The real danger and promise from the tale of these two bishops hinges on whether this “defeat” of the Covenant will lead to a fresh wounding or to a healing of the Global South movement, which was cynically riven by the “divide and conquer” tactics of the powers that be in London and New York. There is now the potential for reassembling that movement, and Archbishops Mouneer and Orombi will be two key figures in it. Pray, brothers and sisters, for the unity of those who hold the common faith once for all delivered to the saints.

Read it all.

To the clergy and people of the diocese:

On April 14, 2009, the newly formed diocese of Fort Worth, along with representatives of The Episcopal Church (TEC), filed a lawsuit in a Tarrant Count, Texas, court. The suit names Bishop Iker and the five-person Board of Trustees for the Corporation of the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth as defendants.

As you might remember, at our 2007 diocesan convention we passed a revised canon outlining a process that could be used if a parish disagreed with the course of the diocese. At the end of the process, if reconciliation were not possible, the canon provided that the church property would be released to the congregation. Even after our 2008 convention, where we ratified our decision to separate from TEC by an 80 percent majority, none of the congregations wishing to remain loyal to The Episcopal Church asked for that procedure to be used.

However, the facts allowed the Bishop and the Standing Committee to investigate, and at the end of our investigation, the properties of Trinity Church, Fort Worth, and St. Martin in the Fields, Keller, were deeded to their respective congregations. At the same time, two other parishes ”“ St. Christopher’s in Fort Worth, and St. Luke’s in Stephenville ”“ were contacted. They had outstanding building loans which were made in the name of the Diocese. The Diocese offered to release their properties to them if they would renegotiate the loans and remove the Diocese from their notes. St. Luke’s renegotiated their note and had their property deeded to them. As soon as we hear from St. Christopher’s, we will do the same for them.

We’ve done everything we can think to do to make a settlement with any congregation that wants to stay with TEC. Bishop Iker and the Standing Committee have no wish to take property from those churches that do not wish to remain with us.

But Kathleen Wells, the chancellor for the new TEC diocese, has said publicly it’s all or nothing. “We’re not feudal lords where the bishops get together and play poker and say, ”˜You have this property, and we’ll keep this one.’

“They’re using our name; they’re holding themselves out to be the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth,” Wells said of us.

The lawsuit filed in April demands that properties held by the Corporation for the benefit of the people be given to them. It also asks that we stop using the name and seal of the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth.

Wells says the new diocese is merely a continuation of the one originally organized in 1982, located in a geographic area that includes 24 North Central Texas counties. The new diocese claims all 56 congregations in Fort Worth, Arlington, Hurst-Euless-Bedford, Wichita Falls, Weatherford, Brownwood, Stephenville, and elsewhere in the 24-county area. “That’s the number we had before Nov. 15, [2008,] when our diocesan convention met and some of these individuals left. We still claim all 55 [sic] and their property,” Wells said.

We will respond to the lawsuit with an appropriate defense. Please keep the bishop, Board of Trustees, and the members of the Standing Committee, in your prayers. Pray that we may respond in humility, in love, and in faith.

The Rev. Dr. Thomas Hightower
President, Standing Committee
The Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth

Nondiscipleship is the elephant in the church. It is not the much discussed moral failures, financial abuses, or the amazing general similarity between Christians and non-Christians. These are only effects of the underlying problem. The fundamental negative reality among Christian believers now is their failure to be constantly learning how to live their lives in The Kingdom Among Us. And it is an accepted reality. The division of Christians into those from whom it is a matter of whole-life devotion to God and those who maintain a consumer, or client, relationship to the church has now been an accepted reality for over fifteen hundred years.

And at present–in the distant outworkings of the Protestant Reformation, with its truly great and good message of salvation by faith alone–that long-accepted division has worked its way into the very heart of the gospel message. It is now understood to be a part of the “good news” that one does not have to be a life student of Jesus in order to be a Christian and receive forgiveness of sins. This gives a precise meaning to the phrase “cheap grace,” though it would be
better described as “costly faithlessness.”

–Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy (San Francisco: Harper, 1998), p.301; emphasis his

After nearly four months of frank, honest, and open dialogue about the failing economy, a weary U.S. populace announced this week that it is once again ready to be lied to about the current state of the financial system.

Tired of hearing the grim truth about their economic future, Americans demanded that the bald-faced lies resume immediately, particularly whenever politicians feel the need to divulge another terrifying problem with Wall Street, the housing market, or any one of a hundred other ticking time bombs everyone was better off not knowing about.

In addition, citizens are requesting that the phrase, “It will only get worse before it gets better,” be permanently replaced with, “Things are going great. Enjoy yourselves.”

“I thought I wanted a new era of transparency and accountability, but honestly, I just can’t handle it,” Ohio resident Nathan Pletcher said. “All I ever hear about now is how my retirement has been pushed back 15 years and how I won’t be able to afford my daughter’s tuition when she grows up.”

ROFL. Read it all.

(Church of Uganda News)

On the first day of the ACC-14 meeting, the Joint Standing Committee of the Anglican Consultative Council made an unconstitutional decision to refuse to seat the clergy delegate from the Church of Uganda. The Church of Uganda is entitled to three delegates ”“ a Bishop, priest, and lay person.

In an e-mail dated 24th April, Rev. Canon Kenneth Kearon, Secretary General of the Anglican Consultative Council, wrote the Most Rev. Henry Luke Orombi, Archbishop of the Church of Uganda, saying, “I’m grateful for the nomination of Rev. Philip Ashey as ACC Delegate”¦and I look forward to welcoming him to ACC.”

Rev. Philip Ashey is a priest of Ruwenzori Diocese in the Church of Uganda, living and working in Atlanta, USA.
During the first press briefing, Venerable Paul Feheley, the ACC’s Spokesperson, stated that each province appoints its own delegates to the ACC, as written in the constitution of the ACC.

In a surprising move, the Joint Standing Committee, meeting on 1st May, exceeded the limits of their authority, reversed Canon Kearon’s decision of 24th April, and determined that Rev. Ashey was not “qualified” to serve as a delegate, citing section 4(e) of the Constitution of the ACC. Their reason? Rev. Ashey is an American who was received into the Church of Uganda in 2005.

In a 2nd May letter appealing to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Archbishop Orombi wrote,

“The appointment of delegates to the ACC from a Province is purely an internal matter and is not subject to review by any body within the ACC, including the Joint Standing Committee. That the Joint Standing Committee would assume such authority is a gross violation of our constitutional relationships, not to mention a further tearing of our bonds of affection. Our reasons for appointing one of our American priests to represent us as our clergy delegate are our reasons, and are not for the Joint Standing Committee to question. Section 4(e) does not give the Joint Standing Committee or the ACC the right to interfere in the appointing body’s determination of the “qualification” of a delegate. For the Joint Standing Committee to assume this power is nothing short of an imperialistic and colonial decision that violates the integrity of the Church of Uganda.”

When asked why he didn’t send a Ugandan priest to represent the Church of Uganda, Archbishop Orombi replied, “We had a last minute vacancy for our clergy delegate and couldn’t organize travel and visas for one of our Ugandan clergy to go. When we learned that our priest, Rev. Philip Ashey could go to Jamaica, we asked him to represent us.”

Orombi continued, “The appointment of Rev. Philip Ashey to fill a vacancy at the last minute provides the Church of Uganda with a strong voice of a priest in good standing in the Diocese of Ruwenzori. It is also a voice for the almost 100,000 orthodox Anglicans in North America who have been persecuted by TEC and the Anglican Church of Canada, who will not be represented by their delegations to ACC-14, and who will not otherwise have voice or seat at the table of the ACC. It is important for the Communion to be reminded that there is a serious tear in the fabric of our communion; all is not well and there continues to be an urgent need to address the ongoing crisis before us.”

When asked why he was not present for the meeting, Archbishop Orombi said, “I am speaking at the New Wine conference in the north of England at the same time the ACC is meeting. This speaking engagement has been in my diary for a long time. It was an unavoidable conflict. I regret that my alternate to the Primates Standing Committee, Archbishop Justice Akrofi of West Africa, was also not able to attend.”

The Church of Uganda’s Bishop delegate was not able to attend the meeting because of a conflict with a previously scheduled trip to the UK.

The Church of Uganda will be represented only by its lay delegate, who protested the decision of the Joint Standing Committee to refuse to seat Uganda’s clergy delegate. Her protest was, nonetheless, overridden by other interests on the Joint Standing Committee.

Check it out.

While it is not a legislative body, the ACC can determine whether a new province can be created. “There are clear guidelines set out in the Anglican Consultative Council reports, notably ACC 10 in 1996 (resolution 12), detailing the steps necessary for the amendments of existing provincial constitutions and the creation of new provinces,” a spokesperson for the Archbishop of Canterbury bishop has said.

Other issues expected to be on the agenda are proposals for an Anglican Covenant, as well as reports from various Anglican bodies and networks dealing with issues like peace and justice, mission, and theological education.

Read it all.

…[During his time in the diocese Bishop Eliud Wabukala] initiated the Wycliffe Centre for Theology and Mission and Development in Bungoma, an affiliate of St Paul’s Theological College, Limuru.

Eight medical clinics were set up.

“Many of these projects got funding from Peterborough in England, an indicator that the bishop could create links,” said Rev Mechumo, adding that the greatest challenge Bishop Wabukala had to contend with was lack of training among the clergy.

Now Bungoma Diocese has several priests with degrees and diplomas.

“This is no mean achievement for a bishop.” Rev Mechumo added: “But now we have to release him. He has now become the leader of the province.”

Read it all.

[BOB] FAW: Religion, says Picoult, has brought comfort and misery. She does not affiliate herself with any formal religion.

Ms. [JODI] PICOULT: I do believe in God, though, and yet I totally support the fact that there are people who do not believe in God, and I think that if you are Catholic, that’s great, and I think if you’re Protestant, that’s great, and if you’re Jewish, that’s great, and I firmly believe that there is just not one way to do it.

FAW: Even though she forces her readers to think about the unthinkable, Picoult says for herself she’s never been happier in that New Hampshire home she shares with Delilah and Quigley, two miniature donkeys.

Ms. PICOULT: Even though I don’t write about things that come from my life because I’m ”” I’m lucky, and I live in a great place with great kids and, you know, a great husband, I think you can find threads of me in the characters, so that’s really what being a writer is, probably. It’s being able to dilute something about you ”” just a tiny little dollop of it into, you know, the heart or the soul of different characters. You are always bleeding a little piece of yourself into everybody.

FAW: Although some people of faith would say there is always a right or wrong side, for Picoult that choice is not so clear and can be agonizing to make.

Read it all.

Now, after the video of …[Susan B0yle’s] performance went viral, a flurry of commentary has focused on how we stereotype people into categories, how we fall victim to the prejudices of ageism or look-ism, and how we should learn, once and for all, not to judge books by their covers.

But many social scientists and others who study the science of stereotyping say there are reasons we quickly size people up based on how they look. Snap judgments about people are crucial to the way we function, they say ”” even when those judgments are very wrong.

They would even agree with Ms. Boyle herself, who said after her performance that while society is too quick to judge people by appearance, “There is not much you can do about it; it is the way they think; it is the way they are.”

i cited this article this morning in an adult Sunday School class on James 2. Read it all–KSH.

In case anyone is wondering, I have had two computers, one desktop and one laptop, descend into the abyss. It took an expert approximately 10 days to try to fix the laptop but now, upon its return, the screen doesn’t work. The desktop is still in the computer hospital. Apparently this is related to some ghastly ghoulish trojans. So, no, I am not running on all cylinders, and yes, could you please bear with me–KSH.

Women’s groups cheered the government’s decision to allow 17-year-olds to buy the “morning-after” emergency contraceptive without a doctor’s prescription, but conservatives denounced it as a blow to parental supervision of teens.

The Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday it would accept, not appeal, a federal judge’s order that lifts Bush administration restrictions limiting over-the-counter sales of “Plan B” to women 18 and older. U.S. District Judge Edward Korman ruled last month in a lawsuit filed in New York that President George W. Bush’s appointees let politics, not science, drive their decision to restrict over-the-counter access.

Read it all.

The Rev’d Mr Harris has released via his blog confidential emails not addressed to him. We assume him to be a man of civility and honor, in view of his role as a member of the Executive Council of The Episcopal Church. The Anglican Communion Institute has long been on record as supportive of the Anglican Communion, the Covenant process, and the flourishing of the Episcopal Church and the defense of its Constitution. We have welcomed the Pastoral Visitors idea as emerging from the Communion’s common life, and have been engaged, through Communion Partners, with a plan that would honor the polity of this Church and find a way to maintain the unity of the Church and of the Anglican Communion. Communion Partners has from its inception been on record as wishing to prevent churches from leaving because, given the season we are in, they were unclear about the place of their own mission within the larger Anglican Communion. Our understanding of the proper role to be exercised by the Presiding Bishop, consistent with the Constitution of The Episcopal Church, is the subject of a public document to be found on our web-site (see the 12 March 2009 essay below) and so no secret.

Mr Harris has put before the public email communications that are not addressed to him, but are fully consistent with this larger goal of maintaining the witness of the Anglican Communion and the role of The Episcopal Church as integral within that.

Read it all.

Also, Mary Ailes has important links and comments on this here.

Fr Mariampillai Xavier Karunaratnam, known by everyone as Father Killi, spent a lifetime helping war victims in northern Sri Lanka. A year ago on 20 April, after celebrating mass in the Maangku’lam Church he set off for his parish church in Vannivi’laangku’lam. He was killed on the Mallaavi-Vavunikkulam Road at 12.30 by an explosion. Army and Tamil Tiger rebels have blamed each other for the death. A year to the day after his death friends, clergymen from the Catholic and Anglican Churches, parishioners, civil society activists and members of the Christian Solidarity Movement (CSM) gathered in the capital to remember him in a memorial ceremony.

Reverend Sathivel, Anglican, who opened the service, said in killing him the “assassins sought to kill truth, love and understanding.”

Read it all.

New York Archbishop-designate Timothy Dolan said Monday, on the eve of his installation, that he will challenge the idea that the Roman Catholic Church is unenlightened because it opposes gay marriage and abortion.

In an exclusive interview with The Associated Press, Dolan said he wants to restore pride in being Catholic, especially given the damage the church endured in the clergy sex abuse scandal, which he called a continuing source of shame.

“One would hope that through education and through the joy that we give by our lives that people will begin to see that these fears and this skepticism we have about the church are unwarranted,” Dolan said.

Read it all.

When pastors gaze upon their flocks after sunrise on Sunday, many will see congregations cast in shadows””haunted by diminishing investments and the prospect of losing jobs and homes.

Amid this fear and doubt, the clergy must lead the faithful to a message of hope””the miracle of the Resurrection commemorated at Easter.

To do it, many will rely on the Gospel of Mark, a tale that embodies the anxiety of confronting the unknown. Mark tells the story of Jesus’ life and death, but it closes with a cliffhanger: Three women go to his tomb, only to tremble with fear at finding the crypt bare.

It is that sensation of emptiness, terror and mystery that is drawing pastors to this scripture.

Read it all.

We are interested in your theological as well as personal reflections.

All night had shout of men, and cry
Of woeful women filled His way;
Until that noon of sombre sky
On Friday, clamour and display
Smote Him; no solitude had He,
No silence, since Gethsemane.

Public was Death; but Power, but Might,
But Life again, but Victory,
Were hushed within the dead of night,
The shutter’d dark, the secrecy.
And all alone, alone, alone,
He rose again behind the stone.

–Alice Meynell (1847-1922)

From here:

“Death remains an intruder in the human story; it’s a scourge, a curse, the last enemy. Christians believe the capacity to face it in hope flows directly from the events of the first Easter weekend…and from the abandonment experienced then.

”˜My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’: the words of Jesus from the cross reveal a depth of spiritual torment we can barely conceive: in his hour of most acute agony, he reaches out for his Father, and he’s not there: he’s by himself.

And that sense of abandonment crushed his followers as well, left them confused, bewildered. It’s why the day after Good Friday is always a strange one: a limbo day between the dark horror, and the dazzling light yet to dawn: God in the grave, the source of all life in the world of the dead.

It’s supremely, it seems to me, a day for those perplexed by uncertainty, anxious about health, work, family, faith, the world…and feeling overwhelmingly lonely.

The Christian faith affirms that Jesus tasted the extreme of abandonment precisely so that we need not; except, that is, the serene abandonment which assures us that even in the greatest traumas, God hold us firmly, and his death-defying purposes are always loving ones.”

From here:

On Holy Saturday we enter into the mystery. Today we contemplate Jesus, there in the tomb, dead. In that tomb, he is dead, exactly the way each of us will be dead. We don’t easily contemplate dying, but we rarely contemplate being dead. I have had the blessed experience of being with a number of people who have died, of arriving at a hospital shortly after someone has died, of attending an autopsy, and of praying with health sciences students over donated bodies in gross anatomy class. These were powerful experiences because they all brought me face-to-face with the mystery of death itself. With death, life ends. Breathing stops, and in an instant, the life of this person has ended. And, in a matter of hours, the body becomes quite cold and life-less – dramatic evidence, to our senses, that this person no longer exists. All that is left is this decaying shell that once held his or her life.

Death is our ultimate fear. Everything else we fear, every struggle we have, is some taste of, some chilling approach to, the experience of losing our life. This fear is responsible for so much of our lust and greed, so much of our denial and arrogance, so much of our silly clinging to power, so much of our hectic and anxiety-driven activity. It is the one, inevitable reality we all will face. There is not enough time, money, joy, fulfillment, success. Our physical beauty and strength, our mental competency and agility, all that we have and use to define ourselves, slip away from us with time. Our lives are limited. Our existence, in every way we can comprehand it, comes to an end. We will all die. In a matter of time, all that will be left of any of us is a decomposing body.

Today is a day to soberly put aside the blinders we have about the mystery of death and our fear of it. Death is very real and its approach holds great power in our lives. The “good news” we are about to celebrate has no real power in our lives unless we have faced the reality of death. To contemplate Jesus’ body, there in that tomb, is to look our death in the face, and it is preparation for hearing the Gospel with incredible joy. That we are saved from the ultimate power of sin and of death itself comes to us as a great relief, as a tremendous liberation. If Jesus lives, you and I will live! The mystery of death, which we contemplate today, will be overcome – we will live forever!

There is another aspect of the institution narrative cited in the Roman Canon on which we should reflect this evening. The praying Church gazes upon the hands and eyes of the Lord. It is as if she wants to observe him, to perceive the form of his praying and acting in that remarkable hour, she wants to encounter the figure of Jesus even, as it were, through the senses. “He took bread in his sacred hands ”¦” Let us look at those hands with which he healed men and women; the hands with which he blessed babies; the hands that he laid upon men; the hands that were nailed to the Cross and that forever bear the stigmata as signs of his readiness to die for love. Now we are commissioned to do what he did: to take bread in our hands so that through the Eucharistic Prayer it will be transformed. At our priestly ordination, our hands were anointed, so that they could become hands of blessing. Let us pray to the Lord that our hands will serve more and more to bring salvation, to bring blessing, to make his goodness present!

Read it all.

Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Tomorrow we begin the Holy Triduum, the heart of the entire liturgical year: a time when we immerse ourselves in the central events of our Redemption. The Chrism Mass serves as a prelude to these three days, as priests renew their promises to the Bishop, who then blesses the holy oils and consecrates the chrism signifying the gift of the Holy Spirit. At the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, we recall the institution of the Eucharist, the supreme sign of Christ’s love for us. As we venerate his Cross on Good Friday, we contemplate the full meaning of his words: “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many” (Mk 14:24). Holy Saturday finds us waiting in silent hope for the Easter Vigil, when every church will break forth in a song of joy at the Lord’s Resurrection. The celebration of the Paschal mystery recalls the depth of Christ’s love: he did not wish to exercise his divinity as an exclusive possession, a means of domination, or a sign of distance between him and us. Rather, “he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant” (Phil 2:7) by sharing fully in our human condition, even to the point of death: not a death imposed by blind chance or fate, but one freely chosen in obedience to the Father’s will for the salvation for all. May our fervent celebration of the Triduum draw us ever more deeply into Christ’s Paschal mystery!
***
I am pleased to greet the English-speaking pilgrims present at today’s Audience. May your visit to Rome during this Holy Week fill you with the peace, hope and joy of Christ Jesus!

The real trend of religion among the younger generation is away from dogmatic and institutional Christianity, and towards an individual and personal faith resting not on authority but on experience. This movement has weakened all ecclesiastical bodies which are exposed to it.

–William Ralph Inge, Assessments and Anticipations (London: Cassell, 1929), p. 83. (Readers may be interested to note that the context is a discussion of the failed 1928 Prayer Book) [Hat tip: SGWA].

After the humbling comes the shrinking. After Sir Fred Goodwin, the deluge: the Royal Bank of Scotland announced yesterday that its most famous former employee is to be joined by 9,000 more, half of them made redundant abroad and half in the UK. There has not been a more powerful proof since the financial crisis began that its effects are now being felt not just by the institutions and individuals that created it, but by the people who worked for them.

The RBS job cuts will be politically painful for a government that now owns 70 per cent of the bank. They will, more importantly, be materially painful for thousands of back-office workers who never aspired to be masters of the Universe but never ”” until last year ”” seriously contemplated being laid off either.

Read it all.

A Staten Island preacher was collared on charges of pilfering $84,537 from his flock and blowing it on fancy clothes, plastic surgery, Botox and booze, prosecutors said Monday.

The Rev. William Blasingame, 66, who recently resigned from St. Paul’s Memorial Episcopal Church in Stapleton, took the money from church accounts over a three-year period, law enforcement authorities said.

Read it all.

Update: The parish website is there.

A gunman invaded an immigration services center in downtown Binghamton, N.Y., during citizenship classes on Friday and shot 13 people to death and critically wounded 4 others before killing himself in a paroxysm of violence that turned a quiet civic setting into scenes of carnage and chaos.

The killing began around 10:30 a.m. and was over in minutes, witnesses said, but the ordeal lasted up to three hours for those trapped inside the American Civic Association as heavily armed police officers, sheriff’s deputies and state troopers threw up a cordon of firepower outside and waited in a silence of uncertainty.

Finally, officers who had not fired a shot closed in and found a sprawl of bodies in a classroom, 37 terrified survivors cowering in closets and a boiler room and, in an office, the dead gunman, identified as Jiverly Wong, 42, a Vietnamese immigrant who lived in nearby Johnson City.

Two pistols and a satchel of ammunition were found with the body. In what the police took to be evidence of preparation and premeditation, the assailant had driven a borrowed car up against the center’s back door to barricade it against escape, then had walked in the rain around to the front to begin the attack.

Read it all.

Update: A slideshow is available there.

Mars Hills draws 11,000 worshipers each week””surely a sign of vitality. But what about the next generation? Churches that reach out to only one or two generations may find out that the next generation wants nothing to do with their way of being culturally savvy. What happens when Bell and Mars Hill are 40- and 50-somethings? Will the church gracefully transform itself into the next generation’s new painting, with a new cultural frame of reference? Of course, such worries can be found in any church.

Meanwhile, Christian convictions are vibrant and healthy at Mars Hill. The church shows evidence of passionate commitment, compelling artistry and intellectual curiosity””all of which are evident in Bell’s sermons too. No wonder young adults are paying attention.

I like the guy and I think the videos, used properly, are a useful tool for parishes. I salute Rob Bell for getting out there and trying to bring Jesus meaningfully into people’s lives. Read it all–KSH.

Watch it all.

It is a truth so familiar as to have become cliché: Women are the driving force behind organized religion. They fill the pews, they bring their children into the fold. The Pew data help make sense of these facts. But the same data highlight the cruel irony that in far too many religious contexts in this country, women remain second-class citizens.

Another of the findings of Pew’s 2008 Religious Landscape Survey was that, among people who pray “more than seldom,” a significant proportion across most religious groups say their prayers are regularly answered, at least once a week or once a month. This religious demographic was not broken down by gender.

But it is fair to assume that, given women’s greater likelihood to pray at all, a sizable number of these supplicants are women. It is equally fair to assume that, if religious equality is what they are praying for, many of them are going to have to wait a while longer.

Read it all.