For too long, we evangelical Christians have maintained an uneasy ecological conscience. I include myself in this indictment.

We’ve had an inadequate view of human sin….

We’ve had an inadequate view of human life and culture.

What is being threatened in the Gulf states isn’t just seafood or tourism or beach views. What’s being threatened is a culture. As social conservatives, we understand”¦or we ought to understand”¦that human communities are formed by traditions and by mores, by the bond between the generations. Culture is, as Russell Kirk said, a compact reaching back to the dead and forward to the unborn. Liberalism wants to dissolve those traditions, and make every generation create itself anew; not conservatism.

Every human culture is formed in a tie with the natural environment. In my hometown, that’s the father passing down his shrimping boat to his son or the community gathering for the Blessing of the Fleet at the harbor every year. In a Midwestern town, it might be the apple festival. In a New England town, it might be the traditions of whalers or oystermen. The West is defined by the frontier and the mountains. And so on.

When the natural environment is used up, unsustainable for future generations, cultures die. When Gulfs are dead, when mountaintops are removed, when forests are razed with nothing left in their place, when deer populations disappear, cultures die too.

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President Obama urged reluctant lawmakers Saturday to quickly approve nearly $50 billion in emergency aid to state and local governments, saying the money is needed to avoid “massive layoffs of teachers, police and firefighters” and to support the still-fragile economic recovery.

In a letter to congressional leaders, Obama defended last year’s huge economic stimulus package, saying it helped break the economy’s free fall, but argued that more spending is urgent and unavoidable. “We must take these emergency measures,” he wrote in an appeal aimed primarily at members of his own party.

The letter comes as rising concern about the national debt is undermining congressional support for additional spending to bolster the economy. Many economists say more spending could help bring down persistently high unemployment, but with Republicans making an issue of the record deficits run up during the recession, many Democratic lawmakers are eager to turn off the stimulus tap.

“I think there is spending fatigue,” House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) said recently. “It’s tough in both houses to get votes.”

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KIM LAWTON, host: Repercussions from the Gulf Coast oil spill dominated the news again this week. President Obama pushed BP to do a better job of resolving the crisis and taking responsibility for the damages. Meanwhile, religious groups have been holding a series of prayer vigils across the country. Participants are praying for an end to the environmental disaster. They are also offering prayers for those who have been most severely affected. The crisis has taken a devastating toll on people involved directly and indirectly in the fishing industry. Several faith-based groups have been mobilizing to provide assistance. Joining me now is Margaret Dubuisson of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New Orleans. Margaret, thanks for being here. Tell us a little about the needs you’re serving right now.

MARGARET DUBUISSON (Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New Orleans): Well, Kim, we have five centers set up in the fishing villages in the archdiocese of New Orleans. We’ve seen about 8,000 people so far, fishermen and their families who’ve come in just looking for help, looking for support, looking for financial assistance in some way. The BP claims process is a little cumbersome, and it is going to take some time. So Catholic Charities has been able to provide direct assistance and food much more quickly and put that in the hands of the fishermen through these five emergency relief centers.

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Baby boomers have long been considered the generation that did not want to grow up, perpetual adolescents even as they become eligible for Social Security. Now, a growing body of research shows that the real Peter Pans are not the boomers, but the generations that have followed. For many, by choice or circumstance, independence no longer begins at 21.

From the Obama administration’s new rule that allows children up to age 26 to remain on their parents’ health insurance to the large increase in the number of women older than 35 who have become first-time mothers, social scientists say young adulthood has undergone a profound shift.

People between 20 and 34 are taking longer to finish their educations, establish themselves in careers, marry, have children and become financially independent, said Frank F. Furstenberg, who leads the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Transitions to Adulthood, a team of scholars who have been studying this transformation.

“A new period of life is emerging in which young people are no longer adolescents but not yet adults,” Mr. Furstenberg said.

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Standing before more than 10,000 Roman Catholic priests, Pope Benedict XVI on Thursday strongly reaffirmed the Vatican’s commitment to priestly vows of celibacy, cutting off speculation that he might reconsider the issue in light of the church’s sexual abuse scandal.

At an outdoor vigil in St. Peter’s Square that veered between moments of deep reverence and outbursts of enthusiasm more characteristic of a soccer game, the pope told the gathering of priests, believed to be the largest in history, that celibacy “is made possible by the grace of God ”¦ who asks us to transcend ourselves.” Celibacy would be a “scandal,” he said, only in “a world in which God is not there.”

Some critics have suggested that the vow of celibacy may at least be partly responsible for the sex abuse scandal that has rocked the Catholic Church, either because it is so difficult to uphold, or because it may discourage men with normal sex drives from becoming priests. In recent months, as the abuse scandal has widened in Europe, an Austrian bishop urged the Vatican to drop celibacy, which he said should be voluntary.

Benedict’s remarks came in response to a question posed by a Slovakian priest, and he made it clear that he supported continuing the practice of celibacy under his pontificate. He compared it to heterosexual marriage, which he called “the foundation of the Christian culture.”

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In the 1960s, there were about 41,000 priests in France. Today, there are around 15,000. About 800 priests die each year, and only 100 are ordained.

Frederic Fonfroide de Lafon is the head of the firm that the church has hired to run its public relations campaign. He says to attract new priests the church must first improve the image of the priest in France.

“Priests suffer from a low social status, so we’re trying to change that by showing what being a priest really means. A priest has extensive training in philosophy and the humanities. He is not someone who lives apart from society in his own world, but someone who participates,” Fonfroide de Lafon says.

“A priest accompanies people in the most important moments of their lives,” he adds.

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(Via email):

The Diocese of Quincy, a member of the Anglican Church in North America, has elected The Rt. Rev. Alberto Morales to be the 9th bishop of the diocese. Abbot Morales was elected on the 2nd ballot at a special session diocesan Synod which met Saturday at Grace Anglican Church in Galesburg, Illinois.

Bishop-elect Morales is the Abbot and spiritual leader of St. Benedicts Abbey, an ecumenical abbey in Bartonville, Illinois near Peoria. He was one of three candidates nominated for bishop by a special committee formed in 2009 to guide the selection process.

Abbot Morales founded St. Benedict’s Abbey in 1985 in Puerto Rico and moved the community to Illinois in 1996 after suffering religious persecution in Puerto Rico. Upon arrival in Illinois, the Abbot opened not only a monastery, but also a church for the people of the local community. Additionally, he started the local ministerial association along with other pastors of the Bartonville area and established St. Benedict’s Charities. He has been involved in helping the Church worldwide through his work in missions, spiritual direction, and conducting conferences and clergy retreats.

The other two nominees considered by the Synod were the Very Rev. Canon Edward den Blaauwen, Dean and Rector of Christ Church Cathedral (pro-tem) in Moline, Illinois, and Canon Liturgist of the diocese; and the Rev. Canon Michael Brooks, Rector at St. Peter’s Church in Canton, Illinois, and the administrator and Canon Missioner of the diocese.

“We have embarrassment fatigue here….If there is an embarrassment equivalent of post-traumatic stress disorder, South Carolina has it.”

–Dick Harpootlian, the former Democratic chairman of the state in the New York Times

After 44 years of hurt, England fans should by now be familiar with the feeling of crushing disappointment with which they awoke this morning.

Following months of hype and anticipation, fans’ hopes were dashed yet again last night after goalkeeper Robert Green wrecked his team’s bid for a winning start.

Green – whose schoolboy error handed U.S.A. an equaliser in the 1-1 draw – was today facing the national backlash endured by so many of his England’s predecessors.

The goalkeeper’s humiliating clanger drew groans of disbelief from millions watching the game on screens across the country.

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Whenever the issue of declining church attendance is raised, somebody always claims that more people attend services in this country than football matches (partly because tickets to holy communion don’t cost £60 a time, plus programme, plus a fiver to the curate for “guarding your car”). But if the Church of England is serious about making itself more attractive, it could do worse than seek inspiration in the World Cup. The answer is simple: sign up Desmond Tutu.

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Ten years after President Bill Clinton announced that the first draft of the human genome was complete, medicine has yet to see any large part of the promised benefits.

For biologists, the genome has yielded one insightful surprise after another. But the primary goal of the $3 billion Human Genome Project ”” to ferret out the genetic roots of common diseases like cancer and Alzheimer’s and then generate treatments ”” remains largely elusive. Indeed, after 10 years of effort, geneticists are almost back to square one in knowing where to look for the roots of common disease.

One sign of the genome’s limited use for medicine so far was a recent test of genetic predictions for heart disease. A medical team led by Nina P. Paynter of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston collected 101 genetic variants that had been statistically linked to heart disease in various genome-scanning studies. But the variants turned out to have no value in forecasting disease among 19,000 women who had been followed for 12 years.

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Poor Robert Green.

Some lovely pictures here.

Mr. Malik and Mrs. Jariullah went straight to their cellphones, calling every relative in Lahore; not one answered. From the television, they heard gunfire crackling, grenades exploding, sirens, screams. The screen showed bodies streaked with blood.

At some point, Mrs. Jariullah realized she was quaking, and yet unable to take her eyes off the screen. Eight hours later, the couple’s worst fears were confirmed. An uncle, a nephew and a cousin were dead, another cousin wounded.

And when they drove from their home in Plainfield, Ill., to their mosque in Glen Ellyn, Bait-ul-Jamaay, they discovered their anguish had company. Of the 120 families who belong to the mosque, a dozen or more had lost relatives in the Lahore attacks. All told, 94 people were killed in the assaults by the Punjabi Taliban on Dar-ul-Zakir and another mosque, Bait-ul-Noor, during Friday Prayer.

The thread of grief connecting Lahore to Glen Ellyn was not some ghastly anomaly. At both ends, the afflicted Muslims were members of the Ahmadi (or Ahmadiyya) sect, which claims 10 million worshipers worldwide. Moderate and peaceful in their precepts, the Ahmadis are reviled by fundamentalist Muslims, especially in Pakistan, for their belief that their 19th-century founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, was the messiah predicted by the Prophet Muhammad.

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(The original article to which they are responding is here).

Here is one:

Without commenting on the separation of Al and Tipper Gore, I think there are at least four reasons to be appalled at the attitude and assumptions reflected by Deirdre Bair in her article.

First, there is no consideration of the religious or at least personal commitment undertaken by couples. The unilateral abrogation of that commitment may result in few regrets by those who do so, according to Ms. Bair, but presumably that is not the view of their abandoned partners.

Second, there is no mention of the effect on the children, albeit adult. One wonders if the children are in fact happy to see their parents pursuing their “third age.”

And oddly for a woman, Ms. Bair breezily assumes that women involved in such situations will do just fine financially. The general understanding is that women most usually suffer financially from divorce.

Finally, there is the clear implication that those who remain married for life are benighted, craven losers without the guts to pursue their zen, rather than those whose love and devotion deserve our respect.

John W. Curtis
Greenwich, Conn.

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A typical house is tough enough to sell in a recession-hampered housing market. But when a house is a house of worship, the job often becomes one that smacks of the Biblical trials of Job. The challenges just seem to multiply.

Take the case of Trinity Episcopal Church, an imposing, steepled stone structure boasting elaborate stained glass windows that was a longtime center of worship in Bristol. It fell victim to the split in the church and was put up for sale for $850,000.

“It needs some work,” says Jack Spaeth, the canon for stewardship and administration for the Episcopal diocese of Connecticut. “But the right buyer is out there, whether that is a faith community or a transformed use.”

Spaeth knows of which he speaks; a former real estate agent who manages property and finances for the diocese, he has handled several church sales in the past few years. “Many of these are Gothic structures that are expensive to maintain,” he says. “It’s not just your standard cinderblock.”

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Britain will grind to a collective halt this evening as 15 million television viewers retire to their sofas for the opening game of England’s World Cup campaign against the United States, amid signs of a football-driven spending spree ”“ and surprisingly heartfelt Anglo-American sporting rancour.

Kick-off at the Royal Bafokeng stadium in Rustenberg between the two sides will presage predicted additional retail sales of nearly £1bn if Fabio Capello’s team manage to progress into the knock-out stage of the tournament, providing the economy with a badly-needed boost which could rise to £2.01bn of extra spending if England reach the final.

It is accompanied by an outbreak of unabashed patriotism, both for and against England, as an estimated three million St George Cross flags, most of them manufactured in China, are draped from windows and clipped to cars.

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The most anticipated American sports event in many years, perhaps decades, is about to take place. Since last December, many Americans have been looking forward to Saturday’s World Cup match with England in South Africa. Finally, it is happening.

Not only that, but the United States has the potential to toss a banana peel under the churning feet of the nation that invented the sport ”” and don’t you forget it.

The Yanks have at least a chance to gain what soccer fans call a result ”” a draw or a victory, a point or maybe even 3, in the traditionally slippery first match of group play.

The nicest part of Yanks-English has been the anticipation, ever since the two nations, linked by history and language and mutual needs, were paired for the first match, when strange things happen.

By my highly unscientific formula of time multiplied by electronic stimulation, this dream World Cup match, this delicious coincidence, has been looming over soccer buffs like some tantalizing full moon that somehow stayed in place for six months.

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When Bob Bradley was the Princeton soccer coach, he took a team of college players to Italy, where he met Fabio Capello, the manager of the Italian and European champion A.C. Milan.

“When you make wine,” Capello advised Bradley, “the grapes are not always the same.”

For Bradley, the meaning was not instantly clear.

“The first few times he said that to me, I thought he was actually talking about making wine,” Bradley recalled. “I have thought about it, and I realized he was trying to tell me something about football.”

More than 15 years later, Bradley and Capello will try to blend different quality grapes into a winning 2010 vintage.

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The most important overlooked story of the past few weeks was overlooked because it was not surprising. Also because no one really wants to notice it. The weight of 9/11 and all its implications is so much on our minds that it’s never on our mind.

I speak of the report from the inspector general of the Justice Department, issued in late May, saying the department is not prepared to ensure public safety in the days or weeks after a terrorist attack in which nuclear, biological or chemical weapons are used. The Department of Homeland Security is designated as first federal responder, in a way, in the event of a WMD attack, but every agency in government has a formal, assigned role, and the crucial job of Justice is to manage and coordinate law enforcement and step in if state and local authorities are overwhelmed.

So how would Justice do, almost nine years after the attacks of 9/11? Poorly. “The Department is not prepared to fulfill its role . . . to ensure public safety and security in the event of a WMD incident,” says the 61-page report. Justice has yet to assign an entity or individual with clear responsibility for oversight or management of WMD response; it has not catalogued its resources in terms of either personnel or equipment; it does not have written plans or checklists in case of a WMD attack. A deputy assistant attorney general for policy and planning is quoted as saying “it is not clear” who in the department is responsible for handling WMD response. Workers interviewed said the department’s operational response program “lacks leadership and oversight.” An unidentified Justice Department official was quoted: “We are totally unprepared.” He added. “Right now, being totally effective would never happen. Everybody would be winging it.”

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One of the notable things about this synod was who wasn’t there. There was little interest from the secular press, visitors were sparse and blog comments were at nothing like the levels seen for the Synod of 2007. Even big name Anglicans like Katherine Jefferts-Schori (from the US Episcopal Church) attracted only a motley bunch of specialty Anglican journalists. For the most part, the secular press was absent.

The church is trying to use social networking to spread its message, so it had a twitter account where a dedicated tweeter typed in endless 140 character messages to edify the curious. There were 114 followers, a half of which were probably already attending synod. To put this in perspective, Stephen Fry has 1,550,779 followers ”“ and he doesn’t even talk about sex all the time.

Why is this? It’s because most people no longer care what the Anglican Church does ”“ whether it is blessing same sex marriages or demanding an end to global warming. The Anglican Church spends much of its time questioning the faith that has shaped not only it, but the last 2000 years of Western civilisation. To fill the void, it has idolatrised “inclusion”, thereby alienating to the point of exclusion many who are determined to hold fast to orthodox Christianity. The church’s quest for relevance has become an accommodation to secular culture and it now finds itself in a market where it cannot and never will be able to effectively compete.

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While discussing the subject of ”vice and virtue”, the students in the Leichhardt Primary ethics class compiled a list of things 10-year-olds consider wicked – stealing pencil cases, telling secrets and lying to secure the last piece of birthday cake.

The litany of sins, carefully devoid of any reference to religious morality, was unintentionally sweet because while children furrow their brows over these issues, adults are clashing over their right to do so.

The trial in 10 NSW schools of secular ethics classes, held as an alternative to special religious education (SRE), has sparked a culture war. It has pitted the faithful against the secular, church against state, and parent against parent. The debate has sparked allegations of lying and scare-mongering from both sides, and feeds into wider anxiety about the forces of militant atheism and the power of church lobby groups.

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Denominations appear to have fallen on difficult times. Theological controversies over core Christian beliefs have weakened some denominations. Others have succumbed to classic liberalism. A handful of denominations have reaffirmed their commitment to theological orthodoxy, but even many once-growing conservative denominations have experienced difficult days. All in all, membership in 23 of the 25 largest Christian denominations is declining (the exceptions being the Assemblies of God and the Church of God).

The 2008 American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) found that the percentage of Americans who self-identify as Christians decreased from 86 percent in a 1990 study to 76 percent in 2008. Much of the loss does seem located in large mainline denominations. At the same time, the ARIS indicated that nondenominational churches have steadily grown since 2001””and that self-identified evangelicals have increased in number. But it seems that denominations have not shared in the growth.

According to many church leaders, denominations are not fading away””they are actually inhibiting growth. I have heard many pastors denounce denominations as hindering more than helping their churches’ mission. Others carp at wasteful spending, bureaucratic ineffectiveness, or structural redundancies; these objections seem to have gained adherents in an economic climate of pinching every penny. Loyalty to a denomination has declined and in some cases disappeared.

Meanwhile, many of the better-known churches in America today have no denominational affiliation….

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When Pope Benedict XVI announced the “Year of the Priest” that concluded Friday, he probably didn’t have in mind the sort of year he got.

He acknowledged as much in a closing Mass, telling more than 10,000 assembled priests in St. Peter’s Square that “in the very year of joy for the sacrament of the priesthood, the sins of priests came to light.”

Benedict had been widely expected to use the occasion to issue his most sweeping and detailed mea culpa to date for the clergy sexual abuse scandal, and perhaps to announce new measures to cope with it. The scandal has rocked the Roman Catholic Church in Europe this year, nearly a decade after it shook the American church to its roots.

But the pope did neither, blaming the problem on “the enemy,” Satan, even as he begged forgiveness from God and from the victims of priest abuse, as he has several times recently. The latest comments failed to satisfy at least some in his audience, who called for greater accountability and more concrete measures to combat abuse.

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The Supreme Court of Virginia just ruled in favor of the Episcopal Church of the Diocese of Virginia, but the ongoing debate over which religious group owns church property could last for years to come.

The property tug-of-war is far different from the common real estate fights that Henry Burt, secretary of the diocese, dealt with during his days as a lawyer at a big firm.

“This dispute would be a lot simpler if we were arguing over ownership of an office building in Rosslyn or on K Street,” said Burt. Those types of property battles between two parties, he explains, typically involve money and can get resolved fairly quickly.

“What we have here are not simply property issues,” he said. “This is not about property or money — it’s about sacred space. Places where generations of Episcopalians have gotten married, baptized and buried loved ones. We have an obligation and duty to protect that legacy.”

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Most of the lay leaders of the largest and most influential Episcopal church in South Texas said Friday they will resign next week as they contemplate whether to leave the denomination ”” a move that could lead to a split in the church as well.

Ten of the 16 people on Christ Episcopal Church’s vestry informed the congregation they no longer in good conscience can be leaders in a denomination they believe has strayed from Scripture. One example is the national church’s approval of gay and lesbian clergy.

The vestry members’ decision comes about a month after the church’s rector, the Rev. Chuck Collins, announced his retirement for the same reason.

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It requires no leap of the imagination to see that what the Presiding Bishop has in mind here is the Episcopal Church itself. If one were, like medieval dramatists, to present the Synod of Whitby in contemporary garb, the Episcopal Church would play the part of Celtic Christianity and the “centralized authority” of the Anglican Communion would appear as Rome. Perhaps Bishop Jefferts Schori would play the part of Colman of Lindisfarne and Archbishop Williams the perennially despised Wilfrid. Such a setting for the Synod of Whitby would then carry the message that the current struggles in the Anglican Communion are simply another manifestation of the perpetual struggle between a powerful, hierarchical, and autocratic church against a vulnerable and egalitarian form of Christianity. Obviously, this is a heady message, calling to arms all who wish to resist the tyrant doing “spiritual violence” once again to those who wish freely to express their “Spirit”-led beliefs. Thus, the Synod of Whitby draws greater power by implicitly invoking the even older image of Babylon persecuting the faithful remnant. Strange how people can morph into a reflection of how they perceive their opponents.

That this is the myth by which the Presiding Bishop is operating is shown by her allusion to colonialism. This is the other governing metaphor of the letter, and in this sense the Synod of Whitby becomes an expression of ecclesiastical colonialism over a native, “Celtic” people. We have here a sort of theological variation on Avatar. The irony, of course, is that this claim is being made by the Presiding Bishop of the U.S.-based Episcopal Church: the world’s most powerful nation and one of the world’s most well-heeled churches. Likening the Episcopal Church to a weak and oppressed Celtic Christianity or to forcefully clothed Hawaiian women requires a degree of mental acrobatics that beggars belief. It is equally ironic that she thereby presents Archbishop Williams, a Welshman, in the role of an agent of the domineering Roman church seeking to suppress the wonderfully tolerant Celtic church!

As thrilling as all this may be to some, the problem is that it does violence (to use a recurring metaphor in the letter) to the actual history.

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Canadian Anglicans took a step forward in considering the Anglican Covenant with the passing of resolution A137: Anglican Communion Covenant at General Synod 2010 on Thursday, June 10.

Bishop George Bruce, chair of the Anglican Committee Working Group provided an introduction to the work of the committee, which has participated in the process of reviewing and providing feedback to the draft. A General Synod 2007 decision affirms the Anglican Church’s involvement in the process of drafting “A Covenant for the Anglican Communion”.

“There have been lots of changes since the Nassau document,” said Bishop Bruce, referring to a previous version of the covenant that was met with concern. “The text is a significant approval over that drafts. Virtually all Canadian concerns have been addressed.”

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If Jews are the people of the book, what stories do the books themselves tell about the varied communities and intersecting worlds of the scholars, scribes, artists, printers, readers and worshippers who produced and used them? Anyone seeking an answer may find it at the Yeshiva University Museum’s current exhibition in New York, A Journey Through Jewish Worlds: Highlights from the Braginsky Collection of Hebrew Manuscripts and Printed Books.

The historical saga that the objects on display recount is (quite literally) a page-turner””a complex narrative of dispersion and continuity, played out in overlapping and at times conflicting worlds both sacred and secular. (A virtual catalogue can also be viewed online at www.braginskycollection.com.)

The dates of these exceedingly rare and well-preserved illustrated scrolls, wedding contracts, Bible commentaries, prayer books and miscellanies span seven centuries. The earliest item, a copy on parchment of the legal code of rabbinic scholar Moses of Coucy, dates to 1288. They come from several continents: Europe, Asia, Northern Africa and the Middle East.

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More than 400 religious and secular progressives will meet here in the nation’s capitol this weekend (June 11-14) to urge President Obama to be the man “they thought they elected in 2008.”

The Network of Spiritual Progressives wants Obama to make good on campaign promises to protect the environment, fight for the poor, rein
in big business, and work for global peace.

“I’m not interested in those who want to be either for or against Obama,” said Rabbi Arthur Waskow, director of the Shalom Center in Philadelphia, Pa. “I want Obama to join us in the protection of the earth, protection of human beings.”

Waskow and about 34 other rabbis, pastors, priests, professors and congressmen are expected to speak at the four day conference, which will rally progressives around causes like a new “global Marshall plan” and a social responsibility amendment to the Constitution.

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Reacting to the ruling by the Virginia Supreme Court issued… [yesterday] morning, the Rev. John Yates, leader of the breakaway congregation at The Falls Church, sent a letter to his followers calling the ruling “a very disappointing result, to be sure.” He added that by having the case remanded to the Fairfax Circuit Court where “the Episcopal Church and the Diocese must still carry the burden of showing, apart from the division statute (which the Supreme Court ruled did not apply in this case — ed.) that they are the rightful owners of this property.”

The “property” referenced is the historic Falls Church in the center of the City of Falls Church, which Yates and his breakaway group has held onto since voting to defect from the Episcopal denomination in December 2006.

Meanwhile today, in an exclusive interview with the News-Press, the Rev. Michael Pipkin, leader of the “continuing Episcopalians,” members of The Falls Church who did not chose to defect and who’ve been locked out of The Falls Church by the defectors, said he hoped that while the case has been remanded back to the lower court, that a reconciliation between the two congregations could occur, and that arrangements could be made for his “continuing Episcopalians” to also worship on the campus of The Falls Church, specifically at 10 a.m. on Sundays in the historic chapel of the church, which is now not being used for any other purpose.

He noted, however, that Yates’ letter today made no mention of such matters, but that he was open to working something out for both congregations to share the property while the court matter is being finally resolved.

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