Episcopal Life Online Daybook -- Today is Monday, November 12, 2007. The Church remembers Charles Simeon, Priest, 1836
* 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 this day in 1701, the Carolina Assembly passed the Vestry Act of 1701, making the Church of England the official religion of the Carolina colony. Active opposition by Quakers and other religious nonconformists who lived there ultimately convinced the proprietors of the colony to revoke the act in 1703.
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MISSION
Jamestown summit remembers Native saints, prepares for future generations
By Jan Nunley
[Episcopal News Service] The low moan of a Hawaiian conch shell and the solemn beat of a rawhide drum preceded Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori into the opening Eucharist of the New Jamestown Covenant Summit at Historic Jamestown in Virginia on November 1, which drew Native and non-Native Episcopalians from 28 dioceses, representing 39 tribes.
"What saints do you remember?" Jefferts Schori asked the nearly 250 people sitting just yards away from the site where 105 men and boys erected a fort and a church to claim Algonquin lands for England in 1607. She was joined at the open-air altar by bishops Steven Charleston (Choctaw), dean and president of the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts; Carol Gallagher (Cherokee), former assisting bishop in Newark and former suffragan of Southern Virginia; Mike Smith (Potawatomi) of North Dakota; Mark MacDonald, the Anglican Church of Canada's first national indigenous bishop, assisting bishop of Navajoland, and resigned bishop of Alaska; and John Buchanan, interim bishop of Southern Virginia.
The saints of native North America were "bridge people" between cultures, Jefferts Schori said -- people like Wahunsunacock, chief of the Powhatan Confederacy and father of Matoaka, better known as Pocahontas, another "bridge person" -- but "there are some whose names we learn and some whose names we will never know.
"Remember and recognize the many unnamed saints among us, and 10 years from now, may we have a clearer sense of our common roots and the bridge we can build to our common future," she said.
Anniversary year This year marks the 400th anniversary of the first permanent English settlement in the Americas, and since last fall, there have been almost continuous celebrations and commemorations of the Jamestown landing.
The November 1-3 summit marked the beginning of the Episcopal Church's second Decade of Remembrance, Recognition, and Reconciliation (2007-2017) with the First Nations of the Americas, according to a resolution adopted by the 75th General Convention. The first decade (1997-2007) was marked with a similar service and signing of the New Jamestown Covenant at Jamestown with then-Presiding Bishop Edmond Browning. Participants in the second service were invited to join their signatures to the covenant.
"During these 10 years, Native ministry has grown in many areas of the country," remarked national Native missioner Janine Tinsley-Roe (Shinnecock/Unkechaug). "The second decade offers the Episcopal Church an opportunity to build on this growth and continue to develop Native American leadership."
The conference, held at Bruton Parish in Williamsburg, included presentations by Chief Kenneth Adams of the Upper Mattaponi Indian Tribe in Virginia; Ben Yahola (Muskogee), president of the Milwaukee-based Earth Keepers Voices of Native America, which works for the protection of sacred sites and burial grounds nationwide; and Principal Chief Brenda Dardar-Robichaux of the United Houma Nation of south Louisiana, as well as members of the Executive Council Committee on Indigenous Ministry (ECCIM) and other special guests.
Full story: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/79901_91767_ENG_HTM.htm
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Catalyst: "The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions - 2nd Revised Ed." from HarperCollins Publishers, by Marcus Borg & N. T. Wright, 305 pages, paperback, c. 2007, $15.95
[Source: HarperCollins Publishers] Jesus is reported to have asked his disciples, "Who do you say that I am?" The question of who Jesus really was has been reignited in our own time, as scholars, clergy, and laypeople debate the truth about Jesus. The answer determines what true Christian faith and authentic Christian living are today.
Now, two leading scholars, representing the primary alternative views, freshly capture the historical Jesus debate in one spirited volume. Marcus Borg, the most popular liberal voice on Jesus, a member of the Jesus Seminar, and author of the bestselling Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, and N. T. Wright, the most prominent standard-bearer for the traditional stance, outspoken critic of the Jesus Seminar, and author of Jesus and the Victory of God, collaborate for the first time in a civilized but forthright debate about all the essential issues.
Through their engaging exchange Borg and Wright begin to answer the essential question of "how different visions of Jesus relate to visions of the Christian life," and they spell out what it means to each of them to be a Christian at the end of the twentieth century.
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