A Christian community for those who call themselves: Anglicans, Episcopalians or members of the Church of England, Episcopal Church or any of the other bodies of believers who share the Anglican heritage.
- from the Charter of the Anglican Community, SL

The Anglican Cathedral on Epiphany Island holds 5 services a week, hosts regular bible study, and engages a young Kiwi vicar, Mark Brown, who preaches on topics like "Six Steps to an Amazing Christian Walk."

It is arguably the newest Anglican Cathedral, built in May 2007 by Monty Merlin. It has been sited high on a rise of Epiphany Island, with sweeping views of mountains, valleys and the seas which surround it. Vaulted gothic ceilings are supported by granite columns punctuated by glorious windows of stained glass. Since it opened its new cathedral doors last spring, the Anglican community on Epiphany Island has grown to more than 300 individuals.

The Anglican Cathedral on Epiphany Island was built to support the Anglican Group in Second Life, which was founded in November 2006 by Bill Sowers, who is a member of St David's Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Kansas.

I urge my readers to consider these facts before deeply discounting the relevance of this MMORPG ministry : the virtual world of Second Life is an international community with millions of members, and the average age of the Second Life player is considered to be in the range of mid-20s to mid-30s. The lay and ordained leadership of The Anglican Cathedral on Epiphany Island are reaching out by logging on. I believe that their work in SL is creating an essential bridge between tradition and technology. As they build trust and deepen relationships among the SL community, they are proclaiming the gospel. For more information, visit the homepage of The Anglican Church in Second Life here.

Anyone who has taken an introductory course in art history will be familiar with the systematic disparagement that the holy receives from TAW*. Artists in TAW seem to earn the title 'artist' only after demonstrating mastery of several disciplines that include a code of conduct and an ethic of work that shuns reference and reverence to the sacred. German painter Gerhard Richter could be categorized in this way. Until now, that is.

Gerhard Richter has experienced a change of (he)art. Considered an important painter in the post-World War II era, Richter has come out, saying "I'm less antagonistic to 'the holy', to the spiritual experience, these days. It's part of us and we need that quality." Context for the artist's statement relates to Richter's commission to create a stained glass window for the Cologne Cathedral in Germany. His first designs depicted the Nazi execution of the innocents, with an illustrator's figurative approach. Dissatisfied with his first trials, Richter returned to his earlier work, from the 1970s, when he was exploring abstraction, and based the design for the stained glass window on one of his color-field paintings, '4,096 Colors', from 1974. The result is a blend of technology and tradition that embraces the colors of the traditional windows in the ancient gothic space while affirming the value of abstraction in approaching a reference and reverence for the holy.

Richter's Pixelated Stained Glass has been named to the New York Times 2007 Annual Year in Ideas. Read more here

Images Spiegel Online

* Reference to TAW (The Art World) from A Broken Beauty, edited by Theodore Prescott, 2005, W. B. Eerdmans Publishing, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

"In the metaphors used by the Christian creeds about the mind of the maker, the Christian artist can recognize a true relation to his [her] own experience; and it is his business to record the fact of that recognition in any further metaphor that the reader [viewer] may understand and apply." - Dorothy Sayers, The Mind of the Maker, 1941 Harcourt Brace, p. 41

If we take Sayers' statement to be true, and I do, then there is a responsibility on the part of the Christian artist to not only seek out cues in support of our intellect's understanding of God, but to portray that information in clear and persuasive ways. This responsibility on the part of the artist comes into focus as a natural extension of the artist's spiritual life, one that is supported by spiritual disciplines and practices that will enfold the artist both in private and in community. And on the part of the viewer, their responsibility is equally serious. For the viewer, their job is to look upon the work of the artist and measure it against the standard of Eternity.

On View: A Paradox of the Holy, photographic montage, by Wilfredo Benitez-Rivera, 2007.

About the artist: Wilfredo Benitez-Rivera is photographer who observes the world through a contemplative eye. He is an Episcopal priest in the Diocese of Los Angeles, and rector of St Anselm of Canterbury Episcopal Church in Garden Grove, California and a frequent exhibiting artist with Episcopal Church & Visual Arts. About the image A Paradox of the Holy, Benitez-Rivera writes, "Three images fused. Graffiti in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem; Muslim Children in the Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem; and a young girl's face from the Anglican Church in Ramalah."

Additional Resources: Sacred Text as Window - Seeing one's self through the eyes of another, Epiphany West 2008 Church Divinity School of the Pacific, Co-sponsored by the Center for Anglican Learning & Leadership, the Center for Jewish Studies and the Center for Islamic Studies at the Graduate Theological Union, and the Episcopal Church’s Office of Ecumenical and Interfaith Relations.

Purify our conscience, Almighty God,
by your daily visitation,
that your Son Jesus Christ,
at his coming,
may find in us a mansion prepared for himself;
who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Wishing you a Blessed Christmastide
from Episcopal Church and Visual Arts

ECVA Board of Directors
Mel Ahlborn, Ken Arnold, Phoebe Griswold, Jerry Hames,
Tom Moore, Clay Morris, Bob Tate

ECVA Staff
Ruth Councell, Brie Dodson, C. Robin Janning, Jan Neal

ECVA Chapter Leadership
Mel Ahlborn, Carol Barnwell, Deborah Cantwell, Ruth Councell,
Tom Faulkner, Rachel Guernsey, Riyehee Hong,
Michelle Draper Lorton, Judith McManis, John Moody,
Kate Robbins, Krystyna Sanderson, Bob Tate