In his Oct 15 intervention, the Rt Rev N.T. Wright, the Anglican observer to the synod, said the challenges of “secularism and relativism” alongside the problems raised by “postmodernity” faced by the churches had bred an “anxiety” that the “Bible might tell us unwelcome things,” and that “its message might be stifled.” He urged a “balanced” fourfold reading of scripture founded upon the heart, (Lectio Divina, liturgical reading), mind (historical/critical study), soul (church life, tradition, teaching) and strength (mission, kingdom of God).” “In particular, we need fresh mission-oriented engagement with our own culture,” Dr Wright said, according to notes released by the VIS. As Paul confronted paganism “so must we. In particular, we must engage critically with the tools and methods of historical-critical scholarship themselves,” he said. Dr Wright said the “climax” of the canon of Scripture “is Jesus Christ, especially his cross and resurrection. These events are not only salvific, they provide a hermeneutical principle, related to the Jewish tradition of ‘critique from within’.”

Drawing upon the speech of Cardinal Ivan Dias to the Bishops at the 2008 Lambeth Conference, Dr Wright said the church should take Mary as its model and embody “fiat (mind), magnificat (strength), conservabat (heart) — but also stabat, waiting patiently in the soul, the tradition and expectation of the church, for the new, unexpected and perhaps unwelcome, but yet saving, revelation,” he said.

Read it all.

Shippensburg University and a religious student group have settled a lawsuit over alleged violations of free speech rights at the state-owned university.

The Christian Fellowship of Shippensburg University asserted in a federal lawsuit filed last May that it had been threatened with being shut down because it requires members to be Christians and its president to be a man.

The group said the school violated a 2004 settlement of a separate lawsuit over the school’s student code of conduct.

Read it all.

The cardinal, who is archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh, Scotland, said this at a conference Saturday in reference to Wednesday’s approval of the Human Fertilization and Embryology Bill.

With a vote of 355-129, the bill passed through its third reading in the House of Commons. The bill passed through the House of Lords earlier this year. After a debate on the amendments introduced by the House of Commons, the bill could become law by November.

The bill permits the creation of animal-human hybrids for medical research, the creation of “savior siblings” genetically matched to an older sick sibling (meaning that those who do not match are eliminated), and loosens access to in-vitro fertilization for lesbian couples by eliminating the requirement for children to have fathers.

John Smeaton, the national director of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, said the passage of the bill marks a “tragic date in British history, as Parliament has passed a law extending the lethal abuse of the most vulnerable members of our society. Future generations will look back on this macabre bill and wonder how a supposedly civilized nation could have so devalued human life.”

Read it all.

The pull of liberty is strong, but only for those who know it and treasure it. After decades of public education designed more to produce compliant subjects and beneficiaries than thinking, self-reliant citizens, there are precious few among us who can even articulate, let alone defend, the principles for which our founders bled and died. There are far more (and especially the well-meaning religious) who say, as Gandalf says of the One Ring, “Yet the way of the Ring to my heart is by pity, pity for weakness and the desire of strength to do good.” In their pity and all too sincere desire to do good, they do not see the end of that road as Gandalf does: “With that power I should have power too great and terrible. And over me the Ring would gain a power still greater and more deadly.”

Is there hope? Yes. There is always hope. Whatever its imperfections and excesses and absurdities, liberty is always better than coercion. Sooner or later this always seems to become apparent. When it does, men and women ready to take a stand for liberty always seem to spring from the earth. Perhaps that moment is again near. If so, it will not be the last. There is no final battle for liberty in a fallen world. As Tolkien reminds us (again in the words of Gandalf), “Always after a defeat and a respite, the Shadow takes another shape and grows again.”

Read it carefully and read it all.

From Irenaeus

Dear Kendall:

I’ve been deeply troubled by the extent to which rage drawn from secular politics and culture wars has shaped comment threads on T19 and some other orthodox Anglican blogs.

We dishonor the gospel by conflating it with our own conventional secular politics. We also impair the unity so sorely needed among Anglican reasserters when we treat the theological divide as a subset of a hackneyed secular political divide—as though secular divisions were paramount.

We should take to heart these wise words from Thomas Merton:

In our refusal to accept the partially good intentions of others and work with them (of course prudently and with resignation to the inevitable imperfection of the result) we are unconsciously proclaiming our own malice, our own intolerance, our own lack of realism, our own ethical and political quackery. Perhaps in the end the first real step toward peace would be a realistic acceptance of the fact that our political deals are perhaps to a great extent illusions and fictions to which we cling, out of motives that are not always perfectly honest: that because of this we prevent ourselves from seeing any good or any practicability in the political ideas of our enemies—which may of course be in many ways even more illusory and dishonest than our own. We will never get anywhere unless we can accept the fact that politics is an inextricable tangle of good and evil motives in which, perhaps, the evil predominate but where one must continue to hope doggedly in what little good can still be found.” —New Seeds of Contemplation, ch. 16.

Oswald Chambers sounds a complementary warning about our own cozy ways of thinking:

“Our Lord never tolerates our prejudices [i.e., our preferences or our customary ways of thinking]. He is directly opposed to them and puts them to death. We tend to think that God has some special interest in our particular prejudices, and are very sure that He will never deal with us as He has to deal with others. We even say to ourselves, ”˜God has to deal with other people in a very strict way, but of course He knows that my prejudices are all right.’ But we must learn that God accepts nothing of the old life! Instead of being on the side of our prejudices, He is deliberately removing them from us. It is part of our moral education to see our prejudices put to death by His providence, and to watch how He does it. God pays no respect to anything we bring to Him. There is only one thing God wants of us, and that is our unconditional surrender.” —My Utmost for His Highest, Oct. 23

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

I join with Karen [in the earlier thread] in affirming that “there needs to be some POSITIVE way of using the blogs to build community” and that providing some personal commentary (if you have time) can help counteract the tendency for readers to react to stories with the same old predictable rancor. It is a bad witness. It is also spiritually unhealthy.

We as T19 commenters also need to be mindful of how we represent a narrow and oddly self-selected slice of Anglican Christianity. Most of us are American; most Anglicans are not. Most commenters are politically conservative; most Anglicans, including those in the Global South, hold views well to the left of Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Tony Blair. Most of us feel betrayed by ECUSA. So do many other orthodox Anglicans, but we differ from them in our willingness to spend time keeping informed about ECUSA’s latest misdeeds. A similar self-selection occurs among T19 readers: those of us who comment actively are more likely to be opinionated and even judgmental than those who read without commenting. We are who we are, and I’m part of it.

But we need to make a conscious effort to avoid bitterness, self-righteousness, and xenophobia. We need to take care that we do not confuse the gospel with our own preconceptions, predilections, and affinities. We also need to take care that we do not, in our zeal, drive away gentle commenters with whom we disagree.

I differ from Karen in hoping you won’t curtail T19’s coverage of Anglican developments.

My decision in June also reflected my conclusion that participating in these blog debates was taking a toll on my devotional life and my witness for orthodox Christianity. (For example, one of my brothers said he enjoyed talking with me about anything except current disagreements in the Episcopal Church.)

Forasmuch as the Reformed Episcopal Church has affirmed the teaching of God’s Word that abortion is the taking of an unborn human life, and inasmuch as we have recognized the duty of all faithful Christians to work to protect the unborn and restrain the sin of abortion on demand, we hereby move that the General Council of the Reformed Episcopal Church direct the clergy and laity of the Reformed Episcopal Church to make a political candidate’s position on the Sanctity of Human Life the highest priority in discerning for whom to vote regardless of political party represented or office being sought.

I was mortified when, last week or so, I posted a comment on Titus One Nine that had to be edited by the elves. That has never happened to me, and I pray it will never happen again, but in my haste to post something and in my anger and revulsion at a story I made a comparison that I should not have made.

Why does it appear that the vituperation index here and on other orthodox blogs is on the rise? I’ll posit that fear is a prolific generator of venom. And, certainly, there is much for us to fear right now. The economic news gets worse almost daily. Our nation may be poised to elect the most liberal president we have ever had. The Episcopal Church House of Bishops and the Presiding Bishop are actively opposing orthodox bishops and dioceses, and do not seem to be constrained by plain canon language.

How may this cycle of fear and anger be broken? The Scriptures teach us. Perfect love casts out fear. We are forbidden to judge. Worry is sinful, and betrays a lack of faith.

In practical terms, what does that mean for blog stewards and those of us who comment on blogs? I think it means we must encourage and build up one another. We must exhort one another to pray, and to pray particularly for those we perceive as enemies– I would argue strenuously that those we tend to think of as enemies are actually victims of our enemy. And we must pray for ourselves, for mercy and forgiveness for thinking of ourselves as less sinful than our opponents, and for the gifts of faith, hope, and charity. In short, the answer is to turn to God, the only source of true peace, true wisdom, and unconditional love.

Kendall, yours has been a voice of reason, love, and faith. You have an exemplary gentle spirit that provides the rest of us with a great witness. May our Lord richly bless you, and bring you peace.

EL PASO, TX ”“ (October 27, 2008) ”“ The vestry of St. Francis on the Hill Episcopal Church, following a vote this week by members of its congregation, has separated from the Episcopal Diocese of the Rio Grande and The Episcopal Church of the USA.

The action to officially separate from The Episcopal Church in the United States (TEC) comes in the wake of over four years of discussions and meetings between St. Francis’s church and The Episcopal Church, as well as with the TEC’s governing body for this Episcopal Church region, the Episcopal Diocese of the Rio Grande. A number of other former Episcopal USA Churches in the U.S. have left the TEC in the past year, including the former St. Clement Episcopal Church in El Paso.

Ron Munden, a St. Francis vestry member who has been involved in the talks since they began, said the separation was mandated by the congregation and ratified by the vestry, “To preserve what the people of St. Francis feel is not only our constitutional freedom but our legal right to worship as true Christians, following the basic tenets and canons on which the original Episcopal Church of the USA was founded, in a church property that we own.”

The Episcopal Church has been in turmoil for a number of years, with what many Episcopalians see as a deviation from the Bible and changes of policies and church laws to fit current cultural moods, rather than holding fast to strong scriptural beliefs. The TEC in the U.S. is part of the worldwide Anglican Communion, which remains at odds with the TEC for a number of those changes and other differences. The rift came to a head in 2003, when the Episcopal Church of the USA consecrated an openly gay bishop and sanctioned same-sex marriages.

“Unfortunately, today in our Church,” said Munden, “many Episcopalians believe that the Church’s leadership has wavered from the core values of Christ’s teachings, creating confusion and division among parishes, dioceses, and the Church hierarchy itself.” Munden added, “Many of the churches within the TEC hung on throughout 2008, thinking that the Church would change, or at least allow them to practice their faith in the traditional Anglican manner, which we believe is founded on scripture. It is apparent that is not going to happen, and The Episcopal Church in the USA has firmly stated they are doing what they think is right — they are not changing. As a result, some churches and even whole dioceses are leaving. For us at St. Francis, we feel we cannot worship and pray in an environment that deviates from traditional church teachings, so we have broken away.”

The Rev. Dr. Felix Orji, Rector of St. Francis on the Hill, explained that his church has been concerned for some time that the Episcopal Church has strayed from such core doctrines as, “The uniqueness of Christ as God and the only Savior of the World, the authority and primacy of Scripture, and the death of Jesus Christ as the only path to salvation.” Fr, Orji also said, “What we have seen over the past three years is a concerted, planned effort by the TEC to ”˜go someplace’ that is not in line with our thinking here. The Episcopal Church is in serious transition, and frankly, we believe that no matter how the TEC tries to explain it away, their beliefs today are vastly opposed to long-accepted teachings of the Bible.” Father Orji noted that the controversies surrounding the changes taking place in The Episcopal Church have caused a major decline in church membership. In 1965, the Episcopal Church in the U.S. had 3.5 million members. Today, that’s down to 2.4 million. “We even know of a number of dioceses that are leaving the TEC. What I have feared for some time is becoming a reality,” Fr. Orji said. “The Episcopal Church as we once knew it has changed so drastically to appeal to modern social and cultural trends that it is now unacceptable to many of its core membership.” He added, “If they are striving to become a popular church for today’s trends and culture, they may very well achieve that. But it will be a much smaller church. The Episcopal Church of the USA today has little resemblance remaining to the foundations of the original Episcopal Church in the Anglican Communion.”

St. Francis on the Hill church leaders say The Episcopal Church of the USA and the Rio Grande Diocese may try to claim a right on the St. Francis church and property. “We have the title and deed to our property,” said Munden. Since the Episcopal Church passed a Canon, or church law, in the 1970’s that said all Episcopal churches’ properties were to be held in trust by the Diocese for the U.S. Episcopal Church, St. Francis on the Hill has denied this claim in official notices to the TEC. “As early as 2004, we let it be known that our by-laws clearly outlined how and why we owned our own property,” said Munden. “We built this church with money from our parishioners ”“ not one dime came from the Episcopal Church or from the Diocese. This church and grounds belong to St. Francis on the Hill, and The Episcopal Church clearly knows of our unique situation here and our position on this matter.”

Fr. Orji said that his congregation has a great sense of relief now that the transition away from the Episcopal Church has taken place. “This has been a long ordeal,” said the minister. “After years of debate, communications to and from the Church and Diocese, and waiting, this controversy is finally over. The membership has elected to follow a path they believe in, and the fact that we have taken those positive steps is comforting to us all. I think collectively, as an independent Church, we are more peaceful.” Fr. Orji added that the fight may not be over for the Episcopal Church, but it is for his congregation. “We made our choice. We are a church that will now worship and carry on our ministries without encumbrance. The TEC may not view it that way, but we hope they do. It is time for all of us to get away from politics that don’t belong in our church and back to the real meaning of Christianity and Christ’s teachings.”

The British government has ruled that some aspects of Islamic sharia law can be accepted into the country’s legal framework, provided they comply with standard practices of jurisprudence.

Bridget Prentice, a justice minister in Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s government, told Parliament that family courts in England and Wales could “rubber stamp” sharia decisions if they decide the Islamic rulings are fair.

Read it all.

Read them both.

But Sue seems to understand what Maya Angelou once observed: that bitterness, like cancer, eats its host. “But anger is like fire,” Angelou notes. “It burns it all clean.” Recalling the day she got the news, Sue says, “I swore a lot.” Eight days after the tumor was found, she was back on the operating table for a double mastectomy. In a few weeks she’ll find out what comes next. But she’s already back in the fight. She hated missing the walk this year, so we e-mailed and texted and sent pictures to her all along the route. I’m counting on her to lead us next year.

None of us know how our days will be numbered. We think nothing can touch us–the car that swerves, the lightning strike, the cells that go insane and start setting fires. So we skip along, stopping to complain about lesser things: plans that fail and doors that stick and people who don’t know yield from merge.

I’ve heard people talk about cancer as a wake-up call, even a blessing in disguise. Sue was born wide awake. She’s like sunshine with skin. Her friends learn by watching her. Courage is said to be the virtue that makes other virtues possible; maybe joy is the gift that makes other gifts possible, the compliment that doubt pays to hope.

You may not know my Sue, but if you’re lucky, you have one of your own. Someone who lifts you up because she lives above the waterline of distractions and temptations that drown out things that matter more. I found when we went off on spring break last year that Sue is a skilled shell hunter; her grandfather taught her. You have to see through the debris the waves bring in, so much random waste, so carelessly tossed aside. She walks that beach with her eyes sharp, and she finds treasures, and gathers them, and brings them home.

Read it all.

But regardless of how people of faith feel about gay people, my wife and I believe that the vast majority of Californians – even many conservative people of faith – realize that this is a simple matter of fairness.

It’s not fair to take away marriages from loving couples. No church will be forced to perform marriages. Even though divorce is legal, Catholic priests are not forced to perform weddings for divorced people. Faith communities will continue to have the right to practice what they preach.

Our Episcopal Church has been in the news recently because of disagreement over gay people. But, despite our differences, California Episcopal bishops urged people to vote “no” on Proposition 8. Bishops from both northern and southern California spoke about such core values as love and mutual responsibility. They said it best, “society is strengthened when two people who love each other choose to enter into marriage, engaged in a lifetime of disciplined relationship building that serves as a witness to the importance of love and commitment.”

The bishops recognized that keeping marriage available to same-sex couples is more than beautiful backyard weddings; it means that loving couples have lifelong obligations to care for one another that are not easily dissolved.

Read it all.

I will take comments on this submitted by email only to at KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

Robinson brings unique experiences as an Irish priest and educator to her role at Calvary. Until her late 30s, she served as an educator in England and this experience informs her role as priest.

She brings to her role a love of teaching and learning as well as an understanding that those things are mutual. She wants to be actively involved in teaching and learning with both adults and children.

Calvary member Alison Martin, the mother of two school-aged children, speaks enthusiastically about how Robinson’s gift of education is obvious. “Watching her interact with children is amazing to me. The way she talks to them about God and Jesus makes me feel so wonderful,” she said.

Throughout her childhood and adult life, Robinson was active in the church. Born and raised in Northern Ireland, she calls herself a “cradle Episcopalian.” However, she did not decide to become a priest until her late 30s. It was about this time that the church allowed the ordination of women.

Read it all.

When she was 20, Jessi Thull’s father died of cancer, an event that took seven months from diagnosis to death, and that she describes now as “overwhelming.”

Thull was brought up as a church-going Christian, but her father’s death and the resulting pain made her question God’s existence. “I had no sense as to how there could be a good God who would just watch as a family falls apart,” she said.

Thull, now 26 and reconciled with God, was examining her skepticism recently as part of a program at The Journey, a popular evangelical church in south St. Louis that is taking dead aim at the resurging popularity of doubt and skepticism in American society.

Read it all.

Richard Engle has been doing some terrific pieces like this one on the “other” war–watch it all..

The rest of the Richard Engle’s reports are here.

California’s Calpers, the US’s biggest pension fund, last week reported a loss of 20 per cent of its assets, or more than $40bn, between July 1 and October 20 this year.

State and local pension funds comprise a patchwork of 2,700 funds that manage $1,400bn on behalf of 21m employees, including teachers, firefighters and other municipal workers.

About 40 per cent are underfunded, meaning that they would not be able to pay the future pensions that employees have been promised. State governments have lifted pension benefits ”“ a move that is politically popular ”“ but have often failed to put in more money to pay for them.

Richard Daley, mayor of Chicago, this year convened a taskforce to address the shortfalls in Illinois funds. For example, funding for the Police Fund has fallen to less than 50 per cent.

Read it all.

So who is this Catholic priest from Fresno who stood up and spoke out against Proposition 8, putting his career on the line? As a gay man who finds the church’s views on homosexuality so objectionable, why has he been a priest for more than 20 years and subjected himself to such moral conflict?

After reading my colleague Duke Helfand’s story about Father Geoffrey Farrow and his recent career-suicide from the pulpit, I was curious.

Farrow agreed to meet me for lunch in the middle of a schedule that’s gotten very busy since he became persona non grata to his employer. He’s been asked to appear all over the state for rallies against Prop. 8, which would amend the California Constitution to say marriage can only be between a man and a woman.

Read it all.

I will take comments on this submitted by email only to at KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

Over the years, I’ve gotten e-mails from a number of people asking me if planets, stars or constellations are mentioned in the Bible. Of course they are!

There are computer programs you can get that contain the whole text of the Bible and allow you to do global searches on words or phrases. When I just looked up “stars” I came across a number of instances. (And, in the process, I missed one of the most famous ones: the opening from Psalm 19, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.”)

But of course, that’s just gathering data. As a scientist, what I do instinctively is to look the data over and try to find trends. And over the next few days I want to share some of these insights here. It’s not just that stars are mentioned in passing in the Bible; what is fascinating to me is how they are used…

Read it all.

A three-judge panel of the 4th District Court of Appeal reversed the decision of a lower court, which determined two years ago that the diocese failed to prove its case.

The civil lawsuit claimed that the leaders of what became St. John’s Anglican Church are not the legitimate officers because they are no longer Episcopalians. According to the lawsuit, new officers elected by members who did not break away from the congregation should have authority over the property.

Vista Superior Court Judge Jacqueline Stern disagreed in her November 2006 ruling.

Read it all.

Where relationship banking still survives, there have been relatively few problems of bad debts. The problems have arisen in transactional and unsecured credit card banking with one-off or completely unknown customers. Of course the customers have often behaved badly; if a bank does not know its customers, who are only blips on a computer screen, some of them will behave badly. The bank only has itself to blame.

The Sunday Times yesterday had a blazing example of the evils that can result. Banks issuing credit cards have found a legal way of turning unsecured debt into debt secured on house property. That means that credit card debt, which banks have been ladling out to all comers, can lead to the repossession of the family home. Which bank is notorious for the harsh use of this loophole of which credit card customers were given no prior warning? Apparently it is Northern Rock, which was “rescued” by being nationalised. So the grotesque situation has arisen in which the Government is repossessing the houses of credit card customers – to their considerable dismay – as part of the rescue of an incompetently run bank.

The decline of moral responsibility has damaged British banks; it is the real flaw behind the credit crisis. There will be new regulation of the world’s banking system after the crisis. Governments cannot risk another catastrophe on this scale. The banks need to change their behaviour. They need to re-establish relations with their clients and value experience in their staff.

Read it all.

The order plans on closing its Augusta house also and is in the process of “refounding itself for new ministry opportunities in a new location, but with the same mission of prayer and service to God’s world.”

“We feel that the Holy Spirit is moving us to relocate to a new area and to re-found our community and mission,” said Sister Cintra Pemberton OSH. The closings bring “us much pain,” she said, “but we recognize that we can no longer afford to operate and staff three convents.”

Read it all.

Don’t get me wrong. The U.S. is a great nation. She has pushed the bounds of science and technology and brought prosperity to the masses, creating the world’s largest middle class. She has defeated some of the world’s vilest villains and brought freedom and the rule of law to the farthest reaches of the planet. But she is not perfect. She has toppled democratically elected governments in favor of friendly dictators and firebombed civilians. She has consumed resources at a dangerous pace and ravaged the environment in the process. She has allowed her cities to fester and her family farms to wither and die. And, she has gone from a progressive tax structure, that was built upon the biblical premise that to whom much is given much is required, to one that provides massive tax relief to the people who need it least the rich.

The faith community has our work cut out for us if America is to become the “city upon a hill” envisioned by some of our greatest leaders. And if self-awareness is the beginning of wisdom, perhaps we should start by reading the Bible with different eyes. Let’s lose the hubris. Maybe we’re not ancient Israel. Maybe we’re Rome.

Read it all.

At a time when more than 37 million Americans are in poverty, including many who are newly poor and paying keen attention, spiritual leaders are encouraging the young to vote and urging voters to select candidates who will fight poverty.

“I feel more momentum, energy and focus on poverty than I have in churches in three decades or more,” said Jim Wallis, chief executive officer of Sojourners social justice ministries in Washington.

“Partly, it’s a new generation. Baby boomers are becoming church leaders and speaking to a new generation that wants their lives to make a difference. It’s a new altar call, if you will,” he said.

Read it all.

Luke is making the same point in Acts, and in his account the apostles’ sermons are summaries of this. It is not that Jesus was an ordinary human being, who received a celestial promotion after the resurrection; rather, from the beginning Jesus was the Lord (kyrios), the Son of God–and Luke lets his reader know this from the beginning of his gospel. However, Jesus’ Lordship and Deity were hidden in humility until the resurrection–he is the Lord who waits at tables. It is only after his resurrection, that Jesus is exalted to the right hand and his identity as “Lord of all” (panton kyrios) is finally recognized and proclaimed by his followers.

Read it all.

As the financial crisis crimps demand for American goods and services, the workers who produce them are losing their jobs by the tens of thousands.

Layoffs have arrived in force, like a wrenching second act in the unfolding crisis. In just the last two weeks, the list of companies announcing their intention to cut workers has read like a Who’s Who of corporate America: Merck, Yahoo, General Electric, Xerox, Pratt & Whitney, Goldman Sachs, Whirlpool, Bank of America, Alcoa, Coca-Cola, the Detroit automakers and nearly all the airlines.

When October’s job losses are announced on Nov. 7, three days after the presidential election, many economists expect the number to exceed 200,000. The current unemployment rate of 6.1 percent is likely to rise, perhaps significantly.

Read it all.

Read it all.

The Episcopal Diocese of Rochester has the rights to the property of the All Saints Church in Irondequoit even though the parish voted to break away from the denomination, the state’s highest court ruled today.

In 1989, All Saints Church signed a document that placed all of its property in trust for the diocese and the national church. The church has since separated from the national church because it disagreed with the ordination of a gay bishop.

But the separation didn’t affect the diocese’s right to the property, the Court of Appeals said in a unanimous ruling, upholding decisions made by two lower courts.

Read it all.

Two rival monks are posted at all times in a rooftop courtyard at the site of Jesus’ crucifixion: a bearded Copt in a black robe and an Ethiopian sunning himself on a wooden chair, studiously ignoring each other as they fight over the same sliver of sacred space.

For decades, Coptic and Ethiopian Christians have been fighting over the Deir el-Sultan monastery, which sits atop a chapel at the ancient Church of the Holy Sepulcher. The monastery is little more than a cluster of dilapidated rooms and a passageway divided into two incense-filled chapels, an architectural afterthought alongside the Holy Sepulcher’s better-known features.

And yet Deir el-Sultan has become the subject of a feud that has gone far beyond the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City. The Ethiopians control the site, but the Egypt-based Copts say they own it and see the Ethiopians as illegal squatters.

Read it all.

From the diocesan website:

It is with a profound sense of sadness that the Episcopal Diocese of the Rio Grande acknowledges the vote of the Vestry of St. Francis-on-the-Hill in El Paso, Texas, to leave the Episcopal Church. This vote took place on Tuesday evening, October 21, 2008, and a majority of the Vestry present voted to make this move.

This decision comes after meetings between the congregation, the President of the Standing Committee and the Assisting Bishop of the Diocese of the Rio Grande, the Rt. Rev. William Frey. At those meetings, Bishop Frey and Canon Kelly made it clear to the congregation that, if they made the decision to leave the Episcopal Church, they could not take their property with them. That counsel follows the consideration of the Standing Committee and Deans of the Diocese that, after the departure of St. Clement’s Church from the Diocese in 2007, other departing congregations would not be able to avail themselves of the same parameters surrounding the severing of a relationship with the Diocese of the Rio Grande.

The Standing Committee understands that St. Francis has filed a suit for declaratory judgment with the District Court in El Paso County, Texas. We have begun to respond to the Court, reminding them that, according to our common agreements, parishes hold their property in trust for the larger Church community.

The Diocese of the Rio Grande is in the midst of an exciting and hopeful period in its life, having entered into a process to call and elect its next Bishop. With the able assistance of a New Life Team, the Diocese has entered into a purposeful time of listening and reflection, with the prayerful hope that this process will lead to healing and reconciliation in the Diocese as we look forward to our next Bishop. It is particularly disappointing that the people of St. Francis-on-the-Hill have chosen this moment to depart from the fellowship of the Diocese of the Rio Grande, as it is a time full of anticipation and hope for the future.

The people of the Diocese gather at their annual Convocation beginning on Friday, October 24, and the presence of the delegation from St. Francis will be sorely missed. Any time a part of the Body of Christ severs itself from the Body, the injury that results requires time, prayer and God’s healing power to restore. We move forward, confident that divine healing will continue to be with us, and that God will lead the Diocese of the Rio Grande into continued leadership in mission and ministry. Our prayers continue to be with the clergy and people of St. Francis.