That’s the headline on the op-ed by John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York, in the Observor. The archbishop writes, “The time has come for Mr Brown finally to slay the ghosts of Britain’s colonialist past by thoroughly revising foreign policy towards Zimbabwe and to lead the way in co-ordinating an international response. The time for ‘African solutions’ alone is now over.”
October 1st marks the 50th anniversary of the appearance of “In God We Trust” on the paper currency of the United States. The phrase, which is the nation’s official motto as well, has been caught in a broader debate over just how high the wall separating church and state should stand.
Why has religion persisted in the West after the Enlightenment? Did the nature of Christianity itself push us toward secularism? Mark Lilla offers some answers in The Stillborn God, which is reviewed in the New York Times Book Review today
“I think they’re pushing us because they want to polarize the issue,” said Bishop Parsley of Alabama, who did not vote for Robinson. “The primates want us to say that we don’t approve public rites of blessing, and we have not done that. They don’t want us to approve gay bishops, and the 2006 general convention resolution makes that unlikely. Basically, what I’m saying is that what they are asking is essentially already the case.”
Is an acceptance of neo-Darwinian evolution possible for a Christian? Catholic theologian Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., offer three different Christian approaches to reconciling scientific evidenc eof evolution with faith in a creating God.
O eternal God,
Turn us into the arms and hands,
The legs and feet
Of your beloved Son, Jesus.
As an American Episcopal priest, however, I feel that no one is looking at the real issue, which is not to get the archbishop to come on board the gay world cruise, but rather to deal with far more critical issues at local and regional levels. It’s really not up to Rowan to make everything all right. Why should we demand that our spiritual leaders become supermen?
“Everybody under age 35” is a priority, says Greg Rickel, who will soon be bishop of the Diocese of Olympia. Rickel, who has an 11-year-old son, Austin, with his wife of 23 years, Marti, a psychiatric nurse, says, “If we can’t master or figure out what to do with that age group, the church is dead.”
Rowan Williams tells the Telegraph that he believes our society is “broken,” in an interview that has nothing to do with the Anglican Communion. “Is
George Packer can hardly be described as a supporter of the war in Iraq, but in his latest for The New Yorker, he both skewers the architects of the war, and poses some difficult questions for those who favor a rapid pullout. On the one hand, he writes: “[T]he inadequacy of the surge is already clear, if one honestly assesses the daily lives of Iraqis.” On the other hand, he finds all of the “quick exit” strategies being advocated on the left shortsighted and superficial.