The Archive

Month: May 2008

A new take on mainline’s decline

May 24, 2008 No Comments

Commentary from USA Today this week posits that mainline megachurches might be the solution to declining mainline churches—or does it? Once you read past the lede, you’ll find the piece takes a closer look at the phenomenon and doesn’t buy the oft-touted explanation that all our mainline people have run away to more conservative havens. In fact, with all the attention raining down on mainline churches as a result of renewed focus on faith on the Democratic side of the political process, signs are pointing to hope for these churches.

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Before Rolling Thunder, there’s Motorcycle Mass

May 24, 2008 No Comments

In preparation for this year’s Rolling Thunder event, where hundreds of thousands of bikers descend on the nation’s capital in honor of fallen and missing heroes, several thousand strong showed up in New Jersey for the Motorcycle Mass, led by a Catholic priest, Father Mark Giordani. He’s actually been doing this since long before Rolling Thunder, now in its 21st year, began: Giordani, himself a biker, started the tradition 39 years ago.

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The power of prayer

May 24, 2008 No Comments

On Speaking of Faith (whose site won the Religion and Spirituality Webby award, it should be noted) this week, Krista Tippett has repurposed some interviews from 2003, before the program was syndicated nationally through Public Radio International, and used them to create a program that examines prayer as a global phenomenon that takes place in many religious and even nonreligious traditions.

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Flow diagram needed to trace church fragmentation

May 24, 2008 No Comments

Jason Byassee, writing for the Christian Century, makes a wry observation about the complexity of Anglican fragmentation. Even at the local level, he writes, “it takes a long memory or a flow chart to keep straight all the Episcopal-Anglican divisions and acronyms that have developed in the well-heeled suburbs of DuPage County, just west of Chicago.” Part of the problem is that most people tuning into the situation are under the impression that homosexuality is the most important issue, but Byassee notes other factors.

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Reclaiming the Sabbath

May 24, 2008 2 Comments

One of the greatest challenges to us as church is to go against the culture’s use of time as a commodity, its business model of program evaluation, and its focus on production and consumption. God loves us. God saves us and makes us whole. God rests on the seventh day. If we decide to embody this as church, what will the shape of our time look like? How will we operate differently from the culture around us?

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Ride like a cowboy, pray like a saint

May 24, 2008 No Comments

Jackson Kemper’s ministry it tied up with the organization called the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society, which in turn is tied up with the story of Episcopal expansion in areas west of the Alleghenies and north of the Ohio River. As early as 1792, the General Convention considered a proposal to send Episcopal missionaries to the frontiers of the United States.

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Florida priest reinstated by Ugandan bishop

May 23, 2008 No Comments

There’s news today in the Jacksonville Sun of a priest who has been reinstated to the ministry by his Ugandan Anglican bishop. The reinstatement is due to the priest’s “modeling true repentance for a real failure”. The priest was removed for having an inappropriate relationship with a parishioner in his former parish.

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Marriage for all

May 23, 2008 No Comments

All Saint’s Church in Pasadena, one of the largest congregations in the Episcopal Church has announced that, in response to the recent California Supreme Court ruling, they have decided to “treat equally all couple presenting themselves” to be married at the church.

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