A former admin worker is to make history by becoming the first female priest appointed as number two to a bishop in the Scottish Episcopal Church.

Susan Macdonald, 61, rector of Christ Church, Morningside, will take over from the Very Rev Dr John Armes as Dean of the Edinburgh diocese when he steps up to become the new Bishop of Edinburgh in May.

It is the most senior appointment a woman has yet held in the Scottish Episcopal Church. The church ”“ where women have been ordained since 1994 ”“ agreed in principle to women bishops in 2003. But despite two occasions when a woman has been shortlisted, no female bishop has yet been elected.

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[Many of the frequent quotes on hears among Methodists these days] …in some way, [are] responses to the question, “Can young people save the Church?”

Whether vocalized or not, this question permeates United Methodist dialogue about membership decline, denominational vitality and the state of young people in an ever-changing world. Many of our conversations about these topics are well-intentioned attempts to answer this question.

But the question of whether or not young people can save the Church is not effective, because it is based on inaccurate assumptions about young people and membership decline.

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The second reading was taken from the Letter to the Colossians. We heard those words ”“ always so moving for their spiritual and pastoral inspiration ”“ that the Apostle addressed to the members of that community in order to form them according to the Gospel, saying to them: “whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus” (Col 3:17). “Be perfect”, the Master said to his disciples; and now the Apostle exhorts his listeners to live according to the high measure of Christian life that is holiness. He can do this because the brothers he is addressing are “chosen by God, holy and beloved”. Here too, at the root of everything, is the grace of God, the gift of the call, the mystery of the encounter with the living Jesus. But this grace demands a response from those who have been baptized: it requires the commitment to be reclothed in Christ’s sentiments: tenderness, goodness, humility, meekness, magnanimity, mutual forgiveness, and above all, as a synthesis and a crown, agape, the love that God has given us through Jesus, the love that the Holy Spirit has poured into our hearts. And if we are to be reclothed in Christ, his word must dwell among us and in us, with all its richness and in abundance. In an atmosphere of constant thanksgiving, the Christian community feeds on the word and causes to rise towards God, as a song of praise, the word that he himself has given us. And every action, every gesture, every service, is accomplished within this profound relationship with God, in the interior movement of Trinitarian love that descends towards us and rises back towards God, a movement that finds its highest expression in the eucharistic sacrifice.

This word also sheds light upon the happy circumstances that bring us together today, in the name of Saint Gregory the Great. Through the faithfulness and benevolence of the Lord, the Congregation of Camaldolese monks of the Order of Saint Benedict has completed a thousand years of history, feeding daily on the word of God and the Eucharist, as their founder Saint Romuald taught them, according to the triplex bonum of solitude, community life and evangelization.

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Everyone willing to follow the Lord is supposed to have listened in some way to this seemingly imperious command: “Come!” a command which implies an act of faith, referred to sometimes as the “leap of faith.” As it is clear from the Scriptures, what we are able to see is not faith, as the biblical faith is defined as : “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” We have to decide “in spite of”’, in order to experience the power of God. But we need to remember that everything must be done according the Word of God. Peter did not experience the possibility to walk on water because he decided to leave the boat but because of the Word, the Command of the Lord.

The Word of God tell us to “expect to suffer hardship” and dishonor for the sake of His Name. Our Christian confession is not acceptable if we ignore this statement, if we do not manifest the patience of the Lord in our sufferings. Anybody ignoring it will be ashamed in that day.

Let us remember that sometimes the leap of faith leads us towards some impasses. Just as the Word led the sons of Israel leaving Egypt toward the impasse of the Red sea. These impasses are midway between promises of God and their fulfillments and they challenge our faith. Believers are to accept these challenges as a part of their spiritual course. The Son was challenged at Calvary in the hardest way, as it is written in the Scriptures….

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Listen to it all should you so desire.

The gay priest whose appointment as a bishop triggered the crisis over homosexuality in the Church of England has condemned the Church as “the last refuge of prejudice”.

Speaking on the subject for the first time in nearly a decade, Dr Jeffrey John, 59, who was pressured by the Archbishop of Canterbury to stand down as Bishop of Reading in 2003, said that the Church’s mishandling of the gay issue was at the root of rising secularism.

“Exactly the same love and commitment are possible between two people of the same sex as between two people of different sexes, and it is not immediately clear why the Church should regard such a relationship as ethically or spiritually inferior to a heterosexual marriage,” he said.

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And here lies the heart of Gregory’s monastic vision, the vision which the brothers and sisters of Camaldoli””whose millennium we celebrate with sincere joy here today””still seek to live out. To be immersed in the sacramental life of Christ’s Body requires the daily immersion of contemplation; without this, we cannot see one another clearly; without it we shall not truly recognize and love one another, and grow together in his one holy catholic and apostolic Body. The balance in the monastic life of solitude and common work and worship, a balance particularly carefully worked out in the life of Camaldoli, is something that seeks to enable a clear, even ”˜prophetic’ vision of the other ”“ seeing them, as the Eastern Christian tradition represented by Evagrius suggests, in the light of their authentic spiritual essence, not as they relate to our passions or preferences. The inseparable labour of action and contemplation, of solitude and community, is to do with the constant purification of our awareness of each other in the light of the God whom we encounter in silence and self-forgetting.

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After six years as rector of Grace Episcopal Church, the Rev. William J. Bradbury will leave tomorrow to become priest in charge of All Saints’ Church in Chelmsford.

“It’s been a wonderful six-plus years, and I know God has great things in store for Grace Church,” he said. “I’m looking forward to my new ministry as well.”

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The new Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral has spoken in support of gay marriage in a move that threatens to deepen divisions within the Church of England.

Dr David Ison, 57, said that the virtues of marriage should be available to gays, adding that it was better to talk of “Christian marriage” rather than homosexual or heterosexual unions. He admitted that he had conducted ceremonies for homosexuals after civil partnerships, even though formal blessing services for gays are banned by the Church and no liturgy has been authorised.

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The 57-year-old grandfather, who enjoys scuba diving and drives a kit car, speaks softly, but he has strong views and a steely determination. As Dean of Bradford, his previous job, he rescued the cathedral from bankruptcy. Now he must restore the reputation of St Paul’s ”” and help the Church of England to rethink its role in society.

The country is “in danger of drifting apart, with the financiers, politicians and others at the top and people ”˜lower down’ feeling that they’re not being heard”, he warns. “Historically, if the top and bottom of society drift too far apart, there comes a point where there’s an explosion.

“We must get on and deal with the reform of our institutions while we still can, before it turns into a situation of revolution.”

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Glorious God, we give thanks not merely for high and holy things, but for the common things of earth which thou hast created: Wake us to love and work, that Jesus, the Lord of life, may set our hearts ablaze and that we, like Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy, may recognize thee in thy people and in thy creation, serving the holy and undivided Trinity; who livest and reignest throughout all ages of ages. Amen.

Christianity and punk rock aren’t typically found in the same sentence – let alone the same mosh pit. But for the Rev. Bertie Pearson, an Episcopal priest and former punk-rock drummer, they’re totally compatible.

“They’re both about a hopeful vision for the world,” he says. “A rejection of materialism and inequality and injustice. They’ve shaped my whole moral value system.”

A parish priest at two Episcopal churches in San Francisco’s Mission District, Pearson discovered punk rock at 10 (“It radically changed my life”) when his sister gave him his first Black Flag and Dead Kennedys tapes. He bought his first drum set at 12, played in several punk bands and also drummed in salsa and electronic-music bands.

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The Rev. Thomas Parke, 72, the spiritual leader of the Bethesda Episcopal Church on Washington Street for 44 years, died Monday after a battle with cancer.

“The Saratoga community, Bethesda Church and the Diocese of Albany have lost a faithful priest and a wonderful man,” said the Rev. Marshall Vang, who has been serving as the church’s rector since Parke’s retirement eight weeks ago. He was also friends with Parke for many years.

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We readily allow that the sacred offices of our most holy religion, may be performed in private Houses; but it is evident from the Prayer at the Dedication of Solomon’s Temple, that religious services performed in the House of God are more effectual in removing Judgments, and procuring Mercies, than those offered in private Places. The Goodness of the Lord never shines with a greater lustre, than when the united Devotions of his faithful Servants, wrestle as it were with the Almighty in his own House.

We find that our blessed Saviour paid particular Respect to Places dedicated to the Service of God. The sacred Jesus coming to Jerusalem, was filled with a pious indignation at seeing his Father’s House vilely prostituted. When his Person was treated in the most cruel and ungrateful manner, he bore it with wonderful patience; but when the Temple of God was prophaned, an holy Zeal instantly kindled in his breast. The meek Lamb of God, thus provoked, had Recourse to holy Violence, and whipped the impious merchants out of the Temple….

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The last decade or so has seen a great resurgence of radical skepticism not only about God – the “new atheism” ”“ but also about Man. It is skepticism updated with reductionist attempts to explain human existence and experience, thought and feeling, in terms of matter alone. The mainstream view trumpeted in the “intelligent” media is that the moral sense, love, and reason are really just survival mechanisms developed in the course of human evolution. The mind is just the tool of a social primate developed in order to give it a competitive edge in procreation. As the effort of ‘the selfish gene’ to replicate itself, the mind can have no inherent claim on our loyalty. And God is just another construct, one which we would do well to discard. (The self-contradictory nature of such radical skepticism is rarely noticed. If reason is just a construct of the selfish gene, then the claim that reason is just a construct is itself a construct.)
The new atheists proclaim their gospel with the fervour of believers: God is dead, man is free, free from the destructive illusions of religion and morality, of reason and virtue. But then a someone dies, suddenly and cruelly, like the young man known to many in ..[this] parish [in [Eastern Georgia] who was killed in a freakish accident last weekend. And his death casts a pall of grief over his family, his friends, their families, his school, and many others. Yet if he was no more than an arrangement of molecules, a selfish gene struggling to replicate itself, there can be no reason for grief, or for the love that grieves, since these are (we are told) essentially selfish survival mechanisms left over from some earlier stage in hominid evolution. Friendship is just another illusion. But of course we do grieve, even the atheists. And in so grieving, they grieve better than they know (or think they know).

The grieving atheist cannot provide any reason why he grieves, or why he (rightly) respects the grief of others. For to grieve the death of such a young man is implicitly to affirm the reality of the soul. Man is embodied, to be sure; but what is embodied is a soul, capable of memory, reason, and love. To grieve the loss of anyone then is to lament the departure of a unique being, whose mind and heart have touched our lives in spontaneously beautiful and inimitable ways. To grieve is to travel even beyond the lost life of a loved one to the origin and source of the love we have known, and there to register our gratitude. To grieve, therefore, is to affirm that there is a higher source of value than ‘the selfish gene’ – there is a God, who is absolute truth and goodness, the very possibility of knowledge and love.

To love, to grieve, is to affirm the dignity of man; and to affirm the dignity is to acknowledge gratefully a special instance of God’s creative and lifegiving power expressed in one whose unique nature is gone. When we can no longer grieve, it is not God who dies, but we ourselves.

As C. S. Lewis says somewhere, God “whispers to us in our pleasures and shouts to us in our pains”. In our griefs God shouts, ”˜the Lord thunders out of heaven’, and his thunder dissolves the attempt to live as if he does not exist. We easily forget him; but he does not forget us, nor does he forsake us; and he permits these pains and griefs to fall upon us that we may turn to him again, and know him truly, not as our enemy but as our friend: as the one who “bears our griefs and carries our sorrows”. Our first need “in all our troubles” is (as the Litany teaches us) “to put our whole trust and confidence in him”. He confronts our grief and bears it, that he might transform sadness to joy, despair to hope, and death to new life. He does this in our souls and minds – a space from which the selfish gene is banished by necessity, and the soul that dies to itself inherits eternal life.

God shouts in our pains; and we awaken from dreams to the fact that he has travelled this way before. “Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows” (Isaiah 53:4) up to and into his Cross. The young man who died, the friend of so many, once ”“ wonderfully! – said, “If we really believe in God, there is nothing to be afraid of.” The friend who takes our grief and carries our sorrows confirms his testimony: “God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. And he ”¦ said, Behold I make all things new” (Revelation 21:4, 5).

——The Rev. Gavin Dunbar is rector of Saint John’s, Savannah, Georgia

The Church of England has issued a rare national apology for child abuse by some of its clergy.

The “unreserved” apology came on the day a damning report was finally published, months after its completion last year, detailing how a convicted paedophile persuaded the Church he was suitable to be ordained as a priest.

Roy Cotton went on to be approved as a Scout leader on the Church’s recommendation and to hold several jobs as a clergyman in the Chichester diocese where he abused at least 12 boys.

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Their marriage had all the appearances of an arrangement made in heaven. He was the son of the second Episcopal Bishop of Connecticut, graduate of Yale, wealthy, an ordained and scholarly minister. She was a beautiful and spirited oldest daughter of Elisha Hart, a prominent Saybrook merchant.

And, on a warm summer day in July 1810, the Rev. Samuel F. Jarvis (1786-1851) married Miss Sarah McCurdy Hart (1787-1863) at St. Michael’s Church in Bloomingdale, New York, his first parish.

But, as sometimes happens, this was a mismatch that was made far from heaven.

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The nationwide research project was conducted by asking pastors in what ways they are likely to improve their churches in the next year. Respondents were presented with 12 possible activities and asked to rate the priority of each activity. Many, though not all, of these 12 activities related to getting assistance, expertise or resources from organizations outside the church.

Looking at the big picture of the research findings, pastors revealed that assessment was a significant strategic priority of today’s faith leaders. Of the dozen priorities examined in the study, pastors are most interested in getting clarity about their organization’s vision and mission. In all, 59% said they were “definitely” going to “assess your church’s vision and mission” in the next year. Out of the 12 improvement priorities assessed in the study, this easily ranked as highest.

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Check it out if you wish to listen to this recent sermon.

Part one is here and part two is there. You are encouraged to take the time to listen to (suffer through?) it all.

Please note–these are both audio files. The time begins with a short Q and A to introduce me to those present before the questions shift to the subject at hand. Note, too that Bishop Kee Sloan of Alabama was invited by the Dean, Frank Limehouse, to come, which he (graciously) chose to do. During the time, Dean Limehouse invited Bishop Sloan to speak, and he chose to do so. This covers a wide range of recent events/developments and will be of broad interest to many blog readers–KSH.

Check it out if you wish to listen to it.

The United States condemns in the strongest possible terms reports that Iranian authorities’ reaffirmed a death sentence for Iranian Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani for the sole reason of his refusal to recant his Christian faith. This action is yet another shocking breach of Iran’s international obligations, its own constitution, and stated religious values. The United States stands in solidarity with Pastor Nadarkhani, his family, and all those who seek to practice their religion without fear of persecution””a fundamental and universal human right. The trial and sentencing process for Pastor Nadarkhani demonstrates the Iranian government’s total disregard for religious freedom, and further demonstrates Iran’s continuing violation of the universal rights of its citizens. The United States calls upon the Iranian authorities to immediately lift the sentence, release Pastor Nadarkhani, and demonstrate a commitment to basic, universal human rights, including freedom of religion. The United States renews its calls for people of conscience and governments around the world to reach out to Iranian authorities and demand Pastor Nadarkhani’s immediate release.

“This is a cultural war, a cultural shift, and those who are in rebellion have decided to portray us as bigots and prejudiced,” says [Nathaniel] Thomas, pastor of Forestville New Redeemer Baptist Church, a trim, pale-brick building across from a storage facility on a dead-end road just inside the Beltway near Pennsylvania Avenue.

He knows that some gay activists are incredulous that black ministers could oppose a civil rights initiative. “”‰”˜How dare a black preacher take this position,’ they say, ”˜because you’ve felt this pain,’ and I have,” he says. Over the decades, he has marched for voting and housing rights and fought for equal protection for blacks.

But Thomas and the 77 other Baptist ministers in the association do not see same-sex marriage as a civil rights matter. Rather, they say, it is a question of Scripture, of whether a country based on Judeo-Christian principles will honor what’s written in Romans or decide to make secular decisions about what’s right.

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Check it out and listen to it some time this Lent.

Another ancient commentary summarizes this beautifully: “Adam was created pure by God to serve Him. All creatures were created for the service of man. He was destined to be lord and king over all creatures. But when he embraced evil he did so by listening to something outside of himself. This penetrated his heart and took over his whole being. Thus ensnared by evil, Creation, which had assisted and served him, was ensnared together with him.”

As we said earlier quoting John Chrysostom, the cursing of the soil had a “medicinal”, or healing, function: meaning that God’s intention is always good and more profound, even than His own curse. The curse does not come from God but from sin. God cannot avoid inflicting the curse because he respects human freedom and its consequences even when they are negative. Thus, within the punishment and within the curse, there is a good intention that comes from God. When He says, “Dust you are and unto dust you shall return”, He intends inflicting a just punishment, but also announcing the way to salvation. This will pass through the Earth, through that same dust, that same flesh which will be assumed by the Word Incarnate.

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A trial court in Iran has issued its final verdict, ordering a Christian pastor to be put to death for leaving Islam and converting to Christianity, according to sources close to the pastor and his legal team.

Supporters fear Youcef Nadarkhani, a 34-year-old father of two who was arrested over two years ago on charges of apostasy, may now be executed at any time without prior warning, as death sentences in Iran may be carried out immediately or dragged out for years.

It is unclear whether Nadarkhani can appeal the execution order.

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A retired Presbyterian pastor who spent her career ministering to gay men and lesbians has been censured by her denomination for marrying same-sex couples during the brief time such unions were legal in California.

The Rev. Jane Adams Spahr lost her final appeal before the highest court in the Presbyterian Church (USA), which released its opinion Tuesday. The tribunal ruled that the 69-year-old lesbian had violated the church’s constitution and her ordination vows when she officiated at the unions of 16 couples and called them marriages.

A lower court’s rebuke of Spahr was upheld, along with the warning that pastors should not represent the marriage of gay or lesbian couples as Presbyterian marriages….

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Each winter he would visit small hunting communities spread over 3,000 miles while driving a team of 13 dogs, covering some 50 miles a day; once, when the dogs were struck by illness, he had to take the lead harness of the 18ft sledge himself for 200 miles.

At the same time Sperry was preaching the Gospel and delivering packages and medical supplies. He was ready to meet any emergency: when the only dentist gave up, Sperry took on the task himself, despite having no training in extractions.

Since few members of his scattered flock spoke English, Sperry learned the Copper Inuit dialect, into which he translated the Gospels, the Acts of Apostles, the Book of Common Prayer and some 200 hymns.

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Ed Dobson is not afraid of dying. It’s the getting there that really scares him.

A former pastor, onetime Christian Right operative and an icon among religious leaders, Dobson has Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. When he was diagnosed, doctors gave him 3 to 5 years to live.

That was 11 years ago….

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