wfn.org | [ENS] Canterbury proposes resignation of ecumenical commission members / Concert video features New

[<mdavies@episcopalchurch.org>]

>Episcopal News Service
>May 28, 2010

>Episcopal News Service is available at
>http://www.episcopalchurch.org/ens.

>Today's Episcopal News Service includes:

* TOP STORY - Canterbury proposes resignation of ecumenical commission
members
* MISSION - Concert video features New York's Grace Episcopal Church
choirs
* PEOPLE - Former Idaho Bishop Harry Brown Bainbridge dies at 70
* OPINION - Remembering wartime sacrifice
* DAYBOOK - May 31: Today in Scripture, Prayer, History
* EBAR PICK - "Christianity - The First Three Thousand Years"

>_____________________

>TOP STORIES

Canterbury proposes resignation of ecumenical commission members

>By Matthew Davies

[Episcopal News Service] Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams is
proposing that representatives currently serving on some of the Anglican
Communion's ecumenical dialogues should resign their membership if they
are from a province that has not complied with moratoria on same-gender
blessings, cross-border interventions and the ordination of gay and
lesbian people to the episcopate.

Williams made his proposal in a May 28 Pentecost letter to the Anglican
Communion, in which he specifically refers to the May 15 consecration of
Los Angeles Bishop Suffragan Mary Douglas Glasspool and the ongoing
activity across provincial boundaries. Glasspool is the Episcopal
Church's second openly gay, partnered bishop.

Two Episcopal Church members serving on the Anglican-Orthodox
Theological Dialogue and one on the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission
on Unity, Faith and Order are expected to be affected by the proposal.

Full story: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/79425_122562_ENG_HTM.htm

More Top Stories: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/ens

>_____________________

>MISSION

Concert video features New York's Grace Episcopal Church choirs

[Office of Communication] The Men and Boys Choir and the Girls' Choir of
Grace Episcopal Church in New York City is featured in a new video
produced by the Office of Communication.

Full story: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81799_122556_ENG_HTM.htm

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

>_____________________

>PEOPLE

Former Idaho Bishop Harry Brown Bainbridge dies at 70

>ENS staff

Harry Brown Bainbridge III, 12th bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of
Idaho, died May 27 at the Talbot Hospice Guest House in Easton,
Maryland. Bainbridge had battled lung cancer and heart complications
since 2007. He was 70.

Full story: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81831_122571_ENG_HTM.htm

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

>_____________________

>OPINION

>Remembering wartime sacrifice

>By Robert Certain

[Episcopal News Service] When I was a boy growing up during the Korean
War, I was reminded of the risks our men in uniform were enduring and of
the need for us at home to make some sacrifice in support of their
efforts in that far away country. I heard stories of the enforced
sacrifice of World War II, of ration stamps for sugar, gas, and other
commodities. I was taught that it was a civilian duty to make such
sacrifices when the nation was at war so that our fighting forces would
have first choice of materiel needed to be successful and victorious.

Sometime in the early 1960s, however, we started to hear about "guns and
butter" -- the idea that we could fight a war without giving up
anything, any comfort or necessity, in our daily lives while our armed
forces were fighting, bleeding, and dying in Vietnam. We even declared a
"war on poverty" with a promise to increase the benefits of our civilian
economy for all our citizens.

Full story: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/80050_122554_ENG_HTM.htm

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

>_____________________

>DAYBOOK

On May 31, 2010, the church remembers the Visitation of the Blessed
Virgin.

* 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 May 31, 1997, Victoria Matthews became the
Anglican Church of Canada's first female diocesan bishop at All Saints
Cathedral in Edmonton.

>_____________________

>EBAR PICK

"Christianity - The First Three Thousand Years" by Diarmaid MacCulloch,
Hardcover, 1184 pages, c. March 2010, $45.

[Viking Adult] The National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of
The Reformation returns with the definitive history of Christianity for
our time

Once in a generation a historian will redefine his field, producing a
book that demands to be read-a product of electrifying scholarship
conveyed with commanding skill. Diarmaid MacCulloch's Christianity is
such a book. Breathtaking in ambition, it ranges back to the origins of
the Hebrew Bible and covers the world, following the three main strands
of the Christian faith.

Christianity will teach modern readers things that have been lost in
time about how Jesus' message spread and how the New Testament was
formed. We follow the Christian story to all corners of the globe,
filling in often neglected accounts of conversions and confrontations in
Africa and Asia. And we discover the roots of the faith that galvanized
America, charting the rise of the evangelical movement from its origins
in Germany and England. This book encompasses all of intellectual
history-we meet monks and crusaders, heretics and saints, slave traders
and abolitionists, and discover Christianity's essential role in driving
the enlightenment and the age of exploration, and shaping the course of
World War I and World War II.

We are living in a time of tremendous religious awareness, when both
believers and non-believers are deeply engaged by questions of religion
and tradition, seeking to understand the violence sometimes perpetrated
in the name of God. The son of an Anglican clergyman, MacCulloch writes
with deep feeling about faith. His last book, The Reformation, was
chosen by dozens of publications as Best Book of the Year and won the
National Book Critics Circle Award. This awe-inspiring follow-up is a
landmark new history of the faith that continues to shape the world.

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