Ekklesia says the Church of England has been criticized three times in four days for its investments practices.

The first report deals with Royal Dutch Shell in which the Church has £103.7 million invested:

A new Amnesty International report says that the company in which the Church of England has its biggest shareholding is responsible for bringing impoverishment, conflict, human rights abuses and despair to the majority of the people in the oil-producing areas of the Niger Delta.

Royal Dutch Shell, in which the Church has an investment of £103.7 million and from which it seeks to profit according to its latest annual report, has brought pollution and environmental damage to the region through its subsidiary company, Shell. Amnesty says that rights to health and a healthy environment, to an adequate standard of living (including the right to food and water) and to gaining a living through work, have been violated for hundreds of thousands of people.

Published on Tuesday, the report, Petroleum, Pollution and Poverty in the Niger Delta, also details how the Nigerian government is failing to hold oil companies to account for the pollution they have caused.

“Oil companies have been exploiting Nigeria’s weak regulatory system for too long,” said Audrey Gaughran of Amnesty International. “They do not adequately prevent environmental damage and they frequently fail to properly address the devastating impact that their bad practice has on people’s lives.”

The Church of England has invested £27.5 million in Tesco, Britain's largest retailer:

(T)he charity War on Want has cited research revealing that employees work up to 80 hours a week making Tesco clothes in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka for as little as 1663 taka (£14) a month.

Employees calculate that a worker needs £44.82 (5333 taka) a month to give their family nutritious food, clean water, shelter, clothes, education, health care and transport.

In the three Tesco factories researched, average pay, £20 (2280 taka) a month, is less than half a living wage.

Ekklesia says that the Guardian reported on the Church of England's £17.2 million investment in ExxonMobil:

Yesterday, the Guardian newspaper revealed that Exxon Mobil, in which the Church of England has a shareholding valued at £17.2 million, is continuing to fund lobby groups which question the reality of global warming, despite a public pledge to cut support for such climate change denial. On Tuesday, campaigners announced that the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) would be the subject of a legal action after it was was linked to climate change and human rights violations. The Church has a £8.4 million stake in RBS.

Read more here and here. See also the Ekklesia report "Where is the Church of England's Heart Invested?" here.

Kristy Harding imagines sees the word "ubuntu" and imagines what an "open source" church might look like.

She writes on the blog ReEmergent Church:

Continuing the recent Anglican “Wonderful Things that Come From Africa” trend, this year’s theme is “Ubuntu,” which roughly translates “I am because we are.”

Because I’m married to a programmer, I can’t hear “Ubuntu” without thinking of the open source movement because Ubuntu is the name of a particularly good distribution of the open source Linux operating system.

I’m not the first person to connect church with the open source movement, but most of what I see online has to do with building emergent theology from scratch and making sermons and materials and software available. This is great, but it made me wonder:

What would happen, if we took the Ubuntu theme and really embraced the philosophy, having a truly “Open Source Church”?

Harding says:

Church would be accessible.

The point of the open source movement is freedom and open doors: You’re not locked out. You can get at the things that you need without barriers, and you then extend that freedom to others with whatever you create. The community recognizes that each member needs the contributions of every other member and facilitates that members’ ability to share.

Anyone who wants to can get at the church.

Harding differentiates accessibility from the myriad of means and groups in which people can be involved. Instead she says that "Anyone who wants to can have access to theology and spirituality."

An open source church would do all it could to make sure as much of the riches of its traditions were as available as possible in places like Project Gutenberg and Google Books–and even, God forbid, mundane places like public libraries.

In addition to old theology, new theology, education and formation would all be accessible.

She concludes with this idea: We need fewer Cathedrals and more Bazaars.

We would have more bazaars and fewer cathedrals–in the sense of Eric Steven Raymond’s essay, The Cathedral and the Bazaar. “Cathedrals” are huge projects that involve enormous amounts of work to pull off. “Bazaars,” interestingly, are also huge projects that involve enormous amounts of work to pull off. The difference between a cathedral and a bazaar is that building a cathedral is centralized endeavor, highly-closed from public view, structured, and takes forever. Bazaars are the work of zillions of people, are a highly transparent affair, and are chaotic. But! They happen for a couple of hours on a Saturday afternoon and can disappear into the sunset cleanly. When something goes wrong in a cathedral, the cathedral collapses, and the entire town falls down with it. If a fire breaks out in a bazaar, it might tear through a section of the bazaar, but bazaars are like organisms: They’re flexible, and they can heal themselves quickly. By working under the bazaar model, the open source church would be truly open and listening to the experiences of its members, and problems wouldn’t get so big that they threatened to bring the entire building down.

Read the rest here.

Episcopal Relief and Development has published their Annual Summary exclusively in an electronic format. In 2008, ERD touched the lives of more people than ever before - nearly 3 million in 46 countries.

Take a look right here and click on the 2008 Annual Summary.

Pat Ashworth in The Church Times:

Lay people at the General Con­vention of the Episcopal Church in the United States will have some hard questions for the Archbishop of Canterbury when he visits, says the president of the House of Depu­ties, Bonnie Anderson. ...

The deputies are unhappy with moves towards greater centralisation of authority in bishops and in panels appointed by Lambeth Palace. “We work very well together [with the bishops], but to see that kind of po­tential disenfranchisement of laity is really adverse to our polity,” Mrs Anderson said on Monday.

The Bishops will have divided loyalties. They are acknowledged to have returned from the Lambeth Conference much influenced by the Archbishop of Canterbury’s appeals for unity, and mindful that newly formed relationships with African bishops could be jeopardised if any steps were taken on this and on same-sex blessings. “The indaba groups enabled bishops to get to know one another,” Mrs Anderson says.

“They are very faithful about transmitting information to us. But I think we can safely say that people in the Episcopal Church like to get in­formation first hand, and we like to speak for ourselves. So there is always that little bit of an edge.”

The Carlisle (PA) Sentinel has the story of dolls doing good:

Barbie may not be much good in the missions field, but thanks to Meaghan McDermott, she’s going to help send some local teens out to serve.

“When I was a child, I loved Barbies,” said McDermott. She stopped actively collecting them when she graduated from college, though, and for years now the dolls and accessories have been sitting in her basement.

Meanwhile, McDermott said, she has served as a member of the youth group ministry committee at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Carlisle.

She was impressed with what she saw: “It’s a valuable program we need in this day and age. We’re helping to teach responsibility, reaching out to community, passing on values.”

So, McDermott said, donating her unused doll collection to the ministry struck her as a good idea, and for more than one reason.

Laurie Goodstein of The New York Times reports:

The second investigation of nuns is a doctrinal assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, an umbrella organization that claims 1,500 members from about 95 percent of women’s religious orders. This investigation was ordered by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which is headed by an American, Cardinal William Levada.

Cardinal Levada sent a letter to the Leadership Conference saying an investigation was warranted because it appeared that the organization had done little since it was warned eight years ago that it had failed to “promote” the church’s teachings on three issues: the male-only priesthood, homosexuality and the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church as the means to salvation.

The letter goes on to say that, “Given both the tenor and the doctrinal content of various addresses” at assemblies the Leadership Conference has held in recent years, the problem has not been fixed.

Mary Frances Schjonberg writes:

[Episcopal News Service] The Episcopal Church's Executive Council has asked General Convention deputations and their bishops to study and comment on the latest draft of a proposed Anglican covenant.

In May, the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) postponed an expected request that the Anglican Communion's 38 provinces consider adopting the Ridley Cambridge draft. The council said instead that it wanted the draft's Section 4, which contains a dispute-resolution process, to get more scrutiny and possibly be revised.

The Archbishop of Canterbury appointed a small working group to do that work. The members, all of whom served on the original Covenant Design Group, have solicited provincial responses by November 13, 2009. The working group will meet November 20-21 in London and report to the Standing Committee meeting December 15-18. The Standing Committee is a group of elected representatives of the ACC and the Primates Meeting.

A letter from Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, House of Deputies President Bonnie Anderson and Rosalie Ballentine, the Executive Council member who chairs the council's task force on the Anglican covenant, asks that responses must be turned in by September 1. The task force and the council will use the comments to formulate a response during its October meeting.

"We believe that this work will best be accomplished in light of work and resolutions passed at the 2009 General Convention, so we are asking that deputations make their responses following convention," they wrote in the letter.

Julia Duin posts this revealing comment from Bishop William Wantland, who apparently thinks that when you go to church you are marrying Jesus:

I queried retired Eau Claire, Wis., Bishop William Wantland, an old friend and an ardent opponent of ordaining women. He reminded me that 22 of the ACNA's 28 dioceses do not allow female priests. It's a system known as "dual integrity," dioceses that differ on a question where Scripture can be read both ways agree to respect and live with each other's views.

I asked him if he wanted the ACNA to eventually outlaw ordaining women entirely.

"Of course. That's our mission," he said. "Christ is the bridegroom and the church is the bride. The priest at the altar is an icon of Christ. What image is that if the person at the altar is a woman? It's a lesbian relationship."

The bishop's turn of phrase is distinctly his own, he's actually captured the official thinking of the Roman Catholic Church on this issue. The Vatican's opposition to women's ordination has nothing to do with Scripture. The Pontifical Biblical Commission found in the mid 1970s that the issue of women's ordination was unresolved in Scripture. (All of this business about the apostles being men ignores the fact that the apostles were not what we think of as priests. And then there is that whole Mary Magdalene business, but that is another matter.) The Church's opposition hangs primarily on interpreting the nuptial metaphor literally.

But if you interpret it literally, what exactly is the nature of a man's participation within the mystical body that is the bride of Christ?

A vestry member at a North Carolina church has been charged with sex crimes involving his 5-year-old adopted son. The Raleigh News and Observer has the story. To read Bishop Michael Curry's statement, click Read more.

Read more »

The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Secretary General of the Anglican Communion have announced the membership of the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission for Unity, Faith and Order [IASCUFO]. The remarkably clergy-heavy commission is, according the ACNS release, charged with overseeing the ecumenical life of the communion. But earlier mentions of the commission had pointed to perhaps its underlying purpose: to define the instruments of communion in order to facilitate greater discipline and the make Anglican Communion more of a church with a magisterium. And Rowan Williams has said that in his view ecumenical work has been hampered because the Anglican Communion has been unable to give assurances of what it is and what it stands for.

The news release, in full:

Inter-Anglican Standing Commission for Unity, Faith and Order - IASCUFO
Posted On : July 1, 2009 4:13 PM | Posted By : Webmaster
ACNS: ACNS4638
Related Categories: ACO ACO - Ecumenical

The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Secretary General of the Anglican Communion have announced the membership of an important new commission, following extensive consultation with the Provinces of the Communion around the world. The Chair is the Most Revd Bernard Ntahoturi, Primate of the Anglican Church of Burundi.

IASCUFO will oversee the ecumenical life of the Anglican Communion, and will:

* promote the deepening of Communion between the Anglican Communion and other Christian Churches and traditions;
* advise the Provinces, the Primates, the Anglican Consultative Council, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, on all questions of ecumenical engagement, as well as on questions of Anglican Faith and Order;
* review developments in the areas of Faith, Order and Unity in the Anglican Communion and among ecumenical partners, and give advice upon them to the Churches of the Anglican Communion and to the Instruments of Communion;
* assist any Province with the assessment of new proposals in the areas of Unity, Faith and Order as requested.

The Inter-Anglican Standing Commission for Unity, Faith and Order (IASCUFO) will start its work in December 2009 in Canterbury, England.

IASCUFO will take forward the work of the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Ecumenical Relations (IASCER), and the Inter-Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission (IATDC).

Members of the Commission

The Most Revd Bernard Ntahoturi, Burundi (Chair)
The Rt Revd Dr George Titre Ande, Congo
The Ven Professor Dapo Asaju, Lagos State University, Nigeria
The Revd Canon Dr Paul Avis, England
The Rt Revd Philip D Baji, Bishop of Tanga, Tanzania
The Revd Canon Dr Alyson Barnett-Cowan, Canada
The Revd Canon Dr John Gibaut, WCC Commission on Faith and Order
The Rt Revd Howard Gregory, Bishop of Montego Bay, West Indies
The Revd Dr Katherine Grieb, Virginia Theological Seminary, The Episcopal Church
The Revd Canon Clement Janda, Sudan
The Revd Dr Edison Muhindo Kalengyo, Uganda Christian University, Uganda
The Rt Revd Victoria Matthews, Bishop of Christchurch, Aotearoa, New Zealand & Polynesia
The Revd Canon Dr Charlotte Methuen, Oxford University, England
The Revd Dr Simon Oliver, University of Nottingham, England
The Rt Revd Professor Stephen Pickard, Assistant Bishop of Adelaide, Australia
Dr Andrew Pierce, Irish School of Ecumenics, Ireland
The Revd Canon Dr Michael Nai Chiu Poon, Trinity Theological College, Singapore, South East Asia
The Revd Sarah Rowland Jones, Southern Africa
The Revd Dr Jeremiah Yang, Sheng Gong Hui (Anglican) University, Korea
The Rt Revd Tito Zavala, Bishop of Chile, Southern Cone

The Secretary to the Commission will be the Director for Unity, Faith and Order, Anglican Communion Office.

Whether a committee this large and diverse can accomplish much (or do much damage) is another question.

As Mathew Davies notes, the 20-member group includes five women and one, count'em (or, rather count him) one lay person.

Covering the General Convention of the Episcopal Church is expensive, and Episcopal Café needs your help in making ends meet. Please make an online donation today. (Actually, please make it RIGHT NOW.) Just fill out this form, and put the words Episcopal Café in the "Dedication" box.

See you next week in Anaheim.

The Diocese of Connecticut has a website for its nominees for 15th Bishop. Check it out.

There are four nominees: the Reverend Mark Delcuze, the Right Reverend Jim Curry, the Reverend Dr. Ian T. Douglas, and the Reverend Beth Fain. More about them here.

Elsewhere, the Diocese of Kentucky's bishop search website is here.

From organist Robert Ridgell.

Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, will meet privately with a select group of Episcopalians concerned with LGBT issues.

Episcopalians during his time in California to participate in General Convention. The meeting is not part of General Convention, and it is not clear that it was meant to come to light.

ENS: Eight members of the Episcopal Church's House of Deputies are scheduled meet privately with Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams at General Convention in a session that is intended in part to address lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) issues in the church.
...
The session is not an official convention meeting and thus there has been no announcement of the plans. However, when contacted by Episcopal News Service, the Rev. Canon Michael Barlowe of the Diocese of California confirmed the details.

Barlowe said that he and the other deputies understood the meeting was to be brief and private, but that it was not a secret.

The presiding officers did not appoint the deputies, Barlowe said. Instead, he was asked to put the group together. He said he consulted with others and sought deputies who reflected the range of geographic, age, and ministerial diversity of those people who supported the request for the meeting.

In addition to Barlowe, the deputies are:

* Louie Crew, Diocese of Newark;
* the Rev. Canon Lisa Gray, Diocese of Michigan;
* the Rev. Tobias Haller BSG, Diocese of New York;
* Joanne O'Donnell, Diocese of Los Angeles;
* the Rev. Altagracia Perez, Diocese of Los Angeles;
* Rebecca Snow, Diocese of Alaska; and
* Michael Spencer, Diocese of Eastern Michigan.

The Rev. Eric H. F. Law, known for his work in multicultural leadership training, has been helping the deputies prepare for their meeting, according to Barlowe, and Law may attend the session with Williams.

Lisa Fox, who blogs at My Manner of Life, has the names of six of the eight members of the secret panel that the House of Bishops Theology Committee assembled to study same-sex relationships.

Bishop Henry Parsley, chair of the commitee, has refused to release the names, but, as Lisa writes, it is hard to keep secrets in a small church.

The bishop's unwillingness to release the names called far more attention to the panel than it otherwise might have received. It also put some committee members in the difficult position of having to maintain secrecy when they did not think it was appropriate to do so.

The four of the eight theologians will produce one document arguing the moral legitimacy of same-sex relationships, while the other four will argue that such relationships are sinful. Now that most of the members' names are known, perhaps these papers can be judged on their content, rather than on the process that led to their production.

The fact that these theologians--whose views on the topic before them are already well-known--will be releasing papers in 2011, does not seem a compelling argument against the Church's making decisions on these issues at its General Convention, which begins in Anaheim next week.

The committee has two co-facilitators, the Rt. Rev. Joe G. Burnett, Bishop of Nebraska and Ellen Charry of Princeton Theological Seminary.

Its members are:

Deirdre J. Good, General Theological Seminary (Full disclosure, Dr. Good is a regular contributor to Episcopal Cafe. She did not provide the names of fellow committee members.)

Willis Jenkins, Yale Divinity School

The Rev. Grant LeMarquand, Trinity School for Ministry

Eugene Rogers, University of North Carolina, Greensboro

The Rev. George Sumner, Wycliffe College, Toronto

The Rev. Daniel A. Westberg of Nashotah House (See Page 3, here.)

Updated: click Read more for a statement from the Chicago Consultation.

Read more »

The printing partner editors have received this email from Anne Rudig, the director of the Episcopal Church's Office of Communication. It is their first direct communication from the church office of proposed changes such as the shift of the print edition of Episcopal Life from a monthly to a quarterly.

From: Jessica Metz Date: July 1, 2009 1:00:14 PM EDT To: Editors Subject: Message from Anne Rudig

Dear Editors,

The following message has been sent on behalf of Anne Rudig…

Dear Editors,

In March, Church Center directors were asked by PB&F to think creatively with an eye to doing more with less in the next Triennium. In response to that request the Office of Communication proposes a shift in strategic focus enabling the Office to evangelize and retain more effectively in the years to come.

The proposal includes moving Episcopal Life to a quarterly frequency, refocusing the content to evangelism and spirituality, and separating Episcopal Life from diocesan newspapers. The regular news staff continues intact and Episcopal Life Online becomes the primary source of church news for Episcopalians.

A draft budget reflecting this shift was submitted to Program, Budget and Finance for hearings at General Convention. This shift is prompting debate about the role of news, the role of print, and the function of Church communications.

After debate and resolution, the Office of Communication will implement the Church's mandate, respecting the concerns of all.

Please feel free to contact me with your comments or concerns as we move through this process.

Kind regards,

Anne Rudig

Jessica Metz
Episcopal Life Media

Maine's bishop, Steve Lane, uses YouTube to offer a few words to Maine Episcopalians in advance of General Convention. Perhaps your bishop could follow his example if he or she has not already done so.

ENS:

The Episcopal Church Center staff issued a 27-page draft report on world mission June 26 in response to two questions posed by Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori:

• What is the primary motivation for global mission?
• How do we practice global mission strategically in the 21st century?
...
The draft report includes a brief history of Episcopal global mission, estimated 2008 international mission expenditure figures ($22.9 million), the 2009 projected budget for international mission and geographic breakdowns of where the money is spent.
,,,
[The presiding bishop] offered some historical perspective: in 1950, 40 percent of the DFMS funding went toward international mission. In 1995 it was 25 percent and today it is 16 percent.

"Today the Anglican Communion Office gets a much bigger chunk …" Jefferts Schori said.

General Convention will be asked to increase funding and to switch to the term "mission partner" instead of "missionary" to help to reinvigorate this work and define more accurately its emphasis on relationship building and interdependence.

More than 70 Episcopal missionaries serve in congregations and dioceses throughout Asia, Africa, Europe, the Middle East and South America. They usually are placed for three years and play a variety of roles, often in education, health care and local support for orphans and immigrants.

The mission personnel budget -- which provides missionaries with a $500 monthly stipend and covers airfare, visa, pension-contribution and health-insurance costs -- has taken a hit in recent months. This led to a temporary hiatus in deploying new adult missionaries in 2009, a situation the Standing Commission on World Mission hopes General Convention will address.

"The rising cost of mission support and the decreases in the General Convention budget call for a fresh look at the mission-funding process," the standing commission says in its report to convention, which proposes increasing the budget to support missionaries by $1 million during the next triennium.

Mel Ahlborn, president of Episcopal Church in the Visual Arts (and, more important to us, the editor of the Art Blog at Episcopal Café is deeply involved in designing the visual environment for worship at General Convention.

Today she sent us this message:

iTunes has just published 'The Rhythm of Ubuntu', my design soundtrack for 'The Ubuntu Reredos'. Come, listen, and rock out some Ubuntu into your bones, my friends.

The Rt. Rev. James Mathes writes that the report commissioned by the Diocese of San Diego on Holiness in Relationships and Same-Sex Unions has been released for study by the whole church as well as in the diocese.

Read more »

IntegriTV, Integrity's video presence in Anaheim launched Sunday, June 28th -- 10 days before the beginning of General Convention 2009. A 10 part "MARCHING TO ANAHEIM" series promotes Integrity's ministry and message.
.
Watch for it daily at here.

Read more »

Bishop Lloyd Allen of the Diocese of Honduras has written to the other bishops of the Episcopal Church assuring them that “so far” he, his clergy and lay leadership and their families are safe, in the wake of the military coup on Sunday that deposed President Manuel Zelaya.

Read more »

Thinking Anglicans reports on how the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA) views the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA). While Uganda immediately transferred their American parishes to ACNA, Nigeria did not. Martyn Minns talks about CANA churches having "dual" citizenship. He admits that ACNA churches are not part of the Anglican Communion, but says that CANA churches have better Anglican bona-fides because of their continuing connection to Nigeria.

Read more »

The Episcopal Church's House of Deputies will discuss whether it wants to explore the revision of controversial Resolution B033 in a committee of the whole before the relevant legislative committee begins its work, Bonnie Anderson, president of the house, disclosed tonight in an email to deputies.

Read more »

As the Episcopal Church approaches the beginning of its triennial General Convention in a little more than a week, tensions are running high among those in the leadership. Thankfully, they're not the only folks in the Church.

There's a lovely and hopeful article today that reminds all of us that even in the midst of controversy, the Episcopal Church still can manage to bridge divides between people of passionate belief:

Read more »

This just in from the Board of Governors of Episcopal Life Media:

The Board of Governors of Episcopal Life Media strongly opposes the proposal of the Episcopal Church Director of Communications to change the nature, scope and content of Episcopal Life and calls for the withdrawal of that proposal. Our opposition comes from concerns about both content and process:

Read more »

The House of Bishop's Theology Committee has just released their report on question of sharing Holy Communion with people who are not baptized. The report was requested by the 2006 General Convention.

Of some interest might be the names of the committee members which are found at the end of the report, the full version of which follows. The chair is Bishop Henry Parsley who notes in his letter introducing the report, "To date we know of no resolution on this subject coming before this convention."

Read more »

Updated: with Not so fast:

Contrary to published reports, President Obama and the First Family have not decided to make Evergreen Chapel at Camp David their primary place of worship in the Washington area.

“The President and First Family continue to look for a church home. They have enjoyed worshipping at Camp David and several other congregations over the months, and will choose a church at the time that is best for their family,” Deputy White House Press Secretary Jennifer Psaki said in a statement.

Read more »

After two and a half years heading up the Anglican Cathedral in Second Life, its founder has stepped down from active leadership and preaching at the virtual cathedral, though he remains involved. The Rev. Mark Brown remains very interested in virtual ministry and has created prayer groups on Twitter (@Prayer4u) and Facebook (Praying People) in recent weeks. He will continue to be involved with the Cathedral in an advisory capacity.

Read more »

British Psychological Science Research Digest:

Moral psychology gets more tricky when the interests of the many are pitted against the few, as in the classic "trolley dilemma", in which a person must divert a hurtling trolley towards a lone victim, so as to save the lives of five others.

Read more »

Bob Smietana in the Nashville Tennessean:

Read more »

Through a blog, Twitter, and Facebook Wyoming's mission trip to Honduras is reported back home as it happens. The immediacy of being virtually present with those on the mission has connected the team, the people of El Ceiba, and Wyoming Episcopalians who support the work from afar.

Read more »

From Killing the Buddha comes this essay by the Rev. Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou is the Senior Minister of Lemuel Haynes Congregational Church (UCC) in South Jamaica Queens, New York:

Read more »

Kevin Lewis in his column, Uncommon Knowledge

Spartan women could inherit, own, and bequeath property; they were fed and schooled as much as men; they had complete freedom of movement; they married later and could even get away with adultery. So why would the tough Spartan men allow this to happen?

Read more »

The Rev. Devon Anderson, executive director of Episcopalians for Global Reconcilliation recently sent an email to the organization's supporters:

Although the MDGs have been our church's number one budget and programmatic priority since 2006, the draft budget coming to General Convention actually cut the MDGs line item. Our highest legislative priority is to reinstate the 0.7% line item for MDGs in the budget for the Episcopal Church. More than this, EGR proposes that this line item be increased to 1% as a cost-of-giving adjustment. EGR will work to reinstate the MGDs line item through two venues: the budget process and resolution D019.

To see the entire letter, click Read more.

Read more »

As Anglicans examine what exactly makes their Communion, um, communal, increasing attention has focused on companion dioceses and companion parish relationships. In this report, the Diocese of Washington's Southern Africa Partnership Committee, looks back at the first five years of its relationships with the Church of the Province of Southern Africa.

Bishop John Bryson Chane is currently visiting South Africa, Mozambique and Swaziland, and working with South African Primate Thabo Makgoba on renewing the relationship.

Here is our weekly collection plate, offering some of the good things that Episcopalians and their congregations have done that made the news this past week. And other news fit to print.

Read more »

From The Times of London:

A revolution in attitudes towards gay men and lesbians is indicated in a poll which shows that a majority of the public want homosexuals to share identical rights to everyone else.

Read more »

Lisa Miller of Newsweek on the role moderate and progressive religious leaders are playing in the health care debate:

Read more »

William McColl in a letter to the editor of The Washington Post:

I am a gay man. My partner lives 12 time zones away. We are in a monogamous relationship, and we do not cheat. We get to see each other only twice a year for less than three weeks. Although he is a professional in marketing, the United States will not let him immigrate because he was not picked in the lottery. The federal government would not recognize our relationship if I married him. The government will not allow us to be together.

Read more »

If you read this one, you will want to read this one from The New York Times:

Read more »

The Washington Post has a story that is simultaneously skin-deep and overwrought about a house on Capitol Hill where conservtive politicians, like the scandal-embroiled Mark Sanford and John Ensign meet to seek spiritual guidance:

Read more »

Ann Fontaine, clergy deputy from the Diocese of Wyoming, and news blogger for Episcopal Cafe, has read her way through all 192 of the A resolutions in the 2009 General Convention Blue Book so you don't have to. (And, yes, we know the Blue Book is actually maroon this year.)

Read more »

With apologies to N. W. A., the BCP Boys offer Straight Outta Compline.

Read more »

Daniel Scarpinato in the Arizona Daily Star

A group of religious activists were told to leave the state Senate Tuesday after they sought to voice their opposition to a bill designed to get local law enforcement to act on federal immigration laws.

Now, the heated dust-up is underlining concerns about the Legislature rushing through dozens of bills in what may be the final days of its session and Democratic criticisms of the powerful GOP chairman of the Appropriations Committee.

Read more »

Updated again, Friday Morning 6/26/09: The Episcopal Community of the Daughters of the King has proposed alternative by-law changes that would both strengthen the Order of the Daughters of the King connection to the Episcopal Church and provides a way that cares for chapters that belong to other denominations. Their proposal also provides a way forward for those members who have left the Episcopal Church to form their own versions of the Order under a "license".

Read more »

R. Stephen Gracey, a lay deputy from the Diocese of Ohio offers a translation of the Ridley-Cambridge Draft of the proposed Anglican Covenant "into English from the original Churchese."

Mary Frances Schjonberg writing for Episcopal Life Online:

Income during the 2010-2012 triennium could be $9 million less than forecast last January, when a draft churchwide budget was approved, according to the chair of the Episcopal Church's budgetary committee.

Read more »

Many Daughters of the King are still concerned for the future of their order.

After the Presiding Bishop wrote a letter to the Episcopal Community of the Daughters of the King last week, Grace Sears, Secretary to the National Council of the Order, wrote an open letter in response.

Read more »

Episcopal bishops in the six states that have legalized same-sex marriage are asking the Church's General Convention to "permit the adaptation of the Pastoral Offices for The Celebration and Blessing of a Marriage and The Blessing of a Civil Marriage for use with all couples who seek the church's support and God's blessing in their marriages."

Read more »