The US Episcopal Church reports that attendance has fallen 16 per cent over the past five years with the number of Episcopalians dropping below two million.

According to statistics released last week, the number of Episcopalians fell from 2,006,343 in 2009 to 1,951,907 in 2010. Over the last 10 years the Church lost 16 per cent of its members, while the rate of decline for the past five years was 11 per cent.

After holding steady in the 1990s membership and attendance began to drop in the wake of the controversies surrounding the consecration of the Church’s first [non-celibate] gay bishop. Over the last 10 years attendance has fallen by 23 per cent to 657,831.

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The four gospels stand magisterially at the head of the canon and the centre of early Christianity. They are remarkable documents. If they had been lost for centuries, and then dug up last year in the sands of Egypt, they would be hailed as among the most extraordinary writings from antiquity. Despite the occasional efforts to push them out of their central position and substitute other documents, whether actually existing (such as the wrongly named Gospel of Thomas) or reconstructed (such as the hypothetical document ”˜Q’), the majority of scholars still believe, rightly in my view, that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John deserve their place. The fact that they are well known should not blind us to their remarkable blend of page-turning narrative, vivid portraiture (especially of their central figure), historical verisimilitude and sophisticated theology.
And yet. Reversing what St Paul says about himself, the gospels, though well known at one level, are unknown at another. An oversimplification, of course; but I refer to the overall drift of gospel studies, and to the perception of the gospels in the church community to which biblical studies remains tangentially, and sometimes uncomfortably, related. Huge strides have been made, not least by my predecessor but one, Professor Richard Bauckham, both in his work on the wide intended readership of the gospels and in his award-winning book on the gospels and the eyewitnesses. If he is even half right ­”“ and I think he is at least that ”“ then all kinds of assumptions, including some of those blessed things they used to call ”˜the assured results of criticism’, will need to be torn up. But we need to go further still. Despite generations now of redaction criticism and narrative criticism, I am not convinced that the main message of the gospels has been grasped, let alone reflected in the methods employed for further study. And since I shall contend in this lecture that the four gospels stand at the centre of the missionary and hence theological life of the early church, a failure to understand their central thrust is most likely an index of a failure to grasp several other things as well about the life and work of the first Christians.

I am not being alarmist. Fine work in many directions has been done on the gospels, a generation ago by another predecessor, Matthew Black of blessed memory. And of course Robin Wilson, of more recent memory, contributed much to our understanding of the early Christian hinterland within which the gospels and their early reception must be understood. But there comes a time in every discipline to take a deep breath, stand back, and say, ”˜Well and good; but perhaps we’re still missing something.’ That’s when we need, not simply more attention to detail, vital and central though that remains, but precisely imagination: a willingness to think beyond the fence, to ask questions hitherto screened out. And, to complete the list of recent predecessors, Markus Bockmuehl in his short stay here published a remarkable book, Seeing the Word, offering an eloquent and wide-ranging plea for just such an imaginative leap, a reassessment of the tasks and methods of the whole discipline. That is the kind of exercise which I want to share with you this afternoon, with due gratitude both for the invitation to occupy this chair and for the warm welcome I have received in St Mary’s College and in the wider University community.

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As the United States prepares to withdraw its troops from Iraq by year’s end, senior American and Iraqi officials are expressing growing concern that Al Qaeda’s offshoot here, which just a few years ago waged a debilitating insurgency that plunged the country into a civil war, is poised for a deadly resurgence.

Qaeda allies in North Africa, Somalia and Yemen are seeking to assert more influence after the death of Osama bin Laden and the diminished role of Al Qaeda’s remaining top leadership in Pakistan. For its part, Al Qaeda in Iraq is striving to rebound from major defeats inflicted by Iraqi tribal groups and American troops in 2007, as well as the deaths of its two leaders in 2010.

Although the organization is certainly weaker than it was at its peak five years ago and is unlikely to regain its prior strength, American and Iraqi analysts said the Qaeda franchise is shifting its tactics and strategies ”” like attacking Iraqi security forces in small squads ”” to exploit gaps left by the departing American troops and to try to reignite sectarian violence in the country.

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Holy Family Episcopal Church ”“ Fresno’s only remaining Episcopal congregation ”“ has cleared the way to build a community labyrinth….

“It’s a very meditative and contemplative tool ”“ and can be used by people of all faiths and walks of life,” says the church’s pastor, the Rev. Michele Racusin, adding that the church hopes to complete the labyrinth by Easter, which is April 8. “That’s what the Episcopal Church is all about.”

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The Rev. Eric Menees, new bishop of the San Joaquin Anglican Diocese, might feel a little like David facing the giant Goliath.

First there’s the lawsuit seeking ownership of 31 of the diocesan parishes and the diocesan headquarters in Fresno. Then there are nine more lawsuits filed against the independently incorporated parishes that also are part of the diocese. Finally, there are the multimillion-dollar assets of the diocese, which remain frozen pending the outcome of the lawsuits.

The giant in this case is the Episcopal Church, which was not happy when Menees’ predecessor, the Rev. John-David Schofield, was the first bishop in the country to lead his diocese away from the national church and its increasingly liberal theology. Schofield and the 40 parishes loyal to him are under the oversight of the theologically conservative Anglican Church in North America, which allowed them to stay with the worldwide Anglican Communion, to which the… [Episcopal] church belongs.

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What? You thought the Game of the Century would feature 100 points?

Admittedly, most of us assumed there would at least be a few touchdowns. Just one would have been nice. But for anyone who found No. 1 LSU’s 9-6 overtime victory over No. 2 Alabama on Saturday to be ugly, unsatisfying or somehow unimpressive, Tigers defensive end Sam Montgomery has a message for you.

“This is the way football is supposed to be played,” said the man whose third-down sack of Alabama quarterback AJ McCarron in the first overtime possession typified a night of defensive dominance. “It’s not about running up the score. This is how two great teams in a great atmosphere are supposed to play.”

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O Lord God of time and eternity, who makest us creatures of time that, when time is over, we may attain thy blessed eternity: With time, thy gift, give us also wisdom to redeem the time, lest our day of grace be lost; for our Lord Jesus’ sake.

–Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)

And when the governor had motioned to him to speak, Paul replied: “Realizing that for many years you have been judge over this nation, I cheerfully make my defense. As you may ascertain, it is not more than twelve days since I went up to worship at Jerusalem; and they did not find me disputing with any one or stirring up a crowd, either in the temple or in the synagogues, or in the city. Neither can they prove to you what they now bring up against me. But this I admit to you, that according to the Way, which they call a sect, I worship the God of our fathers, believing everything laid down by the law or written in the prophets, having a hope in God which these themselves accept, that there will be a resurrection of both the just and the unjust. So I always take pains to have a clear conscience toward God and toward men.

–Acts 24:10-16

… “Godspell,” which opens Monday in its first Broadway revival, was serious business in 1971. At the time American religion was in a profound state of flux. The pews were emptying out, and children especially were disappearing from mainline Christianity. Vocations to the Catholic priesthood were cratering, and from 1963 to 1972 the number of American Catholics going to Mass declined from about three quarters to half (and kept falling). To take one startling statistic, Episcopal church school enrollment fell by a quarter from 1965 to 1971, the year “Godspell” made its debut Off Broadway. John-Michael Tebelak, who conceived and first directed the show, was himself an Episcopalian who later flirted with the priesthood before dying, at 36, in 1985. His church’s pews, even more than most, were vacant.

Young people wanted to leave the church, but not all of them wanted to abandon Christianity. Many wanted to return to a more primitive expression of their faith, and they reimagined Jesus as an accessible hippie, a cool friend rather than an object of veneration. In 1970, when Carnegie-Mellon theater majors threw together “Godspell” ”” which dervish-danced from La MaMa to the Cherry Lane Theater to the movie screen and finally, in 1976, to Broadway ”” it was quite subversive, or so they hoped, to make up Jesus like a clown. They dressed him in a Superman costume, and he danced joyously with a multiracial cast, quite obviously having fun (and, easy to imagine, having sex).

The musical’s challenge to polite Christian society was not lost on the establishment….

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Some Boston parents might be in for a rude awakening: 13 percent of area high school students say they’ve received “sext” messages and one in 10 has either forwarded, sent or posted sexually suggestive, explicit or nude photos or videos of people they know by cellphone or online.

So found a study of more than 23,000 students, with the results scheduled to be presented Wednesday at the American Public Health Association’s annual meeting in Washington, D.C.

Sexting can include overtones of bullying and coercion, and teens who are involved were more likely to report being psychologically distressed, depressed or even suicidal, according to the 2010 survey of 24 (of 26) high schools in Boston’s metro-west region.

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A series of bomb and gun attacks in the north-eastern Nigerian town of Damaturu has killed at least 63 people, the Red Cross says.

Witnesses said the bombs hit several targets, including churches and the headquarters of the Yobe state police.

Many people are reported to have fled the town after a night of violence.

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The church building was designed by William Halsey Wood. It is an example of two English styles of the 16th and 17th centuries, Jacobean and Elizabethan.

“I think it’s one of the most beautiful churches in town, and it’s intimate. It’s not one of those huge Gothic churches you seen in Europe,” said Carolyn O’Brien, a Valley resident.

The building also reflects the influence of the turn-of-the-century arts and crafts movement, which sought to revive the hand-crafted quality of pre-industrial times. Wood used rough-faced random limestone, massive stone arches, timber roof trusses and other “handmade” materials to introduce the arts and crafts aesthetic to Youngstown.

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The increasingly evident problem within Anglican-ism, detached from the moorings of Establishment * and the surviving restraints of theological, historical and liturgical memory, is that its strong internal impulses to conform to the social and intellectual norms of the bien-pensant ̩lite Рwhatever those norms may be Рhave led it to become an almost uniformly middle-class, liberal-left, spiritual pressure group. It has neither the central magisterium of the West or the unbreakably strong, quasi-mystical, role of the living tradition of the East to be able to withstand the insidiously conformist pressures of our secularised western culture and philosophical world-view. When society itself still ahered to broadly traditional Christian beliefs and values, the real problem was not so evident, even if we were living off the riches of the past; but when, as now, that situation no longer applies, the inadequacy of our ecclesiology has become glaringly apparent.

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Orthodox Christian Synergy is a pan-Orthodox organization consisting of clergy and lay representatives of Chicago-area Orthodox Christian parishes who seek to project awareness of Orthodox Christianity to the public at large. Synergy works together with its parent organization, the Orthodox Christian Clergy Association of Greater Chicago, and with the blessings of the Chicago-area Orthodox Hierarchs.

The topic of Synergy’s 2011 Symposium was “Orthodox Christianity and Homosexuality,” and featured was Fr. Thomas Hopko, Dean Emeritus of St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Seminary and the author of Christian Faith and Same-Sex Attraction: Eastern Orthodox Reflections. The gathering took place at St. George Antiochian Orthodox Church in Cicero, Illinois, on Saturday, October 15, 2011.

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(Please note that this is an article about the op-ed which is the post previous to this one–KSH).

The Archbishop of York has urged the Government to introduce a radical overhaul of the tax system and called for greed to be made as socially unacceptable as racism and homophobia.

Dr John Sentamu claimed many of the wealthiest in society are avoiding paying their dues in a stinging attack on the growing divide between Britain’s rich and poor.

Highlighting the growing gulf between the poorest sections of society and the nation’s uber-wealthy, Dr Sentamu also said those who have accumulated the biggest fortunes should not be included on the Queen’s Honours List.

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Top pay has been found to bear little or no relation to company performance, but even if it did, isn’t the performance of a company dependent on the work and well-being of all its staff?

Among the ill effects of very large income differences between rich and poor are that they weaken community life and make societies less cohesive.

If the concept of the Big Society is to become a reality, so that people come to know and take more care of each other, income differences must surely be reduced.

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A few days before Billy Graham’s birthday, his evangelistic association has delivered a present for posterity.

It comes in the form of hundreds of audio files of Graham sermons, speeches and comments that stretch back six decades – all available with the click of a mouse.

Some 900 of the files were collected from Graham crusades around the world. The public can also hear the evangelist’s remarks from events ranging from Lyndon Johnson’s funeral to Graham’s final crusade in 2005.

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While their ages, backgrounds and styles were different, [Maria] Calef and [Daniel] Wilkes delivered the same message to passers-by Wednesday morning.
Calef hoisted a yellow poster board that read, “Which corporation decides legislation?”
Wilkes held a white sign that said, “People’s needs over corporate greed.”
The two are part of the Occupy Columbia movement, an evolving group who have settled in at the State House, creating a protest culture of sharing and open dialogue.

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Bishop Richard [Chartres], for his part, made clear that he was not about to issue detailed policy prescriptions for the world of finance: “The church doesn’t and shouldn’t claim ordination gives you a tremendously privileged insight into how to solve the euro-zone problems.” Asked whether that implied a difference between himself and his boss, Bishop Richard replied teasingly that he would study the Financial Times article with great respect, given its author’s credentials as a prominent European intellectual. As a proof of the two men’s continuing personal closeness, he cited their common interest in Russian Orthodox theology and culture””a topic on which the number of potential conversation partners is limited.

But despite the chaotic image it presented this week, the Church of England looks more likely to trundle on eccentrically than to break into establishment and anti-capitalist camps. Buildings like St Paul’s are part of the reason. No matter how compelling the demands of the poor and angry, which faction would ever agree to abandon the cathedrals?

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O Lord God, who hast revealed in holy Scripture what conquests faith has made both in doing, and in suffering: Grant us no smaller faith than that which overcometh the whole world, that Jesus thy Son is God, very God from the beginning, the First and the Last, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, world without end.

Then he made the disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, but the boat by this time was many furlongs distant from the land, beaten by the waves; for the wind was against them. And in the fourth watch of the night he came to them, walking on the sea. But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, “It is a ghost!” And they cried out for fear. But immediately he spoke to them, saying, “Take heart, it is I; have no fear.”

–Matthew 14:22-27

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Self-styled as “the premier forum for our international economic co-operation”, the Group of 20’s latest summit failed to live up to its central ambition to create “strong, stable and balanced” global economic growth.

As they arrived in Cannes, the leaders of countries representing 85 per cent of global output found the agenda dominated by political turmoil in Greece and a eurozone crisis too hot for the G20 to handle. They had little success in making progress on their medium-term goals.

The G20 all but admitted that the so-called “Doha round” of trade talks, launched in December 2001, was dead; it produced an action plan for growth and jobs that committed countries to almost nothing they were not already pursuing; and left the international monetary system almost unchanged.

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Despite this year’s vote by South Sudan for independence, churches in Sudan and South Sudan have decided to remain united, mainly to help denominations in Muslim-majority Sudan.

Bishops of the Roman Catholic Church on 28 October approved maintaining one conference covering the two states, alluding to shared history and existing “very real practical human links.” In July, the Episcopal (Anglican) Church decided to remain one body for the next two years and the Sudan Council of Churches has also said it will not split.

“It’s more about solidarity,” observed John Ashworth, an advisor with the Sudan Ecumenical Forum, which enhances churches’ work for peace in Sudan, on 3 November.

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At St. Swithuns Church in Retford, services have dropped to a maximum of 20 people, most of them retired.

St. Swithuns Team Rector Rev. Tony Walker said the biggest challenge is that people no longer feel a commitment to be a regular part of the church community.

“There are plenty of people who still see St. Swithuns as their church, but it’s their church that they don’t come to very often,” he said. “But they want it there for weddings and funerals and baptisms.”

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Perhaps it’s easy to see how the two men’s theological differences inform their views of family, but they also yield different understandings of the path to economic advancement.

Mr. Cain’s church subscribes to traditional Christian theology, which sees the black experience in light of scripture. Mr. Obama’s former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, on the other hand, is known for teaching black liberation theology, which sees scripture in light of the black experience. It seeks to create a direct correlation between the black condition and the light of God’s revelation in Jesus Christ. The freedom they gained from whites is a part of the freedom Jesus promised.

According to Antioch’s website, its early leaders “stressed the dignity of work and honest labor.” By contrast, Trinity’s website emphasizes God’s displeasure with “America’s economic mal-distribution.” It’s not surprising, then, that President Obama would see a government-run jobs program as the key to ending the current economic recession whereas Mr. Cain would look to private industry…

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Many of the proposals, which were compiled by a special church commission, seem in keeping with Christian mores: no investing in companies that manufacture guns or pornography; avoid investing in countries that are considered dictatorships or that present a risk to the environment.

The guidelines say investing in the alcohol industry is appropriate, so long as the beverages contain no more than 15 percent alcohol by volume.

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