From here
I do not want to set this thread off on a rabbit trail, but I would like to draw attention to one of the Curmudgeon’s comments regarding whether Mr. Tisdale was authorized to act on behalf of TEC, which goes back to the question of whether David Booth Beers is authorized to act as “Chancellor of TEC.”

[blockquote]No members of the Church, either acting on their own, or acting collectively through their triennial assembly called “General Convention”, have ever hired David Booth Beers to represent the whole Church, or to hire others to do so. Not only that, but there is no official [i]position[/i] that has ever been created and called “Chancellor of the Episcopal Church (USA)”. Thus, by definition, there cannot lawfully be any person who is entitled to claim that he is “South Carolina counsel for The Episcopal Church.” At best, Mr. Tisdale is acting as South Carolina counsel for the [i]Presiding Bishop’s personal chancellor[/i].[/blockquote]

There seems to me to be a common thread between this assumption of power by DBB and that of the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion.

Recently, Bp. Mouneer Anis resigned from “The Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion.” It is clear that Bp. Mouneer is not making up this title and its acronym (SCAC) but is reflecting the view of that group from which he resigned. This is confirmed by the (unpublished) Minutes of that group immediately before and after ACC-14 in Jamaica. Meeting on 29 April-1 May, 2009, the minutes speak of “The Joint Standing Committee of The Primates & The Anglican Consultative Council”; meeting after ACC-14 on 12 May, the minutes refer to “The Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion.”

This change of terminology is obliquely justified in ACC Resolutaion 14.39a, which states that “the former Joint Standing Committee” is named as the “Standing Committee” under the new constitution.” Interestingly, the new [unpublished] ACC constitution does not directly name its Standing Committee as “The Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion,” although it does refer to the “Secretary General of the Anglican Communion,” rather than the Secretary General of the ACC.

My question, following the lines of Mr. Haley’s argument, is this: can anyone produce documentation that the Lambeth Conference or the Primates’ Meeting or even the ACC (apart from the oblique reference in 14.39 above) has ever established the position of “The Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion” ”“ or for that matter, the Joint Standing Committee that preceded it ”“ much less given its terms of reference?

For instance, we know that the ACC admits five Primates to its new Standing Committee, but by what resolution of the Primates’ Meeting was the number five chosen, and was that number chosen intentionally to give the Primates a minority voice when compared to the nine members of the ACC Standing Committee. And how was it decided that these five should represent five particular regions, quite unequal in numbers?

The relevance is this: under the “final” Covenant, the Provinces are being asked to hand over primary oversight of the Covenant to a body that has no constitutional foundation and whose composition is unclear, apart perhaps from the (as yet unpublished) Constitution of one of the Instruments of Communion.

Back to the Curmudgeon and South Carolina. I think the assumption of power in TEC and the assumption of power in the Anglican Communion are similar. This is not strange, considering it is people with the same mindset pulling the strings in the national and the Communion bureaucracies.

Gov. Dave Heineman approved a lethal-injection protocol for Nebraska on Wednesday, ending the death penalty’s monthslong limbo in the state and opening the gate to a new round of lawsuits.

There never was any doubt Heineman, a death-penalty supporter, would sign off on the protocol that replaces electrocution and he did so without publicizing his approval.

Last year, he supported Nebraska lawmakers when they directed the state Department of Correctional Services to craft a lethal-injection protocol to replace electrocution.

The direction from lawmakers followed a 2008 ruling from the state Supreme Court that said the chair amounted to unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment. Nebraska had been the only state with electrocution as its sole means of execution and, since the ruling, has technically been without a means of executing prisoners.

Read it all.

This is great.

Now Abraham was old, well advanced in years; and the LORD had blessed Abraham in all things.

–Genesis 24:1

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

–Hebrews 12:1-2

Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and pay your vows to the Most High; and call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.

–Psalm 50:14-15

[Scott] Benhase replaces the outgoing Rt. Rev. Henry I. Louttit, who is retiring after serving 15 years as bishop of the diocese.

The Diocese of Georgia is one of 116 dioceses that comprise the 2 million-member Episcopal Church.

The denomination traces its Georgia roots to the founding of the colony and the congregation of Christ Church in 1733.

Read it all.

We live in a culture of boutique self-creation.

–John Yates III this morning at Mere Anglicanism

I am speechless–this is huge.

Watch it all.

I love thee, O LORD, my strength. The LORD is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. I call upon the LORD, who is worthy to be praised, and I am saved from my enemies.

–Psalm 18:1-3

For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us. As a father pities his children, so the LORD pities those who fear him. For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust.

–Psalm 103:11-14

Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every joint with which it is supplied, when each part is working properly, makes bodily growth and upbuilds itself in love.

–Ephesians 4:15-16

Bless the LORD, O my soul;
and all that is within me, bless his holy name!
Bless the LORD, O my soul,
and forget not all his benefits,
who forgives all your iniquity,
who heals all your diseases,
who redeems your life from the Pit,
who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy,
who satisfies you with good as long as you live
so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.

–Psalm 103:1-5

A very happy New Year to all blog readers and participants.

Ever since I first heard it, my favorite Christmas song–KSH.

We pray thee, O Lord, to purify our hearts that they may be worthy to become thy dwelling place. Let us never fail to find room for thee, but come and abide in us that we also may abide in thee, who as at this time wast born into the world for us, and dost live and reign, King of kings and Lord of lords, now and for evermore.

–William Temple (1881-1944)

Loving Father, Help us remember the birth of Jesus,
that we may share in the song of the angels,
the gladness of the shepherds,
and worship of the wise men.

Close the door of hate and open the door of love all over the world. Let kindness come with every gift and good desires with every greeting. Deliver us from evil by the blessing which Christ brings, and teach us to be merry with clear hearts.

May the Christmas morning make us happy to be thy children, and Christmas evening bring us to our beds with grateful thoughts, forgiving and forgiven, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.

–Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

See what you make of their list.

Take a careful look if you haven’t yet.

Towering eight stories over wheat fields, the Golden Lamp Church was built to serve nearly 50,000 worshippers in the gritty heart of China’s coal country.

But that was before hundreds of police and hired thugs descended on the mega-church, smashing doors and windows, seizing Bibles and sending dozens of worshippers to hospitals with serious injuries, members and activists say

Today, the church’s co-pastors are in jail. The gates to the church complex in the northern province of Shanxi are locked and a police armored personnel vehicle sits outside.

Read it all.

The main objection to a Tobin tax, however, is that it will not work. Taxes that do not work are worse than a waste of time. They have a cost, if only by diverting the energies of public servants into impracticable byways and clever bankers into tax avoidance schemes, with no compensating benefit in financial stability. The tax will not work because it is impossible to administer. Traders in, say, London could evade it by booking the transaction in other financial centres that are not covered by the tax. To be effective, the tax would have to be implemented globally.

That is unlikely but not impossible. Perhaps the catastrophic experience of the credit crisis might create agreement among governments. Perhaps all the main financial centres would sign up to the tax. But that still leaves the offshore financial centres. It is difficult to see what possible incentive they would have to implement a tax when it would plainly be in their financial interest to attract business from international banks.

Bad taxes can have far-reaching consequences. One of the reasons that London is so prominent a financial centre dates back to US regulations adopted in the 1960s that limited the amount of interest that banks could pay on deposits. US banks moved to London to get round them, and the huge eurobond market developed as a result.

Read it all.

In a massive security breach, the Transportation Security Agency (TSA) inadvertently posted online its entire airport screening procedures manual, including some of the most closely guarded secrets regarding special rules for diplomats and CIA and law enforcement officers.

The most sensitive parts of the 93-page Standard Operation Procedures were apparently redacted in a way that computer savvy individuals easily overcame.

Ugh–read it all.

The Episcopal Church has said for years that it is committed to both the Anglican Communion and the full inclusion of gays and lesbians, said the Rev. Jo Bailey Wells, a professor and director of Anglican studies at Duke Divinity School in Durham, N.C. Glasspool’s election is, in a sense, a fork in the road.

“I think [Rowan] Williams’ statement points out the incommensurability of both agendas,” she said. “Episcopalians are prone to deny the consequences of their actions, because they so believe in what they are doing that they don’t believe that others do not believe.”

Read it all.

Received via email–KSH.

Maryland priest selected in balloting to fill one of two positions

By Bob Williams

[Riverside, Calif.] — The six-county Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles has elected the Rev. Canon Mary Glasspool, canon to the bishops of the Baltimore-based Diocese of Maryland, to the office of bishop suffragan, in which she is called to assist Bishop Diocesan J. Jon Bruno in ministry to the region’s 70,000 parishioners.

Glasspool, 55, was elected Dec. 5 on the seventh ballot taken by some 800 clergy and lay delegates to the 114th Annual Meeting of Diocesan Convention, gathered in Riverside, Calif., as the diocese’s chief legislative body.

The Convention on Dec. 4 also elected the Rev. Canon Diane Bruce to the office of bishop suffragan. Glasspool and Bruce were part of a slate of six candidates nominated by a 24-member diocesan committee.

The second woman to be elected a bishop in the diocese’s 114-year history, Glasspool is also the first openly partnered lesbian to be elected a bishop in the Episcopal Church, which includes some 2.4 million members in 109 dioceses in 16 nations. She is the 17th woman to be elected a bishop in the Episcopal Church; its House of Bishops includes some 300 active and retired members.

Glasspool received 153 votes in the clergy order and 203 lay votes, meeting the required majority of ballots after the Convention’s necessary quorum was declared.

Consent to the election of Glasspool and Bruce by the bishops and standing committees of the Episcopal Church’s other 108 dioceses will now be requested under longstanding denominational procedures in keeping with their elections as bishops not only for the local diocese but also for the whole church.

Consents must be received prior to the bishops-elect scheduled ordination to the episcopate, set for May 15, 2010, at which the Episcopal Church’s Presiding Bishop, the Most. Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, is slated to officiate.

“I am very excited about the future of the whole Episcopal Church, and I see the Diocese of Los Angeles leading the way into that future, said Glasspool, a native of Staten Island, N.Y., who has been ordained a priest for 27 years, and whose father was also an Episcopal priest.

“But just for this moment, let me say again, thank you, and thanks be to our loving, surprising God. I look forward, in the coming months, to getting to know you all better, as together we build up the Body of Christ for the world.”

Bruno said Glasspool brings years of valuable experience to her new role, noting that she has been essentially fulfilling the duties of a suffragan in her role as canon to Maryland’s bishops since 2001.

He said he is looking forward to working with Glasspool because of “her congeniality and willingness to work together to bring us to a place of abundance.

“She’s not afraid of conflict and she is a reconciler,” Bruno said. He added that Glasspool and her partner of 19 years, Becki Sanders, are an example of loving service and ministry. “I will pray that Mary and I and Diane will be as strong a team as Chester and Sergio and I have been. I know Mary will be an asset to this diocese,” he said.

A resident of Annapolis, Glasspool has been canon to Maryland’s bishops since 2001. Previously she was rector of St. Margaret’s, Annapolis (1992-2001); rector of St. Luke’s and St. Margaret’s, Boston (1984-1992); and assistant to the rector of St. Paul’s, Philadelphia.
Ordained a priest in 1982 in the Diocese of Pennsylvania, she holds a master of divinity degree from Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass., and a bachelor’s degree from DickinsonCollege in Carlisle, Pa. She was in 2006 Merrill Fellow at HarvardDivinitySchool.

Glasspool’s life partner, Becki Sander, holds a doctorate in social work.

In response to a reporter’s question about whether Glasspool might receive the necessary consents from other dioceses, Bruno said: “That would be a violation of the canons of this church. At our last General Convention, we said we are nondiscriminatory.

“They just as well might have withheld consent from me because I was a divorced man and in my case, it would have been more justified than in withholding them from someone who has been approved through all levels of ministry and is a good and creative minister of the Gospel.”

He acknowledged rumors of a “concerted effort not to give consent” to Glasspool because she is openly gay.” I would remind the Episcopal church and the House of Bishops they need to be conscientious about respecting the canons of the church and the baptismal covenant to respect the dignity of every human being.

“To not consent in this country out of fear of the reaction elsewhere in the Anglican Communion is to capitulate to titular heads.”

The Diocese has voted from a slate of well qualified candidates whose talents fit well with the episcopal team approach of Bishop Bruno, said the Rev. Julian Bull, chair of the seach and nominating committee, and head of Campbell Hall Episcopal school in North Hollywood, Calif.

In addition to Bruce, other nominees were the Rev. Zelda Kennedy, senior associate for pastoral care at All Saints Church in Pasadena, Calif.; the Rev. John Kirkley, rector of St. John the Evangelist Church in San Francisco; the Rev. Silvestre Romero, rector of St. Philip’s Church in San Jose, Calif., and the Rev. I. Martir Vasquez, vicar of St. George’s Church in Hawthorne, Calif.

In the second election, Kirkley withdrew on the third ballot and Romero on the fourth.

According to Convention rules of order, ballot results in Glasspool’s election were separate from the election balloting in Bruce’s election, according to Canon M. Janet Wylie, secretary of Convention.

The ballot results were posted in real time on the diocesan web site, http://www.ladiocese.org .

Glasspool is the eighth bishop suffragan to be elected in the history of the Diocese of Los Angeles. She and Bishop-elect Bruce together will succeed the Rt. Rev. Chester L. Talton, 68, who plans to retire in May 2010 after serving as bishop suffragan since January 1991.

Also retiring in 2010 is the Rt. Rev. Sergio Carranza, bishop assistant in the Diocese of Los Angeles since 2002 following his retirement as bishop of the Diocese of Mexico in the Anglican Church of Mexico.

Previous bishops suffragan in the Diocese of Los Angeles are the late Robert B. Gooden (1930-1947), Donald J. Campbell (1949-1959), Ivol I. Curtis (1960-1964), Robert C. Rusack (1964-1973), and Oliver B. Garver Jr. (1985-1990).

The Diocese of Los Angeles was formed in 1895 by General Convention action to divide the San Francisco-based Diocese of California. The Diocese of Los Angeles today includes 147 congregations located in Los Angeles, Orange, Ventura, Santa Barbara, San Bernardino, and part of Riverside counties. The diocese is based in L.A.’s Echo Park district at the Cathedral Center of St. Paul, a congregation dating from 1864.

The term suffragan is said to come from the Latin suffragari, which has been translated “to support with one’s vote.” Under Episcopal Church polity, bishops suffragan are elected to assist bishops diocesan without right of succession.

— Robert Williams serves the Diocese of Los Angeles as canon for community relations.

On the 7th ballot.

After the Vatican invited Anglicans to return to the Catholic fold, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, went to Rome. He met the Pope and his cardinals, and the holy father will reciprocate next year in Canterbury.

The invitation allows Anglicans to retain their distinctive customs, but the unavoidable conclusion is that millions of Anglicans would, for the first time in 470 years, kneel and accept the Pope as boss. I expect the meetings in Rome have begun an inexorable reabsorption of the Anglican Church into the world’s oldest institution. The church created by the charismatic King Henry VIII has found its current archbishop, an undertaker, appearing to see his mission as an orderly burial.

Our children will barely distinguish an Anglican from a Catholic church and their children will be baptised in merged congregations. In the absence of a unifying vision, and dynamic global leadership, we must assume the Anglican idea is fast reaching its use-by date.

It has, however, been a great innings, and the Pope’s move is less hostile takeover than reverse takeover. Over the past half millennium, Anglicanism has transformed Catholicism and the world. The Anglican Church was never a truly Protestant church, but a halfway house between Luther and Rome. It leaned Protestant more by accident than design – to keep the peace, it became the original broad church.

Read it all.

The link is here.

I bless the LORD who gives me counsel; in the night also my heart instructs me. I keep the LORD always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved….Thou dost show me the path of life; in thy presence there is fulness of joy, in thy right hand are pleasures for evermore

Psalm 16: 7-8;11

In this morning’s sermon, Mike Lumpkin exhorted us from Deuteronomy 8 about the importance of remembering and the danger of forgetfulness. This brought to mind my favorite story about remembering, somehow oh-so-appropriate on Thanksgiving–KSH.
—————-
It is gratitude that prompted an old man to visit an old broken pier on the eastern seacoast of Florida. Every Friday night, until his death in 1973, he would return, walking slowly and slightly stooped with a large bucket of shrimp. The sea gulls would flock to this old man, and he would feed them from his bucket. Many years before, in October, 1942, Captain Eddie Rickenbacker was on a mission in a B-17 to deliver an important message to General Douglas MacArthur in New Guinea. But there was an unexpected detour which would hurl Captain Eddie into the most harrowing adventure of his life.

Somewhere over the South Pacific the Flying Fortress became lost beyond the reach of radio. Fuel ran dangerously low, so the men ditched their plane in the ocean… For nearly a month Captain Eddie and his companions would fight the water, and the weather, and the scorching sun. They spent many sleepless nights recoiling as giant sharks rammed their rafts. The largest raft was nine by five. The biggest shark…ten feet long.
But of all their enemies at sea, one proved most formidable: starvation. Eight days out, their rations were long gone or destroyed by the salt water. It would take a miracle to sustain them. And a miracle occurred. In Captain Eddie’s own words, “Cherry,” that was the B- 17 pilot, Captain William Cherry, “read the service that afternoon, and we finished with a prayer for deliverance and a hymn of praise. There was some talk, but it tapered off in the oppressive heat. With my hat pulled down over my eyes to keep out some of the glare, I dozed off.”

Now this is still Captain Rickenbacker talking…”Something landed on my head. I knew that it was a sea gull. I don’t know how I knew, I just knew. Everyone else knew too. No one said a word, but peering out from under my hat brim without moving my head, I could see the expression on their faces. They were staring at that gull. The gull meant food…if I could catch it.” And the rest, as they say, is history. Captain Eddie caught the gull. Its flesh was eaten. Its intestines were used for bait to catch fish. The survivors were sustained and their hopes renewed because a lone sea gull, uncharacteristically hundreds of miles from land, offered itself as a sacrifice. You know that Captain Eddie made it. And now you also know…that he never forgot. Because every Friday evening, about sunset…on a lonely stretch along the eastern Florida seacoast…you could see an old man walking…white-haired, bushy-eyebrowed, slightly bent. His bucket filled with shrimp was to feed the gulls…to remember that one which, on a day long past, gave itself without a struggle…like manna in the wilderness.

—I first heard this through Paul Harvey. Happy thanksgiving! KSH