The Episcopal Church is alleging that Bishop Mark Lawrence has abandoned the church through his leadership of the Diocese of South Carolina that has distanced itself from the national church because of its policies of ordaining gay bishops and sanctioning same-sex unions.

Lawrence was contacted last week by the Disciplinary Board for Bishops of the national church. The letter said the board had evidence establishing the “abandonment of the doctrine, discipline and worship of the Episcopal Church.”

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A form of cloning has been used to create personalised embryonic stem cells in humans, say researchers.

Genetic material was taken from an adult skin cell and transferred into a human egg. This was grown to produce an early embryo.

Stem cells have huge potential in medicine as they can transform into any other cell type in the body.

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Pope Benedict XVI asked the international community to continue aid to the drought- and famine-stricken Horn of Africa and asked individuals to offer prayers and donate money to help save the millions facing death.

“I invited everyone to offer prayers and concrete aid for their many brothers and sisters so harshly tried, and particularly for the children, who die in that region each day because of sickness and a lack of water and food,” the pope said Oct. 5 at the end of his weekly general audience.

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Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams will visit Zimbabwe in a show of support for Anglicans who are under siege from a renegade ex-bishop who plans to snub the leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion.

Anglicans in Zimbabwe are embroiled in a church property fight with former Bishop Nolbert Kunonga of the capital of Harare. Kunonga left the church in 2007 over what he said was its pro-gay stance.

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The wife of ousted Trinity Episcopal Cathedral Dean Philip C. Linder has filed suit against the cathedral and the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Upper South Carolina, claiming she was victimized by both when her husband was suspended abruptly in July 2010 and forced to resign from the historic downtown congregation.

Ellen Cooper Linder alleges in the civil lawsuit filed Thursday in Richland County that Bishop W. Andrew Waldo intentionally inflicted emotional distress and defamed her when Waldo, at the behest of the vestry, set in motion the series of events that led to her husband’s resignation.

Ellen Linder, who lost her part-time position as parish nurse and her standing in the 4,400-member congregation, seeks a jury trial and unspecified damages. Mount Pleasant attorney Larry Richter is representing her.

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The Primates of the Global South coalition of provinces have opened ecumenical relations with the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM) ”” China’s official state Protestant Church.

The 12-day visit to China by 11 senior archbishops led by Singapore’s Archbishop John Chew ”” who represent a majority of the communion’s members ”” has sparked public controversy in evangelical circles with some conservatives perturbed by the outreach to the Communist Party-approved state church.

The visit will also pain supporters of the current institutional structures of the Anglican Communion, as the China trip marks the establishment of an international Anglican ecumenical movement independent of the London-based instruments of communion.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams is today embarking on a week-long pastoral visit to the Church in Malawi, Zimbabwe and Zambia at the invitation of the Archbishop of the Province of Central Africa, the Rt Revd Albert Chama.

During the course of the week Dr Williams will meet with bishops, clergy and parishioners to celebrate the life and ministry of the Anglican Church in the region.

The visit will begin in Malawi with a special service of celebration to mark the 150th anniversary of the Anglican Church in Malawi before going on to look at a number of Church initiatives set up to help vulnerable groups in the local communities….

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L’Osservatore Romano (English, September 21) reprinted an essay, “God in Madrid,” by the Peruvian novelist and Nobel Prize winner, Mario Vargas Llosa, from the Spanish paper El País about the meaning of the papal visit….

[In the essay Llosa says that] contemporary culture is rather vapid, a kind of “light entertainment.” Within it is a “cabal of incomprehensible and arrogant experts, who have taken refuge in unintelligible jargon, light years from common mortals.” Culture has not replaced religion, particularly that religion originating in revelation….

Most human beings suspect that the answers need a “higher order” of existence to locate the center of their lives. Atheism’s self-satisfied defenders no longer stand on the solid ground they once assumed. Science itself is looking like it has to admit that the origin of the universe lies in some transcendent, extra-cosmic, intelligent source even to explain science….

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Charles Kingsley Barrett, who has died aged 94, stood alongside CH Dodd as the greatest British New Testament scholar of the 20th century. Barrett regarded commentary on the texts as the primary task of the biblical scholar, and his meticulous commentaries have provided solid foundations for students and clergy for more than 50 years. He was a Methodist minister for nearly 70 years and, during his time as lecturer and professor of divinity at Durham University (1945-82), and in retirement there, he preached most Sundays in the city or a nearby village. His opposition to the scheme for Anglican-Methodist reunion in the 1960s brought him into contact with a wider public as a church leader, as well as a renowned teacher.

He was born into a Primitive (Calvinist) Methodist clergy family in Salford. He was sent to Shebbear college, in Devon, where he became captain of cricket and a promising opening batsman. At Pembroke College, Cambridge, he distinguished himself in the mathematical tripos before transferring to theology. His supervisor, Noel Davey, directed him to what turned out to be the last course of lectures on the theology and ethics of the New Testament by EC Hoskyns.

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For those of us who are part of the Diocese of Melbourne it is important that we reflect on what it means to be an Anglican, or to use contemporary terminology, what is distinctive about Anglican ”˜spirituality’. We are the most diverse diocese in Australia. On the theological level we have anglo-catholic, liberal catholic, reformed evangelical, evangelicals of other persuasions and charismatic parishes well represented, growing numbers of Chinese congregations and several other ethnic parishes, as well as a complete range of ages. What we see in our diocese at a micro level is magnified on the world scene.

Today, the Anglican Communion is an association of national Anglican churches organised as dioceses in 160 countries with a membership of approximately 80 million people. Following the Reformation of the church in England in the 16th century, catholic and evangelical emphases were from this point part of Anglicanism. The theological differences were for centuries contained within a common liturgical practice grounded in English culture. However in recent times doctrinal, liturgical and cultural diversity has become more pronounced and so differing spiritualities live side by side within Anglicanism. Today the Anglican Communion embraces evangelicals and anglo-catholics (with liberal and conservative strands in both cases), theological radicals and demonstrative charismatics, all modified by the ethnic and cultural variety of the Communion….

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Almighty God, whose sovereign power none can make void: Give us faith to stand calm and undismayed amid the tumults of the world, knowing that all things work together for good to them that love thee; through thy beloved Son our Saviour Jesus Christ.

As Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax office; and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he rose and followed him. And as he sat at table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat down with Jesus and his disciples. And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” But when he heard it, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” Then the disciples of John came to him, saying, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?” And Jesus said to them, “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come, when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast. And no one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch tears away from the garment, and a worse tear is made. Neither is new wine put into old wineskins; if it is, the skins burst, and the wine is spilled, and the skins are destroyed; but new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved.”

–Matthew 9:9-17

China and Russia have vetoed a UN Security Council resolution condemning Syria over its crackdown on anti-government protesters.

The European-drafted resolution had been watered down to try to avoid the vetoes, dropping a direct reference to sanctions against Damascus.

But Moscow and Beijing said the draft contained no provision against outside military intervention in Syria.

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In a bold new measure intended to address unemployment among young professionals, lawmakers from across the political spectrum agreed on legislation Tuesday to subsidize the cryogenic freezing of recent college graduates until the job market recovers.

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In advance of the 2012 elections, the U.S. bishops reaffirmed their 2007 document, Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship, in this coming election cycle and beyond, as the “continuing teaching of our Bishops’ Conference and our guidance for Catholics in the exercise of their rights and duties as participants in our democracy.”

Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), joined the chairs of nine USCCB committees in offering an Introductory Note to the document. The bishops discussed this action at their June meeting and authorized it at the September meeting of the USCCB Administrative Committee. Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship was approved overwhelmingly by the U.S. bishops in 2007.

“We urge our Catholic pastors and people to continue to use this important statement to help them form their consciences, to contribute to civil and respectful public dialogue, and to shape their choices in the coming election in the light of Catholic teaching,” the bishops wrote. “It does not offer a voter’s guide, scorecard of issues or direction on how to vote. It applies Catholic moral principles to a range of important issues and warns against misguided appeals to ”˜conscience’ to ignore fundamental moral claims, to reduce Catholic moral concerns to one or two matters, or to justify choices simply to advance partisan, ideological or personal interests.”

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Jews, Muslims and their allies cheered Sunday (Oct. 2) as California Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill prohibiting all local bans on circumcision, making it illegal for local authorities to restrict the medical or religious practice.

Anti-circumcision activists had gathered enough signatures to place the issue on the ballot in San Francisco. Voters would have been asked to decide if infant circumcision should be banned as an unnecessary genital mutilation, a misdemeanor punishable by a $1,000 fine and up to a year in jail.

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In case you are looking for this thread from yesterday, you may find it here.

“A total of 37 punchings was made for every bond.”

Check it out.