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Lauren Winner is a jumble of contradictions: A Jew who found Christianity in a dream starring Daniel Day Lewis as Jesus, an accomplished historian who rides an oversized tricycle to work, and a memoir writer who wants to keep details of her private life private.

In her latest book, “Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis,” Winner, 35, writes about what happens when belief falters. Her spiritual crisis, she writes, was precipitated by the death of her mother from cancer and the breakup of her marriage three years ago.

“In my case, as everything else was dying, my faith seemed to die, too,” the recently ordained Episcopal priest writes. “God had been there. God had been alive to me. And then, it seemed, nothing was alive ”” not even God.”

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First please go here and reread the necessary procedures for a petition nomination. Observe especially the following:

“A petition should come after a prayerful discernment about the preliminary slate and as a way to strengthen the slate,” advises Dean [George] Werner.

A nomination by petition requires ten signatures from individuals representing at least three parishes. Four of those signing must be canonically resident clergy, and of the six lay communicants in good standing in parishes of the diocese, three must be deputies to the Diocesan Convention. The petition must also include the consent signature of the person being nominated.

Now see what you make of Lionel Diemel’s take on this matter.

Right mission depends on power, and that power comes from the Holy Spirit.

At the Transfiguration they saw it. And they lived with it, in Jesus. And that power would be proclaimed, and lived. The mission of the church, from beginning to end, when done the way God wants it done, is accomplished through the power of God.

Lord God, empower our missionaries in the Holy Spirit as they go, and as they point to and proclaim Jesus. May each of us be open to the invitation to go ourselves. We pray that all of us may be empowered and living in the Holy Spirit that we will all live the mission no matter where we are, to the Glory of God and the building up of Your Kingdom. Amen.

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Charles Hough already had quite a career, including 18 years in the prestigious post of canon to the ordinary in the Episcopal Church’s Fort Worth Diocese. Now he wants to become a Catholic priest.

Hough hopes to lead a group of former Episcopalians in Cleburne, Texas, who have asked to belong to the new Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter, created by Rome for former Episcopalians. Every Saturday, from 9 to 4, he participates in a newly developed program of training for former Episcopal clergy.

He and approximately 60 other former Episcopal priests around the United States, many of whom are married, are studying for the priesthood using a teleconferencing system to hear lectures and discuss their intense course of readings.

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Richard Dawkins was crossing proverbial swords with Giles Fraser, the Canon of St Paul’s, on the findings of a poll by his foundation which found that many people who describe themselves as Christian have low levels of belief and little or no practice.

Dr Dawkins claimed that self-identified Christians were “not really Christian at all” because an “astonishing number” couldn’t identify the first book in the New Testament (Matthew) during questioning for the poll.

Dr Fraser then challenged the country’s top Darwinist to name the full title of The Origin Of Species…[which Dr. Dawkins was unable to do]….Dr Dawkins later accused Dr Fraser of an “ambush”.

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If you have seen the movie Chariots of Fire you will surely recall the runner Eric Liddle, son of Scottish missionaries to China, deciding out of Christian conviction not to run on the Sabbath ”“ much to the consternation of the Prince of Wales and others rooting for a British victory in the 1924 Olympic Games.

To underscore his decision the film depicts him preaching at the Church of Scotland parish in Paris to a packed house as the Olympics march on without him. The text he reads is the same as ours this morning. I spare you my effort at a Scottish accent but let your imagination supply a brogue:

“He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall utterly fall: But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; they shall walk, and not faint.”

And not leaving out the verses: the nations are as a drop in the bucket – He brings princes to naught – Rulers are counted as nothing before him.

The clergy of the Presbyterian tribe get to choose their texts for preaching and on that occasion Liddle mounted the pulpit with heavy caliber ordnance.

In Mark’s Gospel, and especially its opening chapter, Jesus goes about his business with a resolve and a steadiness of purpose that makes even an Eric Liddle look weak by comparison. He routs demons. He heals. His teaching and his rapid movements are all executed with authority, greater than the greatest athletic discipline. The trainer Sam Mussabini tells Liddle’s fellow runner Harold Abraham he is over-striding and he can find him several seconds more. By contrast Jesus does not put a foot wrong. Step by precious step Mark chronicles a Jesus whose authority takes the form of magnetic and irresistible victories, without diminishing his compassion or his special concern for the weak, including this morning a mother-in-law with a fever in a one room house in Galilee.

“Have you not known, have you not heard, he gives power to the faint, and lifts up the lowly.”

He lifts her to new life as he lifts us all into a new realm he calls the kingdom of God. Which is wherever he is, speaking his word of life.

There is something ominous then when Mark records that while it was still very dark Jesus withdrew to, as our translation has it, “a lonely place.” “Lonely” is fine, but the word means desert. A deserted place. His withdrawal creates an anxiety on the part of the disciples who then hunt him down. Upon finding him, they offer meekly it is all the others who are asking for him. The desert did not seem the proper next destination for this man showing himself to be unlike other men.

Several things require noting in Mark’s Hemingway-like prose. The desert is often the place of solitary and difficult decision making: for Moses in the wilderness, for Elijah wrapped in his mantle, for John the Baptist. It is a place of testing, a word which in the bible means ”˜road testing’ ”“ seeing what one is made of deep down inside. “Push her ”˜til the bolts rattle.” Jesus was driven by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness to be tested by Satan. The Prophet Isaiah is speaking to people in the desert, “in the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord.” Apart from table grace at a meal for 5000, only twice does Jesus pray in Mark’s Gospel. Here in the desert place and in Gethsemane.

To the degree that Jesus is so publicly successful in all he does, he knows his cover has been blown. It belongs to the heart of Mark’s depiction that Jesus must command silence or at least””for those he tutors””great care in understanding who he is and where God intends to take him. So after a full day in Capernaum and with little sleep he rises before everyone and goes into the desert place to pray.

The Prophet Isaiah speaks of questioning hearts, of weariness, of desert places. Jesus does not avoid these places as he marches through his own Galilean backyard. He confronts sickness and bondage and need, publicly and with great power. But his greatest display of power is entering the desert place and determining through prayer it will not have the last word. The same prayer we will see in Gethsemane is costly fellowship with his heavenly father, whose will it is he loves to do, in spite of the cost, above all else. “Let us go on, for this is why I have come out.” This is why I am here.
In one of her more penetrating insights, Dorothy Sayers put it this way (adapted):

[blockquote]Jesus of Nazareth was not a demon pretending to be human; he was in every respect a genuine living man. Yet he was not merely a man so good as to be “like God”””he was God.[/blockquote]

This is not a pious commonplace. For what it means is this: that for whatever reason God chose to make man as he is””limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death””God had the honesty and courage to take his own medicine. Whatever game he is playing with his creation, he has kept his own rules and played fair. He can exact nothing from man that he has not exacted from himself. He has himself gone through the whole of human experience, from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair, and death. When he was a man, he played the man. He was born in poverty and died in disgrace and thought all that just the point.

Such is the character of God, and of God’s love.

Mark’s craft is subtle. He strings three scenes together – A swift healing – A global casting out of demons and all the sick of the town – And then a withdrawal to the desert to pray. The first two are not more dramatic than the third. Jesus has authority. Power to heal and release from bondage. But his power is not allergic to poverty, but is made perfect in poverty.

The soaring rhetoric of Isaiah rings from the pulpit with energy and authority as the defiant Liddle prepares to address the Sabbath crowd. But the film-maker shrewdly lets the backdrop of all that be, not a champion’s podium, or a gold medal ceremony, but instead all the agony of hard work, drudgery, and defeat. We see the kindly Aubrey Montague, covered in mud, exhausted, hands on his knees searching for breath, the hurdles having defeated him – Harold Abraham collapsing in a heap, having been badly beaten in the grueling 200 meters by Americans Shultz and Paddock.

We all want to live a life without pain or sorrow, and properly discipline ourselves for victories, hard won, and rich in their rewards. But inside us and around all of us is sickness, and bondage, and fear; things larger ourselves, and yes seasons of defeat. Desert places.

“Spirituality” is a popular idea today, yet the Bible has no word for it. Still, the psalms and Isaiah know what the word is getting at. ”˜They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength.’ To wait upon the Lord in expectation of renewal is the discipline of spirituality. We must wait, must learn to wait on God, because God is doing things in and through our suffering and our fears and our struggles. Jesus goes into the desert place while it is still very dark. That image is crucial, set against all the drama of healing and exorcism, all the authority properly seen to make Jesus who he is; a man unlike any who walked among us; a man whose very word makes men drop their nets; who accepts the anxious searching of those he has chosen, because he will transform it and them.

It is his trip into the desert that is the pledge he will go the distance for you and me. There he will face the sure knowledge that his fame and his victories will lead to the Cross, and there he will pray for the resolve that empowers him to say: I am not returning for a ticker tape parade in Capernaum, but must go on to all the towns in Galilee before the night, and in time the final night, cometh. For that is why I came out.

To follow this Jesus today is not to be handed a GPS device. God will not protect us from what he will perfect us through. We might think that a grand idea were it not for the fact that he has done this very thing himself, in and through his own son.

When he was a man he played the man, and in him every desert place we are asked to go we find him there ahead of us.

“They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up as eagles. They shall run and not be weary, they shall walk on and not faint.”

The Reverend Canon Dr. Christopher Seitz is Professor of Biblical Interpretation at Wycliffe College, Toronto and Canon Theologian in the Diocese of Dallas

Catholics hope their Episcopal neighbors see the initiative positively, as an unprecedented way of honoring the Anglican tradition and its core liturgy, in the Book of Common Prayer, by officially making a place for it in the Catholic Church.

“We aren’t about trying to break up congregations or sheep-stealing. We respect the integrity of these communities,” [Jeffrey] Steenson said. “We’re not about competing for souls. … There is a desire to work together to build up church unity.”

Joseph Britton, dean of Berkeley Divinity School at Yale University, said even from an Anglican perspective, this can be seen as a positive move that opens further opportunities for dialogue.

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After months of urging from other Baptists around the country, the Rev. Fred Luter told his African-American congregation that he will seek to become the first black man to lead the predominantly white Southern Baptist Convention.

Several Baptist leaders said Luter becomes the prohibitive favorite for the post, to be filled in a potentially historic election at the Southern Baptists’ annual meeting here in June.

SBC Today, a Baptist-focused news website, carried the announcement on Wednesday. Youth pastor Fred “Chip” Luter III separately confirmed Luter’s announcement to his church on Sunday.

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Growing up in Kuwait, Asif Balbale thought he wanted to become a chemical engineer. He never imagined enlisting in the U.S. Navy, much less becoming an imam.

Balbale got his engineering degree after immigrating to the U.S. at age 21. With jobs hard to come by, he tried to enlist in the Army, but didn’t weigh enough. Instead, he met the Navy’s minimum requirements.

He was sworn in as a U.S. citizen in 2005 while deployed aboard the USS Boxer. Intending to apply for an officer program, Balbale, 31, mistakenly emailed a recruiter for the chaplain corps.

“God, I think, had better plans for me,” Balbale said, looking back.

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The Church of England in Lancashire has launched a county wide debate to make it ‘fit for purpose’ in a decade of decreasing clergy.

Paid parish priests are set to fall to 106 by 2019, compared with 250 in 2000 and 156 currently. Numbers of unpaid clergy are rising, from 44 to 59 between 2006 and 2011, but such continuing growth cannot be guaranteed.

‘We cannot have fewer clergy and continue as we are,’ said the Bishop of Burnley, the Rt Rev John Goddard, who chaired the year-long, 15 member task force that drafted a report on the Church’s future.

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My experience as a married Catholic priest for 28 years brings to mind several thoughts, both practical and spiritual. First, the church must support new priests’ families financially. During my first years as a married Catholic priest, there were times when we could not pay the heating bill. When I was ordained, it was made quite clear to me that I should not look to the church as my main source of income but rather to a full-time job outside of the church. My parish duties have thus always been secondary.

Secondly, the new priests must be prepared for the spiritual struggles that come with the territory of being a married priest in the Catholic Church. It is difficult for children of priests to hear everyone call their father, “Father.” It is one of my regrets that I could never be a “normal Dad” who was able to attend school functions and sporting events. Priests’ wives often bear the brunt of this special status, for they must allow their husbands to be “priest” at a real cost to themselves and their children.

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Seven months after same-sex marriage was legalized in New York State, the Cornell campus still has yet to see a same-sex wedding. Even so, religious leaders and gay rights advocates say, the legislation has already affected Cornell students and faculty.

The Rev. Clark West, chaplain at the Episcopal Church at Cornell University, will perform his first legal same-sex wedding for two Cornell alumni in a year.

“I will be ready, willing, and able to do it” when the time comes, he said. “[There are] a number of openly gay and lesbian students in our community, and if they ever decide to get married, I would be overjoyed at doing a wedding service if they would like me to.”

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I believe that marriage is the bedrock of society. It is a gift from God in Creation. It has a public element, a public commitment made to one another and to the community. For richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health. Already in marriage, there are the ingredients of stability that children are looking for.

What we shouldn’t do is begin to create comparisons of the different family structures because I think that’s a dead end conversation.

Marriage is in creation, whether you’re Christian or not, there isn’t such a thing as “a Christian marriage” – marriage is marriage is marriage. The faith of course can help support it, but we’ve got to honour the institution of marriage ”“ the Holy Estate.

I’ve known people who were atheists who were very loving and caring in terms of that relationship. The only thing I said to them was it would be much easier if they knew that the source of romance is God.

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More than 100 clerics in the dio­cese of London have written asking for the right to choose whether or not to officiate at civil-partnership ceremonies in church.

A letter sent yesterday to the London diocesan representatives on General Synod states: “We, the undersigned, believe that, on the issue of holding civil-partnership ceremonies in Church of England churches, incumbents/priests-in-charge should be accorded the same rights as they enjoy at present in the matter of officiating at the marriage of divorced couples in church. Namely, that this should be a matter for the individual conscience of the incumbent/priest-in-charge.

“We would respectfully request that our views in this regard are fully represented in Synod.”

The Government has relaxed the rules, so that now a civil partnership ceremony can be registered in a place of worship. It has, however, allowed exemptions, and the House of Bishops has insisted that the clergy observe a complete ban.

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(Please note that the above headline is mine, the paper itself has “Church split as senior bishop comes out in favour of gay marriage”–KSH).

Bishop Holtam told The Times: “We are living in a different society. If there’s a gay couple in The Archers, if there’s that form of public recognition in popular soaps, we are dealing with something which has got common currency. All of us have friends, families, relatives, neighbours who are, or who know somebody, in same-sex partnerships.”

For a long time he believed that marriage could only be between heterosexual people. But he said: “I’m no longer convinced about that. I think same-sex couples that I know who have formed a partnership have in many respects a relationship which is similar to a marriage and which I now think of as marriage. And of course now you can’t really say that a marriage is defined by the possibility of having children. Contraception created a barrier in that line of argument. Would you say that an infertile couple who were knowingly infertile when they got married, weren’t in a proper marriage? No you wouldn’t.”

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Holy God, who didst inspire the Dorchester chaplains to be models of steadfast sacrificial love in a tragic and terrifying time: Help us to follow their example, that their courageous ministry may inspire chaplains and all who serve, to recognize thy presence in the midst of peril; through Jesus Christ our Savior, who livest and reignest with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

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Nearly a hundred clergy in the London diocese, one of the most traditionalist in the country, have signed a letter demanding the same rights for priests to hold civil partnership ceremonies in their churches as they have to celebrate the marriages of divorced couples.

The Government ended the prohibition on civil partnerships in religious buildings at the end of last year, but the Church has told its clergy that they cannot register their churches for the ceremonies unless the Church’s governing body first approves the change.

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Bishop T.D. Jakes says he has moved away from a “Oneness” view of the Godhead to embrace an orthodox definition of the Trinity — and that some in the Oneness Pentecostal movement now consider him a heretic.

Jakes — long a controversial figure among evangelicals because of his past unwillingness to affirm the Trinity — stated his belief Wednesday (Jan. 27) at the second-annual Elephant Room (theelephantroom.com), an event that brings together Christian figures from different backgrounds for what organizers call “conversations you never thought you’d hear.” This year’s Elephant Room was held at Harvest Bible Chapel in Illinois and was simulcast to other locations nationwide.

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With a nudge from their pastor, the 25,000 members of the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church near Atlanta opened their hearts, and their wallets, to Ephren Taylor. And why not, given his glittering credentials? Mr Taylor billed himself as the youngest black chief executive of a publicly traded company in American history. He had appeared on NPR and CNN. He had given a talk on socially conscious investing at the Democratic National Convention. Snoop Dogg, a rapper, had tapped him to manage a charitable endowment.

So when Mr Taylor’s “Wealth Tour Live” seminars came to town, faithful ears opened wide. Eddie Long, the mega-church’s leader, introduced Mr Taylor at one event with the words: “[God] wants you to be a mover and shaker”¦to finance you well to do His will.” Mr Taylor offered “low-risk investment with high performances”, chosen with guidance from God.

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Speaking at Washington National Cathedral on Jan. 27, [Bishop Mariann] Budde said the diocese will emphasize congregational renewal and revitalization. The bishop said she intends to hire a new diocesan staff person responsible for congregational leadership and development.

She also announced a new diocesan initiative to begin in March called People of the Way, which will help congregations enhance their spiritual formation practices. This initiative will draw from Brian McLaren’s Finding Our Way Again: The Return of the Ancient Practices (Thomas Nelson, 2010).

While “the Episcopal Church is a jewel on the spectrum of Christianity,” today its “spiritual muscles” are “a bit out of shape,” Budde said. “The undeniable reality is that our church is not thriving. ”¦ I want to turn the trends of decline around.”

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Seven influential megachurch pastors took part in live unscripted discussions on different approaches to ministry in the second round of The Elephant Room ”“ an event billed as “conversations you never thought you’d hear” from pastors.

Held in Aurora, Ill., and broadcast to over 70 locations around the U.S., the discussions were mediated by James MacDonald of Chicago’s Harvest Bible Chapel and Mark Driscoll of Seattle’s Mars Hill Church.

With nondenominational churches growing across the county, the role of denominations and church networks was the first topic discussed.

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In many ways, the Episcopal church is a microcosm of the United States, with congregations often split over social issues. Lowell Grisham himself has never been hesitant to speak his mind on social issues, and addresses them in his various newspaper columns that he writes.

For Lowell Grisham, Fayetteville is much like his boyhood home of Oxford, Mississippi, which translates into a great comfort for him. Previous to his seven years in Fayetteville, Grisham served for several years in Fort Smith.

Sitting down with the soft-spoken Grisham in his book-lined office at the church, one cannot fail to be impressed with the care with which he answers questions. This being an election year in which “moral issues” seemed to motivate many voters, it is only natural to ask if he feels that some moral issues have not been adequately addressed during the election.

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Traveling to Israel with Jewish colleagues earlier this month had a transforming effect on the Rev. Susan Sica, vicar of Saint Gregory’s Episcopal Church in Parsippany.

“It would have been easy to go to Israel and have a sanitized experience that only touched on Christian sites ”” where Jesus walked, and that sort of thing. But then we would never have really looked at what Israel is today,” she told NJJN in a phone conversation a few days after returning.

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“Follow me, and I will made you fishers of men.” Fish for people.

We see and experience this moment of course as a familiar and recurring theme and pattern of the whole Biblical story. God calls Abraham to leave the land of his Father and to come to a new land, where he will establish a new nation loyal to God alone. God calls Moses at the burning bush to leave his father-in-law’s homestead in the Sinai and to return to Egypt and to lead his people from slavery to freedom again, renewing their covenant with him and to be restored in their loyalties and to return again to the Promised Land. God calls Samuel as he goes to sleep in the shrine at Shiloh. David from the sheepfolds of his father Jesse. The great prophets. Elijah and Elisha. Jeremiah. Again and again through the Old Testament. And of course as we think through the New Testament we would remember as well the dramatic vocational experience of Paul as he is thrown from his horse on the Road to Damascus. God calls.

The compilers of our lectionary give us the contrast this morning as we remember what happened with the Prophet Jonah. We remember how he is called at first by God and commanded to carry the message of repentance into foreign territory, the capital city of the ancient enemy. Fearful of what might happen to him if he were to attempt that mission, Jonah hightails it out of town in exactly the opposite direction, finally getting on a ship and sailing away. And of course we remember that story. The storm, the great fish. And then we see the second part of the story this morning. Amazingly, improbably, Jonah’s mission is successful. He gets there. He calls the enemy to repentance. And they hear the message and immediately turn away from their corrupt and evil ways to experience God’s mercy and forgiveness. But then this odd twist: Jonah isn’t satisfied. He apparently has his own agenda. It’s almost like he’s embarrassed.

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Heidi Shott, a diocese spokeswoman, said the disciplinary action against Fles is one of the first since the General Convention of the Episcopal Church in 2009 revised the canons known as Title lV “to make clergy discipline first and foremost a process of discernment, mediation and pastoral response rather than one that is legalistic and judicial.”

“It’s fairly safe to say, since the process was just approved in July, that this is one of the first,” Shott said Monday. “The way it’s changed is that the former clergy discipline was based on military discipline, so it was definitely more on the judgmental side. The new process is to be more like a board of review a lawyer or a doctor might have. It’s looking for a more reconciling process than in the past, and it’s just now being tested.”

An intake report was presented on Sept. 22, 2011, to the church’s Reference Panel of the Disciplinary Board. The panel requested additional investigation, so an investigator was hired and interviewed 18 people over the course of eight weeks.

The result is that Fles has signed an accord, which satisfies the requirements of the church’s disciplinary rules.

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There is no use, my friends, in shutting our eyes to the fact that a serious movement is on foot to formulate a non-miraculous Christianity. God forbid that I should speak harshly or bitterly of those who are engaged in this attempt. Their motive is a perfectly intelligible, and, from their point of view, an entirely praiseworthy one. Convinced, somewhat prematurely as many of us venture to think, that modern science will speedily make an end of ancient faith unless something be done and quickly done to prevent it, they are bent on saving the ship of the Church by the process known in admiralty law as jettisoning the cargo. A ship’s crew jettisons the cargo when it throws overboard so much of it as may be necessary to lighten the craft and thereby save it from foundering. But sailors who, under stress of a panic, cast away the very most valuable portion of the ship’s contents, though they may be acquitted of an evil conscience, cannot be rightly credited with either coolness or discretion. Granting that the Church of Christ is tossed with tempest, as undoubtedly it is, buffeted by adverse winds, threatened by lightning, the proposal to jettison those articles of the Creed which tell of miracle is not likely to help matters. If the Church’s hold on life can only be maintained by its losing hold upon the great affirmations that have made our own life endurable, there are not a few of us who would mournfully ask, Is then the Church itself worth saving? If so much must go, why not let the rest go too?

But is there any real reason why so much should go? If there be, I confess I cannot see it; I know not what it is. Modern discovery has, no doubt, thrown a great deal of light upon some of the subjects dealt with in the Apostles’ Creed. It has greatly enlarged our conceptions as to the extent of the material universe, and has correspondingly modified our estimate of the relative position which our own earth holds in the cosmos. It has added new planets to the old list and enormously multiplied the census of the stars. Moreover, we have learned, through the study of animal life, much more than used to be known concerning the human body and the interdependence of the material and immaterial elements which unite to make it what it is. But when you have said that much, you have said about all there is to say. Two or three of the articles of our belief have been illuminated by the larger light thrown upon them by what we call scientific research; not a single one of them has been invalidated.

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