It had the makings of a B horror movie: Crazed deer crashes through window and, bloodied but undeterred, careers through the halls terrorizing a school in a quiet New Jersey suburb.

But that is exactly what happened yesterday at the Lloyd Road Elementary School in Aberdeen when a 200-pound buck raced through a class of fifth graders and wandered the halls the way a gaggle of errant students would ”” ducking into the nurse’s office and some other rooms ”” before being shepherded out a back door.

It was just before 10 a.m., and Bonnie McCullough and Brenda Adelson were immersed in a vocabulary lesson with their class of 18 fifth graders.

“We heard this crash; I didn’t know what to make of it,” Ms. McCullough said. “It sounded like glass breaking, and I didn’t have time to look too much, and there was this brown blur.”

Read it all.

After our dinner, I snuck away to grab a glass of water, and at the doorway to the pantry I ran into Steve. He was dressed formally, in black with a white collar, with clean rimless glasses and neatly cut hair. I don’t remember exactly what he said, but I do remember my first impression was something like, “Oh gosh, not a priest! I’ve got enough guilt already!” He thanked me for my comments during the discussion and introduced himself as the Episcopal chaplain. At the time, my knowledge was such that this brought up in my mind a small note-card which read only, “1: The American version of the Anglican Church; 2: Like the Roman Catholics, but without the pope.” (These assumptions are actually in many ways correct: the Episcopal Church is the American “daughter” of the worldwide Anglican Communion, so anyone who is Episcopalian is also Anglican.)

Steve asked about my religious background; I told him that my family is evangelical, but that I hadn’t been going to church for a while ”” two years in fact, and not because I was uninterested, but because I didn’t find our evangelical services helpful or enjoyable. I would leave on Sunday mornings feeling conflicted, angry and guilty ”” feeling unworthy without knowing how to make things right.

Read it all.

It may be helpful to distinguish two questions in relation to the JSC Report:

1. Has it been faithful to Windsor and Dar in the criteria it has set by which to judge
TEC?

2. Has it been accurate in its interpretation and assessment of the HoB’s response?

On the first question, it is clear that the JSC have not stuck to the letter of TWR or Dar. The HoB could have embraced the Windsor/Camp Allen Bishops’ resolutions which took this path but they refused. However, it is also clear that JSC have sought to determine whether or not, in practice, TEC has made a commitment to the two requested moratoria. Furthermore, their report understands the moratorium on same-sex blessings in a stronger sense than simply whether or not there is in existence an authorised rite. It appears to be requiring a moratorium that would mean (whatever the private and pastoral response to gay and lesbian Christians) there are no longer any public liturgies of blessing known to be occurring within TEC. Its test, in other words, is captured in the instruction of the Bishop of Hawaii ”“ there must be the bringing to an end of “any liturgies in our churches that might be construed by the reasonable outside observer as a formal public“blessing” or “marriage” of a same-sex couple”.

On the second question, the interpretation and assessment offered was undoubtedly a very generous one. The rejection of the Dar Pastoral Scheme and Council was largely passed by and TEC’s replacement proposals of Episcopal Visitors and wider consultation accepted as a viable alternative model. In addition, there was a willingness to accept the claimed constraints on the HoB due to the alleged supremacy of General Convention in TEC’s polity and a strong and maximalist reading of their commitments (especially in relation to same-sex blessings) that depended more on reading between the lines with a very strong presumption of good faith than on any evidence in the HoB statement (or apparently discussions) itself or any evidence on the ground in many dioceses of TEC. While it will, perhaps, be some time before the generous reading of B033 is tested, it is already becoming clear that the assessment in relation to same-sex blessings was overly optimistic and that a good number of bishops and dioceses have no intention of ending their current practice. What should have been evident from the wording of the statement is now crystal clear in the light of subsequent statements ”“ nothing in the HoB statement is likely to alter the assessment of the Communion Sub-Group Report (para 17) that it is “not at all clear whether, in fact, the Episcopal Church is living with the recommendations of the Windsor Report on this matter” and the Primates’ statement at Dar (para 21) remains as true after NOLA as before ”“ “we understand that local pastoral provision is made in some places for such blessings. It is the ambiguous stance of The Episcopal Church which causes concern among us”. The proof of the pudding will, as always, be in the eating but it seems almost certain that liturgies blessing same-sex unions will continue being conducted in the face of the congregation with the explicit or implicit authority of the bishop in a significant number of dioceses. Furthermore, though contrary to JSC’s maximalist interpretation of the HoB response, this outcome is quite compatible with (indeed perhaps the best understanding of) the intended and plain sense of the HoB statement itself.

In summary, although it may be argued that the JSC slightly lowered the bar set by Windsor/Dar, on the whole they kept faith with the developing Windsor process in terms of the criteria they used. However, the more serious problem is that ”“as has become increasingly obvious since its report was published – they gave the HoB credit for clearing the Windsor/Dar bar when, in fact, they have demonstrably fallen short. That failure at New Orleans sadly means the Archbishop of Canterbury must now face even more difficult decisions than those JSC have already outlined in Part Two of their report.

Read it all.

The Turkish government will seek parliamentary approval for a military operation against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq, a government spokesman said Monday, taking action on one of two major issues straining relations with Washington.
The government will immediately send a motion to the Parliament in hopes of a vote later this week, government spokesman Cemil Cicek said. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government twice acquired similar authorizations from the Parliament in 2003, but did not act on them.

Cicek insisted the only target was the rebel Kurdistan Workers’ Party, known as the PKK.

“We have always respected the sovereignty of Iraq, which is a friendly and brotherly country to us,” Cicek said. “But the reality that everyone knows is that this terrorist organization, which has bases in the north of Iraq, is attacking the territorial integrity of Turkey and its citizens.”

Read it all.

I suppose that it is possible, though not likely, that some of you in this church are as impatient as I am.

-I don’t like to wait.

-I am unhappy in lines of traffic.

-I will go without a breakfast biscuit before I will stand in line behind a busload of high school kids who always seem to have just pulled into the McDonald’s parking lot moments before me.

-And you should see the way I purse my lips when everyone else’s coffee arrives at the table except mine.

My affliction is even of the sort that I am impatient with patient people.

Last Saturday, the curate rode with me to the deacons’ ordination. He left in my car, a piece of painted wood, left over from the reredos construction, a bottle of aspirin, and a lemonade can, which spilled microscopic (albeit significant) drops of lemonade on my upholstery. His intention was to remove these things”¦ eventually. My reaction was to make comment”¦ immediately.

Not many days ago, I walked into my parents’ house and saw my father comfortably stretched out on the sofa. His own mantra is that he can do nothing better than anyone, so I knew for a fact that the only muscle in his body that had moved in an hour was the finger on the remote control…. I therefore said to him cheerfully, I see the medication for your restless leg syndrome is working! He did not think that was nearly as funny as I did.

So yes, I am indeed impatient. And being married for 25 years to a dear soul who is quintessentially “Type B” has done nothing to make my spirit more- shall we say- “mellow”.

So imagine my discomfort when I saw the recent title of an article in a theological journal which stated, IMPATIENCE IS SPIRITUAL ARROGANCE.

–The Rev. Dow Sanderson of Holy Communion, Charleston, S.C. in a recent sermon

Half a dozen years ago, a congregation looked one last time toward the building raised by members’ hands and out across the graves in the churchyard, and wept. Then, the churchgoers turned and left.
This week, they’ll install a new rector, welcome the public to a talk by an Anglican bishop from Rwanda, and play host for the second time to a regional meeting of their new affiliate, the Anglican Mission in the Americas.

“God has blessed our socks off,” said the Rev. Kenneth Cook, assistant to the rector at what was St. John’s Episcopal Church of Huntingdon Valley and now is St. John the Evangelist Anglican Church of Churchville.

“It’s a cool church,” said the Rev. Mark E. Rudolph, scheduled to be installed as its rector Thursday. Rudolph, who was ordained in the Reformed Episcopal Church and served seven years as rector at St. Philips in Warminster, described his path to St. John’s as “circuitous.”

And it was, at least compared to the path walked by members of St. John’s Montgomery County parish ”“ which was decisively away from the Episcopal Church USA. They were among those who broke with the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania over church trends they feared veered too far from fundamental beliefs.

They were not among those who plunged into legal battle with the diocese over “sticks and bricks,” as they call it.

“If we are going to live and die for this property,” Cook said, remembering the agonizing talks, “we might as well admit this is an idol for us.”

Read it all.

The Lord Mayor of Belfast has apologised to a council worker left with back injuries after he tried to leapfrog her during a photoshoot.
Lorraine Mallon suffered a slipped disc when Jim Rodgers’ knee accidently hit her head as he attempted to vault her.

Ms Mallon had been dressed as a tomato to launch a gourmet garden event in Botanic Gardens last month.

The Ulster Unionist councillor said he attempted the act of athleticism at the request of photographers.

“I have been absolutely devastated over what has happened,” he said.

“There had been three false runs and I think Lorraine thought this was just another one.

Read it all and a picture is here.

TEC spokeswoman Neva Rae Fox said a Quincy vote to leave would have to go through the church’s General Convention in 2009 in order to be recognized. Dioceses can’t leave The Episcopal Church on their own say-so because they were created by the church’s General Convention, Fox said.

“They’re dead wrong on that,” said Wicks Stephens, legal adviser for the Anglican Communion Network in Pittsburgh, of which the Diocese of Quincy is a part.

“If you read the constitution and canons of The Episcopal Church, in order for a diocese to come into union with other dioceses of The Episcopal Church through the General Convention, that diocese has to meet certain standards, including forming itself, becoming financially sustainable and other things, including allegiance to The Episcopal Church.”
The Rev. Jim Naughton, director of communications for the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, D.C., said, though, that “this is an argument that didn’t exist until they needed it to exist.”

“No one has previously interpreted constitutions and canons in this way,” said Naughton, whose diocese leans liberal and who contributes to an Episcopalian blog called The Lead.

But the Rev. John Spencer, president of Quincy’s joint standing committee, agreed with Stephens.

“If you actually read the constitution carefully, what it says is the people and the churches and the clergy form a diocese,” Spencer said.

Dioceses, the vicar of St. Francis Church in Dunlap said, created the General Convention, not the other way around.

Read it all.

But Mr. Perrotta said he purposely did not take what he called the Tom Wolfe immersion approach to researching the novel. Instead he wanted to learn just enough to make the novel plausible. At one point he heard about a woman in New York who had, like Ruth, been disciplined for remarks she made in a sex-education class.

Mr. Perrotta called the woman, but when she never returned the call, he was actually relieved. “I was happy with what I’d written,” he said. “Once I’d even heard that the story I was telling sounded familiar and possible, that was enough for me.”

He said he had no idea how an evangelical Christian audience would respond to the book. One character in particular, the aggressively pious Pastor Dennis, seems in some respects to fit a typical liberal perception of an evangelical preacher. But Mr. Perrotta said he actually admired the character’s integrity and authentic caring for Tim. Above all Pastor Dennis is not a hypocrite, Mr. Perrotta said. “Like a lot of secular Americans after that first wave of evangelical televangelists crashed and burned, like Jimmy Swaggart and Jim and Tammy Faye, there was this sense of, ”˜I know who those people are, they’re just a bunch of hypocrites,’” he said. “It took me a long time to understand that a lot of them were completely genuine.

After the abstinence rally in Wayne, Jason Burtt, the national director of Silver Ring Thing, the organization that mounted the event, approached Mr. Perrotta in the lobby and started chatting with him about the novel. When Mr. Perrotta explained the plot, Mr. Burtt said he didn’t believe in coercing teachers. “It is so unconvincing when someone in school is forced to teach abstinence if they don’t believe it,” Mr. Burtt said.

As he prepared to drive back to his mother’s house, Mr. Perrotta said he was struck by how courteous and nonconfrontational Mr. Burtt had been. Over all, he said, evangelical Christian culture seems mostly polite, as well as extremely un-ironic. In response, “a certain kind of collegiate irony is like a reflex,” Mr. Perrotta said. “And it’s a reflex of superiority and condescension. It just wells up. But when I write, I try to quiet it down.”

Imagine that, a lot of them being completely genuine. And their culture polite, too. My oh my. Read it all–KSH.

We are deeply saddened by today’s decision of the Ottawa diocesan synod. Unfortunately, the synod has chosen to reject the pleas of the global Anglican Communion, and ”˜walk apart’ from the vast majority of Anglicans worldwide.

We are grateful that Bishop Chapman has not made a hasty decision to endorse this action and pray that he will see the wisdom of listening to the Primates’ call. The Primates have asked the Canadian and US Churches for an unambiguous endorsement of traditional Church teaching on sexuality and an end to same-sex blessings.

“At a minimum, we hope the Bishop will provide a period of time to allow parishes and clergy to discuss their futures without fear of reprisal and with the confidence that the Bishop will honour the need for such reasonable and legitimate discussion,” says the Right Reverend Donald Harvey, moderator of the Anglican Network in Canada. “There must be care for people who uphold Biblical teaching and are Communion minded. We need a charitable way forward.”

Should the Bishop agree to this request, the diocese will abandon historic Anglican teaching and signal that it does not value walking with the global Anglican Communion. This would only widen the split and fuel the crisis in the Communion.

This crisis is fundamentally a theological dispute about core Christian and historic Anglican teaching. It is about how we understand the nature, authority and truth of the Scripture. The question for the church is: are we going to view the culture through the lens of Scripture or will we view the Scripture through the lens of our culture. These are irreconcilable views of the Scripture that have led us to the brink of schism in the Anglican Communion. The Ottawa diocesan decision shows that the Anglican Church of Canada has a de facto “local option” policy for same sex blessings which is the opposite of what the Primates of the Anglican Communion requested in their Dar es Salaam Communiqué. This will also violate the conscience of many biblically faithful Anglicans in Canada.

The Network supports biblically-faithful, Communion-committed Canadian Anglicans. We are committed to remaining true to historic Anglican orthodoxy as articulated in the founding principles of Anglicanism in Canada, the Lambeth Conference and the Primates’ Communiqués. We stand firm in the mainstream of Anglican tradition and Christian teaching ”“ together with the vast majority of Anglicans worldwide.

A framed document hangs in a dining room-turned sanctuary on the outskirts of this tiny central Mississippi city that reads, “Diocese of Thika, the Anglican Church of Kenya.”

The certificate shows who has authority over the two-month-old congregation, called St. Michael and All Angels Anglican Church.

“We gave them what I call ‘the kiss of peace goodbye,’ ” said St. Michael’s priest the Rev. Linda Berry about her break from the Episcopal Church U.S.A. “Our main focus is on what we’re doing now, which is redoing church.”

Berry is part of a national movement of former Episcopalians and other believers aligning their congregations with conservative Anglican churches in Africa. Those seeking African oversight say they’ve become disillusioned with what they consider to be an increasingly secular drift in the Episcopal Church U.S.A.

Read the whole article.

The “survival of the world” is at stake if Muslims and Christians do not make peace with each other, leaders of the Muslim world will warn the Pope and other Christian leaders today.

In an unprecedented open letter signed by 138 leading scholars from every sect of Islam, the Muslims plead with Christian leaders “to come together with us on the common essentials of our two religions” and spell out the similarities between passages of the Bible and the Koran.

Read it all.

“The Church of England Evangelical Council has met and considered the responses of The Episcopal Church (TEC) to the questions asked of it from the Primates”² Meeting in Tanzania. We wish to report back to the Anglican Evangelical churches we represent the results of our consultation.

We are committed to the Church of England and the Anglican Communion.

We believe TEC”²s response does not meet the requests of the Primates from Dar es Salaam, not merely for clarification but for repentance and turning back from their clear intention to affirm same-sex blessings and the consecration of practising homosexuals to the episcopate. They have continued to widen a gap of their own making. As a result the fabric of the Communion is torn almost beyond repair.

We support attempts to draw the Communion back together around a covenant, but in the light of TEC”²s response this covenant may not hold. TEC has shown by its pronouncements and its practice to have placed itself outside the faith uniquely revealed in the Holy Scriptures and set forth in the Catholic Creeds.

We support the intentions of the Common Cause Council and those bishops invited to give pastoral care for congregations in the United States.

We support those Bishops who have said that under the present arrangements they cannot attend the Lambeth Conference. We invite those English dioceses who are twinned with dioceses and provinces overseas to consult with their companion dioceses about whether to attend the Lambeth Conference. We prayerfully counsel Church of England bishops to consider whether in the light of TEC”²s response they may wish to absent themselves.

Jesus Christ unites people from different races, cultures, economic groups, genders and sexual inclinations into a true inclusivity based on repentance, faith and the gift of the Spirit. This is the true diversity of the transforming gospel. In effect TEC”²s approach to inclusiveness excludes the majority of Anglicans from other provinces who are faithful to Biblical teaching. We affirm as the will of God the biblical teaching that we are called either to heterosexual marriage or celibacy.

We wish to uphold the Primates in our prayers as they receive TEC”²s response and as they work for the health of the Anglican Communion.”

A few years back I was told about an incident that happened at one of our larger Salt Lake churches. A new couple had attended the main service one day, and at the coffee hour following, asked the parish administrator what were the expectations of members of this congregation? The administrator who told me this story said she was flabbergasted””no one had ever raised that question before and she didn’t know what to say.

This report stayed with me because I wondered what it would say about us if the reply was “We have no expectations of our people.” I am sure the administrator in question found something to say, other than that, but the question remains interesting to me.

Do we in fact have expectations and just hope that people will pick them up by osmosis? Or, are we so anxious for new members that we fear any articulation of expectations might put them off our church?

Or, do we use the gentler word, ‘norms,’ and reserve the occasion of speaking to them to vestries or other smaller groups?

Or are they to be found in the mission/ vision or hopes/plans category.

Perhaps our expectations are just ‘there,’ embedded in our life together, but they only show up as we quietly reject people who don’t live up to them?

Read it all.

Moreover Josi’ah put away the mediums and the wizards and the teraphim and the idols and all the abominations that were seen in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem, that he might establish the words of the law which were written in the book that Hilki’ah the priest found in the house of the LORD.

Before him there was no king like him, who turned to the LORD with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might, according to all the law of Moses; nor did any like him arise after him.

–2 Kings 23:24-25

Hey every once in a while we need to jazz it up with pictures.

Many Christians say grace before a meal, thanking God for the food on their tables. But few stop to consider where their food came from, how it was grown and at what cost it arrived on their plates.
A conference at Duke Divinity School starting Monday attempts to bring clarity to that prayer, so often cited but seldom explored.

“Our Daily Bread: A Theology and Practice of Sustainable Living” is Duke’s latest venture into the moral implications of eating, a subject that has been much discussed recently with a crop of popular books on the perils of the industrial food supply.

The conference is aimed at clergy and lay leaders and draws on some of the leading thinkers in the field. One is a geneticist. Another a poet and farmer. But all share a conviction that churches ought to bring a discussion of food into their pulpits.

“How we eat is the single most important decision we make about the health of our planet,” said Ellen Davis, a professor of Bible and practical theology at the divinity school, who championed the conference.

The idea is not to encourage pastors to eat organic, but to examine the ways in which Christians have become alienated from their food sources and have neglected their responsibility to care for creation. Instead of encouraging sustainable agriculture and a love of the environment, many Christians are preoccupied with building even bigger sanctuaries and paving even larger parking lots.

Read it all.

Seventeen bishops have already been ordained by a variety of African churches to lead splinter groups in the United States, and there are more on the way.

Rwanda has almost as many bishops in America as it does at home.

And there is gathering momentum to unite into an independent new church and compete for recognition as the authentic voice of Anglicanism in the United States.

John Guernsey, ordained a bishop earlier this month in Uganda, presides over All Saints, and 32 other parishes.

He says a united traditionalist Anglican Church cannot come soon enough, and looks to their meeting in Pittsburgh to take a big step towards establishing it.

“Clearly we want to be fully unified as a biblical, missionary, Anglicanism that is one”, he says.

“We certainly hope that the Anglican Communion will give recognition and standing to those who are holding to the teaching of the Communion here in America.”

Read it all.

Colorado Episcopal Bishop Rob O’Neill joined his colleagues Tuesday, pledging not to push same-sex unions and openly gay bishops until a wider consensus emerges in the worldwide Anglican Communion.
The U.S. bishops, meeting in New Orleans, were responding to a demand by the conservative Anglican majority overseas to renounce their pro-gay policies by Sunday, or face censure or even expulsion from the 72 million- member communion.

However, conservative churches in Colorado won’t buy the bishops’ carefully worded compromise, the Rev. Jim Paul, of Fort Collins predicted Tuesday.

“We’ve heard all this before,” Paul said.

Paul said his 225 parishioners at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Fort Collins will announce on Sunday’s deadline whether they plan to leave the diocese for a more compatible Anglican organization. He expects other Colorado churches to make similar decisions.

“They’re being very quiet out there, but we know other parishes are lined up behind us,” he said.

Read it all.

The leaders of several conservative Anglican churches in the United States, some of which are still part of the Episcopal Church and some of which have broken away, are gathering this week in Pittsburgh to discuss their future. Four or five of the 110 Episcopal dioceses are talking about trying to leave the Episcopal Church.

“What we were looking for was clarity, and what we got is an exercise in wordsmithing,” said Robert Lundy, spokesman for the American Anglican Council, an alliance of conservatives. “Overall, we feel disappointment.”

The Episcopal Church has repeatedly sought to portray the conservatives who would leave as a tiny minority.

“The conflict that you read about in the headlines is not reality in 95 percent of the church,” Jefferts Schori said yesterday.

Bishop John W. Howe of Central Florida, one of the most conservative bishops present at the meeting in New Orleans, said last night that he did not vote for the statement because it did not bar blessings of same-sex unions outright, but that he also thought that, among the Anglican primates, as leaders of provinces are called, “the majority will find it acceptable.” Howe, asked if he would try to remove his diocese from the Episcopal Church, said “absolutely not.”

“I think we did better than I expected,” he said.

Read it all.

”˜I wish it need not have happened in my time,’ said Frodo.
”˜So do I,’ said Gandalf, ”˜and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us

Then Frodo kissed Merry and Pippin, and last of all Sam, and went abroad; and the sails were drawn up, and the wind blew, and slowly the ship slipped away down the long grey firth; and the light of the glass of Galadriel that Frodo bore glimmered and was lost. And the ship went out into the High Sea and passed on into the West, until at last one night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.

–J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

My information dovetails with Jim Naughton’s below. The sections cover a lot of interesting topics: Gene Robinson coming to Lambeth, for example, and boundary crossings. I hear that some of the language is so controversial the final form MAY need to be voted on by section.

My early sense is that this feels like an attempt at appeasement, rather than to answer the requests on their own terms. In other words, it is a fudge of sorts but with lots of components.

If indeed this is what is coming, I am praying for a minority report.

Jim Naughton has this short blurb posted at Episcopal Cafe (The Lead)

Saying too much?

When the House of Bishops reconvenes, it will vote on a resolution of “seven or eight” bullet points written in resolution style followed by about a page and a half of explanatory langauge. I am told that there is general agreement on the bullet points, but that some bishops feel the explanatory language says more than is necessary, and raises issues that don’t need to be addressed. The PB thinks they can wrap this up by the 5 p. m. Eucharist.

(posted in full since access to Episcopal Cafe may be iffy, just as T19/SF have also been slammed by high traffic)

This morning, after listening to tales from over 20 dioceses of congregations splitting and foreign “incursions” (evidently the new preferred term for the formerly popular “border crossings”) around the Episcopal Church, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori made this astonishing statement:

“The conflict that you read about in the headlines is not reality for 95 percent” of the church.

Read it all.

At the end of the day, the bishops emerged with nothing decided. But Bishop J. Neil Alexander, of Atlanta, was optimistic that they would soon produce a winning document.

“My own feeling is the statement will be shaped in such a way that it will be well received by the leaders of the Anglican communion and also be well received by the majority of the members of the Episcopal Church,” Alexander said.

That remains to be seen. According to several sources, the bishops have agreed on content that is unlikely to appease conservatives.

They will reportedly reiterate that they will show restraint in consecrating openly gay bishops, but they will not rule it out altogether.

They may say they will not officially perform same-sex blessings that are not authorized ”” yet, nearly a dozen dioceses openly permit them. And they will back a proposal that would let the presiding bishop appoint a few bishops to be ambassadors to the unhappy conservative congregations.

But that falls short of the independent oversight conservatives had wanted.

Read (or listen to) it all.

Kendall,

Louie Crew cites the reference in paragraph 143 of the Windsor Report to a “breadth of private response to situations of individual pastoral care.” But the cited language in the Windsor Report is a quote from the Primates’ Pastoral Letter of May 2003. The Primates’ letter in turn cites as its source on the individual pastoral care issue True Union in the Body. What does True Union in the Body say about the subject? In Section 5, “Embodying True Grace: The Pastoral Response of the Church,” we find this: “Pastoral care that is shaped by this costly grace will resist actions to legitimate same-sex unions and seek to show that, because they are in theological error, such actions by the Church do not contain within them the promised seed of freedom.” (paragraph 5.15) “Thus the decision to bless same-sex unions, rather than assisting a life of faithful witness and being good pastoral practice, sends out contradictory messages concerning the Christian life. It undermines faithful witness by leading Christian believers into areas of real temptation and indeed sin.”
(paragraph 5.16)

We are asked to believe that blessings of same sex unions are within the range of private pastoral responses envisioned by the Primates (and in the Windsor Report), but in fact the Primates’ (and the Windsor Report’s) cited source on the subject directly negates the view that unofficial blessings are to be embraced as a permissible pastoral response.

From here:

I am praying for an improvement in the House of Bishops’ gross motor skills.

I agree. Once again I do not think that our trumpeted polity looks very impressive in practice. But let us see what comes later.

with Christ in the vessel we can smile at the storm
smile at the storm
smile at the storm
with Christ in the vessel we can smile at the storm as we go sailing home
sailing sailing home
sailing sailing home
with Christ in the vessel we can smile at the storm as we go sailing home

http://www.anglicantv.org/blog/index.cfm/2007/9/21/Bloggers-Round-Table

As of 9 p.m. Central, still no roundtable. Kevin’s having trouble rounding everybody up… stay tuned. We’ll post info as we get it, but it’s looking doubtful that this will be tonight.

From here:

I enjoyed reading the evenhanded article Decision Nears for Episcopalians” (Sept. 13). Even so, I would like to correct some misunderstandings.

The constitution and canons of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh date from 1865, and so don’t quite qualify as being “centuries old.” This is, of course, a minor point.

To characterize the troubles within the Episcopal Church as being about “whether to ordain gay non-celibate clergy and provide same-sex blessings” is a common recasting of deeper, more divisive, theological issues. Many in national leadership in the Episcopal Church deny basic, historic doctrines of Christianity such as the trinity, the divinity of Jesus, the historic resurrection and the atonement of Good Friday. Additionally, the authority of the Bible in judging the speech and actions of the church has come into question. Charles E. Bennison, the bishop of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia) has gone so far as to say, “The church wrote the Bible, and the church can rewrite the Bible.” These are the real issues at hand.

The PG also allowed Joan Gundersen’s statement, “Boundaries are geographic,” to go unchallenged. Most people don’t realize the Episcopal Church (USA) claims dioceses in the following countries: Taiwan, Haiti, Virgin Islands, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Honduras, Puerto Rico and Venezuela, as well as the Missionary Diocese of the Navajoland, encompassing four states in the Western United States, and a convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe, both of which embrace overlapping jurisdictions involving other Episcopal dioceses and/or Anglican provinces.

All in all, thank you for the coverage of this unfolding drama.