On this date in 1954 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation in public schools is unconstitutional. Discuss. Posted by John B. Chilton Photo:
Of American adults raised Episcopalian as children, 61% have changed their religious identity. Of American adults currently identifying as Episcopalian, 46% were raised in another tradition.
ACI: What is the teaching of The Episcopal Church on this issue? If it is the same as that of the church throughout the centuries and of the overwhelming majority of Christians today, these parents in irregular relationships cannot give the appropriate assurance and the infant should not be baptized.
On an April night in 1960, Guy Carawan stood before a group of black students in Raleigh, N.C., and sang a little-known folk song. With that single stroke, he created an anthem that would echo into history, sung at the Selma-to-Montgomery marches of 1965, in apartheid-era South Africa, in international demonstrations in support of the Tiananmen Square protesters, at the dismantled Berlin Wall and beyond.
Writing in the National Catholic Reporter, Maureen Fiedler wonders when her church will have women in the priesthood. Meanwhile, Pope Francis asks “Why is it expected that women must earn less than men? No! They have the same rights. The disparity is a pure scandal.”
In a news conference, the state’s attorney in Baltimore, Marilyn J. Mosby, described repeated mistreatment of Mr. Gray. Time and again, she said, officers abused him, arresting him without grounds and violating police procedure by putting him in handcuffs and leg restraints in the van without putting a seatbelt on him.
The Union of Black Episcopalians has posted “Reflections on Baltimore, my hometown” by the Rev. Dr. Canon Sandye Wilson. An excerpt: People are sick and
“Baltimore weeps today, but that’s just a prelude to what we’re going to do tomorrow and every day for the rest of our lives: we are going to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and get to the work of striving for justice and peace among all people, and respecting the dignity of EVERY HUMAN BEING.”
“Follow-up studies should also investigate whether the feeling of invisibility affects moral decision-making, to ensure that future invisibility cloaking does not make us lose our sense of right and wrong, which Plato asserted over two millennia ago,” said the report’s co-author, Henrik Ehrsson.
Send down your blessings on these your servants, who so generously devote themselves to helping others….