“We anticipate that the church will approve a rite for blessing same-gender relationships,” the Right Rev. Sean Rowe, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Northwestern Pennsylvania, said.
If, as Rowe expects, the Episcopal Church’s General Convention approves a trial use of the liturgical rite, the Erie-based bishop said he’ll set up a process for it in his 13-county diocese.
“I do plan to authorize same-gender blessings in this diocese,” Rowe said in a letter to members before the convention.
Westminster Abbey choir is to make history this week by singing at the Vatican just under two years after performing for Pope Benedict XVI on his visit to Britain.
The 20 boys and 12 adult singers will become the first to join forces with the Pope’s personal choir, the Sistine Chapel Choir.
The two choirs will sing at First Vespers in the Papal basilica of San Paulo Fuori Le Mura – St Paul Outside The Walls – on Thursday and at the Papal Mass in the Vatican Basilica of St Peter’s the following morning, on the feast day of St Peter and St Paul.
In a conscious effort to reinvigorate Western ritual, [Matthew] Fox deconstructed forms of worship inherited from the modern era, such as sitting in benches and being read to, being preached at and singing from hymnals. In the late 1990s in California, he incorporated the premodern practice of dance with modern music and computer technology to create what he called Techno Cosmic Masses.
An Episcopal clergyman told me recently that in his 6 years in office, he had never seen the pall used in his parish church. What does that mean? It means that the traditional Anglican funeral, with the coffin present and covered by the pall, has almost ceased to exist. How has this happened? The “new” (1979) Book of Common Prayer clearly calls for the body to be present in the church — the rubrics (italicized instructions) assume it, with instructions such as “The coffin is to be closed before the service.” There is even a special set of prayers to be said (p. 466) as the body is brought into the church to repose before the service.
What has happened in the 30+ intervening years to cause this to change so totally? We now have the ubiquitous memorial service, which as far as I know scarcely existed at all thirty years ago….
Worship at General Convention will demonstrate diverse liturgy and music from across the Episcopal Church.
“It’s a combination of everything that the Episcopal Church has at its disposal that’s been approved,” said the Rev. Charles Dupree, rector of Trinity Episcopal Church, Bloomington, Indiana, co-chair of the convention worship planning committee.
Eucharist will be celebrated each day, with different services using formats from Enriching Our Worship or from the Book of Common Prayer”˜s Rite 1 or Rite 2. Music will come from the 1982 Hymnal; Lift Every Voice and Sing II; Wonder, Love and Praise; Voices Found; El Himnario; and Flor Y Canto, a Spanish music resource.
Eight of the ten bishops of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Denmark on June 11 presented a ritual for same-sex marriage to the country’s Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs.
Their action came in response to the Danish Parliament’s decision on June 7 to change the marriage legislation so that from June 15 same-sex couples may be married in a civil ceremony or in the state church, the church’s website Folkekirken.dk reported.
The ritual states that pastors who cannot theologically support same-sex marriage shall be free not to use the rite. Denmark’s sovereign, Queen Margrethe II, is expected to approve the new ritual shortly. A rite for the blessing of civil same-sex marriages was also proposed by the bishops.
The house lights go down. Spinning, multicolored lights sweep the auditorium. A rock band launches into a rousing opening song. “Ignore everyone else, this time is just about you and Jesus,” proclaims the lead singer. The music changes to a slow dance tune, and the people sing about falling in love with Jesus. A guitarist sporting skinny jeans and a soul patch closes the worship set with a prayer, beginning, “Hey God ”¦” The spotlight then falls on the speaker, who tells entertaining stories, cracks a few jokes, and assures everyone that “God is not mad at you. He loves you unconditionally.”
After worship, some members of the church sign up for the next mission trip, while others decide to join a small group where they can receive support on their faith journey. If you ask the people here why they go to church or what they value about their faith, they’ll say something like, “Having faith helps me deal with my problems.”
Fifty or sixty years ago, these now-commonplace elements of American church life were regularly found in youth groups but rarely in worship services and adult activities. What happened? Beginning in the 1930s and ’40s, Christian teenagers and youth leaders staged a quiet revolution in American church life that led to what can properly be called the juvenilization of American Christianity. Juvenilization is the process by which the religious beliefs, practices, and developmental characteristics of adolescents become accepted as appropriate for adults. It began with the praiseworthy goal of adapting the faith to appeal to the young, which in fact revitalized American Christianity. But it has sometimes ended with both youth and adults embracing immature versions of the faith. In any case, white evangelicals led the way.
The Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham is preparing to publish its daily liturgical prayer book, as part of its mission to incorporate Anglican traditions within the Catholic Church.
Father James Bradley, communications officer for the jurisdiction, told CNA on June 5 that the “Customary of Our Lady of Walsingham,” which contains the order of daily prayer and readings, “shows a deep respect for the Anglican tradition, and gives it space to flourish” in the Catholic Church.
Announced in the ordinariate’s “Portal” publication on June 1, the book is due out “in a month or two” according to Monsignor Andrew Burnham, Assistant to the Ordinary.
My Canadian colleague did some digging and found the following, instructive excerpt from the collected works of Ms. [Barbara] Marx Hubbard:
“Although we may never know what really happened, we do know that the story told in the Gospels is that Jesus’ resurrection was a first demonstration of what I call the post-human universal person. We are told that he did not die. He made his transition, released his animal body, and reappeared in a new body at the next level of physicality to tell all of us that we would do what he did. The new person that he became had continuity of consciousness with his life as Jesus of Nazareth, an earthly life in which he had become fully human and fully divine. Jesus’ life stands as a model of the transition from Homo sapiens to Homo universalis.”
Irrespective of the insight that this remarkable passage gives us into the cast of mind at the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, Marx Hubbard’s blundering through Scripture and Christology does suggest one path to which the Episcopal critter prayers can lead. When the biblical metaphors used by the Lord (“people of your pasture” and “sheep of your hand”) are taken to imply that there is no substantial difference between human beings and the animal kingdom, then the temptation to transhumanism–the deliberate manipulation of the human condition through biotechnology–intensifies. As we can “improve” beef cattle, chickens and turkeys by manipulating breeding, we can make “better” human beings: transhumanized human beings, cyberhuman hybrids who are immortal. Prometheus, call your office. Aldous Huxley, how did you see this coming 80 years ago, when you were finishing “Brave New World”?
Listen to it all if you care to, and note there are links to a number of the handouts used.
The three congregations of St Christopher’s on the Costa Azahar, north of Valencia, united in the service in a church member’s large garden overlooking the Mediterranean in Ampolla.
Their Australian locum priest, Fr. Kevin Ellem, spoke passionately of the power of God’s Spirit to invigorate His Church today. Fr Kevin added a native touch to the occasion by leading the service wearing an outback approved sun hat.
Read it all and enjoy the pictures.
Almighty and everliving God, whose servant Thomas Cranmer, with others, did restore the language of the people in the prayers of thy Church: Make us always thankful for this heritage; and help us so to pray in the Spirit and with the understanding, that we may worthily magnify thy holy Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
The Roman Catholic Church teaches that homosexual behavior is a sin, but there are Catholic priests who secretly bless gay unions.
Check out the posts here and also there.
The City Gates has more thoughts to offer in this post as well.
If we associate “theologian” with anyone in a congregation, it is usually the pastor or other ordained staff. Applying that term to our church musicians can seem like a stretch, especially when many church musicians lack the formal theological education clergy receive through master’s of divinity programs.
Part of the problem may lie in how we think about theology. If theology is mostly dried ink for a dusty classroom, then we may never learn to see musicians as theologians. But if one of the purposes””indeed, the chief purpose””of theology is doxology (the praise of God), then it is easier to see how the church musician does function as a practical theologian, complementing the theological role of the pastor. As David Arcus, adjunct associate professor of sacred music and Divinity School organist, told me recently, “Clearly, our tasks [of being musicians or pastors] are different. But we all share in the general responsibility of facilitating the praise of God.”
Commented Fernando, “Isn’t that weird, a Mexican Anglican? When Ruby, my daughter, was born, we were attending an Anglican church here in Albuquerque, and nobody in the church knew about what I did for a living. That was part of what drew us to the church: nobody there that was into contemporary Christian music, so we could go and just be part of the church. Then slowly people found out that I was a musician; I got asked to play a couple times. They finally asked if I would consider becoming the worship leader there. It was perfect, because I was trying to get off the road, because my daughter had just been born, and I didn’t want to be gone from her, I didn’t want to miss anything. It was like God opened this door. We’ve been part of this Anglican church for a year and a half now. Anglicans who are listening take it for granted – but we’ve never, as American evangelicals, ordered our worship or our devotional experience according to the narrative of Christ’s life: Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Easter, Lent, Holy Week. Every week has a theme, so I’m finding hymns, and having to write hymns, that are specific to those themes every week. That’s just not part of evangelicalism, it’s a very general sense of worship. You know how modern worship is: ‘Lord, I love you, I bless you, I thank you for your grace’. But you don’t have songs that are specific to holy days, like the Transfiguration or something like that – you don’t go find contemporary praise songs that are about that. So I’ve ended up having to write those songs, or find old, traditional songs. It’s really influenced my writing.”
The young woman who called St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Hood River, Oregon, was upset and asked if the church offered communion.
“I really need some support right now and I feel like it starts there,” she told the Rev. Anna Carmichael, the parish’s rector.
The wrinkle was that while the woman had attended various churches she had “never formally been baptized and yet somehow this needing to be in community and needing to be supported, in her mind, had something to do with communion as well,” Carmichael recalled.
Hold the chocolate and flowers. Hold the brunch reservations. What mom may really want for Mother’s Day is for the whole gang to go to church first.
A new survey of 1,000 Protestant pastors finds Mother’s Day ranks right after Easter and Christmas in peak church attendance.
Father’s Day, however, is near the bottom of the poll although both holidays were founded as church events more than a century ago.
More than 80 people gathered to view artwork and dance, and to hear poetry and music, as part of “eARTh Night: The Art Around Us” at St. David’s, Austin, on Sunday, April 22. The event celebrated the beauty of the world and the creativity of artists who expressed that beauty in a variety of media.
With almost 100 entries submitted by local writers and artists, the event featured photographs, paintings, felt constructions, jewelry, mosaics and an editorial cartoon by Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Ben Sargent. Members of Art from the Streets at Trinity Center, which serves downtown homeless neighbors, provided more than a dozen entries.
The text of the blessing in English and Spanish is posted online and is being published as a booklet addendum to the Book of Blessings/Bendicional. The blessing will be included in future editions of those liturgical volumes.
“We hope the use of this blessing will provide not only support and God’s blessing for expectant parents and their child in the womb, but also another effective witness to the sanctity of human life from the first moment of conception,” said Archbishop Gregory Aymond of New Orleans, Louisiana, chairman of the bishops’ Committee on Divine Worship.
The Prayer Book in English was the centrepiece of an audacious cultural revolution. Stephen Gardiner, the Bishop of Winchester, was one of those critical of the scheme to introduce an English liturgy. He dismissed the argument that it was desirable for the language to be “understanded of the people” and the mode of conducting the services such as to render them audible. The bishop protested that “it was never meant that the people should indeed hear the matins or hear the mass but be present there and pray themselves in silence.” The barriers of language and audibility were actually conducive to genuine devotion.
This protest from one of the most intelligent conservatives of the day illuminates the radicalism of what was published as the First Book of Common Prayer. It was an audacious attempt to re-shape the culture of England by collapsing the distinction between private personal devotion and public liturgical worship in order to create a godly community in which all and not just the clergy had access to the “pure milk of the gospel”. The result would be a sense of English nationhood crystallising around the biblical narrative of God’s dealings with the children of Israel.
And what English!
St. Paul’s Cathedral in London celebrates the occasion on 2 May with a special service of evensong, or evening prayer, from the 1662 volume, often shortened to the BCP or Prayer Book. Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams is to attend, along with members of Prayer Book societies in Australia, Canada and the U.K. that are dedicated to keeping the work alive.
“I hope and pray that people in Britain and around the English-speaking world realize the importance of this great work,” Prudence Dailey, Chair of the Prayer Book Society in the U.K., told ENInews.
Early reports indicate that the proposed changes to the liturgy that The Episcopal Church will consider at its General Convention this summer will include a “Litany for the Planet” that contains this prayer:
On eukaryotes and prokaryotes, archaea and viruses; on microbes of endless variety, the complex and the simple, Creator have mercy.
Those reports also include:
A recommendation that we authorize “The Message” Bible for liturgical use in the church.
And the sage advice that the Eucharist ought to be offered knowingly and in principle to anyone and everyone as an act of hospitality.
One person was killed and nine others were injured last night after suspected Islamic extremists attacked a TV viewing center in a Christian area of Jos where a crowd had gathered to watch soccer.
At about 10:15 p.m. at the viewing center, one of many such establishments popular in Nigeria for watching soccer matches, the attackers drove past the site and threw an explosive device at hundreds of Christians watching the match, eyewitnesses told Compass.
What do you get when you combine faith, a sense of community, love of music, an experienced music director and a generous church facility?
You get the St. James Community Orchestra, founded last year by members of St. James Episcopal Church.
(I am taking the liberty of putting this on in full text since this is soon to be lost to posterity, I am sorry to say. Please remember that I intensely dislike the terminology of “open” baptism [or “”open” communion] because it confuses the practice being advocated by some in TEC with something altogether different; this is why I plead for what some TEC reappraisers advocate to be described as “communion of the unbaptized” –KSH).
Seminary ruined my ministry. By this I do not mean what we tired old priests often mean by this statement. I am referring here very specifically to the understanding of Holy Baptism that was beat into my head. Actually, it wasn’t beat into my head at all. I drank it in and embraced it in the heart. I was taught and have ever since believed that Baptism is the foundational sacrament of the Church and therefore must be attended to by as much prayer and catechetical preparation as is possible. The key influences here were my liturgics professor, Fr Louis Weil; the Lutheran theologian, Robert W. Jenson; but most especially the writings of the Catholic liturgist, Fr Aidan Kavanagh. Later on William Willimon and Stanley Hauerwas would come along to reinforce what I had already learned, that we no longer live in a Christian culture and therefore can no longer rely on the culture to transmit to our children the beliefs, values, and practices of Christian faith. The Church must become what it once was”“a disciplined community.
Ecclesial discipline begins with the sacrament of Holy Baptism, the gateway into the community of faith. If we do not practice discipline at this point, we cannot effectively foster discipline later down the road. Baptism is not a right. It is a privilege and gift that the Church is authorized to administer under very specific conditions.
I remember years ago hearing an apocryphal story of Catholic missionaries to Indonesia who would beat drums and make a lot of noise in a village, so that its inhabitants would come out of their huts to see what was going on”“at which point they would be met by the missionaries, water buckets in hand: “Ego te baptizo ”¦”
When may the Church baptize? The Scriptures are clear. The Church may baptize an individual when that individual has responded to the gospel in faith and repentance. The Church does not baptize everyone indiscriminately. Faith and conversion are necessary conditions. In the second and third centuries, we see the Church developing a catechumenal process to prepare adult converts for baptism. This process would often last one to three years, concluding with examination by the bishop and sacramental initiation at the Great Vigil of Easter. Kavanagh describes this catechumenal process not so much as intellectual instruction but as “conversion therapy.” He notes that the early Church was not interested in indiscriminately baptizing the multitudes. It wanted to make Christians.
Tertullian had already observed that Christians are not born but made. Augustine and his colleagues over a century later would have agreed, perhaps extending the epigram to say that they do not just wander in off the streets either. They are honed down by the teaching and discipline of the catechumenate until their metal is tough, resilient, sharp, and glowing. The “enlightenment” of baptism was not a flickering flame but a burst of God’s glory in those whose capacities to receive it had been expanded to their utmost. And although things were different since the pagan Celsus had written archly in 168 that “if all men wanted to be Christian, the Christians would no longer want them,” being prepared in the fifth century to absorb a whole society did not mean that the churches would do so indiscriminately. The fathers’ catechetical homilies suggest that they still needed more Christians less than they needed better ones, even as they wished and worked for the conversion of all.
What about the baptism of children? They are the exception, not the norm. We risk the baptism of children only because their parents are practicing Christians and have demonstrated that they will raise their children within the household of faith, in the fear and admonition of the Lord. If their parents are not practicing Christians, then the Church has no authority whatsoever to baptize their children, no matter what the grandparents want!
And so this young priest took this understanding of Baptism and catechumenate out into the world. No other issue has caused me more trouble than this in my ministry of twenty-four years! Indeed, it is probably safe to say that it destroyed my ministry in one parish and has caused me nothing but grief in my present parish. How I wish I could in good conscience offer “open baptism.” Disciplined baptismal policy always offends, no matter how gently and graciously it is articulated. No one wants to hear that there are conditions and requirements that must be fulfilled if baptism is to be administered with sacramental and spiritual integrity. No one wants to hear that the faith and commitment of the parents necessarily and rightly affects the Church’s decision to baptize a baby. No one wants to hear the word no.
So when I read about “open baptism” I am filled with both envy and anger. I am envious, because these priests are able to avoid all of the grief and problems of trying to communicate to nonbelieving parents they must begin to take their baptismal vows seriously if they wish their children to be baptized into the Church. The open baptism policy makes everything so easy. There are no conditions to be imposed. No requirements are insisted upon. Difficult conversations are avoided. We just toss the water and say the magic words and everyone is happy. Oh if only I could in conscience offer open baptism. How nice it would be for me and everyone else if I could just adopt a no-conflict, no-grief, no-aggravation policy like St Bart’s in Poway, California:
We are an open and affirming church. No classes are required and no judgments are passed at St. Bartholomew’s. If you wish to be baptized and become Jesus Christ’s own forever, just ask and you can be.
But as I said, I was ruined in seminary. When I read a baptismal policy like the above, I become angry. These open baptism priests are prostituting the gospel. Baptism is not a spiritual tonic that we dispense to everyone who asks for it. Baptism is conversion, the renunciation of evil, and the embrace of love, self-denial, and the way of the cross. It’s all so cozy for these open baptism pastors and their congregations. No judgments are made. No discipline is imposed. No one has to say “no.” Baptism becomes a nice little ceremony of cultural affirmation. Everyone is blessed. Everyone feels good. But the identity and mission of the Church is sold out for a bowl of pottage.
(Please note that for now you can find the original post there. You may be interested to read the comments–KSH)
This morning the smoke of incense is still dissipating from thousands of churches around the country and the world where, last night, the Great Vigil of Easter was celebrated. This service ”” which begins with a bonfire and continues with readings, psalms, prayers, baptisms and the first mass of the Easter season, all ending (typically) with a big late-night meal to break the fast of Lent ”” was, in the first centuries of Christian history, the central event in the worshiping life of the Church. Today it’s an observance that appeals primarily to liturgy geeks (myself very much included), an unwieldy and time-consuming festival that dramatically complicates one’s plans for baked hams and Easter baskets.
Strange as the Easter Vigil may seem today, it hasn’t lost its original purpose: welcoming new believers into the body of the faithful. What is so powerful about the Easter Vigil, apart from the sheer sensory experience of it, is the way it intertwines the whole story of the Bible with the passing over of Jesus from death on Good Friday to resurrection on Easter. And the men and women who have been preparing for baptism (called “catechumens,” or hearers) step into these entwined stories on Saturday night, just as men and women did back when Christianity was a minor cult of the Roman world.
Easter celebrations will be taking place in Nigeria under the threat of terrorist attacks by the Islamist group Boko Haram.
“In the past celebrations of the major feasts, Boku Haram has attacked the Christian Churches,” said Father Patrick Tor Alumuku, director of social communications for the Archdiocese of Abuja.
Last Christmas, Boko Haram killed 41 people in a series of shootings and bombings.
“There is a feeling of uncertainty and of worry, generally, about how these celebrations will be concluded” Father Alumuki told Vatican Radio. “However, we have hope, and we pray everything will go well.”
Father Alumuki also pointed out most Muslims in Nigeria do not support Boku Haram, and prominent leaders of the country’s Islamic community have sent messages wishing Christians a happy Easter.
In various cultures, it’s called Holy Saturday, Low Saturday, Easter Eve, Silent Saturday, Black Saturday, White Saturday and Great Saturday.
While most Protestant churches in the United States don’t mark the day when, according to the Christian Bible, Jesus lay in his tomb after crucifixion on Friday and before resurrection on Sunday, most Roman Catholic and Episcopal churches hold an Easter vigil service.
“Believe it or not, it is or was considered the primary liturgy of the church,” according to the Rev. John Dukes, interim rector at St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church on Signal Mountain, which holds a Great Vigil service at 7 p.m.