The row is about the authority of Scripture which declares the practice of homosexuality to be a sin. Resolution 1.10 (1998 Lambeth Conference) rejected “homosexual practice as incompatible with Scriptureâ€Â. The resolution “recognises that there are members of the Church who experience themselves as having a homosexual orientation…seeking…
pastoral care, moral direction of the Church and God’s transforming power for the living of their lives and the ordering of their relationshipsâ€Â. The clear implication is that these are not practising homosexuals, but “believing and faithful personsâ€Ââ€â€they believe in the teaching of Scripture and they are faithful to it. The opposition to the blessing of same-sex unions is that such an enterprise would be the blessing of sin, or what Jim Packer has called the ‘sanctification of sin’.
At St. James Episcopal Church in Bowie, children are free to roam during services, and they often amble up to the altar and hold the priest’s hand.
At St. George’s Episcopal, three miles down Lanham Severn Road in Glenn Dale, the congregation is an eclectic, quirky collective of straight and gay men and women of various races.
Neither Episcopal parish in northern Prince George’s County wants to sacrifice the factors that make it special. But against the backdrop of the recession, which has tightened parishioners’ pockets and diminished the value of the church’s national endowments, banding together has emerged as the only viable option for the survival of St. James, the smaller of the two churches with just 38 parishioners.
When that became clear to the Rev. Anne-Marie Jeffery, St. James’s rector (the Episcopal equivalent of a pastor), she reached out to St. George’s. Since April, the two parishes have been exploring a merger by having integrated services mostly at St. George’s, which is more modern and has a following of about 70.
British Quakers agreed Friday to celebrate gay marriages and called on the government to recognise same-sex unions as legally valid.
At the religious group’s yearly meeting in York, the Quakers in Britain said they would ask the government to change the law to allow them to register same-sex marriages in the same way as heterosexual ones.
Gay rights campaigners said it was a “trail-blazing decision†after the issue of homosexual unions had opened deep divisions in other faiths.
Since 2005 same sex couples have been able to enter into civil partnerships in Britain which, while giving gay relationships legal status, are not considered a marriage.
The Quakers agreed “to treat same sex committed relationships in the same way as opposite sex marriages, reaffirming our central insight that marriage is the Lord’s work and we are but witnesses,†they said in a statement.
My new acquaintance, a self-described traditional Christian who has issues with the ordination of women (never mind gays and lesbians), shook his head. From his perspective, the Episcopal Church is out of touch with the majority and has failed to recognize its place in the world.
I would argue that Episcopalians, who number around 2 million in a worldwide church of 80 million, are acutely aware of their place on the global Christian stage….
Episcopalians know [about the global Church shift from North to South]. Whatever their views on sexuality, they speak passionately about the importance of preserving relations and avoiding a major schism.
The question then becomes how to balance the desire to remain in communion with the desire to be fully inclusive of gay and lesbian members.
The Episcopal Church General Convention adoption of resolutions D025 and C056 is a deliberate defiance of the wider Body of the Anglican Communion. We believe this is the choice they make to be politically correct with circular popular opion which seeks continually to destroy the moral fibre of people in general as we see the decay all around us. The blessings of the same-sex unions and the ordination of practicing gay clergy is inconsistence with the Word of God written; it is theologically uninformed, incoherent with the wider church, endorsing schism in the Anglican Communion and threatens ecumenical fellowship and relations.
Blame David Roseberry, who sent me this link:
The statement of their presiding Bishop Katherine Jeffert Schori on salvation of individual seems to strip the gospel of its transforming power of each one of repentant persons when in Christ to be “a new creation†(2 Cor. 5:17). The Episcopal Church has made its choice to journey alone. We as the Anglican Church we still uplift the Biblical standard of guidance in moral behaviour. We do not seek any political correctness, but call upon all people to repentance and change of life and patterns of behaviour for a new character in line with the demands of the Word of God. Our programme is of pastoral care that transforms lives, eradicate poverty, heal the sick e.g. HIV and Aids, remove crime from our streets and build a sound family life in conformity to God’s demands as revealed in the scriptures (Mtt 5:48).
On the issues of homosexuality, we continue to journey on until all people come to the obedience of faith (Rom.15:18). The nation of South Africa must not be deceived, God will bless us only when we seek after righteousness.
Exhibit A is a painting of Alice in Wonderland, by Beth Post of Fayetteville, Ark. Titled “The Temptation of Alice,” it is a rendering of the iconic children’s book character alongside the “Drag-Queen of Hearts,” a man wearing women’s lingerie. The two of them are surrounded by rabbits that are, ahem, busy making more rabbits.
The entire article is available here. I’m sorry, just can’t make myself duplicate the image here.
At the risk of incurring the wrath of the usual suspects, my first thought was that the People’s Artist has obviously been moonlighting. But no, when I checked with that talented soul, I found the work was by someone not yet in the Collective. Give it some thought – isn’t it perfect to represent TEc? You get Alice in Wonderland language tying the unawakened membership to a culture of feel good advocates. If commissioned to come up with a pictorial image of TEc, could you have done better?
With all of the talk in recent months from activist groups like Greenlining and the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy about how charitable foundations need to devote more of their resources to urban areas and racial minorities, observers may have forgotten how much of American poverty is white and rural.
Earlier this month, the Council on Foundations, a national association for philanthropic organizations, attempted to chart a progressive course aimed at combating problems facing rural America. It hosted a three-day conference at Bill Clinton’s Presidential Library, which sits only a short distance from the Mississippi River Delta, home to some of the country’s most abject poverty.
According to a new report from The Bridgespan Group, which analyzed grant-making in 2006 by the top 1,000 foundations, grants to rural America accounted for only 6.8% of overall giving even though 17% of the nation’s population is rural and 28% of that rural population lives in poverty. A 2003 analysis of poverty by U.S. Department of Agriculture revealed that of the 14.2% rural Americans who lived in poverty, 11.3% were white, 30.5% were black, 25.4% were Hispanic and 19.5% were classified as belonging some other ethnic group. With respect to corporate gifts, only 1.4% of the 11,000 grants made by 124 Fortune 500 companies in 2000 went to rural organizations.