From Episcopal News Service
Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams suggested September 20 during an ecumenical service at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center that New Orleans’s recovery could remake the city into God’s image of the holy city.
Noting the service’s reading from Zechariah 8:3-13, Williams said that the image of the holy city is not based on strength of a city’s arts community, business sector, educational offerings, or social-welfare programs.
“What makes a great, godly city is that it is a safe place for older people to sit and children to play in the streets,” he said, adding that few people live in that kind of city anywhere in the world today.
Earlier in the day, Williams visited the site of a former Walgreens drugstore in the lower Ninth Ward to bless what will become the new home of the Church of All Souls, founded in New Orleans’ lower Ninth after Hurricane Katrina and the ensuing flood devastated the neighborhood. The Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana helped to plant the church at the invitation of the neighborhood.
Williams said that, like the rainbow was a promise of God’s everlasting presence after the Flood, the All Souls effort is a sign that “God hasn’t gone away and God’s people haven’t gone away.”
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