In a paradoxical recent poll, 65 percent of respondents said that Christian right leaders “sometimes or almost always represent their views.” Yet 60 percent said “they favored a more progressive evangelical agenda focused more on protecting the environment, tackling HIV/AIDs, and alleviating poverty and less on abortion and homosexuality.”
How should liberals respond to the fact that key conservative priests are deserting their schismatic bishops? One can simultaneously delight in the fact that increasing numbers of conservative Episcopalians are choosing to remain in the Church, while worrying that this might mean a return to business as usual in dioceses that have long worked to marginalize gays and women.
The Rev. Dr. Prince Singh was elected February 2 to be the next bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Rochester. Singh was ordained a priest in the Church of South India in 1990. CSI was inaugurated in 1947 by the union of the South India United Church, the southern Anglican diocese of the Church of India, Burma, Ceylon, and the Methodist Church in South India.
The folks at Beliefnet have created a gallery to Lost’s twelve most “spiritual” moments. But does the show have an identifiable spiritual stance, or do its writers, in true post modern fashion, use whatever motifs are out there to keep their narrative humming along? The character John Locke, is frequently described as a man of faith. But what exactly is it that he believes in?
Archbishop Peter Jensen has announced that he and the five other bishops from the Diocese of Sydney have decided not to attend the Lambeth Conference.
According to a poll, the number of North Americans who believe that the Bible is “the actual word of God” has fallen from 65 per cent in 1963 to just 27 per cent in 2001. Attitudes among Americans toward homosexuality, sex out of marriage and censorship are also growing steadily more liberal. Abortion is the major exception; younger Americans tend to be more opposed to abortion than their elders.
Uncle Buddy, our McDonnell family patriarch at 94, recently began taking guitar lessons. The last remaining brother of seven with no sisters, his favorite song is Amazing Grace, which he practices often on the guitar and daily in his life. “How did you manage to live so long and so well?” his nieces and nephews wonder. Buddy says, “It’s because God has something left for me to do.”
Hope and fear, laughter and tears have been part of our journey.
Joy and pain, longing and doubt meet on the pathway.
Often we do not believe, O God,