The campaign, which mobilised ordinary worshippers against the so-called covenant, was co-ordindated by Mrs [Jean] Mayland from her two-up, two-down cottage in Hexham.

She criticised the Dr Williams as “a manager not a leader” and told The Times: “I still wish that he had stuck to himself and his integrity, while reaching out to those who were against gays and others, and more gently led us in the right direction.

“The next Archbishop should be someone who is able to understand that the Church should be able to bless civil partnerships and lead it into a discussion about gay marriage.”

Read it all (subscription required).

Here we find the first great message that today’s feast brings us: the invitation to adopt a proper outlook upon all humanity, on the peoples who make up the world, on its different cultures and civilizations. The look that the believer receives from Christ is a look of blessing: a wise and loving look, capable of grasping the world’s beauty and having compassion on its fragility. Shining through this look is God’s own look upon those he loves and upon Creation, the work of his hands. We read in the Book of Wisdom: “But thou art merciful to all, for thou canst do all things, and thou dost overlook men’s sins, that they may repent. For thou lovest all things that exist and hast loathing for none of the things which thou hast made … thou sparest all things, for they are thine, O Lord who lovest the living” (11:23-24, 26).

Read it all.

On Wednesday, the 26-strong choir of St James the Great will sing for the congregation as they have always done during Holy Week.
But this week they will do so a mile down the road in St Anne’s Roman Catholic church, their new home.
Led by Fr Ian Grieves, the priest at St James in Darlington for 23 years, 58 parishioners will formally join the Ordinariate, the body set up by the Pope for disaffected Anglicans.

Read it all.

Acts 29 Network cofounder Pastor Mark Driscoll has stepped down from the reins of the successful global church planting organization to make room for Pastor Matt Chandler as president, it was announced Wednesday.

Later in the day, in another major move by Driscoll, the Gospel Coalition announced that they had received a letter of his resignation as a council member. A change in priorities was the reason given by Driscoll who plans to devote more time to his growing church.

Acts 29 is a network of church planters that “emerged from a small band of brothers” to more than 400 churches in the United States and networks of churches in multiple countries.

Read it all.

When all is done, the hell of hells, the torment of torments, is the everlasting absence of God, and the everlasting impossibility of returning to his presence…to fall out of the hands of the living God, is a horror beyond our expression, beyond our imagination…. What Tophet is not Paradise, what Brimstone is not Amber, what gnashing is not a comfort, what gnawing of the worme is not a tickling, what torment is not a marriage bed to this damnation, to be secluded eternally, eternally, eternally from the sight of God?

–From a sermon to the Earl of Carlisle in 1622

I can bring it so neare; but onely the worthy hearer, and the worthy receiver, can call this Lord this Jesus, this Christ, Immanuel God with us; onely that virgin soule, devirginated in the blood of Adam but restored in the blood of the Lambe hath this Ecce, this testimony, this assurance, that God is with him; they that have this Ecce, this testimony, in a rectified conscience, are Godfathers to this child Jesus and may call him Immanuel God with us for as no man can deceive God, so God can deceive no man; God cannot live in the darke himself neither can he leave those who are his in the darke: If he be with thee he will make thee see that he is with thee and never goe out of thy sight, till he have brought thee, where thou canst never goe out of his.

–John Donne (1572-1631), Preached at St. Pauls, upon Christmas Day, in the Evening, 1624

Batter my heart, three-person’d God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp’d town to’another due,
Labor to’admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv’d, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly’I love you, and would be lov’d fain,
But am betroth’d unto your enemy;
Divorce me,’untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you’enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

–Holy Sonnet XIV

Almighty God, the root and fountain of all being: Open our eyes to see, with thy servant John Donne, that whatsoever hath any being is a mirror in which we may behold thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

[This case]…is evolving into a case of two justices: separate and, like Jim Crow laws, far from equal.

From the apparent racial profiling, overt violation of neighborhood watch protocols and real-time police directives, to accusations of tampered evidence, to the failure to undertake reasonable measures afforded by the law, I count a multitude glaring discrepancies. How did “The System” fail to ensure that this boy’s life was not inconsequential?

As a citizen, I understand that no case is all black or all white, despite appearances to the contrary. I realize that justice is fraught with nuances, not the very least of which is Florida’s “stand your ground” law, which was designed to protect threatened parties, and in all irony of all ironies appears to be the very thing keeping the instigator out of prison, in complete contrast to the spirit of the controversial pro-gun law.

Read it all.

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

Debt can limit a person’s generosity — and a church’s.

Travis Smalley arrived at the Cincinnati-area Lakota Hills Baptist Church six years ago with a vision to plant churches locally, nationally and internationally. But just in Ohio, with just one Southern Baptist church for every 17,868 people, Smalley knew Lakota Hills couldn’t reach everyone.

Yet Smalley’s passion to start churches ran up against a major roadblock — lack of funds.

Read it all.

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

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

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

Read it all.

Why were white clergy so reluctant to engage in this issue? It may be because they lead suburban congregations composed by and large of parishioners whose daily lives are socially isolated, antiseptic, homogeneous, and largely segregated by race and class. It may also be the lingering legacy of the South, except that many of the faith leaders, like those in the pews, have moved here from other regions of the country. They have different explanations for the silence. They may simply have been waiting for all the facts of the incident to emerge, and not rush to judgment.

“To be honest, I don’t know why,” said the Rev. David Charlton, the recently arrive pastor of Sanford’s First United Methodist Church. “I don’t have a good answer, and it’s happened on my front steps.”

Read it all (and alert blog readers are asked to note the quote from Bishop Greg Brewer mentioned in the previous blog post–KSH)

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

The Presbyterians have sent new seminary graduates to plant churches across the country, resulting, for example, in Sweaty Sheep, a ministry to runners and cyclists in Louisville, and Hot Metal Bridge, a church in Pittsburgh that opened in a tattoo parlor and then bought a vacant tavern. Other church plants reflect the New Monasticism movement, including a Presbyterian congregation in Pittsburgh, Lutheran missions in Austin and Seattle and a Methodist church in Nashville. Many of these churches are affiliated with intentional communities. The Episcopalians have a disco mass in San Francisco, a liturgy for the homeless on Boston Common, a church and community center for Latinos in Fort Lauderdale and the Art & Soul Café in St. Louis. All were started by recently ordained or not yet ordained ministers.

Carol Howard Merritt, pastor and author of Tribal Church: Ministering to the Missing Generation, applauds these initiatives. “As we head into a time of transition in all of our denominations, when a lot of our churches are closing, it’s good to have a lot of energy going into starting new churches.”

Read it all.

First of all, let us see what the Incarnation means. In the Gospel of Saint Luke we heard the words of the angel to Mary: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God” (Lk 1:35). In Mary, the Son of God is made man, fulfilling in this way the prophecy of Isaiah: “Behold, a young woman shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel, which means ”˜God-with-us’” (Is 7:14). Jesus, the Word made flesh, is truly God-with-us, who has come to live among us and to share our human condition. The Apostle Saint John expresses it in the following way: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (Jn 1:14). The expression, “became flesh” points to our human reality in most concrete and tangible way. In Christ, God has truly come into the world, he has entered into our history, he has set his dwelling among us, thus fulfilling the deepest desire of human beings that the world may truly become a home worthy of humanity. On the other hand, when God is put aside, the world becomes an inhospitable place for man, and frustrates creation’s true vocation to be a space for the covenant, for the “Yes” to the love between God and humanity who responds to him. Mary did so as the first fruit of believers with her unreserved “Yes” to the Lord.

Read it all.

Five candidates visited the 11-county diocese last week. They have diverse convictions on some issues that led to the split. But all pledged to avoid imposing their own agenda on the 32 parishes, which range theologically from evangelical to moderately liberal. All have experience with mediation or reconciliation among feuding Episcopalians. All have led the revival of tiny parishes similar to many here.

And all intend to spend more time in parishes than in an office.

“The next bishop will have to be a missionary bishop, not an administrator,” said the Rev. R. Stanley Runnels, 60, rector of St. Paul’s Church in Kansas City, Mo., in a view expressed by all candidates.

Read it all.

Heavenly Father, whose Son did pray that we all might be one: deliver us, we beseech thee, from arrogance and prejudice, and give us wisdom and forbearance, that, following thy servant Charles Henry Brent, we may be united in one family with all who confess the Name of thy Son Jesus Christ: who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

[The] Reverend Edward Harrison grew up all over the United States ”“ including Florida, Ohio, and Mississippi. “My dad was an Episcopal priest, and growing up as a clergy kid I swore I would never work in the church.” Throughout his early life, Rev. Harrison wanted to be a lawyer. “If I wasn’t serving in the church, I probably would have gone to law school.” During his senior year at Yale University, he started thinking about going to seminary to get his own questions about God answered. It was there that he started to think that he might want to serve in the church.

Harrison’s Coronado Story begins over fifteen years ago when he was living in Jacksonville, Florida. “I also was a Navy Reserve Chaplain, so back in 1995 I spent two weeks at the Amphibious Base doing my summer training. I fell in love with Coronado — I remember driving by the church here and thinking ”˜whoever has that job has really sweet place.’” He went back home and forgot all about Coronado. About three years ago an opportunity in Coronado arose, and he started an interview process with the church here.

Read it all and note that the parish has a behavioral covenant.

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

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

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

Read it all.

Listen to it all should you have such an inclincation.

The Catholic faith has significantly marked the life, customs and history of this continent, in which many nations are commemorating the bicentennial of their independence. That was an historical moment in which the name of Christ continued to shine brightly. That name was brought here through the labours of outstanding and self-sacrificing missionaries who proclaimed it boldly and wisely. They gave their all for Christ, demonstrating that in him men and women encounter the truth of their being and the strength needed both to live fully and to build a truly humane society in accordance with the will of their Creator. This ideal of putting the Lord first and making God’s word effective in all, through the use of your own native expressions and best traditions, continues to provide outstanding inspiration for the Church’s Pastors today.

The initiatives planned for the Year of Faith must be aimed at guiding men and women to Christ; his grace will enable them to cast off the bonds of sin and slavery, and to progress along the path of authentic and responsible freedom. A great contribution will be made to this goal by the continental mission being launched from Aparecida, which is already reaping a harvest of ecclesial renewal in the particular Churches of Latin America and the Caribbean. This includes the study, dissemination and prayerful reading of sacred Scripture, which proclaims the love of God and our salvation. I encourage you to continue to share freely the treasures of the Gospel, so that they can become a powerful source of hope, freedom and salvation for everyone (cf. Rom 1:16). May you also be faithful witnesses and interpreters of the words of the incarnate Son, whose life was to do the will of the Father and who, as a man among men, gave himself up completely for our sake, even unto death.

Read it all.

A former Anglican bishop has been ordained a deacon for the ordinariate.

Robert Mercer, who was received into the Catholic Church in January, was ordained by Auxiliary Bishop Alan Hopes of Westminster at Allen Hall seminary in London. He will be ordained a priest on Monday.

Mr Mercer, 77, was Bishop of Matabeleland, Zimbabwe, in the Anglican Province of Central Africa. He was bishop for 11 years before leaving the Anglican Communion to join the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada, part of the worldwide Traditional Anglican Communion. He served as metropolitan bishop from 1988 to 2005, when he retired to England.

Read it all.

A $7 million renovation project, which should be completed by the summer of 2013, involves restoring its signature organ and delicate stained glass windows and bringing the cathedral’s electrical and structural components up to code ”” a major undertaking for a building completed in 1925.

The renovation, like many home-repair projects, uncovered something a bit unusual: The marble floor around the altar was held up by concrete, plaster of Paris and straw.

“We were pretty much astounded,’’ said The Very Rev. Douglas Wm McCaleb, who is overseeing the project.

Read it all.

As a pastor ”” especially as a woman pastor ”” the Rev. Kristine Holmgren is used to being in the public eye.

In addition to speaking from the pulpit, Holmgren has reached people across the country through the informally syndicated column she wrote for the (Minneapolis) Star Tribune and as a commentator for National Public Radio.

That exposure has perhaps helped prepare her for her newest venture as a playwright.

Read it all.

What if your pastor stood up next Sunday and said he wanted to double the size of the parish within one year? That’s exactly what happened at Holy Comforter-St. Cyprian Catholic parish in Washington DC, a predominantly African-American parish. Monsignor Charles Pope made that bold challenge last September and then got to work….

Read it all and watch the interview and check out the blog also.

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

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

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

Read it all.

As members of the Schuller family head in new directions — Coleman and brother-in law Jim Penner plan to start a new church this Sunday — the famous glass-walled church offers a cautionary tale of the potential pitfalls facing family-run ministries.

“If you have a family ministry, the health of the relationships within the family is key to whether the governance of the ministry is going to work well or not,” said the Rev. Wes Granberg-Michaelson, a former board member and former general secretary of the Reformed Church in America, the denomination of the Crystal Cathedral.

Read it all.

….the story of religion in America over the last two generations is a story, not of outright secularization, but of institutional decline. Contemporary Americans are as religiously-minded as ever, but the rise of church-switching and do-it-yourself faith and the steady weakening of the traditional churches and communions has left the country without religious institutions capable of playing the kind of social role that [Yuval] Levin describes…This organizational decline has been most pronounced within what’s often described as liberal Christianity ”” in the churches of the Protestant Mainline, and in the “Spirit of Vatican II” wing of the Catholic Church. But among more self-consciously conservative believers, too, constant church-shopping is commonplace (just ask Marco Rubio), national political causes often excite more interest than local social engagement, and the glue of confessional and denominational traditions is much weaker than in generations past. The vitality of American Christianity today is too often a vitality of individuals rather than institutions, or else of institutions that depend too heavily on a single personality for their strength and survival. We have plenty of celebrity pastors and authors and bloggers and television hosts, but the more corporate and communal forms of faith are growing weaker every day.

I have much more to say about this in the book, but so far as Murray’s argument is concerned, I think that religious institutions are both one of the areas of American life hit hardest by elite self-segregation (you can’t pastor a church in suburban Buffalo from a corner office in Washington D.C.) and one of the few areas where it’s plausible to imagine his call for elites to leave their cocoons and live among the people actually being answered. Institutions are only as strong as their personnel, and the major religious bodies in the United States have struggled mightily since the 1960s to attract large numbers of the best and brightest (and, indeed, large numbers period) to the ministry.

Read it all.

Watch it all.

The German Church’s accommodation of the Nazi regime reveals an appalling failure of basic Christian preaching and teaching. In [Edmund] Schlink’s understanding the failure of the churches was not so much caused by the persecution as revealed by it. “The forces outside the church showed up what was real in the life of these churches, and what was only an empty shell” (p. 100).

By God’s grace an astonishing renewal of the Church occurred as well. “The renewal began when the Church recognized the enemy’s attack as the hand of God ”¦ and when resistance to injustice became at the same time an act of repentance and of submission to the mighty hand of God” (p. 100). As the contrast with anti-Christian propaganda became more intense “the Church’s ears were re-opened to the Word of God. ”¦ But at the same time God’s Word challenged us, questioned the reality of our own religion, and forced us to recognize God simply and solely in His Word….”

Read it all.

(Please note that the original blog thread on this was there–KSH).

Of course the procreation of children by two same-sex partners is not possible. But the Church has never seen procreation as a necessity for marriage, and so has always married partners past the age of childbearing. Even in Genesis the first reason given why God created Eve is not childbearing but because ”˜God saw that it was not good for man to be alone’. While the Prayer Book states that marriage was ordained first for ”˜the procreation of children’ the modern marriage service begins by emphasising the quality of relationship between marriage partners ”˜that they shall be united with one another in heart, body and mind.’

So same-sex monogamy seems to me to be spiritually indistinguishable from a marriage between two people who are unable to have children together. Admitting same sex couples to marriage would extend the sacrament, not undermine it. Like the Church’s decision to admit women to the sacrament of ordination, it is a lot less revolutionary than it seems at first sight. The ordination of women has not fundamentally changed the priesthood, but has extended and enriched it. The same would be true of extending the sacrament of marriage to people of the same sex. It is not the physical gender of the people involved that matters, but the quality of their commitment and their response to the call of God.

It is important that you take the time to read through it all.