The Rev. Michael Carr knows his predecessor left abruptly because of a theological dispute. He knows his new church’s congregation is small because some church members also left. And he knows he is moving into an area where his denomination has been affected by a nationwide schism.

But all that is in the past. Carr said his focus is on the future.

“We’ll be worshipping together, praising God together, and making a joyful noise in the future,” said Carr, 50, about his plans at All Saints Episcopal Church in Vista, where he led his first service Sunday.

All Saints has had an interim priest since the Rev. Joe Rees left last July to form an Anglican church. Rees’ departure was just one of several incidents in North County that reflected a nationwide crisis within the Episcopal Church.

Churches in Fallbrook, Oceanside, Rancho Penasquitos, San Marcos and Vista were among those affected by a schism that divided the Episcopal denomination between what many describe as liberal versus conservative theologies. Conservative Episcopalians were particularly dismayed at church leadership in recent years when an openly gay minister was ordained as a bishop and a female bishop was chosen as leader of the Episcopal Church of the United States.

Some congregations and clergy, such as Rees, broke away from the Episcopal Church of the United States but remained under the umbrella of the Anglican Communion, a worldwide network of 38 autonomous arms called provisions, that include the Episcopal Church. Break-away churches aligned with Anglican dioceses in other nations to remain within the communion.

Read it all.

In a recent issue of the Rhode Island Catholic, a diocesan newspaper, Bishop Thomas Tobin condemned Rudy Giuliani’s position on abortion: “As Catholics, we are called, indeed required, to be pro-life, to cherish and protect human life as a precious gift of God from the moment of conception until the time of natural death. As a leader, as a public official, Rudy Giuliani has a special obligation in that regard.”

The issue of how the Catholic hierarchy in the U.S. should deal with the problem of pro-choice Catholic politicians came up last during the 2004 presidential election. Some bishops warned Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic nominee, that he should not take Communion in their dioceses because of his support for legalized abortion.

But this problem has been discussed for decades. Most bishops have resisted calls to excommunicate such politicians or even to impose lesser sanctions, including denying them Communion. The very idea of these actions appalls most liberals, both inside and outside the Church. They consider ecclesiastical punishment undemocratic, an attack on personal conscience and a violation of the separation of church and state. “I believe the church has a role in guiding parishioners and people in public life, but I don’t believe the Church should be using the sacrament of Communion as a political weapon,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D., Conn.), a pro-choice Catholic, recently told the Connecticut Post. There was a time, however, when most liberals applauded the bishops for disciplining Catholics, including politicians, who opposed the Church’s teachings.

Read the whole piece.

A year after Harvard University scientists began trying to create cloned human embryonic stem cells, they have been stymied by their failure to persuade a single woman to donate her eggs for the groundbreaking but controversial research.

The goal of the work is to create embryonic stem cells — all-purpose formative cells that can develop into virtually any cell in the body — that are genetically matched to a patient with a particular disease, such as diabetes. Studying such cells could give scientists new insights into the diseases and possibly lead to treatments.

“It’s an important experiment and we can’t do it,” Kevin Eggan, an assistant professor of molecular and cellular biology at Harvard.

Without unfertilized eggs, scientists cannot create cloned embryonic stem cells through the conventional method. Called somatic-cell nuclear transfer, the procedure involves replacing the DNA in a donated egg with DNA extracted from a patient’s cells. Scientists coax this new egg to grow for several days in a laboratory dish until it is an early embryo and stem cells can be obtained.

Over the last year, Harvard has spent tens of thousands of dollars on local newspaper ads in an attempt to recruit egg donors. Hundreds of women have responded to the ads, but none has followed through with donations, for a variety of reasons, Eggan said in an interview.

Read it all.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (Toronto)

Wycliffe College, the evangelical and Anglican theological college in Toronto, is delighted to announce the appointment of the Rev. Dr. Ephraim Radner to be professor of historical theology, to commence Sept. 1, 2007. Dr. Radner, presently the rector of the Episcopal Church of the Ascension, Pueblo, Colorado, has a doctorate in systematic theology from Yale University. He was called by Archbishop Rowan Williams one of the most creative Anglican minds today. Dr. Radner has a distinguished record of publication which includes The End of the Church, a major work on the doctrines of the Spirit and the Church, Hope Among the Fragments, dealing with Scriptural hermeneutics, and The Fate of Communion (co-authored), a theological reflection on contemporary Anglicanism. His commentary on Leviticus for Brazos will appear later this year. On the occasion of his appointment, George Sumner, Wycliffe’s principal, said “Ephraim Radner brings an impressive scholarly corpus to this new work. Equally impressive are his years of faithful and effective parish ministry. His range of ministerial experience includes Burundi, Haiti, and inner-city Cleveland. He embodies the Anglican ideal of the pastor-scholar. Ephraim also continues to make a key contribution to conversations about the future shape of the Anglican Communion through his membership on the Covenant Design Group. On that stage he has been a patient and wise voice on behalf of the unity and catholicity of Church. The addition of Ephraim to an already strong and cohesive faculty means that there is no stronger place than Wycliffe for an Episcopal/Anglican ordinand to learn about his/her tradition.”

“This will be the first opportunity he’s had to speak to the diocese as a whole since he was consecrated,” said Forest Rittgers, who as diocesan deployment officer helps the bishop with recruiting and assigning priests.

The convention made news in 2004 when clergy and lay people voted by a solid majority to join a conservative theological network that opposes the ordination of gay priests. Diocesan communications officer Maggie Hasslacher expected this year’s gathering to be “very calm and just general business.”

Besides the bishop’s address, that business will include approval of the budget, prayer services, workshops and a youth rally.

“Much of what is planned for this year’s convention is intended to help us get back to ‘the basics’ as we move forward in faith,”‘ Love wrote in a letter to the diocese.

Read the whole thing.

His cancer apparently progressed rapidly, and the Lord took him home peacefully. More details will be forthcoming later from appropriate sources. Funeral arrangements are pending.

Update: Bishop Jecko’s Requiem will be at Christ, Church, Plano, TX on Wednesday, June 13, 2007 at 2:00 PM.

First, let me say that I really enjoy blogging. It’s a brilliant format for keeping readers up to date on the things I care about””and for exchanging information with them. I recently asked Swampland readers with military experience to comment on whether it was General David Petraeus’ “duty” to tell the unvarnished truth about Iraq when he testifies on Capitol Hill in September. About a dozen readers responded with links to treatises about “duty” in various military journals. Furthermore, I’ve found that some great reporting takes place in the blogosphere: Juan Cole’s Iraq updates are invaluable, Joshua Micah Marshall’s Talking Points Memo did serious muckraking about the U.S. attorneys scandal, and Ezra Klein (no relation) is excellent on health care. I love linking to smart work by others, something you just can’t do in a print column.

But the smart stuff is being drowned out by a fierce, bullying, often witless tone of intolerance that has overtaken the left-wing sector of the blogosphere. Anyone who doesn’t move in lockstep with the most extreme voices is savaged and ridiculed””especially people like me who often agree with the liberal position but sometimes disagree and are therefore considered traitorously unreliable. Some of this is understandable: the left-liberals in the blogosphere are merely aping the odious, disdainful””and politically successful””tone that right-wing radio talk-show hosts like Rush Limbaugh pioneered. They are also justifiably furious at a Bush White House that has specialized in big lies and smear tactics.

And that is precisely the danger here. Fury begets fury. Poison from the right-wing talk shows seeped into the Republican Party’s bloodstream and sent that party off the deep end. Limbaugh’s show””where Dick Cheney frequently expatiates””has become the voice of the Republican establishment. The same could happen to the Democrats. The spitballs aimed at me don’t matter much. The spitballs aimed at Harman, Clinton and Obama are another story.

Read the whole piece.

A broad immigration bill to legalize millions of people in the U.S. unlawfully suffered a stunning setback in the Senate Thursday, costing President Bush perhaps his best opportunity to win a top domestic priority.

The bipartisan compromise championed by the president failed a crucial test when it could not attract even a simple majority for an effort to speed its passage.

Intense public concern over immigration across the country conspired with high political stakes to produce a roiling debate on the issue. Ultimately, those forces overwhelmed a painstakingly forged liberal-to-conservative alliance that sought to insulate their compromise from partisanship.

Supporters could muster only 45 votes to limit debate and speed the bill to final passage, 15 short of what was needed on the procedural maneuver. Fifty senators voted against cutting off debate.

Most Republicans voted to block Democrats’ efforts to advance the measure.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who had made no secret of his distaste for parts of the bill, quickly pulled it from the floor and moved on to other business, leaving its future uncertain.

He insisted that the bill was not dead, but a crowded Senate calendar complicates its prospects.

Read it all.

He hasn’t paid taxes in 20 years, he tells IveScrewedUp.com.

“I keep moving and switching jobs to make it hard for the IRS to catch up with me,” the writer, who claims to be 38 and from Florida, taps into the keyboard. “I want to fix this but every time I think about it the anxiety grips me so that it causes convulsions.”

Similar hand-wringing from this guy at Notproud.com, another online confession site.

“All of my in-laws are so nice, they make the Brady Bunch look like the Manson family and it drives me nuts! There’s no grit or tension between any of them,” he gripes. “The family get-togethers make me wanna puke.”

Such anonymous soul-sharing, once reserved for the other side of a dark confessional booth, now unfolds daily in cyberspace. Visitors are encouraged to browse the Web sites ”” even to comment on the misdeeds of complete strangers.

Read it all.

World leaders last night hailed a groundbreaking deal paving the way for a “substantial” reduction in greenhouse gas emissions with a view to halving them by 2050. The compromise agreement fell short of the original aims of Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, but was more ambitious than many expected.

It was clinched after President Bush was persuaded that his own plan for a climate change conference in the autumn would be part of efforts to reach a global agreement through the UN. Against expectations, he also allowed the 50 per cent target shared by most leading industrial countries to appear in the final G8 communiqué. Some saw Mr Bush’s shift as a parting gift to Tony Blair after their last one-to-one meeting.

Mrs Merkel and Mr Blair called the agreement a “huge success”, emphasising that America was now at the heart of the attempts to reach a worldwide deal to succeed the Kyoto Protocol in 2012. Some campaigners welcomed the compromise as an important advance; others said it was weak and did not go far enough because they omitted the target of limiting temperature increases to 2C (3.6F).

Read it all

Scientists in the United States and Japan announced yesterday that they have developed artificial stem cells from adult mouse cells. If the approach can be retooled for humans, they say, it would avoid the ethical quicksand that surrounds the use of stem cells drawn from nascent human embryos.

Current stem-cell extraction methods destroy these embryos, which during the procedure are microscopic, hollow balls of cells only a few days old. For people who hold that human life begins at the moment of conception, destroying an embryo at any stage of development is tantamount to killing humans.

In addition, another group of US scientists says it has derived embryonic stem cells in mice using an approach that, if scaled to humans, would avoid the need for women to donate unfertilized eggs to produce large numbers of embryonic stem-cells for research. Instead, researchers could use non-viable embryos that fertility clinics and their patients would have disposed of anyway.

Read it all.

Several years ago, Gene Robinson was elected Bishop of New Hampshire. Robinson is openly gay and in a committed relationship.

This development has created a rift in the Anglican Communion, with some groups within are admonishing the Episcopal Church for its acceptance of Robinson as bishop.

Last year, several Episcopal parishes in Virginia broke away from their diocese, and joined a conservative Anglican group based in Nigeria.

“We’re not at the beginning or the end of this, we’re somewhere in the middle,” Smiraglia said. “But I don’t see the Episcopal Church backing down.”

All Saints’ parish rector, Rev. Max J. Wolf said he has seen a shift in the conversations among Episcopal leaders regarding gays and lesbians.

He said he had gone to conventions years ago where the anti-gay rhetoric from a few attendees was so strong, he questioned being part of the Episcopal Church.

Now, Wolf said, he does not hear such talk at the conventions.

Smiraglia said the Episcopal bishops have basically said they will stand by Robinson and wait for the rest of the communion to get their act together. He said the act is nothing like the Civil War, with states seceding from the Union.

“There is too much power given to the Anglican Communion in this conversation,” Smiraglia said on the issue.

Read it all.

Actually, that is my title, not hers. But read the article and see if you agree with me.

Back in 2002, Rowan Williams was something of a prodigy. At 52, he became the youngest Archbishop of Canterbury in 200 years. “And,” wrote one observer, “perhaps the cleverest,” a man who had quickly established himself as one of Anglicanism’s most gifted preachers and probably its pre-eminent theologian. He was a self-professed “hairy lefty,” a Christian socialist arrested in a 1985 protest at a U.S. air base in England, who now criticizes the Iraq war. And he once also had a controversial stance on the theology of sexuality. In 1989 he delivered a lecture to Britain’s Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement in which he stated: “If we are looking for a sexual ethic that can be seriously informed by our Bible, there is a good deal to steer us away from assuming that reproductive sex is a norm.” He continued: “The absolute condemnation of same-sex relations of intimacy must rely either on an abstract fundamentalist deployment of a number of very ambiguous texts, or on a problematic and nonscriptural theory.” As Archbishop of Wales he admitted knowingly ordaining at least one noncelibate gay man. When he moved with his wife and two children to Lambeth Palace in 2002, the Herald newspaper of Glasgow enthused, “What will endear him to the people … is that he has the courage of his convictions, however unpopular they may be.”

But his convictions turned out to be complex, and not everybody was endeared. Until July 2003, Williams seemed prepared to make Canon Jeffrey John, an openly gay man in a committed, celibate relationship, a bishop. But after a tremendous outcry on the right, Williams held a six-hour meeting with John, who withdrew his candidacy. Williams had already called an emergency meeting of the Anglican leadership over the U.S. Episcopal Church’s election of Gene Robinson, also gay and in a committed relationship, as bishop of New Hampshire. The months that followed set a pattern. The Americans consecrated Robinson. Williams, facing conservative demands that they leave the Communion, endorsed milder requests such as a promise, for now, to make no more gay bishops and bless no more gay marriages. The Episcopalians made ambiguous gestures of compliance, but in 2006 elected as their presiding bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, who had supported Robinson’s elevation. Today Williams calls Robinson’s election ”” absent any prior general decision allowing the ordination of people in same-sex relationships ”” “bizarre and puzzling.” “His heart is where it’s always been,” says Welsh Archbishop Barry Morgan, a good friend. “His natural sympathies and theological understanding are on the side of those who are gay.” And yet Williams insists that churches should not outpace the Communion’s consensus.

Read an interview here and the cover story there. You can also listen on MP# here.

Read it all.

Sheryl and Paul Giesbrect are preparing to celebrate their 26th wedding anniversary. The sweethearts cherish their life together, which began when they met while attending a Christian university.

It’s where they found religion and each other. Today, Paul is a minister in California and Sheryl broadcasts spiritual messages. Both counsel troubled couples, but now they find themselves in need of counseling. Their marriage holds a secret, one the 50-year-old parents of two say rattled their union.

For 10 years, Paul kept the fact that he was addicted to Internet pornography a secret from Sheryl.

“The temptation will be with me until the day I die,” Paul said.

Sheryl was shocked by the revelation. “I said something like, ‘Well, that’s just disgusting.'”

To help themselves and their marriage, the Giesbrects met with psychoanalyst Bethany Marshall. They allowed ABC’s “Good Morning America” to watch them for their first time on the opposite side of the couch.

The sessions yielded surprises from the start, like how often Sheryl dwells on her husband’s obsession.

She said she spent two hours a day thinking about it.

“I thought you were going to say five minutes a week,” her husband said.

When Marshall questioned Sheryl on what she thought about specifically, she admitted wondering about how often her husband was tempted.

“She questions whether their lovemaking will be enough,” said Marshall.

“I feel angry about it. I can’t say, ‘Well, this is your problem. Do something about it,'” Sheryl said.

Marshall said Sheryl couldn’t hold other people responsible to fix her marriage problems, “because you’re not healing him. You’re feeding into the addiction.”

Read it all.

You stress the importance of memory. But don’t some scholars question the reliability of communities to transmit accurate information from generation to generation?

First, studies show that predominantly oral societies have ways of preserving accurately those traditions they wish to preserve, even across many generations. In this respect, they treat different sorts of traditions differently, and the question is: Did the early Christians want to preserve testimonies about Jesus faithfully?

Second, in the case of the Gospels, we are not really talking about traditions passed from generation to generation like folklore. The Gospels were written within living memory of the events. They are what historians in the ancient world regarded as the only sort of history that should really be written, that done while eyewitnesses were still accessible. They are what modern historians call oral history. The central thread through my book is my attempt to put the eyewitnesses of Gospel events back into our picture of how Gospel traditions reached the evangelists. The eyewitnesses (many of them, certainly not just the Twelve), I suggest, remained the authoritative sources and guarantors of the traditions they themselves had formulated. This is one way the transmission of the traditions was controlled, and it’s a key factor in the origins of the Gospels themselves.

Is there any possibility that the “eyewitness accounts” of the Gospels are merely a literary technique of the evangelists?

It’s not impossible. If you have conventional techniques for indicating sources, they can be used fictionally as well as authentically. But in this case, we can, as I’ve mentioned, test the authenticity of names and the way they occur in the Gospels. Random invention wouldn’t account for the specific names we have. Also, the naming of witnesses is more occasional and unobtrusive than we would expect if the device were used fictionally. Some of the later apocryphal Gospels (Gospel of Peter, Protevangelium of James) appeal to eyewitness testimony fictionally, and the ways they do so are blatant and obvious.

I was especially concerned to counter the common scholarly view that the Synoptic Gospels don’t indicate their eyewitness sources and thus are not concerned about eyewitness testimony. I wanted to show that they do have ways of indicating the eyewitness origins of their traditions.

Read it all.

State lawyers answer that the basis for the exclusion is not gender but sexual orientation, a category not covered by existing antidiscrimination provisions. That is true, but forbidding marriages when one partner is the wrong gender still adds up to sex discrimination. The state also asserts that the civil union law grants all the rights of marriage to same-sex couples, and any difference amounts to “a difference in name alone.” A trial court judge bought that argument and dismissed the case last year, saying the plaintiffs suffered no legal harm.

Saying a civil union is the same as marriage does not make it so. Civil unions are a newly invented category, neither universally recognized nor understood. Connecticut’s claim that the two terms are alike merely underscores the bottom-line question: Why relegate a minority group to a separate category?

The court case has helped stall this issue in Connecticut’s Legislature. But if the ruling goes against the couples involved, the Legislature will have a duty to revisit the matter. A law that allows civil unions but not marriage is preferable to denying benefits and recognition to same-sex couples. But no one should confuse it with equality.

Read it all.

Now, on a serious note, there are many small communities and South Dakota really is a place where towns just go out of existence from time to time. We are not denying the potential for small but healthy churches (and that is the defense often mounted by TEC loyalists around here – “Growth isn’t the only measure of success”).

But the numbers from the Diocese are not about small, healthy communities. The numbers show decline – in many cases precipitous. And the historic Reservation Missions are vitually empty save for funerals and drive-by baptisms. We still hear TEC folks from other places boast about how “We have a diocese where over half the members are Native Americans!” Yeah, guess that’s true on paper. But in terms of vital Christian community, well, you really need flesh and blood.

Just for fun, we looked in on Good Shepherd, Sioux Falls, a church teaching the Biblical Gospel and emphasizing prayer and strong lay ministry. Their ASA went from 42 in 2004 to 85 in 2006, and they report that Sundays this year frequently have more than 100 at worship.

Read it all.

Los Angeles residents were urged on Wednesday to take shorter showers, reduce lawn sprinklers and stop throwing trash in toilets in a bid to cut water usage by 10 percent in the driest year on record.

With downtown Los Angeles seeing a record low of 4 inches

of rain since July 2006 — less than a quarter of normal — and with a hot, dry summer ahead, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said the city needed “to change course and conserve water to steer clear of this perfect storm.”

It is the driest year since rainfall records began 130 years ago.

Read it all.

So why a few religious conservatives dominated the news, while religious liberals have been left in the shadows? For starters, conservative groups have been growing in size and power, while liberal groups _ especially mainline Protestant churches _ have lost millions of members. Journalists pay special attention to groups that they believe are gaining power.

Journalists also focus on trends that they consider strange, bizarre and even disturbing. Certainly, one of the hottest news stories in the past quarter century of American life has been the rise of the religious right and its political union with the Republican Party. For many elite journalists, this story has resembled the vandals arriving to sack Rome.

One of the nation’s top religion writers heard an even more cynical theory to explain this evidence that journalists seem eager to quote conservatives more than liberals when covering religion news.

“Personally, I think there’s much truth to what the study claims,” said Gary Stern of the Journal News in Westchester, N.Y., in a weblog post.

“But why? Some progressive religious leaders have told me one theory: that media people are anti-religion, so they trot out angry, self-righteous, conservative voices who make all religion look bad.”

Read it all.

CHELSEA, Vt. (AP) — A prosecutor has dropped charges against a woman who was arrested for staring at and making faces at a police dog Hutchinson, 33, of Lebanon, N.H., was charged with cruelty to a police animal she approached Protzman’s cruiser, where his dog Max was waiting, putting her face within inches of the window and “staring at him in a taunting/harassing manner,” Protzman wrote in an affidavit

(1) Do you think an Anglican Covenant is necessary and/or will help to strengthen the interdependent life of the Anglican Communion?

I don’t feel that a Covenant is necessary, but I am aware that there are many who do, and I am fully prepared to commit to one, provided it does in fact “help to strengthen the interdependent life of the Anglican Communion.” It is hard to answer this question in the abstract, however; the details of any such Covenant””and much more detail than this Draft provides””must first be considered.

(2) How closely does this view of communion accord with your understanding of the development and vocation of the Anglican Communion?

It is close enough, though I think we do well to remember that the Anglican Communion is an historical accident: the spread of Anglicanism globally and the emergence of the Anglican Communion as we know it was not the result of a comprehensive strategy or clear intention. To acknowledge this in no way contradicts the assertion that this Communion is a gift given to us through the grace of God; it simply recognizes the newness, unevenness, and elements of surprise present in our becoming who we are; it should also incline us to an abiding openness to change, flexibility, and a willingness to experiment. It may be that this Communion is still on its way to become something yet unimagined.
I appreciate this section’s reference to mission.

Read it all.

This week on Reporting Religion we hear from one of the world’s most eminent scientists and climatologists, Sir Jihn Houghton. He tells us how his strong Christian faith combines with his scientific work, and how it drives him to protect the world and deal with climate change. He tells us what he said to German Chancellor Angela Merkel ahead of this week’s G8 Summit.

Listen to it all from the BBC World Service.

When the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church convenes June 11-14 in Parsippany, New Jersey, its members will spend time reflecting on the past, present and future shape of the Church and of the Anglican Communion, as well as considering issues of ministry and governance.

The Church’s governing body between General Conventions will, as part of its agenda, look to the past to hear a report about the effort to gather information about how the Episcopal Church may have benefited from slavery.

The Council will look to the present and the future as it discusses how the Church might reach out to Episcopalians in a small number of dioceses and parishes where the leadership is disaffected with the wider Church.

Council will consider a report and resolutions in response to portions of the communiqué issued by the Anglican Primates at the end of their February meeting in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; get a summary of responses to its invitation for Episcopalians to discuss the proposed Anglican Covenant; and will hear about the experience of one gay Anglican in Nigeria.

“I am sure that a number of international concerns will be the subject of our conversation and deliberation,” said Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori. “Among them, Anglican Communion issues, of mission including the Towards Effective Anglican Mission meeting and matters of peace and justice such as our Millennium Development Goal efforts. We’ll talk about how we can grow our partnerships around the Communion; as well as relationships with our covenant partners such as Brazil, Mexico and Philippines.

“The current conflict around the draft Anglican Covenant and the process for its consideration, as well as the Lambeth Conference and the House of Bishops’ response to the Primates’ Communiqué, will be discussed. We will also include in that discussion the conflict caused by incursion into the Episcopal Church from other members of the Anglican Communion.”

“We will consider domestic issues including the federal Farm Bill and our concern about domestic poverty, as well as matters of internal governance,” she continued.

Read it all.

United Methodists have a deep love for their church and passion for their beliefs, but they are less satisfied with its structure and say too many resources are used in administration and bureaucracy.

They are also both hopeful and concerned about the future of The United Methodist Church.

So say the results of surveys that are the basis for a State of the Church report scheduled for churchwide release in mid-June. The surveys were conducted between June and September of 2006, and involved interviewing a cross-section of about 3,000 United Methodist clergy, lay leaders and members from across the globe.

The report was commissioned in 2005 by the church’s Connectional Table, the leadership entity that coordinates the mission, ministries and resources for the denomination. The project represents the first time the church has attempted to produce a comprehensive overview of the life of the church, according to Twila Glenn, a Connectional Table member from the denomination’s Iowa Annual (regional) Conference.

Emerging from the findings were opinions on topics as diverse as prayer, clergy leadership, church cliques, homosexuality and war.

The surveys found that United Methodists strongly affirm their belief in God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. Church members generally rank the denomination’s open table for Holy Communion as extremely important. And they identify the church’s highest priorities as Scripture, children, reaching out to the unchurched and ending racial divisions within the church.

Seventy-two percent of clergy and 61 percent laity who were surveyed agree at least somewhat that the church “uses too much of available financial and human resources in administration and bureaucracy.”

Read it all.

The invitation list for the 2008 Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops is not complete, according to Canon James Rosenthal, communications director for the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC).

Invitations were sent May 22. The initial invitation list was compiled based on past precedent and the recommendations of the Windsor Report, according to Canon Rosenthal and other aides to Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams who spoke with The Living Church.

Bishops who have not received invitations included those whose consecrations are valid but whose jurisdictions are anomalous, bishops not engaged in stipendiary episcopal ministry, and a handful of bishops whose manner of life or public actions are cause for concern. Invitation also were not extended to retired but semi-active bishops known as “assisting bishops” in The Episcopal Church or “honorary assistant bishops” in the Church of England.

Some previous Lambeth Conferences included bishops holding administrative positions within their national churches, but no such invitations have yet been extended for 2008. Episcopal bishops in this group include the Rt. Rev. C. Christopher Epting, the Presiding Bishop’s deputy for ecumenical and interfaith relations; the Rt. Rev. F. Clayton Matthews, director of the Office of Pastoral Development at The Episcopal Church Center; and the Rt. Rev. Steven Charleston, dean of the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass. All three are actively engaged in stipendiary church ministry and are active members of the House of Bishops, but are not directly engaged in “episcopal ministry,” the ACC said.

Read it all.

When you cremate a human body by subjecting it for more than two hours to temperatures of 1,400 to 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit in a specially designed chamber, what remains is between 5 1/2 and 8 1/2 pounds of granulated ash.

That was the approximate weight of the contents of the ceramic urn that Buck Kamphausen was holding over the bow of the Orca III as it idled off Angel Island on a sparkling afternoon with a misty San Francisco skyline and the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance.

He tilted the custom-made urn down toward the bay. “Once in a while, people take them home. It would make a dandy cookie jar,” he joked. The ashes formed a milky gray cloud in the bottle-green water.

The cremated remains — the word “ashes” is frowned upon in the industry — were just a drop in the bay, where many hundreds of people are scattered every month.

As cremation has overtaken burial as the most common form of disposal in California — about 52 percent of the dead are cremated, according to the National Funeral Directors Association — scatterings of remains have become a daily occurrence. Without anybody really noticing, San Francisco Bay has become an enormous burial ground.

“There’s something calming about the water,” said Kamphausen, 67, who own six cemeteries and six crematories, including some in Vallejo, Sacramento, San Jose and Oakland. “We’ve done it at night, in the fog, in the rain. You have to say that if there is something spiritual about it, this is one of the most beautiful places in the world to have it done.”

Read the whole thing.

A reader yesterday asked for printer-friendly versions of articles. We’ve set it up.

Sometimes there really are benefits to letting the elves know your ideas for improving Titusonenine. Yesterday a reader mentioned the trouble he was having printing articles (all the sidebar info was taking up pages, etc.). So, we’ve set up a printer friendly format to view articles. Now in the gray bar at the bottom of every article with the post time and comment information, you’ll see two links:
— Printer Friendly
— Print w Comments

Printer Friendly will take you to a view of the full article so you can print it without lots of extra blog information. Print with Comments will take you to the article and its comments.

Note, you can also access both of these links from WITHIN the article view. If you have clicked on the title of an article, or on the comments link, you will see the printer-friendly links in the gray bar that shows the comment total.

Hopefully articles will print cleanly. If we have to make changes to formatting (margins?) please let us know. We’re glad to try and help, so do continue to let us know what features you would find helpful. Sometimes we can actually figure out how to do them.

Don’t forget, you can always find all of the recent admin posts about blog features by clicking on the blog features category.

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A measure to legalize marriage for gay couples easily passed the California Assembly after a respectful debate Tuesday, in stark contrast to rancorous exchanges on the same issue two years ago.

The legislation by Assemblyman Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) would make California the only state besides Massachusetts to sanction same-sex couples, but it is likely to be vetoed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Leno said he is not dissuaded by the governor’s public comments in February that he would veto same-sex marriage legislation. Leno, whose bill, AB 43, must still pass the Senate, said he hopes to introduce the governor to “children and families who suffer on a regular basis due to the current inequity in the law.”

“I don’t care what pronouncements he’s made, it’s his job to come to learn about this issue and to let us have our moment,” said Leno, an openly gay legislator. “I’m certain that he’s an open-minded and open-hearted individual and when he learns more, he’ll understand more.”

The bill passed 42 to 34 after a 90-minute debate during which 27 of the Assembly’s 80 members rose to speak. All Republicans voted no, and they were joined by two Democrats ”” Nicole Parra of Hanford and Wilmer Amina Carter of Rialto.

Three other Democrats abstained: Juan Arambula of Fresno, Mike Davis of Los Angeles and Cathleen Galgiani of Stockton. Assemblywoman Nell Soto (D-Pomona) missed the vote due to illness.

Leno argued that California’s existing domestic partnership laws do not give same-sex partners all the same rights and obligations afforded to married couples. He described a couple of 50 years. One of the men died of a heart attack, Leno said, and the survivor lost access to his partner’s healthcare, Social Security and veteran’s benefits and wound up homeless.

“That is what our public policymaking is doing,” Leno said.

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