A mysterious stranger with a conscience left a cashier’s check for $3,255 at Dallas’ Episcopal Church of the Resurrection, explaining in a note that he was trying to atone for crimes of his past. Two other times this year, the financially strapped church has had scatterings of $20 bills turn up unexplained in the vestibule, apparently stuffed through a gap in locked front doors.
What dawned on me during the retreat was that these men shoulder the awesome responsibility of rebuilding Sudan after 21 years of horrible war. In the southern part of Sudan, where most are based, the Episcopal Church of Sudan (ECS) is the largest non-governmental organization in the country. In some areas, 90+ per cent of the population belong to the ECS.
So I thought to myself, “Well if that’s not really the beginning of the church’s story what did Jesus really say?” And that took my imagination back before the Great Commission to words that no scholar that I know of has any problem saying that Jesus actually said.
Here is a collection of a few of the good things that Episcopalians and their congregations have done that made the news this past week.
“I want to raise the strengths and uniqueness of what it means to be an Anglican Christian — of holding Orthodox views, but doing so in a way that remains open to all sorts of conditions of people. The separatists seem to have an emphasis on disciplining people who have different lifestyles than they do. That’s alien to the Anglican Communion.”
On gay marriage, among Episcopalian clergy, 49% believe marriage should be legal, 38% civil union should be legal but not marriage, and 13% would give no legal recognition. Compared to other mainline denominations, Episcopalian clergy were most likely to disagree (36%) or strongly disagree (53%) that the Bible was the inerrant word of God.
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Early Christians were all supposed to be martyrs—witnesses—although not all were expected to die. . . . The eagerness with which many early Christians sought a public occasion to give witness indicates that they had already been primed, indeed trained, for the opportunity.