With the downturn in the economy people are struggling to learn how to manage their finances in a new and difficult setting. A somewhat surprising turn of events has significant numbers turning to their local churches to find support and advice.
We have heard from a pair of well-placed and unrelated sources that Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, may be coming to the General Convention
Representative of the Anglican Communion churches in the Americas will be gathering next week to share with each other what they are doing in mission in this hemisphere and to see how they might most effectively cooperate with each other.
Members of Fred Phelps’ church, Westboro Baptist Church, were barred from traveling to Great Britain yesterday effectively blocking their plans to protest at British school production of the Laramie Project.
Like in the United States, in the United Kingdom we have had bankers come to the House of Commons and attempt to explain how they got what they got wrong so wrong. Perhaps even these leading bankers were as much locked into the system as everyone below them. Yes they had more freedom to act, but they were acting systemically. This is the point about corporate sin: it puts its systemic tentacles around everyone.
Your way of acting should be different form the world’s way; the love of Christ must come before all else. You are not to act in anger or nurse a grudge. Rid your heart of all deceit. Never give a hollow greeting of peace or turn away when someone needs your love. Bind yourself to no oath lest it prove false, but speak the truth with heart and tongue. —The Rule of St. Benedict
As the crises intensify, those who have will be tempted to hold on to what they have, become less generous and ignore even more the realities of the weak and vulnerable. So we pray that you do not lead them into that temptation but deliver them from their selfish tendencies and endow them with changed attitudes and new lenses through which to view the world.
The nation’s largest Lutheran denomination will consider allowing individual congregations to choose whether to allow gays and lesbians in committed relationships to serve as clergy, an attempt to avoid the sort of infighting that has threatened to tear other churches apart.
There have been incremental developments in the legal action in Virginia and Colorado, where the Episcopal Church is attempting to reclaim its property from people who think they are entitled to parting gifts when they leave a church.
Today on the Daily Episcopalian blog, we are featuring the full-length video of The Episcopal Moment, Brian McLaren’s keynote presentation on faith-sharing and evangelism to the annual convention of the Diocese of Washington. If you have any interest in helping our Church find a way forward in its effort to improve its evangelism, please make the time to watch.