Episcopal Life Online Newslink September 11, 2007
Episcopal Life Online is available at http://www.episcopalchurch.org/elife.
Today's ELO Newslink includes:
* TOP STORY - Retired Northwestern Pennsylvania Bishop Donald Davis dies at 78 * TOP STORY - Communiqué from the Anglican/Al-Azhar Dialogue Committee * DIOCESAN DIGEST - CENTRAL NEW YORK: Diocese, congregation settle property dispute * WORLD REPORT - ENGLAND: Archbishop of Canterbury launches new research degrees * WORLD REPORT - IRELAND: New York Bishop Mark Sisk dedicates Spire of Hope for September 11 in Belfast * FEATURE - Pentagon's Episcopalians make time for prayer * OPINION - Personal encounters: The church's future depends on missionaries, not mission work
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TOP STORIES
Retired Northwestern Pennsylvania Bishop Donald Davis dies at 78
[Episcopal News Service] Retired Bishop Donald J. Davis of the Episcopal Diocese of Northwestern Pennsylvania died on August 30. He was 78.
Davis had been living in Sarasota, Florida and reportedly suffered from a blood disorder.
Services will be held at 11 a.m. on September 29 at St. Boniface Episcopal Church on Siesta Key, Florida.
Davis was born March 12, 1929 in Newcastle, Pennsylvania, to Rya and LeRoy Davis and was raised in Frederick, Maryland. He graduated from Westminster College in New Wilmington, Pennsylvania in 1949 and Princeton Theological Seminary in 1952. Bishop Angus Dun ordained him a deacon and priest in 1955 at Washington National Cathedral. Davis also received a master's degree from Bowling Green University and an honorary doctor of divinity from Westminster College.
Full story: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/79901_89913_ENG_HTM.htm
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Communiqué from the Anglican/Al-Azhar Dialogue Committee
[ACNS] The Joint Committee of the Anglican/Al-Azhar Dialogue, which is composed of a delegation from the Anglican Communion and from the Permanent Committee of al-Azhar al-Sharif for Dialogue with the Monotheistic Religions, held its sixth annual meeting in London September 2-3, which corresponds to 21-22 Sha'aban 1428. The meeting was held in accord with an agreement signed at Lambeth Palace on January 30, 2002 by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar.
A communiqué issued by the Anglican/Al-Azhar Dialogue Committee is available at http://www.episcopalchurch.org/79901_89910_ENG_HTM.htm
More Top Stories: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/elife
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DIOCESAN DIGEST
CENTRAL NEW YORK: Diocese, congregation settle property dispute http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81803_89909_ENG_HTM.htm
More Diocesan news: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81803_ENG_HTM.htm
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WORLD REPORT
ENGLAND: Archbishop of Canterbury launches new research degrees http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81803_89919_ENG_HTM.htm
IRELAND: New York Bishop Mark Sisk dedicates Spire of Hope for September 11 in Belfast http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81808_89921_ENG_HTM.htm
More World news: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81808_ENG_HTM.htm
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FEATURES
Pentagon's Episcopalians make time for prayer
By Lucy Chumbley
[Episcopal Diocese of Washington] On the morning of September 11, 2001, John Symons was sitting at his desk in the Pentagon's outermost ring when he heard a "big thud -- and I knew what had happened."
So he shut down his computer, turned off the coffee machine and the lights, closed up his office and left the building.
The next day, Symons -- a contractor systems analyst who is a parishioner at St. John's, Norwood, an Episcopal parish in Chevy Chase, Maryland (Diocese of Washington) -- was back at his desk in the still-burning building.
Full story: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/79901_89904_ENG_HTM.htm
More Features: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/78936_ENG_HTM.htm
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OPINION
Personal encounters
The church's future depends on missionaries, not mission work
By Richard Lindsley Walton Jr.
[Episcopal Life] In our relationship with the Anglican Communion today, particularly with those in the Global South, it appears we Episcopalians are reaping what we so often have sown by the aloofness of our wired money transfers: the deep division of alienation.
With all due respect to our archbishops, diocesan bishops and professional theologians, the essential point is this: It is much harder to dismiss the other when we have lived, worked and worshipped together, when we have shared a common meal. This is especially true about those with whom we have the most profound disagreements. Living together is still the best way to discover what we truly have in common and what it means to be in communion.
From the first hour Katharine Jefferts Schori was elected presiding bishop
of the Episcopal Church, she made it clear that she believes the church is currently being forced to neglect its most urgent mission. A few months later, on the day Jefferts Schori was officially invested, when addressing in her sermon those who "disdain" the Episcopal Church's theological position on human sexuality, she proclaimed the great importance of making poverty history, of funding AIDS work in Africa, of distributing anti-malarial mosquito nets around the developing world. And yet, as laudable as those aims and projects are, the question is not the importance of mission; it is the means by which we do it.
Full story: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/80050_89923_ENG_HTM.htm
More Opinion: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/80050_ENG_HTM.htm