Bonnie Anderson, president of the House of Deputies, and four members of her council of advice met for half an hour today with the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury. The topic was the distinctive governance system of the Episcopal Church, and the friction that system sometimes creates for Williams and others in the Anglican Communion.
“Sources close to the Palace”, as they say, have coughed lightly and raised an eyebrow to one another. That’s a courtier’s equivalent of being incandescent with rage.
The other work of convention is about networking, meeting people, talking about what others are doing to love and serve the Lord. Over lunch, I talk with a priest who sits beside me about a colleague of his who would like to come to Maine… new connections. I run into retired Bishop Chilton for a few minutes talk about ministry in the Diocese of Haiti
Some of you may not know that while Victor Rivera was bishop in San Joaquin, and for many years afterward, he insisted that women should not be ordained. He didn’t go to Nedi’s ordination as a priest, and he had never taken communion from her, over the more than 25 years that she served as priest. I asked Nedi later how he had come to change his mind. She said to me, “He didn’t change his mind; he changed his heart.”
Somehow in the midst of the maze of rooms and halls of the Anaheim Convention Center and surrounding hotels, the herculean effort of starting General Convention is gaining a head of steam. It began with a bit of an odd start Tuesday morning with new deputies and some deputy alternates (like yours truly) gathering near the information booth to find out where a promised new deputy orientation was happening. Only thing was, it wasn’t.
We aren’t expecting many mainstream media folks until next week, with the exception of The Los Angeles Times, for whom, in some ways, this is
Matthew Davies of Episcopal News Service has some details on the schedule of the Most Rev. Rowan Williams as he attends the General Convention of
A mere 80 cents – per person – per year – from every Episcopalian in the United States. Why?
So we can double the number of missionaries serving Christ in Christ’s far-flung world. See, it turns
out that the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society, also known as The Episcopal Church, also known as us, only has about 80 missionaries serving overseas at any given moment.
A journey, a quest, the search for the holy, answers a deep need in all of us, the outer journey which reflects the inner journey. The twentieth century has brought easier travel and made it possible for people in their thousands to visit all the great shrines and places of pilgrimage.
Read what Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and President Bonnie Anderson had to say at the opening session of the General Convention of the Episcopal