Four years after the appointment of the first openly gay Episcopal bishop, tensions continue to mount within the Episcopal Church.

While some Episcopal dioceses are discussing breaking away from the church, the controversial bishop is traveling around the world to spread a peaceful and inclusive message.

His next stop — South Florida, where a number of Episcopal leaders have shown their support of Bishop Gene Robinson.

Robinson, of New Hampshire, will speak at Nova Southeastern University Tuesday. Robinson’s visit at NSU will conclude the law school’s 2007 Goodwin Symposium on sexuality, morality and the law. He will focus on how morality affects gay and lesbian legal rights.

”He’s not only a bishop who struggled in the church, he’s a person with an internal struggle,” said Anthony Niedwiecki, professor of current constitutional issues at NSU, who organized the event. “One of the things he will talk about is how a church can actually reconcile with gay, lesbian and bisexual issues.”

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I will consider posting comments on this article submitted first by email to Kendall’s E-mail: KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

I suggest that the Common Cause would benefit from a series of regional conferences where the origins and effects of these two Secessions were examined, not in order to learn from history as such but rather to become more aware of the nature of secession and schism and its possible long-term realities. And this with a view to act wisely in the present and near future.

I say this because the continuing secession of the last several years””following the Gene Robinson consecration””has been uniform only in one thing, that they came out of The Episcopal Church. As they headed out, they went into the arms of one of many waiting embraces; thus we have congregations aligned with a great variety of overseas bishops and also others organized as mission stations of overseas provinces. It is an amazing phenomenon and was predicted by no-one.

After the 1873 secession there was virtually no sub-dividing of the movement and the Reformed Episcopal Church has remained generally united; but WHY?: After the 1977 secession there was sub-dividing within a very short tine and this has occurred often since 1978 also; but WHY?

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“For Christ’s sake, stop!” declared the president of the Southern Baptist Convention, the Rev. Frank Page, pleading for civility in the Baptist blogosphere.
Episcopalians and Anglicans duel incessantly over their faith and future in the Anglican Communion.

Catholics focus on every topic from liturgy to law to spirituality.

These are faith bloggers ”” uncountable voices who contest, confess and consider religious beliefs, doctrines and denominational politics in their posts.

Although every faith has its bloggers, U.S. Christians may be among the most vociferous of the watchdogs, philosophers and ecclesiastical groupies.

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OVER the past few years ”” and this will probably come as no surprise to anyone who has gotten on a plane over this Thanksgiving weekend ”” flying in coach has become an increasingly miserable experience. Legroom is practically nonexistent. Passengers are more tightly packed together. Hot meals have been eliminated. Ditto pillows and blankets. And the next time that guy in front of you leans his seat back directly into your face, few of your fellow passengers are likely to blame you if you feel a brief, murderous urge to strike back.

All this has created a generation of fliers who now view getting on a plane as roughly akin to entering the ninth circle of hell.

Doug Fesler, an executive at a medical research group in Washington, wasn’t expecting much in the way of amenities on his American Airlines flight to Honolulu in September. In fact, knowing the airline no longer served free meals, he had packed his own lunch for the second leg of his flight from Dallas to Honolulu. But he said he was shocked at the lack of basic services and the overall condition of the cabin.

On that flight, the audio for the movie was broken. The light that indicated when the bathroom was occupied was squirrely, causing confusion and, in some cases, embarrassingly long waits for passengers in need of the lavatory. And though food was available for purchase, it ran out before the flight attendants could serve the entire cabin, leaving some fellow passengers looking longingly at the snack he had packed.

His return flight was just as disappointing. This time the audio for the movie worked ”” but only in Spanish ”” and his seat refused to stay in the upright position. “I was just appalled,” Mr. Fesler said. “You pay $500 or $600 for a seat, and you expect it to be functional.” He said he has considered refusing to fly airlines with such poor service, but added that “if you did that with every airline that made you mad, you’d never get anywhere in this country.”

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Fort Huachuca, the nation’s largest intelligence-training center, changed security measures in May after being warned that Islamist terrorists, with the aid of Mexican drug cartels, were planning an attack on the facility.

Fort officials changed security measures after sources warned that possibly 60 Afghan and Iraqi terrorists were to be smuggled into the U.S. through underground tunnels with high-powered weapons to attack the Arizona Army base, according to multiple confidential law enforcement documents obtained by The Washington Times.

“A portion of the operatives were in the United States, with the remainder not yet in the United States,” according to one of the documents, an FBI advisory that was distributed to the Defense Intelligence Agency, the CIA, Customs and Border Protection and the Justice Department, among several other law enforcement agencies throughout the nation. “The Afghanis and Iraqis shaved their beards so as not to appear to be Middle Easterners.”

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After incurring debt problems, Rosemary Potter of Pinon Hills, Calif., decided this year to try to repair her credit. She didn’t qualify for a standard credit card, so she signed up for what’s called an Imagine Gold Card, hoping to use it to raise her credit score.

It didn’t turn out as she’d hoped. For a modest $300 credit line, she was hit with a $150 annual fee, plus late fees and over-the-limit fees. After she’d had the card a few months, her credit score was still blemished, so she canceled it.

“I’m staying away from credit cards now,” Potter, 57, says.

The credit crunch has made it harder to get loans, especially for those with bruised credit. To fill that gap, a breed of credit cards, often called subprime ”” and some critics call predatory ”” has increasingly sought out consumers. These cards offer only a slight amount of credit, yet charge steep fees. Among their targets: young adults with little credit history and families struggling to climb out of debt.

In the first half of this year, direct mailing of such cards jumped 41% over the same period in 2006, according to Mintel International Group, a research firm. Millions of consumers are being hurt, says a new report on subprime cards from the National Consumer Law Center, which has another name for them: fee-harvester cards.

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Friday’s multiple bomb blasts in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh — which killed 13 people and injured about 80 — ought to give pause to those who see the world’s largest democracy as a linchpin in the war on terror. India’s leaders and diplomats seek to portray the country as a firebreak against radical Islam, or the drive to impose the medieval Arab norms enshrined in Shariah law on 21st century life. In reality, India is ill- equipped to fight this scourge.

Like neighboring Pakistan and Bangladesh, (and unlike Turkey or Tunisia) India has failed to modernize much of its Muslim population. Successive generations of politicians have pandered to the most backward elements of India’s 150-million strong Muslim population, the second largest in the world after Indonesia’s. India has allowed Muslims to follow Shariah in civil matters such as marriage, divorce and inheritance. An increasingly radicalized neighborhood, fragmented domestic politics and a curiously timid mainstream discourse on Islam add up to hobble India’s response to radical Islamic intimidation.

Most Indian Muslims have nothing to do with terrorism, and are more concerned with the struggles of daily life than the effort to create a global caliphate. Muslim contributions to the fabric of national life — most visible in sports, movies and the arts — should not be dismissed. Furthermore, religious zealotry in India is not a Muslim monopoly. Still, the notion that Indian Islam is uniquely tolerant, or somehow immune to the rising tide of world-wide radical sentiment, is a myth.

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A headline last Sunday about a Muslim man and an Orthodox Jewish woman who are partners in two Dunkin’ Donuts stores described their religions incorrectly. The two faiths worship the same God ”” not different ones.

—From the New York Times “Corrections” section on November 25th; the original article to which it refers is here.

For what should we think of global Anglicanism today? It has often been said during the past few years that the Anglican Communion is like a torn net, due to denials by some of things that the rest believe to be integral to the gospel and affirmation, mainly by the same people, of behaviour that the rest believe the gospel absolutely rules out. In certain cases communion with a small “c” – that is, full and free welcome and interchange of clergy and communicants at the Lord’s Table – has been suspended. How, we ask, has this come about? In brief, it is the bitter fruit of liberal theology, which has become increasingly dominant in seminaries and among leaders in what we may call the Anglican Old West – that is, North America in the lead, with Britain and Australasia coming along behind.

This has been the story over the past two generations, since Anglo-Catholic leadership began to flag. Let me explain. Liberal theology as such knows nothing about a God who uses written language to tell us things, or about the reality of sin in the human system, which makes redemption necessary and new birth urgent. Liberal theology posits, rather, a natural religiosity in man (reverance, that is, for a higher power) and a natural capacity for goodwill towards others, and sees Christianity as a force for cherishing and developing these qualities. They are to be fanned into flame and kept burning in the church, which in each generation must articulate itself by concessive dialogue with the cultural pressures, processes and prejudices that surround it. In other words, the church must ever play catch-up to the culture, taking on board whatever is the “in thing” at the moment; otherwise, so it is thought, Christianity will lose all relevance to life. The intrinsic goodness of each “in thing” is taken for granted. In following this agenda the church will inevitably leave the Bible behind at point after point, but since on this view the Bible is the word of fallible men rather than of the infallible God, leaving it behind is no great loss.

Well now; with liberal leaders thinking and teaching in these terms, a collision with conservatives – that is, with upholders of the historic biblical and Anglican faith – was bound to come. It came over gay unions, which liberals wish to bless as a form of holiness, a quasimarriage.

As part of its current agenda of affirming minority rights (that is the “in thing” these days), western culture has for the past generation accepted gay partnerships as a feature of normal life. Despite the pronouncement of the 1998 Lambeth Conference in favour of the old paths, New Westminster diocese began in 2002 to bless gay couples, and others followed suit.

The Windsor Report called for a moratorium on this, which was not forthcoming. The St. Michael’s report said that the issue, though theological, was not against Anglican core doctrine so was not a matter over which to divide the church. On a side wind and by a stopgap motion, the General Synod of 2004 declared gay unions to be marked by “integrity and sanctity”. The 2007 General Synod affirmed the St. Michael’s position. So here we are now, the Anglican Network in Canada, accepting the invitation to realign in order to uphold historic Anglican standards, not only regarding gay unions but across the board, as those standards were formulated in our church’s foundation documents and reformulated in the Montreal Declaration of 1994.

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Writing allowed Doyle to express both sides of his nature. It was not his first ambition, for the family plan was that he should make his way as a doctor, and he toiled for years in a profession that was never congenial. He practised in Southsea, sometimes sitting up late at night so that he could slip out and polish his name-plate unobserved. Who would trust a practitioner too poor to employ a servant? Lonely and downcast, Doyle was joined by his stalwart younger brother Innes, and together they established an unorthodox male household that was one of the seeds of the ménage at Baker Street. An adequate living began to take shape, but it was clear that Doyle did not have the makings of an eminent doctor. Yet his efforts were not wasted. As he strained to discover accurate diagnoses and effective cures, he conceived the image of Sherlock Holmes. The scarcity of patients gave him time to write, and he was plying journals, sometimes successfully, with a copious supply of the apprentice work that sharpened his storytelling skills. Literature became more rewarding, personally and then financially, than medicine. Doyle the doctor, and Holmes the detective, grew up together. They have much in common, for close observation was the chosen weapon of both men. One of Doyle’s prototypes for Holmes was his old professor at Edinburgh, Dr Joseph Bell, austere and analytical. But Holmes was primarily modelled on Doyle himself, with bursts of mental and physical energy interspersed with the attacks of depression that would sometimes bring the great detective low: “But is not all life pathetic and futile? . . . We reach. We grasp. And what is left in our hands at the end? A shadow. Or worse than a shadow ”“ misery”. Holmes was a reflection of Doyle. He was also his antithesis ”“ solitary, always confident of victory, and impervious to sexual temptation, while Doyle feared defeat, needed company and was extremely susceptible to attractive women. Every reader wants to possess Holmes’s powers, but most of us, like Doyle, are a good deal closer to Watson: “Facts are facts, Watson, and, after all, you are only a general practitioner with very limited experience and mediocre qualifications”. It was a fair estimate of Doyle’s position as a young doctor.

Sherlock Holmes rescued Doyle, but it did not happen overnight. The sleuth’s first appearance, in “A Study in Scarlet” (1887), attracted little notice, and it was only when Doyle had begun to make his name with more substantial fiction that Holmes’s exploits caught the attention of publishers and readers. The real breakthrough came with Micah Clarke (1889), a vigorous historical novel describing the events of the Monmouth Rebellion. Doyle’s protracted struggle to find a publisher for this work shows him at his best ”“ indomitable, but not so convinced of his own gifts that he would be offended by repeated rejections, or refuse to take advice as to how his work might be improved. The novel had a good reception, and was soon followed by The White Company (1891), set in the Hundred Years War. These books secured the reputation that opened the way for Holmes’s prominence. But it was characteristic of Doyle’s self-distrust that it took an alarming bout of illness, when his life seemed threatened, to liberate him from earlier ties:

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The new spiritual leader of Oklahoma Episcopalians would rather talk about transformational ministry than about the controversy over homosexuality threatening to split the Anglican world.

The Rt. Rev. Edward J. Konieczny (pronounced con-YETCH-nee) was consecrated bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Oklahoma on Sept. 15 in Oklahoma City.

In Tulsa last week for the annual meeting of the diocese at St. John’s Episcopal Church, he talked about his first two months in office.

It has been a busy time.

A short time after his consecration, Konieczny attended a four-day conference in the national cathedral in Washington, D.C.

“This was a group of leaders that have a passion for transformational ministry, for building the Body of Christ,” he said.

“We’re focused on growing the Episcopal Church,” he said, through revitalizing congregations in decline and planting new congregations.

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For nearly a quarter century before his election as pontiff, Joseph Ratzinger served as the Vatican’s guardian of Roman Catholic orthodoxy, earning a tough reputation for his campaign to quash the Marxist-tinged movement known as liberation theology. Cardinal Ratzinger’s success in that crusade won him few plaudits in Latin America, the cradle of liberation theology and home to nearly half the world’s 1.1 billion Roman Catholics. So in April 2005, when he was introduced to the world as Pope Benedict XVI, many feared the worst. Instead, the Pax Romana that Ratzinger helped impose on “the popular church” in Latin America, along with the end of Soviet communism, made increased Vatican pressure unnecessary and unlikely.

But now the focus of Benedict’s anxieties””and Vatican sanctions””has shifted to Asia, Catholicism’s largest untapped market. At issue is the fear””for Rome”” that too many Asian Catholics see other religions not only as bearers of truth, but as alternate pathways to salvation or spiritual insight. In Asia, God””or the gods””are everywhere, while Rome wants to stress the exclusivity of Catholicism. To Benedict, Asian theologians and church leaders are attempting to win converts by translating a Western religion””Christianity””into an Eastern idiom, relating Christ to Confucius, the Buddha or the variety of Hindu deities, transforming Jesus, as Benedict put it, into “one religious leader among others.” To the Vatican hierarchy, says Thomas C. Fox, author of “Pentecost in Asia: A New Way of Being Church,” the teachings of these theologians are “clearly unacceptable, even incomprehensible.”

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Recently retired Episcopal Bishop John Lipscomb of Southwest Florida has said he intends to convert to Roman Catholicism, becoming the fourth Episcopal bishop to seek to join the Catholic Church this year.

Lipscomb said in a Nov. 20 letter to Diocese of Southwest Florida that he has requested release from his ordination vows and his responsibilities in the Episcopal House of Bishops. His wife, Marcie, will convert with him.

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Update: ENS has a piece here also.

In my previous column I expressed enthusiasm about the level, and indeed the very existence, of debate in the Anglican Communion over the ordination of gay clergy. How healthy it must be, I thought, to be able to air these opinions and pull apart holy small print. Far better to address the issues then leave them unchallenged.

Such a thing, if you recall me saying, has yet to happen in Islam, a religion that espouses jihad. Muslims don’t really want to talk about it even though the concept has been used to devastating effect. Discussing jihad, its meaning then and now, would provide a great deal of enlightenment for both people inside and outside the faith. It would also show that Muslims are unafraid of tackling this controversial ideology. Not talking about it makes Muslims look scared and stupid.

Talking is something that Anglicans are good at. But I kind of wish they’d do something else. For at least four years the threat of a schism has been hanging over the communion and people write about walking apart and falling off fences but the key word here is threat. Unless I’m deaf I’ve not heard the crack of a rupture so it leaves me thinking that this much-hyped schism, which by all accounts should have happened months ago, is the longest and slowest break-up in history.

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A bishop has criticised Tony Blair after he said he avoided talking about his religious views while premier because he feared the “nutter” label.
The Bishop of Rochester, Michael Nazir-Ali, said he was “sorry” the former prime minister felt unable to talk about his faith.

It would have led to more constructive social policy at home and principled policies abroad, the bishop said.

Mr Blair’s admission comes in the final episode of BBC One’s The Blair Years.

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Using the existence of a marriage license to determine when the state should protect interpersonal relationships is increasingly impractical. Society has already recognized this when it comes to children, who can no longer be denied inheritance rights, parental support or legal standing because their parents are not married.

As Nancy Polikoff, an American University law professor, argues, the marriage license no longer draws reasonable dividing lines regarding which adult obligations and rights merit state protection. A woman married to a man for just nine months gets Social Security survivor’s benefits when he dies. But a woman living for 19 years with a man to whom she isn’t married is left without government support, even if her presence helped him hold down a full-time job and pay Social Security taxes. A newly married wife or husband can take leave from work to care for a spouse, or sue for a partner’s wrongful death. But unmarried couples typically cannot, no matter how long they have pooled their resources and how faithfully they have kept their commitments.

Possession of a marriage license is no longer the chief determinant of which obligations a couple must keep, either to their children or to each other. But it still determines which obligations a couple can keep ”” who gets hospital visitation rights, family leave, health care and survivor’s benefits. This may serve the purpose of some moralists. But it doesn’t serve the public interest of helping individuals meet their care-giving commitments.

Perhaps it’s time to revert to a much older marital tradition. Let churches decide which marriages they deem “licit.” But let couples ”” gay or straight ”” decide if they want the legal protections and obligations of a committed relationship.

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For Christians, the Bible is explicit about our obligations to our children. “Children are not responsible to provide for their parents but parents for their children,” wrote St. Paul to the Corinthian Church. He went on to assert that one who fails to provide for his family “has disowned the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” (I Timothy 5:8.) The obligation to pay our lawful debts runs even deeper, going all the way back to the Ten Commandments. Defaulting on one’s debts is at least lying if not stealing.

Yet, Americans appear to be violating both of these great religious teachings at warp speed.

How are we doing it? By continuing to spend more and pay less with our national government. Specifically, we are $9 trillion in debt, with the figure rising at the rate of about half a billion dollars a day. The interest alone on the national debt amounts to more than $230 billion a year, or 8% of the federal budget.

Why is this a moral issue? Because these are real dollars that must eventually be paid back. If not by us, by our children and our grandchildren.

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Three months ago it was reasonable to expect that the subprime credit crisis would be a financially significant event but not one that would threaten the overall pattern of economic growth. This is still a possible outcome but no longer the preponderant probability.

Even if necessary changes in policy are implemented, the odds now favour a US recession that slows growth significantly on a global basis. Without stronger policy responses than have been observed to date, moreover, there is the risk that the adverse impacts will be felt for the rest of this decade and beyond.

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I am here, because I have tried to build bridges from my constituency into other parts of the Anglican church. I am here because I want to make a statement that I want to be a fellow pilgrim, a traveler with you. It’s a risky business, people throw rocks at you, they would rather curse at the dark than switch on a light. People like to poke faults, they like to cause rows, but we need to keep taking risks to make peace in our church. It’s the right thing to do. In a world of division and conflict, surely the one place where we ought to overcome difference with love should be the church. Surely we could offer a prophetic message to our world of how to live in diversity.

So I want to encourage you, to actively seek to build new friendships with people you disagree with. When was the last time you met and prayed with someone from a different part of our church. I can go to Spring Harvest and New Wine as a speaker, and hear my friends tut at catholic worship, and the way you guys genuflect and all the liturgy. And I correct them, and say we should rejoice that God is so big he can accept worship from us all. And in the bars, corridors here, I hear the same things being said about the way I worship. I realise many of you have been hurt by folk from my tradition, and that’s wrong. Terrible things have been said, shrill tones used, and people have been bruised. Im sorry for that I really really am.

And I realise some of you would rather have root canal without anesthetic than sing Soul Survivor songs with a full band. But as inclusive church, when was the last time you affirmed the happy clappy evangelical who wants to raise their hands in worship. Would they feel included in your church? These are all important gestures, they are hands of friendship, they build bridges.

And so we sow understanding, and love into our church which seems poisioned with intolerance and misunderstanding. Lets begin to break the walls that divide us.

Unity is not saying that we will always agree with each other, unity is a deeper spiritual concept. Unity allows me to love my brothers and sisters even when I don’t always agree with them. Love allows me to hold difference and diversity. Unity is not uniformity. Unity is generated by the Spirit of God, it cant be manufactured or organised, or strategised. It comes when Gods people seek to live in tune with His Spirit, and to love others as themselves.

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There are other signs that stress is spreading, though it is not yet at recessionary levels””not least because corporate profits remain at record highs in America, and many firms have taken advantage of the years of plenty to get their balance sheets in shape. Even so, Home Depot recently said that it can no longer afford to continue with its share-repurchase plan. In the most recent survey of banks’ senior loan-officers, 19.2% reported a tightening of lending standards to large and medium-sized firms, up from 7.5% three months earlier, and zero a year ago. Surveys of small companies suggest they are finding it harder to get the credit they need to grow.

Between June 12th and November 19th, the spread in interest rates between high-yield corporate debt and Treasury bonds doubled, from 2.6 percentage points to 5.2, says Ed Altman of New York University. The yield on high-yield bonds has risen to 9.33%, the highest level since 2002 and a sign of growing default risk, even though defaults remain near a historic low.

Mr Altman is especially worried by the large amount of low-quality debt issued in recent years, much of it to finance private-equity deals. Some 42% of high-yield corporate bonds issued since 2003 were rated B- or lower, rising to nearly 50% in the first six months of this year. Moreover, some $160 billion of leveraged loans are coming due next year. Refinancing them may be a struggle in today’s financial markets.

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The leader of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales has begun an unprecedented attempt to block new laws on embryo research by contacting all Catholic MPs in a personal lobbying campaign.

The Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, has invited them to a reception next week to discuss in confidence “issues likely to come before the House in the new session of Parliament”.

MPs say that the move signals a shift towards a more outspoken political role for the Church.

They told The Times that the event was the first of its kind and clearly triggered by the current legislation on fertility treatment and embryo research and by further debates on abortion law, which are expected next year.

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Pope Benedict XVI today offered prayers for this week’s Middle East summit at Annapolis, saying he hoped the participants would find the “wisdom and courage” needed to bring peace to the Holy Land.

He said he hoped the meeting would relaunch negotiations “to find a just and definitive solution to the conflict which for 60 years has bloodied the Holy Land and provoked so many tears and suffering among two peoples”.

Pope Benedict was speaking at a ceremony at St Peter’s at which he gave 23 new cardinals their rings of office and urged them to work for “peace and unity”, a day after he had given the new ‘Princes of the Church’ their red hats. The Pope last held a consistory to create new cardinals in March last year, when he installed fifteen.

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Teresa Moore, an associate professor of exercise science at the University of South Carolina, offered this possible explanation to the AP: “You could be out raking leaves, but if you’re eating a high-fat, poor-quality diet, you may still be aggravating the problem.”

Yet if we are to overcome the collective bloating induced by our Thanksgiving day ”” and weekend ”” gorging, we’ll have to do much more than rake our yards. To become healthier requires eating better, and less, and exercising more. Wishful thinking, as perhaps reflected in the survey results, won’t get it done.

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“Oh Dad, there is just so much I do not know.”

We dropped our oldest child Abigail off at her first year of College in August. You may remember that my mother died of cancer this past March. It is a year of rites of passage in the family.

Not long ago Abigail was in our den with her mother and me, expressing her anxiety the day before she left to go to school. One thing after another was named, and then it built into a crescendo, which ended with the quote with which I began above. She was so very frustrated with how little she knew about what her future would look like.

Who could blame her? She didn’t know what her roommate’s personality was, what her major would be, who she would end up being friends with, whether she would like her professors, what she would think of Ohio (she is attending Wooster), and on and on and on.

Hold that thought, I said to my daughter. For it was only the day before that I was having my daily devotions and reading in Hebrews 11 when a verse jumped off the page at me:
“By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place which he was to receive as an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing where he was to go” (verse 8).

I spent a lot of time thinking about what that verse really meant in Abraham’s own experience. He did not know if he would even make it to the place, he did not know what it would be like when he got there, he did not know how long he would stay, or what the implications for his family would be, and his list, too, was very long. But nevertheless he went in faith, for faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

So instead of not knowing being something to lament, it is something to be embraced. For if we did know all that we want to, we would not need to depend on God but on ourselves, putting us on exactly the wrong road when it comes to discipleship.

It is a shame there is not more preaching on and study of the book of Ecclesiastes these days. Vanity of vanities, the writer says about life. The word in Hebrew is a word used for vapor; no matter how hard he tries, the vapor of what he sees always eludes the writer’s grasp as he tries to fathom it. Life is apparently inscrutable in Ecclesiastes. It is not known how God is working his purpose out.

According to Ecclesiastes life is not so much a problem to be solved as a mystery to be lived. Not knowing is a good thing that drives us back to faith, back to our knees before the one who made Heaven and earth.

So I told my daughter that I was right with her in struggling with not knowing. I didn’t know what exactly would happen the next day, where and how I would ultimately end up serving, how her younger sister would like her new school, whether the Anglican Communion would really have a future as a genuine communion, and my list, too, was very long.

But there is one thing we DO know about the future, I told her. God is there. And the God who holds the future holds us in his hands right now as he calls us to go out in faith in the midst of so many unknowns every single day.

–The Rev. Canon Dr. Kendall S. Harmon is editor of the Anglican Digest and convenor of this blog

Bp. Schori has elsewhere expressed the view (also reported here) that, “if all sides in the current debate over sexuality and Scripture could ‘hold their truths more lightly,’ they might yet find a way forward.”

Well, okay, if you want to try holding your “truths more lightly,” here’s a place to start. Let’s assume that Gamaliel is right (and he certainly has been proven right about the beginning of Christianity). These Anglicans are as much a division in the Episcopal Church over a difference in religious views as the early Christians were from the Jews. How about applying Gamaliel’s test to our present situation? How about dispensing with all the lawsuits and, instead, start negotiating settlements with departing Anglican congregations? “For if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men; you will only find yourselves fighting against God.”

Or am I being too biblical?

From all sorts of sources, especially email, but also the blogosphere, as for example there–KSH.

To: All Diocesan Clergy
From: Bishop Michael Ingham
Date: November 23, 2007
Subject: Individuals and Groups Leaving the Anglican Church of Canada

Dear Friends in Christ:

By now you will have heard the announcement from Burlington, Ontario, by the Essentials Network of a formal separation from the Canadian Church. You may well be asked about it this on Sunday and for some time to come, so I thought I would offer you my own preliminary reflections on what should be our principal responses.

First, this development, while not unexpected (the signs have been there for several years, see below) is both unwelcome and unnecessary. Unwelcome because it violates both the ancient traditions of our church and also the consistent urgings of Scripture for unity among Christians. Unnecessary because no Canadian Anglican is being compelled to act against their conscience in matters of doctrine or ethics, and so there is no need for ”˜safety’ from ecclesiastical oppression.

Second, Anglicans in this country do not want to see their church at war with itself. The prospect of costly and bitter litigation will rightly be regarded as a waste of the church’s precious resources given for mission. Further, our efforts at evangelism and outreach will be hampered by the media’s coverage of our organization in conflict. People searching for a spiritual home will be wary of involving themselves in a place of turmoil. Sadly, these consequences will be increased by the Network’s announcement.

Third, it has been the cry of every breakaway group that “we haven’t left them ”“ they’ve left us.” Apart from the tiredness of the cliché, it is an attempt to avoid responsibility for personal choices. Every effort has been made, both in New Westminster and across the Anglican Church of Canada, to provide space for genuine differences of conviction on non-essential matters of faith. We have recognized the difficult place in which those of minority opinion find themselves (and there are several minorities, not just one) and have sought to foster mutual respect and mutual support. The vast majority of conservative and traditional Anglicans in Canada understand and accept this, and will stay with their church. This is not, therefore, a conservative breakaway. It is a decision to leave by those who feel uncomfortable with reasonable accommodation within the Body of Christ.

Fourth, the Network blames the church for its own decisions. Let us remember a brief chronology. It was ten years ago in 1997 that we first heard the term ”˜global south.’ This was from the Kuala Lumpur meeting of certain bishops prior to the Lambeth Conference the following year. They issued the “Second Trumpet From the South” stating their intention to be in communion only with those who held their view of human sexuality. At the 1998 Lambeth Conference a well financed and organized lobby succeeded in raising this position to the level of Resolution 1:10, effectively marginalizing a careful statement prepared during the Conference by a broad spectrum of bishops.

We saw the development in North America of groups called the ”˜Anglican Mission in America” and the “American Anglican Council” and the irregular and provocative consecrations, in Singapore in 2000 and Denver in 2001, of ”˜missionary’ bishops to serve in the United States against the wishes of the Episcopal Church. During this time, congregations in the US and Canada were being urged by these groups to withhold financial contributions from the church.

Thus the seeds of this breakaway movement were laid long before same-sex blessings were authorized in New Westminster or a partnered gay bishop was elected in New Hampshire. The attempt now to lay blame for this development on events that took place in our diocese in 2002 and in the US in 2003 is in my view both a denial of history and an avoidance of responsibility.

Lastly, I think we need to respond to the Network’s announcement in several ways.

1. Pray for the unity of Christians, for a spirit of charity towards those with whom we may disagree, and for God’s forgiveness of our mutual failure to honour the prayer of Christ in St. John’s Gospel “that they may be one.”

2. Give particular support to those conservative and traditional Christians who remain with their church and grieve the departure of friends.

3. Teach our members about the genius of Anglicanism and its balance of Scripture, reason and tradition within the boundaries of common prayer.

4. Emphasize in our preaching and leadership the centrality of mission and its priority over ecclesiastical politics.

5. Challenge the false stereotypes that foster polarization ”“ e.g. the ”˜heartless conservative’ or the ”˜unbiblical liberal.’

6. Give thanks that our church, for all its messiness, is honestly and openly facing issues some other bodies cannot.

7. Press forward in ministry and evangelism at the local level.

8. Deepen our study and immersion in Scripture. Place ourselves under the authority of the Christ it reveals. Avoid both an empty relativism and a harsh literalism.

9. Encourage both local media and the non-churchgoing public to understand the deeper roots of this development.

10. Take the ”˜long view’ ”“ i.e. remember the consistent triumph of the Gospel over the historic fragmentation of the church, and the persistence of faith through the failures of human discipleship.

Please remember our diocesan and national leaders in your prayers too. And above all, let’s get on with the normal work of being the church.

Kindest regards,
The Right Reverend Michael Ingham
Bishop

Nearly every week, new visitors arrive. They want to see the megachurch that was built in the unlikeliest of places by the unlikeliest of men.

The Embassy of the Blessed Kingdom of God for All Nations was founded 13 years ago by a Nigerian immigrant, Sunday Adelaja, in Kyiv, Ukraine. In a predominantly Orthodox Christian country where racism is pervasive, Adelaja created a Pentecostal church with 30,000 members.

The next stop in his bid for global reach is the United States.

“America is fast becoming a mission ground again,” Adelaja said in a phone interview from Sacramento, Calif., during his latest trip through the country. “We are surprised that the Americans who preached to us, the passion they had is almost already gone.”

Read it all.

Read it all.

It starts about 6 minutes and 30 seconds in and features an extended interview with Charlie Masters.