An excerpt:

Gospel ministry is not just proclamation, evangelism, and pastoral care; it involves contending for the faith once for all delivered to the saints. If, at the end of the day, we have maintained Christian orthodoxy but failed to proclaim the gospel, we cannot claim to have pleased Christ nor fulfilled the New Testament ministry. In just the same way, if, at the end of the day we have proclaimed the gospel but failed to maintain Christian orthodoxy, we will have failed Christ.

Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians is a brilliant example of contending for the faith. If the church is the temple of the living God and if that temple is holy, then tolerance of what God calls unholy will provoke his jealousy. There is an astonishing campaign at present in Canada and the USA to portray the blessing of same sex unions as a little in-house issue for the church, that those opposing this constitutionalization of sexual immorality are somehow missing the point and being side-tracked from gospel ministry. I received a letter this week from someone in the diocese of New Westminster who referred to the stance of biblically orthodox Anglicans as a “tedious and unnecessary conflict.” If that is the case then 1 Corinthians is a tedious and unnecessary book and the holiness of the people for whom Christ died is also tedious and unnecessary. We cannot just be pragmatic about this. We cannot believe those who say: “Peace, peace, when there is no peace.” Christian ministry which pleases Christ and is faithful to the New Testament will involve both gospel proclamation as well as contending for the faith once for all delivered to the saints.

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Because an appetite for God is easily manipulated into a consumer activity, we need these wise, sane friends as guides and companions. There are entrepreneurs among us who see the widespread hunger for spirituality as a marketplace and are out there selling junk food. The gullibility of the unwary who bought relics from itinerant monks in the Middle Ages – splinters of wood from the true cross, finger bones from the saints, a few pieces of thread from Jesus’ seamless robe – is more than matched by North Americans in matters of spirituality.

We are trained from the cradle to be good consumers. It is understandable that we seek to satisfy our hunger for God along the lines in which we have been brought up. But it is not excusable, for we have clear counsel in the Gospels to steer away form this consumer world: “Blessed are the poor. ”¦ Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me. ”¦ Love not the world nor the things that are in the world.” And our Lord’s counsel is confirmed and expanded in numerous ways by our wise evangelical ancestors in the faith.

Spirituality is not the latest fad but the oldest truth. Spirituality, the alert attention we give to a living God and the faithful response we make to him in community, is at the heart of our Scriptures and is on display throughout the centuries of Israel and the church. We have been at this a long time. We have nearly four millennia of experience to draw upon. When someone hands you a new book, reach for an old one. Isaiah has far more to teach us about spirituality than Carl Jung.

—Eugene Peterson, Subversive Spirituality

Go here for those who wish to follow the election.

Update: The Rev. Doyle Turner and the Rev. Bonnie Perry withdrew after ballot 3

“We used to go to church expecting very little and came away with nothing. This has now changed to expecting nothing and coming away with even less ”¦. [W]hat we want are services taken with a conviction and a passion for Christ.”

”“An unidentified middle-aged couple speaking of church life in Britain

I do not mean to suggest that anti-Catholicism is confined to the pages New York Times. Unfortunately, abundant examples can be found in many different venues. I will not even begin to try and list the many cases of anti-Catholicism in the so-called entertainment media, as they are so prevalent they sometimes seem almost routine and obligatory. Elsewhere, last week, Representative Patrick Kennedy made some incredibly inaccurate and uncalled-for remarks concerning the Catholic bishops.

Also, the New York State Legislature has levied a special payroll tax to help the Metropolitan Transportation Authority fund its deficit. This legislation calls for the public schools to be reimbursed the cost of the tax; Catholic schools, and other private schools, will not receive the reimbursement, costing each of the schools thousands — in some cases tens of thousands — of dollars, money that the parents and schools can hardly afford. (Nor can the archdiocese, which already underwrites the schools by $30 million annually.) Is it not an issue of basic fairness for ALL school-children and their parents to be treated equally?

The Catholic Church is not above criticism. We Catholics do a fair amount of it ourselves. We welcome and expect it. All we ask is that such critique be fair, rational, and accurate, what we would expect for anybody. The suspicion and bias against the Church is a national pastime that should be “rained out” for good.

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The main issue is the fact that the Anglican Church has no consistent doctrinal authority and often acts independently from the historical positions of the universal church. In light of this, the ordination of women and practicing homosexuals is merely symptomatic of much more fundamental problems with Anglican ecclesiology.

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Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor said the move was discussed in the 1990s but would have been seen as “wanting to put out the net as far as one could”, at a time when only Anglo-Catholics within the Church of England wanted full communion with the Holy See.

He said the situation is different now as Anglicans worldwide have asked the Vatican for help, and added that he welcomed Pope Benedict XVI’s “generous” offer – although he still hopes for complete unity between the two Christian denominations.

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Day No. 2 of the diocese’s annual convention includes a vote on five candidates, two of whom would represent a first: the first openly partnered lesbian to be elected a bishop, or the first Native American. Both insist that making history is not their primary motivation.

“I’m not a cause, I’m a candidate,” said the Rev. Bonnie Perry. The Rev. Doyle Turner struck a similar tone, noting that while he’s proud of his Ojibwe heritage, “I’m not the pastor of a Native American church, and it’s my church that has encouraged me [to run].”

The winner will succeed Bishop James Jelinek in overseeing 106 congregations representing 22,000 members. Jelinek is retiring in February.

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The Vatican today issued a statement about its plans to create a personal Ordinariate for ex-Anglicans which discusses the possibility of ordaining married laymen on a case-by-case basis.

Cardinal William Levada, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, was seeking to quash speculation that the publication of the Apostolic Constitution had been held up by squabbles over the ordination of married men. Not true, he insists.

His statement makes clear that celibacy will be the norm for priests in the Ordinariate ”“ but does not rule out the possibility of married seminarians becoming priests, so long as the local Ordinary, the bishops’ conference and the Holy See agree that an exception should be made. My reading of this document is that it does not completely close the door on the possibility of future married seminarians being ordained.

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Christ Church in Savannah has always been locally owned. The church has never received financial support from the national organization. Savannahians paid for the construction of the church and the payment of its clergy.

A vote of the church membership – in the wake of serious doctrinal issues reaching even the unequivocal divinity of Christ – resulted in the separation of the local congregation from the national group.

The Episcopal Church, with the help of Superior Court Judge Michael Karpf, has seized property it neither paid for nor maintained in more than 275 years.

In any other circumstance, such an abrogation of the local congregation’s property rights would not be tolerated. That the seizure was carried out by religious leaders who have strayed from ironclad biblical teaching makes the heavy-handed action by both church and state that much harder to countenance.

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We are in the ninth year of our Strategic Plan. We started out with a flurry of activity and accomplished much. After five years we got sidetracked by sexuality issues and the departures of several churches. In the face of the conflict in the larger church we have been faithfully living into various parts of the Strategic Plan.

Ӣ We have continued to plant churches. We have planted five churches and several new communities of faith, targeting Latinos, young adults, Koreans, and African Immigrants. Approximately ten percent of our average Sunday attendance is traceable to these new communities of faith.

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According to the release, the members welcomed the Roman Catholic Church’s acknowledgement of a substantial overlap in faith and the legitimacy of many Anglican traditions, a recognition that is the fruit of over 40 years of official dialogue between the two churches. And members were encouraged by statements made by Roman Catholic and Anglican leaders that the official dialogue between the two churches will continue, according to the release.

“Most everyone seemed clear that there were negative as well as some positive aspects to the Vatican’s initiative,” said Bishop Christopher Epting, the Episcopal Church’s ecumenical and interfaith officer. “We thought it was important to wait until we’ve seen the actual text of the constitution before saying much more, but wanted to affirm both churches’ decisions to continue formal dialogue — through ARC-USA — with the only recognized province of the Anglican Communion in the United States (the Episcopal Church) and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. That’s the official ecumenical dialogue, and that’s what’s important.”

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Here is one from the Rev. Thomas Myers :

If the professor of ecclesiastical history at General Theological Seminary feels that the pope’s announcement is more for Britain, it is because the Episcopal Church is being run and overrun by anything but Episcopalians. His query as to whether or not the constitution would newly recognize Anglican orders is as shallow as the new wave theology in the Episcopal Church, and suggests it would include the apostasy that is driving the church apart. Shame on you, professor. The pope has extended his offer to those who desire to retain orthodox worship, theology and practice, and who understand that the unity of Christ’s body is ultimately more important

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In both guises, as an individual practitioner and a credentialed expert, Mr. [Michael] York embodies the increasing mainstream acceptance of Pagan religion. From academia to the military, in the person of chaplains and professors, through successful litigation and online networking, Paganism has done much in the last generation to overcome its perception as either Satanism or silliness.

“Academically, it’s much more open and accepted and respected,” said Mr. York, 70, who retired five years ago from the faculty of Bath Spa University in England. “And on a more personal level, we don’t proselytize or anything like that, but most of my friends know that I’m Pagan and most of them are not, and we can discuss it. They understand that there is a Pagan spirituality, and the misconceptions about it have diminished.”

Because the federal census does not ask about religious affiliation, and because ridicule or discrimination tended to keep Pagans closeted in the past, statistics on the number of adherents in the United States are imprecise and probably too low. Still, the recent growth is evident in surveys done in 1990 and 2001 by the City University of New York.

Over the course of those 11 years, the survey went from tabulating 8,000 Wiccans nationally ”” that branch of Paganism was the only one to turn up ”” to 134,000 Wiccans, 33,000 Druids and 140,000 Pagans.

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So many interesting blogs, so little time. Sigh. Check it out.

JAMES CARROLL’S most recent diatribe against the Catholic Church (“From Vatican, a tainted olive branch,’’ Op-ed, Oct. 26) continues to reveal his misunderstanding of the affairs of the church, and in this case, the announcement last week by the Vatican that former Anglicans who are dissatisfied with the direction their former church has taken may now become members of the Catholic Church while retaining their collective identity within specially designed dioceses.

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Those divisive issues caused the San Joaquin Diocese to become the first diocese in the nation to leave the Episcopal Church in December 2007. The theologically conservative Fresno-based Anglican San Joaquin Diocese represents about 40 parishes from Lodi to Bakersfield, including St. Francis in Turlock, St. Matthias in Oakdale, the historic “Red Church” (St. James) in Sonora and St. Luke’s in Merced.

The theologically liberal Episcopal San Joaquin Diocese, with its headquarters in Modesto, has added about 10 new churches to the original seven that chose to remain Episcopal in 2007. Those original parishes include Christ the King Community Episcopal Church in Riverbank and St. Anne in Stockton.

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The Vatican says Pope Benedict XVI will meet with the Archbishop of Canterbury next month in the leaders’ first encounter since the Catholic church moved to make it easier for disenchanted Anglicans to convert to Catholicism.

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The Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) welcomes the affirmation from the Anglican Diocese of Sydney(Australia) that it is in full communion with the ACNA.

On October 28, the Diocese of Sydney’s Synod passed a resolution which stated: “Synod welcomes the creation of the Province of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) under the leadership of Archbishop Bob Duncan and notes the GAFCON Primates’ Council recognition of the ACNA as genuinely Anglican and its recommendation that Anglican Provinces affirm full communion with the ACNA. Synod therefore expresses its desire to be in full communion with the ACNA.” The resolution also directed the diocese’s standing committee to ask its national body, the Anglican Church of Australia, to declare that it is in full communion with the ACNA as well.

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This much is known: In the mid-eighth century, the ruling elite of the Khazars, a Turkic tribe in Eurasia, converted to Judaism. Their impetus was political, not spiritual. By embracing Judaism, the Khazars were able to maintain their independence from rival monotheistic states, the Muslim caliphate and the Christian Byzantine empire. Governed by a version of rabbinical law, the Khazar Jewish kingdom flourished along the Volga basin until the beginning of the second millennium, at which point it dissolved, leaving behind a mystery: Did the Khazar converts to Judaism remain Jews, and, if so, what became of them?

Enter Shlomo Sand. In a new book, “The Invention of the Jewish People,” the Tel Aviv University professor of history argues that large numbers of Khazar Jews migrated westward into Ukraine, Poland and Lithuania, where they played a decisive role in the establishment of Eastern European Jewry. The implications are far-reaching: If the bulk of Eastern European Jews are the descendents of Khazars””not the ancient Israelites””then most Jews have no ancestral links to Palestine. Put differently: If most Jews are not Semites, then what justification is there for a Jewish state in the Middle East? By attempting to demonstrate the Khazar origins of Eastern European Jewry, Mr. Sand””a self-described post-Zionist who believes that Israel needs to shed its Jewish identity to become a democracy””aims to undermine the idea of a Jewish state.

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Check it out–the Convention album pictures are great. You can set them to view as a slide show.

In the wake of Vatican plans to make it easier for Episcopalians to become Catholic, the Episcopal bishop of Maryland would like to make one point clear: The door swings both ways.

Lost in talk of the splintering of the Anglican Communion, Bishop Eugene Taylor Sutton says, is the appeal that the 45,000-member Episcopal Diocese of Maryland has held for former Roman Catholics and others looking for a big-tent church.

While attention focused on the conversion en masse last month of a Catonsville-based order of Episcopal nuns to the Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore, the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland has received three former Roman Catholic clergy in the past couple of months, Sutton says.

“We just want to remind people that this switching from Anglicans becoming Roman Catholics goes both ways,” Sutton said. “Many, many laypeople in our churches came from the Roman Catholic Church. We get many clergy.”

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A group of churches that split from the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh will appeal an Allegheny County judge’s ruling that allowed the diocese to retain control of more than $15 million in assets, officials said Thursday.

The Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh, composed of 51 local congregations in 11 Southwest Pennsylvania counties and led by Bishop Robert Duncan, said it will file an appeal once the court issues a final order directing the transfer of diocesan property.

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Leaders of Christ Church of Savannah are asking the Georgia Supreme Court to reverse a decision earlier this week granting ownership of the historic building and property to the Episcopal Diocese of Georgia.

Christ Church member and attorney Neil Creasy said church officials filed a notice of appeal Thursday in Chatham County seeking to reverse Superior Court Judge Michael Karpf’s ruling Tuesday granting the diocese “immediate possession” of the church property.

Creasy said the process should allow the congregation to remain on the property in Savannah’s historic district until the state Supreme Court responds.

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The church’s membership, counted as active baptized members, also declined by three per cent, falling by 59,457 to 2,057,292. The rate of decline in attendance and membership also rose last year, with the 10-year rate of decline in attendance rising from 13 to 16 per cent, and the 10-year rate of decline in active membership rising from 10 to 11 per cent.

Fifty per cent of US Episcopal churches saw a decline in attendance last year, while only 35 per cent registered growth. The median average Sunday worship attendance in 2008 was 69.

For the first time the church’s income fell, with recorded “pledge and plate” income falling by 0.2 per cent.

Critics assert the numbers may be overstated as some dioceses have not recorded the secession of breakaway congregations. While the Diocese of San Joaquin recorded a membership drop of almost 8,000, or 77 per cent ”” reflecting the secession of a majority of its congregations, the Diocese of Los Angeles continues to carry St James Newport Beach’s 1,500 members on its books ”” even though the congregation’s fight to quit has already taken the fight to the US Supreme Court.

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The Archbishop of Westminster’s comments come as research exploring the quailty of care provision among the Catholic community found that care home places will have to rise 150 per cent to cope with the ageing population over the next decade.

Latest demographic projections indicated there will be more than 11 million people over 65 within 10 years, with the number of people aged 85 and over projected to reach 3.2 million by 2033.

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What kind of personal pain would cause a 42-year-old pastor to abandon his family, his calling and even life itself? Members of a Baptist church here are asking that question after their pastor committed suicide in his parked car in September.

Those who counsel pastors say Christian culture, especially Southern evangelicalism, creates the perfect environment for depression. Pastors suffer in silence, unwilling or unable to seek help or even talk about it. Sometimes they leave the ministry. Occasionally the result is the unthinkable.

Experts say clergy suicide is a rare outcome to a common problem.

Makes the heart sad. Read it all.

In a tacit acknowledgment that the promise of human embryonic stem cells is still far in the future, California’s stem cell research program on Wednesday awarded grants intended to develop therapies using mainly other, less controversial cells.

The $230 million in grants awarded Wednesday to California universities and companies represent a big step toward moving stem cells from basic research toward application in treating diseases like cancer and AIDS. Grant recipients are supposed to have a therapy ready for initial human testing in four years.

But only 4 of the 14 projects involve embryonic stem cells. The others will use so-called adult stem cells or conventional drugs intended to kill cancer stem cells, which are thought to give rise to tumors.

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A former Marine captain who became the first foreign service official to publicly resign in protest over the war in Afghanistan says staying in the country is not in America’s interest.

“The losses of our soldiers do not merit anything that comes in line with our strategic interests or values,” Matthew Hoh, who signed on as a foreign service official in Afghanistan after fighting in Iraq, tells NPR’s Melissa Block.

Hoh resigned last month after spending five working months in Afghanistan. In his resignation letter, he said he had “lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purpose of the United States’ presence in Afghanistan.”

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The audio here is very entertaining–listen to it all.