Imagine, if you will, says Lori Anne Ferrell, a professor of early modern history and literature at Claremont Graduate University, the furor that might arise if a president decided to re-edit the Bible to suit his own beliefs. That is exactly what Thomas Jefferson did: excising the miracles and inconsistencies he found within the four gospels and pasting the rest of Jesus’ “ethical teachings” into a single narrative.
The Archbishop of York, Dr. John Sentamu, has spoken out against FOCA, “accusing them of ‘ungracious’ behaviour. Dr Sentamu said he had been ‘deeply grieved’ at reports of criticism and ‘scapegoating’ by the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans of the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams,” from a news report.
A few weeks ago, the New York Post published a bit (filed under “entertainment”) about the Church of the Holy Trinity, an Episcopal Church on the Upper East Side where canine congregants are commonly in attendance. Fast forward to this week, where Huffington Post columnist Verena von Pfetten gets a kick out of the story, but digs a little deeper and discovers that this “Episcopalian” church is more than dog schtick.
Readers probably remember hearing talk of Akinola being denied entry to Jordan for the pre-GAFCON meetings that were being held there. While readers may remember this being downplayed in press releases coming out of GAFCON at the time, turns out Akinola believes it was an act of Satan himself intervening with Jordanian affairs of state in an effort to undermine the conference.
Sometime in the 1980s a shift happened within churches and in ecumenical gatherings, both formal and informal. The focus of women’s language about church participation, both at the grass roots and among professional theologians, shifted from a “Please, sir, may I have some more” approach to a different angle: “We are church and have always been church.”
The Gallup Poll released their annual survey on American views about evolution, and once again found strong support for creationism. Gallup has been asking this three-part question about the origin of humans since 1982. Perhaps surprisingly to some, the results for the broad sample of adult Americans show very little change over the years.
Gay couples can’t have biological kids together. So if homosexuality is genetic, why hasn’t it died out? A study published last week in PLoS One tackles the question.
Earlier this week, the Campaign to End Torture released released a declaration signed by a wide variety of former military leaders, religious leaders and former government officials, that called on President Bush to issue an Executive Order that would clearly ban torture.
So, it’s not about schism, they said repeatedly as GAFCON got underway, and as it wraps up, one emerging line of thought is that it certainly isn’t about schism, nor is it about homosexuality nor even about holding fast to scripture: It’s about power. George Pitcher, writing in the Telegraph, opines that some bishops might be feeling a bit duped at this point if they thought otherwise.
Bishop Pierre Whalon corrects some flawed logic invoked at GAFCON about non-geographical jurisdictions, given his experience overseeing the Convocation of American Churches in Europe, and points out the flaw in trying to use the convocation as a model/precedent/justification for CANA. The Convocation of American Churches in Europe ministers to expatriates, people working or stationed abroad, and immigrants to Europe.