The latest question panelists at “On Faith” are weighing in on is the following:

This elf found the reply of Baptist Chuck Colson to be a very clear and concise reflection on the power and importance of liturgy and tradition. See what you think.
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Tradition Must Stay Close to Truth

First off, as a Baptist I am hardly an expert on liturgy or the history of liturgy. But the real question being posed is the necessity of maintaining continuity between our worship and the way in which our ancestors in the faith worshiped.

Sadly, looking at modern Christian worship in this country — Catholic and Protestant alike — it appears that most congregants are more interested in being entertained at worship and in feeling good about themselves than they are in respecting the connection with the roots of our faith.

I have discovered a tremendous joy in orthodoxy (that is, the right belief entrusted once for all to the saints) when I visited Mars Hill in Athens and stood on the very spot where the Apostle Paul confronted the wise men of the day and challenged them with the Gospel. I am thrilled that, almost 2000 years later, I am able to preach that very same Gospel.

A function of tradition in the Christian faith is to preserve this eternal, unchanging Truth. So worship always must be rooted in and express fidelity to the Scripture, the Creeds, and the Apostolic teaching that all Christians hold in common. This is accomplished in virtually every Christian worship service through Bible readings, sermons, explication of Scripture, the reading of prayers, and the observance of the sacraments or ordinances — most notably the baptism and the Lord’s Supper.

I am always struck when I come to the Lord’s table in communion by the fact that I am joined together not only with all believers today, but with the great cloud of witnesses who have gone before us, hundreds of millions, indeed billions who have shared the same belief in the same Christ who died on the cross for the forgiveness of our sins.

The full entry is here.

To see pictures of the “New 7 Wonders of the World” as chosen in an online poll which concluded over the weekend, go to this article at the BBC. No single winner is named, just the top 7 vote-getters.

The following is an excerpt from a lengthy article on the 9Marks website, which I can’t recall having visited before, but which has a lot of interesting articles online all focused on helping Christians be better able to defend the Gospel. If you’ve got a few moments, check out what they claim are the 9 Marks of a church that glorifies God. This definitely looks to be a site this elf wants to browse around further. Note, however, that this is an unabashedly evangelical reformed Protestant site. (Predominantly Southern Baptist, it appears.) I for one find the final line of the excerpt below offensive in how it lumps the Vatican and the WCC together. Nonetheless, in this elf’s opinion, this was a worthwhile and thought-provoking read. –elfgirl
————

What’s the point of the story? Conversion is dirty word. It’s scandalous in today’s pluralistic and relativistic world to contend for one religious truth over and against another. It smacks of pride, arrogance, disrespect, perhaps hatred, maybe even violence.

This is the consensus among many of the secular elite. Popular television personality Bill Maher believes Christianity can only be explained as a “neurological disorder.”[1] Only the most unenlightened, uneducated, and uncouth Neanderthal would both believe and contend for a conversion to religious faith, especially Christianity. It’s absolutely what the modern man does not need.

And Maher simply represents what secular humanism as a movement has been saying all along. To quote from their own manifesto, “traditional theism”¦ and salvationism”¦ based on mere affirmation is harmful, diverting people with false hopes of heaven hereafter. Reasonable minds look to other means for survival.”[2] Reasonable minds”¦you can hear the condescension dripping from the pen.

Some go further, of course. They say such attempts at diversion (i.e. conversion) actually breed violence.

[…]

Yet it seems that conversion is even under attack among some professed evangelicals. This ought to strike us as nonsensical. Our English word “evangelical” comes from the Greek word for “good news.” What is this good news? It is that we, who are at enmity with God in our sin, can now be reconciled to him on account of Christ’s death and resurrection, when we repent of our sin and believe upon Christ. Conversion from our former way of life and thinking to Christianity is required. This much should be blatantly obvious.

Nonetheless, Brian MacLaren, perhaps the most prominent leader within the emerging church movement, calls for a reconsideration of conversion, if not an outright rejection of it. He writes in A Generous Orthodoxy,

I must add, though, that I don’t believe making disciples must equal making adherents to the Christian religion. It may be advisable in many (though not all) circumstances to help people become followers of Jesus and remain within their Buddhist, Hindu, or Jewish contexts. This will be hard, you say, and I agree. But frankly, it’s not at all easy to be a follower of Jesus in many ‘Christian’ religious contexts, either.[5]

We are told to embrace other faiths “willingly, not begrudgingly.” To be fair, McLaren asserts the uniqueness of Christianity apart from other religions.[6] And yet his belief in “a gospel that is universally efficacious for the whole earth,” his unwillingness to “set limits on the saving power of God” in reference to the unevangelized, and his belief that we must continually expect to “rediscover the gospel” as we encounter other religious traditions, “leading to that new place where none of us has ever been before,” raises significant and serious questions.[7] Frankly, I have difficulty seeing how he is recommending anything Christian, let alone orthodox. In the end, his proposals are eerily similar to those being set forth by the Vatican and the WCC.

The full entry is here. It is really quite comprehensive. The various sections are as follows:
— CONVERSION””A DIRTY WORD?
— CONVERSION””A BIBLICAL IDEA?
— CONVERSION””WHAT IT IS AND ISN’T
— BENEFITS FOR BELIEVERS
— CONCLUSION: ONE OF THOSE CHRISTIANS?

(hat tip: TwoOrThree.Net)

Brisbane Archbishop, Dr Phillip Aspinall has been the head of the country’s Anglican community for the last two years and he’s had to answer tough questions on a range of subjects – from the Government’s plan for Aboriginal communities to the detention of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay – but still nothing prepared him for the questions of Year 12 students from Mansfield State High School.

Four students from the school prepared questions for the Anglican Primate of Australia as part of Madonna King’s Student Press Call.

“I was absolutely terrified by what they might ask,” admitted Dr Aspinall. “By the time young people get to Year 12, they really are starting to think very intelligently about very complex matters, so it’s a terrifying prospect that they might quiz me about all sorts of things.”

Read it all.

From the News-Observer (a North Carolina paper serving the Raleigh – Durham – Chapel Hill area)

CHAPEL HILL – At a time when women were often denied positions of authority, the tattered book that chronicles the 1842 incorporation of The Chapel of the Cross bears the signatures of 12 women beside those of 12 men.

The book also lists the names of young slave children whose owner brought them to be baptized in the 1850s. Pauli Murray, the granddaughter of one of those slaves, became the first black woman ordained as a priest in the Episcopal Church. She returned to Chapel Hill and received her first Eucharist as an ordained priest in the church.

Now, The Chapel of the Cross Episcopal Church is incorporating another minority community into its 1,200-member congregation by entering into a discernment process — or active discussion — about blessing same-sex unions.

“We have a number of gay couples in our parish that have been together 25, 30 years, some of whom would like the church’s blessing on their private covenant,” said Rector Stephen Elkins-Williams. “I think we’ve asked them to wait, those who want to, long enough.”

The larger Episcopal Church does not recognize any rites for same-sex unions, although specific parishes are not penalized for offering such ceremonies or creating their own rites.

The Chapel of the Cross, 304 E. Franklin St., would join several other Triangle churches that have offered similar ceremonies for years.

Pullen Memorial Baptist Church in Raleigh has offered “holy union ceremonies” since the early ’90s and performs three or four per year, said Pastor Nancy Petty.

“To have a relationship blessed within the church is a huge statement on the fact that God blesses these relationships,” Petty said. “It affirms what we believe, that people can be Christians and be gay, and that gay people can be in Christian relations.”

The rest is here.

[Episcopal News Service] Nine members of the Episcopal Church’s Executive Council have been appointed to draft the Church’s response to the first version of an Anglican covenant.

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and House of Deputies President Bonnie Anderson made the appointments as called for in Executive Council Resolution INC021, passed at the council’s June meeting in Parsippany, New Jersey.

The group is charged with writing a proposed response of the Executive Council to the draft Anglican covenant for the council, to be considered at its October 2007 meeting in Dearborn, Michigan.

Part of the material the members of the Covenant Response Drafting Group will consider as they work are the more than 400 comments the council received by way of a covenant study guide it published in mid-April. Although the deadline for comments based on the Council’s covenant study guide has passed, the group’s chair, Rosalie Simmonds Ballentine of the Diocese of the Virgin Islands, said responses are still coming into the General Convention office and will be considered. While the group is not actively soliciting more comment, she said “we would still be open to receiving [any additional comments].”

“I am grateful to the members of the drafting group for their willingness to continue this challenging work,” Jefferts Schori said July 11. “Together we look for a thoughtful and well-reasoned response that reflects the diversity of opinion in the Episcopal Church.”

Anderson said that the drafting group will also “design a process for continuing to gather input from the entire Episcopal Church to aid the Executive Council in its response to subsequent covenant drafts.”

Ballentine said the drafting group members reflect “quite a cross section of our Church as represented on the Executive Council.” Because of the church’s diversity, she said, the group will do all it can to ensure that all voices are heard.

[…]

The members of the Covenant Response Drafting Group are:
Chair: Rosalie Simmonds Ballentine (Virgin Islands),
Kim Byham (Newark),
the Rev. Dr. Lee Alison Crawford (Vermont),
the Rev. Dr. Ian T. Douglas (Massachusetts),
Canon Victoria L. Garvey (Chicago),
the Rev. Canon Mark Harris (Delaware),
the Rev. Winnie S. Varghese (New York),
Ted M. Yumoto (San Joaquin) and
Belton T. Zeigler (Upper South Carolina).

Full article here.

[Principal Richard] Turnbull’s supporters ”“ off the record, of course ”“ suggest that it is he, not the saintly Storkey, who is the real victim of a witch-hunt. “This charge that he is a fundamentalist is baloney,” says one well-placed Anglican academic and writer. “He was brought in as a new broom and Wycliffe badly needed one if it was going to survive. Its administration was hopeless and, although it was doing well in teaching theology, its training for ministry was well below the standards needed. The irony in the three former principals attacking Richard is that he wouldn’t need to do what he is doing if they had grasped the nettle of modernisation when they were there.”

In a church famed for its moderation, neither side in the dispute seems willing to turn the other cheek. What seems clear, though, is that most students there are heartily sick of the whole matter and see it largely as a personality clash that is threatening to distract them from the serious business of studying the Bible.

Whether Wycliffe can ever get back on an even keel when, as Turnbull and his supporters hope, the wave of bad publicity has ebbed away, may depend ultimately on a review of the status of the private permanent halls at Oxford currently being carried out by a working group led by Oxford’s former vice-chancellor Sir Colin Lucas, now Warden of Rhodes House. This, it should be stressed, is a regular check-up of their health, but the activities of the Lucas group has taken on a new significance because of the crisis at Wycliffe. Its report is expected in the summer.

Read it all.

St. Paul, in relation to just such a divine grace, ties the “richly indwelling Word” (Col 3:16) to the relational virtues of peace, harmony, forgiveness, and love. But also, because what is involved here is a coming to one mind, a learning, what is required is a discipline within the church, where “admonishment”, of the kind he himself was willing to offer, is a necessary and essential aspect of the Scripture’s power to bring minds together. “Discipline”, after all, is a word cognate with “disciple”, the “student” who learns through following and standing ever near. The “teacher” points to the Scriptures and holds the student ”“ the disciple ”“ close to its formative demands. And “discipline” represents that framework of order through which this teaching or Scriptural indication is permanently applied.

If the councils of the church in the Communion exercise a magisterium, it is in just this way. And it is a way that, arguably, the Communion is currently engaging.

The goal of any Covenant for the Communion, then, would further the one-mindedness of Anglican churches through the discipline of Scriptural listening. Does the conciliar model of the current proposal do this? It would appear, at least, that this is exactly what is happening in the present ”“ we are, through the interplay and adjudication of our councils, being taken close to the Scriptures and made to hear them, often in contested ways to be sure, but ultimately in “symphonic” or agreed upon ways, even if not all are convinced at once. And thus it would seem that the proposal itself is in general congruent with the goal. If anything, the Proposed Covenant could be strengthened through a greater Scriptural focus that linked conciliar discernment with Scriptural conformity and “non-repugnance”, to use the Articles’ own phraseology. This is a point that underlines the fact that Anglican identity need not be sacrificed by stepping to the side of full-fledged confessionalism. Rather, as John Webster has noted, confessions “bind only as [they] present the Gospel’s claim” (Nicene Christianity, p. 131). Agreeing in the truth of God’s holy Word is the act that receives that claim as God’s, and hence makes confession ”“ the “one-speaking” (1 Tim. 6:12f.) that comes from “one-mindedness” — possible. To this act, the Communion is now called to give itself.

This was but one of the papers presented at last week’s Conference in Oxford that I was privilieged to attend–read it all.

In his written response issued July 11, [ELCA Presiding Bishop Mark] Hanson said that while the Vatican’s statement doesn’t change any existing statement “it does, however, restate known positions in provocative ways” that are under discussion in the current U.S. dialogue.
“It is no surprise that the Roman Catholic Church asserts that in it subsists the Church of Christ; surely every Christian church body makes the same assertion, for it is only because Christ’s Church survives in and lives through the community we call ‘Church’ that we preserve and promote the apostolic faith,” Hanson wrote. “However troubling such exclusive claims may be, we recall the Second Vatican Council’s ‘Decree on Ecumenism’ which affirmed that the separated churches and ecclesial communities are used by the Spirit of Christ ‘as means of salvation.'”
Hanson pointed out that the ELCA upholds the “Augsburg Confession,” a 16th century foundational document which states that the Church is the “assembly of saints in which the Gospel is taught and the sacraments are administered rightly.” He wrote that the Church is “wounded by the division that exists among Christians.” However, Hanson stated that the ELCA is not deficient in its self-understanding as ‘Church.’
The “anguished response of Christians” throughout the world to the Vatican’s statement shows that what may have been meant to clarify has caused pain, Hanson wrote.

Read it all.

U.S. intelligence analysts have concluded al-Qaida has rebuilt its operating capability to a level not seen since just before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, The Associated Press has learned.

The conclusion suggests that the network that launched the most devastating terror attack on the United States has been able to regroup along the Afghan-Pakistani border despite nearly six years of bombings, war and other tactics aimed at crippling it.

Still, numerous government officials say they know of no specific, credible threat of a new attack on U.S. soil.

Read it all.

This elf is getting bossy! The power of guest blogging for Kendall the past 10 days is going to her head. 😉 She has a command for all our readers: “DO NOT PASS GO! DO NOT COLLECT $200!” (for our non-American readers, this is an American slang reference from the game Monopoly)

GO DIRECTLY instead to the Article by Apb. Henry Luke Orombi, Primate of Uganda on “What is Anglicanism?“ if you have not yet read it. It is must reading! Please don’t miss it.

Three million and growing: That’s the number of Web clicks on a steamy promotional video on the European Union’s new link to YouTube. Two hundred and crawling: That’s the number of clicks on an EU road-safety video. Sadly, the EU has fallen for the tawdry marketing motto that sex sells.

First, a little background. The EU has a tough time selling itself to skeptical Europeans. In 2005, the French and Dutch rejected a proposed EU constitution, and the continentals are pushing back at the idea of adding more members to this club of 27 countries.

But in the cultural realm, apparently, it’s easier to make the case for togetherness, especially when it’s spiced with a 44-second sprint through 18 torrid sex scenes taken from European films. The clip is one of five that advertise the EU’s support for European cinema.

Moral objections to the vulgar snippet have been especially strong in heavily Roman Catholic Poland. But the official EU response is to decry the criticism as an “outbreak of prudery,” and a comment that “the European Union is not the [American] Bible Belt.”

What a tired defense….

Read it all.

A government needs revenues. So what does it do? It taxes the poor. That happens too often, says Michael Davis, a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) in Dallas. “It’s politically expedient.”

The poor don’t vote in elections to the degree the middle class and the rich do. Nor do they often contribute to political campaign funds. They don’t have much money left over for that after paying for housing, food, and clothing.

And the poor squawk less over tax hikes.

One frequent way the poor get hit is additional “sin taxes” ”“ taxes placed on gambling, tobacco, and alcoholic beverages. Because the poor tend to consume more of these items per capita than do those who are better off, poorer people bear a disproportionate share of that tax burden.

Read it all.

In Harley Granville-Barker’s 1910 play, “The Madras House,” a randy department-store tycoon scandalizes his family by “turning turk,” moving to Arabia and marrying multiple wives. It was absurd for him to endure society’s censure for showing interest in his shopgirls, he decided, when a man of his means could easily support a whole harem of young women. The fault, then, was not in himself but in society.

Barker satirizes nicely the tortured sort of logic to which some of his intellectual contemporaries in Britain resorted when explaining their own eccentric marriages. In “Uncommon Arrangements,” Katie Roiphe chronicles the romances, and rationalizations, of seven post-Victorian power couples who, she says, sought to modernize marriage, turning it into a more humane and equitable partnership — a goal that many today, of course, still strive for.

Yet a century ago these advocates for the equality of women and skeptics of conventional morality found their efforts as messy and frustrating as forward-thinking contemporary couples do. Ms. Roiphe is staunchly committed to feminism, but — to her credit — she seems compulsively interested in picking away at its contradictions. In particular, marital equity for these couples often seems indistinguishable from equal-opportunity philandering.

Read it all from today’s WSJ Europe, page 14.

The wonderful journal First Things has made available online the full version of a feature article by Archbishop Henry Luke Orombi, the Primate of the Church of Uganda “What is Anglicanism?”

What Is Anglicanism?
by Archbishop Henry Luke Orombi

Copyright (c) 2007 First Things (August/September 2007).

Few would deny that the Anglican Communion is in crisis. The nature of that crisis, however, remains a question. Is it about sexuality? Is it a crisis of authority””who has it and who doesn’t? Have Anglicans lost their commitment to the via media, epitomized by the Elizabethan Settlement, which somehow declared a truce between Puritan and Catholic sentiments in the Church of England? Is it a crisis of globalization? A crisis of identity?

I have the privilege of serving as archbishop of the Church of Uganda, providing spiritual leadership and oversight to more than nine million Anglicans. Uganda is second only to Nigeria as the largest Anglican province in the world, and most of our members are fiercely loyal to their global communion. But however we come to understand the current crisis in Anglicanism, this much is apparent: The younger churches of Anglican Christianity will shape what it means to be Anglican. The long season of British hegemony is over.

The preface to the Book of Common Prayer states, “It is a most invaluable part of that blessed ”˜liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free,’ that in his worship different forms and usages may without offense be allowed, provided the substance of the Faith be kept entire; and that, in every Church, what cannot be clearly determined to belong to Doctrine must be referred to Discipline.”

And yet, despite this clear distinction, contemporary Anglicans are in danger of confusing doctrine and discipline. For four hundred years Anglicanism represented both the theological convictions of the English Reformation and the culture of the Christian Church in Britain. The sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Anglican divines gave voice to both: English Reformation theology (doctrine) and British culture (discipline). The Anglican churches around the world, however, have ended the assumption that Anglican belief and practice must be clothed in historic British culture.

Take, for instance, the traditional Anglican characteristics of restraint and moderation. Are they part of doctrine, as Anglican theology, or discipline, as British culture? At the recent consecration of the fourth bishop of the Karamoja diocese, the preacher was the bishop of a neighboring diocese whose people have historically been at odds with the Karimajong (principally because of cattle rustling). At the end of his sermon, the preacher appealed for peace between the two tribes and began singing a song of peace. One by one, members of the congregation began singing. By the end of the song, the attending bishops, members of Parliament, and Karimajong warriors were all in the aisles dancing.

The vision of Christ breaking down the dividing walls of hostility between these historic rivals was so compelling that joy literally broke out in our midst. At that point in the service, I dare say, we were hardly restrained or moderate in our enthusiasm for the hope of peace given to us in Jesus Christ. Did we fail, then, in being Anglican in that moment? Was the spontaneity that overcame us a part of doctrine or of discipline? Surely, African joy in song and dance is an expression of discipline. Yet our confidence that the Word of God remains true, and our confidence that it transforms individuals and communities””all this is part of doctrine: the substance of the Faith that shall not change but shall be “kept entire.”

In the Church of Uganda, Anglicanism has been built on three pillars: martyrs, revival, and the historic episcopate. Yet each of these refers back to the Word of God, the ground on which all is built: The faith of the martyrs was maintained by the Word of God, the East African revival brought to the people the Word of God, and the historic ordering of ministry was designed to advance the Word of God.

So let us think about how the Word of God works in the worldwide Anglican Communion. We in the Church of Uganda are convinced that Scripture must be reasserted as the central authority in our communion. The basis of our commitment to Anglicanism is that it provides a wider forum for holding each other accountable to Scripture, which is the seed of faith and the foundation of the Church in Uganda.

Read it all.

An interesting study by the Pew Forum concludes that in “intensity of religious identity,” Muslims are “not unlike Evangelicals.”

Although Muslims constitute a small minority in the United States, and their holy book and many of their religious rituals are distinctly their own, Muslim Americans are by no means “the other” when it comes to religious life or politics in the United States. In many ways, they stand out not so much for their differences as for their similarities with other religious groups.

In their level of religious commitment, Muslim Americans most closely resemble white evangelicals and black Protestants. In their basic political orientation, they closely resemble black Protestants as well as seculars. When it comes to their views on some social issues, such as homosexuality, Muslims’ conservatism matches that of white evangelicals. Muslims are even more likely than evangelicals or any other group to support a role for government in protecting morality.

Muslims account for less than one percent of the country’s population, whereas eight-in-10 Americans are Christian. Recent public opinion surveys by the Pew Research Center find that, with respect to the intensity of their religious beliefs, Muslim Americans most closely resemble white evangelicals and black Protestants. Within all three groups, large majorities (72% of Muslim Americans, 80% of white evangelicals and 87% of black Protestants) say religion is “very important” in their own lives. Those notably high percentages set all three groups apart from Catholics (49%) and white mainline Protestants (36%).

[…]

When asked about how they think of their personal identity, only about a quarter (28%) of all Muslim Americans say they identify themselves first as an American rather than as a Muslim. This number is strikingly similar to the percentage of white evangelicals (28%) and black Protestants (33%) who say they think of themselves first as American and only secondarily as Christian.

The full article, including lots of interesting tables, is here.

A vicar who has been working to secure the release of five British hostages in Iraq has fled the country after being denounced as a spy.

Canon Andrew White, who ran Iraq’s only Anglican church, left Baghdad amid fears for his safety.

The five Britons’ abductors reportedly threatened to kill them unless the vicar stopped trying to find them. The captives, four security guards and a consultant, were abducted on 29 May, from the finance ministry in Baghdad. They were seized by insurgents disguised as Iraqi police.

‘Serious threat’

Canon White left Baghdad after pamphlets dropped in Shia areas of the Iraqi capital reportedly branded the vicar as “no more than a spy”.

An unconfirmed report in London-based newspaper al-Quds al-Arabi said the leaflets accused Mr White of trying to broker deals against the kidnappers. The vicar, who was based at St George’s Church in Baghdad, arrived back in Britain on Wednesday morning.

The Foundation for Relief and Reconciliation in the Middle East, of which Mr White is executive director, confirmed he had left Iraq because of a “serious security threat”.

The full article is here.

Continuing a series of several posts this week on the Atonement… In a Living Church Reader’s View article, Betty Streett, a Mississippi laywoman writes about the power in Christ’s blood.

Real Power
07/08/2007

The image of Christ’s blood has surrounded me lately. My daughter gave me a Charlie Daniels’ gospel music CD. Throughout it are images of blood: “What can wash away my sins? Nothing but the blood of Jesus,” and “There’s power in the blood, power in the blood.”

Not long ago, I attended a Southern Baptist church and sang such songs, reminding me of my childhood at church in the Tennessee hills. Many Christians, and I must include myself in this, find the words describing salvation through Jesus’ blood old-fashioned, unsophisticated, a little embarrassing, even somewhat offensive. There are at least two reasons for this.

In the first place, we don’t accept the concept of sin, so we find the concept of redemption unnecessary. We see the sacrifice of animals in the Old Testament as a quaint practice, acts done by primitive people, and we really don’t know why God seemed to have required it. We don’t want to consider anything or anyone paying for our transgressions because we don’t think we have any ”” at least not any that are serious. We are, for the most part, kind and generous, honest and faithful. We are for the most part pretty nice people. What more could anyone want? We certainly don’t want or need any blood atonement, any sacrificial death.

In the second place, the human soul can’t conceive of God stepping into history, into creation, and allowing himself to be tortured and killed, to bleed and die. The whole concept of a true, real God is that of power. And no being with power would assume a position of powerlessness to be abused and beaten, tortured and killed.

A suffering, bleeding Christ defies what we think power is and what it’s for. Political power, military power, corporate power, even personal power is all about getting its own way, by force if necessary. Power doesn’t suffer. Power causes suffering whenever and wherever it’s seriously questioned. Power doesn’t bleed. It draws blood if it’s severely challenged. What else could power be for? What good would it be if not to shape the unwilling into willingness?

The idea of the suffering, bleeding God being offensive is not new. It is not a 21st-century invention. Jesus himself saw it clearly. He said he was a stumbling block, an offense. He saw that people would be ashamed of his blood, offended by his death on a cross, and would misunderstand both sin and power.

The rest is here.

[Whew! NY Times to the rescue! The blog was getting really heavy on the Theology category this morning. Here’s something a bit lighter… Loved the Cruella De Vil line! 😉 ]

BEACH HAVEN TERRACE, N.J.,

July 10 ”” Tired of paying as much as $340 per month for gas and electricity at the Cape Cod home here where he has lived for 18 months, Michael Mercurio erected a 35-foot windmill in his backyard last fall that helped reduce his bill to about $114 ”” a year.

“It just makes sense,” said Mr. Mercurio, who is 61 and runs a company selling and installing windmills. “This is a clean, renewable source of energy.”

Some of his neighbors say it is also annoying. They say it is too big. They say it is too noisy. And some residents in this middle-class borough on Long Beach Island have gone to court to try to make him take it down, while the township has stilled it since winter.

It is a collision between the ideals of alternative energy and the suburban reality of New Jersey’s notorious not-in-my-backyard culture, casting Mr. Mercurio in the role of a latter-day environmental knight errant and his neighbor and principal adversary as the ecological equivalent of Cruella De Vil.

What started as one man’s attempts to find a cheap, clean energy source has become a frequent topic of coffee conversation among the small community of year-round residents in this town, where Mr. Mercurio has lived since he was 4, and has galvanized some segments of the state’s environmental community. And, oh, how the Don Quixote jokes have flowed.

“I hear it all the time,” Mr. Mercurio said, standing in the shadow of his still windmill Tuesday afternoon. “I tell them, ”˜You’ve got it all wrong: I’m not fighting against the windmills, I’m fighting for the windmills.’ ”

The full article is here.

Somehow we missed this until this morning, but Matt Kennedy has written an article for his parishoners in response to Donald Lane’s op-ed which Kendall published here on Monday. (Matt+ and his parishoners had special reason to note and respond to the article since it was in their local paper.)

Here’s the link to Matt’s response

I’m not going to try to excerpt it here as it is hard to find a “stand alone” section of Matt’s closely reasoned article. Perhaps the most helpful section is his distinction among the three types of Levitical laws: Ceremonial Laws, Civil (Theocratic) Laws, and Eternal Moral Laws.

Note, Matt’s article makes very good reading in conjunction with John Yates’ sermon which we published earlier this morning.

Grab a cup of coffee or some other favorite beverage and read them both. And share both Matt’s article and John Yates’ sermon widely. These are two excellent preachers and teachers offering very helpful clarification on issues that have become matters of confusion for many Episcopalians.

The Blogger known as “I’d Rather Not Say” (IRNS), aka “Professor Say” has weighed in on the topic of Communion Without Baptism, on which we posted two entries last week (here and here).

Here’s an excerpt:

Why is this matter so crucial? I will leave aside Tradition for now. I am still away from home and my library, so I am not in a position to lard this post with patristic quotations. No, I will only point out the illogic, amounting to a kind of suicidal insanity, of CWOB, or ”˜communion without baptism.’

***

What must one know to be a Christian? What must one believe? What, in the centurion’s famous question in Acts, must one do to be saved? Does it really matter if someone has an intimate understanding of the homoousion, or is familiar with, say the historical vicissitudes of iconoclasm?

In my experience, this minimalist, personal approach to Christian knowledge””“What must I know to be saved?”””is what usually lies at the bottom of discussions about requirements for acceptance into the Christian community, and for some time it has struck me as exactly the wrong question to ask, that the question itself is based on a false premise and a (dare I say it?) very protestant approach to Christian faith. For as people keep asking what the minimum is, (often accompanied with scornful references to ”˜how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?’, a question the Scholastics never actually asked), then it is hardly surprising that, over time, that minimum will shrink. Indeed, it will eventually shrink to nothing at all, particularly under the pressure of the modern gospel of inclusion.

But instead of “What must I know,” surely the proper question for any society to function practically should be “What must we know?” In a modern society, it is not necessary that I, a historian, know how to do open-heart surgery””but I should know that smoking and overeating are bad for my heart, and if I have a heart attack, my thoracic surgeon sure better know what to do, or I’m in trouble. I have no very clear idea exactly how my television or personal computer or cell phone work””but I do know that it has something to do with electricity and wave transmissions, and when they go on the fritz, there had bloody well better be somebody I can call to fix them.

We none of us have to know everything about everything; but all of us have to know something about a lot of things, a lot of us have to know quite a bit about a few things, and each of us has to a lot about one or two things, in order for a complex society to survive and prosper. This really isn’t rocket science, yet it seems to be an obvious paradigm that some are strangely reluctant to apply to the church.

In fact, such a model is even more appropriate for the church than it is for secular society, since the church claims to be organic””the body of Christ””in a way that modern society does not, and in our individualist culture often seems to avoid or even scorn. No, a Christian, considered thus individually, does not need to be able to read the Nicene creed in Greek””but he should know it in some form, and someone needs to be able to explain it based on its original language, or that portion of Christian experience is in danger of being lost. No, an individual Christian will not lose his soul if he doesn’t know that the fourth ecumenical council was held in 451””but when the question of how Christ can be both divine and human is considered, he ought to be able to find someone who does.

The creeds thus do not exist as a minimum requirement the individual must know in order to be saved; rather, they are the corporate commitments made upon entry into a divine community whose collective knowledge far exceeds that of the creeds. In baptism, the new believer, in dying and rising with Christ and joining His Body, puts on the mind of Christ (1 Cor 2:16) and submits himself to it, not as an individual, but as a member of a community, a collective mind, the Church, the body of Christ. If this sounds a little scary””say, a bit like the Borg of Star Trek””well, too bad. Individualism is all very well and good, and we can all have our own unique relationship to God, but go too far in that direction and pretty soon you wind up with a thousand sects, or even with no Church at all, but a church of one, “the flight of the alone to the alone.” This is why the soon-to-be-Christian always recites the Apostle’s Creed before baptism, when he is about to be incorporated into the Body of Christ. This is why we (usually, anyway) recite the Nicene Creed in the eucharist, when we are sustained by the very flesh and blood of the Body of Christ, the Church. These are not individual intellectual commitments, but corporate acts, and it is their very coporate-ness that gives them their meaning. Take that away, and you dissolve the very cellular structure of the Body of Christ.

I wrote above that we recite the creeds as part of baptism and eucharist as part of a coporate experience, a collective life. This is why the soon-to-be-Christian always recites the Apostle’s Creed before baptism, when he is about to be incorporated into the Body of Christ. This is why we (usually, anyway) recite the Nicene Creed in the eucharist, when we are sustained by the very flesh and blood of the Body of Christ, the Church. And this is why, when one part of that Body no longer commits itself to that corporate enterprise, either through active denial or passive neglect, it simply ceases to be.

The full entry is here.

(Note: should it prove difficult to access IRNS’ blog due to server problems on CaNNet, leave a note in the comments, and we can post the full text here. We have it saved, just in case of need.)

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July 12 Update:
Since the CaNNet servers have been down for a few hours now, we’re posting the full text of IRNS’ entry below.

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CWOB = RIP, or “to softly and suddenly vanish away.”

(Again I apologize for the comments problem. I’m hoping it gets cleared up soon!)

The Anglican news is full of the General Synod of the Church of England and its commitment to the creation of an Anglican covenant, of who is or is not invited to, or going to, or boycotting, the Lambeth Conference next year, et cetera. Yet the elves at Titusonenine have pointed out something interesting that has been, not exactly below radar, but slipping by largely unnoticed, a movement in the Episcopal Church that probably most had thought (if they thought about it all) was a fringe phenomenon, but which statistics show is in fact by now quite widespread and increasingly common. This is the practice of giving communion to those who have not yet been baptized””not as a kind of ”˜don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy, but as a deliberate invitation to the literally uninitiated to partake of the Church’s most sacred mystery, no questions asked. By their reading of the numbers, at least as a third, and perhaps as many as two thirds, of dioceses in TEC permit parishes to give communion to those who have not made the commitment of baptism. Apparently, when it comes to disobeying the new directives of the Episcopal Church’s sexual agenda, the authorities are canonical fundamentalists, but when you disobey the canons on the central and most sacred rite of Christian living, it’s no biggie.

Mind you, it is not as though the Episcopal Church asked a lot of questions in the past. However, somewhere, some decades ago, I recall reading a booklet (I think it was by Fr. J. Robert Wright, but can’t swear to it) outlining what the actual requirements in the Episcopal Church were, at least technically, for receiving communion, and I was surprised to discover that it was not quite the “anything goes” attitude that I was used to observing. Nor is this an issue limited to the Episcopal Church, or even the Anglican Communion. I recently visited one of the oldest churches in Florence, San Miniato, a very beautiful basilica which is set on a bluff across the Arno, high above the city and with a spectacular view of Florence below. The church is under the administration of the Benedictines, and my wife and I were lucky enough to arrive in the early evening just as the monks were chanting vespers (in an interesting, if somewhat confusing, combination of Latin and Italian), which was immediately followed by mass. Over the course of the liturgy, a small group of visitors gathered, and I was surprised to see that a substantial number went forward to take communion, including undoubtedly a considerable number who not only had not confessed or prepared in any way, but many who were almost certainly not Roman Catholics at all. I have no doubt that had I gotten in line, I could have received communion as well.

But at least in this case, it was a question of trusting the conscience of the believer as to whether he or she was prepared to partake of the body and blood of Christ. An argument can be made that, when in doubt, give communion and perhaps inquire later. (Whether that is a good argument or not I set aside for now.) But apparently there are a growing number of parishes and dioceses in the Episcopal Church that are not simply allowing communion without inquiring, but encouraging communion without even baptism.

Now at this stage in my life’s journey, I care less and less what TEC does, officially or unofficially. But I do still care about the Anglican Communion, and perhaps +++Rowan Williams, or ++Peter Akinola, or Ruth Gledhill, in considering the question of who should be invited to Lambeth, are focusing a bit too much on all of the kerfuffle over Gene Robinson. Perhaps, in their arguments over whether or not such-and-such a church is Anglican, they should consider whether a church the deliberately flouts its own canons and passes out sacraments to non-Christians is in fact any sort of church at all.

Why is this matter so crucial? I will leave aside Tradition for now. I am still away from home and my library, so I am not in a position to lard this post with patristic quotations. No, I will only point out the illogic, amounting to a kind of suicidal insanity, of CWOB, or ”˜communion without baptism.’
# *******************************

What must one know to be a Christian? What must one believe? What, in the centurion’s famous question in Acts, must one do to be saved? Does it really matter if someone has an intimate understanding of the homoousion, or is familiar with, say the historical vicissitudes of iconoclasm?

In my experience, this minimalist, personal approach to Christian knowledge””“What must I know to be saved?”””is what usually lies at the bottom of discussions about requirements for acceptance into the Christian community, and for some time it has struck me as exactly the wrong question to ask, that the question itself is based on a false premise and a (dare I say it?) very protestant approach to Christian faith. For as people keep asking what the minimum is, (often accompanied with scornful references to ”˜how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?’, a question the Scholastics never actually asked), then it is hardly surprising that, over time, that minimum will shrink. Indeed, it will eventually shrink to nothing at all, particularly under the pressure of the modern gospel of inclusion.

But instead of “What must I know,” surely the proper question for any society to function practically should be “What must we know?” In a modern society, it is not necessary that I, a historian, know how to do open-heart surgery””but I should know that smoking and overeating are bad for my heart, and if I have a heart attack, my thoracic surgeon sure better know what to do, or I’m in trouble. I have no very clear idea exactly how my television or personal computer or cell phone work””but I do know that it has something to do with electricity and wave transmissions, and when they go on the fritz, there had bloody well better be somebody I can call to fix them.

We none of us have to know everything about everything; but all of us have to know something about a lot of things, a lot of us have to know quite a bit about a few things, and each of us has to a know lot about one or two things, in order for a complex society to survive and prosper. This really isn’t rocket science, yet it seems to be an obvious paradigm that some are strangely reluctant to apply to the church.

In fact, such a model is even more appropriate for the church than it is for secular society, since the church claims to be organic””the body of Christ””in a way that modern society does not, and in our individualist culture often seems to avoid or even scorn. No, a Christian, considered thus individually, does not need to be able to read the Nicene creed in Greek””but he should know it in some form, and someone needs to be able to explain it based on its original language, or that portion of Christian experience is in danger of being lost. No, an individual Christian will not lose his soul if he doesn’t know that the fourth ecumenical council was held in 451””but when the question of how Christ can be both divine and human is considered, he ought to be able to find someone who does.

The creeds thus do not exist as a minimum requirement the individual must know in order to be saved; rather, they are the corporate commitments made upon entry into a divine community whose collective knowledge far exceeds that of the creeds. In baptism, the new believer, in dying and rising with Christ and joining His Body, puts on the mind of Christ (1 Cor 2:16) and submits himself to it, not as an individual, but as a member of a community, a collective mind, the Church, the body of Christ. If this sounds a little scary””say, a bit like the Borg of Star Trek””well, too bad. Individualism is all very well and good, and we can all have our own unique relationship to God, but go too far in that direction and pretty soon you wind up with a thousand sects, or even with no Church at all, but a church of one, “the flight of the alone to the alone.” This is why the soon-to-be-Christian always recites the Apostle’s Creed before baptism, when he is about to be incorporated into the Body of Christ. This is why we (usually, anyway) recite the Nicene Creed in the eucharist, when we are sustained by the very flesh and blood of the Body of Christ, the Church. These are not individual intellectual commitments, but corporate acts, and it is their very coporate-ness that gives them their meaning. Take that away, and you dissolve the very cellular structure of the Body of Christ.

I wrote above that we recite the creeds as part of baptism and eucharist as part of a coporate experience, a collective life. This is why the soon-to-be-Christian always recites the Apostle’s Creed before baptism, when he is about to be incorporated into the Body of Christ. This is why we (usually, anyway) recite the Nicene Creed in the eucharist, when we are sustained by the very flesh and blood of the Body of Christ, the Church. And this is why, when one part of that Body no longer commits itself to that corporate enterprise, either through active denial or passive neglect, it simply ceases to be.

Given the organic nature of church, the usual approach has been to declare that such a portion, whether individual or group, must be cut off, like a diseased limb, or else its necrosis will spread. But while such language might be appropriate for condemning, say, those in favor of same-sex “unions,” I do not think it needs to, or even can, be applied in the case of CWOB. For how can you be declared a heretic when there is, in fact, nothing left for you to believe? How can you condemn someone or something that simply isn’t there? For to give communion without baptism is not simply to declare that so-and-so need not make the necessary minimum personal intellectual or spiritual commitment to a set of metaphysical propositions. Minimum requirements in order to pass a test can, and in fact are, always open to negotiation (as anyone who works in education will tell you). Rather, it is to declare that there is, in effect, no Body to which to commit. It is to declare that the Church itself does not exist, whether that Church is visible, invisible, or somewhere in the Twilight Zone. It is to commit spiritual hara-kiri, or (to put it more kindly) to go snark hunting and find a Boojum.
# ***********************************

The Episcopal Church has an illness which is terminal; in fact, it may have already died. The rising tide of CWOB actually demonstrates this better than the debates over same-sex blessings. For all of his admirable (in my eyes, at least) emphasis on finding truth through communion, what the Archbishop of Canterbury has failed to recognize is that, by inviting the Episcopal Church to Lambeth, even minus Gene Robinson, he may be inviting a corpse to the party, vainly trying to prop up a dead body at the dinner table with all of the other guests and insisting that everyone else treat it as if it were alive, a ghastly charade in which many in the Anglican Communion are understandably reluctant to participate.

Or if “corpse” is too extreme, how about “imaginary friend”? Anyone who has seen Harvey knows how normal people react when someone insists on introducing you to an invisible six-foot rabbit. In which case, inviting TEC to Lambeth is not an act of poor taste, but of delusion””unless +++Rowan Williams believes that TEC is some sort of Anglican pooka. If it is, then Williams is an even greater mystic (whether of the druid or Christian variety) than any of us suspected; but if not (any bets?), then efforts to get TEC to participate in the ”˜covenant process’ will be pointless, for how can you have a covenant with a church that simply isn’t there? If failure to require baptism for communion does not make this clear, then I fear that nothing ever will.

This elf just finished reading the most-recent post by Chuck Blanchard, aka “A Guy in the Pew.” Chuck and some others on the “reappraising side” show some signs of reassessing strategy and musing whether TEC needs to “do what it takes” to ensure they remain a full member of the Anglican Communion.

Some of the “Next Steps” which Blanchard proposes for TEC are the following:

…what should the Episcopal Church do? I offer the following thoughts:

First, another response by the House of Bishops that speaks of polity and the independence of the Episcopal Church will not be helpful. We have made our points about polity and independence. It is time to offer a way ahead to reconciliation within the Communion.

Second, we need to end our obsession with Archbishop Akinola and the most vocal Global South Primates. They are not the audience for our response. I doubt even defrocking of all gay priests would be enough for them. Instead, our audience includes Anglicans across the world who want to preserve the Communion, members of our own Church for whom the issues of the day are of no import, and yes, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the majority of the Primates. This audience will not demand capitulation, but it will expect a respectful (and yes, compromising) response.

Third, we need to stop talking about the issues of same sex unions as if they were political issues that can be decided by majority votes. These are theological issues, that deserve theological attention.

You can read Chuck’s post (with quite a few links to other reappraising / progressive bloggers) here. (link is fixed)

(hat tip Nick Knisely)

It’s quite interesting to this elf to note how this soul-searching follows the CoE debate and vote on the Anglican Covenant. Perhaps there is actually much more listening going on than say, in 2003? I have no idea if Kendall would have posted this blog entry, or what he thinks of it. But I do think that it’s helpful to read some of the discussion among bloggers who have generally up until now been supportive of TEC’s decisions and actions at and in the wake of the 2003 General Convention.

From today’s Daily Telegraph:

The sound of unbridled joy seldom breaks the quiet of the British Museum’s great Arched Room, which holds its collection of 130,000 Assyrian cuneiform tablets, dating back 5,000 years.

But Michael Jursa, a visiting professor from Vienna, let out such a cry last Thursday. He had made what has been called the most important find in Biblical archaeology for 100 years, a discovery that supports the view that the historical books of the Old Testament are based on fact.

Searching for Babylonian financial accounts among the tablets, Prof Jursa suddenly came across a name he half remembered – Nabu-sharrussu-ukin, described there in a hand 2,500 years old, as “the chief eunuch” of Nebuchadnezzar II, king of Babylon.

Prof Jursa, an Assyriologist, checked the Old Testament and there in chapter 39 of the Book of Jeremiah, he found, spelled differently, the same name – Nebo-Sarsekim.

Nebo-Sarsekim, according to Jeremiah, was Nebuchadnezzar II’s “chief officer” and was with him at the siege of Jerusalem in 587 BC, when the Babylonians overran the city.
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The small tablet, the size of “a packet of 10 cigarettes” according to Irving Finkel, a British Museum expert, is a bill of receipt acknowledging Nabu-sharrussu-ukin’s payment of 0.75 kg of gold to a temple in Babylon.

The tablet is dated to the 10th year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II, 595BC, 12 years before the siege of Jerusalem.

Evidence from non-Biblical sources of people named in the Bible is not unknown, but Nabu-sharrussu-ukin would have been a relatively insignificant figure.

“This is a fantastic discovery, a world-class find,” Dr Finkel said yesterday. “If Nebo-Sarsekim existed, which other lesser figures in the Old Testament existed? A throwaway detail in the Old Testament turns out to be accurate and true. I think that it means that the whole of the narrative [of Jeremiah] takes on a new kind of power.”

Full story here.

Several weeks ago, the Rev. John Yates of the Falls Church began a sermon series on the 10 Commandments. Here’s an excerpt of the first sermon in the series which provides a really helpful framework for how Christians should understand the relationship between the Old Testament and the New Testament in moral decision-making:

We live in a time where the air the young people breathe is filled with the spirit of autonomy. There’s a great hesitation among young adults today to say that such and such behavior is wrong for someone else if the someone else doesn’t think it’s wrong. Our culture is becoming more and more hesitant to draw moral boundaries. Even young people who follow Christ are hesitant to draw moral conclusions about others because they’ve grown up in a society that says do you own thing, find your own way, question authority. And so the college student who challenged his mom, the college students who challenge their parents’ interpretation of biblical teaching about sexual morality now, it’s not unusual. And, Christians who just quote the Bible in support of this or that moral position are often accused of either insensitivity or backwardness or of selecting out those passages that fit their own predilections and ignoring others. That’s the setting that we’re living in today.

Now, the question is, how do we know what’s right and what’s wrong? And another question is how do we make wise moral decisions? Well, we’re here because we follow Christ. We believe he’s the Son of God who came among us to reveal God, to teach God to us, to teach us the way of God. And so we follow Christ to know right and wrong. We believe he’s entrusted to us the scriptures as a reliable, true, authoritative guide in right thinking and right living. He told us to trust and to heed the Old Testament, and he established the New Testament through the apostles who he promised to guide into the truth as they proclaimed the word. And so the church has always believed what the apostles wrote in 2 Timothy 3. You know the words:
All scripture is inspired or breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness that the man of God [or the woman] may be competent, equipped for every good work.

The fundamental reason why the Anglican Communion and other communions as well are being pulled apart is that there’s no longer agreement as to what scriptural authority means. Church people are now accepting and approving ideas and behaviors that the church has consistently seen over the centuries as contrary to biblical teaching: the deity of Christ, the atoning death of Christ, the historical reliability of the resurrection, our responsibility to proclaim Christ to all people, and of course certain standards of moral behavior. All this and more is being questioned and even discouraged by many church people, and so we’re divided over these things, painfully divided. How do we read our Bible to discern what is right and what is wrong? We’re about to enter into a series of talks on Sundays in the summer on the Ten Commandments””God’s moral foundation for all civilization””because we forget how basic and how helpful the Ten Commandments are and what they teach us. They never go out of date. We’ll try to pitch this in a way that the kids will appreciate it as well as adults. But before we get to that today, I want to help you think clearly about how we view the Bible as a whole in its moral teaching. It’s true””as some people accuse us””it’s true. We do accept some passages of Leviticus, for instance, as still binding, and others we reject. Why do we do that? Are we just subjective””that’s what we’re accused of””or is there more to it?

The full text is here.

(hat tip: Prydain)

In a post that starts out as a review of the book “Pierced for Our Transgressions,” Peter Ould provides a summary of and includes some of his own commentary on the Penal Substitution debate that has been going on in various parts of the Anglican world (especially the CoE) and the Anglican blogosphere in recent months:

Penal Substitution is the name give to the explanation of what Jesus did on the cross that is favoured by Evangelicals and mainstream Anglo-Catholics. The doctrine, drawing chiefly but not exclusively on passages in Isaiah, John, Romans and Hebrews states that Jesus’ death on the cross pays the penalty that would otherwise go to us for our sin. When you accept Jesus as Lord and Saviour it’s as though your “bad slate in front of God” is transferred onto Jesus. You are left perfect in the eyes of God while Jesus takes the full penalty for your sins – hence “Penal Substitution”.

In the past few years the doctrine has been attacked publicly twice, with attendant media attention, first in the church press and then in the national papers. The first recent criticism was by Steve Chalke in his book, “The Lost Message of Jesus”. In the book Chalke criticised the doctrine as “a form of cosmic child abuse – a vengeful father, punishing his son for an offence he has not even committed. Understandably, both people inside and outside of the church have found this twisted version of events morally dubious and a huge barrier to faith.” More recently, Jeffery John (of St Albans Cathedral) used a BBC Lent talk to say that the doctrine made “God sound like a psychopath” and the doctrine “worse than illogical .. insane”.

Yes, some people have a problem with penal substitution, but often their problem comes from not getting the proper picture of penal substitution. For example, Chalke criticises the idea of a father punishing a son for things he hasn’t done. But such a criticism fails to remember that the labels “Father” and “Son” in the god-head are not biological descriptions but rather limited human language God has used to help us understand who he is. In penal substition God takes upon himself the punishment for our sin – the fact that the Father places it upon the Son is not the point here – human understanding of those words should not limit us in accepting what the Bible says is true.

Peter’s full post, including various background links, is here.

This elf has been trying to follow some of the various blog articles and discussions on the Atonement recently. Over the past few days, I’ve pulled together several posts on this topic. Stay tuned for more on the theme of the Atonement today and tomorrow.

The document said that the Second Vatican Council’s opening to other faiths ”“ including “ecclesial communities originating with the Reformation” ”“ had recognised there were “many elements of sanctification and truth” in other Christian denominations, but had also emphasised that only Catholicism was fully Christ’s Church.

The document said that other Christian faiths “lack elements considered essential to the Catholic Church”.

The disappointment of the Anglicans was evident in the response of Canon Gregory Cameron, Dr Williams’s former chaplain in Wales and a leading canonical lawyer and scholar who is now ecumenical officer of the Anglican Communion.

Canon Cameron said: “In the commentary of this document we are told that ”˜Catholic ecumenism’ appears ”˜somewhat paradoxical’. It is paradoxical for leaders of the Roman Catholic Church to indicate to its ecumenical partners that it no longer expects all other Christians merely to return to the true (Roman Catholic) Church, but then for Rome to say that it alone has ”˜full identity’ with the Church of Christ, and that all others of us are lacking.”

He said Anglican bishops had indicated in 1997 that such a position constituted “a major ecumenical obstacle”.

Read it all.

Fifth Question: Why do the texts of the Council and those of the Magisterium since the Council not use the title of “Church” with regard to those Christian Communities born out of the Reformation of the sixteenth century?

Response: According to Catholic doctrine, these Communities do not enjoy apostolic succession in the sacrament of Orders, and are, therefore, deprived of a constitutive element of the Church. These ecclesial Communities which, specifically because of the absence of the sacramental priesthood, have not preserved the genuine and integral substance of the Eucharistic Mystery[19] cannot, according to Catholic doctrine, be called “Churches” in the proper sense.[20]

Read it all and there is another version here.

But attending was not really about taking a peek at another school’s methods. “The fund­amental reason was that I wanted to have my own skills improved as a manager and leader,” Prof Francis says. “The course did what it said it would ”“ we were both impressed.

“The opportunity of talking about it with 89 other senior executives who have depth and experience is part of what you are paying for ”“ as is being led by someone who is highly experienced and can pull out all the nuances.”

Harvard, Prof Francis says, has developed and crystallised his thinking and given him greater confidence that his intuition about how and what to change were correct. “For me, one of the biggest, most striking insights is the importance of organisational culture. There was a phrase I found very striking, which Ford had pinned up in the boardroom: ”˜culture eats strategy for breakfast’. It means that you can strategise all you like but, if you have not got hearts and minds, it is a complete waste of time.”

–Professor Arthur Francis, Dean of Bradford University School of Management, in yesterday’s Financial Times, page 12

How interesting to come across this story from the NY Times today (hat tip to Pat Dague) after we’d already prepared to post the entry below on the new faith and politics blog that’s past of the Washington Post/Newsweek’s On Faith site. Blogging, faith, and politics especially in relation to the 2008 Presidential election certainly seem to be a very hot topic at the moment.

WASHINGTON ”” The morning meeting could have been at any news outlet, with discussion around the glass conference-room table about stem cells, Iraq and the presidential candidates. But afterward the members of the small group in the room bowed their heads in prayer.

“I just pray for all of us, reporters, photographers and editors,” said David Brody, a reporter. “Give us the strength to get through the day. Bless our work, Lord. Give us the right words to say.”

Mr. Brody, 42, writes a blog and covers politics for the Christian Broadcasting Network, the television station founded by Pat Robertson. With the three leading Republican presidential candidates in the early going each confronting his own serious obstacles in winning over evangelical Christians, Mr. Brody occupies a position of influence in the 2008 presidential campaign as a gatekeeper to a crucial constituency.

CBN has about a million viewers a day on television, making it a big platform for Mr. Brody and the Republican candidates.

In addition, Mr. Brody’s blog, the Brody File, which scours the conservative credentials of Republican candidates but also looks at Democrats on occasion, has become required reading for political insiders, and is frequently cited by mainstream news organizations and bloggers on both ends of the political spectrum. With its blend of reporting, jokey commentary and savvy explanations of the concerns of evangelical voters, it now draws almost 100,000 hits a month, more than five times the traffic it was getting just several months ago.

Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York recently became the latest Republican presidential candidate to appear with Mr. Brody on the network’s main news program, “The 700 Club,” with segments posted on the Brody File. Earlier this year, Mr. Brody interviewed Senator John McCain of Arizona. He has twice sat down with Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts.

The full article is here.

The link to the Brody File is here.

———

This elf confesses that she isn’t yet following the Presidential election very closely, has never to her knowledge read the Brody File, and doesn’t have a lot of political blogs in her list of bookmarks. (Unless, of course we’re talking ANGLICAN politcs! That’s a whole ‘nother story! 😉 )

What political blogs do you all recommend, and which do a good job of focusing on issues of faith and politics?

Newsweek and the Washington Post have launched a new branch of their “On Faith” blog/website: Georgetown/On Faith. Here’s what the blog has to say about its scope and goals:

THE GOD VOTE
The Religion-Industrial Complex
–

The 2008 presidential election is probably the first in American history that has spawned a veritable faith and politics industry.

Entire non-profit organizations, university departments, think tanks, polling operations, and web divisions at prestigious East coast newspapers, have marshaled their resources in an attempt to make sense of the role that religion will play in the run for the White House. The industry is immense. Its wares displayed on every boulevard, sidewalk and back alley of the mass media. Its potential for influencing public opinion is considerable.

The faith and politics industry also has a variety of “applied” or “hands-on” subsidiaries. There are the lobbyists who work for religious special interest groups. There are demographers who conduct surveys for any client willing to cough up the fee. There is the very lucrative traffic in what I call “religious imaging.” By this I refer to the work of political consultants–an astonishing percentage of whom are graduates of theological seminaries–who advise and often rehabilitate candidates who have somehow drifted off (religious) message.

And did I mention that the industry is completely deregulated? That is to say, there are no standards for entrance, let alone excellence. No one seems to be interested in the identity of the employees or employers in the industry. It doesn’t hold annual conventions in a big, deep carpet-y Hotel where everyone gets to expense their meals back to Headquarters. In fact, no one seems to have much to say about the industry as a whole. It floats under the radar. Which is strange because as regards religion and politics the Industry is the radar.

The goal of this blog is to change that by casting a self-reflexive glance on the 2008 faith industry from a non-partisan perspective (about which more anon). By necessity, this will be an incomplete look, a peek. The industry is so vast and decentralized that no one observer could hope to cover it all. But, if all goes well I hope to draw your attention to key trends, emerging patterns, failures of judgment, and moments of critical heroism that will come to pass in 2008.

The rest is here.