God freely created us so that we might know, love and serve him in this life and be happy with him for ever. God’s purpose in creating us is to draw forth from us a response of love and service here on earth, so that we may obtain our goal of everlasting happiness with him in heaven.
Mainline Protestantism’s (potentially) prophetic voice has been drowned out in the debate over who can sleep with whom and still do God’s work. Yes, it’s a big deal but so is the war in Iraq, public education, the environment, New Orleans, poverty and the imperial presidency. At times, I wonder if it’s an easier fight than the ones with less obvious (depending on your side) heroes and villains. – Diane Winston
The Rt. Rev. Stacy Sauls writes to the House of Bishops that the procedures used for consent to deposition of a Bishop for abandoning the
Sydney Anglicanism has been in fact marginalised and made even irrelevant by its continuing opposition to the leadership, the headship of women, and that this is why the Sydney Anglicans have put so much energy in recent years into forging overseas alliances, particularly in the Third World.
We actually anticipate that we will be in a situation within 24 to 36 months in which . . . a separate ecclesiastical structure in North America within the Anglican Communion will exist as a united reality. – Bishop Duncan
Misdirected government policy plays a part here, too. In 2005, the United States Congress began to require widespread use of ethanol in motor fuels. This law combined with a subsidy for this use has created a flourishing corn market in the United States, but has also diverted agricultural resources from food to fuel. This makes it even harder for the hungry stomachs to compete.
Individual parishes are neither truly independent nor fully autonomous but emanate from the diocese. The bishop serves as the foundation’s head. Rectors and priests represent him or her at the parish level. We will not delve further, as in this instance church structure flows from denominational belief and thus falls under the purview of theologians.
Psychological studies suggest that the mere fact of division, even when there is no substantive content to it, can be corrosive: in a series of experiments in the 1950s and ’60s, groups of similar people arbitrarily divided into subgroups quickly exploded into conflicts of “Lord of the Flies”-like intensity. Other studies have shown that when relatively like-minded people are grouped together, they don’t settle around the average point of view of the individuals in the group but rather become more extreme in the direction toward which they’re already inclined.
I’d like to tell you some fancy things about the spirituality of walking. I enjoy thinking I’ve become an expert in humble walking. I cut several paragraphs where I tried to deliver the thousandth (and best) lecture on the cultural and religious importance of the Camino. You don’t need the lecture. Walking is simpler and humbler than any fancy spirituality.
Teilhard de Chardin outlines the dangers of a divided heart and mind if we do not love God and the world aright. He suggests that most Christians are in danger of becoming ‘distorted, disgusted, or divided’. We become distorted when we deny our taste for the tangible world and make ourselves purely religious objects.