[W]hat about those 100,000 members that ACNA claims? Shortly after it launched, the group actually lowered that number to 81,311 people in the pews every Sunday. In June, ACNA lowered that number again to 69,197.
I will participate in the demonstrations tomorrow. Maybe they will turn violent. Maybe I will be one of the people who is going to get killed. I’m listening to all my favorite music. I even want to dance to a few songs. I always wanted to have very narrow eyebrows. Yes, maybe I will go to the salon before I go tomorrow!
Robin Eames, the retired primate of the Church of Ireland, or Rt Revd the Lord Eames of Armagh, as he is called when he is at home, was chair of the panel that produced the Windsor Report. In a recent lecture, he spoke of reconciliation and looked back at his committee’s handiwork.
Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori has notified the Episcopal Church’s House of Bishops that she has accepted the renunciation of vows by Williams MacBurney, the
Jessa Crispin: When I read The Wrath of Angels for the first time five years ago, I had hoped it was a look back on a troubled time. The conversation around abortion then was had been no less heated than that of the book, but at least it was less bloody. Now I’m beginning to fear it simply documents the first chapter in a long story.
Twenty years ago, we were actively pushing our young people out the doors of our churches and Dioceses. We didn’t mean to – it’s just that we wouldn’t make room for them in our activities; we didn’t include their voices in our public conversations; we didn’t ask them for stories of their encounters with the good news of God as known in Jesus Christ. As a result, we lost them.
Bishop Gene Robinson of New Hampshire gave a lecture recently at Emory University on “Why religion matters in the quest for gay civil rights.” Watch the video.
Jessa Crispin: Western society does not have much time for sin. Not the sins themselves, of course – those we like very much. We pursue them, wrap our arms around them …. But when it comes to the idea that fornication or ditching work or imbibing excessive amounts alcohol should bring spiritual guilt, confession, and penance, that’s as outdated as the whole masturbation-will-send-you-straight-to-hell thing.
In the past fifteen years, gay marriage has increased in popularity in all fifty states. No news there, but what was a surprise to me is where the largest changes have occurred. The popularity of gay marriage has increased fastest in the states where gay rights were already relatively popular in the 1990s.
“Unjust discrimination is fundamentally wrong.” So say the Roman Catholic bishops of England and Wales in evidence to parliament on the equality bill. But doesn’t this terminology imply there might be another category of “just discrimination” which is slightly less awful, or even in some circumstances righteous?