For a man at the heart of a bitter dispute that threatens to sunder the Anglican communion, Bishop Gene Robinson seems more relaxed than almost any of the 650 bishops and archbishops gathered for the Lambeth Conference, the once-a-decade assembly that brings together the leaders of an estimated 80 million Anglicans worldwide.
Set aside the fraught question of when human life begins. The new debate: When does pregnancy begin? The Bush Administration has ignited a furor with a proposed definition of pregnancy that has the effect of classifying some of the most widely used methods of contraception as abortion.
The Archbishop of Canterbury put the squeeze on the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada today, saying that the Anglican Communion would be in “grave peril” if the North American churches did not adopt a moratorium on same- sex blessings and the consecration of gay bishops.
The Most Rev. Carlos Touché Porter, Primate of Mexico : I was prepared for much worse. One thing I enjoy about being Anglican is to live with uncertainty and unresolved questions, and that is how we are going home. But if we are not of one mind, I think we are of one spirit.
The Archbishop of Canterbury’s final presidential address to the 2008 Lambeth Conference is now online.
The Reflections Document from the 2008 Lambeth Conference is now online. Here is the section on the Windsor Report and the three moratoria. I have
One can take heart in the fact that some of the most ardent homophobes in the Communion feel that they are losing ground, yet the fact remains that the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Anglican Communion Office and the majority of the bishops at this conference want us to maintain our de facto ban on the consecration of partnered gay candidates to the episcopacy, and to ban either the authorization of rites of same sex blessings–it isn’t clear which.
The problem with miracles is that we tend to get mesmerized by them, focusing on God’s responsibility and forgetting our own. Miracles let us off the hook. They appeal to the part of us that is all too happy to let God feed the crowd, save the world, do it all. We do not have what it takes, after all.
Today, much talking about the talk, so to speak: How language challenges us. How we hear things, how we say things, and how to truly listen–and speak–when there’s so much noise. The Bishops are coming to the end of indabas and bible study with colleagues from around the world, and are feeling pangs of sadness at it being time to go, wonder at what has been accomplished (even if it hasn’t seemed like much to those outside).
Andrea Useem writes on Health.com’s Poked and Prodded blog about the condition known as runner’s high, and her own experience with it during her first marathon. The exultation she felt reminded her more of a religious experience than of any chemical rush, she says, and it piqued her interest enough to drill down into the phenomenon a bit more.