Dear Sisters and Brothers,

The documents below explain themselves. Briefly, they relate to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Allentown’s desire to change the status of three of our clergy to the status of lay people.

I want to note here that the ordination of these three men was recognized by this church some years ago and their orders were received here. They are priests under the jurisdiction and protection of the Episcopal Church. Please be assured that nothing that might occur in the Roman church effects their identity, status, or work among us. I value each of them highly, as I am sure you know.

Faithfully,

–(The Rt. Rev) Paul Marshall, Bishop of Bethlehem

Read it all.

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.

The challenge is not that we have a ministry of the baptized and Communion as our central act of worship ”“ the challenge is that we have clergy ill-trained in Sacramental theology administering them. We have laity that we have failed to form in Sacramental living. We now have a wide body of our priests that do not believe anything much actually happens in the Sacraments.

Do you believe the Holy Spirit descends upon a person and transforms their very being in Baptism so that they are united with Christ? Do you believe that Christ is truly present in the Body and Blood we receive at the Altar? Are the Sacraments God’s action or ours? I have heard far too many talking of Baptism as an entry rite rather than as transformation just as I have heard too many speak of Communion as a “meal” alone rather than the very Presence of Christ among us.

If you have a clergy addicted to modernism and reformation charged with carrying out the catholic Sacramental life of the Church then you will, indeed, have tension. But the tension should not between upending the Sacraments or administering them faithfully as they have been across the centuries. The tension should be between doing or not doing them. You can choose other ways of ministry that do not involve undoing the historic Sacraments of the Church if you are not comfortable with the faith and order we have been welcomed into as both baptized and ordained leaders.

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This article, a theologically thick description of opening the eucharistic table to all, is rooted in Aidan Kavanaugh’s conviction that liturgical theology is primarily that “knowledge” of God generated by the encounter of Christian congregations with God in the liturgy. Thus, this work began with a working group of four Open Table Episcopal parishes reflecting together on what they have found of God, Christ, church, and grace within their practice. The vision that emerged from this reflection was centered in a complex theology of grace and response inherent in Christ’s parable of the Prodigal Son. This central commitment was, moreover, structured around intuitions concerning the universal status of all persons as God’s children, the relational character of grace, the communal character of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist, a Christocentric ecclesiology defining the church by the commitments at its center, and a missional understanding of baptism.

Read it all carefully.

Dear Fellow Trinity Parishioners,

On behalf of the Vestry and the Search Committee, I am pleased to announce today that Trinity Cathedral Parish has called The Reverend Timothy Jones to serve as our next Dean. This exciting news is the culmination of an extensive search under the guidance of the Search Committee, led by Vance Bettis and Bishop Waldo. Tim accepted the call to Trinity following unanimous decisions by the Search Committee and Vestry last week. He will assume his new position on July 16, 2012.

Since 2005, Tim has served as Senior Associate Rector of St. George’s Episcopal Church in Nashville, Tennessee. St. George’s is comparable to Trinity in both membership and budget, with 3,200 members, 715 in Average Sunday Attendance, and an Operating Fund Budget of $3,400,000. Tim’s emphasis while serving at St. George’s has been on adult formation, newcomers, and mission and outreach….

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The Church of England was plunged into another row over gay marriage…[recently] when a cleric condemned a new statement by the Archbishop of York against gay marriage as “absolute rubbish”.

The Rev Giles Fraser, who has taken up a position in a deprived parish in South London after resigning from St Paul’s over the Occupy protest, tweeted: “Absolute rubbish from the Archbishop of York, I’m afraid.”

Dr John Sentamu had posted a paper on his own website explaining why he believed same-sex marriage to be wrong. He criticises those who attempt to draw a parallel between same-sex marriage and interracial marriage.

Read it all (requires subscription).

It’s not a subtle point, nor can it be truly realized without changing one’s perspective and approach completely. And that realization is the explanation for the explosion of the church throughout history. “All authority in heaven and earth is given to ME – go YE therefore into all the world.”

By contrast, The lack of that realization is precisely what has many of us presently cowering in our corner while we let the gods of this age go about doing the serious business of running the world. Paul’s prayer for the Christians in the throne city of the goddess Diana is that they will have the eyes of their hearts enlightened – so that they can see what Ezekiel saw in Babylon and what Paul knew was somewhere in the skies over Diana’s temple in Ephesus. A sapphire throne bearing an unchallengeable monarch with scar tissue on his hands and feet.

Now for the warning label: This is the potentest of potent stuff, and deploying it in the face of the would be rulers of any age can have (and has had) unexpected, unintended and even unwanted consequences.

Read or listen to it all (audio [about 16 minutes] highly recommended).

The Anglican Church in Kenya has banned politicians from taking political campaigns to its places of worship.

The church, through its leader Archbishop Eliud Wabukala, said the church will not receive gifts from politicians or allow the pulpit to be used to spur animosity among Kenyans.

“We must embrace humility and become wiser as the country nears the General Elections. We will not allow the church pulpits be used by politicians to attack each other,” said Archbishop Wabukala on Sunday after leading a Sunday worship session at the All Saints Cathedral Church in Nairobi.

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The cleric noted that the all social vices confronting the country had continued to increase on a daily basis, despite several calls to governments at all levels to checkmate those problems.

The Bishop said, “ As Nigerians, we have no other country than this one. Therefore, we must make it as Nehemiah to seek the welfare of this nation. While so many social evils have been identified in the past year in our charge, there seems not to be respite yet for Nigerians.

“Kidnapping is still in place, the power sector is still in comatose, and corruption has become an established evil staring at us in the face as a nation in all the three tiers of government.

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In an unprecedented act of defiance, a California branch of the Presbyterian Church (USA) refused a ruling from a church court to rebuke a pastor who wed same-sex couples.

The Napa-based Presbytery of the Redwoods voted 74-18 on Tuesday (May 15) to instead praise the Rev. Janie Spahr, who wed 16 same-sex couples when gay marriage was legal in California in 2008.

Read it all and also note an LA Times article on this matter is there.

The Episcopal Church of the Advent in Kennett Square has a new pastor, and he knows he has big shoes to fill.

Michael Bullock was recently named pastor of the church and its 1,200 members. He succeeds Rev. David P. Thomas, who died in 2010. Thomas was very active in the community, helping to form Kennett Consolidated School District’s After-The-Bell program, and was a board member of the Kennett Area YMCA and Jennersville Hospital.

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There is a revolution taking place in the way traditional congregations hire, manage and compensate their staff. Some of it is healthy and overdue, some of it is painful and short-sighted.

As traditional congregations entered the 21st century, they walked into a perfect storm of factors negatively impacting staffing. Attractional, programmatic congregational life was waning in many settings. Missional leadership required a set of skills and a mentality that was foreign to those who had been trained and taught in another era. The Great Recession put unprecedented strain on church operating budgets. Scapegoating among congregational leaders seeking to explain a suddenly clear pattern of plateau and decline became the norm.

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Listen to it all; it is based on John 15 verses 9 and following.

Bishop Timothy Clarke, head of the First Church of God, a large African-American church with a television ministry in Columbus, Ohio, was perhaps most typical. He felt compelled to address the president’s comments at a Wednesday evening service and again Sunday morning. He was responding to an outpouring of calls, emails and text messages from members of his congregation after the president’s remarks.

What did he hear from churchgoers? “No church or group is monolithic. Some were powerfully agitated and disappointed. Others were curious ”” why now? to what end? Others were hurt. And others, to be honest, told me it’s not an issue and they don’t have a problem with it.”

What did the bishop tell his congregation? He opposes gay marriage. It is not just a social issue, he said, but a religious one for those who follow the Bible. “The spiritual issue is ground in the word of God.”

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…nowhere is this question more fraught than in African-American churches, says Tony Evans. He pastors the 9,000-member Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas. One reason, he says, is cultural.

“The breakdown of the family is the single greatest challenge that we face today,” he says….

“The Bible is clear on…sexual relationships are to be between men and women within the context of marriage,” Evans says. “That’s not only related to the issue of homosexuality, but adultery, or fornication or bestiality. All of that is proscribed in the Bible.”

Read or listen to it all.

[Graham said marriage] “should not be defined by presidents or polls, governors or the media. The definition was set long ago and changing legislation or policy will never change God’s definition.”

The Rev. Murdoch Smith, pastor of St. Martin’s Episcopal Church in Charlotte, challenged Graham’s view, saying “I am always suspect when someone says that they know the mind of God.”

“President Obama stated that his position was evolving because he was open to what all sides had to say on marriage equality,” Smith said Thursday. “That openness ”¦ brought him to the conclusion that God blesses all who commit to one another in his presence.”

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The Rev. Brian O’Rourke, who oversaw family ministries, was dismissed from the post Thursday. In an open letter to the congregation, the Rev. James R. Mathes said he had worked for several months “regarding various problems” between the rector, the Rev. Lane Hensley, and O’Rourke.

“This relationship has deteriorated to the point where it can no longer be sustained,” Mathes wrote. “After considerable effort and prayer, I have come to the conclusion that for this reason, it is time to end Brian’s ministry at St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church effective immediately.”

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The President went on to justify his new definition of marriage with these words: “The thing at root that we think about is, not only Christ sacrificing himself on our behalf, but it’s also the golden rule ”” you know, treat others the way you would want to be treated”¦” Mr. President, the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross at Calvary was for the sins of the world. Jesus did not die to take away the moral law or the God-given teaching on marriage. He died to redeem us from our inability to keep that law. The Golden Rule is also misapplied in this instance. To redefine marriage in a way that is contrary to God’s word is to do immeasurable harm to one’s neighbor, not good.

On this day after the announcement, we are told that pollsters have now determined that 50% of the country aligns with President Obama’s position on redefining marriage. Whether or not we believe these numbers, it is important to remember that some decisions are not about the majority or what we feel is best. Some decisions are made in eternity and determined by a loving and just God. Some decisions are above our pay grade. And so I say respectfully No, Mr. President.

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Take heed to yourself and to your teaching; hold to that, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers. [1 Timothy 4:16]

I would sum up the impact of this verse as “the extraordinary seriousness of the pastoral ministry.” I hope that one effect of this message will be to make you earnest and diligent in your prayers for all the vocational ministers of the church. And I hope that another effect will be to make David Livingston and Brad Nelson and the rest of the pastoral staff passionate and persevering and utterly devoted in the fulfillment of their ministry.
Three Commands and Two Promises

This verse contains three commands and two promises for the young pastor. The first command is that he take heed to himself. The second command is that he take heed to his teaching. The third command is that he hold on to those two duties; in other words, that he keep on taking heed to himself and keep on taking heed to his teaching, and never think that the days for personal vigilance are over or that the days for doctrinal growth are past….

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A Scranton Roman Catholic priest who was previously an ordained Episcopalian has been named the first priest in a new national Catholic jurisdiction that incorporates elements of the Anglican faith.

The Rev. Eric Bergman was incardinated on Tuesday into the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter, a jurisdiction of U.S. Catholics established by the Pope at the start of the year that welcomes Anglicans and some of their traditions into the Catholic Church.

The U.S. ordinariate is just the second such group established by the pope. The first, for England and Wales, was created in 2011.

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Take a listen and see what you make of it.

I am delighted to announce the appointment of The Reverend Canon Hosam Elias Naoum as the new Dean of the Cathedral Church of Saint George the Martyr in Jerusalem.

Canon Naoum, 38, has served as the Canon Pastor of the Cathedral since 2005, and was the Acting Dean for three years (2007-2009). As Dean, Canon Naoum will continue to serve as Pastor to the Arabic and English-Speaking Congregations at the Cathedral. He did his first theological training at the College of the Transfiguration and Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa, and a Master of Theology degree in Canon Law (MTS) at the Virginia Theological Seminary (VTS), Alexandria, Virginia in the USA.

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Corporate chaplains have been around for more than 50 years, strengthened by a portion of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that prohibits religious discrimination in the workplace. Changes to labor laws in 1972 also included requirements that employers make religious accommodations for employees if they do not substantially interfere with business. By the late 1980s, several national organizations had sprung up to provide chaplains and their counseling services throughout the American business scene.

In recent years, as businesses look at ways to cut costs, some have turned to corporate chaplains as an alternative to more traditional employee assistance programs.

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Watch it all.

Church elders announced Holder’s arrest to the church’s congregation by email in January, and said the arrest was related to his service as rector of Church of the Ascension in Atlantic City, where he served from March 2007 until June 2009.

Holder became associate rector at Christ Church in December 2009, according to the Christ Church website. As associate rector, he did pastoral care of the elderly and both fund-raising and spiritual development and evangelism.

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On May 3, 1817, he conducted the first…[Episcopal] service in Columbus at the Buckeye House hotel.

Four days later, he preached again at the High Street home of storekeeper Lincoln Goodale. “Some of those who came were merely curious. Others believed that God’s inerrant providence brought them to that spot. All listened with reverence as Chase intoned the service from the Book of Common Prayer and preached to them,” Lisa M. Klein wrote in her 2003 history of Trinity Episcopal Church, Be It Remembered.

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For Christians, says [Fleming] Rutledge, there can be no speaking of “the God of the Old Testament” as though that God is somehow different from “the God of the New Testament.” In a sermon on Isaiah 28, she reminds us that “There is just as much good news in the Old Testament as in the New Testament, and a lot of it has the additional advantage of being written in poetry.” In another sermon on the same text, (Rutledge admits to “being fascinated” by the prophet’s words about evil and suffering), she insists that “a wrathful Old Testament God has not been replaced by a loving New Testament God.” Jesus, after all, was known to strike the occasional note of judgment””and God is seen doing much loving in the Old Testament. The God of the Old Testament, Rutledge makes plain, is not the God of caricatures of the Old Testament. Rather, it is precisely “the Old Testament God” who has “come down from his throne on high into the world of sinful human flesh and of his own free will and decision has come under his own judgment in order to deliver us from everlasting condemnation and bring us into eternal life.” Since the God of Abraham is the Father of Jesus Christ, “the witness of the entire Scripture is a seamless garment. No change within God occurred in the intertestamental period; there is no break in the revelation of God’s self, as though there had been an alteration in God.”

At the same time, “there are intrinsic, inalienable features of God in the Old Testament which we would not be able to extract from the New Testament taken by itself.” Without Old Testament preaching, how will we know about the election of Israel, “the righteousness of God as both noun and verb,” God’s jealousy, and God’s “aseity (being-from himself)”?

If you, like me, have a nagging feeling that you are not paying enough attention to the Old Testament””if you, like me, feel inadequately acquainted with the biblical testimony to God’s jealousy; God’s righteousness; God’s freedom, testified to in election; or indeed God’s love””consider taking up Rutledge’s sermons. (They are not an endpoint; as Rutledge surely hopes they will do, these sermons will likely inspire you to further reading””including, I dare suggest, reading more of the Old Testament itself.)

—Books and Culture, May/June 2012, page 12

England’s Catholic jurisdiction for former Anglicans has received a $250,000 donation from Pope Benedict XVI, prompting an expression of thanks from its top cleric.

“I am very grateful to the Holy Father for his generosity and support,” said Monsignor Keith Newton, head of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, in a May 1 statement….

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Teresa MacBain has a secret, one she’s terrified to reveal.

“I’m currently an active pastor and I’m also an atheist,” she says. “I live a double life. I feel pretty good on Monday, but by Thursday ”” when Sunday’s right around the corner ”” I start having stomachaches, headaches, just knowing that I got to stand up and say things that I no longer believe in and portray myself in a way that’s totally false.”

MacBain glances nervously around the room. It’s a Sunday, and normally she would be preaching at her church in Tallahassee, Fla. But here she is, sneaking away to the American Atheists’ convention in Bethesda, Md.

Read or listen to it all.

(The story about this letter was first posted on the blog yesterday).

Read it all.