St. Paul’s in Walnut Creek, Calif. took an interesting route away from carbon power. The chair of the environment committee there started a business called Sonlight Solar, LLC, to provide backing to a project that would convert the church to solar power. Inspired by an October 2006 viewing of An Inconvenient Truth, parishioners found themselves searching for a way to make the solar conversion happen.
Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, one of 11 accredited seminaries in the Episcopal Church, has decided to stop offering a residential Masters of Divinity degree, and to enter a period of discernment about its future.
John-David Schofield has written a letter to the Rev. Canon Brian Cox and the Rev. Canon Robert Moore, warning them that they are not to meddle in the affairs of the diocese. He paints them into a rhetorical corner, saying that if the argument was San Joaquin couldn’t remove itself from the Episcopal Church, that he and the diocese are still in TEC and that the canons’ presence was intrusive–but if they had legitimately left the diocese, then they were still intruding into another province’s diocese.
He sees his role, then, as defender of the various subcultural spaces that resist the logic of secularism, the enclaves within our culture where fully human meaning is made. And of course these are not only Christian. In a curious way his vision echoes Prince Charles’ declaration that he would like to be the defender of faith rather than the faith. He wants to be the defender of the endangered cultural space that insists on the priority of God. If the Muslim form of such space is tied up with sharia law, we must try to accommodate this.
Earlier this week, Hollywood held its 16th annual “Faith and Values Gala.” The Gala, a project of Movieguide®, with the support of The John Templeton Foundation, aims to recognize “films and television with a positive values message.” The winners including Amazing Grace.
The idea of a limited war, in which certain groups of people should be protected, is not new. In the fourth century St Augustine was already advocating the doctrine of a “just war”, based on civilian protection, proportionality and restraint. The same principles were enshrined in the 1949 Geneva Conventions and in the mandates of the various international tribunals set up over the past 15 years. Yet the moral ideal of civilian protection remains very much a minority view.
The National Council of Churches has published its 2008 Yearbook of Canadian and American Churches. It reports that the fastest growing denomination in the United States and Canada is Jehovah’s Witnesses. The denomination with the sharpest decline was the Episcopal Church.
At the end of their meeting this week in Quito, members of the Executive Council sent a message saying that the Diocese of Central Ecuador may provide a model for the reconstitution of the Diocese of San Joaquin, in addition to reviewing the financial health of the Episcopal Church (which ended the year with a $1 million surplus).
Now that the field has been winnowed down, Time is taking another look at the leading contenders for the Democratic nomination, recounting the mistakes made in 2004 and how today’s candidates seem to have learned from them in a sidebar to coverage of Super Tuesday. In addition, some religious conservatives don’t seem too thrilled that McCain is emerging as the Republican frontrunner, and may be exploring the possibility of supporting a third-party candidate.
The Right Rev. Graham Dow, Bishop of Carlisle, addressing what Ruth Gledhill calls “a fringe meeting of the General Synod” that marked the release of God, Gays and the Church, tossed off a remark that was probably meant to be witty and seems to be coming round as something else. At the very least, it seems that Bishop Dow did not intend for his remarks to go outside of the audience.