that now appear as strangely prescient for his own life: “Men—we are not thinking of butterflies—cannot exist without difficulty. To be shorn of it means death, because inspiration is bound up with it, and inspiration is the breath of God, without the constant influx of which man ceases to be a living soul. Responsibility is the sacrament of inspiration. . . . The fault of most modern prophets is not that they present too high an ideal, but an ideal that is sketched with a faltering hand; the appeal to self-sacrifice is too timid and imprecise, the challenge to courage is too low-voiced, with the result that the tide of inspiration ebbs and flows.” He was to parse this belief taking root in his soul, with the phrase “the inspiration of responsibility”. Within two short years he would have the opportunity to test these words with his life.

His name was Charles Henry Brent, born the son of an Anglican clergyman from New Castle, Ontario in 1862. How Charles Brent, a Canadian by birth, came to be a priest in of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts and under the episcopacy of the renowned Phillips Brooks, and later, the almost equally celebrated Bishop William Lawrence, is itself an interesting story we haven’t time to explore. Suffice to say that God seemed to be grooming through the seemingly quixotic twists and turns of providence a bishop not merely for the church or for one nation, but for the world—a man, of whom it could be said, he was Everybody’s Bishop.

You may find Part One there and Part Two here. Take the time to read it all.

#OTD March 27, 1929
Death in Lausanne, Switzerland, of Charles Henry Brent, an Episcopal priest active in the ecumenical movement. Two years before his death, he had presided over the 1927 World Conference on Faith and Order, in Lausanne, Switzerland. pic.twitter.com/NgUT4qgI34

— ☧ Today in Christian History (@HistoricalRook) March 27, 2022

In the past few weeks, the Christians of the world have been holding their first major conference in some 500 years for the specific purpose of seeing what can be done about unifying Christianity as the sum of its world-wide parts.

Preparation. Today the parts (denominations) number 200-odd, all of them organized as distinct entities. The practical necessity of relating so many parts, of discovering identity among so many entities, was established by the Edinburgh Missionary Conference of 1910. The logical necessity was established later the same year, at a convention of the Episcopal Church in Cincinnati. The man who then proposed a world conference on Faith & Order lived to see such a conference actually held, after 17 years of preparation, and to preside over it as chairman, at Lausanne, Switzerland, the past three weeks.

Chairman Brent. This man was Bishop Charles Henry Brent of the Episcopal diocese of Western New York. Canadian-born and educated, naturalized in the U. S., an obscure worker in the awkward robes of the Cowley Fathers among the poor of Boston, later (under Bishop Phillips Brooks) an Episcopal rector who was made a missionary bishop and sent to the Philippines because of his earnest simplicity, rugged strength and adaptability among people of other races, it was Bishop Brent who confirmed General Pershing in the Philippines and subsequently became Chaplain-in-Chief of the A. E. F.

First in war, first in peace, Bishop Brent had had experience in handling international conferences, as president of opium parleys at Shanghai (1909) and The Hague (1911). He declined the bishoprics of Washington, D. C., and New Jersey, to preserve for his world ministry the freedom of action he enjoys at Buffalo, N. Y. When his world ministry reached its peak this month, he was not content merely to preside over the hundreds of churchmen he had brought together, but went with them into their councils; explained, directed, adjusted and dictated daily despatches on their progress to the New York Herald Tribune.

Read it all (requires subscription).

(For his feast day) Charles Henry Brent cover story in Time, August 29, 1927 https://t.co/4batzXLWFS@TIME #churchhistory #ecumenism #missions #christianity #history #parishministry #clergy pic.twitter.com/ayzHHMZllU

— Kendall Harmon (@KendallHarmon6) March 27, 2021

Heavenly Father, whose Son did pray that we all might be one: deliver us, we beseech thee, from arrogance and prejudice, and give us wisdom and forbearance, that, following thy servant Charles Henry Brent, we may be united in one family with all who confess the Name of thy Son Jesus Christ: who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

Today the Episcopal Church commemorates Charles Henry Brent, Bishop of the Phillipines, and of Western New York, 1929 https://t.co/I09wiw0Xfw

Portrait photo by Unknown photographer, 1901-1918, in the National Portrait Gallery, London (CC BY-NC-ND) pic.twitter.com/eZMTKoLHz2

— The Anglican Church in St Petersburg (@anglicanspb) March 27, 2023