John McCardell, Vice-Chancellor of the University of the South, announced today, June 26, the appointment of the Rt. Rev. J. Neil Alexander, Th.D., D.D, H’02, as Dean of The School of Theology. Alexander will assume the role of dean on Aug. 1, 2012. He succeeds the Very Rev. William S. Stafford, who retired on June 30, 2012, after serving in that position for seven and
one”“half years.

“I am delighted to be able to continue my working relationship with Bishop Alexander in this new role,” said McCardell. “The years we have served together as chancellor and vice-chancellor have been enormously productive for the University, and his numerous strengths are a perfect match for The School of Theology, which is poised to grow and embrace future challenges.”

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The Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith warned June 4 that Mercy Sister Margaret Farley’s 2006 book, “Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics,” contains “erroneous propositions” on homosexual acts, same-sex marriage, masturbation and remarriage after divorce that could cause confusion and “grave harm to the faithful.”

In a notification signed by U.S. Cardinal William J. Levada and approved March 16 by Pope Benedict XVI, the congregation said the book “is not in conformity with the teaching of the church” and “cannot be used as a valid expression of Catholic teaching, either in counseling and formation, or in ecumenical and interreligious dialogue.”

Sister Farley, who taught at Yale University Divinity School from 1971 to 2007 and now serves as Gilbert L. Stark professor emerita of Christian ethics, is a past president of both the Catholic Theological Society of America and the Society of Christian Ethics.

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(I thought of this when I was reading the previously posted article. It is only very slightly edited from its orignial form as a post on the blog in 2004–KSH).

Andrew Adam covers an absolutely taboo topic with some helpful comments, including this truth:

One of the problems at the seminary level is that very few people preach a half-decent sermon in their first dozen, two dozen, perhaps hundred sermons. Overall, the standard of preaching in the Episcopal Church is pretty low, so some people preach sermons that aren’t nearly as bad as the average; but most folks need more than three or four practice sermons in seminary to make significant strides toward fluency and grace in preaching.

I [Kendall Harmon] would submit that the question ought to be why the Episcopal Church is not repenting over our pitiful preaching. Most Episcopal preachers today think they are terrific, and in most cases they aren’t good at all, or worse than that.

And repent and pray for better preaching, and for better preachers, in ECUSA. Heaven knows we need them–KSH.

Leighton Ford famously described Christian leadership as: learning to be led by Jesus; learning to lead like Jesus; and learning to lead people to Jesus. This is what we hope to do at OTC. We want to equip people to be confident in the person and the work of Jesus Christ.

We believe that the biblical Gospel still ”˜works’, that it is in fact “”¦the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes”¦” (Romans 1:16 ESV). So we want to equip individuals to humbly but boldly preach and teach the gospel and the whole counsel of God. We hope to equip people for leadership in a local church that sees the whole world as their mission field. Our College is located in Ottawa, the capital city of Canada, which is itself a very rich mission field.

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From here:

Staff and students at Wycliffe were told last week that Principal Richard Turnbull is to take a leave of absence from the Hall. The Council wishes to make it clear that the Principal has not been dismissed. The Council and Richard are now in ongoing discussions over his future role at Wycliffe, with Vice-Principal Simon Vibert assuming the position of Acting Principal. We have every confidence in Simon, and in the rest of the staff, to ensure continuity and the efficient functioning of the Hall during this time.

The outcome of the discussions with Richard will be communicated to staff and students in due course. However, our overriding priority is to ensure Wycliffe remains unequivocally committed to equipping men and women as leaders, preachers, church planters and evangelists in the mission of proclaiming and living the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, with a deeply biblical understanding of the nature of the Kingdom of God.

At its Baccalaureate Service on May 11, 2012, Trinity School for Ministry announced the appointment of two new professors of New Testament, Mr. Wesley Hill and the Rev. Dr. Peter Walker. Both of these new Faculty members will begin teaching in the fall of 2012.

Mr. Hill is a PhD candidate from the University of Durham, UK where he also received his Master of Arts. He has international teaching experience and comes to Trinity with glowing references. He already has several publications including Washed and Waiting.

Dr. Walker holds both a PhD in New Testament from Cambridge University, UK, and a DPhil from Oxford University, UK. He has taught for many years at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, UK.

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There was a certain style to the RJ [Reformed Journal]’s writing. First some current event or life experience grabbed the writer’s attention. Calvin English professor John J. Timmerman recounted a speech he heard by a vice-president of General Motors, launching GM’s annual “Parade of Progress.” Then the writer exegeted the deeper values driving the topic. The American way of life, Timmerman said, was being identified with an abundance of things. At the dramatic heart of the article, the author put out a tight statement of the core truth at stake. Timmerman, drawing on an enduring Puritan strain, insisted that “the real American sees beyond the means to the goals they should serve.” And then the deeper intellectual play commenced, riff upon riff, showing the varied ways the truth penetrates and bounces off the episode.
What saved these pieces from becoming tedious or predictable was their playfulness. They were more like jazz than like sonatas. Postwar conservative Protestants of various kinds were re-engaging American culture, but the neo-Calvinists seemed more skilled and confident about this mode of thinking. They were less uptight about making mistakes or straying too close to the boundaries of propriety, patriotism, or orthodoxy. I saw this difference being played out at a remarkable event, “A New Agenda for Evangelical Thought,” hosted at Wheaton in 1987. There was a panel of conservative evangelical theologians, including luminaries Carl F. H. Henry and Kenneth Kantzer. How earnestly they labored to keep the conversation rightly centered and bounded, and their body language underscored their efforts. Later came a panel of RJ types: Cornelius Plantinga, Jr., of Calvin Theological Seminary, and Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen and Nicholas Wolterstorff of Calvin College. They were relaxed, making jokes, trying on thoughts and arguments for size, gesturing and improvising freely in a brilliant intellectual jam session.

So the RJ conveyed orthodoxy with a forward view. It was Calvinism as an invitation to a conversation, not as a conversation stopper. It offered mixed feelings about American life, enjoying its bounty and creativity but bristling at its materialism and arrogance. Unlike Sojourners, which started publication as the Post-American, the RJ writers did not accuse the USA of being the main driver of evil in the world. Unlike Christianity Today writers, the RJ crowd readily saw and critiqued American individualism and its lack of regard for the power of history, institutions, systems, and structures.

–Joel Carpenter in Books and Culture, May/June 2012, page 5 (my emphasis)

The Consecration of a new Area Bishop for the Horn of Africa within the Episcopal / Anglican Diocese of Egypt with North Africa and the Horn of Africa

In an amazing gathering that brought together bishops and archbishops from the Coptic Orthodox Church, the Greek Orthodox Church, the Roman Catholic Church, the Coptic Catholic Church, and well as representatives of the Grand Imam of Al Azhar, government officials, Ambassadors, prominent writers, and politicians, the Episcopal / Anglican Diocese of Egypt with North Africa and the Horn of Africa celebrated the consecration of The Rev. Dr. Grant LeMarquand as a new Area (Assistant) Bishop for the Horn of Africa.

The Most Rev. Dr. Mouneer Hanna Anis, together with The Rt. Rev. Michael Lewis (Diocesan Bishop of the Diocese of Cyprus and the Gulf), The Rt. Rev. Dr. Bill Musk (Area Bishop for North Africa), and The Rt. Rev. Ghais Abdel Malek (the retired Diocesan Bishop of Egypt) par-ticipated in the consecration of The Rev. Dr. Grant LeMarquand.

Many people sent greetings, including The Most Rev. & Rt. Hon. Dr. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Other representatives from around the Anglican Communion attended, including: Archbishop Robert Duncan of ACNA; Bishop Peter Tasker of Sydney; representatives of The Diocese of Singapore and The Diocese of South Carolina (our companion dioceses); The Diocese of Pittsburgh; The Diocese of Tennessee; The Diocese of Texas; the Honorary Chairman and Secretary of the Egypt Diocesan Association in the UK; Trinity School for Ministry in Am-bridge, Pennsylvania; The Church Missionary Society, UK; and The Church Missionary Society, Australia.
It was very meaningful to have this consecration on 25 April 2012, on the Feast of St. Mark the Evangelist, the Patron Saint of Egypt, in the presence of the Orthodox churches that were started in the first century by St. Mark. It was also the same day of the consecration of All Saints Cathedral at its present site in Zamalek, Cairo in 1988.

In his sermon, Bishop Mouneer said, “Grant, today you will walk in the steps of St. Frumentius, the first Bishop of Axum in Abyssinia, who was ordained by St. Athanasius, the Patriarch in Alex-andria, here in Egypt in the 4th Century. In this tradition, we are consecrating you an Area Bishop for the Horn of Africa.” He added that we “need to be ready to stand firm in the faith we once re-ceived from the saints.”

Bishop Mouneer reminded Grant that he “will go to harvest the fruit of the seeds that were sown by many great servants of the Lord, including Bishop Andrew Proud who proceeded you.”

He added that “the church in Africa needs to be grounded in the faith and grow in the knowledge and love of Jesus Christ, so that she can replay the role she played in the first millennium in shap-ing the Christian mind. As you know, the church in Africa is growing numerically in an amazing way however, there is a great need for theological education and making true disciples.”

It is worth mentioning that since their establishment, both Episcopal Areas (North Africa and the Horn of Africa) within the Diocese of Egypt, are flourishing and growing. The installation of Bishop Grant LeMarquand will take place at St. Matthew’s Anglican Church in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on 27 October 2012, when the church celebrates the Feast of St. Frumentius.

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Ah, ah, ah–no looking or googling. Guess first please, then read it all.

“The University should be thinking about what its heart is,” [Sam] Wells said. “If you don’t have a heart, you simply commit yourself to a commodity culture where you are only here to get an investment, a degree…. It’s an impoverished notion of what a university can truly be.” For the Chapel to effectively operate as a church, Wells said that it is important to interact with the people Jesus spent most of his life with””the poor. He tried to accomplish this through outreach to Durham’s more impoverished areas.

“Success is seeing people’s lives change and not just saying so but actually seeing the differences,” he said. “Poverty is a mask we sometimes put on people to [conceal] their real wealth… [but it is important for] a rich person to see how poor they are or for a person coming out of prison to see how rich he is…. That’s what the kingdom of God is about, those kinds of transformations.”

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The Reverend Fenhagen served as Rector of several parishes in Maryland, the District of Columbia, and at St. Michael and All Angels’ Episcopal Church in Columbia SC before becoming active in academic settings.

He was Director of the Church and Ministry Program at the Hartford Seminary Foundation.

He was named President and Dean of the General Theological Seminary in New York City in 1978 and retired from there in 1992.

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The Rev. Roger A. Ferlo compares his new calling as the first president of two federated Episcopal seminaries to helping an internet startup firm. Ferlo, Virginia Theological Seminary’s associate dean and director of its Institute for Christian Formation and Leadership, will become president of Bexley Hall and Seabury-Western seminaries beginning July 1.

“It’s kind of like venture capital,” he said. “I’m 60 years old. This is fabulous. I feel like it’s the culmination of my ministry to take these two seminaries and move them to a new place” of ministry.

The boards of trustees for both seminaries announced March 27 that they had approved the federation in unanimous votes. They will share one budget, one president and one board, but continue in their two locations: Seabury-Western in a building shared with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s national office in suburban Chicago and Bexley in its cooperative ministry with Trinity Lutheran Seminary, Columbus, Ohio.

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(Blog readers please note that Father Henderson is a 2009 Graduate of General Theological Seminary currently serving a parish in Connecticut–KSH).

I joined a church that valued tradition and yet was engaged with modernity. I joined a church that embraced the timelessness of dignity and beauty. I joined a church that was engaged theologically and reasonably rather than emotionally in issues of doctrine and order. I joined a church that was a true blend of Catholic and Reformed. I joined a church that valued the uniformities of the Prayer Book even as it explored how to plumb its depths in manifold ways. I joined a church that was sacramentally grounded. I joined a church that believed that how we pray says something about what we believe.

Just as when I went to General [Seminary], finding the Episcopal Church was a joy and it felt exactly like where I was called to be. I felt at home and it was a place that made sense because there was a there there.

I am not sure where the there is now.

As I talk to priests too happy to ignore rubrics and ordination vows to conform to the doctrine, discipline, and worship of the Church because they have decided their sense of “welcome” is more important than the church’s call to common identity,

as I attended a Diocesan Convention at which we sang treacly hymns with narcissistic lyrics,

as I talk to priests in pitch battles in their dioceses about baptizing in the name of the Trinity,

as I attend Eucharists where priests make up the Eucharistic Prayer on the spot (“meal of power” not Body and Blood and “the systems of the world are broken” at the Fraction),

and as I watch the Church one more time hurtle into a divisive squabble, I am feeling profoundly out of place.

The Church that is slashing funding for Christian formation and youth ministry while hurtling toward… “[the Communion of the Unbaptized]” is not the Church I thought I was joining. The Church that has a diocesan convention at which we sing “Shine, Jesus Shine” and ignore the Prayer Book is not the Church I thought I was joining. The Church that is defining sainthood as anyone who has done something good and worthy rather than someone who has done good and worthy things because of their faith in Christ is not the Church I thought I was joining.

Read it carefully and read it all and many of the comments are well worth the time.

A first meeting of representatives of the Anglican Church in North America and the North American Lutheran Church (NALC) was held Tuesday, March 27, at Trinity School for Ministry in Ambridge, PA.

This gathering included representatives from the two denominations, including the leaders of both groups: Archbishop Robert Duncan and Bishop John Bradosky (NALC). The Anglican Church in North America was formed in 2009 as a new Anglican Province in North America. The NALC was formed in 2010 as a reconfiguration of Lutheranism in North America. Both bodies represent a biblical, confessional expression of their respective historic traditions.

The group was hosted by Trinity School for Ministry, a biblical and orthodox Christian seminary which trains men and women for lay and ordained ministry. A presentation was made by Bishop John Rodgers on historical Lutheran-Anglican dialogue. Bishop Rodgers was a regular participant in this work at both the international and national levels from 1969 to 1990.

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You’ve written often about the importance of storytelling, even to the point of suggesting that first-year divinity students should read a diet entirely of fiction — Flannery O’Connor, the Russian novelists, Faulkner. Wonderful idea. How are people transformed by fiction?

I think that their imaginations are transformed. When you’re reading a novel, you’re following a plot and character development. The best writers leave a lot to your imagination. The task of a writer is to get participation from the reader, and you can’t do that by telling them everything. The Bible is that kind of literature. There’s very little explanation””almost no explanation, no definitions. And the writers of Scripture were also, as they were telling these stories, aware of all the other voices that were in the air””Moses, Isaiah, Daniel, Jesus, Paul.

Our school curriculum teaches you how to study. You learn facts. But they don’t do much to help you read in an imaginative way to help you enter the story. That’s what novelists do. So I think a basic immersion in fiction is almost a prerequisite to reading the Bible, to preaching sermons, to teaching classes. Poetry does the same thing, but it takes a different route to do it.

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“This is a very exciting moment for Trinity,” remarked the Very Rev. Dr. Justyn Terry, Dean and President of Trinity School for Ministry. “The vision of the Robert E. Webber Center is a very good fit for our own identity as a global center for Christian formation. We are pleased to come alongside the Center and to engage in this pioneering work.”

“I have been delighted that Trinity School for Ministry has recognized the many points of contact between the work of the late Robert Webber and Trinity’s mission” stated David Neff, Editor in Chief of Christianity Today and co-founder of the Robert E. Webber Center. “The new Robert E. Webber Center at Trinity School for Ministry will be a place where Dr. Webber’s theological and social insights can be brought to bear on the ministry challenges of 2012 and beyond. I’m also thrilled that Joel Scandrett has agreed to take on responsibility for directing the renewed Webber Center through its early years. Joel’s experience in teaching and his ministry in a renewed Anglican context complement his personal history with Robert Webber to make him an ideal choice for this initiative.”

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…Trinity graduates continue to have prominent roles in the Episcopal diocese, the Rev. Scott Quinn among them. On Tuesday he was among three candidates questioned about the seminary.

Rev. Quinn spoke well of the education he had received there, but said that after his decision to remain in the Episcopal Church, “I feel I am not welcomed” on campus. He called the idea of a diocesan ban on Trinity graduates “ridiculous.”

“That’s just like saying any other discriminatory thing,” he said. “But if the people there want to be part of the Episcopal Church, they have to understand it is a diverse group.”

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Almighty and everlasting God, the source and perfection of all virtues, who didst inspire thy servant James de Koven to do what is right and to preach what is true: Grant that all ministers and stewards of thy mysteries may afford to thy faithful people, by word and example, the knowledge of thy grace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Amidst the debris of postmodernism (a movement that has basically run its course) stands a great ambivalence about the nature of truth. The great intellectual transformation of recent decades produced a generation that is not hostile to all claims of truth, but is highly selective about what kinds of truth it is willing to receive.

The current intellectual climate accepts truth as being true in some objective sense only when dealing with claims of truth that come from disciplines like math or science. They accept objective truth when it comes to gravity or physiology, but not when it comes to morality or meaning.

One result of this is that we can often be heard as meaning less than we intend. When we present the gospel, it can easily be heard as a matter of our own personal reality that is, in the end, free from any claim upon others….

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The church’s faithful witness in Sri Lanka amid a rich inter-religious environment and the challenges of post-war reconciliation has fostered new insights for the work of TEAC (theological education in the Anglican Communion). Meeting in Kandy from 1-7 March 2012, the 3rd and final meeting of the Working Party on Theological Education in the Anglican Communion (TEAC 2) evaluated the work achieved to date and developed recommendations for future work at the Communion level.

One of the valuable things learned through TEAC 2 has been the importance of engagement with the local context (having met in Canterbury, UK, Harare, Zimbabwe as well as Sri Lanka) for meaningful theological education reflection. After the much-valued solidarity expressed in Harare, Zimbabwe, in 2011, the 2012 meeting at the invitation of the Church of Ceylon offered a special opportunity to learn from the church’s reflections in the Sri Lankan context.

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William Hamilton, the retired theologian who declared in the 1960s that God was dead, died Tuesday (Feb. 28) in his downtown Portland apartment. He was 87.

Hamilton said he’d been haunted by questions about God since he was a teenager. Years later, when his conclusion was published in the April 8, 1966, edition of Time Magazine, he found himself at the center of a theological storm.

Time christened the new movement “radical theology,” and Hamilton, one of its key figures, received death threats and inspired angry letters to the editor. He lost his endowed chair as a professor of theology at what was then Colgate Rochester Divinity School in 1967.

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Check it out and listen to it some time this Lent.

Lauren Winner is a jumble of contradictions: A Jew who found Christianity in a dream starring Daniel Day Lewis as Jesus, an accomplished historian who rides an oversized tricycle to work, and a memoir writer who wants to keep details of her private life private.

In her latest book, “Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis,” Winner, 35, writes about what happens when belief falters. Her spiritual crisis, she writes, was precipitated by the death of her mother from cancer and the breakup of her marriage three years ago.

“In my case, as everything else was dying, my faith seemed to die, too,” the recently ordained Episcopal priest writes. “God had been there. God had been alive to me. And then, it seemed, nothing was alive ”” not even God.”

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Seminarians currently enrolled at St. Mary’s served as hosts during the opening day of the first formation weekend in January.

“I think the seminarians at St. Mary understand how significant this is and they have been incredible,” Msgr. [Jeffrey] Steenson told the Texas Catholic Herald, newspaper of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston. “They are so energized about this — they know it is historical.”

He credit[s] the “extraordinary efforts and help” and “time and resources” of the archdiocese and Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo with bringing about “exactly what Pope Benedict hoped for — the close relationship with the local diocese and the new ordinariate.”

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The Three Main lectures are on the following topics:

“Justification and the Future of Anglicanism”

“Luther and the English Reformation”

“Justification from Hooker to Newman”

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Charles Hough already had quite a career, including 18 years in the prestigious post of canon to the ordinary in the Episcopal Church’s Fort Worth Diocese. Now he wants to become a Catholic priest.

Hough hopes to lead a group of former Episcopalians in Cleburne, Texas, who have asked to belong to the new Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter, created by Rome for former Episcopalians. Every Saturday, from 9 to 4, he participates in a newly developed program of training for former Episcopal clergy.

He and approximately 60 other former Episcopal priests around the United States, many of whom are married, are studying for the priesthood using a teleconferencing system to hear lectures and discuss their intense course of readings.

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