Saudi Arabia won praise Friday for taking a leading role in an interfaith conference in Madrid, with participants saying it was another sign the conservative Muslim kingdom is opening up.
The bishop skillfully avoided the media’s attempts to get him to make a statement about the issue of homosexuality. “We’ve got different issues,” he said. “In Zimbabwe, our issues are poverty, unemployment, no medication… these are the burning issues in Zimbabwe. At the present moment, we have the problem of being oppressed by a system.”
“Gene Robinson should just go away from the Anglican world and be a normal Christian,” said Deng. He said he could not predict the future of the Communion if Robinson did not resign.
Just as I am writing, the Church of Sudan has released two statements, one on war, genocide and hopes for peace, the other asking the Episcopal and Canadian churches to refrain from ordaining additional gay clergy or approving rites for same-sex blessings; cease court actions, etc. Guess which one is engendering more interest in the press room?
The Indaba groups began meeting Monday to explore their commonalities as Anglican bishops. Most, but not all, of the bishops who blog seem to feel
The oldest surviving New Testament manuscript is being assembled and placed online as a resource for scholars and students. The British Library says the full text of the Codex Sinaiticus will be available to Web users by next July, digitally reconnecting parts that are held in Britain, Russia, Germany and a monastery in Egypt’s Sinai Desert.
He was diplomatic about it, but it was clearly vexing to the primate of the Southern Cone, Greg Venables, that he had neither seen nor agreed to the published response to the St Andrew’s draft Covenant, issued by GAFCON on Friday in his name and those of six African primates.
Archbishop Rowan Williams met the press this morning in a facility know as the Missing Link building, and unlike Saturday’s “interview” with Tom Wright, I did not make that up. He answered one of the key questions put to him with great clarity, another with evasion, and a third with intriguing nuance.
With so little happening, the media is parsing trivialities. It turns out that the purportedly Buddhist chant with which the Right Reverend Duleep de Chickera, the Bishop of Colombo, concluded his sermon at yesterday’s opening Eucharist was actually a profession of faith in the Trinity chanted in what struck many listeners as a Buddhist fashion.
Peter Steinfels has a provocative column in the New York Times that discusses the importance of doubt to our modern faith. The question he raises is this: is our doubt a transition to a life without faith? Or is modern faith simply more comfortable with doubt? While inconclusive, the data seems to point to the first option.