Is this the same Christ Church that is the 274-year-old “Mother Church of Georgia” and occupies one of Savannah’s most prime, valuable pieces of real estate, directly facing Johnson Square? ( The same square that ironically was the site on Sept. 15 of the 8th annual Savannah Gay Pride Festival.)

Is this the same church proudly named after Jesus Christ, supposedly to honor and glorify the founder of Christianity by exemplifying, illustrating and following his teachings?

Are these “Christians” angry and upset enough to break away because their church is “too liberal” and has been expanding love, inclusion and acceptance to unworthy people?

Hmm…

Somehow, something seems very wrong, very twisted and distorted with this scenario. Indeed, it seems utterly preposterous.

It seems only to painfully prove, once again, that some, if not most, organized religions are confused, fearful and dysfunctional. Their ideas and preachings about God and Jesus are erroneous.

They remain blind to this fact, and see only what they want to see.

They do not see the cruelty, fighting and killing going on everywhere in God’s name. They are not seeing the separation, the divisions, oppression, fear and dysfunction around us.

Worse, some of them are seeing it and playing into it, using it as a means of controlling people.

Read it all.

The Ottawa diocese of the Anglican Church of Canada yesterday approved same-sex marriage blessings in a move sure to inflame a debate over gay rights that has pushed the communion to the brink of schism.

By a margin of 177 to 97, delegates to the diocese’s annual synod in Cornwall approved a motion asking the local bishop to allow clergy “whose conscience permits” to bless same-sex unions.

Conservative church leaders immediately condemned the move.

“It goes to the very opposite direction to what the international church is calling for,” retired Newfoundland bishop Donald Harvey, moderator of the Anglican Network in Canada, told the Star.

The worldwide Anglican Communion has been bitterly divided on the issue of same-sex marriage blessings since the appointment of the openly gay Gene Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire in 2004.

The majority of Anglicans worldwide belong to conservative churches in developing countries, which have been pushing for a more orthodox approach to policy.

Read it all.

I suppose that it is possible, though not likely, that some of you in this church are as impatient as I am.

-I don’t like to wait.

-I am unhappy in lines of traffic.

-I will go without a breakfast biscuit before I will stand in line behind a busload of high school kids who always seem to have just pulled into the McDonald’s parking lot moments before me.

-And you should see the way I purse my lips when everyone else’s coffee arrives at the table except mine.

My affliction is even of the sort that I am impatient with patient people.

Last Saturday, the curate rode with me to the deacons’ ordination. He left in my car, a piece of painted wood, left over from the reredos construction, a bottle of aspirin, and a lemonade can, which spilled microscopic (albeit significant) drops of lemonade on my upholstery. His intention was to remove these things”¦ eventually. My reaction was to make comment”¦ immediately.

Not many days ago, I walked into my parents’ house and saw my father comfortably stretched out on the sofa. His own mantra is that he can do nothing better than anyone, so I knew for a fact that the only muscle in his body that had moved in an hour was the finger on the remote control…. I therefore said to him cheerfully, I see the medication for your restless leg syndrome is working! He did not think that was nearly as funny as I did.

So yes, I am indeed impatient. And being married for 25 years to a dear soul who is quintessentially “Type B” has done nothing to make my spirit more- shall we say- “mellow”.

So imagine my discomfort when I saw the recent title of an article in a theological journal which stated, IMPATIENCE IS SPIRITUAL ARROGANCE.

–The Rev. Dow Sanderson of Holy Communion, Charleston, S.C. in a recent sermon

State lawmakers moved Illinois to the forefront of the national school-prayer debate Thursday, requiring public schools to provide students with a brief moment of silence at the start of classes.

The House joined the Senate in voting to override Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s veto of legislation mandating the period for “silent prayer or for silent reflection on the anticipated activities of the day.”

The governor had said he believes in the “power of prayer” but worried the law could erode the barrier between church and state.

“This was never about trying to require prayer in the schools,” said Rep. Will Davis (D-Homewood), a lead sponsor of the new law. “This is a way for teachers and students to [start] their day off in the right way.”

Legal experts said the law, which turns the moment of silence from an option to a requirement, is likely to survive any constitutional challenges. But educators predicted there will be huge problems in enforcing the mandate because teachers and other administrators will have to sort out how to deal with students who ignore it. The law does not contain any penalties for non-compliance.

The law takes effect immediately, and school districts will get a notice from the State Board of Education shortly, a spokesman said.

Read it all.

12. The route from Sect-type, extra-mural Anglicanism, to the Denominational-type of Anglicanism (which is necessary in order to become an alternative Province to the PECUSA in the USA) is a route that has NEVER been undertaken before anywhere in the world. In the conditions of the USA (with great emphasis on liberty and the right to express personal opinions) it will be extremely difficult even to get started on moving on this unexplored and un-chartered route. But the Common Cause Partnership has begun. And we pray that out of the many will be made the One. [Yet one wonders whether the Primates who are encouraging the creation of the Sect-type, extra-mural, Anglicanism, have thought about in any detail the immensity of the task in creating an alternative Province to PECUSA. Further, has any one of them seriously thought about the 1977 seceders and whether or not they should be consulted and involved in the route towards one Province for all seceders?]

13. There is one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one God and Father. Paul tells us that there cannot be truth without unity and unity without truth in his Epistle to Ephesus; and Jesus in his Priestly Prayer in John 17 prays that we shall be one for that is his will. Many of us appear not to desire to be one! We think that possessing what we regard as truth is sufficient to justify our isolated standing before God in sect-type churchmanship. Maybe we are beginning to change our minds and see that truth and unity, or unity and truth, belong always together and to claim to have truth and to shun unity is a totally false position.

Read it all.

Q: What has been the situation in this diocese?

A: I have said to the diocese that there will be no permission for blessing of same-sex unions until the General Convention of this church has made a decision.

That is not because I feel that faithful persons in a chaste, loving relationship should not have the grace of God acknowledged by a blessing, but I also am bound as a bishop of the church to be responsible and faithful and obedient.

Q: You said in New Orleans that “sometimes traveling as a body means slowing down the pace, in the hope that all can make the journey.” What should gay and lesbian Episcopalians understand when you say that?

A: I want them to hear that the commitment to the journey of full inclusion continues. We don’t know what it will ultimately look like. But we want them to know we’re still on the journey.

What I have found is that many gay and lesbian Christians are concerned not just about their sacramental inclusion, but about the church. Many have shared that they’re willing for us to pause and have that conversation. There are some who are pretty angry, and I understand that.

Read it all.

Half a dozen years ago, a congregation looked one last time toward the building raised by members’ hands and out across the graves in the churchyard, and wept. Then, the churchgoers turned and left.
This week, they’ll install a new rector, welcome the public to a talk by an Anglican bishop from Rwanda, and play host for the second time to a regional meeting of their new affiliate, the Anglican Mission in the Americas.

“God has blessed our socks off,” said the Rev. Kenneth Cook, assistant to the rector at what was St. John’s Episcopal Church of Huntingdon Valley and now is St. John the Evangelist Anglican Church of Churchville.

“It’s a cool church,” said the Rev. Mark E. Rudolph, scheduled to be installed as its rector Thursday. Rudolph, who was ordained in the Reformed Episcopal Church and served seven years as rector at St. Philips in Warminster, described his path to St. John’s as “circuitous.”

And it was, at least compared to the path walked by members of St. John’s Montgomery County parish ”“ which was decisively away from the Episcopal Church USA. They were among those who broke with the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania over church trends they feared veered too far from fundamental beliefs.

They were not among those who plunged into legal battle with the diocese over “sticks and bricks,” as they call it.

“If we are going to live and die for this property,” Cook said, remembering the agonizing talks, “we might as well admit this is an idol for us.”

Read it all.

Metropolitan Community Church began in 1968 as an alternative for gays who felt alienated by most churches’ condemnation of homosexuality.

After a contentious summer in which the denomination suspended local worship for a month and revoked the credentials of the local pastor, the Rev. Beau McDaniels, Hope Metropolitan Community Church members are doing what many congregations do after a fight with church headquarters.

They are thinking about joining another denomination. The United Church of Christ, a liberal Protestant church that has ordained openly gay clergy and affirmed same-sex marriage, is mentioned as a possible successor to the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches.

Vikki Del Fiacco, a former Metropolitan member in Daytona Beach, has already switched over. She is training for the ministry with Port Orange United Church of Christ.

Del Fiacco likes the United group because “it’s open and affirming of everyone.” She noted Metropolitan founder Troy Perry “never thought MCC would last long term.”‘

Its original mission was “to be accepting,” Del Fiacco said. “But other denominations are accepting now.”

Read it all.

Two weeks ago, the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church (TEC) replayed the scenario, to its–at any rate, to my–shame. Evidently, their conversations with the Archbishop began by celebrating the uniqueness of the ”˜79 prayer book’s baptismal covenant in which, besides renouncing Satan and turning to Christ, besides pledging faithfulness in common prayer and Christian service, we promise to “strive for justice and peace among all people, and to respect the dignity of every human being.” The Presiding Bishop reports that while the majority interpret this to mean that gays and lesbians are deserving of “the fullest regard of the church,” the House of Bishops showed itself “willing to pause” in “its consideration of full inclusion of gay and lesbian persons in the life and ministries of the Episcopal Church.” Bishops reaffirmed 2006 General Convention resolution to exercize restraint by withholding consents to episcopal elections of persons whose lifestyle would pose a serious problem for other members of the Anglican communion. Bishops went further by promising not to authorize rites for the blessing of same sex partnerships until the communion is of a different mind or a future General Convention decides otherwise. (The American House of Bishops has no authority to bind future General Conventions.)

For some bishops, these resolutions were a matter of conscience. It’s no secret that I disagree with them, but that is not my point right now. My focus is instead on the spiritual danger of “going along to get along,” of willingly sacrificing what one believes to be the dignity and well-being of real and present persons on the altar of institutional objectives. The lust for institutional harmony and stability is strong. It repeatedly seduces us, whether the issue is race, gender, sexual orientation, fair trade and wages, immigration and asylum, or something else. But Jesus Christ did not show Himself “willing to pause”: Jesus healed the man with the withered hand, the woman with scoliosis, the lame and the blind on the Sabbath day! Jesus warns, “Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven!”

Happily, the bible’s God does not observe pop-psychological parenting rules not to threaten without following through. Repeatedly, the bible’s God prophesies doom and ruin to wake people up and win repentance. In the midst of present church controversies, one thing is certain: Jesus’ pronouncement should shock us out of our complacency, chasten our behavior, and keep us on our knees!

Read it all.

Scientists reported progress yesterday toward one of medicine’s long-sought goals: the development of a blood test that can accurately diagnose Alzheimer’s disease, and even do so years before truly debilitating memory loss.

A team of scientists, based mainly at Stanford University, developed a test that was about 90 percent accurate in distinguishing the blood of people with Alzheimer’s from the blood of those without the disease. The test was about 80 percent accurate in predicting which patients with mild memory loss would go on to develop Alzheimer’s disease two to six years later.

Outside experts called the results, published online yesterday by Nature Medicine, promising but preliminary. They cautioned that the work needed to be validated by others and in much larger studies, because there have been many disappointments in the past.

“Looking for biomarkers for Alzheimer’s disease is a very hot area,” said Dr. William Jagust, professor of public health and neuroscience at the University of California, Berkeley. “Things tend to get a lot of attention, and they are not always borne out.”

Read it all.

In 1997 a group of scientists issued a declaration in which, among other things, they argued that “human capabilities appear to differ in degree, not in kind, from those found among the higher animals. Humankind’s rich repertoire of thoughts, feelings, aspirations and hopes seems to arise from electrochemical brain processes, not from an immaterial soul”.

Is that all we are? Where, on this definition, will we place the book of Psalms, King Lear, Monet’s water lilies or the Bodleian Library, Oxford? Where will we locate the individuals who risked their lives to save lives during the massacre in Rwanda, or the Buddhist monks today who confront the military regime in Burma in the name of freedom? Do we adequately capture the parameters of the human spirit by reducing it to “electrochemical brain processes”? Clearly not.

The declaration is guilty of an elementary mistake of logic, the genetic fallacy, the belief that because Y “arises from” X, Y is no more than X. An oak arises from an acorn, a butterfly from a caterpillar, but they are not the same things. Music arises from a disturbance of airwaves, but that does not make music mere noise. Everything that lives can be traced back to the first ribo-organisms. But that does not mean that all forms of life are essentially the same.

Read it all.

Lay Canon Elizabeth Paver (picture here) is one of three members on the Anglican Consultative Council from the Church of England, and is a member of the ACC Standing Committee. She was therefore one of the international guests at the recent House of Bishops in New Orleans which was attended by the Joint Standing Committee of the ACC and the Primates. Canon Paver worked for 40 years in education before her recent retirement, and served many roles over that time, as for example Head Teacher at Intake Primary School in Doncaster and President of the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT).

I met Canon Paver when I was an observer to the ACC 13 meeting in Nottingham. A participant on my blog, Sander, wrote in a comment in the midst of a lengthy discussion of the Joint Standing Committee Report in a thread below as follows:

#76, I have heard reports this afternoon that Canon Elizabeth Paver, one of the four who did not respond in time, has since responded and given her concurrence to the opinions of the other 9 who did respond.

Because I am aware of Mrs. Paver’s convictions, I wanted to understand more fully her sense of the recently released Report on the Joint Standing Committee of the Primates and the ACC (Anglican Consultative Council) on the New Orleans meeting of the House of Bishops. The following is an article I wrote based on several conversations with Canon Paver–KSH.

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When the report was issued, Canon Paver noted, it was in such haste that she was shocked. “ It wasn’t in the time frame we were led to believe when we went to New Orleans. It was my understanding that it was to be a report only to the Archbishop of Canterbury and therefore it did not need to be finalized so quickly.”

The report was drafted NOT in the United States with a full committee around the table, but was done by email. In Mrs. Paver’s view this prevented the committee from doing its work properly.

In any event, once the report was being finalized quickly, Elizabeth Paver read the material. This created a dilemma for her. “I think the process in New Orleans was accurately reported,” she observed. However there was a division on the committee itself as to whether the American House of Bishops had responded adequately to the requests of the Primates in Tanzania, and the report did not reflect this division of opinion.

“When the report was published, its conclusion represented a majority view, but it certainly was not a unanimous view,” she asserted.

When the report was made public in its final form, Mrs. Paver was confused. She was listed as having not responded, which was accurate as she had missed the Tuesday deadline but following conversations with ACC staff on the day of publication she agreed that the Report was an accurate account of the Standing Committees conclusions but needed to reflect the minority view also. She agreed with the description of what transpired in New Orleans, but also agreed in principle with Bishop Mouneer Anis that what the the primates called for had not been provided. She was assured that Bishop Mouneer’s Response would be appended to the report in full which covered the areas that concerned her.

It is important for people to understand the crucial significance of the call for a moratorium on same sex blessings, Mrs. Paver insisted. “From my perspective, anything other than a full moratorium would mean that the whole report is brought into disrepute,” she observed.“If there is no moratorium and this can be demonstrated then in my view the Joint Standing Committee will need to issue a further statement.”

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Two comments about this from yours truly. First, here is a faithful laywoman who was clearly let down by the system. The bizarre and rushed way that this report was put together meant that she was reported not to have responded, and then it was alleged that she concurred. Actually, she did respond but not in time for the rushed release, and she agreed with the reports description but not its evaluation (which is hardly concurrence).

Second, her comments make clear the degree of miscommunication involved in the report as far as the moratorium is concerned. The JST somehow believed based on communication that took place in New Orleans that there was a moratorium on same sex blessings being officially allowed and/or encouraged in all dioceses, when as Gene Robinson as well as other bishops have made clear that is simply not the case.

This means that the entire JSC report about New Orleans is even further called into question–KSH.

Until recently, fragmentation seemed to be the strategy du jour of traditionalists in the current Anglican crisis. This crisis was precipitated by the decision of the Episcopal Church to consecrate a divorced non-celibate gay man as the Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire and to allow the blessing of same-sex unions. A minority of Episcopalians in the U.S. and a majority of Anglicans worldwide disagreed strongly with this decision and set about to scupper it.

Offshore Anglican archbishops, mainly in Africa, came to the rescue of American traditionalists by offering membership in their own traditionalist provinces. It seemed like an almost perfect solution for American conservatives. Africans provided them with new missionary bishops to oversee their congregations in the United States, while providing a way for former Episcopalians to remain (more or less) in unbroken communion with the archbishop of Canterbury.

But therein lies the rub. The problem was not that American traditionalists lacked friends overseas but rather that they seemed to have far too many of them, including sympathetic archbishops from Bolivia and Singapore. By August, conservatives could choose between missionary bishops from Nigeria, Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya — and many of them did. Once again an Anglican dissenting group seemed headed toward fragmentation and diminished influence.

That is, until Sept. 27-28, when Anglican conservatives made a move toward greater unity among themselves. Bishops and bishops-elect from the Episcopal Church, the Reformed Episcopal Church, the Anglican Mission in America, the Anglican Province of America, the Convocation of Anglicans in North America, the Anglican Network in Canada, as well as missionary bishops from Uganda and Kenya met in Pittsburgh as a Common Cause College of Bishops.

According to a joint statement, the bishops “repented” of the divisions that had existed among them and vowed to meet every six months as a continuing College of Bishops. Their primary agenda was to unite as soon as possible the divided Anglican groups of which they were representatives into one undivided church. Toward that end the participating bishops agreed to share clergy across the lines that still separated them.

Among the supporters in principle of this agreement were several dissenting bishops of the Episcopal Church, who proposed to bring their dioceses with them, including (one assumes) titles to church property. The dioceses present were Pittsburgh, Fort Worth, Quincy, Western Kansas, Springfield and Albany.

Read it all.

As America’s finest continue shedding their blood in Iraq and Afghanistan, we do well to take stock of who we are and what we’re up against. What we’re up against is a fanatical cadre of theocrats bent on imposing their view of Theo on everybody else. At gunpoint.

Who we are is a little more complicated. On paper, we’re the freedom people. I say “on paper” because that’s where it all starts. We have the oldest written constitution on the planet. We can be proud of that. What we can’t be proud of is that many Americans don’t seem to know what it says, particularly when it comes to our nation’s first freedom: religious freedom.

Ask most Americans what the Constitution says about God, and their answers may surprise you.

“One nation under God?”

Nope, that’s the Pledge of Allegiance.

“Oh, yeah, right, right. How about, ‘Endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights’?”

Sorry, but that’s the Declaration of Independence.

“Hmmmm.”

Mostly what you’ll get is a lot of blank stares. Trust me. I’ve tried it in nearly 50 states. Fully 55% of the country, according to a recent survey by the First Amendment Center, believes that the U.S. Constitution establishes us as a “Christian nation.” Worse still, while nearly all Americans say freedom of religion is important, only 56% think it should apply to all religious groups. The truth is that the Constitution says nothing about God. Not one word. And, you can bet that some of the local clergy back in the 1780s howled about it. Newspapers, pamphlets and sermons decried the drafters’ failure to acknowledge God.

Read it all.

Christ Church leaders canceled a late morning worship service Sunday to measure the congregation’s support of their recent decision to break from the Episcopal Church.

More than 200 parishioners gathered at the downtown parish at 11 a.m. to cast ballots and find out what happens next. A vast majority of voters said they supported the split.

Senior warden Steve Dantin tried to explain to the congregation why the church aligned with an Anglican entity in Africa after its break with American Episcopalians.

“These entities represent a lifeboat. It’s a temporary measure,” Dantin said. “All of these lifeboats will ultimately be leading towards a mother ship, and the mother ship will more than likely be an alternate Anglican province in the United States.”

The meeting follows the Sept. 30 decision by church leaders – known as the vestry – to leave the Episcopal Church in the U.S. and join the more conservative Anglican Province of Uganda. Both the American and Ugandan churches are members of the worldwide Anglican Communion.

Read it all.

The Lord Mayor of Belfast has apologised to a council worker left with back injuries after he tried to leapfrog her during a photoshoot.
Lorraine Mallon suffered a slipped disc when Jim Rodgers’ knee accidently hit her head as he attempted to vault her.

Ms Mallon had been dressed as a tomato to launch a gourmet garden event in Botanic Gardens last month.

The Ulster Unionist councillor said he attempted the act of athleticism at the request of photographers.

“I have been absolutely devastated over what has happened,” he said.

“There had been three false runs and I think Lorraine thought this was just another one.

Read it all and a picture is here.

October 14, 2007- Savannah, GA. By a decisive margin of 87% the congregation of historic Christ Church voted overwhelmingly to affirm the vestry’s September 30, 2007 decision to place itself under the pastoral care of The Rt. Reverend John Guernsey, Rector of All Saint’s Church in Woodbridge, VA and a bishop of the worldwide Anglican Communion’s province of Uganda, Africa. The action followed a prolonged process of disciplined prayer and discernment.

“It saddens us that The Episcopal Church (TEC) has chosen to walk apart from the rest of the Communion. We have been an Anglican parish since the founding of the Colony of Georgia, and it is important to us that we continue to participate as members in good standing with the rest of the worldwide Anglican Communion,” said Steve Dantin, Senior Warden.
TEC, the U.S. “branch” or province of the worldwide Anglican Communion, received a final call from the Anglican Communion to return to orthodox Christianity and to signify the same by taking certain actions no later than September 30, 2007. TEC failed to comply, and thus it abandoned the communion previously existing between TEC (including the Diocese of Georgia) and Christ Church. Therefore, Christ Church appealed to Bishop Guernsey and Archbishop Orombi for their pastoral care and oversight, which has been granted.

“This has been a long and arduous journey,” said Dantin. “It was gratifying to see the large number of parishioners participate in this process. Our congregation has spoken clearly.”
Along with 33 other Anglican congregations in the U.S., Christ Church is under the authority of Archbishop Henry Orombi of the Province of Uganda, which has a membership of 9.5 million people. Christ Church is one of over 1,000 congregations representing more than 200,000 U.S. Anglicans and 1,200 clergy who are associates of the Anglican Communion Network, an ecclesial, Anglican body in the U.S. Christ Church is also an affiliate of the American Anglican Council, an advocacy group for Anglican orthodoxy in the United States.

“We look forward to working to build a biblical, missionary, and united Anglicanism in North America,” said The Reverend Marc Robertson, Rector of Christ Church. “In the meantime nothing is changing at Christ Church. Our location, mission, ministry, education and worship services are continuing as usual.”

Founded in 1733 with the establishment of the Georgia colony, Christ Church is the Mother Church of Georgia and the oldest continuous Christian congregation in the state. Christ Church predates the establishment of The Episcopal Church in the United States and the Diocese of Georgia. Early rectors include British evangelists John Wesley and George Whitefield. Located on its original site on historic Johnson Square in downtown Savannah, Christ Church continues as an active and thriving congregation.

TEC spokeswoman Neva Rae Fox said a Quincy vote to leave would have to go through the church’s General Convention in 2009 in order to be recognized. Dioceses can’t leave The Episcopal Church on their own say-so because they were created by the church’s General Convention, Fox said.

“They’re dead wrong on that,” said Wicks Stephens, legal adviser for the Anglican Communion Network in Pittsburgh, of which the Diocese of Quincy is a part.

“If you read the constitution and canons of The Episcopal Church, in order for a diocese to come into union with other dioceses of The Episcopal Church through the General Convention, that diocese has to meet certain standards, including forming itself, becoming financially sustainable and other things, including allegiance to The Episcopal Church.”
The Rev. Jim Naughton, director of communications for the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, D.C., said, though, that “this is an argument that didn’t exist until they needed it to exist.”

“No one has previously interpreted constitutions and canons in this way,” said Naughton, whose diocese leans liberal and who contributes to an Episcopalian blog called The Lead.

But the Rev. John Spencer, president of Quincy’s joint standing committee, agreed with Stephens.

“If you actually read the constitution carefully, what it says is the people and the churches and the clergy form a diocese,” Spencer said.

Dioceses, the vicar of St. Francis Church in Dunlap said, created the General Convention, not the other way around.

Read it all.

Read it all.

As Episcopalians and Anglicans wait to see if their fractious global fellowship will splinter or hold together in a long-running conflict over homosexuality and the Bible, other denominations are watching nervously.

The same or related issues are roiling many denominations, especially such mainline Protestant churches as Evangelical Lutherans, Presbyterians and Methodists. And many church leaders and scholars predict that the way these questions play out in the Episcopal Church and the worldwide Anglican Communion will hold lessons for them all.

“The struggle going on inside the Anglican Communion. . . is not peculiar to Anglicanism,” Sister Joan Chittister, a Roman Catholic nun, wrote in a recent column in the National Catholic Reporter newspaper. “The issue is in the air we breathe. The Anglicans simply got there earlier than most.”

Conservative Judaism has debated the issue as well, but the conflict is especially pronounced among Protestant churches. Said John C. Green, senior fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life: “They know it’s going to happen to them too.”

Across faith groups, the controversies revolve broadly around homosexuality: whether to allow openly gay and lesbian clergy or bishops and whether to provide official recognition to the unions of same-sex couples. But fundamentally, the debate involves questions of scriptural interpretation and whether the Bible’s teachings are to be seen as unchanging or in cultural and historical context.

The issues are not new. In many American Protestant denominations, the dispute has been simmering for about 30 years, longer than the same groups’ now largely resolved disagreements over ordination for women.

But in recent years, vocal minorities on both ends of the theological spectrum — religious traditionalists on one side, gay religious groups and supporters on the other — have become less inclined to search for middle ground.

Gay and gay-friendly pastors have been tried in church courts, and breakaway parishes and parent churches have fought legal battles over property. The national conventions of several denominations have taken up the topic again and again.

“On both sides of the question, there’s really no willingness at this point to compromise,” said the Rev. Jay Johnson, professor of theology at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley and senior research director at its Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in Religion and Ministry. “This isn’t something that’s negotiable.”

Read it all.

Why does it matter so much to African Anglicans what the Episcopal Church thinks and does about homosexuality?

I think it is wrong to say it is between Americans and Africans, or the West and the Southern hemisphere. It is between two groups of people who understand the authority of Scripture differently. You see, for me as a Christian from Nigeria, my parents are Christians. My grandparents had practiced traditional religion before they became Christian. Now, in African traditional religion, if I had an attraction to a male person, that is considered as an abnormal thing, a spiritual problem. …

Now, when my grandparents met the English, who introduced us to the Christian faith, they read the Bible to my grandparents, and said, look, this thing you’re talking about, the Bible agrees that it’s sinful. So for us, the Bible supports our pre-Christian theology. We accepted it. We became Christian. And that is why in Africa, generally, if you have an abnormal sexual orientation, you don’t brag about it. …

That’s why we feel we are deceived, we have been cheated by the people the Lord Jesus Christ used to introduce us to the Scriptures, to bring us to a new faith in the Lord Jesus. They are telling us that it’s not wrong after all, that it’s a natural way. But we say: You are wrong; the Bible is right. So it’s not just a question of human sexuality. It’s about the authority of Scripture. For us, Scripture judges every culture. What I hear in the Western world is that culture judges Scripture. That’s the basic difference. It’s not a question of sex or no sex.

It’s the same thing with the unique nature of Jesus Christ and the finality of his sacrifice. …Today you will hear leaders of the Episcopal Church say that Jesus Christ is not the only way, and I say: “So why are you even in the church? You should resign.”

Read it all.

For the 110 Episcopalians who shared their stories at “The Abundance of God’s Love” retreat at Shrine Mont in Orkney Springs, Virginia, October 7-8, their tales were not entirely unique.

Unhappy with the actions of the Episcopal Church at General Convention in 2003 and 2006, their congregations’ leadership decided to reconsider their membership in the Episcopal Church and the Diocese of Virginia.

Parishioners noticed a shift in the climate of their congregations: Episcopal flags were removed, or rectors focused their preaching primarily on “the issues.” They entered into “40 Days of Discernment” — in hindsight, with a sense of naiveté, said some participants. And they all entered into a journey categorized by confusion, frustration and, for some, hopelessness.

“It’s like the stages of grief,” said Suzanne Fichter, parishioner of the Episcopal Church of the Epiphany, Herndon. “Denial, anger, acceptance.”

In the Diocese of Virginia, the majority of 15 congregations would vote to quit the Episcopal Church and the Diocese of Virginia. In several places loyal members of the Episcopal Church remained. In four of them — St. Stephen’s, Heathsville; St. Margaret’s, Woodbridge; The Falls Church, Falls Church; and Church of the Epiphany, Herndon — those loyalists reorganized. They called congregational meetings and elected new vestries and new delegates to diocesan council. They have returned to weekly Episcopal worship, albeit in exile from their church properties, and returned to mission and ministry in their communities.

Read it all.

But Mr. Perrotta said he purposely did not take what he called the Tom Wolfe immersion approach to researching the novel. Instead he wanted to learn just enough to make the novel plausible. At one point he heard about a woman in New York who had, like Ruth, been disciplined for remarks she made in a sex-education class.

Mr. Perrotta called the woman, but when she never returned the call, he was actually relieved. “I was happy with what I’d written,” he said. “Once I’d even heard that the story I was telling sounded familiar and possible, that was enough for me.”

He said he had no idea how an evangelical Christian audience would respond to the book. One character in particular, the aggressively pious Pastor Dennis, seems in some respects to fit a typical liberal perception of an evangelical preacher. But Mr. Perrotta said he actually admired the character’s integrity and authentic caring for Tim. Above all Pastor Dennis is not a hypocrite, Mr. Perrotta said. “Like a lot of secular Americans after that first wave of evangelical televangelists crashed and burned, like Jimmy Swaggart and Jim and Tammy Faye, there was this sense of, ”˜I know who those people are, they’re just a bunch of hypocrites,’” he said. “It took me a long time to understand that a lot of them were completely genuine.

After the abstinence rally in Wayne, Jason Burtt, the national director of Silver Ring Thing, the organization that mounted the event, approached Mr. Perrotta in the lobby and started chatting with him about the novel. When Mr. Perrotta explained the plot, Mr. Burtt said he didn’t believe in coercing teachers. “It is so unconvincing when someone in school is forced to teach abstinence if they don’t believe it,” Mr. Burtt said.

As he prepared to drive back to his mother’s house, Mr. Perrotta said he was struck by how courteous and nonconfrontational Mr. Burtt had been. Over all, he said, evangelical Christian culture seems mostly polite, as well as extremely un-ironic. In response, “a certain kind of collegiate irony is like a reflex,” Mr. Perrotta said. “And it’s a reflex of superiority and condescension. It just wells up. But when I write, I try to quiet it down.”

Imagine that, a lot of them being completely genuine. And their culture polite, too. My oh my. Read it all–KSH.

The Vatican has suspended a senior priest in the Holy See who acknowledged homosexual relations in a supposedly anonymous television interview, but was identified by superiors from background shots of his office.

In a major embarrassment for the Roman Catholic Church’s hierarchy, Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said on Saturday the monsignor, whose name was not released, was suspended from duty pending an internal investigation.

Local media identified him as a senior figure in a Vatican department which oversees matters relating to priesthood and said he also made regular appearances on Vatican television.

Read it all.

The synod of the diocese of Ottawa, by an overwhelming vote of 177 to 97, today approved a motion requesting its bishop to allow clergy “whose conscience permits, to bless duly solemnized and registered civil marriages between same-sex couples, where at least one party is baptized” and to authorize rites for such blessings.

But despite what he called a “strong majority” (65 per cent in favour) and “a clear directive,” the diocesan bishop, John Chapman, cautioned that the approved motion was only “a recommendation and is not binding on the diocese or bishop.”

Nonetheless, he said, it gave him an indication of the feeling of the diocese on the issue. He said that while there was a sense that “it’s not helpful for us to walk alone,” the vote also indicated that, “we’re not afraid to walk alone.” (Opponents of same-sex blessings warn that churches and dioceses who move forward with the issue would cut themselves off from the Anglican Communion.)

After the vote, Bishop Chapman told a news conference he could not say when he would announce his decision on the motion, adding that he would take the matter to the House of Bishops, which meets later this month. He added that there would be more consultations with the diocese, and other Anglicans both at the national and international level. “I really don’t know when I’ll make a decision. I just want to see the ground settle,” he said, adding that his immediate concern was “for those who voted in opposition to the motion; I want to make sure that they’re okay.”

Read it all.

Here is the main portion of one of the three resolutions proposed for the Diocese of Fond Du Lac Convention this coming weekend. You can read all the resolutions here.
Resolution 2007-03 “Anglican Pastoral Scheme”

Submitted by the Rev. Dean Einerson, the Rev. Paul Feider, the Rev. Jim Fosdick, the Rev. Malcolm
Hughes, the Rev. Tom McAlpine, the Rev. Ian Montgomery, the Rev. Ken Okkerse, the Rev. Wilson
Roane, the Rev. Ray Ryerson, the Rev. Ed Smith, the Scott Thompson

Whereas, the Primates of the Anglican Communion sought to give temporary relief to the minority in
the Episcopal Church, who dissent from the decisions of recent General Conventions, and
Whereas, the House of Bishops in March 2007 rejected that pastoral scheme, and
Whereas, the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church in June of 2007 similarly rejected such a
scheme and sought to make General Convention 2009 the sole body able to make an appropriate
response, and

Whereas, there are several lawsuits to which the National Church is a party, which is expressly
addressed by the Dare es Salaam Communiqué, with the request that these cease,

1 Be it resolved, by the 133rd Annual Convention of the Diocese of Fond du Lac, that

The Diocese of Fond du Lac, expresses its regret that the leadership of the Episcopal Church has rejected this pastoral scheme, and

The Diocese of Fond du Lac, asks the leadership of the Episcopal Church to provide meaningful pastoral support and oversight to the dissenting minority, having involved persons from that 6 dissenting minority in discussion, and

The Diocese of Fond du Lac, asks the leadership of the Episcopal Church to accede to the requests of the Dar es Salaam Communiqué.

The Diocese of Fond du Lac, asks that the National Church cease its participation in the litigation that is at present before the courts and any future such litigation.

The Liturgical Covenanting, Blessing, and Sending Forth of Couples in Committed
Same-Gender Relationships

RESOLVED, that this 158th Convention of the Episcopal Diocese of California
commend to the Bishop of California the lectionary, rubric entitled “Concerning the
Service,” and three rites endorsed by the Commission on Marriage and Blessing, and
urge the Bishop to approve the trial use of these forms as resources in the Diocese of
California for formalizing the blessing of same-gender unions.

Explanation:
The Commission on Marriage and Blessing, in response to a resolution passed at the
156th Convention of the Episcopal Diocese of California, has adapted three extant rites
for use in the liturgical blessing of same-gender unions in this diocese. The rites are
adapted from:

Ӣ The Celebration and Blessing of a Marriage (as well as The Blessing of a Civil
Marriage and An Order for Marriage) in The Book of Common Prayer

Ӣ A Rite for the Celebration of Gay and Lesbian Covenants, commonly referred to
as The New Westminster Rite, from the Diocese of New Westminster in the
Anglican Church of Canada

Ӣ Marriage Liturgy, Second Form, in A New Zealand Prayer Book

In endorsing these rites/resources, the Commission celebrates the intention of the
Episcopal Diocese of California to support and bless both same-gender and ”˜straight’
couples in godly relationships, while hoping for the day when ”˜marriage equality’ will be
the reality in our Church and State.

The Commission calls particular attention to the part of the rubric ”˜Concerning the
Service’ which sets forth, in addition to the familiar material adapted from the Book of
Common Prayer, the expectation that the use of liturgies of blessing for marriage and
union occur in the context of Christian community and with the community’s
understanding of its role in fostering godly relationships.

The rites and other materials referred to in the Resolution may be found in the
Commission’s Report to the 158th Convention of the Episcopal Diocese of California and
on the Commission’s website (http://marriageandblessing.org) along with other
materials such as a bibliography for use in pre-marital/pre-union counseling and
examples of particular rites drafted or used over the years which are offered, without
endorsement, for informational purposes.

Commission on Marriage and Blessing

From here. Page 3-4. Note, the report is dated October 2007. It would be interesting to know exactly when this resolution was drafted. Pre or Post New Orleans?

From this blurb on page 6, we assume this resolution was drafted PRE New Orleans:

2007 and Beyond
The various CMB subgroups have been meeting during the first part of 2007,
including a working CMB retreat on March 31. We anticipate having a website up and
running by early summer, with sections on rites, resources, and matters of church and
state. (www.marriageandblessing.org) We plan on reporting to Diocesan Convention in
October, commending a list of Commission On Marriage and Blessing Endorsed Rites
and Resources for consideration by Convention, the Diocese, and Bishop Marc.
Having completed the initial phase of our work on rites, our primary tasks in 2008
will include continued development of resources for couples, clergy, and congregations
(per the second of the three resolutions cited above) and work on matters of church and
state, especially the issue of whether clergy should act as functionaries of the State in
marriage/civil union, etc.

Will New Orleans make any difference to the folks in the diocese of California? We’ll know next week.

“If I died right this minute, I would be able to say, ‘God, what a ride! What a ride!'”

and

“If I were to die today, I would be nervous about what people would say at my funeral. I would be happy if they said things like ‘He was a nice guy’ or ‘He was occasionally decent’ or ‘Mike wasn’t as bad as a lot of people.’ Unfortunately, eulogies are delivered by people who know the deceased. I know what the consensus would be. ‘Mike was a mess.'”

— Michael Yaconelli (1942-2003), whom we sorely miss

Update: A Christianity Today article on him and his death is here.

Here’s an excerpt from Bp. Paul Marshall’s convention address to the Diocese of Bethlehem this weekend:

Comment is needed in the aftermath of the late meeting of House of Bishops. I need to say something different from what other bishops may be saying in their conventions because the Bethlehem deputation in 2006 did not vote for the General Convention Resolution that the bishops were seeking to “clarify” for the primates. Something we were not favor of in the first place has been intensified.

Every single news report I have read about that meeting does not resemble the meeting I attended. Let me just say that I remain perplexed by the action and more perplexed by the process in New Orleans, but as always, I think God is providing a spiritual opportunity for me.

I find that as just a few years ago I had to learn to be a gracious “winner,” if such a term is ever appropriate, when the church was moving my way, now I must learn to be a gracious “loser,” if such a term is ever appropriate, when that course is reversed or halted. For some of you those poles are reversed, and it is your turn to be a gracious winner. Some of you may well feel keen disappointment and even rejection as a result of my colleagues’ clarifications. As those of you who accepted the invitation to meet with me two weeks ago know, I believe that your pain is deep and proportionate. I will not presume to say that I can feel anyone else’s pain, but I certainly recognize and grieve its existence, as do many, many people in this diocese.

Beyond that, I must also say that I believe we have held together as a diocesan community during a turbulent three decades not because our range of opinion and conviction is narrower than that found elsewhere in the Episcopal Church. We have held together because of discipline, the tough discipline we practice of keeping our focus on Christ rather than ourselves, the tough discipline of genuinely honoring the conscience of every member of this diocese and welcoming the gifts the Holy Spirit bestows on the Church through each of the baptized. In previous years in this room I have had to reassure those who might be considered conservative of this fundamental principle of our life. I find myself today needing to reassure those who might be considered liberal or progressive of the same thing, that the only disciples of Jesus excluded in this diocese are those who exclude themselves.

I do not know how to predict if what the Archbishop of Canterbury and our domestic leadership wanted of and got from the majority bishops of this church will be effective or productive, and having no power in the matter have chosen to cease from worrying about the behavior or witness of any bishop other than myself.
So here is where I am. My understanding of my relationship with Christ means that I am not personally able to sacrifice individual lives or the dignity of any follower of Jesus to even the most benign dreams of world-wide ecclesiastical empire, but will do my utmost to stay in real and effective communion with Anglicans in every place on the globe.

As the designated chief sinner of the diocese, I will continue to try to honor each of you as God’s works in progress, living stones built into a marvelous temple for the praise of God the Father. As Habbakuk was taught in last Sunday’s first lesson, we do not know how things will turn out but we do know that the future belongs to God and we are to keep busy letting people know that there is a vision. We need to do that communicating, the prophet was told, in letters
so big that joggers may read them. Translation: it must be unmistakable in our words and deeds that we trust the God who made each of us and that we are moving ahead in that trust.

In saying that I do not mean to say that we should pretend that our varying understandings do not exist. On the contrary, I meant something active and powerful and traditionally Anglican ”“ that is, in honoring and exploring our differences, we may generate the way through them to a place nobody would have imagined.
Let me dwell on this for just a minute. I just spoke of 400 years of Anglicanism in Virginia, now let me go back a mere 40 years, to a non-Anglican in California. In 1967, Dr. Ralph Greenson, “psychiatrist to the stars” and medical professor in Los Angeles, wrote about the tendency of his colleagues not to communicate with each about their disagreements in theories or practice. Remember, these are psychiatrists who weren’t communicating. Listen to his observations from 1967. Where you hear the language of his vocation, insert the language of our life as disciples. Ask whether Greenson’s words do not speak to our situation:

Those who wish to suggest innovations or modifications of technique do not usually confer with others who are more traditional in their viewpoint. They tend to form cliques and to work underground, or at least segregated from the mainstream… As a consequence the innovators are apt to lose contact with those groups”¦ that might help validate, clarify, and amend their new ideas. The secluded innovators are prone to becomes “wild analysts,” while the conservatives, due to their own insularity, tend to become rigid with orthodoxy. Instead of influencing one another constructively they each go their separate ways as adversaries, blind to whatever benefits each might have gained from an opening and continuing discussion. (The Technique and Practice of Psychoanalysis I, p. 2)

To put his observation in spiritual terms, we grow when we risk exploring each other’s perceptions and applications of biblical truth to test and strengthen our own grasp of God’s will for us. I would say that it is quite one thing to think that one possesses truth and quite another thing to experience oneself as being possessed by truth. Whether it is an old truth or a new truth, they who believe they own the truth will become rigid and defensive. They who believe they are possessed by truth, new or old, find themselves in joyful service to the truth, and willingly engage others so that all members of the conversation can be productive and balanced. Rigidity and disconnection are the enemies of spiritual growth in conservatives and liberals alike.

The value of the worldwide Communion, when it is working well, is that those who see something new and those who cherish something old, are in a position to grow in a conversation that is truly catholic. At the moment, at least, that possibility still exists and, like many, I hope that the long-promised conversation may actually get started.

The full text is here.

We are deeply saddened by today’s decision of the Ottawa diocesan synod. Unfortunately, the synod has chosen to reject the pleas of the global Anglican Communion, and ”˜walk apart’ from the vast majority of Anglicans worldwide.

We are grateful that Bishop Chapman has not made a hasty decision to endorse this action and pray that he will see the wisdom of listening to the Primates’ call. The Primates have asked the Canadian and US Churches for an unambiguous endorsement of traditional Church teaching on sexuality and an end to same-sex blessings.

“At a minimum, we hope the Bishop will provide a period of time to allow parishes and clergy to discuss their futures without fear of reprisal and with the confidence that the Bishop will honour the need for such reasonable and legitimate discussion,” says the Right Reverend Donald Harvey, moderator of the Anglican Network in Canada. “There must be care for people who uphold Biblical teaching and are Communion minded. We need a charitable way forward.”

Should the Bishop agree to this request, the diocese will abandon historic Anglican teaching and signal that it does not value walking with the global Anglican Communion. This would only widen the split and fuel the crisis in the Communion.

This crisis is fundamentally a theological dispute about core Christian and historic Anglican teaching. It is about how we understand the nature, authority and truth of the Scripture. The question for the church is: are we going to view the culture through the lens of Scripture or will we view the Scripture through the lens of our culture. These are irreconcilable views of the Scripture that have led us to the brink of schism in the Anglican Communion. The Ottawa diocesan decision shows that the Anglican Church of Canada has a de facto “local option” policy for same sex blessings which is the opposite of what the Primates of the Anglican Communion requested in their Dar es Salaam Communiqué. This will also violate the conscience of many biblically faithful Anglicans in Canada.

The Network supports biblically-faithful, Communion-committed Canadian Anglicans. We are committed to remaining true to historic Anglican orthodoxy as articulated in the founding principles of Anglicanism in Canada, the Lambeth Conference and the Primates’ Communiqués. We stand firm in the mainstream of Anglican tradition and Christian teaching ”“ together with the vast majority of Anglicans worldwide.