wfn.org | [ELD] PITTSBURGH: Episcopal Church petitions to join property case, wants Duncan to vacate offices /

["Matthew Davies" <mdavies@episcopalchurch.org>]

>Episcopal Life Daily
>February 17, 2009

Episcopal Life Online is available at http://www.episcopalchurch.org/elife.

>Today's Episcopal Life Daily includes:

* DIOCESAN DIGEST - PITTSBURGH: Episcopal Church petitions to join
property case, wants Duncan to vacate offices
* DIOCESAN DIGEST - ECUADOR CENTRAL: Convention authorizes House of
Bishops to elect diocesan bishop
* DIOCESAN DIGEST - SOUTHERN VIRGINIA: New bishop proclaims diocese
has 'come a very long way'
* WORLD REPORT - BRITAIN: Bishop who says job loss may be opportunity
angers unions
* WORLD REPORT - KENYA: Church leaders back international trial for
violence suspects
* MISSION - Venerable Protestant radio program expands Web presence
* PEOPLE - Joanna Udal to serve as Canterbury's secretary for Anglican
Communion affairs
* ARTS - Female spirituality celebrated at Sacred Circles Conference
* OPINION - Include new province
* DAYBOOK - February 18, 2009: Today in Scripture, Prayer, History
* CATALYST - A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom

>_____________________

>DIOCESAN DIGEST

PITTSBURGH: Episcopal Church petitions to join property case, wants
Duncan to vacate offices

>By Mary Frances Schjonberg

[Episcopal News Service] Saying that all property held by or for a
diocese can only be used for the mission of that diocese and the
Episcopal Church, the church has asked a Pennsylvania court to allow
it to join an ongoing case concerning the Episcopal Diocese of
Pittsburgh.

Full story: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81803_105094_ENG_HTM.htm

>- - - - - -

SOUTHERN VIRGINIA: New bishop proclaims diocese has 'come a very long way'

>By Lisa B. Hamilton

[Episcopal News Service] A day after his consecration as tenth bishop
of the Diocese of Southern Virginia, the Rt. Rev. Herman "Holly"
Hollerith IV, 53, addressed the diocesan Annual Council. "We have come
a very long way in Southern Virginia. Not all wounds are healed. Not
all of our brokenness is mended. Not all of our fears have been
relieved. But, by the grace of God, we are blessed with some light at
the end of this tunnel," he said.

Full story: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81803_105079_ENG_HTM.htm

>- - - - - -

ECUADOR CENTRAL: Convention authorizes House of Bishops to elect diocesan
bishop

>By Pat McCaughan

[Episcopal News Service] Delegates attending the annual convention of
the Diocese of Ecuador Central on February 14 in Quito narrowly
approved a resolution authorizing the Episcopal Church's House of
Bishops to elect their next bishop.

"It was a movement towards health and wholeness in the diocese. Most
people were pleased with the final outcome because it was the fruit of
their decision-making in a democratic fashion that they were not used
to," said Bishop Wilfrido Ramos-Orench, who has served as provisional
bishop since 2006.

Full story: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81803_105078_ENG_HTM.htm

More Diocesan news: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81803_ENG_HTM.htm

>_____________________

>WORLD REPORT

KENYA: Church leaders back international trial for violence suspects

[Ecumenical News International] Kenya's Anglican leader says he
supports the prosecution at the International Criminal Court in The
Hague of suspected instigators of violence that followed disputed
Kenyan elections in December 2007.

"Let us go to The Hague. I am very unhappy. Kenyans are very unhappy,"
Archbishop Benjamin Nzimbi told Ecumenical News International on
February 16.

Full story: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81808_105089_ENG_HTM.htm

>- - - - - -

BRITAIN: Bishop who says job loss may be opportunity angers unions

[Ecumenical News International] Comments by the Anglican bishop of
London, Richard Chartres, that losing one's job might be a welcome
"relief" from the rat race has angered trade unions in Britain, where
unemployment is almost two million, and thousands of bankers have lost
their jobs since the credit crunch started in 2008.

Full story: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81808_105087_ENG_HTM.htm

More World news: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81808_ENG_HTM.htm

>_____________________

>MISSION

>Cookbook serves hope in wake of Hurricane Ike

>By Lisa B. Hamilton

[Episcopal News Service] When Hurricane Ike made landfall on September
13, 2008, the 600 fundraising cookbooks that had arrived the week
prior at St. Christopher's Episcopal Church
(http://www.stchrischurch.org/) in League City, Texas survived.

Twenty miles to the southeast, the cookbooks' beneficiary, Galveston's
St. Vincent's House (http://www.stvhope.org/), a nonprofit social
service agency, was not so fortunate. It sustained "upwards of
$500,000" in damage, Executive Director Michael Jackson said in an
interview. The facility serves around 70,000 people annually through a
daycare and preschool, a medical clinic, a food pantry and a
transportation program. Major damage included the destruction of the
main building's first floor along with the roof of another building,
said Jackson.

Full story: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81799_105095_ENG_HTM.htm

>- - - - - -

Venerable Protestant radio program expands Web presence

>By Lisa B. Hamilton

[Episcopal News Service] The Atlanta-based weekly ecumenical radio
program, "Day1," has launched a redesigned and expanded website, the
Alliance for Christian Media has announced.

Full story: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81799_105082_ENG_HTM.htm

More Mission: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81799_ENG_HTM.htm

>_____________________

>PEOPLE

Joanna Udal to serve as Canterbury's secretary for Anglican Communion
affairs

[Lambeth Palace] The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, has
appointed the Rev. Canon Joanna Udal to serve as secretary for
Anglican Communion affairs. She will be based at Lambeth Palace in
London. Since 2001, Udal has been assistant to the Archbishop of the
Sudan, an appointment made jointly through the Church Mission Society
and Lambeth Palace.

Full story: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81831_105076_ENG_HTM.htm

More People: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81831_ENG_HTM.htm

>_____________________

>ARTS

Female spirituality celebrated at Sacred Circles Conference

>By Anne Carson

[Episcopal News Service] On Valentine's Day weekend, about 1300
participants gathered at Washington National Cathedral for the Sacred
Circles Women's Spirituality Conference, which explored the theme of
love in action as a collective and powerful force that could reshape
the world and save the planet.

Full story: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81827_105098_ENG_HTM.htm

More Arts: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81799_ENG_HTM.htm

>_____________________

>OPINION

>Include new province

>By D. Stuart Dunnan

[Episcopal Life] As I watch the sad saga of our bishops' legalistic
and punitive response to 'traditionalist" bishops, dioceses and
parishes who are attempting to leave the Episcopal Church in order to
form a new North American Anglican province, I am reminded of the
defensive and dismissive response of the Church of England bishops to
the Methodist Movement in the 18th century. The result, of course, was
the founding and development of a separate Methodist Church, which is
now much larger than the 'Anglican" Church (at least as we are now
constituted) on this continent.

Imagine the strength and witness of Anglicanism today if the
Methodists were welcomed as a preaching order within the Church of
England. Surely, they would be more 'orthodox" and we would be more
'vibrant," and together we would be much larger and much more
effective for the gospel in the world than we are divided. This, by
the way, is exactly what Innocent III achieved when he embraced St.
Francis and welcomed his friars into the ministry of the Catholic
Church at the beginning of the 13th century, despite the fact that
they were preaching such a dangerous 'new" doctrine.

Now, what I wonder is this: What would happen if the Presiding Bishop
with the support of the House of Bishops were to welcome the formation
of a new province for 'traditionalists" within the Episcopal Church,
allowing every diocese, parish and church institution to join this
province with a two-thirds vote by the appropriate parish meeting,
convention or governing body? She could even stipulate an acceptable
window of a year during which this vote would be required to happen.

Full story: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/80050_105100_ENG_HTM.htm

More Opinion: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/80050_ENG_HTM.htm

>_____________________

>DAYBOOK

On February 18, 2009, the church calendar remembers Martin Luther,
reformer (1483-1546).

* 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 February 18, 1781, Henry Martyn, missionary and
Bible translator in India, was born in Truro, Cornwall, England.

>_____________________

>CATALYST

"A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom" from Houghton
Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Co., by David W. Blight, 315 pages,
paperback, c. 2009, $14.95

[Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Co.] Slave narratives are
extremely rare; very few are first-person accounts by slaves who freed
themselves. Now two newly uncovered narratives, and the biographies of
the men who wrote them, join that exclusive group. Wallace Turnage was
a teenage field hand on an Alabama plantation, John Washington an
urban slave in Virginia. They never met. But both saw opportunity in
the chaos of the Civil War, both escaped north, and both left
remarkable accounts of their flights to freedom. This book is more
than their narratives: working from painstakingly acquired records and
sources for the lives of heretofore unknown former slaves, the
historian David W. Blight has discovered and reconstructed their lives
-- from slave childhood to black working-class stability in the North.
These are the untold biographies of two ordinary men, but they are
also new answers to how four million people moved from slavery to
freedom. A Slave No More is a major addition to the canon of American
history.

To order: Episcopal Books and Resources, online at
http://www.episcopalbookstore.org, or call 800-903-5544 -- or visit
your local Episcopal bookseller, http://www.episcopalbooksellers.org

More Catalyst: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/83842_ENG_HTM.htm

>_____________________

Subscriptions to Episcopal Life, the monthly newspaper for all
Episcopalians, are offered to individuals for $27 per year. This is an
18% savings off the cover price. To subscribe call 1-800-374-9510 or
send an email to elife@aflwebprinting.com. Save even more with a $50
two-year subscription. Episcopal Life started in-depth coverage of
General Convention in January.