Episcopal Life Online Newslink October 16, 2007
Episcopal Life Online is available at http://www.episcopalchurch.org/elife.
Today's ELO Newslink includes:
* TOP STORY - 'There will be no outcasts in this Church,' Presiding Bishop tells live webcast audience * TOP STORY - Become a people of mission, Bonnie Anderson tells Episcopal Divinity School's St. John's Society * TOP STORY - Beijing Circles addresses women's issues at first national conference * WORLD REPORT - SOUTHERN AFRICA: Archbishop Ndungane commends Episcopal Church's commitment to reconciliation * OPINION - Love must prevail: Proposed covenant unworkable if it abandons justice for all
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TOP STORIES
'There will be no outcasts in this Church,' Presiding Bishop tells live webcast audience Jefferts Schori reflects on Church's mission, House of Bishops meeting
By Daphne Mack
[ENS] Opening with an overview of the mission-driven September 20-25 House of Bishops meeting in New Orleans, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori set the tone October 16 for her second webcast held at the studio facilities of Trinity Church, Wall Street, in New York City.
"We met intentionally in New Orleans, as an act of solidarity with the people of Louisiana and the Mississippi Gulf coast, so that we might represent the prayers and concern of the whole church, and offer a small contribution to the rebuilding effort," said Jefferts Schori. "We were told that 100,000 housing units were lost during Katrina and its aftermath, displacing nearly 250,000 people. Of those housing units, only about 4,000 have been made habitable once again."
Many of the bishops, their spouses, "as well as a number of our Anglican Communion visitors", Jefferts Schori said, "participated in various rebuilding efforts on one day of meeting."
Full story: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/79901_91034_ENG_HTM.htm
The webcast is available for on-demand viewing at http://www.trinitywallstreet.org/calendar/index.php?event_id=41421.
The full text of the Presiding Bishop's opening remarks are available at http://www.episcopalchurch.org/79901_91026_ENG_HTM.htm
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Become a people of mission, Bonnie Anderson tells Episcopal Divinity School's St. John's Society
[Episcopal Divinity School/Episcopal News Service] God is at work in the lives of Episcopalians and "setting us up to live and act in freedom and truth," Bonnie Anderson, president of the Episcopal Church's House of Deputies, told the members of the Episcopal Divinity School's (EDS) St. John's Society on October 12.
Anderson, a 2006 recipient of a Doctor of Divinity degree, honoris causa, was the keynote speaker at this annual event honoring individuals and organizations that have provided significant gifts to the seminary.
Anderson recalled the Episcopal Church's 74th General Convention in 2003 in Minneapolis when deputies, bishops, and visitors were asked to sit in silence and prayer to await the results of the consents to the election of Gene Robinson as the bishop of New Hampshire.
Full story: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/79901_91028_ENG_HTM.htm
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Beijing Circles addresses women's issues at first national conference
By Susan Barksdale
[Episcopal News Service] A movement has arisen that is on its way to encircling the globe. "Beijing Circles," based on the Beijing Platform for Action which addresses global issues affecting women, have been forming in Episcopal churches around the country, and the first national conference was held October 12-13 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
About 40 women -- and a few men -- gathered at St. James on the Parkway, Minneapolis, site of the first Beijing Circle in the state. They came from seven states and several denominations. During the gathering, which was sponsored by the Episcopal Church's Office of Women's Ministries, participants heard from national leaders, learned of the experiences of the Minnesota women, and left with a commitment to bringing more and more people "into the circle" to help create awareness and change them for the better.
Starting from a platform
The Beijing Platform Plan for Action was developed at the Fourth World Conference on Women, sponsored by the United Nations and meeting in 1995 in Beijing, China. It contains 12 "planks" -- critical areas of concern -- ranging from the increasing burden of poverty on women to violence against women to stereotyping and gender inequalities to discrimination against the girl child. The Beijing Platform was signed by 189 UN member nations, but that was just the beginning.
Full story: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/79901_91024_ENG_HTM.htm
More Top Stories: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/elife
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WORLD REPORT
SOUTHERN AFRICA: Archbishop Ndungane commends Episcopal Church's commitment to reconciliation http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81808_91021_ENG_HTM.htm
More World news: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81808_ENG_HTM.htm
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OPINION
Love must prevail
Proposed covenant unworkable if it abandons justice for all
By Charles V. Willie
[Episcopal Life] The contentious relationship between the Episcopal Church based in the United States and the worldwide Anglican Communion is appropriately called a "civil war over homosexuality" by The New York Times. I, also, think it is an event of civil stress about love and justice. In 1966, Joseph Fletcher, an Episcopal priest on the faculty of the Episcopal Theological School, Cambridge, Massachusetts, wrote a book titled Situation Ethics in which he declared that "love is the boss principle of life" and "justice is love distributed."
"God is love" is a fact of life some of us learned in Sunday school. We also learned that covenants, creeds, doctrines and traditions may pass away, but love endures. How, then, can a church with a responsibility of promoting love and justice adopt a policy of discrimination that prohibits homosexual people from being elected and consecrated as bishops? There is no evidence that such people cannot "love and be loved in return." If love is the boss principle of life, arbitrary and capricious acts of discrimination against all sorts and conditions of people, including male and female people, heterosexual and homosexual people, is unjust and should cease and desist.
While other institutional systems in society -- like government, the economy and education -- identify principles other than love that are central to their mission, certainly love is the foundational principle of religion -- all religions. It is our religious responsibility in society to remind other institutions to do what they are called to do in loving and just ways.
Full story: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/80050_91030_ENG_HTM.htm
More Opinion: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/80050_ENG_HTM.htm