In analysing a crisis of this kind, one should always bear in mind that nothing difficult happens unless there is a real pressure for it to happen. General Musharraf would not have instituted the state of emergency if there had been no Islamic militants.

Chuck Prince would not contemplate resignation unless the bank had lost a great deal of money. The oil price would not be more than $90 a barrel if there were no shortage and no threat of war. Gold would not be above $800 an ounce if people trusted the dollar. Real events force painful decisions to be made.

Read it all.

The appellants are fighting not for their lives but for a more efficient cocktail of deadly drugs. In the current protocol, the first drug is intended to produce unconsciousness, the second to paralyze the muscles and the third to stop the heart. In some cases, the appellants say, the first drug fails, leaving prisoners awake but unable to move or speak as they die of cardiac arrest.

It is the inverse of the guillotine. Rather than painless for the convict but gruesome for witnesses, the three-drug cocktail may be easy on witnesses but brutal for the victim ”” an inert body suffering unspeakable pain.

The Supreme Court may end up banning the cocktail, but such a ruling would only inspire state officials to mix up a new set of drugs. The new protocol may at first appear to work smoothly, but decades of executions have taught us this: Technical systems are prone to failure, and human bodies are irreducibly complex and idiosyncratic. Whatever the technique, executions will go horrifyingly wrong.

Pain is often a necessary part of death. That fact seems unfortunate yet unremarkable in cases of natural death, but when the killing is done deliberately, on our behalf, we keep seeking ways to spare ourselves the dreadful truth.

Read it all.

A Peters congregation that felt Washington Presbytery had balked at its request to join a more conservative Presbyterian denomination voted yesterday to leave the Presbyterian Church (USA) without presbytery approval, and to immediately affiliate with the Evangelical Presbyterian Church.

The vote at Peters Creek Presbyterian Church was 207-26 with five abstentions. According to Peters Creek leaders, the Evangelical Presbyterian Church had already approved its request to affiliate, so people left the 11 a.m. service as members of the smaller, more conservative denomination.

The Rev. L. Rus Howard, pastor of Peters Creek, said during the service that this would put the matter of who owns the property into the civil courts, but he believed they would be more fair and impartial than Washington Presbytery.

“I’m very grateful” for the vote, he said afterward. “This has been a long struggle, but we did it as a matter of faith. We … believe this honors God and lets us get on with our mission.”

Read it all.

Children need more than ever the presence and guidance of fathers in family life. According to a recent collection of essays, a significant body of scientific research clearly documents the vital role a father plays in the formative years of a child’s life.

The book is titled “Why Fathers Count: The Importance of Fathers and Their Involvement with Children” (Men’s Studies Press). Sean E. Brotherson and Joseph M. White, the editors and authors of the first chapter, set the tone for the book with an overview of arguments regarding the importance of fathers for children. The presence of a father has a positive impact in many ways, they note, as children with fathers have fewer behavioral problems, obtain better academic results, and are economically better off.

Brotherson and White also clarified that they do not in any way wish to minimize the contribution made by mothers to family life. In fact, they stated, both parents count: fathers and mothers. Nevertheless, as statistics amply confirm, there has been a marked increase in fatherless families in recent decades, hence the book’s concentration on fathers.

Read it all.

Rauschenbusch’s book revived the proud tradition of the American jeremiad to confront readers with the unsettling, indeed shocking gospel of Jesus and his early followers. A middle-class church grown lazy and comfortable, indifferent to social evil as it called upon individual sinners to repent, stood condemned by the very creed it professed to uphold. Even as he underscored that “Jesus was not a social reformer of the modern type”-that Jesus’ greatest lesson for his followers was “how to live a religious life”-Rauschenbusch believed Jesus’ teachings were a desperately needed corrective to modern complacency. “Jesus was not a child of this world,” he wrote. “He nourished within his soul the ideal of a common life so radically different from the present that it involved a reversal of values, a revolutionary displacement of existing relations.”

In confronting the social crisis of his time, Rauschenbusch once again called for this revolutionary displacement. Eleven years of ministering to an immigrant church in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood left him grimly aware of the toll that exploitation, unemployment, unsanitary housing, and alcoholism took on working-class people. Godless capitalism was an abomination, in his view, manifesting itself everywhere from the miseries of the sweatshop and tenement to the atrocities Western powers inflicted on Africans. He denounced “fictions of capitalism” that seem unchanged a century later: “that the poor are poor through their own fault…that the immigrants are the cause of corruption in our city politics…that we cannot compete with foreign countries unless our working class will descend to the wages paid abroad.” Although he wasn’t a Marxist, he could pose the alternatives facing the church in terms as stark as those of any socialist militant: “If we serve mammon, we cannot serve the Christ.”

Rauschenbusch’s socialism, like that of his contemporary Eugene Debs, was less orthodox than it might initially appear. His critique of industrial capitalism was indebted to the radicalism of populist thinkers like Henry George, who defended an economy of small producers against land speculation and monopolies. For Rauschenbusch, as for Debs and George, the collapse of that economy endangered the rough egalitarianism and sturdy character traits necessary to democratic citizenship. What especially appalled Rauschenbusch about corporate capitalism was its degradation of work and denial of a common moral identity. “Man is treated as a thing to produce more things,” he complained, while a consumer ethic substituted envy and resentment for solidarity and fellow feeling. “The ostentation of the overfull purses of the predatory rich lures all society into the worship of false gods.”

Read it all.

“I’m convinced there are young people who are searching for churches which will embrace their passion for caring for the earth. These folks can help the church remember its connection to creation, and the church can give them a sense of wholeness in their lives by relating their passion to Christ,” said the Rev. Pat Watkins, a United Methodist clergy member of the Virginia Annual (regional) Conference and environmental coordinator for the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy.

The task force joined Muslim, Jewish and Christian clergy for a breakfast to discuss the role of faith communities in caring for creation. The breakfast was co-sponsored by the British Embassy and the Greater Washington Interfaith Power and Light.

Speakers included the Right Rev. James Jones, bishop of Liverpool in the Church of England, who described how he called for a “carbon fast” last year for Lent in the Diocese of Liverpool. He said such a fast was more valuable than giving up chocolate or candy or other more typical seasonal sacrifices. “We are caught up in a disease of consumption, and that is what is afflicting the earth,” he said.

Jones said that, by the end of the carbon fast, “people weren’t ready to resume their previous consumption levels; it made them think about their life

Read it all.

The British Government is prepared to work with faith groups, but only if they agree to work with others of different views, and to stop using public money to proselytize.

Communities Minister Hazel Blears told a church conference yesterday that faith groups had a ”˜vital role’ to play, but acknowledged that their contribution had not always been recognized by the Labour administration.

“In the past faith groups have found doors closed: little recognition of their role, little willingness to debate it. And it was a real missed opportunity that we chose not to make more of their enthusiasm and expertise,” she said.

Read it all.

When [Graham] Mallaghan logged on, he found a group called For Those Who Hate The Little Fat Library Man, dedicated to insulting him.

One of Mallaghan’s responsibilities is to enforce the library’s noise regulations, and he believes the group was set up by students unhappy with his efforts. Mallaghan, who is 37, says that it quickly began to have an impact on all aspects of his life: “At its peak the group had 363 members. Both my wife and I had the brakes on our bikes cut. People would run up to me and take photos on their phone ”“ at one point there was a competition on the group for who could get the best close-up.”

Websites such as Facebook and MySpace are the primary exports of the Web 2.0 revolution, which brought user-created internet content to the fore. The biggest of the sites, MySpace, launched in August 2003 and now has more than 200 million accounts worldwide. Facebook has gathered more than 49 million accounts so far, including more than five million in the UK, its third-largest market. Globally it is adding 200,000 users a day. The MySpace audience is mainly composed of teenagers, while Facebook’s users are older ”“ dominated by college students and young professionals.

The sites have grown exponentially over the past four years by offering a fast, free and easy way for people to come together online and coalesce into an ever-shifting network of social connections around hotspots of friendship, work and shared interests. This can lend new energy to existing friendships and seed new ones at an astonishing rate. All you need is the patience to create your own homepage on one of these sites and the lack of inhibition required to start sharing details about yourself, your life and thoughts with the world. The doors of the social network are thrown open.

Read it all.

Today, there are two faith-related matters that religious conservatives find most troubling with Hillary: her church politicking is one, but first and foremost is her perceived stridency on the abortion issue.

The church politicking is a brazen, undeniable use of her faith for political benefit. Remarkably, she campaigned in 27 New York churches in the two months before the November 2000 vote, including six on Election Day morning alone.

But while values voters find her church politicking distasteful, they find her position on abortion ”” she may be the most uncompromising pro-choicer in the entire Congress ”” intolerable.

This is an enormous obstacle for her, and she knows it, as do leading religious voices in her own party.

“I think our party’s leaders ”” some of them ”” are overemphasizing the abortion issue,” said Jimmy Carter in November 2005. “I’ve never been convinced, if you let me inject my Christianity into it, that Jesus Christ would approve abortion.”

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Chemists around the world must demand the right to “conscientious objection” and refuse to sell medicines – even though they are legal in many countries – that cause euthanasia or abortion, including the so-called “morning-after pill”, Pope Benedict XVI said this week.

Speaking at the Vatican on Monday to the International Federation of Catholic Pharmacists (IFCP), the Pope said: “In the moral realm, your federation is invited to confront the question of conscientious objection.” He said this was “a right that must be recognised” for all chemists, because they could not “collaborate – directly or indirectly – in furnishing products” intended for “clearly immoral choices”.

He said that pharmacists could only sell drugs that “truly fulfilled their healing role” and protected “every being” from “conception to natural death”.

But the Pope said refusal to sell such “immoral” drugs was only part of the pharmacist’s duty. He pointed out that chemists also played an “educative role” in their work as “intermediaries between doctor and patient”. And, therefore, they had a duty to inform their customers of the “ethical implications” inherent in using certain drugs. “It is not possible to anaesthetise consciences,” he said, “for example, about the effects of molecules [of a drug] that prevent the implantation of an embryo or abbreviate a person’s life.”

Read it all.

Saturday’s ceremony, called the welcoming and seating, was led by the Very Rev. John P. Downey, Cathedral of St. Paul’s dean.

“Sean Walter Rowe, bishop in the Church of God, and our bishop, we welcome you to your Cathedral Church, the symbol and center of your pastoral, liturgical and teaching ministry in this diocese,” Downey said.

Rowe was then officially seated in the cathedral for the first time.

Before the ceremony, Rowe said he was looking forward to moving the diocese forward.

“I’m hoping to bring enthusiasm and energy,” he said. “I want to set out a vision of hope.”

Read it all.

According to Akinola, Nigerian bishops had not “fully decided” on whether they would attend.

“At present, the Anglican Church is so divided. There is so much distrust and disrespect. Even basic courtesies are lacking among the bishops.

“What kind of communion do you have when you have bishops from all over the world coming together and you cannot even have fellowship or share the Lord’s Supper?” he asked.

“What we are doing now is to tell the authorities in Lambeth Palace (Archbishop of Canterbury) the conditions that must be met if we are to attend.

Read it all.

“We have tried every act of reconciliation. We have tried to reconcile with the Episcopal Church and there is no reconciliation in their hearts, “ says Waymon Singleton, who has been a member of the Church of the Good Shepherd in Maitland for thirty-four years.

Waymon and his wife Elaine are supporting their pastor, Rev. John Nyhan, in his decision to separate the congregation from the Central Florida Diocese. According to Rev. Nyhan, the Episcopal Church, USA has been shifting to a more liberal path since the 1960s.

“We have a problem holding up as a model for the Christian life, and when you become a priest and are ordained –and that comes with the calling that you must be an example with the Christian life — we object of that lifestyle being help up as a model for the Christian life, “ says Nyhan.

Nyhan says the rift is not just about the homosexual issue. He says the House of Bishops, which presides over all churches in the United States, is not following the guidance of the Holy Scriptures.

“In our seminaries they have taught a very liberal and deconstructed understanding of what scripture is, and what they have done is stripped it of having any authority. They’ve rendered the scriptures of being an uninspired book.”

Nyhan, along with other church leaders, urged Central Florida Bishop John Howe to oppose changes and keep the diocese on a more traditional course, but the bishop decided to side with the church’s current path in the spirit of reconciliation. Nyhan says the decision left him with no other option.

Read it all.

In 2004, then-presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., didn’t make his religious background and convictions clear to the public, he said Thursday, and paid a price for it.

“The challenge for anyone running for president is how to explain who they are … I could have done a better job of that, and probably should have,” Kerry said at a session hosted by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

Looking back on his own journey of faith, experience on the campaign trail and religious studies since the 2004 election, Kerry outlined his mistakes and mapped out areas of common ground for religious liberals and conservatives.

Read it all.

“Is God calling us to a new understanding of human sexuality?”

That’s the been the key question ever since Gene Robinson, an openly gay man, was confirmed as bishop in the Episcopal Church, according to the Rev. Frank Wade of Washington, D.C.

Wade was chaplain to the House of Deputies when the General Convention consented to Robinson’s election as bishop of New Hampshire in 2003. He spoke Saturday to about 150 people attending a conference at the Middleton Place conference center sponsored by the Episcopal Forum of South Carolina. The conference was organized to urge the local diocese to remain active in the Episcopal Church.

“God does call us to new understanding,” Wade said. “It’s a possibility.”

So let me get this straight. It is a possibility. Ah. But then we approve of it in our highest office, that of bishop, and we do so in practice without even settling the theological questions involved. All based on a possbility? Nonsense. The national leadership is acting on what they believe is a certainity. God is doing a new thing, we were told in Minneapolis. Again, the message of the leaders and their actions do not compute.

Read it all.

As The New York Times transforms itself into a multimedia news and information platform ”” the printed newspaper plus a robust nytimes.com offering breaking news, blogs, interactive graphics, video and more ”” it is struggling with a vexing problem. How does the august Times, which has long stood for dignified authority, come to terms with the fractious, democratic culture of the Internet, where readers expect to participate but sometimes do so in coarse, bullying and misinformed ways?

The answer so far is cautiously, carefully and with uneven success.

The issue is timely because last week, with very little notice, The Times took baby steps toward letting readers comment on its Web site about news articles and editorials, something scores of other newspapers have long permitted. On Tuesday, readers were invited to comment on a single article in Science Times and on the paper’s top editorial, using a link that accompanied each. Few did because there was no promotion of the change, but as the week went on and more articles were opened to comment, participation picked up.

The paper is creating a comment desk, starting with the hiring of four part-time staffers, to screen all reader submissions before posting them, an investment unheard of in today’s depressed newspaper business environment. The Times has always allowed reader comments on the many blogs it publishes, with those responses screened by the newsroom staff. That experience suggests what the paper is letting itself in for.

“I didn’t know how big it would become, and I didn’t know how tough it would be to manage,” said Jim Roberts, editor of the Web site.

We have been around and around on similar issues on this blog now for years. Read it all.

Dear Kendall,

I have been following your blog with great interest, and I wonder if you would compare what is happening now with the Anglican Church with what happened in the 16th century with the Roman Catholic Church?

It seems to me that a preoccupation with works, property, and wealth were present then, and while we don’t necessarily have the sale of indulgences going on, we are nevertheless, very indulgent.

The reaction has been to re-focus the church on the transcendent, the relationship with the divine, and re-emphasize faith and scripture. Again, this seems very analogous to the Reformation period.

What I’m wrestling with is how far this Reformation process extends — is it simply an Episcopalian Reformation, or are we looking at an Anglican Reformation? In other words, how rotten is the English church?

I’m also wondering if by calling it what it is, a Reformation, we can begin to educate folks that this isn’t about 2003, but about something much deeper?

As an Episcopalian, [Bryan] Thompson sees Beloved Son, a group sponsored by Holy Trinity on Folly Road, as reckless and wrong.

“I think what infuriates me most about this is that in no way does this program allow gay and lesbian individuals to celebrate their love for God and their lives together,” he said.

The implication, Thompson and other gays fear, is that they need to be fixed, that they in fact, can be fixed.

At the issue’s base is a familiar question: If you’re gay, are you going to hell?

To Thompson, studying to be a theologian through a program sponsored by the University of the South, the answer is easy: No.

“To me,” he said, “the great tragedy in programs like Beloved Son is that they set God and sexuality as opposing forces.”

The matter is decidedly thornier, particularly for individuals such as the Rev. Peter Mitchell, rector of Holy Trinity and director of Beloved Son. He believes homosexuality to be a sin.

Read it all.

Our neighbouring American diocese in the Anglican Communion, the Diocese of Olympia, has consecrated a new bishop. During the ceremony he was presented with a unique talking stick crosier crafted by a British Columbia Coast Salish artist.

Reaching out by the Anglican Church to the Aboriginal Community, and to other communities, took centre-stage at the consecration of the eighth bishop of the Diocese of Olympia, the Rt. Rev. Gregory H. Rickel. The ceremony took place in Bellevue, Washington, about ten kilometers east of Seattle.

The talking stick crosier was carved by Curtis Johnson of Vancouver out of red cedar with a dark stain. It included an assemblage of feathers, the diocesan emblem, and a dream catcher.

Four symbols carved on the talking stick crosier incorporated both First Nations and Christian traditions. They symbolized both animals in the wild, and the four Gospels: the raven (Gospel of Matthew), beaver (Gospel of Mark), bear (Gospel of Luke), and the eagle (Gospel of John).

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If there is one thing writ large in the lives of the saints it is that they came to know their need of God. Here is the very heart of the matter – not only for them, but also for us – for Christians in every age – a recognition of our deep need of God. “Like as the hart desireth the water brook; so longeth my soul after thee O God”.

In a world of fragmentation and increasing confrontation; where confusions and anxieties abound; and where there is much fear about the future – where is it all going? where surfers and seekers abound; here in the lives of the saints we have sure signposts for the Church in the present and into the future. True enough, they speak to us from the past; not, though, a past which is over and done with. It was the Tractarian revival of an understanding of the Church – not as arm of the State, not simply one organisation or institution among others, but rather the Church as a divine society – encompassing, embracing the whole company of the faithful in heaven and on earth, where life today is to be lived and understood in the context of life eternal; a larger, more inclusive, catholic vision, which in drawing out the past into the present gives us the courage and the confidence to move ahead into the future.

Here in the saints is no roll call of past heroes. Rather they are our sisters and brothers; they are with us on the way – alongside us as companions and guides, sustaining us with their prayers and guiding us by their example. And it is here in the celebration of these holy and awesome mysteries that in those words of the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews “We stand before Mount Zion and the city of the living God, heavenly Jerusalem, before myriads of angels, the full concourse and assembly of the first born citizens of heaven and God the judge of all…” What a contrast to that dull, pedestrian, committee-speak and committee-bound, utilitarian view of the Church which all too frequently I experience and which is hardly likely ever to inspire or convert anyone to anything.

We desperately need to recover this vision of the Church which is God’s and not ours…

—Then Archbishop of York David Hope, in a sermon on All Saints Day 1998

At this point, I wish to switch from the strictly narrative to the personal. As has now been noted in my earlier posting, I was in error regarding the necessity of a two-thirds majority vote for Resolution One (I plead as my excuse that I heard someone with a track record in the Diocese remark upon it in my district meeting and took it on faith instead of consulting the canons.) I find at the end of two very long days that I am troubled. I am no more troubled about my vote than I was before; amidst a multitude of evils I believe it to have been the right choice. What concerns me is the temper that I see emerging among the majority, of which I still consider myself a member. It is a temper of loyalty at all cost, to person and practice as well as to principle. It is a temper that speaks to the solidarity of the elect and has little time for the more quirkish orthodox spirits that inhabit this Diocese. One almost wonders if the spirit of fear is less a fear of what those outside can do to us and more of how reliable our fellow conservatives will be.
I believe there are measures of orthodox Christianity and that they should govern our leadership choices. Sadly, it would seem, we are now demanding a ”˜higher’ standard. As I listened to some conservatives speak today about the climate of intimidation, I couldn’t help but feel that they were missing the point of Bishop’s Duncan’s sermon yesterday in which he reminded us that Christians are called to suffering and ostracism and rejection. If a decision is ”˜right,’ why should it alarm us to be called upon to state it? What price conscience, without cost? If our enemies behave badly ”“ and some of them have done and are doing so ”“ it does not exempt us from behaving well. I am loyal to my Bishop in large measure because I believe he has a better sense of balance than some of those who proclaim themselves to be his most loyal supporters. I disagree with some of his judgments, but I have never faulted his sense of pastoral care.

Let us at least be clear among ourselves. We are witnessing the passing of something that was at the core of Anglican identity here in Pittsburgh and at the core of Anglican witness in the United States until now. The loss will not simply be the loss of liberal friends but will almost certainly be the loss of assurance and perhaps of the orthodox ”˜diversity’ to which we have been so long accustomed. It behooves those who know that beyond the veil there is perfect freedom, to remember the rest of us who will walk that way certainly in uncertainty, perhaps in pain, because they know that to remain where they are is much the more perilous.

Read it all.

When I pay 100% of the airfare, 100% of the plane is a minimum requirement.

–ET, commenting on the bizarre story of a SriLankan Airlines Airplane which announced it was taking off with a small section of its wingtip missing

* For all the saints, who from their labor rest,
* Who thee by faith before the world confessed,
* Thy Name, O Jesus, be for ever blessed.
* Alleluia, alleluia!

Holy ones present at our beginnings:

Stand Here Beside Us!
Abraham and Sarah,
Isaac and Rebecca,
Jacob and Rachel and Leah,
makers of the covenant, forebears of our race:

Stand Here Beside Us!
Elizabeth and Simeon,
Joseph, Monica and Helen,
exemplars in the love and care of children:

Stand Here Beside Us!
John the baptizer, map-maker of the Lord’s coming:

Stand Here Beside Us!

* Thou wast their rock, their fortress, and their might:
* Thou, Lord, their Captain in the well-fought fight;
* Thou, in the darkness drear, the one true Light.
* Alleluia, alleluia!

Holy ones who showed the good news to be the way of life:
Stand Here Beside Us!
Thomas the doubter;
Augustine of Canterbury;
Francis Xavier;
Samuel Joseph Schereschewsky;
all travelers who carried the Gospel to distant places:

Stand Here Beside Us!
Bernard and Dominic;
Catherine of Siena, the scourge of popes;
John and Charles Wesley, preachers in the streets;
all whose power of speaking gave life to the written word:

Stand Here Beside Us!
Benedict of Nursia,
Teresa of Avila;
Nicholas Ferrar;
Elizabeth Ann Seton;
Richard Meux Benson;
Charles de Foucauld;
all founders of communities:

Stand Here Beside Us!

* O may thy soldiers, faithful, true, and bold,
* Fight as the saints who nobly fought of old,
* And win, with them, the victor’s crown of gold.
* Alleluia, alleluia!

Holy ones who gave their lives to the care of others:
Stand Here Beside Us!
Louis, king of France;
Margaret, queen of Scotland;
Gandhi the mahatma, reproach to the churches;
Dag Hammarskjold the bureaucrat;
all who made governance an act of faith:

Stand Here Beside Us!
Peter of the keys, denier of the Lord;
Ambrose of Milan, who answered the Church’s summons;
Hilda, abbess at Whitby;
Robert Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln, protector of the Jews;
Jean-Baptiste Vianney, cure d’ Ars,

Patient hearer of catalogues of sins;
All faithful shepherds of the Master’s flock:

Stand Here Beside Us!
Mary Magdalen, anointer of the Lord’s feet;
Luke the physician;
Francis who kissed the leper;
Florence Nightingale;
Albert Schweitzer;
all who brought to the sick and suffering the hands of healing:

Stand Here Beside Us!

* O blest communion, fellowship divine!
* We feebly struggle, they in glory shine;
* Yet all are one in thee, for all are thine.
* Alleluia, alleluia!

Holy ones who made the proclaiming of God’s love a work of art:
Stand Here Beside Us!
Pierluigi da Palestrina;
John Merbecke;
Johann Sebastian Bach;
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart;
Benjamin Britten;
Duke Ellington;
all who sang the Creator’s praises in the language of the soul:

Stand Here Beside Us!
David and the Psalmists;
Caedmon;
John Milton, sketcher of Paradise;
William Blake, builder of Jerusalem;
John Mason Neale, preserver of the past;
all poets of the celestial vision:

Stand Here Beside Us!
Zaccheus the tree-climber;
Brother Lawrence;
Therese of Lisieux, the little flower;
Andrew of Glasshampton;
all cultivators of holy simplicity:

Stand Here Beside Us!

* And when the strife is fierce, the warfare long,
* Steals on the ear the distant triumph song,
* And hearts are brave again, and arms are strong.
* Alleluia, alleluia!

Holy ones haunted by the justice and mercy of God:
Stand Here Beside Us!
Amos of Tekoa, who held up the plumbline;
John Wycliffe, who brought the Scripture to the common folk;
John Hus and Menno Simons, generals in the Lamb’s war;
Martin Luther, who could do no other;
George Fox, foe of steeple-houses;
all who kept the Church ever-reforming:

Stand Here Beside Us!
Paul the apostle, transfixed by noonday light;
Augustine of Hippo, God’s city planner;
Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin, architects of the divine;
Charles Williams, teacher of coinherence;
Karl Barth, knower of the unknowable;
all who saw God at work and wrote down what they saw:

Stand Here Beside Us!
John, the seer of Patmos;
Anthony of the desert;
Julian, the anchoress of Norwich;
Hildegarde, the sybil of the Rhine;
Meister Eckardt;
Bernadette of Lourdes;
all who were called to see the Master’s face:

Stand Here Beside Us!
Joachim of Fiora, prophet of the new age;
Johnny Appleseed, mad planter of Eden;
Sojourner Truth, pilgrim of justice;
Benedict Joseph Labre, priest and panhandler;
all whose love for God was beyond containment:

Stand Here Beside Us!

* The golden evening brightens in the west;
* Soon, soon to faithful warriors cometh rest;
* Sweet is the calm of paradise the blest.
* Alleluia, alleluia!

Holy ones who died in witness to the Christ:

Stand Here Beside Us!
Stephen the deacon, the first martyr, stoned in Jerusalem:

Stand Here Beside Us!
Justin, Ignatius and Polycarp, who refused the incense to Caesar:

Stand Here Beside Us!
Perpetua and Felicity, torn by beasts in the arena at Carthage:

Stand Here Beside Us!
Thomas Cranmer, Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley,

Burned in Oxford:

Stand Here Beside Us!
Maximilian Kolbe and Edith Stein, put to death at Auschwitz:

Stand Here Beside Us!
James Reeb, Jonathan Daniels, Michael Schwerner,
Medgar Evers, Viola Liuzzo, shot in the South:

Stand Here Beside Us!
Martin Luther King, shot in Memphis:

Stand Here Beside Us!
Janani Luwum, shot in Kampala:

Stand Here Beside Us!
Oscar Romero, shot in San Salvador:

Stand Here Beside Us!
Martyrs of Rome, of Lyons, of Japan, of Eastern Equatorial
Africa, of Uganda, of Melanesia,
martyrs of everywhere:

STAND HERE BESIDE US!
* But lo! there breaks a yet more glorious day;
* The saints triumphant rise in bright array;
* The King of Glory passes on his way.
* Alleluia, alleluia!

Holy ones of every time and place:

Stand Here Beside Us!
Glorious company of heaven:

Stand Here Beside Us!
All climbers of the ladder of Paradise:

Stand Here Beside Us!
All runners of the celestial race:

Stand Here Beside Us!

[The people may call out saints’ names]

Great cloud of witnesses:

Stand Here Beside Us!

Mary most holy, chief of the saints:

Stand Here Beside Us!
Mary most holy, yes-sayer to God:

Stand Here Beside Us!
Mary most holy, unmarried mother:

Stand Here Beside Us!
Mary most holy, gate of heaven and ark of the covenant:

Stand Here Beside Us!

* From earth’s wide bounds, from ocean’s farthest coast,
* Through gates of pearl streams in the countless host,
* Singing to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost:
* Alleluia, alleluia!

Jesus our liberator, creator of all:

Stand Here Beside Us!
Jesus our liberator, redeemer of all:

Stand Here Beside Us!
Jesus our liberator, sanctifier of all:

Stand Here Beside Us!
Jesus our liberator, the alpha and the omega, the beginning and
the end:

Stand Here Beside Us!