Episcopal Life Online Newslink June 1, 2007
Episcopal Life Online is available at http://www.episcopalchurch.org/elife.
Today's ELO Newslink includes:
* TOP STORY - Bishops' Theology Committee offers Primates' communiqué study document * TOP STORY - Disaffected, breakaway bishops to meet in September * DIOCESAN DIGEST - CENTRAL NEW YORK: Mission strategy session to redefine goals * DIOCESAN DIGEST - NEW HAMPSHIRE: Bishop will let priests decide about performing same-gender civil unions * OPINION - Diverse mission fields: Pentecost calls us to share good news in new ways * OPINION - War Tapes and Veteran Saints * ARTS - Author Sybil MacBeth employs drawings to enhance prayer life
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TOP STORIES
Bishops' Theology Committee offers Primates' communiqué study document Document says bishops want response from entire Episcopal Church
By Mary Frances Schjonberg
[Episcopal News Service] The Theology Committee of the Episcopal Church's House of Bishops on June 1 released a study document aimed at helping the bishops respond to the requests made to them by the Primates of the Anglican Communion.
The 15-page "Communion Matters: A Study Document for the Episcopal Church" is available online. A color PDF version of the document is available at http://www.collegeforbishops.org/media/documents/Communion%20Matters%20co lor .pdf. A black-and-white PDF version is available at http://www.collegeforbishops.org/media/documents/Communion%20Matters%20bw .pd f. French and Spanish translations will be available soon.
Theology Committee chair and Alabama Bishop Henry Parsley told Episcopal News Service that the report is meant for bishops to use in conversation with the people of their dioceses in the three and a half months between now and the mid-September meeting of the House of Bishops in New Orleans. Rather than call for responses from individual Episcopalians, Parsley said the committee will in late August and early September gather input from bishops on the result of their conversations in their dioceses.
Full story: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/79901_86477_ENG_HTM.htm
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Disaffected, breakaway bishops to meet in September
By Mary Frances Schjonberg
[Episcopal News Service] Bishops of seven self-identified Anglican organizations have been invited by Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan to attend a meeting September 25-28, in part to "initiate discussion of the creation of an 'Anglican Union'" such as the one envisioned by the Primates of the Global South when they called for a new "ecclesiastical structure of the Anglican Communion in the USA."
Duncan issued the invitation in his role as moderator of the Network of Anglican Communion Dioceses and Parish (NACDP), also known as the Anglican Communion Network. The gathering is being called the "first-ever Common Cause Council of Bishops."
In addition to his fellow bishops in that organization, Duncan invited the bishops of the Anglican Mission in the Americas, which appears to be a combination of the Anglican Mission in America (AMiA) and the Anglican Coalition in Canada; the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA); the Anglican Network in Canada; the Anglican Province of America; Forward in Faith North America; and the Reformed Episcopal Church.
Full story: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/79901_86474_ENG_HTM.htm
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DIOCESAN DIGEST
CENTRAL NEW YORK: Mission strategy session to redefine goals http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81803_86466_ENG_HTM.htm
NEW HAMPSHIRE: Bishop will let priests decide about performing same-gender civil unions http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81803_86467_ENG_HTM.htm
More Diocesan news: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81803_ENG_HTM.htm
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OPINION
Diverse mission fields
Pentecost calls us to share good news in new ways
By Katharine Jefferts Schori
[Episcopal Life] Was Pentecost just something that happened 2,000 years ago? Is it just a theological way of talking about the presence of the Spirit in the earliest church? What does it mean for us today?
This church has a mission, or, as someone has more accurately put it, God's mission has a church, and that mission means we are to speak and do good news with all sorts and conditions of people. We live in a nation that at times seems consumed by worries about "the other." Recently, that "other" has included our neighbors to the south, who speak Spanish and who increasingly come here seeking a just and living wage. That "other" also has included people of other religious traditions, particularly those who practice Islam. Where might the Spirit be moving among us today?
Pentecost would seem to say most clearly that God as Holy Spirit prompts witness in a variety of languages and to a variety of people. I recently returned from a visit to the Diocese of Honduras, where I witnessed abundant good news being shared in Spanish, English and a local Mayan language. But far beyond language, I witnessed good news in the form of basic human dignity and the love of God for people in every station of life -- those who are HIV-positive, hungry, living in isolation or squalor, as well as middle-class urbanites. God loves all, and Christians have an essential call to respond where the world speaks bad news.
Full story: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/80050_86470_ENG_HTM.htm
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War Tapes and Veteran Saints
By Bowie Snodgrass
[Episcopal Life] One of the things I love most about the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City are the casts of characters who congregate there. The crowd that came together on Wednesday night, May 30, to watch The War Tapes and discuss it afterwards, included a wide variety of vets, joined by activists, clergy, and some curious folk from the Cathedral community.
I attended with my friend, Isaac Everett. Both of us could be categorized under "military families;" my brother is serving his second tour in Iraq as an Army medic and Isaac's brother is also in Baghdad for his second year, following a previous deployment to Afghanistan.
Thinking back to my brother's mass e-mails home, plus stories and pictures from the media, the movie resonated as a sort of "every soldier" story told through the camera work and individual tales of three National Guardsmen from New Hampshire who served in Iraq in 2004: Specialist Michael Moriarty, Sgt. Steven Pink and Sgt. Zack Bazzi.
Full story: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/80050_86468_ENG_HTM.htm
More Opinion: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/80050_ENG_HTM.htm
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ARTS
Author Sybil MacBeth employs drawings to enhance prayer life
By Jerry Hames
[Episcopal Life] Words sometimes lead to worry that is not helpful for prayer, according to Sybil MacBeth, who presented her new book, "Praying with Color: Drawing A New Path To God," (Paraclete Press, 110 pp., $16.95) at the Religious Booksellers Trade Exhibit in Chicago in May.
The daughter and granddaughter of noted artists and sculptors, McBeth remembers sitting on her back porch one day, doodling with an abstract drawing while thinking of family members and friends who were sick.
"I realized I had put someone's name in the middle of it," she said in a recent interview. Then she found that, as she worked on others, she would place in her drawings the names of people for whom she offered prayers.
Full story: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81827_86472_ENG_HTM.htm
More Arts: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81827_ENG_HTM.htm
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