The Archbishop of Canterbury today called for the leaders in South Sudan to cease hostilities immediately and accept mediation.

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Eliot Waddingham, 24, a transgender person from Ottawa, said tension over the vote was palpable.

“It is breaking my heart that there are people who see gay marriage as a separation from God and from love,” said Waddingham, a longtime Anglican attending the synod as an observer.

“I think ‘no’ would be a death sentence for our church. It would be driving off the edge of a cliff.”

To pass, the resolution to change the marriage cannon requires two-thirds of the delegates to vote yes in each of three orders ”” lay, clergy and bishops. The bishops’ group indicated in February that the threshold would likely not be met. Indigenous bishops have also said they would resist having “Western cultural approaches” imposed on them.

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Fearful that the nation is locked in a spiral of violence and discord, many Americans took what refuge they could in church on Sunday. In tiny storefronts and suburban megachurches, worshipers mourned the deaths of five Dallas police officers at the hands of an African-American sniper who was aiming to kill white officers at a demonstration against police violence. They also grieved for two African-American men killed in shootings by the police in Baton Rouge, La., and Minnesota.

Some prayed for the souls of the men who pulled the triggers. Some thanked God for the sacrifices the police made daily to protect their cities. Some thanked God for the technology that allowed the world to see controversial acts of police violence toward African-Americans.

At St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan spoke of a country “worried, frustrated and fatigued over senseless violence.”

“From Minnesota to Louisiana and Texas, one nation under God examines its soul,” he said. “Sadness and heaviness is especially present in our African-American and law enforcement communities.”

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Read them carefull and read them all.

My dear people of God,

We have recently celebrated the festival of St Thomas the Apostle (July 3rd) who is often known as ”˜doubting Thomas’, but we have from his lips one of the great statements of the New Testament about the true glory and nature of Jesus Christ. When he sees the wounds of the Risen Christ, Thomas exclaims ”˜My Lord and my God’ (John 20:28) and we who by those wounds have been healed from the deadly sickness of sin join in with our heartfelt ”˜Amen’ to the Apostles’ words.

This exclamation of worship draws from Jesus a wonderful promise. He says ”˜Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed’. That promise should be a powerful encouragement to us as we press on to preach the gospel. Since the ascension of Jesus and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the first day of Pentecost, believing comes not through seeing, but hearing.

In two years’ time, Anglican leaders from around the world will gather in Jerusalem for our third Global Anglican Future Conference, GAFCON 2018. Blessed indeed were those who believed as the Holy Spirit was poured out in that place on the first Pentecost and may the Lord grant us in our time a season of refreshing before we are sent out again to bear witness to the Risen Christ.

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“It is always dangerous to draw too precise parallels between one historical period and another; and among the most misleading of such parallels are those which have been drawn between our own age in Europe and North America and the epoch in which the Roman Empire declined into the Dark Ages. None the less certain parallels there are. A crucial turning point in that earlier history occurred when men and women of good will turned aside from the task of shoring up the Roman imperium and ceased to identify the continuation of civility and moral community with the maintenance of that imperium. What they set themselves to achieve instead””often not recognising fully what they were doing””was the construction of new forms of community within which the moral life could be sustained so that both morality and civility might survive the coming ages of barbarism and darkness. If my account of our moral condition is correct [one characterized by moral incoherence and unsettlable moral disputes in the modern world], we ought to conclude that for some time now we too have reached that turning point. What matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us. And if the tradition of the virtues was able to survive the horrors of the last dark ages, we are not entirely without grounds for hope. This time however the barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have already been governing us for quite some time. And it is our lack of consciousness of this that constitutes part of our predicament. We are waiting not for a Godot, but for another–doubtless very different–St. Benedict.”

–Alisdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (Terre Haute, Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 3rd. ed., 2007), p. 263

Update: Peter Leithardt’s comments on this are also worth pondering:

“The turning point, he says, occurred with a renunciation of the “task of shoring up the Roman imperium,” which required “men and women of good will” to begin to distinguish between sustaining moral community and maintaining the empire. Roman civilization was no longer seen as synonymous with civilization itself. Mutatis muntandis, this is the intellectual and practical transformation that has to take place before we can begin to construct “local forms of community” for the flourishing of civility and intellectual life. We need to acknowledge that our task isn’t to shore up America, or the West, or whatever. If we promote local communities of virtue as a tactic for shoring up the imperium, we haven’t really grasped MacIntyre’s point, or the depth of the crisis he described.

That renunciation is as emotionally difficult as the project of forming local communities is practically difficult.”

Almighty and everlasting God, whose precepts are the wisdom of a loving Father: Give us grace, following the teaching and example of thy servant Benedict, to walk with loving and willing hearts in the school of the Lord’s service; let thine ears be open unto our prayers; and prosper with thy blessing the work of our hands; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

St Benedict, whose feast is July 11, in the 10th-century Benedictional of St Æthelwold (BL Add. 49598, f.99v): pic.twitter.com/U6M7w8RmzF

— Eleanor Parker (@ClerkofOxford) July 11, 2016

Almighty God, who in thy Son Jesus Christ hast called us in from the bondage of sin to be servants of righteousness: Give us grace to yield our lives wholly to thine obedience; that, being made free from sin, we may have our fruit unto holiness, and hereafter may be made partakers of the life everlasting; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.

To thee, O Lord, I lift up my soul.
O my God, in thee I trust,
let me not be put to shame;
let not my enemies exult over me.
Yea, let none that wait for thee be put to shame;
let them be ashamed who are wantonly treacherous.

Make me to know thy ways, O Lord;
teach me thy paths.
Lead me in thy truth, and teach me,
for thou art the God of my salvation;
for thee I wait all the day long.

–Psalm 25:1-4

No excuses for France, they were the home team and there was no Ronaldo after about 20 minutes in and they just weren’t good enough. An ugly win is still a win but congrats to Portugal

HOLDEN: Well, there’s probably nothing more devastating than that. And so we call what we do, primarily in that regard, ministry of presence. Sometimes it’s not just saying something. It’s just being there and letting them know that we care. You know, I’ve been through a number of police funerals, and it’s never ever easy, as you can imagine.

MARTIN: Your group has deployed chaplains to places like Ferguson and Baltimore where there’s been so much unrest in recent years – days of rioting, emotions so raw. What – what’s your role in those situations?

HOLDEN: We work with the community and the police department. So we’re there to just pray with people, hug people – we do a lot of hugging just to let them know we care, and certainly with the department as well – but also to try to be a balance between the community and the police department and to be out there in the streets. We – we’ve become very proactive, just talking with people, you know, just letting them know that we’re there for them, whatever their needs might be.

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