“Within the Church,” the Pontiff said, “believers’ first steps along the way of Christ must always be accompanied by a sound catechesis that will allow them to flourish in faith, love and service.”

He continued: “Christian revelation, when accepted in freedom and by the working of God’s grace, transforms men and women from within and establishes a wonderful, redemptive relationship with God our heavenly Father, through Christ, in the Holy Spirit.

“This is the heart of the message we teach, this is the great gift we offer in charity to our neighbor: a share in the very life of God.”

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In response to criticism of the USCCB statement, Cardinal Wuerl’s 13-page resource highlights the complementary role that should be played between bishops and theologians.

“It is the privilege of theologians to delve more profoundly and systematically into the meaning of the faith, according to the ancient adage, ‘fides quaerens intellectum’ (faith seeking understanding),” the cardinal wrote. “Since this faith is handed on by the Church through the ministry of the magisterium, the bishop and the theologian have a special relationship that can and should be reciprocally enriching.”

“Bishops benefit from the work of theologians,” he continued, “while theologians gain a deeper understanding of revelation under the guidance of the magisterium. The ministry of bishops and the service rendered by theologians entail a mutual respect and support.”

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As the religious landscape continues to change in North America, many voices are seeking the attention of Christians. Mainline churches were the voice of Christianity for most of our U.S. history. Today, the media often views American evangelicals as speaking for Christianity on issues of faith and society.

Who are these people, the American evangelicals? They range from members of megachurches to devotees of TV evangelists to fundamentalists and conservative denominations. Evangelicals are our neighbors, family members and co-workers.

Some questions often posed about them by mainline church members include: “Do we have conversations with evangelicals? How do we differ from evangelicals?”

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Faith is a journey and facing doubts is part of the journey, according to Frank Schaeffer, a best-selling New York Times author and popular blogger for the Huffington Post.

Schaeffer will present a workshop “Articulating an Authentic Faith for People Who Don’t Like Religion (or Atheism)” on Saturday, sharing his journey from conservative evangelical beliefs to joining the Eastern Orthodox Church.

“I tell people my own doubts, my own story. People aren’t used to hearing people share doubts,” Schaeffer said Monday in a phone interview.

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For a community that prides itself on being “biblical,” it is shocking how out of focus our views of sexuality can be. A biblical view of sexuality is a profoundly positive, profoundly appealing, and profoundly life-affirming foundation from which to address the abortion problem. Evangelicals are fundamentally not anti-abortion””at the most basic level, we are defined by what we are for rather than what we are against. We are fundamentally life-affirming and sexuality-affirming because we celebrate the truths that are ours in Jesus Christ.

Unfortunately, we start the formation of our young people’s understandings of sexuality tardily, anemically, ambiguously, and ineffectively. We are stuck in avoidant, negative, sub-biblical paradigms for thinking about sexuality. Our pastors avoid the topic except for the safest messages, which too often are shame-oriented, “just say no” litanies. We engage easily in negative culture-war rhetoric. Sadly, too many evangelical leaders fail to live up to the standards they proclaim and become very public examples of hypocrisy. Competing views about sexuality take advantage of these failures and seduce our youth.

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Just how did Mary and Joseph make their famous trip to Bethlehem?

What did an innkeeper tell Mary and Joseph once they reached the city?

The Rev. Joe Alsay, rector of St. Augustine of Canterbury Episcopal Church, asked his congregation these and other questions during the Dec. 19 services at the Oklahoma City church, 14700 N May.

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Check it out and yes, we would appreciate your prayers.

Over the next year, people in the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh ”” including locals from Monroeville ”” will read 100 Bible
passages.

Last month, more than 4,000 people from 48 churches in the Pittsburgh region began to read 100 “essential” readings in the Bible ”” 50 from the Old Testament and 50 from the New Testament
.

The E100 challenge is a Bible reading
plan that provides an overview of the biblical narrative and advances participants’ Bible knowledge through regular reading.

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Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, House of Deputies President Bonnie Anderson and Executive Council member Rosalie Simmonds Ballentine have issued a letter to the church calling for study on the Anglican Covenant.

“We strongly urge every congregation in this Church to engage in discussion of the proposed Covenant at some time in the coming two years,” the letter states.

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I am interested in the following: where was it offered, who taught it, what aids did you use if any (book, video), how long did it last (both the classes themselves as well as the overall course), and, most especially, WHY did it have such a big impact on you? Any other details are of course welcome. Many thanks–KSH.

Check it out to see which film(s) and book(s) were chosen.

[Bill] Scott and other interested Christians who met for the meal at the Hendersonville church were participating in “What Would Jesus Eat?” a Food in the Gospels Bible course being held at the church on Wednesday evenings for the next few weeks.

The course, taught by Bible student John Snodgrass, aims to shed light on the importance of planting, harvesting and dining through the parables as well as miracles that Jesus performed.

“Jesus is known to us today because he captured the hearts of first-century Galileans, and the best way to the heart of a first-century Galilean was through his stomach,” Snodgrass told the group as they ate.

Snodgrass and his wife Elizabeth prepared the food for the meal. They attempted to re-create a typical first-century Palestinian peasant’s supper.

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Go here and on page 3 you can find a blurb about THIS YEAR’s conference where South Carolina Bishop Mark Lawrence was the speaker. Doesn’t that sound worthwhile? How about considering attending next year’s conference? You can find information about it there.

Barney Fife and Andy Taylor may not be Peter and Paul, but Chattanooga churches have found TV’s Mayberry disciples often touch on the same truisms as the New Testament leaders.

Local congregations increasingly are using television shows and the movie format to teach spiritual lessons.

“It’s amazing the parallels you can find to New Testament scripture,” said St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church member Bill Steverson, who led the recent study “The Gospel According to Barney,” based on the 1960s “Andy Griffith Show.” “I wondered if the scriptures I found were the ones they were reading when they wrote the (television show) script.”

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Check it out and see what you make of it.

Americans love their Bibles. So much so that they keep them in pristine, unopened condition. Or, as George Gallup Jr. and Jim Castelli said in a widely quoted survey finding, “Americans revere the Bible but, by and large, they don’t read it.”

Anecdotes abound. Time magazine observed in a 2007 cover story that only half of U.S. adults could name one of the four Gospels. Fewer than half could identify Genesis as the Bible’s first book. Jay Leno and Stephen Colbert have made sport of Americans’ inability to name the Ten Commandments””even among members of Congress who have pushed to have them posted publicly.

Perhaps the first step toward improved Bible literacy is admitting we have a problem. A 2005 study by the Barna Group asked American Christians to rate their spiritual maturity based on activities such as worship, service, and evangelism. Christians offered the harshest evaluation of their Bible knowledge, with 25 percent calling themselves not too mature or not at all mature.

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Graham Tomlin has a radical goal: to bring theology back to the heart of the church. You’d think it would already be there, but Tomlin, on the pastoral staff of Holy Trinity Brompton Anglican Church in London, believes the local church has neglected sound theological teaching for the past 200 years.

“It began when universities began to become secular in the 18th and 19th centuries,” says Tomlin, also the principal of Holy Trinity’s St. Paul’s Theological Centre and the dean of St. Mellitus College, an Anglican theological school. “Theology was being taught apart from Christian life and separate from the churches, to the impoverishment of both. Seminaries started in reaction to that, to provide Christian alternatives to the secular university. Yet those remain one step removed from real local churches.”

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When it comes to religion, people of faith are passionate about their beliefs, and at times, that passion can lead to conflicts with others of different religions.

However, sometimes with understanding can come peace.

With that idea in mind, the Solo Flight Singles Group of New Covenant United Methodist Church decided to host an event that would promote peace and understanding between faiths.

The group gathered together representatives from five different faiths ”” Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Jewish and Christian ”” for an interfaith panel discussion at the church Tuesday evening.

“I think it’s important that we try to understand everyone,” said Bev Diaz, coordinator of the event. “We’re all coming to realize the world is getting smaller. We’re coming into contact with more faiths, and to have more peace, we need to understand and tolerate each other.”

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When it comes to religion, people of faith are passionate about their beliefs, and at times, that passion can lead to conflicts with others of different religions.

However, sometimes with understanding can come peace.

With that idea in mind, the Solo Flight Singles Group of New Covenant United Methodist Church decided to host an event that would promote peace and understanding between faiths.

The group gathered together representatives from five different faiths ”” Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Jewish and Christian ”” for an interfaith panel discussion at the church Tuesday evening.

“I think it’s important that we try to understand everyone,” said Bev Diaz, coordinator of the event. “We’re all coming to realize the world is getting smaller. We’re coming into contact with more faiths, and to have more peace, we need to understand and tolerate each other.”

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The talks manage to avoid the sin of navel-gazing: rather than focusing on Anglican peculiarities, the purpose of each is to see and to show how the Anglican tradition opens up onto a world much larger than itself, making them not just a good primer on Anglicanism but on Catholic Christianity as such.

The series begins with N.T. Wright, who with characteristic clarity and depth of learning gives not only an overview of the New Testament but also of how Anglicans have classically read and been formed by the Bible in their common life. Scripture, as reformers such as Wycliffe, Tyndale, and Cranmer held, is to be placed in the hands of the people and read in common, so as to knit together a people through deep immersion in the Scriptural story. This, Bishop Wright holds, is in fact at the heart of Anglican worship and life: the simple, daily, communal reading of the Bible, through which the Spirit forms us as a church and equips us for mission in the world.

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If you are taking a class, I am interested in what it is, if you are teaching, we want to hear that also.

I am teaching a six week class on C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters–KSH.

In Georges Bernanos’ Diary of a Country Priest, the elderly Curé de Torcy gives his young priest friend a bit of advice about proclaiming the Gospel: “The Word of God is a red-hot iron,” he says. “Truth is meant to save you first, and the comfort comes later.”

One could probably craft a meditation on the state of the Catholic soul today in terms of the tension between those two values — truth and comfort. We want the church to offer comfort, which among other things implies that Catholics shouldn’t brutalize one another in internal tribal warfare. Yet we also want the church to be bold in proclaiming the truth that saves, which inevitably means that sometimes lines have to be drawn and feelings may be bruised.

The $64,000 question is, can we do both? Can the Catholic church be both the “sacrament of the unity of the human race” and a fearless evangelical force?

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“Packer’s last crusade in this world,” the Rev. Dr. J.I. Packer affirms, is recovering catechesis ”” systematic instruction in the Christian fundamentals ”” to meet the challenges of an increasingly pagan age.

The evangelical theologian said at St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Dallas on Jan. 9 that he yearns for the return of catechesis, “Bible-based, Christ-centered, declarative in style,” at a time when “the Christian value system is virtually disappearing from schools.”

“We are drifting back into paganism, that’s the truth,” said Dr. Packer, the second featured speaker in the James M. Stanton Lecture Series.

“Ongoing learning is part of the calling of the Church,” he said. “It has to be taught in all churches at all times.”

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Those of you in parish ministry considering continuing education opportunities for 2010, here is a grand possibility to consider.

Has there ever been a more pressing time to discuss the ethics of business and investment?

The Dean of Liverpool Cathedral, the Very Rev Justin Welby, thinks this is exactly the right time to debate the issue.

Liverpool Cathedral will be the UK northern host of an online worldwide conference on this topic from Wall Street, New York.

It will join with Canterbury Cathedral and St Paul’s Cathedral, London, for the live video webcast streamed from New York.

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Jesus promised that he would build his church (Matthew 16:18) and one of the surest ways we know to be obedient to God is to be faithful to the Holy Scripture. It was Jesus who prayed for the church, saying, “Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth” (John 17:17).

God seems to be using at least six factors in the continuing process of renewing and reforming United Methodism toward faithfulness to his Word.

1. Most evangelistically-minded churches grow, while others seldom do. Quite simply, too many of our United Methodist congregations don’t know how to reach out. Though most liberal United Methodists are compassionate, kind people, their churches seldom grow. One definite reason is theological. Most evangelical Christians feel a sense of urgency about lost people. They really believe that people who are outside a relationship with Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord are at risk of spending all eternity in a horrible place where God is totally absent. By way of contrast, many liberal United Methodists are universalists””believing that all persons are going to heaven regardless of what they believe or do. Such a belief makes evangelism irrelevant.

Recently I studied one particular annual conference in the Southeastern Jurisdiction. The ten local churches with the highest worship attendance figures for the previous year were quite diverse in terms of location (some are inner-city, others suburban) and in worship style (traditional, contemporary, and blended). But these ten churches have one thing in common””all of their senior ministers are evangelical/orthodox in theology. That same pattern probably prevails in most other annual conferences.
Jesus said that he came to earth “to seek and to save what was lost” (Luke 19:10). The Holy Spirit seems to bless those congregations that focus primary attention and resources on seeking, serving, and saving lost people.

2. United Methodist renewal and reform groups are making a positive contribution. The “granddaddy” of UM reform organizations is Good News, launched in 1966 by Charles Keysor’s article in the Christian Advocate. For 28 years, the Rev. James V. Heidinger II led Good News with prophetic courage and winsomeness. Now, the Rev. Rob Renfroe leads this vital agency of renewal and reform. Other organizations like The Confessing Movement, The Institute on Religion and Democracy, The Mission Society, Lifewatch, Transforming Congregations, and others have joined in the struggle.

3. High-quality biblical material has been introduced into the UM educational curriculum….

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”¢ Scriptural Authority. This is such a comprehensive dimension of our present crisis in the church that one hardly knows where to begin. But one can hardly do better than St. Ambrose’s statement that “the whole of Holy Scripture be a feast for the soul.” How seldom one hears upon us who are bishops in Tec such glowing statements about the Bible. In my experience all too many of our bishops and priests seem to mine the scriptures for minerals to use in vain idolatries. There is too little confidence expressed in its trustworthiness; the authority and uniqueness of revelation. Indeed, as J.V. Langmead-Casserly once put it, “We have developed a method of studying the Word of God from which a Word of God never comes.” Too often supposed conundrums or difficulties are brought up, seemingly in order to detract from traditional understandings, never considering the damage to the faithful’s trust in God and his Word. Ridiculous arguments such as shellfish and mixed fabrics are dragged out (long reconciled by the Fathers of the Church, as well as the Anglican Reformers) in order to confuse the ill-taught or the untutored in theology. And those who are intellectually sophisticated, schooled in many academic disciplines, but dreadfully untaught in the Bible and theology, are, through little fault of their own, except for naively trusting generations of slothful priests and bishops, are led astray. We must be willing to speak out against this.

—South Carolina Bishop Mark Lawrence in his special clergy day address earlier this year

Comedian Jay Leno has gotten lots of mileage out of exposing general ignorance, including biblical ignorance. He’ll ask passersby a question such as “On the first day of creation, God said, ‘Let there be _____'” and people will respond: “Um, peace!” Or he’ll ask, “Who were Cain and Abel?” and get the answer: “Friends of Jesus?”

The Bible is the all-time best-selling book””according to a 2002 Gallup poll, nearly every American (93 percent) owns at least one””yet it seems people know little about it. A Kelton Research survey in 2007 indicated that people know more about what goes into a Big Mac than they know about the Bible and can name members of the Brady Bunch far better than they can name the Ten Commandments. A 1997 Barna survey showed that 12 percent of adults think that Noah’s wife was Joan of Ark, and about half don’t know that the book of Isaiah is in the Old Testament. Yet another poll (by Gallup in 2004) revealed that nearly one in ten teens thinks that Moses was one of the 12 apostles.

Americans are not alone in their ignorance. Earlier this summer, St. John’s University in Durham, England, released its biblical literacy report for the U.K. While 76 percent of respondents said that they owned a Bible, 79 percent couldn’t identify a single accurate fact about Abraham, and 60 percent had no idea what the parable of the Good Samaritan is about.

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If by any chance you didn’t catch it, this is an excellent discussion.

The Rev. John Graham at Grace Church, an Episcopal parish in Georgetown, has held an adult forum every Sunday morning since the weekend after Labor Day to help people hurt by the recession.

“When people are dealing with unemployment, they don’t feel like they’re productive members in the society,” Graham said. “They doubt the sense of their meaning, and some even hide from their neighbors because they feel so much shame. They tend to think they’re not useful.”

He said the class has about 25 to 30 people, a significant number considering the size of the church, which has about 100 people at Sunday service.

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