In the cloistered world of Episcopal seminaries, time sometimes seems to stand still as clergy-in-training gather in stone chapels to pray in ways familiar to their forebears centuries earlier.

But the semblance of timelessness can be deceiving.

Some of the 11 seminaries affiliated with the Episcopal Church are slashing core programs, while others report rapid growth in enrollment. Still others are reexamining conventional wisdom about what it takes -- and how much it costs -- to shape a faithful priest.

The Episcopal method of training clergy "is a very expensive way to do theological education," said Daniel Aleshire, executive director of the Pittsburgh-based Association of Theological Schools. "There is significant financial stress in the Episcopal seminary system."

Centrist and liberal seminaries are facing especially hard times....

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • * Theology • Seminary / Theological Education

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: We have a report today on a conflict between solving crimes and protecting privacy. It's called "familial searching." Police can now take DNA from a crime scene and compare it to millions of DNA samples in a government database. If there is even a partial match, that could lead to the criminal by way of his or her family members if their DNA is in the database. And they could be completely innocent. Should that practice be legal? Lucky Severson reports.

Unidentified Man (working in lab): Stick it right back in there. Okay, and we'll close it up right there. And this is the same thing, these are ...

LUCKY SEVERSON: Three years ago, Pearl Wilson's son Charles died in a Maryland prison while awaiting sentencing for rape. But for his mother, her son lives on.

PEARL WILSON: My son lives in me and I in him, and his blood is my blood, and my blood was in him.

SEVERSON: Though Charles is dead his DNA still sits in a databank. By law DNA has to be gathered from all felons. Some states even take it from arrestees. The DNA profiles remain there indefinitely.

Ms. WILSON: I'm worried about them continuously holding my son's DNA in that database.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Marriage & Family • Science & Technology • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Pope Benedict, speaking a day after a California court ruled in favour of same-sex marriage, firmly restated on Friday the Roman Catholic Church's position that only unions between a man and a woman are moral.

Benedict made no mention of the California decision in his speech to family groups from throughout Europe, but stressed the Church's position several times.

"The union of love, based on matrimony between a man and a woman, which makes up the family, represents a good for all society that can not be substituted by, confused with, or compared to other types of unions," he said.

The pope also spoke of the inalienable rights of the traditional family, "founded on matrimony between a man and a woman, to be the natural cradle of human life".

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Filed under: * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • Pope Benedict XVI • Sexuality Debate (Other denominations and faiths) • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

The Trinity School for Ministry Board of Trustees announced today that the Rev. Dr. Justyn Terry has accepted an enthusiastic call by the board to become the new Dean and President, succeeding the Rt. Rev. Dr. John H. Rodgers, Trinity’s second Dean and President, who left retirement to serve as Interim Dean/President beginning in August 2007.

Chairman of the Board of Trustees the Rev. Canon David Roseberry said, “The Lord has blessed us indeed, as Justyn will assume the awesome responsibility of Trinity’s vital role as a bearer of an orthodox evangelical witness in North America.”

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • * Theology • Seminary / Theological Education

Transnational companies, many of whom have their headquarters in Britain, are legally and illegally withholding billions in taxes from some of the poorest countries in the world, Christian Aid says.

The money would be more than enough to meet all the UN Millennium Development Goals, states the development charity’s report, Death and Taxes, which was launched on Monday at the start of Christian Aid week. It estimates that 1000 children die each day from causes that the lost revenue could have alleviated.

Companies argue that they have a legal duty to minimise or avoid tax. But the report says that, although tax avoidance is legal, responsible companies should not seek aggressively to avoid the taxes that are needed to pay for the essential welfare services and infrastructure in developing countries.

Illegal tax-evasion schemes, such as transfer mispricing and false invoicing, account for $160 billion a year in lost revenue, it says. This figure reflects the research of Raymond Baker, a senior fellow at the US Center for International Policy. Donations from countries and aid agencies are “peanuts” compared to the wealth that has left poor countries in tax evasion.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Economy • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

After Dar es Salaam, a representative of the progressive position on sexuality encouraged the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church to ‘fast’ for a season from involvement in Communion affairs. That was sage counsel. The alternatives are simply keeping people close to the presenting issue without giving them any genuine way forward.

Our plea is then for the adherents of a new teaching in sexuality, and a principled view of Anglicanism as a worldwide federal reality, to take courage and move forward, and detach from an understanding of both of these issues, theological and ecclesiological, with which they disagree. There is no reason for this action to be the cause of any negative judgment whatsoever, and every reason for it to be applauded as principled, courageous, and a sign of consistent belief and consistent commitment. It is unclear why this view of the way forward is not enthusiastically embraced, as a principled commitment to a specific understanding of the Gospel and its demands.

It has become clear that mutual subjection in Christ, within a worldwide catholic Communion, is not a priority for certain American Episcopalians; it may also not be so for some Anglicans with opposing views, though their opposition emerged in the context of provocation. We see no reason whatever to contest this view or argue for its deficiency. Its logic is clear and time has allowed that to emerge with clarity. Can we not then allow for a different view to go its own way, and so find a resolution that belongs to the logic of ‘ecumenical relationships’? The Anglican Communion is not some kind of ultimate good, necessary for salvation, and indeed it is seen to be a hindrance for many within The Episcopal Church.

Let that reality sound forth, and let those within this same church exhibit the kind of keen commitments to Communion, commitments they believe are consistent with what it genuinely means to be an Anglican in the United States, express them and move forward on that understanding.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Covenant • Anglican Identity • Episcopal Church (TEC) • Sexuality Debate (in Anglican Communion) • Same-sex blessings • * Theology • Ecclesiology

McGill University has bought the Anglican Diocesan Theological College for an undisclosed amount.

"The sale price is between us and McGill University," college principal John Simons said yesterday. "But all things shall one day be revealed."

The college says it can no longer afford to maintain the century-old neo-Gothic building on University St. north of Sherbrooke St.

It will however, lease the north wing of the building, known as the Principal's Lodge, from the university, convert it into a seminary and continue to use St. Luke's chapel in the building's south wing, which it will share with McGill as a multi-purpose teaching facility.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Anglican Church of Canada • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • Canada • * Theology • Seminary / Theological Education

One Sunday, my Methodist minister wife made a mistake in preparation. She didn't glance at the assigned psalm text before she stood up, in worship, to lead the church in reading responsively.

Psalm 137 begins innocently enough, beautifully even: "By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion." This is the kind of language church people expect from the Bible: pretty, exotic, comforting—in short, religious, in the modern sense of dealing with feelings. But by the end of the psalm things have taken something of a turn: "O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is he … who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks."

From my pew I watched my wife's expression change from that of the non-anxious presiding presence they taught us to be in seminary to that of someone who'd just swallowed a frog. Then the organ struck up the doxology, she turned to face the cross, and led the church in praising the God whose Word just blessed the smashers of babies' heads.

What was that all about?

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Filed under: * Theology • Theology: Scripture

[Anne] Hjelle was taken by helicopter to Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo. After surgery, Hjelle felt helpless as the attack replayed in her mind in an endless loop.

"It was like watching a horror movie," she said. "Except it really happened to me."

Her pastor, Phil Munsey of Life Church of Mission Viejo, arrived the next morning and felt the urge to pray for her emotional health, worried that she would be plagued by flashbacks and nightmares.

"As a pastor," Munsey said. "I prayed for a miracle and received one."

Her pastor gave her a New Testament verse from 2 Timothy 4:17 to inspire her: "... the Lord stood at my side and gave me strength ... And I was delivered from the lion's mouth."

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * Theology • Pastoral Theology

The brief policy statement on embryonic stem-cell research that is to come before the U.S. bishops at their June 12-14 meeting in Orlando, Fla., is designed to set the stage for a later, more pastoral document explaining why the Catholic Church opposes some reproductive technologies.

"While human life is threatened in many ways in our society, the destruction of human embryos for stem-cell research confronts us with an issue of respect for life in a stark new way," says the statement drawn up by the Committee on Pro-Life Activities of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Although the topic of embryonic stem-cell research has been raised in several broader USCCB documents and has been the subject of testimony and many letters to Congress, there has never been a formal statement on the issue from the full body of bishops, said Cardinal Justin Rigali of Philadelphia, chairman of the pro-life committee, in an introduction to the draft document.

"The issue of stem-cell research does not force us to choose between science and ethics, much less between science and religion," the document says. "It presents a choice as to how our society will pursue scientific and medical progress."

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Life Ethics • Science & Technology • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

1. The .. experience [in the Episcopal Church] was primarily one of inward-looking mediation and reconcilliation attempts from day one, and all along Lipscomb was less and less able to be at peace about what he was doing. First, ECUSA continually took positions which refuted sound moral theology. Secondly, the 'gifts' of catholicity that Lipscomb had hoped to infuse into ECUSA were simply not wanted. And, he was just so tired of the jargon which carefully differentiated 'Anglicanism' from ECUSA, and shopped for bishops; to have such a misguided sense of boundaries in the Church is not 'catholic' at all.

2. The unity which John 17 calls for is a unity for the purpose of a united mission. This had become impossible in ECUSA. And, ECUSA's brand of ecumenism apart from truth could never produce any sense of unity at all; added to that is the fact that the English Reformation was about rebellion from the outset, the quest for unity becomes futile. In other words, the Anglican crisis is 500 years old....

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

The pillar that continually returns as obviously of greatest importance to Sanneh is that of "translatability." Some readers may wonder what more there is to say that Sanneh has not already said in his pathbreaking academic study Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture (Orbis, 1989) and more recently in a cheeky volume of self-interrogation, Whose Religion Is Christianity? The Gospel Beyond the West (Eerdmans, 2003). Yet this theme is so important for what Sanneh believes about the nature of God, about human cultures under God, and about Christianity as an intrinsically world religion that he continues to find new meaning in the process by which the scriptures—and then the whole of Christian faith—move from one language-culture-mental framework to another.

Sanneh writes that God exists "at the center of the universe of cultures, implying equality among cultures and the necessarily relative status of cultures vis-à-vis the truth of God." Translatability shows why "no culture is so advanced and so superior that it can claim exclusive access or advantage to the truth of God, and none so marginal and remote that it can be excluded." It takes flesh in "the ethical monotheism Christianity inherited from Judaism" in such a way that it "accords value to culture but rejects cultural idolatry." And it shows why "in any language the Bible is not literal; its message affirms all languages to be worthy, though not exclusive, of divine communication." If the faith embodied in Jesus Christ resounds in its essence "with the idioms and styles of new converts," it was then inevitable that Christianity would become "multilingual and multicultural." Sanneh has previously faced the question of whether one activity can bear all of this interpretive weight. This book provides his most convincing answer.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Missions • * Culture-Watch • Globalization • * Theology • Ecclesiology

They say that there's no sound if a tree falls in the forest and there's no one there to hear it. Likewise, if the tree falls in a thunderstorm, perhaps there's no noise because the air waves are already full.

In 1998, the bishops of the Anglican Communion said that we "commit ourselves to listen to the experience of homosexual persons." In recent months, the committee planning for the next meeting of Anglican bishops, set to open in July 2008, has been gathering reports on how the listening process has been going.

Amid the chaos and confusion, what can be heard? As one interested listener, what I hear first of all is the incredible diversity of the voices and the improbability that Anglicans will arrive at a common mind anytime soon.

Connecticut Episcopalians often are baffled by the attitudes of Episcopalians in Fort Worth, but at least we are all Americans and follow teams in the NBA. When we add England and Australia to the mix, we no longer have sports in common, but we do still speak English. But what do we have in common with Anglicans in Myanmar and the Congo?

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • - Anglican: Commentary • Anglican Identity • Sexuality Debate (in Anglican Communion) • Same-sex blessings • * Theology • Ecclesiology

In a fascinating essay in the book Ecopsychology, Mary Gomes and Alan Kanner probe the relevance of our sense of self to the environmental crisis, focusing on the early development of the child. So far as we know, newborn babies make few if any distinctions in their experience, not even between "self" and "mother". These develop with time, but differently in different cultures: in ours we have built up the fiercest distinction ever known between humans and the rest of the biosphere, which has simply become a resource we can exploit in any way we please. This attitude, combined with our ingenuity, has led the biosphere to the brink of the sixth great extinction - the first conscious one. The essay discusses the "separative self" - we are still dependent on our environment for each breath we take, but our actions are based on the illusion of independence.

But separation is behovely. The child's ego must be allowed to develop. Language, even thought, depends on making distinctions; a word or concept defines something by excluding other things. The fatal flaw arises from making separation absolute. Redemption is a dialectic: we think ourselves separate, rise up on angel's wings, then are dashed down when the reality of total interdependence calls us back to earth. Like a parent picking up a fallen toddler, life sets us back on course, hopefully a little wiser. We fall at another hurdle, learn a little more. Eventually we may learn respect for our limitations, teamwork, even love - but we can and must still strike out on our own, to fall back again into the loving arms of interdependence, learned in a new way each time.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Energy, Natural Resources • * Theology

DE SAM LAZARO: More importantly, Pomeroy says he fears any changes could jeopardize fragile congressional support for what remains the world's largest food aid program, even though it accounts for just $1.2 billion of the $280 billion U.S. farm program.

Rep. POMEROY: One of the things about the structure of our program is that it's been able to sustain congressional support through all kinds of political circumstances. Even in the years I've been in Congress, I've seen very different environments relative to the receptivity of members of Congress to supporting foreign aid.

Ms. MCGROARTY: So for purchasing we want to be targeting associations. I mean, it's impossible for us to deal individually with each farmer and each farm.

DE SAM LAZARO: World Food Program officials say they make local purchases carefully. They reject criticism that this causes prices to rise. But they're not about to reject Food for Peace donations.

Mr. SCALPELLI: I am asked this question quite a bit, and I'm not going to bite the hand that helps feed essentially a million Malawians today, and the United States government is indeed the number one largest donor to Malawi still.

DE SAM LAZARO: Other food aid agencies, unlike CARE, say they must continue to monetize their U.S. donations.

(to Nick Ford): Would you not prefer just straight cash assistance?

NICK FORD (Catholic Relief Services): Absolutely, and that's going to be a much more efficient use of the American taxpayers' money. We still have a service to provide the target communities for our development activities. Monetization provides resources that do address the root causes of hunger and poverty in these countries.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Dieting/Food/Nutrition • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Monstrous to some, but representing a ray of hope in the fight against debilitating diseases to others, stem cell research has been steeped in controversy for over a decade.

While scientists, doctors, patient groups and medical charities welcome the ground-breaking advances it could bring, the Roman Catholic Church and several other faiths are vehemently opposed to stem cell research on the grounds that it compromises the sanctity of human life. Central to the religious objectors' argument is that using stem cells amounts to deriving benefit from the destruction of human embryos - fertilized eggs in the early stages of development - and is therefore tantamount to murder, and certainly little better than abortion.

Yet supporters of the revolutionary research techniques are thrilled that stem cells taken from embryos can be made to grow into any cell in the human body, providing an extraordinary resource in the fight against Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Motor Neurone Disease, diabetes and other conditions.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Life Ethics • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Just as the Christian church patronized the arts, so it vigorously supported scientific research. The caricature of an obscurantist, ignorance-promoting church simply doesn’t correspond to historical truth.

Some of history’s greatest scientists — Newton, Pasteur, Galilei, Lavoisier, Kepler, Copernicus, Faraday, Maxwell, Bernard and Heisenberg — were all Christians, and the list doesn’t stop there. Some important scientists, such as astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, were actually Catholic priests!

Christianity is not against science, but against an absolutist reading of science. The empirical sciences cannot do everything, and hold no monopoly on knowledge and truth. Many important questions — the most important, really — fall outside the purview of science.

What is the meaning of life? How should people treat one another? What happens to us when we die?

No matter how long a white-coated scientist toils and sweats in his laboratory, his instruments will never reveal the answers to these questions. Science is the wrong tool for the job.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • Science & Technology • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • * Theology • Apologetics

Until recently, I thought being a Christian was all about belief. I didn't know any Christians, but I considered them people who believed in the virgin birth, for example, the way I believed in photosynthesis or germs.

But then, in an experience I still can't logically explain, I walked into a church and a stranger handed me a chunk of bread. Suddenly, I knew that it was made out of real flour and water and yeast — yet I also knew that God, named Jesus, was alive and in my mouth.

That first communion knocked me upside-down. Faith turned out not to be abstract at all, but material and physical. I'd thought Christianity meant angels and trinities and being good. Instead, I discovered a religion rooted in the most ordinary yet subversive practice: a dinner table where everyone is welcome, where the despised and outcasts are honored.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * Theology • Sacramental Theology

The Vatican has said that the time has come for the Anglican Church to choose between Protestantism and the ancient churches of Rome and Orthodoxy.

Speaking on the day that the Archbishop of Canterbury met Benedict XVI in Rome, Cardinal Walter Kasper, the president of the Pontifical Council of Christian Unity, said it was time for Anglicanism to "clarify its identity".

He told the Catholic Herald: "Ultimately, it is a question of the identity of the Anglican Church. Where does it belong?

"Does it belong more to the churches of the first millennium -Catholic and Orthodox - or does it belong more to the Protestant churches of the 16th century? At the moment it is somewhere in between, but it must clarify its identity now and that will not be possible without certain difficult decisions."

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Abp of Canterbury Rowan Williams • Anglican Identity • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • * Theology • Ecclesiology

He may not have been thinking about it at the time, but Pope Benedict, in the course of his recent U.S. visit may have dealt a knockout blow to the liberal American Catholicism that has challenged Rome since the early 1960s. He did so by speaking frankly and forcefully of his "deep shame" during his meeting with victims of the Church's sex-abuse scandal. By demonstrating that he "gets" this most visceral of issues, the pontiff may have successfully mollified a good many alienated believers — and in the process, neutralized the last great rallying point for what was once a feisty and optimistic style of progressivism.

The liberal rebellion in American Catholicism has dogged Benedict and his predecessors since the Second Vatican Council of 1962-65. "Vatican II," which overhauled much of Catholic teaching and ritual, had a revolutionary impact on the Church as a whole. It enabled people to hear the Mass in their own languages; embraced the principle of religious freedom; rejected anti-Semitism; and permitted Catholic scholars to grapple with modernity.

But Vatican II meant even more to a generation of devout but restless young people in the U.S. Rather than a course correction, Terrence Tilley, now head of the Fordham University's theology department, wrote recently, his generation perceived "an interruption of history, a divine typhoon that left only the keel and structure of the church unchanged." They discerned in the Council a call to greater church democracy, and an assertion of individual conscience that could stand up to the authority of even the Pope. So, they battled the Vatican's birth-control ban, its rejection of female priests and insistence on celibacy, and its authoritarianism.

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Filed under: * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • Pope Benedict XVI • * Theology

This is the shorter version (and there is a video link for those so inclined) and the longer version is there. Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Conflicts • Sexuality Debate (in Anglican Communion) • Same-sex blessings • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Krister Stendahl, a biblical scholar, one-time Lutheran bishop of his native Stockholm and former dean of Harvard University Divinity School, is being remembered for his pathbreaking efforts in Christian-Jewish understanding and his plainspoken support for women's ordination and gay rights.

Stendahl was a week shy of his 87th birthday when he died April 15 in Boston. He was lauded as one of "the most distinguished biblical scholars, theological leaders and insightful churchmen of the 20th century" by Mark S. Hanson, presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. "He spoke what he believed was a timely word," Hanson said, "even if what he said might provoke others to disagreement."

The New Testament scholar began teaching at Harvard Divinity School in 1954 and served as its dean from 1968 to 1979. He was credited with expanding the diversity of the school, especially in recruiting women and African Americans. Stendahl was among the best known of Lutheran scholars advocating women's ordination in the 1970s.

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Filed under: * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Lutheran • * Theology • Theology: Scripture

Rationalism teaches that I believe only what I can understand. I will seek to create a united understanding of the universe. It will either be an open universe or a closed universe. That’s just the way it is. You can take the miracle bits out and what are you left with? Nihilism: The line of despair. Everything is left to chance; we are all products of blind forces. Intellectual pride adopts that over the Bible. Spiritual truth is what you want it to be, nothing fixed.

In the 60’s theology went off, saying it was foolish to define anything. You could make it exactly what you wanted. The real world is what God created and it functions according to His purposes. Same language; Some of the same words. Completely different meaning. This is what confuses us today. In the West, we recreated theology to suit our own grasp. We used the same words, but gave them different values and meaning. So that nothing stands for what it originally was meant to be. Same words; skewed meaning. The result is deep confusion.

Theology always challenges culture. Culture doesn’t define what God does.

Doctrinal impurity leads to moral impurity. There is no guide to right or wrong, just what you think about it. This is not true when you submit yourself to what God has said.

So there is a moment of truth. People ask me why all this fuss about sexuality. It is not about sexuality. It is about what God created and ordered. God ordered them male and female. Marriage is a sign of that ordering. It is not an organizational tool or just how we choose to order our society. Marriage is Holy Matrimony. It is not just an organizational trinket but God-ordained. It is the image of our relationship with Christ. Holy matrimony is the Church in relationship to Christ: bride and bridegroom. Just because I don’t feel that way does not change it.

Read it all and take the time to read Texanglican's report also.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Southern Cone • Episcopal Church (TEC) • Sexuality Debate (in Anglican Communion) • Same-sex blessings • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology • Theology: Scripture

Black liberation theology was a radical movement born of a competitive time.

By the mid-1960s, the horns of Jericho seemed about to sound for the traditional black church in the United States. Martin Luther King Jr. was yielding to Malcolm X. Young black preachers embraced the Nation of Islam and black intellectuals sought warmth in the secular and Marxist-tinged fire of the black power movement.

As a young, black and decidedly liberal theologian, James H. Cone saw his faith imperiled.

“Christianity was seen as the white man’s religion,” he said. “I wanted to say: ‘No! The Christian Gospel is not the white man’s religion. It is a religion of liberation, a religion that says God created all people to be free.’ But I realized that for black people to be free, they must first love their blackness.”

Dr. Cone, a founding father of black liberation theology, allowed himself a chuckle. “You might say we took our Christianity from Martin and our emphasis on blackness from Malcolm,” he said.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Race/Race Relations • * Theology

Then the LORD said, "I have seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters; I know their sufferings,

and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Per'izzites, the Hivites, and the Jeb'usites.

And now, behold, the cry of the people of Israel has come to me, and I have seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them.

Come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring forth my people, the sons of Israel, out of Egypt."

--Exodus 3:8-10

Filed under: * Theology • Theology: Scripture

ii. In this regard, we reiterate the resolution of Anglican Consultative Council, Hong Kong, August 2002 in response to Archbishop George Carey’s urging that dioceses “that are considering matters of faith and doctrine that could affect the unity of the Communion to consult widely in their provinces, and beyond before final decisions are made or action is taken.”

iii. We affirm the importance of showing concern and regard to the rest of the Communion.

2. We, however, out rightly condemn and reject the unacceptable action of some of the members of the Communion in the blessing and formal acceptance of same-sex marriages and relationships, the appointment, election and ordination to ecclesiastical offices of those persons who openly admit and declare that they are homosexuals and lesbians (cf Romans 1:26-27). That such practices of some of the members of our Communion do exist and that they are to be treated pastorally, we deny not. However, that they be given official recognition and acceptance by the Church of God as a standard form of life is quite another stand which we cannot and dare not accept.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • - Anglican: Primary Source • -- Reports & Communiques • Anglican Provinces • Anglican Province of West Africa • * Theology • Ecclesiology

Important ethical questions raised here--watch it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

For to me the people of Israel are servants, they are my servants whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.

--Leviticux 25:55

Filed under: * Theology • Theology: Scripture

A final comment about the significance of the covenant and the process of its adoption is in order. For many, if not most, the covenant will be viewed simply as a means of dispute settlement. It certainly is that, and for this reason the Appendix containing procedures for dispute settlement is an essential part of the document. Failure to include such a procedure renders the covenant ineffective from the outset. However, to focus primary attention on the settlement of disputes is to miss the significance of the process and its outcome. The basic issue before the Communion as it struggles to adopt a covenant is that of the identity of the Anglican Communion as an expression of catholic Christianity. How is it that Anglicans propose to negotiate the passage of time in a way that both remains faithful to the apostolic witness and bears witness to the Christian Gospel in ways suitably adapted to time and place? The St Andrew’s Draft makes clear that the Anglican way is not that of the Roman Catholic Church with its focus on papal authority and a uniform juridical system. As articulated in the draft, the Anglican way is also not the way of the Orthodox Churches with their focus not on pervasive synodality but upon ecumenical councils (which now seem impossible to assemble). I have indicated as well that it ought not to be the way adopted by the confessional churches of the Reformation.

The way proposed by the St. Andrew’s Draft and WR is that of common belief and practice expressed in common worship, common ministry, mutual support, and open hospitality, all sustained by the practice of mutual subjection expressed by forbearance and restraint over time within a conciliar polity. This way is the way that indeed pervades the witness of the New Testament, but it is a way that cannot prevail through time unless commonly understood and commonly supported.

I have written this response in large measure to make this final point. I can only hope and pray that in the midst of the push and pull of politics and ideological difference it will not be forgotten that Anglicans are in this debate giving identity to themselves. In its “Introduction” (#4), the St Andrew’s Draft mentions a special Anglican “charism among the followers and servants of Jesus”, but does not actually say what that is. Taken as a whole, however, the draft in fact puts that charism on display and in so doing asks that we take notice of it, cherish it, and offer it to the Christian churches for testing.

Read it carefully and read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Covenant • Anglican Identity • * Theology • Ecclesiology

It must be clear that development is not only about the growth of the economy in general; it is about the development of the human being with his/her capabilities and relationships with intermediary social groups (family, social, political, cultural groups etc.) within which he/she lives. This requires a change in perspective that recognises peoples as unit