Some, including the Episcopal Church, are embracing that debate, and looking for ways to evolve their faith.

Bishop R. William Franklin of the Episcopal Diocese of WNY said, “Many Episcopalians believe that in community, we can discern with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, a way in which the letter of Scripture is compatible with a wider inclusion of the life of partner gay and lesbian people in our community. And that would apply, now, to the question of marriage.”

Others are choosing to adhere to more traditional views

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The Rev. Christopher Young lovedcats ”“ so much that when the rector at one church announced that no staffers should feed the stray cats, Young snuck across the street regularly to put cat food in a nearby parking lot.

At his apartment, located near Sanford’s Lake Monroe, “Father Chris” was also famous for feeding the ducks. When management asked him to stop because the ducks were making such a mess on the complex grounds, it was too late. The ducks already knew where he lived.

“They would come up and knock on his sliding glass door” with their beaks, said his friend Ruth McDonald.

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One Saturday afternoon last winter, I drove north on Route 85 through the rolling rangeland of southeastern Wyoming. I was headed to a small town north of Cheyenne to see an old friend and colleague named Michael Glatze. We worked together 12 years ago at XY, a San Francisco-based national magazine for young gay men, back when we were young gay men ourselves.

Though only a year removed from Dartmouth when he arrived at XY, Michael had seemingly read every gay book ever written. While I was busy trying to secure a boyfriend, he was busy contemplating queer theory, marching in gay rights rallies and urging young people to celebrate (not just accept) their same-sex attractions. Michael was devoted to helping gay youth, and he was particularly affected by the letters the magazine received regularly from teenagers who were rejected by their religious families. “Christian fundamentalists should burn in hell!” he told me once, slamming his fist on his desk. I had never met anyone so sure of himself….

I thought about those times as I pulled my rental car into the Wyoming town where Michael now lives. A lot had happened in the decade since we last saw each other: he and Ben started a new gay magazine (Young Gay America, or Y.G.A.); they traveled the country for a documentary about gay teenagers; and Michael was fast becoming the leading voice for gay youth until the day, in July 2007, when he announced that he was no longer gay….

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Sudan’s President Omar Hassan al-Bashir told Chinese media the impending split of his country’s south risked triggering “time bombs”, but said his government’s bond with China would not be shaken by Beijing’s courting of the secessionist south.

He made the comments in interviews published on Monday, the day he begins a state visit to China, his powerful patron and a major buy of Sudanese crude oil.

Beijing has been building ties with the emerging state in southern Sudan but continues to be one of the major supporters of Bashir, who faces indictment from the International Criminal Court over war crimes charges stemming from long-running fighting in the Darfur region.

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It may be the best-selling book of all time, but its battles, bloodletting, and “begats,” its many laws, rituals, and tribes, and those chewy names like Oholiab and Eliphelehu and “Joshbekashah son of Heman” don’t make for easy reading.

Yet when the rector of St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Whitemarsh invited his congregants in January to join him in reading the Bible cover to cover in a year, the response surprised him.

“It’s taken on a life of its own,” the Rev. Marek Zabriskie said last week.

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Bishop Suheil Dawani, the Anglican bishop, hosted an ecumenical reception for local church leaders, and the Commission was addressed by His Beatitude Theophilos III, the Greek Patriarch of Jerusalem. The Commission spent one of its sessions with Bishop Dawani and Bishop Younan. At both this session and at the reception, members of the Commission heard of the struggles of Christians in Jerusalem and Palestine: of the strain of living a restricted life, of the lack of jobs and opportunities particularly for young people, and of lacking peace with justice for all in society, all of which lead many Christians to leave the holy land and diminish the witness of Christianity in the very places of its birth. At the same time, they heard of the dedication of the local churches to be the hands and feet of Christ: to advocate for a just peace among all, to seek good relations among all the faith communities, and to offer high quality education and health care to the whole society.

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After just two years and four months, Columbia Hope Episcopal Church at 4603 John Garry Drive is closing because of lack of attendance. The church’s last worship service will be tomorrow. The Rev. Dan Smith, executive officer of the diocese, said about 40 to 50 people on average were coming to Sunday worship.

“To start a new church there has to be a significant growth pattern over a period of time” to keep it running, Smith said.

“Firstly, I’m deeply saddened by this,” he said. “I thought Columbia was a great location for another Episcopal church. ”¦ This one just never gained traction.”

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Read it all–carefully.

Americans are using the weekends to get more done at home and on the job….

”¢35% of workers overall work on weekends. A slightly greater percentage of part-timers work on weekends than full-time employees. On average, those who work weekends work 5½ hours. More than half of sales workers work on weekends, the largest percentage among occupations in the survey. But weekend duty is a fact of life for only 20% of office and administrative personnel

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O Lord, who hast taught us that whatever we do unto the least of thy brethren we do unto thee: Give us grace to see thee in all who are poor and needy, and always to be ready to serve our fellows for thy sake; who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Spirit, world without end.

Praise the LORD! O give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures for ever! Who can utter the mighty doings of the LORD, or show forth all his praise? Blessed are they who observe justice, who do righteousness at all times!

–Psalm 106:1-3

An Executive Council task force has released a report it received from the Standing Commission on Constitution and Canons outlining the changes that would be needed if the General Convention decides to sign onto the Anglican Covenant.

“The SCCC is of the view that adoption of the current draft Anglican Covenant has the potential to change the constitutional and canonical framework of [the Episcopal Church], particularly with respect to the autonomy of our Church, and the constitutional authority of our General Convention, bishops and dioceses,” says the report.

In a statement June 24, the D023 (Anglican Covenant) task force wrote that it has released the report now because of “legitimate concerns raised about issues of transparency around a decision as important for our Church as the Anglican Covenant.”

Read it all and please follow the links.

The Rev. Canon Carol L. Wade, former canon precentor at the National Cathedral in Washington, will be the new dean and rector at Lexington’s historic Christ Church Episcopal Cathedral. She is the first woman to hold either position at the downtown church.

Wade will assume her new duties in September. Her selection was announced at both worship services at Christ Church on Sunday.

“I am overjoyed,” Wade said in a telephone interview. “I cannot tell you how much I look forward to partnering with the wonderfully gifted people at the cathedral and working with the diocese, the people of Lexington and beyond.

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[Rowan] Williams outlined several challenges churches will encounter this century and urged them to use new means of communication and social media to spread the gospel more effectively.

“There is virtually nowhere you can go in the world where you won’t see a mobile telephone. The church needs to learn how use these new means of communications more effectively for the sake of the gospel. If we have social media, they can also be media for communion,” he said.

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Alarmed by a shortage of primary care doctors, Obama administration officials are recruiting a team of “mystery shoppers” to pose as patients, call doctors’ offices and request appointments to see how difficult it is for people to get care when they need it.

The administration says the survey will address a “critical public policy problem”: the increasing shortage of primary care doctors, including specialists in internal medicine and family practice. It will also try to discover whether doctors are accepting patients with private insurance while turning away those in government health programs that pay lower reimbursement rates.

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Speaking about his morning in Kibera, the Archbishop praised the remarkable work being done by the local churches:

“The work being done here is so inspiring because it shows what can be done when people are prepared to identify the problems that they face – not as someone else’s issue, not as doing good to someone else, but actually standing alongside as God in Christ stands alongside – that is the beginning and end of all real Christian mission and service.”

The Archbishop concluded his visit to Kibera by giving a homily at Holy Trinity Church in which he spoke about the meaning of Emmanuel ”“ ‘God with us’, explaining how God is at work in every human being and every part of the universe, restoring hope to those whose situation may seem hopeless, and being ever present in the face of those we live amongst and serve.

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I’ve been writing in this blog about living out our faith in the context of our work and academics. [Lesslie] Newbigin calls us to learn to do this from the starting point of God’s new creation in Christ which means we will view the world differently than from the viewpoint of the Enlightenment project. That was about objectivity, efficiency, calculations, technology, and cost benefit assessments that all too often has had the effect of marginalizing or oppressing actual people. As Christians, we know that pursuing those values alone can’t be the best way to operate.

Evelyn Lai, a May 2011 alumna from the Yale School of Nursing, gave the student commencement address to her class. In it, I think she models at least one dimension of what pursuing that profession from the perspective of God’s new creation is like. In so doing, she also sets an example that others of us can follow in our disciplines as well….

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“This is about prayer,” he said inside the cathedral. “I sort of needed a good dose of the Lord’s grace and mercy because I’ve been down a little lately as you can imagine.”

Archbishop [Timothy] Dolan said he was disheartened that the same-sex marriage bill was passed by the Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo.

“I would have to say I was sad because it’s not good for the common good,” the archbishop said. “I think society and culture is at its peril.”

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In other words, our competition is hell. Hell is at work wherever the will of God is defied.

Every time a little child is left unloved, unwanted, uneducated, unnoticed. Every time a marriage ends. Every time racial differences divide a street or a city or a church. Every time money gets worshipped or hoarded. Every time a lie gets told. Every time generations get separated. Every time a workplace becomes de-humanizing. When families get broken up. When virtue gets torn down. When sinful habits create a lives of shame or a culture of shamelessness. When faith gets undermined and hope gets lost and people get trashed. That’s when hell is prevailing.

It is not acceptable to Jesus that hell prevail. Your job is not to meet a budget, run a program, fill a building, or maintain the status quo. Your job is to put hell out of business.

Read it all (used this one in adult Sunday school this morning–KSH).

Opponents of a measure that would make it a misdemeanor to circumcise male children in San Francisco filed a lawsuit Wednesday to get the initiative stricken from the November ballot.

The plaintiffs called the measure anti-Semitic, a threat to the religious freedom of Jews and Muslims, and an infringement on parental and medical rights. But during a news conference on the steps of City Hall, attorney Michael Jacobs said the group is suing on the grounds that state law prohibits local governments from restricting medical procedures.

That’s the job of the state Legislature, said Jacobs, flanked by two Muslim women in head scarves and a doctor in a white coat….

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REV. MICHEL BRIERE: The eldest daughter of the Church, that’s what we were called. Today, saying you believe in a religion takes a real identification of faith. Today, the number has really diminished.

[DEBORAH] POTTER: Twenty years ago, about 80 percent of French people described themselves as Catholic. Today, it’s just over half and less than 5 percent””most of them older””regularly go to Mass. Father Briere blames a growing culture of consumerism and a Catholic hierarchy that he says has been too rigid, failing to draw young people into the Church. That’s true across Europe, but France is a special case, a country where religion is widely seen as a source of trouble. If France had an official religion it would be laicite or secularism, a principle that’s enshrined in this country’s constitution and reflects its history of religious wars between Catholics and Protestants, as well as the French Revolution, that basically booted the Catholic Church from power.

That history lives on in French movies and classrooms, where students are taught in gory detail about a 16th-century massacre, when thousands of Protestants [Huguenots] were slaughtered by the Catholic forces of the King. And that history still lies on public display in Paris. These are the bones of Catholic priests killed and mutilated by a revolutionary mob in 1792””small wonder that the French concept of separation of church and state is strikingly different from that in the US, says Jocelyne Cesari, a French political scientist and research fellow at Harvard.

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Indeed, as well as not paying for their metro tickets, the people of Greece barely paid a penny of the underground’s £1.5 billion cost ”” a ”˜sweetener’ from Brussels (and, therefore, the UK taxpayer) to help the country put on an impressive 2004 Olympics free of the city’s notorious traffic jams.

The transport perks are not confined to the customers. Incredibly, the average salary on Greece’s railways is £60,000, which includes cleaners and track workers – treble the earnings of the average private sector employee here.

The overground rail network is as big a racket as the EU-funded underground. While its annual income is only £80”‰million from ticket sales, the wage bill is more than £500m a year ”” prompting one Greek politician to famously remark that it would be cheaper to put all the commuters into private taxis.

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When President Obama announced his decision to surge more troops into Afghanistan in 2009, I argued that it could succeed if three things happened: Pakistan became a different country, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan became a different man and we succeeded at doing exactly what we claim not to be doing, that is nation-building in Afghanistan. None of that has happened, which is why I still believe our options in Afghanistan are: lose early, lose late, lose big or lose small. I vote for early and small.

My wariness about Afghanistan comes from asking these three questions: When does the Middle East make you happy? How did the cold war end? What would Ronald Reagan do?

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In late May, a NATO soldier was killed as he emerged from his tent. Two weeks earlier, two NATO soldiers were killed while eating a meal. In late April, eight U.S. troops were shot dead at a meeting at Kabul airport.

The attacks had one thing in common: The killers all wore Afghan military or police uniforms.

Foreign troops serving in Afghanistan say they’re increasingly concerned about the “enemy within.” Yet they emphasize the importance of keeping anxiety in check amid a climate of deepening mutual distrust.

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Syria’s military has moved into a village near the border with Turkey and a town near the boundary with Lebanon, activists say.

Hundreds of Syrians, some with gunshot wounds, have fled into Lebanon, according to reports.

At least four civilians were reportedly killed by security forces during house-to-house raids and at funerals held for those killed in Friday’s rallies.

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O God, the God of all goodness and of all grace, who art worthy of a greater love than we can either give or understand: Fill our hearts, we beseech thee, with such love toward thee that nothing may seem too hard for us to do or to suffer, in obedience to thy will; and grant that thus loving thee, we may become daily more like unto thee, and finally obtain the crown of life which thou hast promised to those that love thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

–B. F. Westcott

No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. That is why his faith was “reckoned to him as righteousness.” But the words, “it was reckoned to him,” were written not for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be reckoned to us who believe in him that raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was put to death for our trespasses and raised for our justification.

–Romans 4:20-25

Now let’s be serious. When 815-level lawyers threaten and cajole diocesan bishops not to reveal multiple sex-abuse cover-ups at the highest level lest former leaders be embarrassed, what can we expect, and why do we look down on the RCC? Serious and credentialled investigative reporters can contact me.

As a rector I had to follow a priest who was simply passed along by another bishop, and as a bishop have had the same experience with a staff member who was protected by his bishop, with catastrophic results here

On paper, we are a one-strike church, but in reality, too may people are walked. 815 refused comment on this story with principled-sounding obfuscation, which essentially tells it all, doesn’t it? There is no more transparency at 815 than previously, as some of the commentators above [on this thread] know to their pain.

— Bishop Paul Marshall of the Episcopal Diocese of Bethlehem, Penna.

There is no independent journalistic entity that covers the Episcopal Church in the fashion that the Church Times covers the Church of England, and thus no one to hold us accountable when we are being unnecessarily secretive, or when people in positions of authority insist on prerogatives that aren’t healthy for the wider church. We have to do that ourselves.

—Jim Naughton of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, D.C.

Parry, 69, led the Abbey Boy Choir of Conception Abbey from 1982 to 1987. He said he had sexual contact with five or six choir members. Most were over 18, but two were 16 to 18 years old, he said.

“As far as I’m concerned, great harm was done to those people,” he told the newspaper in an interview from Las Vegas, where he now lives. “To lie and not recognize that would be a gross injustice to those folks.”

He did not return a telephone message left by The Associated Press on Friday.

Read it all.