Saint Luke's Episcopal Church, Jackson, Tennessee

Biblical Authority or Biblical Tyranny - L. William Countryman

2009-10-19T13:41:00.005-05:00

New Adult Class on the Authority of Scripture

On November 8, 2009, we will begin a new adult Christian education class dealing with the Authority of Scripture. We will use the book Biblical Authority or Biblical Tyranny by L. William Countryman. It is available from christianbook.com at a reasonable price. You might also want to check google shopping for the best rate currently, or purchase it used. Alibris has some additional used sellers here and here that also have inexpensive copies of the book (from $1.99 and up). Abe Books also has an extensive list of used copies from $1.56 on up.

Literalism - the 20th Century Heresy - Confirmation Class Resources I

2009-08-30T19:12:00.006-05:00

This is such an important piece of learning for modern Christians in placing the relatively recent development of literalism applied to the Christian scriptures.

Here is a short-form podcast by the Reverend David Simmons on the heresy of literalism.

David has also produced a video lecture given at Murray State for a religion class he taught. The videos below expand upon the material in the audio podcast above. If you prefer audio only, the audio only version of the videos may be found here.

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

Part V

The Meaning of Life with Fr. Josh

2009-08-22T19:58:00.002-05:00

Fr. Matthew has a guest for his show this week - the Reverend Josh Condon. Josh is an old friend from the University of Georgia. Enjoy!

William Porcher DuBose

2009-08-20T09:54:00.005-05:00

From Episcopal Cafe -Daily Reading for August 18 • William Porcher DuBose, Priest, 1918

DuBose's emphasis on the role of experience in the process of salvation underscores the theological significance of Turning Points. Indeed, DuBose's spiritual autobiography was the major theological publication that revealed and developed his theological method in terms of the central role of human experience. Turning Points was a major theological work, akin to Augustine's Confessions. It spells out "the presence and vitality of the Word of God" in DuBose's life. The central role of human experience in his theological method comes across even more clearly here than in his other theological writings because he use the personal details of his conversion, suffering, discovery, and transformation as the experiential basis for his theological reflection.

It was toward the end of the Civil War, after the Confederate defeat at the battle of Cedar Creek in Virginia, that DuBose had a moment of shock and realization. That night his brigade slept behind a line of battle for the first time in the war. At this moment he realized the impossibility of success for the Confederate cause and the world he had known all his life. He "felt as if everything was gone! The end of the world was upon me as completely as upon the Romans when the barbarians had overrun them." With respect to his moment of recognition "under the stars" that the Confederate cause was lost, DuBose states that "such an experience can never be altogether lost, and I go back to it at times for such a sense of the utter extinction of the world, and presence of only the Eternal and the Abiding, as is seldom vouchsafed to one." He recalls that "the actual issue was all upon me that fateful night in which, under the stars, alone upon the planet, without home or country or any earthly interest of object before me, my very world at an end, I redevoted myself wholly and only to God, and to the work and life of His Kingdom, whatever and wherever that might be."

From The Theology of William Porcher DuBose: Life, Movement, and Being by Robert Boak Slocum (University of South Carolina Press, 2000).

DuBose became a thoughtful theologian, teaching at the School of Theology at the University of the South in Sewanee, TN. Some believe that the great Vatican II theologian Karl Rahner may have been aware of his work since they come to such similar positions. Sam Portaro, in his book "Brightest and Best" contends that his influence on the 20th century is unparalleled with his emphasis on the doctrine of the Incarnation.

Fr. Matthew presents - Lectio Divina - Praying the Scriptures

2009-08-19T15:34:00.000-05:00

Breathe

2009-08-19T10:55:00.001-05:00

Why I am an Episcopalian - David Simmons

2009-08-19T10:36:00.003-05:00

Fr. David Simmons has a thoughtful take on why he is an Episcopalian.
He writes in part:

A large portion of the reason for me is because our denomination historically refuses to play the cultural games others have been drawn into. The Episcopal Church is drastically worship-centered. This goes all the way back to the “Elizabethan Compromise” in the Church of England in which unity in worship was considered more important than conformity in belief. This idea was codified in the “Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral” (BCP 876) which set out the basics of a generous, creedal orthodoxy which could be affirmed by a wide variety of Christians of good faith.
As I became a member of the church, I noticed how diverse it was. We had Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, Anglo-Catholics and liturgical Protestants. We had people of color in a culture where Sunday was still the most segregated day of the week. Any conversation in the parish hall that touched on religion was bound to bring up differences. In fact, if one had only come to the coffee hour, one might conclude that this was some sort of interdenominational gathering. But on Sunday mornings, we worshipped together as a family. While I could look at other churches in our town and pin exactly where the members of that church would live and how they would vote, our Episcopal church could not be so categorized.

Read the rest here.

Strategic Planning and General Convention

2009-08-18T13:04:00.003-05:00

Marshall Scott Argues A061 the Most Important Resolution at General Convention.

I’ve been continuing to think about General Convention. Like many a powerful and moving experience, it’s taking some time to process it all, and to appreciate the many things that happened there. I’ve written about coming away with a sense of hope, and that hope remains; but with a little time passed I’m beginning to appreciate some more subtle things that we did.

With everyone else, I’ve read and thought about and commented on what happened with the hot button issues. However, there was another resolution that has stayed with me. That resolution was A061, and these were the most significant points:

“Resolved, the House of Deputies concurring, That the 76th General Convention direct the Executive Council to create a Committee of Strategic Planning to guide the Executive Council and the Church Center in their capacities as leaders of The Episcopal Church; and be it further

Resolved, That the Committee on Strategic Planning be charged with using the best appropriate planning methods available to develop a ten-year plan, updated annually, that identifies and tracks the missional, financial, societal, cultural and other challenges and opportunities facing The Episcopal Church; considers alternative paths of action; recommends a path; defines measurable indicators of success of the selected direction and a specific timeline; details resources needed and proposes how those resources will be gathered;”

Read the rest here.

Brian McLaren's Open Letter to Conservative Christians in the US

2009-08-18T12:59:00.005-05:00

Pastor and Author Brian McLaren asks some important questions to conservative Christians in the United States concerning the current healthcare debate.

He writes:

Although today I would not call myself a political or social conservative, I am grateful for my heritage as an evangelical Christian: My faith is rooted in a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ, I honor and seek to live in harmony with the scriptures, and I love to share the good news of God’s love with others. Since my teenage years when I decided to follow Jesus, I have pursued wholehearted discipleship, and my life has been shaped by that commitment. After completing graduate school and teaching college English, I became a church planter and pastor and served in the same congregation for 24 years.

But for almost that many years, I have been growing more and more deeply troubled by the way so many from my heritage in conservative Christianity – in its evangelical, charismatic, and Roman Catholic streams – have allowed themselves to be spiritually formed by various conservative political and economic ideologies. It’s been disturbing to see how many Christians have begun to follow and trust leaders who live more by political/media/ideological codes than by moral/spiritual/biblical ones.

As a result, I sometimes think that Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, and Fox News may now influence many conservative evangelicals, charismatics, and Catholics more than Billy Graham, Rick Warren, T.D. Jakes, Pope Benedict, or even the four gospels.

Now in a free country, people certainly have the right to choose their ideology. But Christians of all sorts, I think we all can agree, have a special calling – to increasingly harmonize our lives (including our lives as citizens) with the teaching and example of Jesus. My concern is that many of my sisters and brothers, without realizing it, have begun seeing Jesus and the faith through the lens of a neo-conservative political framework, thus reducing their vision of Jesus and his essential message of the kingdom of God. As a result, too many of us are becoming more and more zealous conservatives, but less and less Christ-like Christians, and many don’t seem to notice the difference.

More here.

Evangelism the Boxed Set

2009-08-18T12:56:00.001-05:00

All four presentations in the Diocese of Washington's evangelism series are now available online. The presenters were Brian McLaren, Dean Ian Markham and Professor David Gortner of Virginia Theological Seminary and the Rev. Terry Martin, better known to some of you as Father Jake.

Hat tip: episcopalcafe.com

Comprehensiveness for the Sake of Truth

2009-04-30T09:48:00.002-05:00

There's a movement afoot in the Episcopal Church to make a comprehensive statement about the bounds of our common life. This one is bubbling up from the grass roots. I think it has the potential to become a part of something grand. It is a statement "on the nature of the church, with guideposts to its stability, growth, and mission," found at a new blog aptly named Comprehensiveness for the Sake of Truth.

I find it to be a marvelously Anglican statement that incorporates the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral along with points on our common liturgy and mission. I invite your thoughts and reflections.

The Archbishop of Canterbury's Easter Message

2009-04-11T14:58:00.000-05:00

The Great Vigil of Easter

2009-04-01T14:32:00.001-05:00

Did you know that the first Easter Eucharist at Saint Luke’s is on Saturday, April 11 at 7 PM? It is an annual service called The Great Vigil of Easter, and is a foundational service for every other service of the Church year. And yet, many Episcopalians are unaware of it.

I once served a parish where the rector had members of the parish to a celebration at his house each year after the Great Vigil of Easter. He reckoned that it was one of the only ways to get the parish to change its mind about the Great Vigil was to make the ticket to entrance to the party at his house participation in the Great Vigil. Kiezha and I have often thought that we’d like to implement his method, and yet have realized we can’t quite make that happen with two children under four years of age.

When I was a new Episcopalian years ago, I was invited to a Great Vigil of Easter, and I had no idea what I was about to celebrate. (The Presbyterian Church I grew up in had no such celebration.) Goodness, was I surprised, and perhaps you will be as well.

What in the world is The Great Vigil of Easter? To begin with, it is the service that begins our celebration of The Great Fifty Days of Easter. It is also the third part of a three part service that includes Maundy Thursday, and Good Friday. Perhaps most importantly, it is an ancient feast. If the Christian Passover or Paschal Vigil does not date to New Testament times, it can certainly be documented early in the Second Century A.D., and yet, many Episcopalians haven’t experienced this service. In their haste to remove all things “Catholic,” the Reformers unfortunately didn’t restore this ancient and central feast of the Church, which hadn’t survived in its ancient form in the Roman Catholic church. It did survive these many centuries intact in the Eastern Orthodox church. However, for Anglicanism, the Easter Vigil, like the other Holy Week services, was reintroduced in the wake of the Oxford Movement of the 1800s.

The 1979 Book of Common Prayer recovered the ancient Vigil, the keystone about which the rest of the Church Year is built, and through careful liturgical scholarship, the Great Vigil has been restored in the majority of the churches of the Anglican Communion, along with the Lutheran Churches throughout the world.

The Great Vigil of Easter has four parts:
The service of Light
The service of Lessons
The service of Christian initiation
The celebration of Holy Eucharist

The service of Light begins with the kindling of the new Paschal (Easter) Fire. Right there in our courtyard we light a fire in our special fire-pit and light our brand new Paschal (Easter) candle, which remains next to the Baptismal font year round and is lit throughout the season of Easter, at Baptisms and at funerals. Once the paschal candle is lit, participants are given a hand candle to hold throughout the service of lessons. We process into a darkened church, singing “The light of Christ. Thanks be to God.” Our cantor then sings a song called The Exsultet which is an ancient prayer for light.

Then we experience the service of Lessons wherein we will hear three readings each followed by a canticle, psalm, or hymn. (We have the option to do as many as nine lessons, but for the sake of time, Saint Luke’s keep it at three.) These readings include the story of Creation, Israel’s deliverance at the Red Sea.

After the service of Lessons comes the service of Christian initiation, also known as Holy Baptism. The candidates for Holy Baptism are presented and baptized. Baptism is the theological climax of the Great Vigil, for as the Apostle Paul writes, “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” Romans 6:3-5

Then, after the newly Baptized are presented, the candles are extinguished, the lights come on and we say, “Alleluia, Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia! At this time we make what is called “The Great Noise” and sing our Easter songs. We invite you to bring any noisemakers you might have at home such as a musical instrument, or anything that makes noise so that you can join with us as we proclaim that it is Easter and Christ is risen, indeed!

Finally, the church, renewed and increased by the addition of the newly baptized, makes eucharist, as we join in celebrating the first Easter Eucharist and in receiving Christ’s Body and Blood. It is all there. Not with the drama of Palm Sunday and Good Friday, but with the solid symbols of faith, fire, light, water, bread and wine, and with the proclamation of the Word of God. In the Great Vigil of Easter, we pass over with Christ from death to life, and with the church from Lent to Easter.

If you haven’t experienced the Great Vigil of Easter, I invite you to do so. This service holds all of the power, mystery, and specialness of our Christmas Eve midnight service, and is a beauty to behold. I shant incentivize your participation, but it is well worth your time. So come and join in the Church’s ancient feast and be brought again from death into new life.

Easter Blessings,

Sean+

The April Edition of the Parish Life

2009-04-01T12:46:00.003-05:00

The April edition of our parish newsletter, The Parish Life is now available online.

Here's a preview...

Episcopal Life article from the Presiding Bishop featuring the Diocese of West Tennessee

2009-03-28T11:31:00.002-05:00

[Episcopal Life] I've had several remarkable visits recently concerned with education and the Episcopal Church. I wrote in this column in February about the conversations going on in the Diocese of Mississippi around the role of Episcopalians in bringing justice to a functionally segregated educational system.

I visited the Diocese of Haiti late last fall and saw how that diocese serves 80,000 children and young people in elementary and secondary schools, a university, a music school (which started and maintains the only philharmonic orchestra in Haiti), a nursing school (graduating the first degreed nurses in the country this year) and vocational schools that focus on electronics, business, architectural design and mechanics.

The Diocese of Massachusetts participates in two remarkable schools that serve middle schoolers (fifth through eighth-graders), one just for girls (Esperanza Academy) and one (Epiphany) that serves 85 poor innercity children of color.

Epiphany recruits fifth-graders by lottery from the lowest-performing fifth of public-school students. Those incoming children test at second- or third-grade levels, but by the time they leave eighth grade, they are functioning at 10th-to 11th-grade levels. They do it by addressing the basic human dignity of students and their families in an intensive educational environment, 12 hours a day, five days a week, 11 months of the year.

I've just been in the Diocese of West Tennessee, where I learned about St. Mary's School and the Bridges youth center and visited Emmanuel Episcopal Center, all in Memphis. St. Mary's started in 1847 and today educates more than 800 girls, pre-K through high school, to high academic standards.

Emmanuel owes its roots to an African-American Episcopal Church of the same name, begun more than a century ago. Today, Emmanuel Center includes a worship space and a large gymnasium and serves more than 600 inner-city kids in focused after-school and summer programs. The main center is located in the middle of a public housing project and has grown from the only church that wasn't torn down when the project was built.

The center is 20 years old and continues to increase its service and effectiveness. Kids aged 5 to 19 participate, and in the last two years the center has seen 100 percent high school graduation rates for its seniors.

Last year, 80 percent of them went on to higher education. The Saturday afternoon we visited, the principal of the local elementary school turned up as well – many of her students participate, and they greeted her with open arms and hugs.

Bridges was begun by the Episcopal Church in the 1920s. Its primary focus today is leadership development in the areas of racial reconciliation, poverty, educational challenges and environmental advocacy. The center's building is the first "green" one in Memphis and has been constructed with several startling objectives, including that the building itself teach and that it be surprising.

One meeting room has an unusually shaped large table, built of all the different native woods of Tennessee and shaped so that no seat has an outsized claim to authority. The center's work continues to touch and transform thousands.

Why is education so foundational to our church? Certainly our worship depends on literacy, and early Anglican missionaries always worked to teach reading and writing so that converts would be able to read the Bible and prayer book.

That's only an outward sign, however, of a conviction that salvation includes the whole person. We believe that we serve God with our whole heart and mind and soul and strength.

We also believe that the whole community is the aim of our participation in God's reconciling mission – not just Episcopalians.

Bishop Catherine Roskam of New York and her team came to visit me recently to talk about All Our Children, a movement that seeks to enlist congregations and faith communities across this country to partner with local schools. Children – all of them – need the personal attention and love of adults. At the beginning of every school day at Epiphany School in Boston, the children have to look the director in the eye and shake his hand before they walk into the building. It's a reminder that each one is loved, has
dignity and will be expected to do the best of which she or he is capable.

A resolution concerning All Our Children likely will come to General Convention this summer. It's an invitation to put our baptismal covenant into action – to affirm the dignity of every young human being in the schools in our neighborhoods. Educators consider the involvement of unrelated adults to be an essential asset to children's development into effective and humane adults.

How can you and your congregation share the love of God with children, in a human form they can see and touch?

-- The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori is presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church.

From Episcopal Life Online

Lenten Series - Weeks 4 and 5 - The Episcopal Moment - Brian McLaren

2009-03-26T08:57:00.004-05:00

Lenten Series - Weeks 4 and 5 - The Episcopal Moment - Brian McLaren

Click here to view in Windows Media Player format

Click here to view in Quicktime format

Holy things for holy people

2009-03-19T16:52:00.010-05:00

Episcopal Cafe recently posted this daily reading from St. Cyril of Jerusalem. It points to a part of the liturgy that we don't hear in our modern liturgical forms.

"After [the Lord’s Prayer] the Priest says, “Holy things to holy men.” (or holy things for holy people.) Holy are the gifts presented, having received the visitation of the Holy Ghost; holy are ye also, having been deemed worthy of the Holy Ghost; the holy things therefore correspond to the holy persons. Then ye say, “One is Holy, One is the Lord, Jesus Christ.” For One is truly holy, by nature holy; we too are holy, but not by nature, only by participation, and discipline, and prayer." (read the rest here.)

This ancient announcement at the presentation of the gifts to the people, sometimes called the "Sancta Sanctis" is a portion of the Eucharistic liturgy that would be worth retention. In our modern Episcopal liturgy the Presider says, "The gifts of God for the people of God."

I have heard a priest or two over the years add a line from the Sancte Sanctis into the liturgy saying, "The gifts of God for the people of God: holy food for holy people." While I have serious reservations about adding an incomplete Sancta Sanctis, "holy things (food) for holy people," it is a potent reminder that God has made us holy. Holiness literally means "set apart." Our lives are set apart by God at our Baptisms, and God continues to set us apart as we receive Christ's body and blood, and live as Christ's body, the Church, in the world.

The Sancta Sanctis is utterly incomplete without the response of the people, “One is Holy, One is the Lord, Jesus Christ.” While God has set us apart through grace in holy Baptism, holiness is not complete without our participation, discipline, and prayer. That's why we make baptismal promises, and disciplines by which we grow in faith. As Cyril so eloquently put it, "One is truly holy, by nature holy; we too are holy, but not by nature."

Gordon Lathrop's book Holy Things: A Liturgical Theology says it best, “Holy things for holy people,” sings the presider, summing up the history of the liturgy and condensing our own ritual attempts to say, in invitation and warning, something of the truth of God. “Neither we nor these things are holy,” sing the people. “God is holy by giving holiness away in the world. But these things and we are holy, by God’s great mercy, because of Jesus, because by his promise and presence are full of him, and only so.”

Holy Things: A Liturgical Theology By Gordon W. Lathrop Published by Fortress Press, 1998

Lenten Series Week 3 - The Emergent Church

2009-03-18T21:38:00.003-05:00

Week 3 of the Lenten deals with the Emergent Church. While we have spoken at length about Phyllis Tickle's understanding of "The Great Emergence," this week deals with some of the churches that are intentionally blending Conservative, Renewalist, Liturgical, and Social Justice strains of Christianity. In many cases their worship looks foreign and their theology is fuzzy. That's okay. The intent of this class in the Lenten Series is not to make us an Emergent Church, but to become aware of the movement.

Religion and Ethics Newsweekly - the Emergent Church

Introduction to the Emerging Church - Part 1 - from Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI

Introduction to the Emerging Church - Part 2 - from Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams on the strengths and weaknesses of the Emerging Church.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams discusses how is the Emerging Church viewed in the Church of England.

Church of the Apostles - Seattle, WA - an "Anglimergent" congregation - that is an Episcopal congregation that is a part of the emerging church phenomenon.

Lenten Series - Week Two - The Great Emergence - The New Rose - Phyllis Tickle

2009-03-11T21:07:00.003-05:00

Phyllis Tickle explains the Great Emergence - a once every 500 year phenomenon within the Christian Church.

Church of Ireland grows by 50%

2009-03-10T20:36:00.003-05:00

News from episcopalcafe.com

An almost unnoticed, but historically dramatic, social change has occurred in Ireland over the past few years: more and more Irish Catholics are joining the Church of Ireland according to the Independent.ie.

After a long decline ever since 1861, Irish Anglicanism is undergoing a quite remarkable period of growth.

In the early Nineties, there were 82,840 members of the Church of Ireland in the 26 counties. This has increased by 50per cent, to 121,229.

Some of this expansion is due to immigration. But a substantial amount is due to conversion -- cradle Catholics turning to the Reformed faith.

Read more here.

Hat tip: Deirdre Good.

Saint Luke's Episcopal Church Slideshow....

2009-03-10T15:02:00.001-05:00

The 'emergent church'

2009-03-09T19:03:00.003-05:00

The 'emergent church' – growing but hard to define

By Lisa B. Hamilton, March 09, 2009

[Episcopal Life] New ways of "being church" that developed in the past couple of decades are gathered under the term "emergent church."

It's also called a conversation, a movement, a phenomenon – and defining it is "like chasing mercury around a chemistry lab table," said Phyllis Tickle, author of The Great Emergence: How Christianity is Changing and Why.

Although their emphasis on Scripture, the sacraments and their relationship to the established church vary widely, emergent churches are linked by their dedication to worship and ministry in the context of their location.

"A community in rural Iowa is going to be very different from the ones I've been involved with in Manhattan and Harlem because the places attract people with different stories and sensibilities in different environments," said Bowie Snodgrass, co-founder of New York's Faith House, described on its website as "an interdependent community." She recalled an Easter evening when more than 200 people attended a worship service honoring Mary Magdalene in a Manhattan club. She and a musician friend had developed the service with sex workers and artists who lived and worked in the neighborhood.

"We just do it," said the Rev. Jimmy Bartz, leader at Thad's, a mobile congregation under the authority of Bishop J. Jon Bruno of the Diocese of Los Angeles. "What we've leaned into is an ideal of creating a community of faith for people who wouldn't otherwise be attracted to traditional church," he said.

The Rev. Tom Brackett, church planting specialist for the Episcopal Church's Evangelism and Congregational Life Center, said most emergent church folk "answer the question, 'What kind of relationship would Jesus have with the institutional church?' with, 'He'd be out there on the steps, teasing people to serve in the world."

Read the rest at Episcopal Life Online.

Remorseful stranger's money gives East Dallas church a 'miracle month'

2009-03-07T21:46:00.003-06:00

By SAM HODGES / The Dallas Morning News
samhodges@dallasnews.com

A mysterious stranger with a conscience left a cashier's check for $3,255 at Dallas' Episcopal Church of the Resurrection, explaining in a note that he was trying to atone for crimes of his past.

Two other times this year, the financially strapped church has had scatterings of $20 bills turn up unexplained in the vestibule, apparently stuffed through a gap in locked front doors.

Though no note came with those donations, the Rev. Canon Victoria Heard speculates they were from the same man.

Regardless, she's grateful.

"It was a godsend, especially in the middle of the winter when our fuel bills are the highest," said Heard, canon-in-residence at the Far East Dallas church.

An envelope containing the cashier's check, $13 in cash and the note was discovered in a back pew on Jan. 11.

The man signed his note with a barely legible "Michael." His last name was on the check, but Heard declined to share it, saying she could not violate a "confession situation."

Church leaders have searched membership rolls and asked former and current members, and no one knows anybody by the name on the check.

The handwritten note begins, "I paid every single debt I had in life but could not find or locate 14 of them or I wasn't sure."

Then it lists 14 crimes, including "White Rock robbery – $100," "Stolen car at woodmeadow – $800," "A set of knives from a fellow soldier in Iraq – $300" and "A lot of CD's in a velcro pouch from an ex-friend in Tyler Texas when I was a kid – $300."

Yet another crime mentioned is "Eckerd's (for stolen candy) – $25." The note adds that "Eckerd's is now CVS pharmacy."

The 14 listed amounts total $3,268 – equal to the cashier's check combined with the $13 found in the envelope.

Read the rest here...

Emptying our cups

2009-03-07T17:05:00.003-06:00

“Once upon a time,” an ancient story tells, “the master had a visitor who came to inquire about Zen. But instead of listening, the visitor kept talking about his own concerns and giving his own thoughts. After a while, the master served tea. He poured tea into his visitor’s cup until it was full and then he kept on pouring. Finally the visitor could not bear it any longer. ‘Don’t you see that my cup is full?’ he said. ‘It’s not possible to get anymore in.’ ‘Just so,’ the master said, stopping at last. ‘And like this cup you are filled with your own ideas. How can you expect me to give you Zen unless you first empty your cup?’”

A monastic Lent is the process of emptying our cups. Lent is the time for trimming the soul and scraping the sludge off a life turned slipshod. Lent is about taking stock of time, even religious time. Lent is about exercising the control that enables us to say no to ourselves so that when life turns hard of its own accord we have the spiritual stamina to say yes to its twists and turns with faith and hope. . . . Lent is the time to make new efforts to be what we say we want to be.

From The Rule of Benedict: Insights for the Ages by Joan Chittister (Crossroad, 1996).

From Episcopal Cafe

Ash Wednesday meditation

2009-03-05T07:01:00.003-06:00

Ash Wednesday is a week past, but what a wonderful video meditation.

Lenten Series - Week One - An Introduction to the Great Emergence and the Emerging Church

2009-03-05T06:42:00.004-06:00

Some scholars argue that we are in a period of great transition - a once every 500 year shift in the face and style of Christianity - the last being the Great Reformation. Phyllis Tickle discusses this shift in this first video.

The Great Emergence

Wolfhart Pannenburg has descriptively divided the Christian world into four segments - Conservatives (or Evangelicals), Renewalists (Pentecostals, neo-Pentecostals, Charismatics), Liturgicals (Liturgy oriented traditions), and Social Justice (The old Protestant Mainline). Phyllis Tickle suggests that as a part of the Great Emergence that the four types of Christians are merging.

The Gathering Center

We are in a time of great change. The changes of the last 130 years have given rise to the Great Emergence. Phyllis Tickle describes how the rapidly changing world is changing how Christians practice their faith.

20th Century Impact

The Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church talks about why one should be an Episcopalian

2009-03-04T12:49:00.003-06:00

How Faith Engenders Doubt - from Andrew Sullivan

2009-03-01T13:27:00.002-06:00

Richard Grant, a British post-doc, ponders:

The beauty of faith is that it’s not an intellectual exercise. Anyone can join in, at whatever level they like. It doesn’t require you to be clever—or rich, or middle-class, or college-educated. But it doesn’t have to stop there—faith can expand according to your ability. Indeed, as someone’s faith grows they will find that it permeates more and more of their life and outlook. In fact, they will probably find themselves becoming a sceptic.

A sceptic, despite what the internets tell you, isn’t necessarily an unbeliever. A sceptic is one who questions, one who doesn’t take anything on faith (and I must piss off my friends mightily because it’s naturally difficult for me to take what anyone says without wanting to verify it myself). Someone who, in fact, might make a reasonable scientist. Now, you might say that my definition negates the possibility of a sceptic having faith: but that would be because you misunderstand the nature of ‘faith’.

From andrewsullivan.com

A survey on technology and the church - Reposted from episcopalcafe.com

2009-03-01T13:22:00.003-06:00

The Barna Group, best known for its surveys on faith attitudes, has a new survey that focuses on the use of technology by different generations, and the implications for churches:

While it’s no surprise that young adults are more tech-savvy than the older generation, a new study examines specific details of the differences that could help church leaders better understand how to get their messages to click with congregants.
Both young and old Americans are quite comfortable and dependent on technology, but to varying degrees, shows the latest study by The Barna Group, published this week. But the youngest American adults (ages 18 to 24), which Barna calls Mosaics, are the most likely to admit “gadget lust” than older adults.

More than one-fifth (22 percent) say they consider owning the latest technology to be a very high priority in life, compared to only one out of every 11 adults (9 percent) over the age of 25.

For the Mosaic generation, the study found that eight of the 14 tech activities they were surveyed about were used by 50 percent or more of this group. For the Buster generation (ages 25-43), only four of the digital activities were relied upon by half or more of them. Those four activities include email, search, text messaging and hosting a personal website or homepage (such as MySpace or Facebook).

. . .

Meanwhile, email and search are the only two digital activities that at least 50 percent of Elders (ages 63 and above) and Boomers (ages 44 to 62) rely upon.

“All Americans are increasingly dependent on new digital technologies to acquire entertainment, products, content, information and stimulation. However, older adults tend to use technology for information and convenience,” commented David Kinnaman, president of The Barna Group.

“Younger adults rely on technology to facilitate their search for meaning and connection. These technologies have begun to rewire the ways in which people - especially the young - meet, express themselves, use content and stay connected.”

The study also highlighted certain technologies gaining notable popularity among Mosaics. These “emerging” technologies, those used by at least 20 to 49 percent of computer users, include online purchasing, listening to church podcasts, and visiting their church Web site.

“For church leaders, it is notable that a minority of churchgoing Mosaics and Busters are accessing their congregation’s podcasts and website,” Kinnaman said. “While technology keeps progressing and penetrating every aspect of life, churches have to work hard to keep pace with the way people access and use content, while also instructing churchgoers on the potency of electronic tools and techniques.”

Read it all here. How are you using technology at your church? In doing so, do you take the age of your audience into account?

Father Matthew on that old saying "Hate the sin, love the sinner."

2009-02-28T15:17:00.002-06:00

Fr. Matthew offers a valuable lesson.

Road honors educator's journey toward equality

2009-02-28T14:58:00.006-06:00

A story about Episcopalian Austin Merry. The Reverend Sean Ferrell dedicated the new Austin Merry Boulevard in celebration of his service to God and the church. Original story here.

By NICHOLAS BEADLE
nbeadle@jacksonsun.com
• February 27, 2009

Local leaders and dozens of Jackson Central-Merry High School students and Merry High School alumni gathered on Royal Street Thursday morning to watch descendants of Austin Merry unveil markers dedicating the road in the pioneering black educator's honor.

After concerns about an initial proposal to outright rename Royal Street's five-mile stretch for Merry, the Jackson City Council approved a plan last year to place dedication markers along the road and a plaque explaining Merry's accomplishments. That plaque was unveiled Thursday at the intersection of South Highland Avenue and South Royal Street.

Merry is credited with formalizing black education in Jackson and Madison County around the turn of the 20th century.

Last fall, city leaders closed a street named after him a few blocks northwest from the new plaque, but not without the City Council promising Merry's descendants that they would find another road to honor him on.

City leaders praised Merry for his work. Jackson Mayor Jerry Gist said Merry was "instrumental to getting us where we are today, especially in our education system."

In attendance was a mixed-race crowd of students from JCM, the modern-day descendant of the high school originally named for Merry.

Councilman Harvey Buchanan, who worked to get the markers approved, asked those students to "have a yearnin' and a burnin' for learnin'" so they could become the city and county's next generation of leaders.

"Education is not black and white. We are proud of that fact today," Buchanan said after the ceremony about the students who attended. "... If it hadn't been for the vision of Austin Merry, though, I don't know where African Americans would be in the education system in Jackson now."

Merry's descendants talked about how his passion for education has echoed through the family for generations. His great-granddaughter Shayla Merry, a 26-year-old medical student, recalled how as a child her parents checked her homework assignments and asked her to make revisions before turning the work in.

Gwendolyn Merry- Coleman, who asked the council to find another street to bear her grandfather's name, said the markers unveiled Thursday highlight the accomplishments previous generations made against segregation, intolerance and racial strife.

"This is bigger than Jackson and bigger than West Tennessee - it's even bigger than black or white," Coleman said. "It is a global accomplishment. ... That is what we call change."

Visit jacksonsun.com and share your thoughts.

- Nicholas Beadle, 425-9763

God's House - Daily Reading for February 27 • George Herbert, Priest, 1633

2009-02-27T22:26:00.006-06:00

From the Speaking to the Soul section of episcopalcafe.com

What doth this noise of thoughts within my heart
As if they had a part?
What do these loud complaints and pulling fears,
As if there were no rule or ears?

But, Lord, the house and family are thine,
Though some of them repine.
Turn out these wranglers, which defile thy seat:
For where thou dwellest all is neat.

First Peace and Silence all disputes control,
Then Order plays the soul;
And giving all things their set forms and hours,
Makes of wild woods sweet walks and bowers.

Humble Obedience near the door doth stand,
Expecting a command:
Than whom in waiting nothing seems more slow,
Nothing more quick when she doth go.

Joys oft are there, and griefs as oft as joys;
But griefs without a noise;
Yet speak they louder, than distemper’d fears.
What is so shrill as silent tears?

This is thy house, with these it doth abound:
And where these are not found,
Perhaps thou com’st sometimes, and for a day;
But not to make a constant stay.

“The Family” by George Herbert, from The Church, quoted in George Herbert: The Country Parson, The Temple, edited by John N. Wall, Jr., The Classics of Western Spirituality (New York: Paulist Press, 1981).

George Herbert's Church is Bemerton, England

The March edition of The Parish Life

2009-02-27T22:10:00.007-06:00

Our parish newsletter, The Parish Life is now available online.

Here's a preview...

What happens next...

2009-02-26T15:58:00.004-06:00

The Rev. Paul Zahl, former Dean of Trinity School for Ministry (formerly Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry - yeah they dropped it on purpose) and also former Dean of the cathedral in Birmingham, AL,and currently rector of All Saints Episcopal Church in Chevy Chase, Maryland, shares his thoughts on grace, and coming to a post 2003, post-conservative and post-liberal place in the Episcopal Church. His latest book, Grace in Practice: A Theology of Everyday Life, at an April 4 book signing at the Catalyst Café and Books in New York City.

Ash Wednesday at Saint Luke's Episcopal Church, Jackson, Tennessee

2009-02-26T07:16:00.008-06:00

Congregants begin season of sacrifice By TRACIE SIMER

tsimer@jacksonsun.com
• February 26, 2009

The bells of St. Luke's Episcopal Church rang at noon, declaring the beginning of the church's first Ash Wednesday service. About 30 people listened to Father Sean Ferrell, rector of St. Luke's, deliver an Ash Wednesday sermon. Then everyone came forward, and Ferrell marked everyone's foreheads with a small ash cross.

The ritual of placing an ash cross on the forehead is where the name Ash Wednesday comes from, Ferrell said.

"While the ashes are placed on each person, I recite, 'Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return,'" he said.

Gary and Linda Wood attended the noon service at St. Luke's. Gary said one reason they come to the service is because it is a tradition.

"This reminds us that this is a solemn season," he said. "Which will culminate in a great service for Easter."

Linda, who's giving up chocolate for Lent, said the ashes are special. The ashes come from the same palm leaves they used last year during Palm Sunday. Those leaves are burned and saved for next year, she said.

Ferrell said Palm Sunday is the week before Easter, and references Christ's triumphal entry to Jerusalem on a donkey, a few days before his crucifixion. The people, who were happy to see him at the time, greeted him by waving Palm branches.

Gary Wood said both services then are tied together.

"That makes it a continuation from year to year," he said.

Ferrell said Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent, a 40-day period of fasting and remembrance. "It's a season where we give up things and are reminded of our sinfulness and mortality," he said. "It prepares us for Easter. You can't understand the resurrection without it."

The 40 days roughly parallel the 40 days Christ spent in the wilderness, where he was tempted by Satan. Christians in the early church used this time to prepare by performing acts of repentance, Farrell said.

For many Christians, this is a time for folks to make a lifestyle change.

"They take on a personal discipline," he said. "They use this as a spring board for giving something up."

Traditionally, Christians fasted during Lent. Catholics give up meat on Fridays, eating only fish or vegetables. Eastern Orthodox Christians give up oil, nuts, eggs and other items, Ferrell said.

"With us, it's up to the individual what they give up," he said. "It can be a good time. For example, when you feel a craving for caffeine, it's a reminder to pray."

Visit jacksonsun.com and share your thoughts.

- Tracie Simer, 425-9629

Original article

Daily Reading for February 26 from episcopalcafe.com

2009-02-26T06:22:00.005-06:00

Daily Reading for February 26

For most of my life I have struggled to find God, to know God, to love God. I have tried hard to follow the guidelines of the spiritual life—pray always, work for others, read the Scriptures—and to avoid the many temptations to dissipate myself. I have failed many times but always tried again, even when I was close to despair.

Now I wonder whether I have sufficiently realized that during all this time God has been trying to find me, to know me, and to love me. The question is not “How am I to find God?” but “How am I to let myself be found by him?” The question is not “How am I to know God?” but “How am I to let myself be known by God?” And, finally, the question is not “How am I to love God?” but “How am I to let myself be loved by God?” God is looking into the distance for me, trying to find me, and longing to bring me home.

From The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming by Henri J. M. Nouwen (New York: Image Books, 1992).

The Geranium Farm - Almost Daily eMo

2009-02-25T16:41:00.003-06:00

By Barbara Crafton

...Another Lent begins in austere weariness, ready for a season of spareness, a little more quiet. Forty plainer days are just what we need. It is seven on the morning here; our first liturgy is at eight. Remember that you are dust, we will say repeatedly today. Remember that you are tired, that you need to slow down, that you need to think. Remember that what you say and do has eternal significance, so you'd best consider it closely before you say or do it. Remember what you long ago forgot. Remember that it is never too lage to begin again to make it right, and that we don't have to make it right all by ourselves.
+
And remember, this Lent, those less fortunate than yourself. Even now, when we are all feeling a little unfortunate ourselves.

You can read more at http://geraniumfarm.org/dailyemo.cfm?Emo=1082

The Archbishop of Canterbury's Reflections on Lent

2009-02-25T10:22:00.004-06:00

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, reflects on Lent as a time to: "Sweep and clean the room of our own minds and hearts so that the new life really may have room to come in and take over and transform us at Easter".

As always, Dr. Williams does fabulous job explaining the season.

Evangelism and the Episcopal Church - Fr. Matthew Moretz

2009-02-24T13:48:00.004-06:00

Fr. Matthew's video work is fabulous sharing of our faith. He understands evangelism. Check out the video for more!

Ashes and Wine - Sam Candler

2009-02-24T11:36:00.006-06:00

By Sam Candler

About 350 miles west of Morocco and about 550 miles southwest of Lisbon, there lies a verdant island, lush with greenery and life. Scientists now recognize the island as having been formed by an ancient volcanic explosion. The island was discovered in the year 1418 by one Captain Joao Zarco, sailing under orders from Prince Henry the Navigator. He found it virtually impenetrable, so thick was the forest and growth.

Because the forest was so dense, Captain Zarco named the island for the Portuguese word for "wood." That word is "madeira." Then, Captain Zarco set about clearing the land. It was hard work. Deciding that the only way to clear the entire island was to use fire, he and his men burned the whole island.

The island of Madeira burned for seven years. When the fire was out, the entire place was covered with a fine wood ash. That ash dissolved into the volcanic ground, combined with the clay and calcium already there, and an incredibly rich soil resulted, even more fertile than the previous soil. In fact, this became the same sort of soil which was conducive to fine wine.

So, people began to grow grapes in the soil! Thus was the beginning of a fine wine named Madeira. By 1495, it was being produced. It became, in Europe, the after-dinner drink of choice. George Washington is said to have drunk a pint a day. Thomas Jefferson toasted the Declaration of Independence with madeira.

Madeira -- a fine wine, born of burnt ashes in the soil.

On Ash Wednesday, Christians put ashes on our foreheads. In doing so, we are following one of the oldest of Christian customs. At one time, not everyone in the Christian congregation placed ashes on their head, but only those who were acknowledging and confessing egregious sins. They made public their confession with these ashes. But in the Middle Ages, it became the practice for every Christian to submit to the ashes. The season of Lent became a time of public penitence for the entire church.

Today, the ashes mean these things, but many more. The ashes are a reminder of our origin from the earth. “Remember,” we say, “that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” We are not the self-assured, comfortable, live-forever people that we try so often to look like. We are going to die, all of us; we know that. Ashes are a sign of that ultimate reality.

The ashes are also, of course, a sign of sin. We are tainted, stained, by our constant falsehoods and wrong actions. We are a people who know better, but who make wrong choices. It was not someone else who made us do it. It was not the fault of Satan. We were not possessed by demons. It was not the fault of our parents. It was not the fault of society. It was not our peer group or the culture around us.

It was us. We are responsible. We have sinned by our own fault in thought, word, and deed; by what we have done, and by what we have left undone.

Continue reading....

The Very Rev. Sam Candler is dean of St. Philip's Cathedral in Atlanta. He helped start that city’s interfaith group, and leads regular community bible studies. He is also inspired by playing jazz piano, hunting, astronomy, and poetry. His sermons and reflections on “Good Faith and Common Good” can be found on the Cathedral web site.

Global issues a priority for General Convention

2009-02-24T09:34:00.002-06:00

Archbishop of Canterbury to attend first two days

By Matthew Davies, February 23, 2009

[Episcopal News Service] Global concerns and Anglican Communion issues will be a major focus of the Episcopal Church's 76th General Convention when it meets July 8-17 in Anaheim, California.

The church's main legislative gathering, which meets every three years, also will welcome many international guests from various Anglican Communion provinces. Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams will attend General Convention for the first time July 8-9. He will participate in Bible study and be a keynote speaker at a global economic forum on the evening of July 8.

Convention will devote extensive conversation to global issues through its Committee on International Concerns, which will prepare legislation to be addressed by convention's House of Bishops and House of Deputies.

Some of the key issues will focus on the crises and peacemaking efforts in conflict areas such as the Middle East, Sudan, Sri Lanka and the Great Lakes region of Africa.

Convention addresses global concerns for two reasons, said the Rev. Canon Brian Grieves, the Episcopal Church's senior director of mission and director of the Advocacy Center.

"One is in response to God's mission to reconcile all things to Christ. We join in Christ's work of salvation of the world. Secondly, we undertake this work as an expression of our partnership with other provinces of the Anglican Communion. These are life-and-death matters."

The legislative process, Grieves said, "may seem pedantic and ineffective to some, but, in fact, the resolutions adopted become the work of the church, especially through our Office of Government Relations [in Washington, D.C.]"

Alexander Baumgarten, international policy analyst in the government relations office, said that "Episcopalians frequently ask where the Office of Government Relations gets direction for its advocacy work, and the answer is from the resolutions of the General Convention.

"Any Episcopalian who wishes to influence the voice of our church in the public square can work with his or her deputies and bishops to bring a resolution to convention, which, if adopted, shapes the advocacy work of our church in the years to come," he said. "Each of the global issues for which the Episcopal Church has become noted in Washington in recent years -- whether the Millennium Development Goals, the Jubilee 2000 campaign for debt relief or the struggle for peace and human rights in the Sudan -- has begun as a result of resolutions brought to the convention by Episcopalians from around the country."

-- Matthew Davies is editor of Episcopal Life Online and international correspondent of Episcopal News Service.

DON'T TRADE HONOR FOR SURVIVAL

2009-02-16T09:21:00.006-06:00

By The Rev. Dr. Gene L. Davenport, Theologian in Residence
Saint Luke's Episcopal Church, Jackson, TN

President Obama is discovering what every other president has discovered. The job is different from the way it appears on the outside. Moreover, anyone who interpreted "change" to mean "revolution" is discovering that they read more into the word than they should have read.

The president has been criticized by some for relying on veterans of the Clinton administration. Basically, however, he had only two options - selecting people with no experience in government and starting from scratch or selecting people with experience who are willing to work in harmony with him and with each other.

The first option would have risked four years of trial and error. Like it or not, government is not merely the sum of all the individuals who work in it or of all the parts that make it up, but is an institution with an identity and personality all its own. It does not change overnight in accord with the intentions of any individual or any group.

The second option, the one the president has chosen, will be effective only if those selected work in harmony with each other and use their knowledge and understanding to help the president.

There are, however, some bothersome aspects to the Obama presidency. For one thing, the power exercised by presidents since Lyndon Johnson has led to the expression "the imperial presidency." The Constitutional Convention debated at length the role and even the number of the executive branch, wanting to be certain that the executive office or offices would not be simply another form of kingship. Most presidents for almost half a century, however, have strong-armed Congress, while Congress frequently has simply handed the president its own responsibilities.

The recent political campaigns seemed at times to assume that the president is the heart of government, and the expectations of some as to what President Obama can do to change the government reflect the same view. Moreover, as long as Congress concentrates on party power and prestige rather than on the well-being of the nation, the office of president will continue to assume royal garb.

For another thing, in his testimony before a Senate committee, Leon Panetta, nominated to head the CIA, said that "in extreme cases," if interrogators were unable to extract critical information from a prisoner, he would not hesitate to request from the president authority to employ methods not permitted under the new rules of the Obama administration. In other words, humane methods of questioning will be used only as long as they "work," and President Obama frequently is said to be a pragmatist. Moreover, the Bush administration could not have said it better.

Also, although Panetta said that the CIA will refuse to hand suspects over to a country known for torture or for other actions that violate human values, he also said that the agency will continue the practice of "rendition," the code name for sending prisoners to other countries for interrogation. What possible purpose for "rendition" could there be other than keeping the agency's (and, by implication, the nation's) hands technically clean? You will recall that President Bush avowed, "We do not torture!"

The question is whether security and survival are to be purchased at the cost of our humanity. Is survival the highest value? Conduct tends to become habitual. When habitually repeated, actions that were abnormal become, normal. A person not accustomed to acting cruelly but who begins to act cruelly for a period of time will either suffer emotional crises on the basis of guilt or become a habitually cruel person. The psychological studies of war veterans can teach us much on this point.

It is commonly said that the nation's honor is worth dying for. Honor was a major value in the early church as well as in the Roman Empire. But is survival purchased by cruelty really an honorable survival?

Dr. Gene Davenport is Professor Emeritus of Religion at Lambuth University and Theologian in Residence at St. Luke's Episcopal Church. Readers can send e-mail to him at genedavenport@yahoo.com.

ACCOUNTABILITY

2009-02-14T08:51:00.001-06:00

by Tom Ehrich

How do the sayings go? "If you make a mess, clean it up." "You made your bed. Now lie in it." "The captain goes down with the ship."

The simple aphorisms of accountability. Actions have consequences. The one taking the action should bear the consequences. The captain who steered into disaster can't be first into a lifeboat.

It all seems so simple, if somewhat counter-intuitive to a child, and yet so absent in today's cultural, political and economic climate. The art of managing nowadays seems to focus on getting someone else to pay the price. Enjoy rewards on the way up, but protect your flank on the way down.

If the business goes sour, lay off lower-level employees, even though they had no hand in messing up product design, market analysis, financial stability, research and development, or capital spending. If the bank's foolhardy risks go sour, don't fire the chief executive who steered the ship. Acquire another bank, and fire its CEO.

Thus far not one of the eight bankers who testified before Congress about the financial meltdown happening on their watch seems in danger of losing his job.

Even as they put entire towns out of business, industrial executives continue their comfortable lives and, evading all mention of their failure as leaders, insist that only they can save the enterprise.

The message isn't lost on underlings. Protect your flank. Deflect blame. Don't be the one left holding the bag. Pump up the numbers. Discourage true measurements of performance. Blame the workers for being lazy, blame the customer for being stupid, blame the Chinese, blame immigrants. Soon, no one knows the truth, and telling the truth becomes known as "whistle-blowing" and must be protected like an endangered species.

It was odd, if refreshing, when President Obama said he messed up in not vetting some appointments. What President in recent memory has accepted accountability for failed policies, improper behavior, or bad management? In an election, no one admits to being an "insider" responsible for consequences.

In my son's school, a hovering parent made sure his daughter didn't bear the consequences for cheating; the teacher who caught her got reprimanded for embarrassing the child. Local jails are filled with black boys who got caught, but not with white boys who stole from their classmates.

In religion, mainline Protestant denominations have been in steep decline since 1964. Partisans have used that slide to blame women, gays, liberals, whoever stokes their ire. But no one looks at the generation running churches in 1964 and asks how they misread a changing culture, failed to retain their members, ignored questions people were asking, planted congregations in poor locations, and squandered centuries of accumulated respect. Failure is a great teacher -- the best teacher -- but only if you see it and own it.

It's a fool's game, of course. Reality inevitably prevails. Ships that hit icebergs do sink. Wars waged on fraudulent information and unexamined ideology become quagmires.

Someone needs to stop the dance of denial. I vote for faith communities. Let's start by teaching right and wrong. Let's accept our diminished state as something we brought about. Let's stop hiding from reality by maintaining facilities we can't afford. Let's stop the precious internal feuds that have nothing to do with recessions, wars, rampant dishonesty and greed. Let's close under-performing congregations and furlough under-performing clergy and lay leaders.

If we who claim Messiah's mantle don't teach and accept accountability, who will?

Do Evolution & Faith Have to Fight?

2009-02-12T11:49:00.001-06:00

Today is the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin and 2009 is 150th anniversary of the publication of his Origin of the Species. The debate between evolution and religious faith appears to be as American as apple pie.

Religion Dispatches has three interesting articles reflecting on the religious consequences of evolution, focusing on the ongoing debate often framed as a fight between science and religion.

Lauri Lebo takes a look at American attitudes toward Darwin while attending a British conference on science and the public interest:

I am standing at a podium in England, invited to speak by of the British Council, because I am American. To be even more specific, because I resided at Ground Zero of my country’s cultural battle over science and religion, in an event that took place four years ago in Dover, Pa. when the local school board tried to force religion into science class.
I have been aware of this British fascination with us ever since the BBC came to my town in the fall of 2004, right after the Dover Area School Board inserted the phrase intelligent design for the first time in the US into a public school biology curriculum....I remember the BBC crew looked at me much the same way that these people are looking at me now. Trying to determine on which side of the cultural divide I stand. The British don’t understand, I’ve been told, why Americans are so divided.

They find this issue fascinating. And they watch me curiously. In a way, I suspect, they find our fundamentalism kind of cute. Just like the meerkats.

I know they’re thinking: What is it with you Americans? Why are you so hung up on this religion vs. science thing?

It can be said that Darwin and the theory of evolution begat American Christian fundamentalism. Lebo points out that through much of the 19th century, Biblical literalism was on the decline. Science was accepted, even in the churches, and the idea that the earth is very old was widely accepted. "A typical interpretation of the Genesis account," she says, "viewed the six days not as literal 24-hour periods, but as separate, lengthy spans of time."

This is an interpretation that probably feels familiar to many Episcopalians. The rector of St. Dunstan’s Episcopal Church in northwest Atlanta, The Rev. Patricia Templeton, says in today's Atlanta Journal-Constitution that "the problem begins with those questions, the pairing of religion and science as polar opposites."

Although I believe that the Bible contains the words of the living God, I also think that looking to the Bible for modern scientific knowledge requires denying the use of one of God’s greatest gifts, our minds.
“I will pray with the spirit, but I will pray with the mind also,” the apostle Paul says. “I will sing praise with the spirit, but I will sing praise with the mind also.”

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind,” Jesus says. “This is the greatest and first commandment.”

A faith that requires you to close your mind in order to believe is not much of a faith at all.

The Bible was never meant to be a science textbook.

Instead, it tells the story of the relationship between God and human beings, between the Creator and creation.

By the early 20th century, there arose a theological response to the liberal trends in theology of day, in particular as a reaction to the Social Gospel, higher Biblical criticism, Catholicism, and Darwinism. A series of tracts called "The Fundamentals" were issued calling for a literal interpretation of the Bible, proclaiming for the first time the doctrine of inerrancy, and thus pitting the Bible against evolution in a stark and popular way. To be opposed to evolution was not so much being opposed to science as to what evolution symbolized for these groups.

Since then there has been a major clash between what we now call creationists and those who teach evolution in the schools.

Nathan Schnieder says that even with the ongoing controversies, there are five things we can learn from creationists:

With court case after court case, in this country at least, the creationists put on a good show. The occasional monkey trial has become a national pastime, and we average about one big one per decade. It's too bad they're so completely wrong. Year after year, more evidence piles up pointing to the truth of your theory. It has served as the fundamental basis of modern biology, paleontology, and anthropology, through which we understand life on earth more completely than ever before. To science, creationism since your time has offered mainly obfuscation. There's more to them than science.
As your birthday present, I'd like to offer a list. It's not about you, exactly, but about what 150 years of creationism can teach us about your accomplishment. I hope you like it.

5 Things We Can Learn from the Creationists:

1) They show us that there is more at stake in science than science itself. People have other concerns at heart, religious, political, or otherwise.
2) They never tire of pointing out how scientific ideas can be misused by dangerous ideologies, from reckless capitalism, to vanguard communism, to Nazism. We will always need the reminder.

3) They demonstrate that, when you really stretch it, the same data can be interpreted in very different ways.

4) They encourage fuller scientific demonstrations of evolution by playing the devil's advocate. After Michael Behe made his case about the bacterial flagellum's intelligent design, for instance, researchers figured out how it evolved.

5) In their desire for a faith-based science, they remind us that faith and science are part of a common human urge.

David Westmoreland, a professor and evolutionary biologist and a Christian feels the pinch all the time, but offers a cogent way through the divide:

Why the discord? Is there no middle ground between religion and Darwin, or is the only solution a partitioning of intellectual turf? Stephen Jay Gould suggested a truce of the latter sort in proposing the notion of Nonoverlapping Magisteria (NOMA): evolutionists should focus their efforts on the ages of rocks, theologians on the rock of ages, and neither should tread on the other’s domain. This approach brokers a tentative peace between Park Place and Boardwalk, but avoids the uncomfortable conflict that Darwin likely feared for Emma—can religion and evolution occupy the same home?
I would argue that they can, and do, coexist—and even complement each other. However, as a scientist I am in the minority. Polls indicate that very small percentage of biologists believe that a deity exists, the rest falling into the community of philosophical naturalists. At church, I am the misguided evolutionist; at work, the inexplicable Christian. I wonder if Emma understands.

Church friends ask how I could possibly “believe in” evolution, and how my evolutionist thinking cannot be in conflict with scripture. The answer to the first is easy—overwhelming evidence. Evolution explains a vast number of facts that, in its absence, would be mere curiosities: the pattern of change in the fossil record, the presence of identical, functionless pseudogenes in all primates, the subtle infidelity of songbirds. To the second question, I point out that all conflict with scripture evaporates when Genesis is taken as allegory. The point of the Garden is not that two humans started our species from a perfect environment, but that two people given an ideal home and a single rule will not be able to resist sweet disobedience.

At work, naturalist colleagues have diagnosed my condition as a cognitive variety of split personality, applying Occam’s razor to scientific matters and a theological butter knife to issues of faith. But I contend that distinctively different ways of thinking are justified for distinctively different ideas. First, on what basis does one conclude that science is the only method of inquiry that yields truth? Second, do my ersatz therapists deny that science is limited in scope to questions that can be addressed by quantification, statements that can be potentially falsified by data? Theological concepts are outside that realm. Faith is not a product of data, but an amalgamation of intuition, personal experience, and tradition that is unique to every person. Any attempt to transform that complex brew into a scientific line of inquiry is hopelessly doomed.

Lauri Lebo: Denying Darwin.

Nathan Schieder: Five Things We Can Learn from Creationists.

Arri Eisen, an RD columnist and biologist asked a poet, a public health expert, and an evolutionary biologist how Darwin affects their beliefs. Read it here.

Posted by Andrew Gerns on February 12, 2009

2009-02-11T13:59:00.003-06:00

Presiding Bishop joins call for review of U.S. policy on landmines and cluster munitions

By Joe Bjordal February 10, 2009 [Episcopal News Service]

Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori has joined with leaders of 67 national organizations in calling on President Barack Obama to reconsider United States opposition to global treaties prohibiting the use, transfer and production of landmines and cluster munitions.

In a letter, delivered on February 10, the leaders called on the president to launch a review of the past administration's decisions to "stand outside of" two international treaties: the Convention on Cluster Munitions, completed and signed by 95 countries in December 2008, and the Mine Ban Treaty, signed by all but 39 countries in the world in March 1999.

"The closest allies of the United States negotiated the Convention on Cluster Munitions based on their conclusion that these indiscriminate and unreliable weapons post an unacceptable threat to civilian populations during and long after combat operations have ceased—in much the same way as do landmines," say the leaders in the letter.

"Reconsidering these two treaties—and eliminating the threat that U.S. forces might use weapons that most of the world had condemned—would greatly aid efforts to reassert our nation's moral leadership."

The letter was organized by the U.S. Campaign to Ban Landmines (USCBL), a coalition of religious, veterans, medical, peace, humanitarian, and human rights organizations and thousands of individual members who support U.S. participation in the Mine Ban Treaty. The campaign also encourages the government to increase U.S. funding for mine clearance and landmine victim assistance programs. The USCBL, a member of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize-winning International Campaign to Ban Landmines, is coordinated by and based at the Friends Committee on National Legislation in Washington, DC.

Joining Jefferts Schori in signing the letter were heads of communion of six other major U. S. church bodies including Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson. Robert Radtke, president of Episcopal Relief and Development, was also a signer.

Other signers represent the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Friends Service Committee, Amnesty International, CARE, Oxfam America, the U.S. Fund for UNICEF and Veterans for Peace.

The Episcopal Church passed a resolution calling for a ban on the use of landmines at the 71st General Convention, meeting in Indianapolis in 1994. The resolution also called for the establishment of an international fund to promote and finance landmine awareness, clearance, and eradication programs.

Following release of the letter, Unites States senators Patrick Leahy and Dianne Feinstein and Representative James McGovern will reintroduce the Cluster Munitions Civilian Protection Act, legislation that would prohibit the use by U.S. troops of highly unreliable cluster munitions that leave behind large numbers of landmine-like cluster submunitions on the ground, as well as any use of cluster munitions in civilian-populated areas.

Leahy and McGovern have also been leaders in congressional efforts over the past 15 years to restrict U.S. use and export of antipersonnel landmines.

-- Joe Bjordal is Episcopal Life Media correspondent in the dioceses of Provinces V and VI. He is based in Minneapolis, Minnesota.