Tonight in the opening ceremonies of the Olympics, the flag of the United States will be carried by one of the nations newest citizens, Lopez Lomong. Lomong has only been a US citizen for 13 months, having immigrated as child from the Sudan where he was one of the “lost boys”, a forced migration of children caused by war and the persecution of christians and their communities in that nation.
Earlier this week we covered the controversy surrounding the release of letters by the Archbishop of Canterbury suggesting that his private beliefs on the sanctity of same-sex unions were at odds with the official position of the Lambeth Conference. The Archbishop has released a statement in response.
I am sorry, more than I can say, that we were part of a system that took you and your children from home and family. I am sorry, more than I can say, that we tried to remake you in our image, by taking from you your language and your signs of identity.
The demographic makeup of the evangelical movement within American christendom is changing. The driver of this change appears to be the assimilation into evangelicalism of large numbers of immigrants from around the world. Their presence is effecting the way evangelicals as whole view the relationship between Church and State, but it’s also serving to reinforce many of the existing social views of present evangelicalism.
Lionel Deimel, a lay person in the Diocese of Pittsburgh who is opposed to efforts to realign the Episcopal Diocese and remove it from the Episcopal Church, and perhaps from a connection with the Archbishop of Canterbury, has posted his analysis of the latest filing by that diocese in response to a lawsuit brought by one of the congregations.
For an American church flak like me, learning to work with the British news media has been similar to learning to drive on British roads. The enterprises are fundamentally similar, and yet one’s reflexes need reconditioning to avoid accidents.
Another story perhaps lost in the Lambeth avalanche was Jonathan Wynne-Jones’ article on the exhumation of Cardinal John Henry Newman, a candidate for sainthood in the Catholic Church, who was buried with his best friend, Ambrose St. John ( a name which the English pronounce “Sinjin” or “Wuster”, or something like that)
There is something about spending days with children that slows one down and opens the eyes. Many have remarked on the wonder of seeing things only noticed by the under 10 set or those who see the world through the openness of a child or an artist.
The centers of intellectual and theological enquiry increasingly moved during the twelfth century to new cathedral “schools” that eventually gave birth to the great European universities. This involved a geographical shift of learning from countryside to new cities. However, the move involved more than geography.