Episcopal Life Online Newslink June 29, 2007
Episcopal Life Online is available at http://www.episcopalchurch.org/elife.
Today's ELO Newslink includes:
* TOP STORY - Listening Process facilitator meets with representatives of Integrity, other groups * WORLD REPORT - CANADA: Bishops discuss fallout from same-gender vote at General Synod * WORLD REPORT - KENYA: Beware of saving scams, churches warn * WORLD REPORT - UGANDA: Church receives retired North Dakota bishop Andrew Fairfield * OPINION - Guest commentary: A solution for the Episcopal Church * ARTS - Window honors first woman bishop, first African-American priest
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TOP STORIES
Listening Process facilitator meets with representatives of Integrity, other groups Two-day meeting explores full-inclusion issues
By Mary Frances Schjonberg
[Episcopal News Service] A group brought together by Integrity USA, the church's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) affinity group, spent June 27-28 telling the facilitator of the Anglican Communion's Listening Process about their experience of being homosexual or transgender, or having a family member or friend who is.
In addition, the group, meeting at the General Theological Seminary with the Rev. Canon Phil Groves (http://www.aco.org/listening/about.cfm), discussed how to work with Groves to tell stories such as theirs throughout the Communion.
The Primates Meeting at Dromantine, Ireland, in February 2005 asked the Anglican Consultative Council "to take positive steps to initiate the listening and study process" which has been the subject of resolutions at Lambeth Conferences since at least 1978 (Lambeth 1978, Resolution 10) (http://www.lambethconference.org/resolutions/downloads/1978.pdf).
Full story: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/79901_87433_ENG_HTM.htm
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WORLD REPORT
CANADA: Bishops discuss fallout from same-gender vote at General Synod http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81808_87431_ENG_HTM.htm
KENYA: Beware of saving scams, churches warn
http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81808_87427_ENG_HTM.htm
UGANDA: Church receives retired North Dakota bishop Andrew Fairfield http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81808_87429_ENG_HTM.htm
More World news: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81808_ENG_HTM.htm
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OPINION
Guest commentary: A solution for the Episcopal Church
By Paul Valliere
[Episcopal Life] The decision of a group of historic Virginia parishes to leave the Episcopal Church deserved the national publicity it received. The exodus is the latest evidence of a process of disintegration that threatens the existence of the Episcopal Church as a significant force in American and world Christianity. The irony is that the Episcopal Church is an unlikely candidate for the kind of conflict that is consuming it. The large majority of Episcopalians are religious moderates with little interest in divisive theological polemics.
The leadership of the church is a large part of the problem. The current crisis was not caused by gay activism in the church, or even by the election of a non-celibate gay man as bishop of New Hampshire, but by the assent to that election on the part of the church's supreme governing body, the triennial General Convention. Meeting in 2003, the General Convention had full authority to reject the result of the New Hampshire election but chose not to do so. By the time of the next General Convention, in the summer of 2006, the extent of the damage done to the church and the worldwide Anglican Communion was clear. World Anglican leaders had publicly spelled out the minimum steps required to restore the good standing of the Episcopal Church. Yet the General Convention still refused to moderate its position, sparking the surge in the number of Episcopalians running for the exits late last year.
Can anything be done to mend the peace of the Episcopal Church? The answer is yes, but to imagine it we need to look beyond the church's existing governance structures. They are mired in the syndrome Max Weber identified long ago as an affliction common to large organizations: the displacement of charisma by bureaucracy, of spirituality by legalism, of leaders by organization men -- and nowadays, organization women.
Full story: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/80050_87428_ENG_HTM.htm
More Opinion: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/80050_ENG_HTM.htm
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ARTS
Window honors first woman bishop, first African-American priest
[Episcopal News Service] On June 24, in a day celebrating firsts, Bishop Barbara C. Harris, the first woman to be consecrated a bishop of the Episcopal Church and of the Anglican Communion, dedicated the first window to honor her along with a panel remembering Absalom Jones, the first African-American Episcopal priest at the Church of St. Alban the Martyr, in St. Albans (Queens), New York.
The dedications occurred during the parish's patronal festival honoring the first recorded British martyr, St. Alban.
The windows at St. Alban the Martyr were given in memory of departed parishioner Judith Espeut-Harris, according to a news release.
Full story: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81827_87432_ENG_HTM.htm
More Arts: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81827_ENG_HTM.htm
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