Bishop Trevor Mwamba of Botswana spoke of “delusions of grandeur” among some of the African primates and noted that many church members throughout the continent had not been consulted about issues of human sexuality, and were “frankly not bothered with the debate.”
Speaking at a charity dinner, President Bush called the work done for Africa by his administration and family “a labor of love.” Before his remarks, he accepted the Bishop John T. Walker Distinguished Humanitarian Service Award, which pays tribute to leaders in humanitarian fields for Africa.
A Catholic priest got exercised when a California reporter attempted to ask him about reports that he had expelled a woman from Mass “because her vehicle sported painted signs in support of president-elect Barack Obama.” Violence ensued. Imagine the response on the Anglican right had the priest been an Episcopalian and the signs in support of John McCain.
Bishop Tom Ely: I will convene a Task Force to study and plan for what it will take to bring renewable energy projects to Rock Point and to make Rock Point – by the year 2015 – a model of energy conservation and efficiency in Vermont and beyond.
Religion Dispatches, which will have a bright future if its early content is any indication, has two excellent essays about President-elect Barack Obama and the Religious Left–such as it is.
Philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, economists … are putting together a novel picture of morality—a trend that University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt has described as the “new synthesis in moral psychology.” The picture emerging shows the moral sense to be the product of biologically evolved and culturally sensitive brain systems that together make up the human “moral faculty.”
Note the prominent role played by at this meeting by members of the Windsor Continuation Group, a group put together by the Archbishop of Canterbury to accomplish no one is quite sure what. The only thing that can be said with any certainty about this group is that not one of its members supports gay ordination.
In hopes of salvaging his career, suspended Episcopal Bishop Charles E. Bennison Jr. yesterday asked a special church court convened in Philadelphia to reverse its recent sentence removing him from holy orders.
As a religion major at Drew University, I had the chance to study theology in Oxford. There was a catch, I had to act as if I were studying for ministry. That meant mandatory chapel and it meant field work. Rather than send some college kids to a parish where they might break things, they sent us to place where we could do no real harm. You guessed it: they sent us to a hospital!
Holiness, Benedict argues, is not something that happens in a vacuum. It has something to do with the way we live our community lives and our family lives and our public lives as well as the way we say our prayers. The life-needs of other people affect the life of the truly spiritual person and they hear the voice of God in that. . . .