On Maundy Thursday we had a service in the evening. So I decided to try the Thursday morning spin class instead. Little did I know, the Thursday morning class is “Devotion in Motion,” an hour-long spin class during which the instructor plays praise and worship music and talks about God, using the idea of a bike ride as a metaphor for the spiritual life.
Holy Week is the world’s sacred Winter;
The earth is a widow, the skies are sere,
There’s a sound of scourging and nailing in the vinegary wind;
And the darkness chokes the Son of Man.
Episcopal Divinity School will present honorary doctor of divinity degrees to five individuals for their social justice work: The Rt. Rev. John Chane, former NBA star Kevin Johnson, Cynthia Shattuck, Katie Sherrod, and Hellen Wangusa. Wangusa, Anglican Observer to the United Nations, will deliver the commencement address.
The governing body of the Church in Wales meets next Wednesday to discuss a bill to enable women to be ordained as bishops. Backed by the six diocesan bishops of the Church in Wales, the bill states that henceforth men and women may be ordained as Bishops, but that pastoral care and support will be provided for those who in conscience object to the ordination of female Bishops.
The Chicago Tribune’s photo essay on the Keiskamma Altarpiece is worth a visit. Grace Cathedral offers a panel by panel view of this monumental artwork.
Café contributor Adrian Worsfold wonders whether Bishop N. T. Wright actually deserves his reputation as a scholar. It isn’t necessary to embrace his entire critique to believe that the bishop is so frequently lauded for his Biblical scholarship, that it obscures the hackneyed anti-modernism that mars much of his political and social commentary.
The Very Rev. Tracey Lind, dean of Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Cleveland, will take part in a panel discussion about race, religion and politics on The News Hour with Jim Lehrer tonight. The program is broadcast at 6 pm EDT; the panel discussion is expected to air about 6:30 pm.
Students of the current Anglican controversy may recall that Richard Mellon Scaife, who spent millions on dollars to bring down Bill Clinton also spent hunderds of thousdans of dollars to bring down the Episcopal Church. How odd, then, to see him seated beside Hillary Clinton, as she criticized Barack Obama for his handling of the Jeremiah Wright affair.
Steven D. Martin’s film on the Institute on Religion and Democracy–Renewal or Ruin–is now available online at talk2.action.org. It’s an easy way to understand this organization, its donors and their campaign against mainline Protestantism.
Michael Gerson hasn’t learned that people who live in glass churches shouldn’t throw stones. In a recent column in The Washington Post, he took Barack Obama to task for his relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, while retaining his membership in the Anglican Church of Nigeria, which is led by the flamboyantly bigoted Archbishop Peter Akinola.