It is easy for us to say that we love our neighbor, and in fact, many of us repeat those verses every Sunday. It is easy to strike our chests and claim we have given a certain amount of our money to the local shelter, a hospice in Guatemala or even for the Millenium Development Goals, but would we be willing to leave the ease of modern life and share all we have with the miserable? No, we would not.
Episcopal News Service observes the fifth anniversay of the war in Iraq by looking at the many ways in which The Episcopal Church remains active
At least two more good essays have appeared since the initial reactions in blogs and in the media to the Pew Forum on Religion and
IRIN reports: In a statement, the Swaziland Coalition of Concerned Civic Organisations (SCCCO) condemned the “continued abuse of the Royal Swazi Police and Umbutfo Swaziland
“American religious and secular values hold that medical professionals have a responsibility to provide timely and adequate medical care and that, while an individual’s conscientious objection must be protected, it cannot be at the cost of good patient care and it cannot control or restrict the legal and moral decisions of the patient.” – The Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice
“I am not afraid of schism. I am afraid of a church in which leaders voted to listen to the experience of homosexual persons, but show little evidence of having acted on that promise. I am afraid of a church in which righteousness is understood to be the enforcement of a small number of biblical texts, forgetting that in the bible righteousness is realized in the practice of justice.” – Paul Gibson
Bishop Mouneer Anis of Egypt has issued a statement on the meeting of the Joint Standing Committee of the Anglican Consultative Council held February 29
Robert Rae Spears Jr., 89, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Rochester from 1970 to 1984, died March 18. “Bishop Spears made the diocese a healthy and vibrant place, though somewhat divided because of his determination to stand for justice and on the side of those who need advocacy,” the current Bishop of Rochester, Jack McKelvey, said.
“[C]ommunicating Christianity well requires sensitive understanding of the particular missionary situations. Provinces are in better positions to attend to such tasks. Provinces should also make every effort to understand the social contexts of their mission. They should teach the Christian faith in creative ways…”
Sin, sorrow, and suffering, and death itself, were indeed taken away at the Cross, but we mortals must enter into the depths of this mystery in actual experience. The fact that the Savior bore all this for us does not mean that we bear nothing of it; rather, it means that we are invited in to that place (the Cross) where suffering is transfigured. We (the Church) are his Body, says St. Paul. As such, we share in his suffering for the life of the world.