The Archive

Author: Episcopal Cafe

What the church gets right

May 3, 2008 No Comments

Two things that the church gets right, says Guardian columnist Simon Jenkins over at Comment Is Free, are architecture and unofficial welfare. Describing the apparently magnificent restoration of St. Martin-in-the-Fields at Trafalgar Square, Jenkins provides a singular portrait of the architectural anomaly of steeple-upon-portico that became, in the 18th century, the template for many an Anglican church to come. But more than that, he adds, are the features that are at once just as permanent and, as individuals, totally transient.

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Rehm on the “Art of Listening”

May 3, 2008 No Comments

Renowned radio host Diane Rehm found herself on the other side of the interviewing mike last week at the National Cathedral’s Sunday Forum. Rehm, an Episcopalian, related that her faith grew stronger and deeper while she was undergoing treatment for spasmodic dysphonia, the condition which makes it difficult for her to speak. In spite of her condition, Rehm has hosted a call-in radio show at Washington’s talk-oriented public radio station, WAMU, for more than a quarter century.

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Robinson “trying to walk a fine line”

May 3, 2008 No Comments

Bishop Gene Robinson gets another spotlight this week from PBS’s Religion and Ethics Newsweekly, talking about his upcoming civil union and his ongoing safety concerns. Civil unions became legal in New Hampshire as of Jan. 1, and for Robinson, this allows him and his longtime partner Mark Andrews to enjoy “some 400 of the protections that out of 1,100 that are accorded to heterosexual couples,” as he says in the interview with R&EN’s Kim Lawton.

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Guiliani draws fire for taking communion

May 3, 2008 No Comments

Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani apparently caused quite a ruckus last month by taking communion at a papal mass held at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Seems he and Cardinal Edward Egan had a “tacit understanding” that Giuliani wouldn’t take mass because of his support of abortion rights, according to an RNS story picked up at the Pew Forum. When it happened, Reuters ran the story that it was his divorced-and-remarried status that barred him from receiving communion, and tabloids ran rather amok with the report. But Egan seems to be taking the matter very seriously, citing Giuliani’s support of abortion rights.

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God and Battlestar Galatica

April 27, 2008 1 Comment

Battlestar Galatica is no stranger to the exploration of faith and religion in the human (and Cylon) experience. The original series supposedly built itself around Mormon theology, but the current incarnation plays fast and free with elements of monotheism (hints at Jewish, Christian and Islamic faiths), polytheism (Greek mythology in particular) and elements of Eastern religions (in particular, reincarnation).

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Is “Let him who is without sin” Biblical?

April 27, 2008 2 Comments

When Dallas Theological Seminary professor Daniel Wallace examined New Testament manuscripts stored in the National Archive in Albania last June, he was amazed by what he did not find. The story of the woman caught in adultery, usually found in John 7:53-8:11, was missing from three of the texts, and was out of place in a fourth, tacked on to the end of John’s Gospel.

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Wright versus Ehrman on evil

April 27, 2008 1 Comment

Theologians have grappled with the issue of why God allows evil and suffering in the world since the book of Job–and likely before. Beliefnet is hosting a very interesting debate/dialogue on the problem between Bart Ehrman and N.T. Wright.

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Hardwired for status?

April 27, 2008 1 Comment

New research shows for the first time that we process cash and social values in the same part of our brain (the striatum)—and likely weigh them against one another when making decisions. So what’s more important—money or social standing? It might be the latter, according to two new studies published in the journal Neuron

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Theologian joins exodus

April 26, 2008 2 Comments

Douglas Todd, who maintains the Vancouver Sun faithblog “The Search,” has written about theologian James Packer’s recent announcement that he is affiliating with the Southern Cone. Packer, named one of the 25 most influential evangelicals by Time magazine, announced his departure from the Diocese of British Columbia earlier this week, condemning what he calls “poisonous liberalism.” Todd also quotes the Rev. Kevin Dixon of St. Mary’s Anglican Church, who points to Packer’s literalism as leading down the same path of logic that could be used to support slavery.

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