“For from the Anglican perspective, this new invitation to swim the Tiber can sometimes have a slightly predatory feel; in corporate terms, a little like a take over bid in some broader power play of church politics. And if Anglicans do feel a little like this, I wonder if things really are all that rosy in the ecumenical garden.”
For Sunday Social Hour this week, we left the question open to what folks wanted to talk about. They shared their favorite posts, and opened some topics for discussion.
Can it really be that absence of bodies and voices can be nearly as persuasive as presence and wisdom?
Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori sat for an interview with the Houston Chronicle during a recent visit to Texas. As usual, she acquits herself–and represents our church–well.
What about receiving into the Episcopal Church that day via Skype?” I asked. “I’m not sure that’s ever been done before,” said Bishop Duncan. “So . . . ” I replied.
What, then, is preaching, of which we are to speak? It is not hard to find a definition. Preaching is the communication of truth by man to men. It has in it two essential elements, truth and personality. Neither of those can it spare and still be preaching. The truest truth, the most authoritative statement of God’s will, communicated in any other way than through the personality of brother man to men is not preached truth. Suppose it written on the sky, suppose it embodied in a book which has been so long held in reverence as the direct utterance of God that the vivid personality of the men who wrote its pages has well-nigh faded out of it; in neither of these cases is there any preaching.