Since 2007, the Lambeth Diploma and Lambeth MA are no longer offered by the Archbishop’s Examination in Theology (AET) because of the launch of MPhil/PhD research degrees. The research degrees programme has been developed with Quality Assuarance Agency requirements and general university standards in mind.

The Archbishop of Canterbury enjoys the right to grant these degrees by an Act of Parliament in 1533. This act gave Archbishop Cranmer the right to grant dispensations previously granted by the Pope.

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The Right Reverend Edward L. Salmon, Jr., Chairman of the Board of Trustees, and the Very Reverend Robert S. Munday, Dean and President of Nashotah House Theological Seminary, announce that Dean Munday has resigned as the Dean and President of Nashotah House, effective June 30, 2011.

As of July 1, 2011, Dean Munday will become the Research Professor of Theology and Mission at Nashotah House. Dean Munday will be relocating his family and residence from the Nashotah Deanery to Hobart House, a residence owned by the seminary on Upper Nashotah Lake.

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The first ever international consultation for Anglican Communion theological college Principals and Deans, gathering together representatives from 27 countries, has been held in Canterbury. We celebrate and affirm the vital significance of theological education for the life and health of the Church and the whole people of God. We believe that good theological education has transforming power, and can promote a global understanding of Anglican identity. Our consultation has contributed to the unity of the Anglican Communion, as well as enabling various models of ecumenical engagement to be explored. We identified through our meeting a shared commitment to fostering active and discerning Christian discipleship which embraces holistic mission and enables the building up of the Kingdom of God.

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Lord God, in whose providence Jackson Kemper was chosen first missionary bishop in this land, that by his arduous labor and travel congregations might be established in scattered settlements of the West: Grant that the Church may always be faithful to its mission, and have the vision, courage, and perseverance to make known to all peoples the Good News of Jesus Christ; who with thee and the Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, for ever and ever.

A 400-page book on pneumatology (theology of the Holy Spirit) by a systematic theologian may sound like an unlikely candidate for international acclaim. But the Rev. Dr. Robert D. Hughes III, author of Beloved Dust: Tales of the Spirit in the Christian Life (Continuum, 2008), has already won the inaugural des Places-Libermann Award in Pneumatology from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, and the book has been shortlisted for the 2011 Michael Ramsey Prize.

Hughes is professor of systematic theology and Norma and Olan Mills Professor of Divinity at the University of the South’s School of Theology.

“I was very grateful for that kind of recognition,” Hughes said in an interview with The Living Church. “It meant someone was reading the book and getting it.”

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Bishop Michael’s homily focused on the Resurrection narratives (noting his early sighting of a Pittsburgh road sign proclaiming Resurrection Avenue – “you can’t get better than that!”) Calling the post-Resurrection appearances “spine-tingling” and “out of this world, in every sense of that term”, he expressed his puzzlement as to why the Apostle Thomas has had such an unfavorable press, given that he is a model for Christians and Christian community. It is he who acknowledges Jesus with the stunning declaration “My Lord and My God”. From Thomas, members of the Church – and future clergy – should learn to point always to Jesus and our Lord’s encounter with Thomas may be understood in liturgical terms, as both acknowledgment and acclamation.

Bishop Michael decried the tendency of contemporary evangelical revivalism to emphasize the person making the decision to accept Christ, almost to a Pelagian level, when the truth is that such decisions can only be a response to God’s choosing and calling. Everyone will have a different story – as it should be – and the call of today’s graduating class has been tested and matured and will now be evidenced in ministry. Companionship – not just of God but of mentors – will be important on their present journey.

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Imagine an institution that requires its leaders to attend not only college, but graduate school. Imagine that the graduate school in question is constitutionally forbidden from receiving any form of government aid, that it typically requires three years of full-time schooling for the diploma, that the nature of the schooling bears almost no resemblance to the job in question, and that the pay for graduates is far lower than other professions. You have just imagined the relationship between the Christian Church and her seminaries.

Mainline churches are nearly universal in their requirement that their Priests/Pastors/Ministers/Reverends be seminary graduates, and since seminary is a graduate school, this means the students must first be successful undergraduates. So take all of the arguments about a college bubble and add at least three years of tuition cost and forgone income.

But you’re not quite done: My friend Father Jay Geisler counsels seminary students. He tells me that in his experience roughly half of matriculated students do not graduate within three years. In addition, he tells me that the living costs tend to be higher for seminary students than for undergrads because undergrads are almost never married with children, but seminary students often are. As such, dorm room type accommodations for grads will not do….

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The Episcopal Church is changing.

”¢ 87% of TEC is “non-hispanic white”
Ӣ 61% of those who attend church are women
Ӣ 33% of Episcopalians have college degrees,
32% have graduate degrees
Ӣ 30% earn $100,000 per year or more

Contrary to what many people believe, everyone in our church is not old. The fact is:

Ӣ 60% of Episcopalians are 49 or younger. Only 13% are 65+.
Kirk Hadaway, research specialist for the Episcopal Church tells
me that just 10 years ago the Episcopal Church had 2.3 million
members. In 2009 it was 2.0 million.
Ӣ Since 1999 our membership has declined by 300,000.

Although the number of ordained Episcopal clergy has increased during the past decade, the number serving congregations dropped by 800, from 6,062 to 5,262.

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McGreevey — who shocked the nation in 2004 when he announced he was a “gay American” and stepped down from office — has been denied his bid to join the priesthood of the Episcopal Church, The Post has learned.

Church leaders, who have long embraced gay parishioners and clergy, were bothered by McGreevey’s bitter divorce, sources told The Post.

“It was not being gay but for being a jackass — [McGreevey] didn’t come out of the whole divorce looking good,” said a source with the Episcopal Diocese of Newark.

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I will take comments on this submitted by email only to at KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

Read it all and follow the links.

Also in 2009, Arcus gave the communications firm of Douglas Gould and Company a grant of $194,200 to provide communications support to both the UM Reconciling Ministries Network and Lutherans Concerned to assist their efforts “to advance the full inclusion of LGBT people in the United Methodist Church and in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.”

Here are several other Arcus grants from last year:

Church Divinity School of the Pacific: $404,351 “to develop official rites for the blessing of same-gender relationships within the Episcopal Church….”

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I’m ordained, 37, single (never married), with experience pastoring in large churches. Given my credentials, I had zero anxiety initially. Then I started reading “job requirement” phrases like these in pastoral job applications:

-“We are looking for a married man”
-“Preferably married”
-“Is married (preferably with children)”

These churches explicitly were not looking to hire someone single–like Jesus or Paul. I then was surprised to discover that even though the majority of adult Americans are single (52 percent), that only 2 percent of senior pastors in my denomination are single! Something was clearly amiss.

Read it all and note part two is there.

Follow up: the New York Times ran a piece on this there.

The second meeting of the Steering Group of TEAC 2 (Theological Education in the Anglican Communion) took place in Harare, Zimbabwe, February 17 ”“ 24 2011, at the invitation of Bishop Chad Gandiya, Anglican Bishop of Harare and a member of the Steering Group. It was chaired by Archbishop Colin Johnson of Toronto, Canada.

Although problems with obtaining a visa for Zimbabwe had prevented several members of the Steering Group from getting to Harare, and their input was missed, the fidelity and witness amidst persecution of Bishop Chad and his clergy and people offered a vital context for TEAC’s work.

The Group offered two days of ”˜Continuing Ministerial Education’ to about 80 clergy from the Diocese of Harare and other Dioceses of the Church of the Province of Central Africa. The training developed themes explored in the Signposts statement which seeks to set out the essentials of the Anglican Way, ”˜Formed by Scripture’, ”˜Shaped through Worship’, ”˜Ordered for Communion’, ”˜Directed by God’s Mission’. Members of the Steering Group gained as well as gave, honoured to meet with the courageous clergy of the diocese and learn of their experiences. The powerful Shona song, “Namata urinde” “Watch and pray” (which can be heard in the audi player below) marked the beginning and end of the teaching sessions and seemed an extraordinarily apt watchword for these Christians standing firm in their faith in spite of difficulties and dangers.

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That’s the task of ministry: using words, frail things really, to make sense of the incarnate God who’s beyond our sense.

Seminaries, at their best, are strong ecologies of reading and writing. They’re about setting students on a course for a ministry of abundant life for the sake of the church’s flourishing. They’re about helping students and their future flocks inch slightly higher in love of God and neighbor. Saint Basil the Great in the fourth century situated this mission in the context of reading and writing, and he put it really well. In Basil’s day, people were arguing over how exactly to describe the relationship between Jesus and the One who sent him, between the Father and the Son””are they the same, different, or sort of both? And there were of course the naysayers, the people who said it didn’t matter, who argued that we should be out there helping the poor instead of poring over this esoteric academic nonsense. Basil had an answer:

Those who are idle in the pursuit of righteousness count theological terminology as secondary, together with attempts to search out the hidden meaning in this phrase or that syllable, but those conscious of the goal of our calling realize that we are to become like God, as far as this is possible for human nature. But we cannot become like God unless we have knowledge of God, and without lessons there will be no knowledge. Instruction begins with the proper use of speech, and syllables and words are the elements of speech. Therefore to scrutinize syllables is not a superfluous task.

Sure, Basil says, those who don’t care about holiness don’t care about language. But those who want to love God know that our only way to do that is to love language””as theologians, future pastors, and educators, as writers, all we have is words from God to give out to other people. And words are enough.

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Map-makers use a lovely word to describe the essential discipline of checking the map they are making, however perfect and satisfying it seems, against the uneven ground of the earth it pictures: ground-truthing.They get away from the table, outside the car, and walk across the earth, which is always bigger, richer than the map. Maps are useful guides. But we need to keep checking them against the bumpy ground we walk on. The intertwined pleasures and dangers of maps are especially good to be aware of in a school of Christian theology…[or any parish]: for theologies too are maps””human worlds imposed on the mysteries of God’s action. It is all too easy to become overly comfortable with our world of necessary maps. Perhaps, then, theological students””and pr ofes s or s ””must , more than anyone, cultivate the discipline of ground-truthing.

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As its cover story for the Dec. 15, 2008 issue, the editors of Newsweek offer readers a hopelessly distorted and one-sided propaganda piece on “gay marriage” entitled “Our Mutual Joy.” The 2800-word article is by Lisa Miller, religion editor and author of the “Belief Watch” column for the magazine (her academic credential is a B.A. in English at Oberlin College). She claims that Scripture actually provides strong support for validating homosexual unions and no valid opposition to “committed” homosexual practice. She quotes from scholars such as Neil Elliott and “the great Bible scholar” Walter Brueggemann, who are strongly supportive of “gay marriage.”

There is not the slightest effort on Miller’s part to think critically about her own line or reasoning. The lone voice that she cites against homosexual practice is not from a scholar but from a certain Rev. Richard Hunter, a United Methodist minister who offered a short comment for a “roundtable” discussion sponsored by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. From the thousand pages or so that I have written on the subject over the past decade Miller cites not a word, including my critique of Elliott’s untenable claim that Paul in Romans 1:24-27 was thinking only of the exploitative homosexual intercourse practiced by depraved emperors like Nero and Caligula; and my critique (pp. 11-12) of “Brueggemann’s” use of Gal 3:28 (“there is [in Christ] no ”˜male and female’”) as support for homosexual unions (my critique is directed at Prof. Stacy Johnson of Princeton Seminary but it applies equally to Brueggemann’s claim).
Miller’s article reminds me of the equally distorted (but thankfully much shorter) op-ed article put out in The New York Times four years ago by Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof (“God and Sex,” Oct. 23, 2004). My response to Kristof, “”˜God and Sex’ or ”˜Pants on Fire’?”, showed how bad that piece was. My response to Miller will do the same. This essay has three primary components: a discussion of Scripture apart from the witness of Jesus; a discussion of Jesus’ witness; and concluding thoughts, which takes in also Meacham’s “Editor’s Desk” column.

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Sharper Than a Two-Edged Sword consists of various essays from well-known contributors: Thomas Briedenthal (Bishop of Southern Ohio), Ellen Davis (Episcopalian), Amy Plantinga Pauw (Presbyterian), Richard Hays (Methodist), Robert Jenson (Lutheran) and Roman Catholics James Buckley, R.R. Reno, and Michael Root. The chapters were given as papers at a conference at Duke Divinity School, sponsored by the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology, in 2006. They were directed to pastors and students, and the level is general and accessible. Three contributions deal directly with preaching and teaching the Bible in church and the role of the laity. The others speak more generally to the theme of theological interpretation. The book is a compact illustration of certain trends in theological reading, with an emphasis on practice.

All in all, these three works would be good additions to a library for those wanting to hear more about the theological interpretation of Scripture. They reflect the variety of ecclesial voices now looking at the task of Christian interpretation of Scripture, from a fresh direction. I would welcome further clarity on appeal to the “Rule of Faith” that frequently arises, and more precision on its place in the early Church, especially in respect of the Old Testament. Also, the legacy of historical-critical questions remains a crucial ingredient in any effort to read the Bible in our day. The question is just what legacy that represents and how it can best be integrated in the light of proper concern to hear the earlier history of interpretation and the particularities of the community of Christian readers, now and in the past.

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[The originial languages are]…good for helping us understand the Bible, the Word of God, which for Christians is a person, who asks us to connaître him. This involves spending time with him, pondering the Word, contemplating it, mulling it over, chewing on it even. For an Orthodox Jew, the object of meditation is Torah, and the notion of meditating on it in translation would be almost inconceivable. You want the prize itself, not someone’s prosaic description of it.

By contrast, most Christians who meditate on scripture don’t consult it in the original languages. The argument is sometimes made that the gospel, which is to be preached to all the nations, is by its nature always a translation. For an image of this idea, see the account of Pentecost in Acts, where by the power of the Holy Spirit each member of the international audience assembled in Jerusalem hears the apostles in his own native tongue. Christian faith does not depend on a reading knowledge of Koine Greek.

Still, just as all things lawful are not expedient, not all things optional are bootless. Let’s concede that the fine points you miss by meditating on scripture in mere translation are only a few pixels that drop out of the picture. The subject and the general shape of things are still clear enough. What you’re missing is the meaning of the expression in the subject’s eyes. You can identify their color, however, and the other physical features of his that can be measured and recorded on a driver’s license. You can savoir his identity. That counts for a lot. But you don’t connaître him.

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(Please note that the article, enttiled “Holy Enrollers,” was originally discussed here on February 2, 2001–KSH).

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Of the many things I learned in seminary, several of them were from David Hubbard. One of these I’ve turned into a regular practice. Back in that day Hubbard was president of Fuller Seminary as well as professor of Old Testament. Now, Hubbard was a master of language, and every student knew it. So he had our attention.

It was an aside, probably sparked by an Old Testament wisdom text. Hubbard broke away from Proverbs or Ecclesiastes to speak of the value of effective language in communication.

He encouraged the class to improve our skills in using descriptive language. And he gave us some simple, practical advice: while driving””that mentally idle time between life’s real appointments in Southern California! ””we should practice describing what we see, whether it be a tree, a building or a landscape….

It is good advice for anyone. Read it all–KSH.

Now, the key is that this is not a story about a trend in the Episcopal Church or even the world of oldline Protestantism. The heart of the story is a set of new statistics out from Association of Theological Schools, which, as Time tells us, includes more than 250 graduate schools in North America. The whole point is that gray-haired baby boomers are now the fastest growing niche in theological education….

Also, it would help to know the overall numbers and demographics at General Theological Seminary ”” a school which reported 202 students (134 full-time equivalents) in the same time frame as the Time report. Meanwhile, there were 108 students (62 FTE) up at Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass.

As a point of comparison, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth had 3,042 students (2,068 FTE) that year and, on the various campuses of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, there were 2,134 students (1,492 FTE)

I was going to post this when Time made the etext available, since I first saw it in my paper subscription, but alas, it never occurred. In any event, read it all–KSH.

A number of participants are viewing the sessions at partner sites throughout the United States and Canada, Nigeria, Panama, Sudan and South Africa. Others are attending via live webcast. During a panel discussion after Brueggemann’s presentation, questions came in via video conferencing from South Africa, Missouri, Connecticut and Toronto, in addition to those asked by New York participants.

Church Divinity School of the Pacific Dean and President Mark Richardson said in introducing Brueggemann that modern-day skeptics look for an “unfeeling God of the scripture that they find by treating the material of the Bible as if it can be flattened out into facts much as scientific inquiry is about discreet, quantifiable things and processes, and then they attack the God they think they have discovered in scriptures.”

Thus, he said, the Bible becomes “a symbol of what is past and what must make for a new spirituality.”

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The Reverend Professor Robert Darwin Crouse died in his sleep at his home in Crousetown, Lunenburg, Friday night. He had been very ill for several years but he played the organ for the Liturgy at St Mary’s Crousetown the Sunday before last.

It is a passing so momentous for so many, including all of us in the Department, that I can say nothing more at present than to express my thanks to God as Professor Crouse’s perpetual student for all He did for us through this great scholar, spiritual father, saintly exemplar, and unsurpassable teacher.

A student of James Doull, with him he refounded the Classics Department, giving it the character which it now has and which has made it so exceptionally successful. No student of his ever ceases to hear him and so
to walk in the presence of the Logos.

Dr Wayne J. Hankey
Carnegie Professor and Chairman
Department of Classics with Religious Studies
Dalhousie University and Kings College

Amy arrived at Virginia Theological Seminary in 2007, the same year as Brian.

“We took a lot of the same classes,” he said, and before long, “friendship turned into asking her to marry me.”

They finished seminary in May and married two months later. Brian’s passion is working with college students; Amy’s ministerial focus is middle school and high school students.

They wound up in Fredericksburg when Kent Rahm, rector at Trinity, was looking for a replacement for his assistant, who was ready to move on.

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Lam was strengthened by his Christian faith. He was a devout Baptist who attended Oakridge Baptist Church in Vancouver. Even when he was 80, he was energetically touring with a 60-person choir he’d put together called The David C. Lam Hymn Society.

Singing hymns, Lam said, was a way “to communicate with each other through the heart.” In addition to old Christian hymns, he loved listening to classical music and, when he was in the mood, Whitney Houston. He gave generously to evangelical Regent College on the UBC campus.

Lam was also shaped by the Confucian philosophy of his homeland, which taught a strong work ethic and moderation.

“Confucianism tells me when enough is enough: The sky is not the limit,” Lam said. “Confucianism has a lot to do with not disrupting the social order. This is opposed today. People seek instant achievement. They maybe even break the law a little bit, or in a big way.”

One of the remarkable Canadian saints of this generation, from the long line of should-have-already-been-posted material. Read it all–KSH.

It is my duty and honor to thank Dr. Lytle for his service. He was appointed as Dean by Dr. Samuel Williamson, the XIVth Vice-Chancellor of the University of the South. During the years following Dean Lytle’s appointment, he made significant contributions to the mission of this School that no subsequent developments should obscure. He brought to Sewanee the considerable stature he had won as scholar and church historian, and as Dean carried a full load of teaching with brio. His professional study of the history of the clergy in the context of Anglican ecclesiology and spirituality buttressed his contemporary concern to clarify the nature and improve the quality of Episcopal priests. That led to his appointment to national commissions, committees, symposiums, and lectureships. Combined with his vigorous representation of the School in the offices of bishops around the church and his peripatetic preaching and speaking, he brought wide recognition to Sewanee. Vigorous work in recruitment led to years of the largest enrollment the School has ever enjoyed. That in turn permitted him to create new positions on the faculty. He appointed young scholars who multiplied the perspectives and approaches available to students. Financial support by dioceses and parishes expanded: One Percent Plan parish contributions rose to levels they have never since approached. Large gifts came in for the scholarship endowment of the School, which has helped make Sewanee one of two Episcopal seminaries that can offer very substantial financial aid to all students who need it. Dean Lytle’s close work with the XIVth Vice-Chancellor and Provost led to the resolution of many long-standing issues between the University, the College, and the School. Not least among them was clarification of the financial standing of the School, eliminating a great part of the friction over the School’s budget and endowment that had beset his predecessors.

Dr. Lytle made many other contributions to the School’s mission. Among them, he helped create the Visiting Committee, one of the chief means by which the seminary comes into dialogue with the wider church and community. His strong support helped move The St. Luke’s Journal of Theology into the fresh directions it took as The Sewanee Theological Review, and it has flourished ever since. During his deanship, Education for Ministry, Disciples of Christ in Community, Galilee Moments, and other major programs for the wider church grew and blossomed in the School’s Programs Center. The annual Anglican Tour of England was his creation; for years he led large groups in a brilliantly narrated pilgrimage through the holy (and less holy but refreshing) sites in the England he knows so well.

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Unlike some rites for blessing same-sex couples, the rite from Massachusetts repeatedly invoked the language and theology of marriage, occasionally revising the language of the Book of Common Prayer (1979).

“We have come together in the presence of God to witness and bless the joining together of these women in Holy Matrimony,” said the liturgy authorized and celebrated by Bishop Shaw. “Holy Scripture tells us that all love is from God, and the commitment of marriage signifies to us the mystery of the union between Christ and the Church.”

The rite also invoked marriage with a reading from the opinion by Margaret H. Marshall, Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, in the case of Goodridge v. Department of Health.

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The [Episcopal]…bishop of Massachusetts began 2011 by solemnizing the first lesbian marriage – of two senior Episcopalian clergy – at Boston’s St Paul’s Cathedral Saturday (January 1).

The marriage of Episcopal Divinity School, dean and president, the Very Reverend Katherine Hancock Ragsdale and Mally Lloyd, Canon to the Ordinary, was the first lesbian marriage solemnized by the Right Reverend M Thomas Shaw SSJE, Bishop Diocesan of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts.

At the marriage attended by close to 400 guests, Bishop Shaw commented: “God always rejoices when two people who love each other make a life long commitment in marriage to go deeper into the heart of God through each other. It’s a profound pleasure for me to celebrate with God and my friends, the marriage of Katherine and Mally.”

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Among some of the reasons for this failure to keep and recruit younger people, I would list the following:

1. The abandonment in the early 70’s of a National Curriculum for Church Schools.
2. The failure to have a unified teaching and age for confirmation, and the lack of emphasis by our bishops of the place on confirmation.
3. The moment toward ordination to an older and older age, along with making ordination almost exclusively a “second career” track for people.

These two reasons are closely related because it is younger leaders who have the best chance of reaching their own generation for Christ.

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Rivonte Moore, 17, doesn’t think of himself as a theologian. But he raised his hand in a class at Atlanta’s Candler School of Theology last summer to debate the meaning of the term “sentimental nihilism” as used by Cornel West in Democracy Matters.

Moore was one of 39 students at Candler who took part in the Youth Theological Initiative (YTI)””three weeks of learning, service and reflection for youth of high school age. Moore, from Jacksonville, Florida, has no plans to enter the ministry but found his time at Candler surprisingly exciting. “I thought it would be cool. I didn’t think it would be this cool.”

He was moved by the visit to a synagogue, where the singing in Hebrew was very different from his own church experience, yet the prayers were to the same God. He was stunned to learn that Muslims pray five times a day; in his tradition, showing up at church once a week was enough. He enjoyed meeting people from different backgrounds and figuring out how to express himself and how to listen. He doesn’t know what impact all of this will have on his life, but he does not question that he has been changed.

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