So the upshot is this: I’m going to focus more on Science vs Theology here – and start posting my thoughts about the Great Anglican Upheaval over on the Cafe elsewhere. We’ll see if I can stick to that, but at least for now it’s the plan. Grin.
Mexican President Felipe Calderon visited the region and offered “all help humanly possible” to the more than 300,000 Tabasco residents whose homes were flooded or damaged and to the thousands of farmers whose entire harvests were destroyed….
Only a week or so ago, a US blogger was remarking charitably that it wasn’t worth expending a bullet on the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, who is the first woman to lead a major Christian denomination. The blogger, incidentally, was herself a woman.
The Church of England had provided no bishops for the colonies prior to the Revolution and it was not prepared to do so afterwards. The consecration of Seabury was a key to the formation of the Episcopal Church. Its relationship to the Anglican Communion was figured out later.
A two-week trial began Tuesday in Fairfax County Circuit Court that will determine whether the 1867 law governs the dispute between 11 Virginia congregations that voted to leave the church and Episcopal leaders who reject the validity of those votes. At the time of enactment of the law, Protestant churches had been torn apart over slavery and abolitionism, and the splits were never amicable or formally recognized by both sides. Ironically, the Episcopal Church was an exception.
If the Jews say that God speaks Hebrew, and the Muslims that God speaks Arabic, what language do we Christians say that God speaks? Our revelation is not so much through a text as through a human being, Jesus, (and, however unlikely this seems sometimes, through his body, the Church visible and invisible). What is the human language that translates this revelation?
The general practice in this country is to have monthly Communions, and I bless God the Holy Ordinance is so often administered. Yet when I consider its importance, both on account of the positive command of Christ and of the many and great benefits we receive from it, I cannot but regret that it does not make a part of every Sunday’s solemnity.