Over at the Catholic group blog Vox Nova, M.Z. Forrest is trying to compile a list of great Catholic fictional literature, which he defines to include “Catholic, Orthodox, and high Anglican authors.” To get the discussion going, his initial list includes four authorss, one of whom was an Anglican.
It is precisely the point of the liturgy to take people out of their worlds and usher them into a strange, new world—to show them that, despite appearances, the last thing in the world they need is more of the world out of which they’ve come. The world the liturgy reveals does not seem relevant at first glance, but it turns out that the world it reveals is more real than the one we inhabit day by day.
The good news of God is trapped in competitive Christianity. Yes, we know we are supposed to reach out with the gospel. And surely we are meant to spread Christ’s love throughout the earth. But, there are too many steeples to keep painted. Too many church lawns to be mowed.
There’s a nice piece on the newly Right Reverend Stephen Taylor Lane, who was consecrated the ninth bishop of Maine today, in this morning’s Bangor Daily News, who caught up with him at a press conference yesterday. He will be bishop coadjutor of the diocese until Bishop Knudsen retires.
Signs are pointing to increasing dissent among conservative Christian leaders with regard to their involvement in politics. Recently we’ve seen acknowledgment of climate change from Southern Baptist leaders, and the growing influence of Sojourners within the faith-meets-politics landscape. Now, the Associated Press tells us, a group of conservative christian leaders are working on a “starkly self-critical document saying the movement has become too political and has diminished the Gospel through its approach to the culture wars.”
It’s common enough that Christian universities hire Christian faculty, according to a front page article in this week’s Chronicle of Higher Education. Some places even require that one sign off on a “statement of faith” that includes doctrinal declarations about such things as Original Sin or the inerrancy of Scripture. But one Presbyterian university, Whitworth, in Spokane, Wash., tries to find a balance between the extremes of being a nominally Christian institution and dictating faith to its faculty, and requires that applicants write their own statement of faith as part of the application process.
Two things that the church gets right, says Guardian columnist Simon Jenkins over at Comment Is Free, are architecture and unofficial welfare. Describing the apparently magnificent restoration of St. Martin-in-the-Fields at Trafalgar Square, Jenkins provides a singular portrait of the architectural anomaly of steeple-upon-portico that became, in the 18th century, the template for many an Anglican church to come. But more than that, he adds, are the features that are at once just as permanent and, as individuals, totally transient.
Renowned radio host Diane Rehm found herself on the other side of the interviewing mike last week at the National Cathedral’s Sunday Forum. Rehm, an Episcopalian, related that her faith grew stronger and deeper while she was undergoing treatment for spasmodic dysphonia, the condition which makes it difficult for her to speak. In spite of her condition, Rehm has hosted a call-in radio show at Washington’s talk-oriented public radio station, WAMU, for more than a quarter century.
Bishop Gene Robinson gets another spotlight this week from PBS’s Religion and Ethics Newsweekly, talking about his upcoming civil union and his ongoing safety concerns. Civil unions became legal in New Hampshire as of Jan. 1, and for Robinson, this allows him and his longtime partner Mark Andrews to enjoy “some 400 of the protections that out of 1,100 that are accorded to heterosexual couples,” as he says in the interview with R&EN’s Kim Lawton.
Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani apparently caused quite a ruckus last month by taking communion at a papal mass held at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Seems he and Cardinal Edward Egan had a “tacit understanding” that Giuliani wouldn’t take mass because of his support of abortion rights, according to an RNS story picked up at the Pew Forum. When it happened, Reuters ran the story that it was his divorced-and-remarried status that barred him from receiving communion, and tabloids ran rather amok with the report. But Egan seems to be taking the matter very seriously, citing Giuliani’s support of abortion rights.