Episcopal Life Daily January 25, 2008
Episcopal Life Online is available at http://www.episcopalchurch.org/elife.
Today's Episcopal Life Daily includes:
* TOP STORY - Gaza's Ahli Arab Hospital receives support from American Friends, ERD * TOP STORY - Anglican Women's Empowerment to welcome delegates to 52nd UNCSW assembly * TOP STORY - 'Traces of the Trade' premieres at Sundance, gets bought by PBS * DIOCESAN DIGEST - NEW JERSEY: Growing Episcopal parish forms young musicians * DIOCESAN DIGEST - NORTH CAROLINA: Convention formalizes companion relationship with Botswana * MISSION - Winter Talk XX goes north to Minnesota for spiritual growth and storytelling * OPINION - COMMENTARY: The hard but necessary work of transformation * ARTS - Five new books for Lenten instruction, meditation and spiritual growth * DAYBOOK - January 28, 2008: Today in Scripture, Prayer, History * CATALYST - A Most Holy War: The Albigensian Crusade and the Battle for Christendom
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TOP STORIES
Gaza's Ahli Arab Hospital receives support from American Friends, ERD
By Matthew Davies
[Episcopal News Service] The Ahli Arab Hospital, one of the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem's oldest institutions, has been severely affected after Israel's blockade of Gaza on January 17 created fuel shortages throughout the territory, resulting in the closing of the region's main power plant.
Emergency funding from the American Friends of the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem (http://www.americanfriends-jerusalem.org) and Episcopal Relief and Development (http://www.er-d.org) (ERD) is ensuring critical assistance reaches the hospital as it struggles to serve the predominantly Muslim population in Gaza where about 80 percent of the 1.2 million residents are living below the World Health Organization poverty line.
AFEDJ's board, after meeting for two days in Los Angeles and hearing chilling updates about the situation in Gaza, decided unanimously to send $18,000 to Ahli Arab Hospital for immediate humanitarian purposes, the first step in a large nationwide appeal for funds. AFEDJ, a nonprofit, nonpolitical organization which supports the work of the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem, donated more than $160,000 to the hospital in 2007.
ERD is providing support to help the hospital procure fuel to operate its generator and steam boiler to enable it to remain open and continue to serve the community.
Full story: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/79901_94266_ENG_HTM.htm
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Anglican Women's Empowerment to welcome delegates to 52nd UNCSW assembly
[Episcopal News Service] In February, women from every region of the world will arrive in New York to participate in the 52nd United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (http://www.episcopalchurch.org/uncsw.htm) (UNCSW), held at the United Nation's headquarters. This year's theme is "Financing for gender equity and the empowerment of women."
The annual gathering, dedicated to gender equality and advancement of women, draws thousands to caucus, draft resolutions, learn, and exchange information about the progress being made toward fulfilling the Millennium Development Goals (http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals) (MDGs) and the Beijing Platform for Action (http://www.episcopalchurch.org/32862_60507_ENG_HTM.htm).
Hundreds of non-governmental organizations will be represented during the February 25-March 3 assembly including all the mainline denominations.
Full story: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/79901_94265_ENG_HTM.htm
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'Traces of the Trade' premieres at Sundance, gets bought by PBS
Reviewers debate its stance on atonement; Utah bishop calls film 'deeply moving story, amazingly told'
By Mary Frances Schjonberg
[Episcopal News Service] After premiering January 21 in Park City, Utah, at the Sundance Film Festival, (http://www.sundance.org/festival) "Traces of the Trade," (http://www.tracesofthetrade.org) a film that documents one family's part in the slave trade, became one of three documentaries bought by Public Broadcasting System's Point of View (P.O.V.) series.
Filmmaker Katrina Browne, an Episcopalian who in 2001 began tracing the northern United States' role in the slave trade and her family's participation in it, said that P.O.V. will show "Traces" during its 2008 season. The date should be determined in the next few weeks, she said.
Browne said she is happy that P.O.V. purchased the film both because of the series' standing as a "showcase for premiere documentaries" and because of P.O.V.'s reputation for helping with a film's outreach efforts. "They will be a great partner for getting the film out for dialogue," she said.
Full story: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/79901_94258_ENG_HTM.htm
More Top Stories: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/elife
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DIOCESAN DIGEST
NEW JERSEY: Growing Episcopal parish forms young musicians http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81803_94256_ENG_HTM.htm
NORTH CAROLINA: Convention formalizes companion relationship with Botswana http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81803_94255_ENG_HTM.htm
More Diocesan news: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81803_ENG_HTM.htm
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MISSION
Winter Talk XX goes north to Minnesota for spiritual growth and storytelling
By Susan Barksdale
[Episcopal Diocese of Minnesota] Winter is a time when the crops are in and the food is stored. For many peoples, it is a time to sit around the fire and tell stories, to remember recent events and to pass on their lore to the next generation -- to have a "Winter Talk."
From January 20-23, scores of people visited Buffalo, Minnesota, for the
20th annual "Winter Talk" gathering, sponsored by the Native American Ministries Office of the Episcopal Church. The group represented 21 tribes from 29 congregations, 11 dioceses, and two Anglican provinces. There were clergy and laity, elders, middle-aged people, young adults, and children (the youngest attendee was aged one year and one week). They came to learn, to discuss issues common to their communities, and to renew friendships and make new ones. But through it all, they came to tell stories.
The Winter Talk gatherings were held for many years in Oklahoma, but in recent years they have moved to other locations. The 2007 event was held in Jamestown, Virginia, and was a time of reflection on the coming of Europeans to North America and its effect on the peoples who were living in this land. This year's central Minnesota venue with its sub-zero temperatures was a bit of a shock to some, but it served, as one person put it, "to put the 'winter' back in Winter Talk."
Full story:
More Mission: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81799_ENG_HTM.htm
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MULTIMEDIA
More Multimedia: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/80056_ENG_HTM.htm
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OPINION
COMMENTARY: The hard but necessary work of transformation
By Tom Ehrich
[Religion News Service] In the Church Wellness Project, we talk about three aspects of membership development: Recruitment, Retention, Transformation
The first two can be clearly, if inelegantly, stated as bringing new members in the front door and keeping them from going out the back door.
Both need to be in balance. It does no good to focus so much on new members that existing members feel abandoned and unloved. Nor can we be so solicitous of existing members that newcomers feel unwelcome and invisible.
It is the third activity -- transformation -- that is difficult to pursue and measure.
Full story: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/80050_94254_ENG_HTM.htm
More Opinion: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/80050_ENG_HTM.htm
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ARTS
Five new books for Lenten instruction, meditation and spiritual growth
By Episcopal Life staff
[Episcopal Life] Lent is traditionally a season marked by deprivation and repentance for many Christians, but it can also be a time for many to strengthen their faith and develop spiritually. As the church calendar approaches Ash Wednesday, Episcopal Life asked its three major book critics for recommendations for Lenten reading.
Here are books appropriate for this season reviewed by Lois Sibley, Martha Baker and Sharon Sheridan:
More Arts: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81827_ENG_HTM.htm
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DAYBOOK
On January 28, 2008, the Church calendar remembers Thomas Aquinas, priest and friar (1225-1274).
* Today in Scripture: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/82457_ENG_HTM.htm * Today in Prayer: Anglican Cycle of Prayer: http://www.anglicancommunion.org/acp/index.cfm * Today in History: On January 28, 1547, England's Henry VIII, who presided over the founding of the Anglican Church, died at age 55.
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CATALYST
"A Most Holy War: The Albigensian Crusade and the Battle for Christendom" from Oxford University Press, by Mark Gregory Pegg, 253 pages, hardcover, c. 2008, $25
[Source: Oxford University Press] In January of 1208, a papal legate was murdered on the banks of the Rhone in southern France. A furious Pope Innocent III accused heretics of the crime and called upon all Christians to exterminate heresy between the Garonne and Rhone rivers -- a vast region now known as Languedoc -- in a great crusade. This most holy war, the first in which Christians were promised salvation for killing other Christians, lasted twenty bloody years -- it was a long savage battle for the soul of Christendom.
In A Most Holy War , historian Mark Pegg has produced a swift-moving, gripping narrative of this horrific crusade, drawing in part on thousands of testimonies collected by inquisitors in the years 1235 to 1245. These accounts of ordinary men and women, remembering what it was like to live through such brutal times, bring the story vividly to life. Pegg argues that generations of historians (and novelists) have misunderstood the crusade; they assumed it was a war against the Cathars, the most famous heretics of the Middle Ages. The Cathars, Pegg reveals, never existed. He further shows how a millennial fervor about "cleansing" the world of heresy, coupled with a fear that Christendom was being eaten away from within by heretics who looked no different than other Christians, made the battles, sieges, and massacres of the crusade almost apocalyptic in their cruel intensity. In responding to this fear with a holy genocidal war, Innocent III fundamentally changed how Western civilization dealt with individuals accused of corrupting society. This fundamental change, Pegg argues, led directly to the creation of the inquisition, the rise of an anti-Semitism dedicated to the violent elimination of Jews, and even the holy violence of the Reconquista in Spain and in the New World in the fifteenth century. All derive their divinely sanctioned slaughter from the Albigensian Crusade.
Haunting and immersive, A Most Holy War opens an important new perspective on a truly pivotal moment in world history, a first and distant foreshadowing of the genocide and holy violence in the modern world.
To order: Episcopal Books and Resources, online at http://www.episcopalbookstore.org, or call 800-903-5544 -- or visit your local Episcopal bookseller, http://www.episcopalbooksellers.org
More Catalyst: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/83842_ENG_HTM.htm