It seems to me that many of the issues that face us in restructuring, and much of the talk in the restructuring conversations, reflect this phase in the life cycle of a community — or a church.
Jon Meacham, an Episcopalian, suggests that Barack Obama has found an Anglican solution to the controversy controversy over whether Roman Catholic schools and hospitals would be required to provide employees insurance plans that covered contraception.
This is not a rhetorical question. Conversations about how to “fix” the church are raging all over the place. But it isn’t clear that we agree on what is wrong with it. What is your diagnosis?
The Diocese of Chicago will once again offer Ashes to Go, the exceedingly popular, and at least slightly controversial initiative in which congregations take to
One of the more thoughtful critiques of Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and Bishop Stacy Sauls’ plan for restructuring the Episcopal Church in ways that would vest more authority in the offices they currently hold, was written by Tobias Haller. He is particularly good on the two bishops’ faulty understanding of mission.
This is manifestly not an attempt to examine issues, kick off a conversation or any of the other euphemisms that have been used to describe their efforts. The two bishops are attempting to win the vote for their legislation by controlling the flow of information.
Why is gay marriage inevitable? First, the basic insight of the gay rights movement over the last four decades has proved powerfully correct: As more gays and lesbians have come out of the closet, the social environment has become more gay friendly. In turn, as the social environment has become more hospitable, more gays and lesbians have felt free to come out of the closet.
For the past five years, the remaining members of several Episcopal congregations in Northern Virginia have been worshiping in borrowed basements and empty houses while praying to return to the prominent sanctuaries where they married, baptized their children and buried their parents. Now, the time appears to be at hand.
The Episcopal Church of the Redeemer in Shelby, North Carolina recently hosted a forum for opponents of a ballot initiative that would make same-sex marriage
If the desire of possession in a man is stronger than the sense of brotherhood,” he wrote, “he may be a tyrant or a slave, or both in one. He in whom a sense of brotherhood is uppermost may suffer, even to death, but he will preserve society from destruction. ~Charles Freer Andrews