The Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles elected a lesbian as assistant bishop Saturday, the second openly gay bishop in the global Anglican fellowship, which is already deeply fractured over the first.

The Rev. Mary Glasspool of Baltimore needs approval from a majority of national church leaders before she can be consecrated as assistant bishop in the Los Angeles diocese.

Still, her victory underscored a continued Episcopal commitment to accepting same-sex relationships despite enormous pressure from other Anglicans to change their stand.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • TEC Conflicts • TEC Conflicts: Los Angeles • Instruments of Unity • Sexuality Debate (in Anglican Communion) • Same-sex blessings

For a time, the Episcopal Church sought to discourage the elevation of gay and lesbian priests as bishops in hopes that strains in the 70-million-member Anglican Communion would be reduced. But the move failed to stem growing disenchantment by conservatives alarmed by the ordination of gays and lesbians, and what they saw as liberal interpretations of the Bible.

In the U.S. some Episcopal parishes, including four Los Angeles parishes, and several dioceses bolted from the national church and aligned themselves with conservative Anglican bishops in Africa and South America. So great were the possibilities of schism that the archbishop of Canterbury, the spiritual leader of the Anglican Communion, implored the American church to go no farther.

But in July, the Episcopal Church reversed course at its national convention in Anaheim, voting to open the top echelons of the church to gays and lesbians. The Los Angeles diocese is the first to test that policy.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • TEC Conflicts • TEC Conflicts: Los Angeles • Sexuality Debate (in Anglican Communion) • Same-sex blessings

Received via email--KSH.

Maryland priest selected in balloting to fill one of two positions

By Bob Williams

[Riverside, Calif.] -- The six-county Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles has elected the Rev. Canon Mary Glasspool, canon to the bishops of the Baltimore-based Diocese of Maryland, to the office of bishop suffragan, in which she is called to assist Bishop Diocesan J. Jon Bruno in ministry to the region's 70,000 parishioners.

Glasspool, 55, was elected Dec. 5 on the seventh ballot taken by some 800 clergy and lay delegates to the 114th Annual Meeting of Diocesan Convention, gathered in Riverside, Calif., as the diocese's chief legislative body.

The Convention on Dec. 4 also elected the Rev. Canon Diane Bruce to the office of bishop suffragan. Glasspool and Bruce were part of a slate of six candidates nominated by a 24-member diocesan committee.

The second woman to be elected a bishop in the diocese's 114-year history, Glasspool is also the first openly partnered lesbian to be elected a bishop in the Episcopal Church, which includes some 2.4 million members in 109 dioceses in 16 nations. She is the 17th woman to be elected a bishop in the Episcopal Church; its House of Bishops includes some 300 active and retired members.

Read more...

Filed under:

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • TEC Conflicts • TEC Conflicts: Los Angeles • Sexuality Debate (in Anglican Communion) • Same-sex blessings

This decision represents an intransigent embrace of a pattern of life Christians throughout history and the world have rejected as against biblical teaching. It will add further to the Episcopal Church's incoherent witness and chaotic common life, and it will continue to do damage to the Anglican Communion and her relationship with our ecumenical partners.

--The Rev. Dr. Kendall Harmon is Canon Theologian of the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • TEC Conflicts • TEC Conflicts: Los Angeles • Global South Churches & Primates • Instruments of Unity • Sexuality Debate (in Anglican Communion) • Same-sex blessings • Windsor Report / Process • * Christian Life / Church Life • Church History • * Religion News & Commentary • Ecumenical Relations • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

On the 7th ballot.

Filed under:

Though there are few Jews in Montana today, there once were many. In the late 19th century, there were thriving Jewish populations in the mining towns, where Jews emigrated to work as butchers, clothiers, jewelers, tailors and the like.

The city of Butte had kosher markets, a Jewish mayor, a B’nai B’rith lodge and three synagogues. Helena, the capital city, had Temple Emanu-El, built in 1891 with a seating capacity of 500. The elegant original facade still stands, but the building was sold and converted to offices in the 1930s, when the congregation had dwindled to almost nothing, the Jewish population having mostly assimilated or moved on to bigger cities.

There is a Jewish cemetery in Helena, too, with tombstones dating to 1866. But more Jews are buried in Helena than currently live here.

And yet, in a minor revival, Montana now has three rabbis, two in Bozeman and one (appropriately) in Whitefish. They were all at the Capitol on the first night of Hannukah last year to light a menorah in the ornate Capitol rotunda, amid 100-year-old murals depicting Sacajawea meeting Lewis and Clark, the Indians beating Custer, and the railway being built. The security officer and the dog followed the rabbi into the rotunda, to size him up.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

[Dick] Witherow is a tall, spare man, 76 years old, a former private detective.

Shortly after he entered the ministry some 30 years ago, he began working in prisons, holding prayer services and doing addiction counseling.

Then, about a decade ago, he began focusing on sex offenders. After some horrific sex crimes involving children, Florida became one of the first states to pass laws restricting where sex offenders could live after they're released from prison — effectively banning them from some communities.

Take the time to listen to it all (a little over 7 1/2 minutes). I sometimes ask myself if Jesus were to come to earth now as opposed to when he did, where would we find him. My answer--doing something like this--KSH.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Prison/Prison Ministry • Religion & Culture • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology • Pastoral Theology

Read it all.

His parish chart is here.

His information as provided for the process is there

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops

An ecumenical church service was held before the march in St Leo the Great Roman Catholic Church in Beech Avenue, Bellahouston.

It was attended by the Right Reverend Bill Hewitt, Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, Cardinal Keith O'Brien, leader of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland and the Most Reverend David Chillingworth, Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church.

Mr Hewitt said: "We need to be sure that the negotiators gathered in Copenhagen are aware of our support and our belief in the importance of their task."

Cardinal O'Brien added: "People from all faiths and none will suffer the effects of catastrophic climate change if world leaders fail to deal with the problem."

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Climate Change, Weather • Religion & Culture • Science & Technology • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • --Scotland • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

The link is here.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • TEC Diocesan Conventions

After the Vatican invited Anglicans to return to the Catholic fold, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, went to Rome. He met the Pope and his cardinals, and the holy father will reciprocate next year in Canterbury.

The invitation allows Anglicans to retain their distinctive customs, but the unavoidable conclusion is that millions of Anglicans would, for the first time in 470 years, kneel and accept the Pope as boss. I expect the meetings in Rome have begun an inexorable reabsorption of the Anglican Church into the world's oldest institution. The church created by the charismatic King Henry VIII has found its current archbishop, an undertaker, appearing to see his mission as an orderly burial.

Read more...

Filed under:

The cardinal, however, said in a statement sent to ZENIT on Thursday that his words were taken out of context. The cardinal said he was referencing the Bible, specifically St. Paul's Letter to the Romans, 1:26-27, which says (in part), "Males did shameful things with males and thus received in their own persons the due penalty for their perversity."

"This is what the Word of God says, it isn't what I said," Cardinal Lozano Barragán affirmed. "Now, I have never said that a particular homosexual cannot be saved, because he can be saved."

"Many times one is not a homosexual through one's own fault; it all depends on one's education and environment," the prelate clarified.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Media • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • Sexuality Debate (Other denominations and faiths)

• Scriptural Authority. This is such a comprehensive dimension of our present crisis in the church that one hardly knows where to begin. But one can hardly do better than St. Ambrose’s statement that “the whole of Holy Scripture be a feast for the soul.” How seldom one hears upon us who are bishops in Tec such glowing statements about the Bible. In my experience all too many of our bishops and priests seem to mine the scriptures for minerals to use in vain idolatries. There is too little confidence expressed in its trustworthiness; the authority and uniqueness of revelation. Indeed, as J.V. Langmead-Casserly once put it, “We have developed a method of studying the Word of God from which a Word of God never comes.” Too often supposed conundrums or difficulties are brought up, seemingly in order to detract from traditional understandings, never considering the damage to the faithful’s trust in God and his Word. Ridiculous arguments such as shellfish and mixed fabrics are dragged out (long reconciled by the Fathers of the Church, as well as the Anglican Reformers) in order to confuse the ill-taught or the untutored in theology. And those who are intellectually sophisticated, schooled in many academic disciplines, but dreadfully untaught in the Bible and theology, are, through little fault of their own, except for naively trusting generations of slothful priests and bishops, are led astray. We must be willing to speak out against this.

--South Carolina Bishop Mark Lawrence in his special clergy day address earlier this year

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Adult Education • Ministry of the Ordained • Preaching / Homiletics • * Theology • Theology: Scripture

The Rev. Marcus Kaiser will be ordained a priest on Saturday, December 5 at a service beginning at 11 a.m. at Holy Comforter, Sumter, the wonderful parish where I served my curacy.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Ministry of the Ordained • * South Carolina

No, this isn't a joke; it's a new scene for American Christianity: Young guys in their 20s and 30s forming Christian communities in pubs, concert halls, cafes and art galleries.

In West Town, that guy is Mark Bergin, 29, who leads prayer meetings wearing a cap embroidered with the Guinness logo. The self-described "hot-dog-eating, baseball-loving, tool-owning missionary" is part of the church planting movement in the United States -- an effort to start thousands of churches a year that reach people in more culturally relevant ways.

When he moved from Seattle a few months ago to start a church on Chicago's West Side, he met more than 50 potential churchgoers by visiting neighborhood coffee houses and bars, including the Chipp Inn across from his house.

Read the whole article.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Evangelism and Church Growth • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Evangelicals

In the Episcopal Church, the late Bill Gordon is probably best known as the church’s youngest bishop.

In Alaska, he’s best known as a pilot.

The second plane of Gordon’s, aka “The Flying Bishop,” is being hung for display next week in the Morris Thompson Cultural and Visitors Center in downtown Fairbanks.

The yellow Piper PA-12 Super Cruiser with brown trim has a 35 1/2-foot wingspan and room for a pilot and two passengers.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • * Culture-Watch • Travel

John Lipscomb, the married, 59-year-old former bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Southwest Florida, was ordained a Catholic priest Wednesday.

The morning after, he expressed joy and a sense of relief. He's at peace, spiritually. He's just a priest now. He's not the boss.

"The part of the job that never fit was sitting in judgment of other people's lives," he said. "I'm at a point in my life where I want to do the things God called me to do, and not have to make the kinds of decisions that are impossible to make anyway."

"We're happy that John has found his place," said Jim DeLa, the Episcopal Diocese's director of communications. "If this is it for him, God bless him."

Read the whole article.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • Pope Benedict XVI • * Theology

The Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles elected the first woman bishop in its 114-year history today but had yet to decide whether to select an openly gay priest for a second bishop opening.

Clergy and lay leaders, meeting in Riverside for their annual convention, chose the Rev. Canon Diane M. Jardine Bruce, a local favorite from Orange County known for her financial expertise and ability to build up congregations.

Bruce, rector of St. Clement’s by-the-Sea Episcopal Church in San Clemente, edged out five other candidates, including two openly gay priests, for the first "suffragan" bishop post. Suffragan bishops assist a diocese’s primary bishop.

"All my life I have known that I have been called to serve God in Christ in God’s church," Bruce wrote in her biography on the diocese’s website.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • TEC Diocesan Conventions