Episcopal Life Online Newslink May 11, 2007
Episcopal Life Online is available at http://www.episcopalchurch.org/elife.
Today's ELO Newslink includes:
* DIOCESAN DIGEST - COLORADO: Bishop, Diocese file property claim * DIOCESAN DIGEST - KANSAS: ERD supports communities affected by tornadoes and flooding * DIOCESAN DIGEST - NEW YORK: Diocese contributes to Transit Museum exhibit * DIOCESAN DIGEST - OLYMPIA: Immigration reform backed through New Sanctuary Movement * DIOCESAN DIGEST - WASHINGTON, D.C.: Cathedral opens first underground bus garage in nation's capital * DIOCESAN DIGEST - WESTERN MICHIGAN: Fire ravages Albion church; Sunday services to proceed * OPINION - A slow advance: Noting parallels between desegregation efforts and church's move toward full inclusion * ARTS - Review: Reading Judas
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DIOCESAN DIGEST
COLORADO: Bishop, Diocese file property claim
http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81803_85885_ENG_HTM.htm
KANSAS: ERD supports communities affected by tornadoes and flooding http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81803_85875_ENG_HTM.htm
NEW YORK: Diocese contributes to Transit Museum exhibit http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81803_85883_ENG_HTM.htm
OLYMPIA: Immigration reform backed through New Sanctuary Movement http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81803_85886_ENG_HTM.htm
WASHINGTON, D.C.: Cathedral opens first underground bus garage in nation's capital http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81803_85882_ENG_HTM.htm
WESTERN MICHIGAN: Fire ravages Albion church; Sunday services to proceed http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81803_85867_ENG_HTM.htm
More Diocesan news: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81803_ENG_HTM.htm
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OPINION
A slow advance
Noting parallels between desegregation efforts and church's move toward full inclusion
By Winnie Varghese
[Episcopal Life] Martin Luther King Jr. wrote the Letter from Birmingham Jail (published in The Christian Century in 1963) as a response to a letter from Alabama clergymen, Christian and Jewish, titled A Call for Unity.
A Call for Unity decried the intrusion of so many black activists into their peaceful city to stir up trouble. These activists were marching for the rights of black people to equal access to public facilities and full protection under the law. The response was that the law blasted them with fire hoses, beat them and jailed them. It was a different time and place, and a movement most of us have come to agree was of God and significant in expanding the definitions of a person guaranteed rights by the founding documents of this country and advancing the experience of God's justice and peace in this nation.
Our House of Bishops was clear in its response to the primates' communiqué that an alternative primate is not allowable under our polity. We, as a church, now have a summer season in which to consider, again, moratoria on same-sex blessings and openly gay bishops. We've already imposed moratoria through General Convention 2009 on the consent to openly gay bishops, but we have declined to act on same-sex blessings, leaving such blessings unsanctioned but not illegal.
Full story: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/80050_85858_ENG_HTM.htm
More Opinion: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/80050_ENG_HTM.htm
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ARTS
The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity
Reviewed by Martha Baker
Reading Judas By Elaine Pagels and Karen L. King Viking, 198 pp., $24.95
Reading Judas is a small book packed with revelations and information. Elaine Pagels, a professor of religion at Princeton University, and Karen King, a professor of ecclesiastical history at the Harvard Divinity School, have applied their considerable expertise in translating and analyzing the Gospel of Judas.
Their introduction traces the history of the Gospel of Judas, which was written in 2nd-century Greek then translated into Coptic. The National Geographic Society made the gospel's discovery in the 1970s public in 2006. King's English translation, with notes and commentary, fills the second half of Reading Judas; the first half is cogent exegesis.
As with the other gospels, Judas was not written by the disciple named Judas, and King and Pagels are careful always to refer to "the author of Judas," never (confusingly) just "Judas." This gospel's author proposes that Judas-the-disciple was not just loyal, but was, indeed, Jesus' favorite.
Full story: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81827_85856_ENG_HTM.htm
More Arts: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81827_ENG_HTM.htm
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