Tobias Haller writes: Now, this may sound shocking, but Scripture does not provide an answer for the dilemma of church polity, at least if one is looking for an international system or code of government. Scripture doesn’t even provide a polity for a national church, let alone a communion!
Before I became a priest, I was a professor of oceanography. One of
the things I learned was that oceanographers couldn’t just study
squid or fish in isolation. We had to study interconnected systems.
We had to understand not only the animals’ environment, such as the
water, but its chemistry and circulation, the atmosphere above the
ocean and the geology below it. And that, I believe, is how we must
understand our world: We must see everything, and everyone, as
interconnected and intended by God to live in relationship.
Two of the most significant crises facing our world — climate change
and deadly poverty — offer an example of such interconnectedness.
Trinity Episcopal Church, while affirming its place in the Diocese of Ft. Worth and in the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States of America, does not support any search for forming a new Anglican Province. Trinity Episcopal Church does not support transferring to another existing province of the Anglican Communion. Trinity Episcopal Church does not support seeking the status of an extra-provincial diocese.
One night in 1985, when he was 17 years old, Tramel played a role in the stabbing death of a homeless man named Michael Stephenson. A prep school roommate, David Kurtzman, wielded the knife that killed Stephenson while Tramel stood by. Tramel got 15 years to life; Kurtzman got an additional year for use of the weapon. The youths had sought retaliation against gang members who had roughed up some classmates. Stephenson, who wasn’t involved, became their target.
Do we need to be re-educated about Christianity? That was religion scholar and Jesus Seminar participant Marcus Borg’s contention in his address before the recent Church for the 21st Century conference at Washington National Cathedral. In his address, entitled “A Tale of Two Christianities Today,” Borg argued that the common understanding of Christianity of a generation or two ago has become “hugely unpersuasive” in our time