Given the reality of medieval office politics (as real for us in the twenty-first century as it was in the thirteenth), Hadewijch offered two main pieces of advice: “be on your guard against instability” and “never abandon the true life of good works.”
Archbishop Gregory Venables responded to questions while in Canada. He was there visiting Anglicans who insist that they have broken away from the Anglican Church in Canada and become associated with the Province of the Southern Cone where Venables is the primate.
Chancellor to the Diocese of San Joaquin has announced the filing of a Complaint for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief in Fresno County Superior Court to reclaim all property currently being held by John-David Schofield, the former Bishop of the Diocese of San Joaquin. In a related matter, the Rt. Rev. Jerry Lamb, Provisional Bishop of the Diocese of San Joaquin, has sent a letter of protest to Presiding Bishop Gregory Venables of the Province of the Southern Cone.
The decline in Episcopal Church membership relative to America’s population growth is often attributed to our “lack of biblical faith”. Interestingly today, the Southern Baptist Convention, which prides itself on a focus on biblical faith above all else has announced that it must recognize that it is a “denomination in decline”.
Questions are being raised about the timing of Bishop Gene Robinson’s scheduled civil union ceremony this coming June. There are voices that feel that Bishop Robinson intentionally timed the event so as to overshadow the Lambeth Conference that will be held later this summer. Bishop Robinson denies that intention.
While HIV/AIDS is thought of as the world’s greatest public health challenge, there are other significant diseases that are are taking a similar toll. Today is World Malaria Day and a number of organizations around the world have taken advantage of the attention being paid to their work to call for new initiatives in the prevention of Malaria.
Several national hierarchical churches denominations, including the United Methodist Church and the African Methodist Episcopal Church, filed an amicus curie (or “friend of the court”) brief yesterday supporting the position of the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia that the §57-9 division statute of the Virginia Code “cannot withstand constitutional challenge.”
As I said the words and moved my hand in the familiar shape of the cross, something caught my eye. One of the first grade boys seated in the second row was moving his arm with mine. His face was scrunched in concentration, his little fingers shaped just as mine were, his arm also tracing the shape of the cross through the air. He was mimicking me.
The authors of the New Testament were very much like the scribes who would later transmit those authors’ writings. The authors too were human beings with needs, beliefs, worldviews, opinions, loves, hates, longings, desires, situations, problems—and surely all these things affected what they wrote.
The redoubtable Bosco Peters has launched a new feature on his blog that deserves attention for both its name and its flinty sense of humor.