Today Christians celebrate the Feast of the Conversion of St Paul. It is an unusual feast, for it is not an anniversary of the death, or martyrdom, of a saint but a commemoration of a “turning around” of one of the great teachers and thinkers of the Christian world.

St Luke records in the Acts of the Apostles how Saul, the strictest of Pharisees, was journeying to Damascus to persecute and put to death Christians, the followers of a new way, which he regarded as heretical. They had to be stamped out because they were leading the people of God astray. Suddenly, on the Damascus road, a blinding light from Heaven overwhelmed Saul, the blinding light which in the Jewish tradition was the shekinah, the dazzling glory of God. He falls to the ground and asks “who are you Lord?” To which the answer comes: “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.” There, at the very centre of the glory of God, is the One whose followers Saul had come to Damascus to root out. Blinded and overwhelmed by this experience, Saul is led stumbling into Damascus. There, a Christian disciple, Ananias, comes in obedience to find the persecutor, and lays hands on him that Saul may receive his sight again and be filled with the Holy Spirit.

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A national Episcopal leader visited Bakersfield Thursday, heard believers’ concerns about the San Joaquin Diocese’s recent secession from the church and appointed a local clergyman as a temporary missionary priest to serve Bakersfield area believers.

He also said the national church considers the diocese’s Dec. 8 decision to place itself under overseas Anglican rule illegal.

The Rev. Canon Robert Moore, of Seattle, who was appointed by the Episcopal Church’s presiding bishop, the Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, as an “interim pastoral presence” in the San Joaquin Valley, spent the day in the greater Bakersfield area as part of a five-day “listening tour” that will culminate in a valley-wide conference in Hanford on Saturday.

At a Thursday night gathering of 60 to 70 believers and clergy at First Congregational Church and hosted by Remain Episcopal in the Diocese of San Joaquin, a faith community opposed to the split, Moore received hearty applause when he announced he had appointed the Rev. Tim Vivian, a Bakersfield resident, to a “temporary pastoral position as missionary priest under my direct supervision, which puts him within the jurisdiction of the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church.”

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“My purpose is … to be pastorally supportive of these congregations and missions,” said [John] Guernsey, who hails from Falls Church, Va. “I’m coming to Midland to talk about the worth of sharing our faith. That’s what I’ll be preaching about.”

Leadership at Christ Church is looking forward with excitement to the visit.

“We’re thrilled that he has found time for us and our other two West Texas Anglican congregations so soon,” said the Rev. Tom Finnie, Christ Church rector. “We respect the fact that he is busy and cherish the time he is giving us.”

It’s evident that as the bishop for the American churches, he will have a growing task ahead of him. Soft-spoken and with a bookish look, the Yale graduate has seen the number of churches allied with Uganda skyrocket before, during and after his consecration.

In June 2007, the Ugandan church reported 26 American congregations. In September, the number had risen to 33. Now, the total is 44, Guernsey said.

There are many other American Anglican churches that have sought shelter and affiliation with other foreign churches, many in Africa and South America. Guernsey estimates that number to be more than 300.

Though it’s not the main purpose for his visit — “This is not a political trip at all,” he said — Guernsey is currently working toward a larger goal.

If all goes well, a new nationwide Anglican church composed of those that broke with the U.S. Episcopal Church will be formed, and all of the dissenting churches allied overseas will be released to the new structure.

“The congregations are eager to put the difficulties and church conflicts behind them,” he said.

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Now that [Mark] Lawrence’s calling into a higher level of responsibility has become a reality for him — a bishop is to be “the shepherd of the shepherds of God” and “the chief shepherd of the diocese,” he said — Lawrence is a very busy man.

“The closest I can compare what I’m going through right now is trying to learn a new language in an intensive program,” he said. “There are so many dimensions to the ministry and work of a bishop that I’m immersed in learning all the dimensions.”

Since relocating to South Carolina near the start of this year, he has been learning all he can from retiring bishop the Rt. Rev. Edward L. Salmon Jr., who served in that capacity for 18 years and will be one of Lawrence’s consecrating bishops. Lawrence will have to oversee at least 70 missions and parishes and about 30,000 diocesan members. He will be responsible for the confirmation of new believers and the ordination and appointment of deacons and priests in parishes within the diocese.

He will also have to sit on the boards of two seminaries, several colleges and a slew of other institutions to which the South Carolina Diocese is connected.

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Check it out. The link was provided yesterday to watch it live on the diocesan website.

Catholic and evangelical social justice leaders on Thursday urged President Bush to use his upcoming State of the Union address to turn around what they called his faltering moral legacy.
Frequently referring to the state of American public policy as “shameful,” the representatives of five major religious organizations said Bush has sidestepped pressing religious concerns, despite his recurrent religious rhetoric.

Specifically, they said the White House has failed to deal with growing poverty at home and abroad, turned a blind eye to torture, ignored climate change, and neglected the human suffering from the war in Iraq.

“We have yet to fully sort out the legacy of an explicitly evangelical president, who sadly has had such a truncated vision of what a moral leadership looks like,” said the Rev. David Gushee, president of Evangelicals for Human Rights.

“I am hopeful that the evangelical community as a whole has been chastened by that and is open to reconsidering what we think a truly evangelical moral leadership would look like.”

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Early returns are encouraging. Mike Cinnamon, executive director of the Richland County election commission, said there were long lines of absentee voters Friday. Cinnamon said there were about 700 Republican absentee votes and at least twice that in Democratic votes.

The State Election Commission has issued more Democratic absentee ballots than Republican, a reversal of typical elections.

Last week ”” in ice, rain and cold ”” Republican turnout dipped about 22 percent from the all-time high in 2000. About 445,000 voted in last Saturday’s Republican primary.

Few think that many Democrats will turn out, but the three candidates, Clinton, Obama and former North Carolina U.S. Sen. John Edwards, have drawn larger crowds this week than most Republican rallies.

“Some of those people are going to vote in the Democratic primary,” Obama supporter former Gov. Jim Hodges said of those who did not vote Republican. “We’ve got three good candidates.”

Voters are allowed to vote in either the Republican or Democratic primary, but not both.

Despite the trend of high turnout, University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato said it does not foreshadow a Democratic win in November. Democrats turned out in 1980 and 1988 primaries, Sabato said, only to see Republicans win the presidency.

Democrats have had a difficult time winning Southern states, with Bill Clinton the last candidate to claim Southern electoral votes in 1996.

“This has been happening all over the country,” Sabato said. “It doesn’t necessarily mean anything … it’s a good sign Democrats are engaged.”

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ST PAUL, facing shipwreck off Malta, spotted the soldiers getting into a small boat to rescue themselves. “Unless these men stay in the ship,” he said to the centurion, “you cannot be saved.”

A similar urgent plea must now be addressed to those who, envisaging the imminent break-up of the good ship Anglican, are getting into a lifeboat called GAFCON, leaving the rest of us to face the future without them.

I have shared the frustration of the past five years, both in the United States and around the world. I have often wished that the Windsor report could have provided a more solid and speedy resolution. But the ship hasn’t sunk yet.

The rationale of GAFCON (the Global Anglican Future Conference) is: “The Communion is finished; nothing new can happen; it’s time to split.” No mention is made of the Windsor report, the proposed Anglican Covenant, or, indeed, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Advent letter, insisting as it does on scriptural authority, which GAFCON seems to regard as its monopoly.

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From here:

Hindu-Episcopal service: An article in Sunday’s California section about a joint religious service involving Hindus and Episcopalians said that all those attending the service at St. John’s Cathedral in Los Angeles were invited to Holy Communion. Although attendees walked toward the Communion table, only Christians were encouraged to partake of Communion. Out of respect for Hindu beliefs, the Hindus were invited to take a flower. Also, the article described Hindus consuming bread during Communion, but some of those worshipers were Christians wearing traditional Indian dress.

Taking a significant step toward the creation of man-made forms of life, researchers reported Thursday that they had manufactured the entire genome of a bacterium by painstakingly stitching together its chemical components.

While scientists had previously synthesized the complete DNA of viruses, this is the first time it has been done for bacteria, which are much more complex. The genome is more than 10 times as long as the longest piece of DNA ever previously synthesized.

The feat is a watershed for the emerging field called synthetic biology, which involves the design of organisms to perform particular tasks, such as making biofuels. Synthetic biologists envision being able one day to design an organism on a computer, press the “print” button to have the necessary DNA made, and then put that DNA into a cell to produce a custom-made creature.

“What we are doing with the synthetic chromosome is going to be the design process of the future,” said Dr. J. Craig Venter, the boundary-pushing gene scientist. He assembled the team that made the bacterial genome as part of his well publicized quest to create the first synthetic organism. The work was published online Thursday by the journal Science.

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Resolution:

Be it resolved that the 217th Convention of the Diocese of South Carolina dissociates itself from the affiliation of The Episcopal Church (TEC) with the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC).

Explanation:

On the 12th of January 2006, the Executive Committee of The Episcopal Church voted to formalize the relationship between The Episcopal Church and the RCRC, a registered political lobby, which advocates for unlimited abortion rights in the political realm. The literature and website of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice reveal that it advocates positions specifically at odds with those of the Episcopal Church as expressed by a resolution of the 1994 General Convention declaring that, “As Christians, we believe strongly that if [the right to abortion] is exercised, it should be used only in extreme situations. We emphatically oppose abortion as a means of birth control, family planning, sex selection, or any reason of mere convenience.” Further on this the final day of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, it must be noted that this affiliation represents yet another divergence from the normative moral teaching of Catholic Christianity.

[b]Update (from elfgirl):[/b]
For those readers who may have been unaware of the Episcopal Church’s formal affiliation with the RCRC, we’ve compiled a pretty extensive list of links which will provide much background and commentary on the topic, which has (in our opinion) flown much too far under the radar in many dioceses and much of the debate about TEC’s current beliefs and actions.

Here’s the link: http://new.kendallharmon.net/wp-content/uploads/index.php/t19/article/9529/#175687

–elfgirl

A leading Catholic religious order has said its Dutch branch risks a split within the Church with its recommendation to allow lay people to celebrate mass to overcome a growing shortage of clerics.

The proposal ‘risks not only worsening the polarisation within the Dutch Church but also encouraging schism,’ said a report for the Dominicans, an order that has produced many prominent theologians since its founding in 1216.

The Dutch Dominicans, who sent a booklet entitled ‘Church and Ministry’ to all Dutch Catholic parishes last August proposing that an ordinary person could lead the service if there was no priest available, deny wanting to create a schism.

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For those of you who are following the South Carolina Convention.

Bartholomew I, Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, can be regarded as the “pope,” or at least the symbol of unity, of Orthodox Christianity. The denomination’s 300 million or so adherents make it the second-largest body of Christians in the world, after Roman Catholicism. The 67-year-old Bartholomew also represents one of Christianity’s most ancient branches as the latest in a line of 270 archbishops of his city — modern Istanbul — that traces itself back to the apostle St. Andrew, brother of St. Peter, in a part of the world where the Christian faith has existed since New Testament times.

In December 2006, Bartholomew, patriarch since 1991, was thrust under the world-wide media spotlight when he celebrated the Orthodox Divine Liturgy with Pope Benedict XVI. The two met in the tiny Church of St. George in the equally tiny patriarchal compound in Istanbul, all that remains of an Eastern Christian civilization on the Bosporus so glistening and powerful that for more than 1,500 years Constantinople called itself the “new Rome.”

Now Bartholomew has a forthcoming book, in English, “Encountering the Mystery: Perennial Values of the Orthodox Church” (Random House). It purports to be a primer to Orthodoxy, with short chapters on ritual, theology, icons and so forth. What it really is, perhaps inadvertently, is a telling glimpse into the mindset of a church that, venerable and spiritually appealing though it may be, is in a state of crisis. And the book reveals the jarringly secular-sounding ideological positions its leader seemingly feels compelled to take in order to cultivate the sympathy of a Western European political order that is at best indifferent to Christianity.

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Asked how the conference would address the issue of homosexuality, Archbishop Williams said one day on the schedule was reserved to consider “sexuality questions as they affect the ministry of bishops,” including a report on the listening process from the Rev. Canon Phil Groves of the Anglican Communion Office. “It [also] is inevitably going to be part of the conversations informally, day by day as people will bring to the conference what their anxieties are and what their hopes are. There will not be a resolution on this subject.”

Archbishop Williams reiterated that Bishop Gene Robinson of New Hampshire has not been invited “and it’s proving extremely difficult to see under what heading he might be invited to be around.” Asked whether he had considered inviting all bishops, including CANA bishops and Bishop Robinson, Archbishop Williams said he had, but “I thought it best to stick fairly closely with what the Windsor Report recommends, that we should see this as an event for those who have accepted the general direction of the Windsor Report and haven’t flown in the face of its recommendations.”

Regarding the attendance of San Joaquin Bishop John-David Schofield, inhibited by the Presiding Bishop earlier this month, the archbishop said he is “waiting on what comes out of the American House of Bishops’ discussion of that. It’s not something I’ve got a position on yet. At the moment he still has an invitation.”

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Check it out from ABC’s Nightline.

The link is here.

Société Générale, one of the largest banks in Europe, was thrown into turmoil Thursday after it revealed that a rogue employee had executed a series of “elaborate, fictitious transactions” that cost the company more than $7 billion, the biggest loss ever recorded in the financial industry by a single trader.

Daniel Bouton, the Société Générale chairman, said the employee, later identified by other bank employees as Jérôme Kerviel, had confessed to the €4.9 billion fraud, although he did not appear to have profited personally from the trades. The bank has started legal proceedings against the employee, whom the governor of the Bank of France, Christian Noyer, said was currently “on the run.”

Later, a woman identified as the trader’s lawyer, Elisabeth Meyer, said on French television that he was “not fleeing” and was “available for judicial authorities.” She did not say where he was.

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S.C. women are torn between two historic quests playing out in Saturday’s Democratic presidential primary.

The race between U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, who would be her party’s first female nominee, and U.S. Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, who would be his party’s first black nominee, has divided women along generational and racial lines.

It has split households and forced women to ponder racial and gender allegiances.

“I don’t like that because I’m looking for who would be the best candidate ”” period,” said Natasha Guess of Spartanburg, who has been teetering between Clinton, Obama and former U.S. Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina. “I’m thinking about the issues. And it doesn’t matter if it’s a woman, an African-American or whoever.”

Guess knows that not everyone feels the same way. “My sister says the men have had their show. She’d like to see what a woman can do.”

How S.C. women vote Saturday will be a key to who wins. While much has been made of the power of South Carolina’s black vote ”” expected to account for about half of the Democratic primary turnout ”” women hold even more clout. They are expected to cast about 58 percent of Democratic primary votes.

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A bitter and potentially expensive battle over the question of who owns a historic Episcopal church in Bristol may be drawing to a quiet close.

Lawyers for a Bristol congregation, which defected from the Episcopal Church to join a more conservative Anglican group last year, and the Connecticut Diocese are negotiating an end to litigation over the church property, according to church sources.

Members of the Trinity Church parish and its pastor, the Rev. Donald Helmandollar, probably will vacate the property once the diocese’s lawsuit against Trinity is dismissed, the sources said.

Neither Helmandollar nor Connecticut Episcopal Bishop Andrew Smith would discuss the negotiations, citing the sensitive nature of the relationship between Trinity and the diocese.

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They may be found in every hotel bedroom, and are widely available in prisons and hospitals, but members of the clergy claim one of the last places you will find a Bible is in a church.

The absence of the Word of God from the pews is of such concern to the Church of England that it is to debate the issue at the next meeting of its General Synod, or “Parliament”, next month.

The complaint was raised by Tim Cox, a Synod member from Blackpool, who said he had been dismayed to discover that churches he visited “all too often” had no Bibles for worshippers to follow the readings and the sermon.

“Sometimes they have the passages printed in their noticesheet, sometimes they even have bibles available – but have them locked away in a cupboard without the key being available,” he said.

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The online poll, completed by 980 self-identified “evangelical/born again” respondents from January 17 to January 23, showed that 85-percent of evangelicals ranked the economy and “cleaning up government” as the most important or very important issues, compared to 61-percent who said the same about ending abortion and 49-percent who identified “stopping gay marriage” as a top issue.

In some ways, the survey reveals evangelicals to be quite conservative: 41-percent said they were Republican compared to 30-percent who were Democrats; 47-percent said they were conservative versus 14-percent who said they were liberal. Almost 80-percent said they attended church weekly or more than weekly and 84% said the Bible is the “inerrant word of God.”

Generally speaking, however, evangelicals ranked traditionally progressive or Democratic causes as more important than traditionally conservative or Republican ones. Twenty three percent said their views had become less positive about Republicans, twice the number who said they’d soured on Democrats, though half of respondents said they had become less positive about both parties. Almost 60-percent said they favored a more progressive evangelical agenda focused more on protecting the environment, tackling HIV/AIDs, and alleviating poverty and less on abortion and homosexuality.

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Pope Benedict called on the media on Thursday to practise “info-ethics”, saying it was often used irresponsibly to spread violence and impose “distorted models” of life.

In his message for the Catholic Church’s World Communications Day, Benedict said that while the media did much good, it was also often used for ideological reasons and tried to create reality rather than report it.

“When communication loses its ethical underpinning and eludes society’s control, it ends up no longer taking into account the centrality and inviolable dignity of the human person,” he said in the three-page message.

“For this reason it is essential that social communications should assiduously defend the person and fully respect human dignity. Many people now think there is a need, in this sphere, for ‘info-ethics’, just as we have bioethics in the field of medicine and in scientific research linked to life,” he said.

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We defend the truth of the Gospel against those who would deny the existence of any ultimate truth at all. Disguised in false humility, we hear of those who present themselves as humble seekers, but not jubilant finders. In fact, anyone who “finds” is held suspect, because the underlying philosophy here is that there is no absolute truth, and therefore the Christian journey is reduced to nothing more than a quest, but a quest that has no object, like an Easter-egg hunt without any eggs. And what we are finding in our young people is the frustration and dismay of such a quest. Post-modern philosophy, spewing forth from our universities and even through our high schools, touts a world that has no ultimate answers. The result? Get what you can while you can. Enjoy life to the fullest, for there is no universe of meaning out there. And look what is happening, especially in Western civilization: we are hot in pursuit of entertainment and personal peace. Billions of dollars are now spent in and through the entertainment industry, and the difficult truth-questions are left unaddressed. Even if there is an interest in Christianity by those in their teens and twenties, the question often is, “What’s in it for me?” I have recently talked with Anglican leaders who are dismayed that the younger generation of ordained clergy seem more concerned about their salary and pensions than about the Gospel and its demands upon their lives. Diacletian, one of the Roman Emperors during the decline of the Empire, once said, “Give them bread and the circus, and that will suffice.” In other words, keep the masses fed and entertained, and they won’t give you any trouble. Today, we Americans are, for the most part, well fed and highly entertained, and the truth questions drift by us as we go to our movies, our sporting events, play our “gameboys” and try to improve our skills at bridge or golf.

More insidious is the use of familiar language that conveys objective truth to us, but has been eviscerated of truth by its user. This demands of us the constant question, “What does that mean?” For example, an Episcopal bishop says, “I don’t say the Creed, I sing it.” What does that mean? Or the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church remarks, “Jesus is our vehicle to the divine.” What does that mean? Or even the seemingly comfortable affirmations that “we, too, believe in Jesus, the Bible, and the Creeds.” What does that mean? The temptation is to avoid the hard work of careful study and clear articulation of the faith. Someone can say, “I believe in the Bible,” and mean nothing more than “I admire and acknowledge the Bible as the ancient chronicle of human efforts to understand spirituality.” But look at what such a statement doesn’t say. And at the risk of appearing persnickety, we must confront the world with the truth question and continue to ask, “What do you mean by that?” No longer can we assume that words mean the same thing. Lewis Carroll in Through the Looking Glass, understood the total collapse not only of language but of meaning itself when this world-view is adopted. Listen to this exchange from Alice and Humpty-Dumpty:

When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone,’ it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.’
‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master – that’s all.’

Being master ”“ a world without ultimate Truth becomes a world without meaning, which means we must assign meaning to the world for ourselves. We become our own masters. We cannot assign meaning to the words “Jesus,” “The Bible,” “The Word of God,” “The Resurrection” or any number of other critical words in the Christian lexicon without changing the meaning of the Christian faith itself. We at Christ Church stand to affirm a universe that has meaning, described by words that have meaning, and we recognize that we are not to assign our own meaning to those words, but allow their historic and constant definitions to remain. Now, intellectual honesty may demand from us that we say “I cannot believe this or that,” but it will not allow us to fudge the meaning of the words and then proclaim, “I believe!”

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Keya Neal, owner of It’s All In The Cut hair salon on Dorchester Road talks politics with customers while styling Shakella Haynes’s hair. Neal, who did not always follow politics has been following this primary season closely.

For many black women, deciding who they’ll vote for in Saturday’s Democratic primary is a good kind of angst.

Do they vote for who could be the first female president or the first black president? It’s the first time they’ve had to choose between the two.

Yvette Jackson of Goose Creek said the choice isn’t at all bad, though she’s torn on what to do. She settled on Illinois Sen. Barack Obama over Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York after considering the two front-runners’ stances on key issues.

“Obama has the credentials, and I think he needs our support,” she said. “This may be what he needs in South Carolina to get him that vote to win the nomination. … If he couldn’t, then certainly, I’d be just as happy with Hillary.”

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Adapted from a template prepared by Mike Angell of the Office of Young Adult and Higher Education Ministries at the Episcopal Church Center in New York, the liturgy takes the worshipper through eight stations of the MDGs, each signifying one of the goals of the 2000 UN programme to eradicate poverty in the developing world.

The service begins with an explanation of the meaning of the MDGs and the statement that “Today, we will pray and experience the MDGs as Stations as we commit ourselves to living out the Baptismal Covenant by working to achieve the MDGs. We see ourselves and the Church as on a pilgrimage in the world, journeying with each other toward the justice of the Reign of God as manifest in the goals.”

Pilgrims then recite the Baptismal covenant found in the American Book of Common Prayer and then move through each of the eight stations as leaders give reflections how the worshipper might help: eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, achieve universal primary education, promote gender equality and empower women, reduce child mortality, improve maternal health, combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases, ensure environmental sustainability, and create a global partnership for development.

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