People – Page 40 – Episcopal Cafe

An unfortunate letter

September 6, 2007 15 Comments

Bishop John Shelby Spong has written an open letter to Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury that rehashes old complaints and seems calculated to give offense. It is perhaps best seen as an act of unconscious self-marginalization (not to mention bad manners.) Spong, like N. T. Wright, has become one of those figures whose public utterances frequently do more to bolster the cause of his adversaries than his allies.

William Stringfellow reads the Bible

September 6, 2007 3 Comments

Alongside his social justice activism, Stringfellow was a surprisingly bold critic of Mainline Protestantism’s “virtual abandonment of the Word of God in the Bible” for a mess of modernistic philosophical porridge. He thought mainline churches were neither “intimate with nor reliant upon the Word of God in the Bible, whether in preaching, in services in the sanctuaries, or in education and nurture.

A prayer for Larry Craig

September 4, 2007 No Comments

James McGreevy, former governor of New Jersey and currently a student at General Theological Seminary, writes with compassion and a prayer for Larry Craig,his family, and the tide of history.

“My gut wrenched when I read of Sen. Larry Craig’s bathroom arrest. I remembered my own late-night encounter with the law at a Garden State Parkway rest stop following a political dinner in north Jersey….

Going from strength to strength in the life of perfect service

September 3, 2007 1 Comment

This is the story of Fr. Rick Schark, and how the experience of grieving the most profound of personal losses started him on a spiritual

Mother Teresa’s labors of faith

September 2, 2007 2 Comments

To walk into the Home of the Dying Destitutes was like walking into Auschwitz at the end of World War II. All one could see were living skeletons, hollow bodies and pain. For that reason, Mother Teresa had instructed her volunteers to look to a wall that bore a crucifix with the words “I thirst” written beside it. These words reminded us that as we ministered to the dying, we would be ministering to Christ.

Encountering Verna

August 30, 2007 No Comments

I went to her and introduced myself, “gushing” like the fan I was about how much her writing had helped me to understand and claim my ministry as a lay person and a teacher in the church. She talked with me a bit about my story and my work, and then fixed me with her compelling, prophetic gaze, pointed her finger at me and wagged it sternly as she said to me, “Now: don’t you go and get ordained: Jesus was not ordained. Jesus was a teacher.”

Doubting Mother Teresa?

August 26, 2007 1 Comment

Time Magazine has a fascinating report about the spiritual life of Mother Teresa. Based on a series of letters from Mother Teresa to her confessor and superiors that is about to be published by a supporter of her sainthood, Time reports that Mother Teresa had a long crisis of faith that began almost as soon as she began her ministry to the poor of Calcutta

‘Lost Boy’ priest talks about God’s presence during ordeal

August 18, 2007 No Comments

Shortly after the Rev. Zachariah Jok Char–one of Sudan’s “lost boys” who walked hundreds of miles to escape strife in that country–was ordained to the

Ministry from on high

August 18, 2007 No Comments

The LA Times has a feature this week on a Denver pilot who takes “faith leaders from all walks of life” on helicopter rides to

Brooke Astor: a life of giving

August 14, 2007 1 Comment

Brooke Astor, Episcopalian and NYC’s most gracious philanthropist, died Monday at the age of 105. According to The Rev. Paul Woodrum of Challwood Studios, when she gave money to a project, however, small, she would always go visit the people receiving it and see how it was being used.

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