March 30, 2013
This is The Lead on Episcopal Cafe today. If you watch the video on the link, I’d be interested in your responses:
DOMA, Proposition 8 and the Easter story
John Fugelsang draws a contemporary parallel to the story of the Passion and Resurrection in this commentary. Does its analogy hold up for you?
April 13, 2010
This from the Associated Press Via the Episcopal Cafe Lead (it was posted by Jim Naughton):
The Associated Press tells this horrific story via the Boston Herald:
THIES, Senegal — Even death cannot stop the violence against gays in this corner of the world any more.Madieye Diallo’s body had been in the ground for only a few hours when the mob descended on the weedy cemetery with shovels. They yanked out the corpse, spit on its torso, dragged it away and dumped it in front of the home of his elderly parents.
The scene of May 2, 2009 was filmed on a cell phone and the video sold at the market. It passed from phone to phone, sowing panic among gay men who say they now feel like hunted animals.
There are people who will tell you with a straight face a) that it is culturally imperialistic to attempt to change the kinds of attitudes that inform this violence and b) that no member church in the Anglican Communion has any business ordaining LGBT priests and bishops until such attitudes change.
March 23, 2010
From the Daily Episcopalian on Episcopal Cafe (with thanks to Monica Romano for the tip):
By Marshall Scott
I’ve been thinking about another of my frequent conversations at the bedside. It begins with, “How are you doing?” And while it might wander a bit, frequently it comes back to this: “I’m having a hard time with this, Chaplain; but they say that God won’t give you more than you can handle.” My initial response to this is, “Perhaps; but I often find myself wishing God didn’t have quite so much faith in me!” (more…)
March 3, 2010
That’s “The Lead” at Episcopal Cafe. This happened on a 95 to 21 vote (with 74 needed to approve). If I understand correctly, this means that all churches that want to can perform civil or religious ceremonies for same-sex couples. No church has to do this. And it means that some individual congregations (including congregations from the Church of England) can perform such marriages, without the Church of England ever having approved them. This is because the head of the Church of England is the Queen, and some decisions about what the church can or cannot do (like approving a new Prayer Book) are effectively decided in Parliament. It’s really very interesting how this works. And it changes the landscape on this question in England.
January 15, 2010
Episcopal Cafe has an update on the move towards woman bishop’s in the UK. The artile begins:
While the movement towards women bishops is stalled in England because the revision committee missed their deadline, The Scottish Episcopal Church moves towards the election of a new Bishop of Glasgow & Galloway for which one of the three finalists is a woman.
If you want the full update, you can find it here.
November 20, 2009
On Episcopal Cafe, there is an interesting article on “rethinking the religious box score.” It talks about how in baseball the on base percentage may be more important than the hits and RBIs listed in the box score (and a pitchers ratio of ground balls to fly balls may be more important than ERA). In applying it to the Roman Catholic Church, John Allen says (in the National Catholic Reporter) that
If you want a measure of how over-emphasis on a limited set of categories distorts perceptions, consider this: Barrels of ink have been spilled dissecting the Vatican’s outreach to disgruntled Anglicans, which, realistically, might bring a few thousand new members into the church worldwide. Here you have an effort to integrate 1.3 million folks more thoroughly into the church, and it flies below radar — because, of course, ministry to the deaf doesn’t open a new front in the culture wars, which is a category we in the West take very seriously indeed.
To which the folks at Episcopal Cafe add
So the question to we Episcopalians is this: what things do we value and how does this distort or enhance our picture of the church, the world, and the people we are called to minister to? What would “Sabermetrics” for the Episcopal Church look like?
If you want to see the whole article, you can find it here.
November 20, 2009
This comes from Episcopal Cafe. It’s a follow up on my earlier posting on the same legislation:
A special session of the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church has been called to discuss the church's position on the “Anti-Homosexuality Bill” currently before the Ugandan Parliament. The meeting will be conducted via conference call on the afternoon of December 7, according to numerous sources.
Special sessions of Executive Council can be called by the Presiding Bishop or, as in this instance, by a petition signed by at least nine members of the council. (more…)
October 20, 2009
It may be a while before anybody can speak with any real knowledge about the impact of the development described in the story below, which contain a major error in its first paragraph. (more…)
October 10, 2009
Dean Baker says
You know that society is moving toward the acceptance of gay relationships when Joint Force Quarterly , a prestigious journal published by the National Defense University Press for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff gives the top prize in its 2009 essay contest to a systematic dissection of the U. S. Military’s policy of Don’t Ask. Don’t tell.
Col. Om Prakash of the U. S. Air Force wrote “The Efficacy of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” while a student at the National War College.
You can find the final paragraph of the essay in his piece here.
October 6, 2009
I found this (so did Dean Baker) at the Daily Episcopalian on Episcopal Cafe:
Outside looking in
By George Clifford
In downtown San Francisco, an abandoned building has furniture, including a refrigerator, sofa, chair, and lamp, hanging out of windows and otherwise attached to the exterior. The building has stood that way for years, with colorful murals decorating the sheets of plywood placed around the ground level to keep people out. I do not know the building’s story, whether the perpetrator(s) intended it as an artistic statement or something else. (more…)
Stories of Ministry and Doings of St. George's Episcopal Church in Carmichael
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Becoming a Bat Mitzvah in one's fifties, and other midlife leaps of faith
The Sunset Juggler (formerly The Dragon's Mouth) 