The Episcopal Diocese of Milwaukee stopped using the “ecologically diverse” Camp Webb as a diocesan camp and retreat several months ago and began exploring options to sell it, provoking community opposition when it started entertaining an offer for commercial development (i.e. condominiums).
Yesterday, around 3,000 people descended upon Heathrow Airport in London to protest the third runway that would, if it goes forward as proposed, would spell the end of the village of Sipson and increase air traffic along Heathrow’s flight path significantly. The Archbishop of Canterbury was unable to attend but did send a message of support to the protesters.
The National Cathedral, facing a budget shortfall, has suspended several programs and laid off 33 people. Also closing is the Cathedral’s greenhouse. This is happening despite a rebound in visitors at the Cathedral, with nearly half a million visitors touring the landmark in fiscal 2008–so far. But an increase in donations isn’t enough to offset the budget shortfall. And while leaders are claiming the shortfall is a surprise, others say they should have seen it coming.
Nine years ago, Vincent Pannizzo, now 39, dropped out of his doctoral program at Berkeley to take up preaching. But Pannizzo’s ministry in East Oakland, Calif., is different from what most pastors experience; indeed, it stands out even among street preachers. He’s known as Preacherman to those that come to his nightly “services” on an otherwise unfriendly street corner.
David Gushee writes: “In light of the hatred, mockery, loathing, fear and rejection directed at homosexuals in our society — and in our churches — I hope to God that I am not and never have been a perpetrator. But I fear I have indeed been a bystander. I am trying to figure out what it might mean to be a rescuer.”
US Courts have repeatedly decreed that creationism and intelligent design are religion, not science, and have no place in school science classes. Try telling that to American high-school teachers – 1 in 8 teach the ideas as valid science, according to the first national survey on the subject
In their study, which appears in the May 2008 edition of The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Gruber and Hungerman show what happens when religious services must compete with shopping, hobbies and other activities.
Catholics are sacramental in a way that is profoundly different from the way Protestants are sacramental. If a hospital patient asks the chaplain for communion, the chaplain can be 99 percent certain that the patient is Roman Catholic. Lutherans, Presbyterians and other Christians may say that they give equal weight to word and sacrament or that communion is a central part of their faith, but how many, when they go into the hospital, ask for the sacrament?
The Wenatchee World, the “fiercely independent voice of North Central Washington,” offers up some local wisdom about the Episcopal Church in the form of five bullet-points from the Rev. Patton Boyle of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Wenatchee.
Commentary from USA Today this week posits that mainline megachurches might be the solution to declining mainline churches—or does it? Once you read past the lede, you’ll find the piece takes a closer look at the phenomenon and doesn’t buy the oft-touted explanation that all our mainline people have run away to more conservative havens. In fact, with all the attention raining down on mainline churches as a result of renewed focus on faith on the Democratic side of the political process, signs are pointing to hope for these churches.