From the front page of the local paper:

Nine firefighters died Monday night in a fire that destroyed the Sofa Super Store in West Ashley.

It was the single-worse loss off firefighters since 9/11, according to a spokesman from the U.S. Fire Administration, which tracks fire deaths and injuries.

“Nine brave, heroic, courageous firefighters of the city of Charleston have perished fighting fire in a most courageous and fearless manner, carrying out their duties,” Charleston Mayor Joe Riley said at a news conference this morning. “To all of their loved ones, our heart goes out to them.”

Read it all.

From here:

The government is blaming unrest on the United States. Most people know better, but reading about American spy rings, and U.S. financed rebel groups makes for entertaining reading. There’s not much other entertainment allowed in Iran.

Here is an excerpt from one:

One resolution dealt with the dioceses that have changed their constitution and canons and limited their full accession to the national constitution and canons. The council made it clear that Pittsburgh (Bishop Bob Duncan), San Joaquin (Bishop John-David Schofield), Quincy (Bishop Keith Ackerman) and Fort Worth (Bishop Jack Iker), “will live by the rules we have agreed upon at General Convention this will be enforced.” The four dioceses are named in the resolution. The council member from San Joaquin asked that, “you (the Council) treat it as an opportunity not to punish but to enact reconciliation.” I believe this fell on deaf ears.

In discussion, David Booth Beers, the national chancellor stated, “I have written to 2 of the chancellors, if they decline to roll back these canonical and constitutional amendments, the Presiding Bishop will have to consider what action to take. We can sue them. These are recalcitrant dioceses. What did they actually do? Those dioceses have said that they don’t like what we are doing and they won’t go along with it. We will frame our litigation in reference to that.”

The vote was called. There was 1 abstention, and 1 no. The resolution passed by voice vote.

Read them all here, there, and here.

Large teams of newly trained suicide bombers are being sent to the United States and Europe, according to evidence contained on a new videotape obtained by the Blotter on ABCNews.com.

Teams assigned to carry out attacks in the United States, Canada, Great Britain and Germany were introduced at an al Qaeda/Taliban training camp graduation ceremony held June 9.

A Pakistani journalist was invited to attend and take pictures as some 300 recruits, including boys as young as 12, were supposedly sent off on their suicide missions.

The tape shows Taliban military commander Mansoor Dadullah, whose brother was killed by the U.S. last month, introducing and congratulating each team as they stood.

“These Americans, Canadians, British and Germans come here to Afghanistan from faraway places,” Dadullah says on the tape. “Why shouldn’t we go after them?”

Read it all.

From the diocese of New Westminster:

A special Synod of the Diocese of British Columbia has told its delegates to the national Church’s General Synod this month that about two-thirds of its members approve of same sex blessings now or sometime in the future.

A slight majority of the 197-member Diocesan Synod, 102 or 51.7 per cent, voted to tell the delegates on Saturday, June 2, that they felt a resolution coming before General Synod to “affirm the authority and jusisdiction” of diocesan bishops and synods to authorize same sex blessings should be approved by the national Church.

Another 13.7 per cent were in favour of the motion in principle, but said that now was not the time the Canadian Church should take action.

And some 22.8 per cent said the Anglican Church of Canada should never approve same sex blessings. The rest were undecided or expressed no opinion.

Read it all.

From Religious Intelligence:

Under legislation expected to receive Parliamentary approval and Royal assent this summer, a national body will be given sweeping powers to recommend the closure or reorganisation of dioceses and the scrapping of suffragan or assistant bishop posts.

The legislation was initially drawn up three years ago, partly in response to criticism that the Church was becoming increasingly top-heavy, stifling grass-roots growth.

With many parts of the Church shedding staff — and the numbers of stipendiary clergy shrinking at a rate of about 100 a year — critics have long complained that dioceses and episcopal posts appear almost immune from such cuts.

This is primarily because the only people who can permit them are the bishops themselves — the ecclesiastical equivalent of turkeys voting for Christmas.

The newly-constituted Dioceses Commission will, however, be able to initiate reforms, though the final decision will be left in the hands of the General Synod.

Read it all.

From the Toronto Star:

Toronto’s historic Church of the Holy Trinity says it will defy any attempt by the Anglican Church of Canada to stop the blessing of same sex unions, and may even start performing the wedding ceremonies themselves.

In a resolution released late Sunday, members of the activist downtown church voted to “continue to exercise its conscience and bless same-sex unions and marry same-sex couples.”

Rev. Jim Ferry, fired by the Anglican Church 15 years ago for being gay but since given limited duties at Holy Trinity, says the parish has long supported same sex blessings, and predicted it will soon take the next step of performing a gay marriage ceremony.

“I think we’re going to be consistent and move in that direction,” Ferry told the Star. “Our parish is not about to go backwards.”

Read it all.

Nearly two generations of Catholics now have grown up in a post-Vatican II world, worshipping in a church that celebrates mass in their local languages and, at least to some extent, embraces modern customs as much as it once rejected them.

So it seemed anathema when the Vatican confirmed recently that Pope Benedict XVI would relax restrictions on celebrating the 16th-century Tridentin Mass, citing “a new and renewed” interest in the ancient Latin liturgy, especially among younger Catholics.

Given the fierce fight that preceded Vatican II””the liturgical and doctrinal reforms of the mid-1960s that sought to make the church more accessible””a similar war would seem needed to overturn them. But a movement is building at seminaries nationwide to do just that: In addition to restoring the Latin mass, young priests are calling for greater devotion to the Virgin Mary, more frequent praying of the rosary, and priests turning away from the congregation as they once did. Perhaps most controversially, they also advocate a dimished role for women, who since Vatican II have been allowed to participate in the mass as lay altar servers and readers.

Read it all.

For my part, I do wish that the PTC had done more work on the definition of doctrine and the nature of doctrinal development. Nevertheless, I want to reflect a little bit on where the issue of same-sex blessings fits in this spectrum between core doctrine and adiaphora, leaving aside the question of whether or not same-sex blessings are “commanded or forbidden by God’s word.”

There are many beliefs that are rightly ”Žunderstood as “doctrinal” in that they represent the ”Žacknowledged teaching of the Anglican Church and are essential to its identity, polity (that is, structure and organisation) and mission.

The SMR rightly observes that an issue like same-sex unions, while not itself a matter of core doctrine, carries strong implications for central doctrines such as what it means for human beings to be made in the image of God, salvation and marriage. So it would be a serious misreading of the intent of the report to isolate the category of “core doctrine” and claim that because same-sex unions are not to be categorized as such, they are not important enough to require greater consensus in the Anglican Church’s deliberations.

Read it all.

From the diocese of Pittsburgh:

Calling a recent resolution by the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church a failed attempt to interfere in the internal constitutional processes of their dioceses, the chancellors of the Episcopal Dioceses of Fort Worth, Quincy, Pittsburgh and San Joaquin rejected claims that changes the dioceses had made to their accession clauses over the last fifteen years were null and void.

Read it all.

From the ACC News:

What is the situation now in the church with same-blessings? With same-sex marriage?
Same Sex Blessings: Officially the House of Bishops of the Anglican Church of Canada has requested that all dioceses refrain from permission for the blessing of same-sex unions until General Synod 2007. The Diocese of New Westminster has permitted those parishes that had been granted permission up to that point to continue to do so but has granted no new permissions. The Diocese of Niagara voted at its Synod in 2004 to permit the blessing of same-sex unions in parishes that had approved ”“ however, the Bishop (as is the Bishop’s right) withheld permission at this time.

Same ”“Sex Marriage: The Anglican Church of Canada has not, in any diocese, granted permission for clergy to perform same-sex marriages.

What is the situation now in New Westminster?
After 3 successive Synods requesting permission for same-sex blessings by increasing majorities, BishopMichael Ingham granted permission in 2002 for blessings to occur in parishes where the membership of the parish has studied and voted to permit them to occur in that parish. When the House of Bishops requested a moratorium on permission for same-sex blessings the Bishop of New Westminster withheld any further parish permissions but allowed those previously granted to continue.

Read it all.

The Dalai Lama has just completed a tour of Australia, boosting what is the country’s fastest-growing religion. Australia has more Buddhists per capita than anywhere else in the Western world. From Sydney, Phil Mercer reports on how this religion has moved beyond Asian immigrant communities and into the mainstream.

Tibetan nuns chant traditional prayers – an increasingly common sight in Australia.

There are about 350 thousand Buddhists in the country in this mainly Christian nation, and government census data indicate that number is up almost 80 percent from 1996. The Buddhist population eclipses the size of Australia’s Muslim population.

Mark Allon an expert on Buddhism from the University of Sydney says the faith’s roots here were established by settlers from Asia.

“We have many immigrants from Buddhist countries. Many Asian immigrants recently and even historically – they brought with them Buddhism,” Allon said. “So among those communities you have an interest in Buddhism, a preservation of their religion and culture. Then you also have an interest among the wider Australian community, non-Asian community, resident community, in Buddhism and that has been going on now for almost 100 years.”

Read it all.

The Province of Kenya issued a statement on Wednesday, June 13, 2007, announcing its intention to consecrate The Rev. Canon Bill Atwood as a Suffragan Bishop “to support the international interests of the Anglican Church of Kenya, including support of Kenyan clergy and congregations in North America.” Their further “goal is to collaborate with faithful Anglicans (including those in North America who are related with other provinces). A North American Anglican Coalition can provide a safe haven for those who maintain historic Anglican faith and practice, and offer a way to live and work together in the furtherance of the Gospel.”

So, what does this mean? It is illustrative of the truism, “nature abhors a vacuum.”

In this analogy, nature is the Anglican Communion. What is the vacuum? The lack of leadership from the Archbishop of Canterbury.

I have long been a supporter of the Archbishop’s leadership and the difficult position that he has been in. I have gleaned his writings and comments for those tidbits that would give an indication of the direction in which he would lead the Communion.

He has been quoted to say that “actions have consequences,” leading me, and others, to believe that he would allow the TEC to suffer the consequences of their decisions in some form of discipline. He said that he gave a September 30th deadline for the assurances from the American Episcopal House of Bishops so that invitations to Lambeth could be sent out or withdrawn in response to the American bishops’ responses. He said that the primates would decide what course of action they would take.

This all made sense in light of his perceived ecclesiology: he did not want to make an arbitrary decision that would give subsequent Archbishops of Canterbury more power that might be abused later; he had a conciliar view of the authority of the church and its bishops. All this made sense to me until the invitations to Lambeth were issued in an untimely manner, and the actions of the American Episcopal church bishops that consented to and consecrated the bishop of New Hampshire that has caused this rupture in the Communion.

The act of issuing these invitations at this time has shown that some actions have not had any consequences. The American House of Bishops’ response to the Primates’ Communiqué from Dar es Salaam clearly rejected the pastoral scheme of the Communiqué and dismissive of the underlying concerns of the Primates.

Since the actions of the American Church seem to have no consequences with respect to the full Communion, contrary to their stated concerns, we are left with the consequences of inaction. The inaction of the primates as a whole and our Archbishop of Canterbury have resulted in the consequences of yet another Anglican bishop being consecrated by another foreign (African) province to provide oversight for churches who want to leave the Episcopal Church because the actions of their American bishops have been shown to have no consequences at the international level.

In short: nature abhors a vacuum. Because the conciliar vision expounded by the Archbishop of Canterbury is either not working or not being followed we are left with everyone doing what is right in their own eyes (Judges 17:6). This has led to the multiplicity of foreign jurisdiction Anglican bishops in the United States, lawsuit upon lawsuit, inhibition and deposition upon early resignation and retirement.

How does Jesus view us? I suspect just as he did when he saw the crowds: “he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”

We are a bishop-based church. Whether one believes that bishops are of the esse or the bene esse of the church, it is time for our bishops, both primates and diocesans, and especially the Archbishop of Canterbury, and in consultation with the Archbishop of York, to step up and bring some order out of this chaos. We are witnessing the breakup of the Anglican Communion before our very eyes. It has been given to the primates to enforce their own Communiqué. If they do not, the Anglican witness in the United States will truly be diverse, with a multiplicity American-born Caucasian bishops from Bolivia, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Uganda, Venezuela, overseeing their little niches of Anglicans in the United States, while the greater cause of Christ is hampered by our sad divisions that speak the lie to all our self-affirmations of unity. Maybe this is what God wants. Maybe this is what Anglicanism deserves.

–The Rev. Canon Dr. Neal O. Michell is Canon Missioner for Strategic Development in the Diocese of Dallas; this is posted here with his permission

It seemed obvious all week that the most hotly discussed blog entries would be related to the Executive Council meeting and last week’s news about the Anglican Church of Kenya’s announcement that Canon Bill Atwood will be consecrated as a missionary bishop for North America. However, a late entry posted yesterday afternoon just barely eclipsed those entries to emerge as the past week’s comment leader.

Here are the stories from June 11-17 with the most comments as of 14:00 EDT / 18:00 GMT today, June 18. It was definitely an interesting week in the Anglican blogosphere.

1. A Seattle Episcopal Priest says: “I am both Muslim and Christian” (74)
2. Nigerian Gay Rights Advocate Addresses Executive Council (72)
3. Network welcomes Kenya’s decision to care for U.S. Anglicans (58)
4. Two More Articles on the recently concluded Executive Council Meeting in New Jersey (50)
5. Statement from the Most Rev. Henry Luke Orombi (47)
6. From AP: Episcopal panel rejects Anglican demand (46)
7. Homosexuality & the Church: Two Views from Eve Tushnet and Luke Timothy Johnson (41)
8. Carolyn J Sharp Responds to the Proposed Anglican Draft Covenant (39)
9. Executive Council Rejects Primates’ Pastoral Plan; Insists on Diocesan Accession Clause (39)
10. Newark Diocese Addresses Executive Council, Moves Forward on Same-Sex Blessing (34)

What shocking visual image inspires so much fear, disgust and outrage that even in this era of unfettered free expression, federal courts feel compelled to take drastic steps to cover it up?

(Judges will rarely use their power to hide public sculptures depicting sadistic brutality, or to obscure billboards peddling sex and nudity, but in the California desert they’ve ordered the concealment of a simple white cross that has honored the nation’s war dead for more than 70 years.

In 1934, the Veterans of Foreign Wars erected a monument on a barren hilltop known as “Sunrise Rock” in the Mojave National Preserve to commemorate “the dead of all wars.” More than a half-century later, the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California challenged the memorial, claiming that it violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment because the cross (recognized by the government as a war memorial) stood on public land. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the dismantling of the monument, but Congress took action in 2004 to authorize the transfer of the ground surrounding the cross to private parties.

A federal district judge invalidated that transaction, even as officials responsible for the desert refuge took steps to hide the cross while the legal wrangling continued. Government agents covered the offending crossbeam with boards, making it look like a crude screen, or a shallow box, perched incongruously on a stick in the middle of the California desert.

The absurd status of this ongoing struggle shouldn’t obscure its serious and alarming undercurrents including a common attitude among militant “separationists” that treats Christian symbols with more hostility and less tolerance than those of any other religious tradition.

Read it all.

The Anglican Church of Canada has been far behind the governments and courts of this country in recognizing the rights and privileges of same-sex partnerships. Although the church has passed statements of welcome and support, same-sex couples have not been able to have their commitment to one another blessed within their parish church.

This month the national decision-making body of the Anglican Church of Canada will meet in Winnipeg and one of the agenda items could open up an option for supportive dioceses to bless same-sex partnerships. If, however, this option is denied again there will be a call for more study and more discussion even though the Anglican Church in Canada has studied and debated this issue for over 30 years.

Caution has held sway over the decades because it is a divisive issue for Christian traditionalists and because the Anglican Church has to work within a vast international communion that struggles with cross-cultural tensions.
To many in the secular world this rift within Anglicanism may seem unimportant: a sign of yet another moribund institution unable to ”˜keep up with the times’. Not so; this struggle is much more broadly instructive because it is about the risks ”“and promises ”“ of communal decision-making. It is about the openness that societal organizations must allow for successful local autonomy, while at the same time fostering a broader sense of identity and kinship with those from whom they differ.

Read it all (subscription required) or read it there.

Europe was racked by two world wars in the last century, both of which created near-famine conditions. Presumably, this caused Euro-heights to lag that of Americans, an effect that probably skews data until we get to Europeans born after, say, 1955. In other words, when Paul Krugman saw eye-to-eye with Europeans in the early 1970’s, he was looking at a lot of war-deprived shorties.

However, regardless of the absolute wealth of Europe versus the United States, from about 1955 onwards (or, in terms of measuring adults, form about 1975 onwards), one would expect Europe to increase more quickly than the US, simply because they are moving up from a war-depressed baseline.

Second problem – what is the ethnic mix of Europe relative to the United States? I would hazard a guess that healthy, well-fed Swedes are taller than healthy, well-fed Irish or Italians. The United States has descendants from all three countries, but I would hardly be surprised to learn that Sweden has surpassed the US in height. But are the Irish in Ireland taller than their US counterparts? Are the Scandinavians in this country lagging the Scandinavians who stayed behind? Who knows?

And an alternative explanation – rather than blaming America’s work ethic, let’s idly speculate that the cause is the general European welfare state.

Read it all.

Authorities in northern China have arrested five people accused of starving and beating workers at a brick kiln to keep them enslaved, state media reported Monday.

The suspects were arrested for “illegally holding and deliberately injuring laborers … and forcing them to do highly intensive manual labor,” the official Xinhua News Agency said.

The five include the kiln boss, the foreman and three hired thugs, Xinhua said. It said police are looking for three others in connection with the case, which has shocked China and exposed links between Communist Party officials and the kiln owners.

A man who answered the telephone at the Shanxi provincial public security bureau confirmed the arrests but would not give any details.

Heng Tinghan, the foreman, accused of using slave workers since March, was captured in central China’s Hubei province Saturday night after a nationwide hunt.

Read it all.

From the Winnipeg Sun:

Planning a wedding is usually complicated, taking months to sort out a seemingly endless parade of details.

For Frank Kajfes, 60, the months leading up to the big day with Bryan Wannop, his partner of 30 years, were difficult for another reason.

As Anglicans, it was important to Kajfes and Wannop, 70, to have a religious component to their wedding. Since the church doesn’t allow its priests to bless same-sex unions, having Kajfes and Wannop at the altar on their wedding day was a delicate matter.

Church leaders came up with a clever compromise.

Before they were legally married by a Federal Court judge at the end of a regular Sunday mass, they were prayed for by the entire congregation of St. John the Evangelist in Ottawa — instead of just the priest.

“They were blessing us, not our marriage. That was a technical point,” said Kajfes.

“It was the closest thing they could do without contravening the bishop’s directives.”

Read it all.

Scott at Magic Statistics blog has a good listing of links for those wanting to follow the Canadian General Synod as coverage by various orthodox bloggers.

Oh, and Scott, here’s another link for your roundup. We category-loving elves have created a Canadian General Synod category for all the Canadian Synod news here on T19.

From Magic Statistics blog:

The big event is almost here. On Tuesday morning, a week of festivities kicks off as General Synod 2007 convenes in downtown Winnipeg. Lots of important stuff will be discussed and voted upon. A new primate will be chosen on Friday 22 June, with formal installation scheduled for the following Monday.

You can follow the action via the internets. Here are a few suggested sources.

Anglican Essentials Canada is running a blog where they will endeavour to post the latest news as it happens. The blogmeister is Peter (I don’t know if he’s ever mentioned his last name online), proprietor of the fine blog The Age To Come. He’s from an orthodox Anglican parish on the south side of Calgary. AEC also has a page of general information about General Synod 2007 and another on the AEC 24/7 prayer vigil.

The mighty, mighty webelf Binky oversees the CaNN General Synod 2007 blog. At last report, Binky has been laid low by the hot humid weather out east, combined with other health problems. Prayers, please.

Also in attendance will be my friend The Rev Joseph Walker, of St Timothy’s, Edmonton. Joe’s been making fun of certain Anglican leaders and talking about going on pub crawls with Winnipeg Anglican priest Preston Parsons, so I don’t know if Joe will be a reliable news source. On the other hand, he may be able to report dirt information that no one else can, so stay tuned to his blog felix hominum.

For those who want the official line, the Anglican Church of Canada says it will provide webcast and other coverage here.

Much prayer is needed for the bloggers, for their jobs demand stamina, quick thinking, and nimble fingers. Pray also for the clergy and lay delegates, for they will need our Lord’s wisdom and guidance.

In the run-up to GS 2007, Anglican prayer blog Lent & Beyond has posted a series of prayers for Canada. This one was posted today:

O Lord,
The Anglican Church of Canada is fragmented and in need of rebuilding. Turn the hearts of its leaders to fear and obey You that they may become like a signet ring, carrying the authority of Jesus, teaching Your people to obey everything He has commanded, and making disciples of all nations.

Lord, it is our hearts’ desire that the Anglican Church of Canada be rebuilt upon the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the cornerstone. All authority is given to Jesus in heaven and in earth. Rebuild this church on Jesus, dear Lord. Amen.

Haggai, Matthew 28:18-20, Ephesians 2:20

You can read Scott’s full post, including links to previous background on General Synod here.

From the Orange Country Register:

The other day, six Anglican archbishops called for the church to bless the unions of same-sex couples. The Anglican Church of Canada is about to have a big vote on the issue, and depending which way they swing it will either deepen the schism within the worldwide Anglican Communion or further isolate the Episcopal Church of the United States.

But never mind all that. What struck me was the rationale the archbishops came up with. This gay thing, they sighed. We’ve been yakking about it for years. Let’s just get on with it, and then we can get back to the important stuff. “We are deeply concerned that ongoing study,” they fretted, “will only continue to draw us away from issues which are gradually destroying God’s creation ”“ child poverty, racism, global warming, economic injustice, concern for our aboriginal brothers and sisters and the growing disparity between the rich and the poor.”

That’s it? Anglicans need to fast-track a liturgy for gay couples so they can free up time to deal with the real issues like global warming? Half that catalogue of horrors seems to be different ways of saying the same thing (“child poverty”¦ economic injustice”¦ growing disparity”) in order to give a bit of pro forma padding to the totally cool cause du jour of global warming. Which is so cool that, if an Anglican archbishop shows up at a climate-change conference, he’ll be lucky to get in the room, and if he does he’ll be stuck at the table with the wonky leg next to the toilet, barely able to see the Most Reverend Almer Gortry up on stage doing his power-point presentation and warning that rising sea levels will send tidal waves crashing through every gay wedding reception in Provincetown by Saturday afternoon.

Read it all.

From Religious Intelligence:

Of the 3.2 million people going to church on an average Sunday in England, over 900,000 are 65 or over. That is one person in nine over 65 in the entire country.

The opportunity therefore to reach out to other folk in the country is huge, which is exactly what Manchester diocese found when they started their “Back to Church” campaign in 2005, and what the recently published Tearfund survey showed of some 3 million waiting to be invited back to church. A good many of such people are older people.

Through the wonders of modern health science we are living longer on average, and over the past 50 years the expectation of life, for both men and women, is some eight or nine years more, although women usually continue to live longer than men. Since until very recently the normal retirement age was 60 or 65 (that is, the extra years were not translated into an extended working life), these “extra years” being mostly when people are between 65 and 74. Those who are 75 today are often of similar health and energy as those who were 65 in 1957.

Read it all.

For those of you who have mentioned that when you first get on the T19 homepage it is not correctly displaying whether you are currently logged in, thanks to Greg G., we figured out the problem. Make sure you are using this bookmark for TitusOneNine: http://new.kendallharmon.net/t19 (i.e. with the full www and also the /t19).

At one point we were publicizing the link as http://kendallharmon.net That link works and will get you to the site, but the above link is better and will enable the blog to properly display your login status whenever you visit the blog.

While the Anglican Church of Canada prepares to vote this week on whether to let priests bless same-sex couples, a relaxed Christopher McBain is celebrating Edmonton’s gay pride week with members of his new church.

The former Anglican marched Saturday in the gay pride parade behind a banner for the Robertson-Wesley United Church, a church that welcomes gay, lesbian and transgendered people.

After 15 years as an Anglican, McBain left that church in April 2006.

“I left because of the gay issue,” said McBain, who said he never felt comfortable telling people in the Anglican Church he is gay.

The Anglican church’s longtime indecision over the issue has served to alienate supporters on both sides, McBain said.

“I’ll certainly celebrate with them if they are able to make a decision in favour of gay and lesbian rights, but it certainly won’t affect where I worship. It’s too little, too late,” said McBain, 27.

The issue of blessing same-sex unions is slated to go before the Anglican Church’s General Synod, the governing body of the Anglican Church of Canada, which begins its weeklong meeting in Winnipeg on Tuesday.

About 350 delegates representing bishops, clergy and lay people will discuss a so-called “local option” resolution that would let each diocese decide whether to perform the blessings.

Critics have said such a move would split the church.

Read it all.

For the increasingly vocal radical members of the community, change wasn’t going far enough or fast enough. They wanted revolution, but out there in the middle of the cornfields the only “bourgeois” thing to fight was Antioch College itself. The let’s-try-anything, free-thinking society of 1968 evolved into a catastrophic blend of legitimate paranoia (Nixon did keep enemies lists, and the F.B.I. did infiltrate campuses) and postadolescent melodrama. In 1973, a strike trashed the campus and effectively destroyed Antioch’s spirit of community. The next year, student enrollment was down by half.

Most of the talented faculty members began to leave for other institutions, and the few who were dedicated to rebuilding the Yellow Springs campus found themselves increasingly isolated. The college that gave the Antioch University system its name had become just another profit center in a larger enterprise and not even the most important one at that.

Antioch College became a rump where the most illiberal trends in education became entrenched. Since it is always easier to impose a conformist ethos on a small group than a large one, as the student body dwindled, free expression and freedom of thought were crushed under the weight of ultraliberal orthodoxy. By the 1990s the breadth of challenging ideas a student might encounter at Antioch had narrowed, and the college became a place not for education, but for indoctrination. Everyone was on the same page, a little to the left of The Nation in worldview.

Much of this conformist thinking focused on gender politics, and it culminated in the notorious sexual offense prevention policy. Enacted in 1993, the policy dictated that a person needed express permission for each stage in seduction. (“May I touch your breast?” “May I remove your bra?” And so on.) In two decades students went from being practitioners of free love to prisoners of gender. Antioch became like one of those Essene communities in the Judean desert in the first century after Christ that, convinced of their own purity, died out while waiting for a golden age that never came.

I grieve for the place with all the sadness, anger and self-reproach you feel when a loved one dies unnecessarily. I grieve for Antioch the way I grieve for the hope of 1968 washed away in a tide of self-inflated rhetoric, self-righteousness and self-indulgence.

The ideals of social justice and economic fairness we embraced then are still right and deeply American. The discipline to turn those ideals into realities was what Antioch, its community and the generation it led was lacking. I fear it still is.

Read it all.

Check it out.

From the front page of Saturday’s Wall Street Journal:

One morning in April, Dr. Donald Landry, the interim chairman of Columbia University’s department of medicine, boarded a 3 a.m. train from New York to Washington, D.C. He was there for an unfamiliar kind of meeting: Though he’s neither a political insider nor a stem-cell specialist, Dr. Landry was in the capital to tell two dozen U.S. Senate staffers how he proposed to sidestep the ethical concerns that have largely blocked stem-cell research. Back at home later that day, Dr. Landry and his two teenage sons watched on C-Span as senators debated the merits of a plan the doctor had hatched during off-hours musing a few years earlier.

“It was surreal,” says Dr. Landry.

Dr. Landry’s unlikely brush with national policy making culminates a personal journey that began years before, when the devout Catholic grappled with an ethical dilemma. As a man of faith, he believed harvesting stem cells from a human embryo was an immoral destruction of life. As a doctor, he believed stem-cell advances could save lives.

His solution — which involved extracting stem cells from dead embryos rather than live ones — turned out to be persuasive, and it has led to a new avenue of research. It will also figure prominently in a conflict that is likely to come to a head in coming weeks: President George W. Bush is expected to veto a bill that would provide government funding for research using stem cells derived from living embryos that are unused by fertility clinics. Instead, the White House has signaled that it prefers legislation that incorporates Dr. Landry’s proposal, among others.

The doctor has been to the White House to discuss his stem-cell approach, and is due for another visit in coming days. The state of New York has provided $1 million to help Dr. Landry, 53, kick-start his own experiments at Columbia. “The destruction of nascent human life is something that society should be wary of,” Dr. Landry says. “I think I’ve found a potentially simple answer to the problem.”

Dr. Landry’s answer has drawn fire from other scientists. Harold Varmus, who won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1989 and is president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, says the approach is scientifically dubious. The bill that includes the Landry proposal, he says, is an effort to “provide political cover for people who want it both ways — to say they voted for stem cells, but without offending their political base.”

Read it all.

Check it out and listen to it all.

Count me as one of the persons puzzled by the response of the Executive Council to the 2/19/07 Communique from the Primates and subsequent comments on this list. Our discussion would be improved, I think, if folks took the time to read once again just exactly what the Primates actually said and the rationale they provide.

The main issue for the Primates seems to have been a perception of ambiguity about the meaning of GC Resolution B033: “(23) Further, some of us believe that Resolution B033 of the 75th General Convention does not in fact give the assurances requested in the Windsor Report.” In other words, GC spoke (ie, Bishops and Deputies acted separately but concurrently) but just what does B033 mean? As we all know, the Primates are not alone in wondering about the meaning of B033.

The Primates reaffirmed their commitment to “the establishment of a Covenant” (29), indicated that “an interim response is required in the period until the Covenant is secured,” (30) and stated “such is the imperative laid on us to seek reconciliation in the Church of Christ that we have been emboldened to offer a number of recommendations.” (35) Note the word “recommendations.”

So, the Primates ask the House of Bishops, speaking only on behalf of the HoB, to clarify its understanding of B033 (in which the HoB participated) and the meaning of the absence of any resolution from GC on the blessings of same gender relationships. So, to quote the Primates:

“In particular the Primates request, through the Presiding Bishop, that the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church:

1. make an unequivocal common covenant that the Bishops will not authorize any Rite of Blessing for same-sex unions in their dioceses or through General Convention;

[Note: in effect the Primates are asking whether the March 2005 pledge by the HoB not to authorize any public rites for the blessing of same-sex unions, and not to bless any such unions at least until the 2006 GC, is still in effect.]

and

2. confirm that the passing of Resolution B033 of the 75th General Convention means that a candidaate for episcopal orders living in a same-sex union shall not receive the necessary consent … .

“If the reassurances requested of the HoB cannot in good conscience be given, the relationship between The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion as a whole remains damaged at best, and thus has consequences for the full participation of this Church in the life of the Communion.”

The Executive Council of TEC responded as follows:

“Still, the requests of the Primates are of a nature that can only properly be dealt with by our General Convention. Neither the Executive Council, the Presiding Bishop, nor the House of Bishops can give binding interpretations of General Convention resolutions nor make an ‘unequivocal common commitment’ to denying future decisions by dioceses or General Convention.”

So, here is the nub of the issue. The Primates have for all intents and purposes have asked the HoB of TEC to pass a “mind of the House” resolution not unlike the Port St. Lucie statement on conscience and women’s ordination in 1977 or the March 2005 pledge not to authorize any public rites for the blessing of same-sex unions. Such a resolution would speak only for the HoB; it is not binding on anyone else (at least as I understand the polity of TEC). EC has interpreted this as a “binding interpretation of General Convention resolutions” (or in the case of same-sex blessings, the meaning of the absence of any GC resolution). If I understand EC’s position correctly, such a mind of the House resolution from our Bishops acting alone somehow would be construed as binding on everydody in TEC. It feels like two ships passing in the night. And, as an aside, please tell me again who does not understand the polity of the Episcopal Church?

A more honest and forthright response from EC might have said something like this: “we support those Bishops who choose to authorize same-sex blessings, we promise not to make any attempt to force any Bishop to authorize such Rites in his/her Diocese (in sharp contrast to our recent actions on the issue of women’s ordination), and we applaud the ambiguity of B033 which will permit us to do whatever the hell we want to.”

Alas, such candor seems to be in short supply these days.

–The Rev. Nathaniel Pierce lives in Trappe, Maryland

From the Hartford Courant:

When more than 10,000 clergy and parishioners from the United Church of Christ converge on Hartford this week for their General Synod, at least half of the dozen resolutions they’ll consider will deal with issues of social justice – a more humane immigration policy, a worldwide ban on depleted uranium weapons, support of physician-assisted suicide.

In other words, bread and butter issues for a mainline denomination, known by most as the Congregational Church, that has come to be associated with its progressive – some would say liberal – stance on controversial topics like gay marriage and abortion rights.

But sandwiched between those resolutions is an almost equal number of proposals that illustrate the cost the UCC has paid for its strong social justice component.

These resolutions, which come from conferences in the Midwest and South, range from calls to “vehemently affirm” that marriage is a God-ordained relationship between a man and a woman to more measured proposals suggesting ways to keep conservative congregations from leaving the UCC.

Since the last General Synod, in 2005, when more than 80 percent of delegates voted to endorse gay marriage, at least 220 churches have left the denomination, according to Faithful and Welcoming Churches of the United Church of Christ, an organization whose stated goal is keeping estranged churches from bailing out of the UCC.

The UCC disputes these numbers, and said only 160 churches have left the denomination since 2005, and only 90 of those specifically cited the marriage resolution as their reason for leaving.

Whatever the number, it doesn’t change the underlying truth that the UCC, much like the Episcopal Church of America, is struggling to keep its family intact as it grapples with questions about its own identity.

Read it all.