“I’m going to give it attention,” [Greg] Rickel said. “I want to discern the differences between the covenant and what’s actually on the ground.”
Rickel is an optimistic man. St. James was turned into a flourishing multicultural congregation, 40 percent African-American, 40 percent white and 20 percent Hispanic.
He was active in interfaith relations, and has trained as a presenter in Al Gore’s effort to slow global warning.
“It’s a stewardship issue,” Rickel said. “We are caretakers of God’s creation. The church has a role to be stewards of the resources that God has given us. It’s an issue of faith.”
The new bishop brings wit to the job. Brought up a Methodist, he attended a Catholic high school in Little Rock, whose principal tried to interest him in becoming a Roman Catholic priest.
“I told him, ‘I like girls. I think the pope is sometimes silly. And I don’t like it at communion when you send me to the end of the row.’
“He replied, ‘You sound like a damned Episcopalian.’ ”
perhaps ‘wit’ is what those future priests need…
Perhaps a backbone or at least some gristle might be helpful. It’s shameful that the Diocese of Olympia could see the area grow like mad, and their congregations shrink! What’s been going on out there? Apparently not preaching the gospel or living it either. Frankly, if I were bishop out there, I’d be inviting Mark Driscoll to come and teach my priests on what it looks like to reach that region with the gospel of Jesus Christ.
[blockquote] “I told him, ‘I like girls…
“He replied, ‘You sound like a damned Episcopalian.’ ”
[/blockquote]
That would not have been my first thought on such a declaration.
He is going to need all the humor he can muster with all the shenanigans in the Dio. of Olympia; a Moslim/Episcopal priest, a previously fired but now hired gay ecstasy rave massing priest, and now all the trouble at the cathedral with the very much rumored imminent departure of the “gay Dean” in tar and feathers for sundry offenses.
[b]New Episcopal Bishop in Olympia brings wit to the job[/b]
How about:
New Epsicopal Bishop in Olympia brings [b]strong faith in Christ, dedication to traditional Christian theology[/b] to the job?
Now that’s a headline I’d like to read.
[i]New Epsicopal Bishop in Olympia brings strong faith in Christ, dedication to traditional Christian theology to the job? [/i] I know Greg Rickel and he will be a strong asset to the diocese and TEC. LibraryJim, do you know anything about him other than what you read in this article? Rickel+ has a very strong faith in Christ, and while your definition of “traditional” might not match up with his, you should at least attend a service he leads before you judge him as “untraditional.”
The fact that he buys into Al Gore’s global warming BS demonstrates that he is a few wafers shy of a full communion plate!
Re:#7
Dave B,
Generally I don’t think someone’s politics should be regarded as a good measure of their religious orthodoxy. As I have noted elsewhere God is not (contrary to widespread rumors) a registered Republican. Christians can in good faith disagree on all sorts of political matters as long as they are not intrinsic to the faith (i.e. abortion).
There are a lot of issues where I do not fit neatly into a political box. I am conservative on some issues, liberal on others and libertarian on many. And I have met some rock solid conservative Republicans who are several fries short of the theological happy meal. Politics are secular and with a few exceptions should not to be confused with Christian doctrine.
I like Bishop-elect Rickel. I very much appreciate that his mother disciplined him about his attitude toward Blacks. I hope she will remind him to put his chewing gum aside [b] before[/b] the Consecration (Seating!)
Wamark (#4), what is this about “the very much rumored imminent departure of the “gay Dean†in tar and feathers for sundry offenses?”
Ad Orientem : I don’t view environmental concerns as either conservative or liberal. The source and reason for global warming is not well understood. Al Gore is so concerned about global warming that he owns a house that uses twenty times the energy of the average American home. He owns land in Arkansaw that is used by Ocidental Petrolum to pollute the Chaney river. Yet Al Gore lectures on carbon footprints, pollution and the environment? I feel the Bishop is not fully informed on this issue is my point. A few fries short of a happy meal is great!
[blockquote]Al Gore is so concerned about global warming that he owns a house that uses twenty times the energy of the average American home.[/blockquote]
How small a house must someone own before they are allowed to express concern over global warming? Is there an actual maximum square footage requirement?
Is it possible that because Gore is basically a consultant some significant portion of his house is actually his office?
#9 I have heard from a very reliable clergy source that the cathedral here is in turmoil over the the firing by the dean of three women clergy several months back…supposed budget shortages…but the money saved from the firings or at least a portion of it was rolled over into the dean’s rather handsome salary. The three women fired were, I was told, lesbians and, of course, this has set the gay community against him (St. Mark’s is on Capitol Hill the center of Seattle gay community). Moreover, the Dean’s original boyfriend who moved here with him when he took the post was recently been booted out of the cleric’s fashionable digs in favor of a new boyfriend and this, apparently, has not gone over at all well. I further understand that the dean is now accompanied to all public meetings at the cathedral by his attorney and that he answers no questions regarding his accountability or roll in the issues at hand in the cathedral. I was told a buy out is in the works and that he can’t get out of town fast enough to suit himself or anyone else for that matter. Some of this has been reported in the Seattle newspapers.
I vaguely recall reading something in Scripture about gossip….
Tegularius There are some very large eco friendly houses that use very little carbon energy, Passive solar, photo votaic panels, ground loop heat exchangers, wind turbines. President Bush’s Crawford Texas house is very eco friendly. This is not about Gore and Bush politically, it is about thier environmental choices. Has nothing to do with the size of the house, has to do with the willingness to pony up the cash to make it work. Gore seems to want everybody else to change thier life while he continues on his merry way. Their are many inaccuracies and distortions in the movie “An Inconvenant Truth” and the Bishop should have realized that.
#9:
It’s true that there has been some bad feeling around three women (two of them priests) being laid off (not fired) at about the same time that the Dean got a substantial pay raise. As I recall the explanation was that the Dean’s salary comes from a different source than the rest of the staff payroll, so it wasn’t possible to move money from one to the other… but I have no idea what the truth of that is. Even if it is true, it certainly looks bad.
One of the clergy laid off was the Rev. Ann Holmes Redding, who has acquired some infamy on this blog. The other was the Rev. Janet Campbell, who I’ve worked with on occasion. The third person, the arts program administrator Heather Hodsdon, I didn’t know. If any of them are lesbians, it’s news to me — it didn’t get mentioned in any of the news stories that I saw at the time, at least.
It seems as though at least part of your story got garbled in transmission.
Oops, that was a reply to #12 wamark, not #9 — sorry.
Revamundo,
I don’t believe I stated anything [i]ABOUT[/i] the Bishop-elect in my post, only what I would like to see in a headline. The words in my version reflect what I expect to see in a Bishop. A sense of wit is good, but that is hardly the trait that most qualifies one to be Bishop.
If he is a strong Biblical Christian, than I pray God will strengthen that in him and allow him the grace to proclaim it boldly. If not, I pray God will instill that in him and give him the grace to proclaim it boldly, as well.
heh. Just had a thought. It’d be nice to see a Bishop-elect (anywhere) give out a Bible to each member of the parish the way Peter Jensen is planning in Sydney. 🙂
oops, that should read:
[b]Archbishop Peter Jensen[/b]. “Didn’t mean no disrecpect, guv’nor!”
#7…DaveB Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt. Open your eyes!
NOAA Affirms Predictions of Sea Ice Loss
By DAN JOLING Associated Press Writer
Sep 7th, 2007 | ANCHORAGE, Alaska — An analysis of 20 years’ worth of real-life observations supports recent U.N. computer predictions that by 2050, summer sea ice off Alaska’s north coast will probably shrink to nearly half the area it covered in the 1980s, federal scientists say.
Such a loss could have profound effects on mammals dependent on the sea ice, such as polar bears, now being considered for threatened species status because of changes in habitat due to global warming. It could also threaten the catch of fishermen.
In the 1980s, sea ice receded 30 to 50 miles each summer off the north coast, said James Overland, a Seattle-based oceanographer for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“Now we’re talking about 300 to 500 miles north of Alaska,” he said of projections for 2050.
That’s far past the edge of the highly productive waters over the relatively shallow continental shelf, considered important habitat for polar bears and their main prey, ringed seals, as well as other ice-dependent mammals, such as walrus.
The NOAA researchers reviewed 20 computer scenarios of the effects of warming on sea ice, used by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its assessment report released this year.
The researchers compared those models with observations from 1979 through 1999, Overland said, and concluded that the summer ice in the Beaufort Sea likely will have diminished by 40 percent, compared with its 1980s area.
The same is likely for the East Siberian-Chukchi Sea region off northwest Alaska and Russia. In contrast, Canada’s Baffin Bay and Labrador showed little predicted change.
There was less confidence for winter ice, but the models also predict a sea ice loss of more than 40 percent for the Bering Sea off Alaska’s west coast, the Sea of Okhotsk east of Siberia and the Barents Sea north of Norway.
The research paper by Overland and Muyin Wang, a NOAA meteorologist, will be published Saturday in Geophysical Research Letters, a publication of the American Geophysical Union.
The situation is dire for polar bears, said Kassie Siegel of the Center for Biological Diversity, who wrote the petition seeking federal protection for the animals.
“They’re going to drown, they’re going to starve, they’re going to resort to cannibalism, they’re going to become extinct,” she said.
As ice recedes, many bears will get stuck on land in summer, where they have virtually no sustainable food source, Siegel said. Some will try and fail to swim to sea ice, she said.
Bears that stay on sea ice will find water beyond the continental shelf to be less productive, she said, and females trying to den on land in the fall will face a long swim.
“It’s absolutely horrifying from the polar bear perspective,” she said.
Less sea ice also will mean a changing ecosystem for commercial fishermen and marine mammals in the Bering Sea, Overland said.
With sea ice present, many of the nutrients produced in the ocean feed simple plankton that bloom and sink to the ocean floor, providing rich habitat for crabs, clams and the mammals that feed on them, including gray whales and walrus.
“If you don’t have the ice around, the productivity stays up closer to the surface of the ocean,” Overland said. “You actually have a change in the whole ecosystem from one that depends on the animals that live on the bottom to one that depends on the animals that live in the water column. So you have winners and losers.”
That could mean short-term gains for salmon and pollock, he said. But it also could mean that fishermen will have to travel farther north to fish in Alaska’s productive waters, and warm-water predators might move north.
The contribution to warming by greenhouse gas emissions likely is set, he said. Emissions stay in the atmosphere for 40 to 50 years before the ocean absorbs them. The amount emitted in the past 20 years and the carbon dioxide put out in the next 20 will linger, Overland said.
“I’m afraid to say, a lot of the images we are going to see in the next 30 to 40 years are pretty much already established,” he said.
Revamundo please read post number 10 again. I do not deny global warming. I don’t think the reason is clearly understood. The temperature on Mars has risen by the same amount as the earths temperature. If this increase in earth’s temperature is related to solar activity as some scientists believe we have little control. If it is caused by mans activity, Al Gore spending twenty times the average energy on his personel living indicates he will not modify his behavior to conform to his beliefs. Only thing worse than a limosine liberal is a Gulf Stream conservationist! Some scientests believe that this is part of a ten year solar cycle and we will start having a “chill” soon, over the next two years that will last about ten years.
You might want to check out thesse articles from [url=http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs]the Senate Committee on the Environment[/url] :
[blockquote]SURVEY: LESS THAN HALF OF ALL PUBLISHED SCIENTISTS ENDORSE GLOBAL WARMING THEORY; COMPREHENSIVE SURVEY OF PUBLISHED CLIMATE RESEARCH REVEALS CHANGING VIEWPOINTS
Michael Asher
August 29, 2007 11:07 AM
In 2004, history professor Naomi Oreskes performed a survey of research papers on climate change. Examining peer-reviewed papers published on the ISI Web of Science database from 1993 to 2003, she found a majority supported the “consensus view,” defined as humans were having at least some effect on global climate change. Oreskes’ work has been repeatedly cited, but as some of its data is now nearly 15 years old, its conclusions are becoming somewhat dated.
Medical researcher Dr. Klaus-Martin Schulte recently updated this research. Using the same database and search terms as Oreskes, he examined all papers published from 2004 to February 2007. The results have been submitted to the journal Energy and Environment, of which DailyTech has obtained a pre-publication copy. The figures are surprising.
Of 528 total papers on climate change, only 38 (7%) gave an explicit endorsement of the consensus. If one considers “implicit” endorsement (accepting the consensus without explicit statement), the figure rises to 45%. However, while only 32 papers (6%) reject the consensus outright, the largest category (48%) are neutral papers, refusing to either accept or reject the hypothesis. This is no “consensus.”
The figures are even more shocking when one remembers the watered-down definition of consensus here. Not only does it not require supporting that man is the “primary” cause of warming, but it doesn’t require any belief or support for “catastrophic” global warming. In fact of all papers published in this period (2004 to February 2007), only a single one makes any reference to climate change leading to catastrophic results.
These changing viewpoints represent the advances in climate science over the past decade. While today we are even more certain the earth is warming, [b]we are less certain about the root causes.[/b] More importantly, research has shown us that — whatever the cause may be — the amount of warming is unlikely to cause any great calamity for mankind or the planet itself.
Schulte’s survey contradicts the United Nation IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report (2007), which gave a figure of “90% likely” man was having an impact on world temperatures. [/blockquote]
There was another article that said, in part:
[blockquote]New Peer-Reviewed Scientific Studies Chill Global Warming Fears
Posted By Marc Morano
Washington DC – An abundance of new peer-reviewed studies, analysis, and data error discoveries in the last several months has prompted scientists to declare that fear of catastrophic man-made global warming “bites the dust†and the scientific underpinnings for alarm may be “falling apart.†The latest study to cast doubt on climate fears finds that even a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide would not have the previously predicted dire impacts on global temperatures. This new study is not unique, as a host of recent peer-reviewed studies have cast a chill on global warming fears.
“Anthropogenic (man-made) global warming bites the dust,†declared astronomer Dr. Ian Wilson after reviewing the new study which has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Geophysical Research. Another scientist said the peer-reviewed study overturned “in one fell swoop†the climate fears promoted by the UN and former Vice President Al Gore. The study entitled “Heat Capacity, Time Constant, and Sensitivity of Earth’s Climate System,†was authored by Brookhaven National Lab scientist Stephen Schwartz. (LINK)
“Effectively, this (new study) means that the global economy will spend trillions of dollars trying to avoid a warming of ~ 1.0 K by 2100 A.D.†[/blockquote]
But, hey, this is supposed to be a thread about the Bishop-elect, not Gorbal Warming!
Thanks Jim. It was my point that Bishop Rickel jumped on the band wagon of Global Warming and “An Inconviant Truth” with out understanding the full isssue. It speaks to a lack of research and analytical thinking in an arena out side of his expertise (much like many of my comments).
MYTH: The science of global warming is too uncertain to act on.
FACT: There is no debate among scientists about the basic facts of global warming.
The most respected scientific bodies have stated unequivocally that global warming is occurring, and people are causing it by burning fossil fuels (like coal, oil and natural gas) and cutting down forests. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences, which in 2005 the White House called “the gold standard of objective scientific assessment,” issued a joint statement with 10 other National Academies of Science saying “the scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action. It is vital that all nations identify cost-effective steps that they can take now, to contribute to substantial and long-term reduction in net global greenhouse gas emissions.” (Joint Statement of Science Academies: Global Response to Climate Change [PDF], 2005)
The only debate in the science community about global warming is about how much and how fast warming will continue as a result of heat-trapping emissions. Scientists have given a clear warning about global warming, and we have more than enough facts — about causes and fixes — to implement solutions right now.
Global Warming by the Numbers
Challenge is Clear for the New Congress
Posted: 16-Jan-2007; Updated: 30-Aug-2007
1 Rank of 2006 as hottest year on record in the continental United States.
1 Rank of America as top global warming polluter in the world.
20 Percent increase of America’s carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels since 1990.
15 Percent increase of America’s carbon dioxide emissions forecasted by 2020 if we do not cap pollution.
80 Percent decrease in U.S. global warming pollution required by 2050 to prevent the worst consequences of global warming.
78 Number of days by which the US fire season has increased over the past 20 years – tied closely to increased temperatures and earlier snowmelt.
200MM Number of people around the world who could be displaced by more intense droughts, sea level rise and flooding by 2080.
358 Number of U.S. mayors (representing 55 million Americans) who have signed the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement pledging to meet or beat Kyoto goals in their communities.
0 Number of federal bills passed to cap America’s global warming pollution.
0 no wait…1 Number of times President Bush has mentioned “climate change” or “global warming” in his previous six State of the Union speeches.
Revamundo Not so quick. Claude Allegre, one of France’s leading socialists and among her most celebrated scientists, was among the first to sound the alarm about the dangers of global warming. He now denies global warming. Read his bio. I think he is very qualified on this subject. But again this is about Bishop Rickel and as we can see there is much controversy here. It still doesn’t explain why Al Gore uses so much carbon energy!
revamundo, Not just a leading French scientist, but respected Canadian, Russian, Australian, New Zealand, and American scientists demur on this subject and say that humans are not responsible for whatever global warming we are perhaps seeing. I just wonder, revamundo, if your rants are due to the kool-aid you have been drinking or the rope you have been smoking. It certainly isn’t due to any substantive articles or research on the subject that you have been reading.
[i] This thread is about the Bishop of Olympia, not global warming. Please return to the original topic. [/i] -Elf Lady
[i]I just wonder, revamundo, if your rants are due to the kool-aid you have been drinking or the rope you have been smoking.[/i]
What a nice thing to say! I’m moved to tears by your kindness.
Greg Rickel is a smart, devoted, Christ-inspired man who will make a wonderful bishop for TEC.
Revamundo, So glad I could be of assistance to you. thank you for your compliment. As far as Rickel goes only time will tell.
Elf lady, sorry to have helped thread to wonder off topic.