My friend Robert Easter at Sanctifusion has thrown me some very deep questions in the course of a discussion: I was talking about you to a young man who is in the process of shifting form Church of God to Anglican. Something about the ancient ties and the Nicene writers. When we look at it, …
The House of Bishops and the Deadly Meaning of “Until”
In his Anglican Action blog, Ralph Webb, Director of Anglican Action at the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD) noted the most significant detail of the "Mind of the House Statement" from the recent Episcopal House of Bishops meeting in New Orleans: I (Webb) asked Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori why the mind of the …
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The Paradox of GLBT People and the Church
One thing that has buffaloed me from the start of this fiasco over TEC, Gene Robinson and the very strong existence of the GLBT in this and other historically Christian churches is this: why would anyone want to join a church whose Scripture explicitly casts as sinful their defining way of life? It's true that …
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A Semi-Marxist View of the Baptismal Covenant
One recurring issue in Episcopal/Anglican life is the "Baptismal Covenant" that appears in the 1979 BCP. (For a look at it, click here.) This has been Peter Toon's cause célèbre for a long time, and now it's been picked up by Gary L'Hommedieu. Now it seems that Rowan Williams has joined in the chorus. As …
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Kendall Harmon’s Radical Solution
Kendall Harmon's radical solution for the Episcopal Church, i.e., the bishops absent themselves from Lambeth, is an interesting proposal. But it's unlikely to get much traction where it counts. Let me look at this from a more political standpoint. First, any kind of withdrawal from Lambeth--voluntary and temporary though it might be--would be interpreted as …
After half a lifetime…
Richard Kew's piece After half a lifetime... confirms one of the things I mentioned in my email to the elf, specifically the problem of the seminaries: It was when I started travelling around the church that I got to visit the seminaries that I started to discover how they functioned and what they perceived their …
The Options Run Out at the Episcopal Church
Recently I was contacted by one of the "elves" at Titusonenine, the weblog of the Rev. Canon Dr. Kendall Harmon (which I reviewed back in May.) Same first child of Iluvatar inquired about my idea concerning the Episcopal Church and its Anglican alternatives. My response should not surprise readers of this blog: What I am …
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Rowan Williams and Hermeneutics
The Blogging Parson's piece on Rowan Williams and hermeneutics goes a long way to explain the Archbishop of Canterbury's position--or more precisely his lack of one--in the current Anglican Communion row over homosexuals in the episcopate. But it also is an opportunity to stop and think about one of the most important issues in Christianity--the …
Move to empower laity raises church ire
The idea of the Anglican Archdiocese of Sydney (Australia) to empower the laity raises the ire of many churches. It's an issue that has some peculiarly Anglican implications, but it's also interesting for many of the rest of us. The "empowerment" they're proposing is allowing lay people to celebrate the Holy Communion, which traditionally is …
When God Pulls the Plug
Jim Workman's piece in The Living Church Foundation on "Turning Away from God" is a good treatment on the subject of institutions and God, and certainly relevant for the present state of the Episcopal Church. But it's also a reminder to everyone that institutionalism isn't God's original plan for his people. God established the proper …
Positive Infinity 