By Derek Olsen

So—what is the connection between the foregoing discussion about salvation and sacraments and the current issue upon the table—Communion without Baptism (CWOB)? The issue is about liturgical practice and how we greet strangers and seekers in our midst, not theology, right?

Well, I’m not so sure… I’m fond of telling my students that there are no such things as liturgical changes; rather, there are theological changes with liturgical implications. While there is more than a bit of hyperbole in that statement it captures an essential truth: our rites communicate our theology. When we change our rites, very often there is a change in the theology we are expressing whether we recognize it at the time or not. Thus, when faced with a decision about our liturgical practice (i.e., whether or not we should invite the unbaptized to receive the sacrament of the altar) we must first remember what we believe and why we believe it.

You see, Anglican—Christian—sacramental theology is the logic and theology of intimacy. Even the metaphors Scripture uses for the relationship between God and believers bespeak this intimacy: to abide, to dwell with, to remain within. The prophets and poets of sacred page have used time and again the figure of bride and groom in scandalous and sometimes shocking ways to communicate both the depths of intimacy (Revelation and the incomparable Song of Songs) and intimacy’s betrayal (Ezekiel and Hosea). Remembering the logic of intimacy, remaining faithful to its vision of life in relationship grounds our ritual ways, our liturgical practice, in a theology that honors the God who has chosen to be in relationship with us.

At the heart of intimacy is commitment. Nothing more—and nothing less. Intimacy is not instant; it grows over time. Intimacy is a process of growing into knowledge, love, and trust gradually—and its gradual nature demands that those growing remain committed to the process and to each other. It grows through hearing promises, then seeing those promises come true; through sharing truths, then recognizing and confirming those truths embodied in the patterns and rhythms of everyday life.

In our sacramental life, the moment of commitment is baptism. Like promises exchanged between lovers, like the promises made before the altar in marriage, baptism is a covenant relationship. God is constantly inviting us into relationship, simultaneously presenting and fulfilling the promise to be in relationship with the whole creation and with each individual member of it. In Baptism, individuals—or those presenting them—both recognize the call of God and return the commitment, recognizing the identity of God as it has been revealed to us in the baptismal creed and promising to be faithful to the relationship with God. This, we believe, is an everlasting covenant. Even if we fail, even if we fall away and betray the promises made or refuse their claim on us, God continues to love and call us again to the fullness of a life hid with Christ in God.

When we accept this call, however, God’s ongoing commitment and revelation of his deepest self to us comes through the Holy Eucharist: Christ’s own flesh and blood, given to us as a true sharing of body and essence, true intimacy. In the Blessed Sacrament we receive Christ into ourselves to abide, remain, and dwell so that we likewise may abide, remain, and dwell in him.

Furthermore, this intimacy to which we are called is not just about individual gratification or knowledge. For as we are baptized, we are baptized into the whole company of faithful people, into the company of all those also joined to Christ and most especially those embodied in our local communities. As we approach the altar we never do so alone; rather we participate—in the most literal sense—in the Communion of all the saints without regard to time or space or the limits of the flesh. For this too is part and parcel of the mystery of the life hid with Christ in God: as we grow in love, trust, and intimacy with God, we grow too towards one another and to the whole of humanity, indeed God’s whole creation, as we learn to love as God loves. This is the logic of Communion with Baptism; this is the theology of intimacy.

Coming from this perspective, Communion without Baptism misreads the logic of the liturgy. It demands intimacy without commitment, relationship without responsibility. To apply this same logic to another sphere of human relationship, this is the logic of the one night stand—the logic of the “meaningless” fling. Is this the relationship that we wish to have with the God who knows us each by name and who calls that name in the night, yearning for our return to the Triune embrace? But then again—who is this “we”? Exactly whose relationship are we talking about? Is this “we” the clergy, the members of the vestry, those who populate our pews day in and day out? Are those the ones invited to receive communion without baptism? No. The seekers, the strangers, the wanderers in our midst—they are the ones in view here. And here is my question; this is what we must answer to the satisfaction of our own consciences: Do we have the right to choose for the stranger and the seeker a relationship contradicting the logic of intimacy without offering them a yet more excellent way? Do we who make decisions for the church uphold our own baptismal commitment and covenant by offering the strangers and seekers less than what has been offered to and received by us?

The call of God is to all. God’s radical hospitality is for all. Truly Christ stretched out his arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within the reach of his saving embrace. Truly the Spirit moves over the waters of renewal and new life, beckoning and inviting. To the stranger, to the seeker, through our mouths we offer and issue God’s words of invitation: “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden…” inviting them through the waters of Baptism into the household of God. And in doing so we fulfill Christ’s commission to baptize those of all nations and teaching them his words and ways, the depths of his love, the depths of a life hid with Christ in God.

Derek Olsen blogs at Haligweorc. This essay is part of a continuing reflection on the place of the sacraments in the life of the Episcopal Church. A future essay will focus on Scriptural issues. For a differing view, read Deirdre Good's essay on hospitality, and visit the Cafe on Monday for an interview with the leaders of a church that practices open communion.

By Helen Thompson

I just turned down a job offer. I didn't have to turn this one down, and part of me will always wonder what would have happened if I hadn't. It's sort of like that old saying about "When God closes a door..." except this time God opened one, and I sat there feeling dumb and not knowing what to do. Why? I want to see what other doors there might be beyond the horizon. I felt like I was playing Let's Make a Deal, short of wearing a silly costume, and having to choose between one door with a known and many other doors with unknowns. I chose the unknown.

"Lead us not into temptation," however, didn't work. I was tempted by more money, a shorter commute—and a blinding vision of something else, yet to come, that was more in line with my vocation. After all; I didn't "need" to take this job. I'm employed, and very good at what I do, if my evaluations and occasional awards are any indication. And I make a respectable living—although in this part of the country, it doesn't go as far as I'd like it to. But I've been singing that sad song for years now, and honestly, it's nothing compared to what I've been through.

You see, sometimes I know I'm lucky to be employed at all. When you look at the first ten years of my Social Security Statement, your first thought might be how on earth I managed to feed myself (and, by 1992, a family of three) on less than $10,000 a year. In 1996, I managed to break $6 per hour for the first time. Later that year, I got my first white-collar job, right before my 26th birthday, making $18,000 a year managing charter transportation projects for the University of Virginia.

So now you know how old I am. Another ten and change years later, I'm turning down positions that pay more than my Dad was making at retirement. He's so proud of me, but then my mortgage payment is six times what his was. I'm a successful, award-winning writer, an accomplished editor, a Web 2.0 jockey and a DJ. On my way to a second, loving marriage. But sometimes, I still feel poor.

Poor. Even though the money I make could feed a village in many parts of the world.

You see, I have lived through the American incarnation of poverty. Sometimes it's weird, seeing my present middle-class world through that lens. And I didn't start there, having been raised in a middle-class family in an entirely average American neighborhood. But in 1991, I dropped out of college to marry a guy I'd had a crush on when I was 14 and didn't know much more about him than I'd had a crush on him when I was 14.

And because he now works for a government agency and has a security clearance, I sometimes wonder if his biggest fear might be that I might write an honest memoir of that time period. Suffice it to say, that for the four years he and I were married, we lived off food stamps and WIC checks, my pregnancy was covered by the taxpayers of the Commonwealth of Virginia (thank you), and I tried very, very hard to find a path to productivity rather than get trapped in the system. I worked overnight shifts at a local nursing home while trying to get back to school, taking evening classes at the local community college while paying all the bills for our little family.

If you'd told me then that someday I'd be turning down jobs like the one I just turned down, I'd likely have laughed. But I've realized now that jobs aren't about work, and aren't even about career. They're about calling. Even when I was at my poorest, I followed a call out of poverty, one that would later help me connect with people from a wide range of socioeconomic circumstances. Now I'm a homeowner with car payments and any struggle I ever have, I'm thankful for.

But to this day, when I look into the face of American poverty, I see myself staring into a dark mirror. I made it out because I had the cultural language to navigate my way out. On the one hand, I see people with privilege who never know want, dispensing charity with a pat on the head and a tut, tut of pity. On the other hand, I see the faces of a million other moms like the me of a decade ago, too proud to snatch that coin from the fingertips of the condescending.

For it is more blessed to give than to receive, true, but… what do you package with that "give?" To this day, I still wonder if people are looking at me like I have "Medicaid" stamped across my medical file. Heaven knows that most people with kids my son's age are at least ten years older than I am. My peers are having kids now that they're established in their careers, and they already know how they're paying for junior's college. I don't, because, in spite of every blasted thing, I'm still poor. But that's OK.

I know wealth and abundance in how it comes from the love of friends. I'll wear my thrift-shop threads to the country club with pride. And I don't worry about what next great opportunity will cross my threshold. And most importantly, I know there are other doors waiting for me—ones that when they open, I'll know I'm supposed to walk through them. And I'll be able to say, "Here I am. Send me."

That's faith, and it's priceless.

Helen Thompson, known on the faithblogging circuit as Gallycat, is a writer living in the northern Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. She has written for the Philadelphia City Paper, RevGalBlogPals, Geez magazine and others. Visit her on the web at Gallycat's Lounge.

By Micah Jackson

A couple of weeks ago, Ruth Graham, wife of evangelist Billy Graham, died after a long illness. As an admirer of Billy Graham, I was sad that his wife had passed away, but I will confess that one of the first questions that came into my head when I heard the news was "where will she be buried?"

This was not a random question. For the last several months of her life, there had been some controversy about plans for her gravesite. Last December, The Washington Post reported that Ruth and Billy's son, Franklin, wanted them to be buried at the now open Billy Graham Library in Charlotte. Ruth, according to the story, didn't like the Library, and wanted to be buried at The Cove, the Graham's rural home near Asheville. She felt that the Library was too commercial, and wasn't the kind of place she'd like to have her body. Novelist, family friend, and Ruth Graham biographer, Patricia Cornwell, also opposed the Charlotte site. "I was horrified by what I saw," she told Billy after touring the library. Ultimately, the leaders of Billy Graham Evangelistic Association prevailed. When Ruth Graham was laid to rest, it was at the place Franklin favored, a garden at the end of a cross-shaped stone walkway, at the end of the Billy Graham Library and Museum tour.

It reminded me of another recent controversy about the burial site of a celebrity. When Rosa Parks died in 2005, her body was laid at the Rosa L. Parks Freedom Chapel in Woodlawn Cemetery, in Detroit. Though she and some of her family members received their plots for free, prices to be buried at the chapel skyrocketed, especially after her death. Reports indicated that the cost rose to more than $65,000 for plots near the woman who many say touched off the civil rights movement.

This is nothing new, really. Early in Christian history, many people wanted to be buried ad sanctos, near the martyrs. At first there was competition for actual burial plots near those whose faith was officially recognized. When that became impossible due to the large number of Christians (and the comparatively few saints), people began scattering the ashes of the faithful near the graves of the saints, and then finally near any site associated with them in life.

Why this human fascination with the final resting place of a person's body? Should it matter to a Christian how their mortal remains are treated or where they are laid to rest? After all, the body is just a shell. After death the soul is released from this world and makes its way to the next. But, (if you read 1 Cor 3:16 this way) the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, and should be treated with the utmost respect. Jesus had a body, just like ours, and we confess in the Apostles' Creed that we believe in "the resurrection of the body."

The Book of Common Prayer is clear, "Baptized Christians are properly buried from the church." (BCP 468, 490) The burial rite assumes that a coffin with the body normally will be present at the funeral, though Episcopalians are choosing cremation in increasingly greater numbers. And this makes sense. Because the Spirit of God resides in our bodies, and because we have been marked with the cross of Christ at our baptism, our bodies are holy, and should be disposed of as any holy object when its useful life is over—by burial in the earth, or by reverent burning. During the funeral, the body is censed with three swings, the same honor paid to a cross, a gospel book, or any other symbol of Christ and his Resurrection.

Christians have always honored the mortal remains of the faithful dead as the former home of a member of Christ's body. And this is as it should be. But our true home is in Heaven with our God. Disputes over the disposition of our bodies aren't worth a family splitting argument, or a $65,000 price tag.

The Rev. Micah Jackson, a priest of the Diocese of Chicago, is a doctoral student in Homiletics at the Graduate Theological Union. His personal blog is St. Jerome's Library.

By Deirdre Good

I participated recently in a talk on hospitality at St. Ethelburga's Centre for Reconciliation and Peace in London. I thank them for their gracious welcome. That talk and the subsequent discussion got me thinking about ways in which we speak about and practice hospitality.

Any discussion about hospitality needs to be hospitable. How is a space welcoming? This particular discussion was conducted in a circle, which for many indicates inclusion. But people may choose to participate from beyond the circle for various reasons and we need to provide for that. We need to focus on the people to whom a welcome is shown, anticipating and facilitating their degrees of involvement in the event.

We can all agree that hospitality is a Christian virtue. But why are we thinking about hospitality at all? Hospitality is central to other religious traditions. Abraham's offering of food and protection to the three messengers of the Lord in Gen 18 becomes the paradigm for ancient Israelite, Jewish, and early Christian hospitality. In fact, hospitality to strangers is a mandate in most non-Western societies. I've been welcomed into the houses of complete strangers in Matere Valley, Nairobi and in the favellas of San Paulo in ways that I would never be welcomed into the apartments of strangers in Manhattan.

Openness to strangers reflects a mindset most of us who are Western don't intrinsically possess. Is this why our discussions of hospitality can dwindle to stories of our hosting (non-Western) strangers in our homes? But if our discussions and practice of hospitality become questions of whom we welcome into our homes (and for how long under what conditions), then we have lost the dynamic of exchange that hospitality presupposes. Hospitality has become a one-way street. We determine who is invited and who is excluded because it is our home, our castle. Such an interpretation is not about welcoming anyone-it is about control. Welcoming someone has become secondary to an assessment-a judgment by me as host about the kind of stranger that is welcome and the type of welcome that is appropriate. If we reduce hospitality to an arbitration of who is and who is not welcomed by us as hosts into our homes, and under what conditions, is this not a diminution of God's hospitality to the point of distortion?

I believe this is also true of debates about conditions and circumstances under which people may approach the communion table. If we enter into such debates, we have already decided that there is such a debate about who is welcome and who is not. I myself believe that on this question, the evidence of the gospels is univocal: Jesus practiced open table fellowship with respect to God's hospitality. It wasn't his table. He was received as a stranger, welcomed as a guest, and gave hospitality at the tables of strangers or acquaintances. Sometimes he learnt from others about brokering God's limitless inclusion.

The practice of hospitality is not about being a good host: it is about participating in a continual exchange of the roles of stranger, guest and host. It presupposes a network of relationships-an awareness of interdependence. We can see this best in the story of the two disciples encountering a stranger on the road to Emmaus. That stranger walks and talks along the road with them about recent events in Jerusalem. They offer him hospitality at the end of the day whereupon, invited to stay as a guest, he assumes the position of host and is identified by them as he breaks bread. On the road to Emmaus and in a place that is not his, a homeless, resurrected Jesus moves fluidly between roles of stranger, host and guest. Luke's Jesus offers Westerners the challenge of receiving and giving hospitality "to go." In Luke's gospel, journeys characterize and shape ministry; Jesus journeys to Jerusalem for most of the gospel while in Acts, disciples and apostles travel from Jerusalem to Samaria, to Europe, and eventually to Rome. Hospitality facilitates and defines Jesus' journey to Jerusalem; it identifies followers and disciples who listen and extend welcome (Mary and Martha, the mission of the Seventy, the Good Samaritan, Zacchaeus) and solidifies opposition (some Pharisees and scribes).

When we relocate the practice of Christian hospitality from who is and who is not welcome in our homes to the recognition that hospitality is offered and received in other places along the way, a different more permeable dynamic opens up. But changing the location of the welcome is only half the solution. Offering someone food in a soup kitchen, while it is a good thing in itself, is not actually hospitality because it is not rooted in an exchange of roles.

In post-biblical tradition, Abraham, the paradigm of hospitality, moves out of the familiarity of his house. He pitches a tent at the crossroads so as to welcome more strangers, according to the Testament of Abraham. Philo says Abraham ran out of his house and begged the strangers who were passing by his home to stay with him because he was so eager to extend hospitality to them. Abraham and Jesus confront our restrictive notions of hospitality, encouraging us to think about our human interdependence in giving and receiving hospitality on the way.

Deirdre Good is professor of New Testament at The General Theological Seminary, specializing in the Synoptic Gospels, Christian Origins, Noncanonical writings and biblical languages. While she is an American citizen, she grew up in Kenya and loves marmite which may explain certain features of her blog, On Not Being a Sausage.

Episcopalians do not do evangelization by reproduction. We also don’t do a terribly good job at retaining the offspring we do produce.

- Katharine Jefferts Schori, Hays Daily News, June 18, 2007

By John B. Chilton

The mainline denominations – Methodist, Episcopal, Lutheran, Presbyterian – didn’t pay much attention to competition for members from conservative denominations until the early 1970s when the number of conservatives passed the mainline denominations in total membership. Since then conservatives have continued to grow relative to the mainline churches. In the 1950s mainline denominations constituted 60% of Protestants; by the 1990s it was the conservative denominations that held 60%. Is this because the mainline denominations are soft and the upstart evangelicals do a better a job of evangelism? Many have supposed this to be the case, and I echoed those views in my essay in the Daily Episcopalian last month.

A friendly commenter suggested that the reasons had to do more with lower rates of fertility in mainline denominations. Indeed, several times our Presiding Bishop has made much the same point – that the fertility rate of Episcopalian women is lower than the rate for women in the United States as a whole. Whenever she has made that point conservative bloggers (or their followers) have been quick to headline her words and brand them as excuses. But numbers on family size are facts. I conjecture that mainline couples have fewer children for standard economic reasons; mainline families do tend to have higher incomes and those higher incomes are due to higher wages, for both spouses. Children take time to rear so children are more expensive for families with higher wages. Higher price of children, fewer children demanded.

The relative decline of mainline denominations could of course be due both to differences in fertility and in evangelism. My commenter pointed me to what he admitted was a somewhat dated paper here. From that tip I was able to find a more recent paper, “The Demographic Imperative in Religious Change in the United States” by Michael Hout, Andrew Greeley and Melissa J. Wilde, The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 107, No. 2. (Sep., 2001), pp. 468-500 [JSTOR, subscription only].

Hout et al. have individual records on religious affiliation at birth, change in affiliation and fertility rates of women through 1998 via the General Social Survey. The data is recent enough to include the rise of the Religious Right in public awareness, but not to capture developments after 2003, the year that Gene Robinson was confirmed as the Bishop of New Hampshire. This is just as well because they do not report on denominations separately. The 139 Protestant denominations are classified and grouped as either mainline or conservative.

Grow your own

Besides, Hout and his co-authors report, conservatives have succeeded in evangelism because they have conformed to the edict, “be fruitful and multiply.” From the GSS records they were able to tease out fertility rates for women in the cohorts born between 1903 and 1973. Using only the fertility data they then project the implied growth in membership from 1903 to 1998 – in the following categories: mainline, conservative, other religion, and no religion. Their result:

Evidence from the General Social Survey indicates that higher fertility and earlier childbearing among women from conservative denominations explains 76% of the observed trend for cohorts born between 1903 and 1973: conservative denominations have grown their own.

Again: “conservative denominations have grown their own.” Hence the “demographic imperative” – a smaller group will eventually become the larger group if its growth rate is larger. For much of the 20th century the mainline fertility by age cohort was just over two, barely enough for zero growth. In contrast, conservative fertility in the early part of the century was almost one more child per woman; more recently it remains above but is nearly equal to mainline fertility.

Teach your children well: don't grow up to be mainline

Why has conservative fertility declined? Socioeconomically the conservatives have become more like the mainline denominations. They have climbed the economic ladder, but unlike in the past, they are less likely to switch to a mainline denomination.

Herein lies the other substantial part of the reason the conservatives have had more success in evangelism. They not only grow more of their own, they “teach their children well” so that they do not convert to a mainline denomination in their adulthood. This is not to say that conservatives have improved on "backdoor evangelism," i.e. the rate at which members leave. Rather, most of those who leave don't join mainline denominations; they grow up to be unaffiliated with any faith. It's a great irony that after differential birthrates, the second most important fact in explaining the rise of conservative membership relative to the mainline is that a portion of conservative youth that in the past would have converted to mainline in their adulthood now drop out of Christianity altogether.

Two final findings: (1) “a recent rise in apostasy added a few percentage points to mainline decline” and (2) “conversions from mainline to conservative denominations have not changed, so they played no role in the restructuring.” The bad news for the mainline denominations is that they are losing more of their young people. (But this is only a small part of the explanation of the decline, and it could have to do with recent trends in delay of marriage, and delay in childbearing.) The surprising thing about conservative denominations is that their growth is not due to work in the mission field. It has to do with reproduction and rearing. Reports of their success in evangelism are greatly overstated.

Conclusion

The economist Steve Levitt argues that the drop in crime can be traced back to the legalization of abortion several decades earlier; that the drop had little or nothing to do with changes in police tactics or spending. Perhaps the fortunes of the mainline denominations can be traced not to a rejection of liberal theology, but to differential changes in family planning practices dating back a century.

Dr. John B. Chilton is an economist at the American University of Sharjah (United Arab Emirates.) In the summers he resides near Shrine Mont Episcopal Conference Center of the Diocese of Virginia. He maintains two personal blogs, The Emirates Economist and New Virginia Church Man.

By Marshall Scott

I'm paying attention to the thimerosal trial that began last week. The issue is the alleged causative relation between thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative once used in vaccines, and autism in children. Some parents of autistic children believe profoundly that their children's symptoms began with and were caused by childhood vaccinations.

This has come, after some years in process, to the U. S. Vaccine Court. If you're like me, you didn't know there even was a Vaccine Court. It is, it turns out, a division of the U. S. Court of Federal Claims.Congress established the Vaccine Program “as a no-fault compensation scheme whereby persons allegedly suffering injury or death as a result of the administration of certain compulsory childhood vaccines may petition the federal government for monetary damages.” Congress intended that the Vaccine Program provide individuals a swift, flexible, and less adversarial alternative to the often costly and lengthy civil arena of traditional tort litigation.” Of course, in addition to offering possible victims monetary damages in “a swift, flexible, and less adversarial” context, the Vaccine Program also offers some protection to the pharmaceutical companies by virtue of being “not fault.”

For the families involved, of course, this case and the issue of alleged harm caused by a vaccine preservative is very important in and of itself. However, it also brings up a corollary issue: whether a health care system based primarily in private industry can adequately provide for us.

My point is not a general condemnation of free market capitalism. But we need to recognize the limits of the free market in providing for general welfare. While no company or corporation can survive unscathed by knowingly mistreating customers, the first responsibility of the company or corporation is to the owners and investors. We acknowledge that in a meaningful way when we distinguish in law and ethics between for-profit and not-for-profit organizations. The not-for-profit needs to come out ahead at the end of the year just as badly as the for-profit; but we allow some tax benefits and social approval for a not-for-profit because it reinvests all of its surplus in maintaining and perhaps expanding the work of the organization. The for-profit organization will return some surplus to reinvestment, but a significant portion is distributed to the owner or owners. That’s not a bad thing; but we need to remember that it’s integral to their nature.

And in health care that can be a problem. The pharmaceutical industry is a case in point. There are a number of areas in which we would benefit from more pharmaceutical research. New and safer vaccines, and new processes for delivering them faster is one. We have yet to see a vaccine for HIV, for example; and public health officials around the world worry about how long it would take to develop a vaccine for a rising pandemic influenza. Another area is development of new antibiotics. The recent story of the American traveler with extreme drug resistant tuberculosis (XDRTB) has raised again that concern. Finally, there are orphan drugs for orphan diseases. Orphan diseases are those that affect statistically small numbers of people. Orphan drugs are those that might treat them, but aren’t available, or are only available at very high prices, to treat those diseases.

These are all areas where many if not most of us face real risks, and where some experience severe suffering. However, they are not the major areas of research for pharmaceutical companies because they won’t be major sources of profit. Orphan drugs serve too few people to be financially viable. Vaccines prevent disease, and it’s been well documented that preventing disease is much cheaper than treating disease – the flip side of which is, of course, that is also generates much less cash flow. Antibiotics are prescribed ad hoc, as needed for a specific infection and only for a limited period of time. All of those are, if you will, natural limiters of profitability.

On the other hand, we all know some drugs can be quite profitable. They tend to have two characteristics. First, they are chronic medications for chronic concerns. For example, while you might take an antibiotic for a week or two, if you’re on cholesterol medication you’ll probably be on it for the rest of your life. Some folks will successfully change their lives sufficiently to eliminate the need for blood pressure medicine, but probably not that many. A company can make a lot for a long time, or at least for the life of the patent, with a drug taken daily for life.

The second characteristic is that the medications treat concerns that affect a lot of us, or that we fear will affect a lot of us. As we age as a society, that becomes even more of an issue. We baby boomers, wanting to fight off our own perception of our age as long as possible, are driving a lot of that. It’s no accident that there are so many advertisements these days for medications, both prescription, and “natural” (over-the-counter) for “erectile dysfunction.” Many of us men aren’t aging well, at least in our own minds, and we’re willing to pay a lot for the drugs that will help us, and for the research that will produce them.

Unfortunately, that leaves the small but significant gaps – and how small they are depends on whether or not you’re in one of them – that I’ve described. The benefits of new and safer vaccines, and new antibiotics, and specialized drugs are clear. The economic feasibility of the research to produce them is not clear at all.

Again, this is not to say that corporations, including pharmaceutical corporations, are evil for needing to make a profit. However, it is to raise a question for us as consumers (and investors), and as members of the body politic, and as Christians. Jesus has called us to be in the world but not of the world (as in John 17); and to be "wise as serpents and innocent at doves" (Matthew 10:16). As Episcopalians and as Anglicans we have long understood that to mean being engaged in the world, actively participating in God's compassion (as in Matthew 25). The Millennium Development Goals are one expression of this. Our own advocacy as individuals and as a Church for a health care system, including pharmaceuticals, that serves all people is another.

That’s why, you know, the Episcopal Church maintains the Office of Government Relations. It is, to put it simply, a lobbying office, working to bring the moral statements of the General Convention to the attention of our elected and appointed officials. By lobbying themselves, and by involving individual Episcopalians through the Episcopal Public Policy Network , they make known the positions that we have taken in Convention on social concerns.

General Convention has not spoken to these specific pharmaceutical concerns. We have, however, spoken repeatedly of a need for “appropriate levels of cost-effective health care for all persons,” (1988-D108) and of “the right of all persons to medically necessary health care... to include... prescription drugs” (1991-A010). We have called for a system for universal access to health care (1991-A099), and have articulated principles for “quality health care” (1994-A057). In our last General Convention we adopted a Comprehensive Children’s Policy that includes the assertion that “Every child and family has a right to guaranteed quality, comprehensive health care” (2006-B018). All of these are based in the Baptismal Covenant, where we commit to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving neighbor as self.

So, while we have not spoken explicitly about vaccines or antibiotics or orphan drugs, we have spoken consistently about appropriate health care, including pharmaceutical care, for all, including those who won’t generate a profit. For us as Episcopalians, these are opportunities for us to show our faith in the world in concrete ways. What do we expect of the officials we vote for, both in terms of programs like Medicare and Medicaid, and in terms of paying for basic research? With most health insurance provided through employers, what do we call for in the health plans of the companies we work for – of the companies we lead? How do we support health care institutions, whether with money or volunteer hours? All of these are ways that can directly or indirectly affect the availability and affordability of health care, including appropriate drugs, for all people.

And they’re all ways that are in our hands. Our free market, for-profit health care and pharmaceutical industries have indeed brought us significant benefits, but we can’t consider them sufficient to meet all needs. We have to act ourselves, both as individuals and as active, voting citizens, if we want a health care system that serves “the least of these” – including those who will never generate a profit.

The Rev. Marshall Scott is a past president of the Assembly of Episcopal Healthcare Chaplains. He keeps the blog Episcopal Chaplain at the Bedside.

By Liz Zivanov

I’m in the final two weeks of a four-month sabbatical. It’s been a journey of surprises, joys, challenges, changes, rest, adventure, and much reflection. I’ve discovered family in Romania and made new friends there; I’ve spent unstructured time at home with my cats, Hooker and Cranmer; I was welcomed into a religious community for six weeks; I learned about the art of fine furniture making and about the gift of humility; and I’ve vicariously enjoyed the Hawaii vacations of the many friends who cared for Cranmer and Hooker and enjoyed some down time in Paradise.

When I left the parish on March 10, I thought I knew what the four months would look like but I was also ready to be flexible and allow events and travels to happen, even if they weren’t scheduled. And I was and continue to be so grateful for the gift of this sabbatical from my parish.

There is one issue, though, that has continued with me from the beginning of my preparations: The comment that was sometimes said in jest, sometimes in appreciation, sometimes in anger: “I wish I got a sabbatical!” Or in semi-private conversation: “How come she gets a sabbatical and the rest of us don’t?”

Sabbaticals used to be known only in the academic community. They were seen as a time for writing, for study, for research. Sabbaticals in the clerical community are still somewhat of a novelty, and are often misunderstood.

This misunderstanding is not surprising, though, considering the difficulty our society has with the concept of sabbath. When we think about Sabbath, we think about God resting on the seventh day after the work of creation. For many centuries, Christians have observed the Sabbath on Sundays by going to church, having family time, and generally resting from the rest of the week. This Sabbath time rarely happens any more. Various sports and performing arts and other enrichment activities keep children busy on Sundays, even in the morning. Parents have opted to allow secular organizations to determine family schedules because they don’t want their children to miss out on an opportunity. Adults work on the Sabbath. They go into their offices, they work at home; they are too busy to take time to relax.

Most parish clergy are all too aware of the competition that Sunday School and church are in with secular activities. The importance placed on these activities is such that they are seen as crucial to a young person’s success in their adult life. (I did serve in one community where the churches came together and put pressure on the local sports leagues to stop scheduling events on Sunday mornings. They succeeded.)

Parents and other adults have difficulty stepping off the treadmill for any length of time; children and young people watch the behavior of their elders and buy into it as well, scheduling every day with meetings, practices, and other school and extra-curricular activity.

There is no Sabbath any longer for so many Christians and Christian families. This is not about taking vacations. This is about taking time for rest, for stopping, for day dreaming, for worshipping God. It’s about taking time for silence and for listening to God.

What I knew intellectually before my sabbatical and have learned since being in the midst of sabbatical is that we people of God actually do have control of our lives. The problem is that we have passively turned that control over to secular institutions. We talk about how we “can’t” take time off or come home for dinner or get the family together without great efforts at planning ahead and synchronizing calendars. We do this to the extent that we will not step back and take control of our own time and our family’s time for emotional and spiritual health. To put it bluntly, even God needed the seventh day for rest, but we seem to have more important tasks to take care of than God.

We have scheduled our own lives and our children’s lives out to the maximum so that we and they don’t miss any “opportunities” that might – just might – play a significant role in the directions of their lives. We’re afraid that we and they will somehow fail if we don’t keep up with the rest of the rat race.

When someone – like a member of the clergy – takes time for spiritual and emotional renewal, we get angry because that individual has dared to stop working. The real question though is why the rest of us will not reclaim control of our own lives and that of our children and provide for a regular time of Sabbath. Sundays, perhaps. Or maybe we could imitate the Mormons, who pledge each Monday evening for a family gathering, or the more conservative Jews, who actually observe the Sabbath and insist that their children observe it too, regardless of what else is happening on Saturdays. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a child who didn’t make it into college because he or she observed the Sabbath rather than play soccer. There have even been Olympic level athletes who have refused to compete on the Sabbath, and their observance has been honored.

It is a sign of strength, a sign of integrity, a sign of wisdom, a sign of faith to insist on a balanced life that includes regular Sabbath periods. Rather than insist that we “can’t,” we must instead have the courage to take back control of our lives and teach our children the importance of balance and rest. Those of us who claim to be Christians must focus again on the fourth commandment for our own wholeness and holiness. We cheat ourselves, we cheat our children, and we cheat our Creator by turning our lives over to the world instead.

There’s absolutely no reason to covet the sabbaticals of clergy or the Sabbath-taking of others. Each one of us has the power to claim a Sabbath for ourselves. God expects it of us, and God knows we are fully capable of honoring a holy time in our lives and the lives of our families. But each one of us must have the courage and faith to take that first step toward our own Sabbaths and sabbaticals.

The Rev. Liz Zivanov is rector of St. Clement's Church in Honolulu, Hawai`i, a deputy to General Convention 2006, and president of the Standing Committee of the Diocese of Hawai`i. Her sabbatical adventures can be followed on Stopping By Woods.

By Missy Morain

I hate going to church alone. No, actually I despise going to church alone. I skip going to church on Sunday morning sometimes just so I will not have to go alone. Going alone and sitting there among people makes me fell even more alone than when I am at home all by myself.

Growing up church was always about family for me. I went with my family every Sunday, and skipping was not an option. I sat in the front pew with my mom, sisters, and brother while my father sat in the choir stalls. We always went to church school and came upstairs at the offertory and sat together as a family. The only time when it was different was when I was an acolyte. Then I would sit in the stalls with the rest of the acolytes. Conscious of the fact that I was supposed to be setting a good example, I tried to make faces at my sisters only when no one else was looking. Along the way church became very locked in as a place that I went with family.

When I left home for college I tried going to the local Episcopal Church but felt uncomfortable going alone and eventually stopped going. I am a natural introvert and felt uncomfortable walking in alone, sitting alone and then standing in the narthex watching while everyone around me carried on conversations but no one really looked at me. I compounded the problem by beginning to slip out quickly after the service so I wouldn't feel so strange. A few years later I went back to that parish as a youth leader and began to form friendships that kept the feeling of isolation at bay, but I was always conscious of the family groups that surrounded me. I also began to develop a new and much less traditional family composed of other single people who were following less traditional paths themselves.

I wonder if this is part of the reason why young adults don't go to church. We have noticed that young people come to church when they are beginning families but that there is a hole between when they graduate from high school and when they return to church. I wonder if part of the reason that young people stop going to church is because it can be lonely, and because the parish experience is generally geared to families. So that even surrounded by people in the adjoining pews, one can still feel intensely alone.

Eighteen months ago I moved to Washington, D. C., and began the process of finding a new parish. I had never lived anywhere where there was a choice of more than one or two Episcopal parishes and figured that this was my time to explore the ways that parishes differed from each other. Some places were very welcoming; at others it was hard not to feel intensely alone again. I know that eventually I will again build up that community but until I do, going to church is one of the hardest things that I do.

Missy Morain, Program Coordinator for the Cathedral College Center for Christian Formation at Washington National Cathedral, is keeper of the blog Episcopal Princess.

By Heidi Shott

Fifteen years ago this week five friends enjoyed a picnic on the west coast of Ireland just north of Galway. We had ham and cheese, good bread and a tube of spicy mustard perfect for a cutlery-free, wayside lunch. I suspect there were cookies and cherries and probably pickles. We ate perched on a jumble of rocks – not unlike the coast of Maine – high above that side of the Atlantic. It was a wonderful lunch, full of happy banter. It was the kind of lunch I would have remembered years later even if what happened next hadn’t happened.

After lunch, my friend Denise and I decided to pick our way along the rocks. We hadn’t gone far before we heard the insistent, unmistakable bleat of goats. We walked toward the sound and looked over a precipitous edge. Twenty feet below three goats – two grownups and a kid – balanced on a narrow ledge. Bleating, panting and standing amid clumps of goat poop, these were not happy goats. The drop facing the sea was much greater than the 20 feet above.

Oh dear. A goat crisis.

Denise, a physician, is used to fixing things and immediately started to make suggestions about how to effect a rescue. We tossed a few implausible ideas around but after a moment we yelled, “Scott!” My husband, the best kind of troubleshooter, ambled over with our other companions, Chris and Mo, whose turn it was to pack up the lunch things.

“They’re goats. They’ll figure it out. That’s what goats do,” he said dismissively. “They leap up and down rocks and ledges.”

“But they look hot and panicky,” I moaned.

“There’s a lot of goat shit down there and they appear to be dehydrated,” said Denise. “They’ve been stuck down there a long time.” She looked around to a couple of cottages a quarter-mile in either direction along the coast. “Maybe we should tell a farmer.”

Scott howled and his native West Virginian accent suddenly shifted to Irish: “Now, Jimmy, do you remember the time when we were kids and the daft Americans stopped by to inquire as to the welfare of the goats?” He looked at Denise and me. “They’ll be telling that story 50 years from now.”

After another ten minutes of heated goat debate, we conceded defeat and piled into our rental car. We stopped for the night in Galway where, at the modern Cathedral, I looked around for my friends before dropping an Irish punt into a tin and lighting three candles for the you-know-whats.

The goat affair wasn’t the first time I’d been tempted to intervene in matters outside my sphere of responsibility. About four years earlier, just a few weeks before we moved to Maine from West Virginia, I sat down in a colleague’s office at the newspaper and told him that there was something I thought he should know. I thought he should know that there were rumors floating around town that he was having an affair with a church secretary. I said I knew the rumors would be hurtful to his wife and daughter. I admired this man.

“I don’t know how these things get started,” he said with a wave of his hand. “I appreciate you telling me, but there’s nothing to it.” He deftly shifted the conversation to some loose ends with a story I was working on. He walked me back to the stairs.

“You did what?” Scott asked me when I told him I’d talked to Keith. “It’s not your place to intervene.” Months later we learned that Keith and the church lady had run off to North Carolina. It hadn’t lasted. After a month he slouched back to his wife.

Despite my acute embarrassment, I wondered if I still hadn’t done the right and caring thing by talking to him. I had intervened with a good heart and loving intentions. But feeling burned, I also decided to never put myself in that position again. I’d mind my own business in the future. Later, when it came to the goats, I didn’t insist on intervening and it’s haunted me ever since. My good friend Denise knows this and every few years, after we’ve had a few glasses of wine, she’ll lean back in her chair, look to the ceiling, and muse, “I wonder what happened to those goats?”

I was pondering this fine line between saint and busybody one morning last week while driving Colin, one of my 13 year-old twin sons, to school. For someone who considers himself an agnostic with deistic leanings, Colin has an awful lot of questions about religion. We’d been cruising along in pleasurable silence when Colin asked me to buy him a copy of the Koran. “I need to know more about Islam,” he said.

“You need to know more about Christianity,” I countered. By the time we crossed the bridge over Great Salt Bay, we’d moved onto the central theme of Christianity. As in, “So, Mom, what is it?”

Easily nailed! “Matthew chapter 20-something: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind and love your neighbor as yourself.” (I realized, however, such imprecision would not impress my high school Bible quiz team coach.)

“So if you do those two you’ll automatically keep the ten commandments?” Colin asked as we turned into his school’s driveway. “They sort of take care of all the wrong things you might otherwise do?”

“Yeah, pretty much,” I said, the ever-deficient carpool theologian.

But as he leaned his head in the rear passenger door to grab his backpack, he delivered the zinger: “Well, I don’t need to be a Christian to love my neighbor.” And then with a cluck of his tongue – our schoolyard signal that means ‘I love you but I don’t want to say it in front of the whole world’ – he turned and was gone.

He’s right, of course. Some of the most wonderful, selfless, appropriate interveners I know would not characterize themselves as Christian.

The problem is that I’m not one of them. I’m not at all selfless but I am a Christian. After all these years of trying to live this stuff, I am yet to figure out where the line should be drawn between loving involvement and benign indifference to the people I walk this world among.

Amid the ridiculous busyness of two jobs, two kids, two school boards, many friends, one house, one garden and one husband who is lobbying to host a lobster feed for 60 people on the fourth of July – amid all this – I can’t quite figure out whom to love first or in whose life I should intervene.

Jesus commands me to love my neighbor, which, according to the www.one.org wristband I’m wearing, means everybody in the whole wide world. It also means enforcing a consistent computer policy with Colin. It also means visiting my 84 year-old mom more than once a year and supporting my brother in his care of her. It also means checking in more regularly with my friend who’s going through a hard divorce. It also means making time to go to town with my sons to choose goodies to send to the four children of our friend Alex who are living on their own in Ghana while he works to support them in England. It means everything in between.

In this world where it’s possible to know so much about so many, how can we possibly manage to do what Jesus asks?

In the Galway Cathedral, I lighted three candles and prayed for the goats. If we’d jumped down onto the ledge to try to hoist them up, we would have failed and irredeemably soiled our shoes. If we’d gone to the nearest cottage to report the goat situation, we would have been the worst sort of tourists. So I prayed, dropped a coin in the box – such good work as had been prepared for me to walk in. That was June 1992. Four years before I’d sat trembling in a chair just before I told a good and kind man something I thought he needed to know, something I thought no one else would tell him.

Last Christmas morning, I opened a package from Denise. In recent years we’ve tried to scale back on the gift-giving and have taken to donating to good causes in our families’ names. Inside the box was a card with the Heifer Project logo. “In honor of the Shott Family: Three Goats.” Below, in her hand, I read, “They’re not Irish goats, but I did the best I could.”

Heifer International www.heifer.org

Heidi Shott is communications director of the Genesis Fund, a revolving loan fund that provides expertise and low-interest loans to nonprofits engaged in community development. Her essays about trying to live a life of faith may be found at Heidoville.

By Derek Olsen*

One of my friends was recently writing about the end of a ninth-month chaplaincy placement. During an online discussion of worship practices, he stated that he had prayed and sat and wept with a lot of suffering people over that time; what then, he asked, does a lengthy document on sacramental theology have to do with the suffering of a common person?

My response—perhaps a bit flippant—was to suggest that if it wasn’t immediately obvious how the sacraments connected with the suffering, then either the lengthy document was bad theology, or the caregiver needed reeducation in basic Christian theology. In his case I was preaching to the choir. Just a few posts earlier, he had treated us to a moving meditation on a request for baptism from an inmate of the psych unit, one whose endless rounds from the ward to the streets and back again left him at the literal margins of Christian community.

Conversations about the sacraments are not—or should not be—esoteric arguments about essences and obscurities several frames of reference removed from our daily realities. No, the sacraments stand right next to our daily experience because they stand at the heart of what we understand Christianity to be; they are part and parcel of the mystery of salvation.

The whole issue of Christian salvation is fraught with difficulties and confusion: Who gets saved? Do I get saved? Does that guy get saved? How do I get saved? As we all well know, different Christian groups have answered and debated these questions in different ways, a debate that has accelerated since the Reformation and caused innumerable divisions between Christians. More effective than arguing “who,” I find, is contemplating “what.” What, as far as the Scriptures are concerned, is salvation? The answer to which I return again and again—an answer which seems to contain both so many other answers and possibilities—comes from one of the those books towards the middlish-end of the New Testament, one of those books we hear about too little and pass over too often: “…your life is hid with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3b).

Your life is hid with Christ in God… There is no other promise in Scripture as open or deep as this, for what Scripture teaches is not simply metaphor but the ontology of the new creation—to be a Christian, to be saved, is not about getting wings and a halo when you die, nor having your consciousness expanded by a great teacher who died long ago. Rather, it is to participate in the very life of God through what Christ has done for us—and to us.

And, as Colossians tells it, the path to this life is through death; indeed, that’s the first part of the verse…: “For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.” This death of which Scripture speaks is mentioned but a few verses before:

“Buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with [him] through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead. And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses…” (Col 2:12–13).

Death, Christ’s death, is our path to life through the waters of Baptism. Again—as Paul writes in Romans:

“Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life” (Rom 6:3–4).

There—that’s the key… We in our baptism are buried into death; we are drowned beneath the waters: the waters of the Flood, the waters of the Red Sea, the waters of the womb of the Spirit. As they close over our heads our breath is stripped from us and replaced with a new breath, a new Spirit, a Holy Spirit, and we rise from the waters new people of a new people, rising from death to resurrection life, a life invigorated by the power of the Spirit, a life hid with Christ in God.

Now, you may be thinking that all this is very mystical sounding—and it is. This may be all well and good for meditation in a cloistered nook—but what about reality: a poopy toddler in one hand, a frozen chicken in the other, and twenty minutes to get dinner done? The truth is simple—this too is the resurrection life. It is incarnate, and therefore messy. But it is in these moments, in that split second when trying to wipe and re-diaper before the wriggling infant can stab her foot into the filth of the recently removed diaper, that I have the potential to realize I am doing more than just one more chore; rather, I am performing an act of service to the very image of God, to a member of Christ. This is to live the life hid in God—but all too often, the diaper remains a diaper; the chore, a chore. The message, the truth of resurrection life is simple, so simple—but the remembering is hard.

This is one of the functions of the Eucharist. To recall us, to remind us, to bring us once again to an awareness of our place in the narrative of what God has done, what God is doing for the world through Jesus Christ. We gather to discern the Body, in broken bread, in gathered bodies, to find the presence of Christ made real and true and tangible in the words of the Gospel and in the wine. The relationship begun in Baptism—the life hid in God—is nourished, not by bread alone but by everything that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord, and when those words and bread are joined and the bread becomes bread alone no longer, then we truly receive the bread that satisfies, the bread of life. This bread, this wine, they lead us deeper into the relationship begun in baptism, changing us, converting us, not through a conversion of mind alone, but into the literal conversion of the nature of our being: as we take the very Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ into our body and blood we are changed more and more into his likeness—and another small piece of creation is invited into the redemption wrought by Christ.

Furthermore, as we receive this bread-which-is-Body we, in turn, become Body-which-is-bread to feed a world hungry and thirty for love, for knowledge of God and—indeed—for basic bread itself. The conversion is proofed, is completed when the Body of Christ moves like a Body, the limbs and members caring for one another, extending itself with arms outstretched to welcome the world, to invite the whole of the groaning creation into a life hid with Christ in God. And not just in the abstract either but with hands washing dishes, with arms enfolding those who weep, with bodies that labor on behalf of others, with voices that bring forth songs to praise and delight, and—yes—even in the changing of diapers.

* Derek Olsen blogs at Haligweorc.

About this article he writes: This post is in response to a string of comments from a while back concerning Communion without Baptism—sometimes referred to as “Open Communion.” (Because I find the latter term a bit ambiguous, I prefer the former language.) This is the first of a three-part consideration of the Eucharist in our Episcopal communities, especially in reference to the place of Holy Baptism. The current post considers the sacraments in the context of Christian life, the next will examine the issues of Scriptural interpretation connected with this debate, and in the third I hope to clarify conceptions and misconceptions about the relation between Baptism and Eucharist.

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by The Rt. Rev. Steven Charleston

Here are three names to remember: Genarlow Wilson, Stepha Henry, and Edith Isabel Rodriguez.

Each of these names has been in the news recently. Each tells a different story but with a very familiar theme. I invite us to remember them now because each name will probably disappear soon as other stories emerge with other names. And yet, if we forget these three persons we may be failing to hear a wake up call that rings clearly in all of their experiences.

Genarlow Wilson was the young Black man who was sentenced to 10 years in prison for committing a consensual sex act with a 15 year old girl when he was 17. Stepha Henry was the young Black woman whose disappearance was largely eclipsed in the media by the frenzy over Paris Hilton’s court appearances. Edith Isabel Rodriguez was the Hispanic lady who died on the floor of the hospital emergency room while her family made desperate calls to 911.

In each case, the implications of racism are unmistakable.

Would Mr. Wilson have been so harshly sentenced if he were not Black? Is our justice system fair or is it compromised?

Are white abductions and disappearances treated more thoroughly in the press than those of other racial groups? Do we have a free and equal press, or only a corporate media outlet?

Is access to quality medical care really available to every citizen in our country? Are substandard medical facilities for the urban poor a double standard for health care where those who can afford it live and those who can’t die?

These are the questions behind the names. They are the questions behind the experiences of people of color in the United States. And they point to some of the core values of our society in some of the most critical areas of that society: the public media, the justice system, the health care system. These are not trivial concerns, but deeply embedded outcomes that are the direct result of systemic American racism. They challenge us not to look the other way.

In the days to come, as our attention is refocused onto other names and stories, we should remember these three names. We should remember the stories of three of our neighbors who never knew one another, but whose lives strangely illuminated our shared reality, even if only for a moment. In a graphic way, they spotlighted the shadowy role that race continues to play in preventing our nation from ever becoming what it proclaims to be, a community where every citizen is treated fairly and given equal access to the basic rights of any human being. They embodied in a physical way what most of us already know. Young men of color going to court are constant reminders of our flawed culture and its broken system of administering the law. The extent of media coverage in America is in direct proportion to your skin color and your mailing address. Health care in the United States is a scandal, especially for those who have long ago fallen between its huge cracks of indifference. These are the foundational crises we confront and they all have the fault lines of racism running through them for any who would want to see. Genarlow, Stepha and Edith showed us those cracks. Their witness calls us to name what we see and to face the reality we have created.

We may forget the individual names, but we must never forget the story they tell.

The Rt. Rev. Steven Charleston, former Bishop of Alaska, is president and dean of Episcopal Divinity School, and keeper of the podcasting blog EDS's Stepping Stones. A citizen of the Choctaw Nation, Bishop Charleston is widely recognized as a leading proponent for justice issues and for spiritual renewal in the church. He has been called "one of the best preachers in the Episcopal Church" and has written many articles on both Native American concerns and spirituality.

By Jennifer McKenzie

There’s a bullet that we’ve somehow managed to dodge for lo these many years as a family. And we knew it would hit us soon enough. Well, this week it hit. We got the word from our all-star soccer team coach via email that our big tournament games had been scheduled: Game 1 would be played on Saturday at 9:15 a.m. Game 2 would be later that day at 2:15 p.m. Ah, but Game 3 would be played….yep, here it comes: Sunday morning at 8 a.m. And, on Father’s Day no less!

I really had to think hard about the email reply: send just to the coach or hit “reply to all?” I decided to broadcast. Not to be snippy, but to be a witness. As someone who has led youth groups in the church for the past 20 years and understands the value of teamwork; as someone who is a soccer mom who roots HARD for the home team; as someone who is a priest, albeit on a mini-sabbatical between calls…I am just plain sick and tired of the level to which our kids’ organized sports has risen and the unrealistic demands that these leagues and teams place on families. So I braced myself and began to type:

“Hi coach:

We will see you on Saturday. However, Sunday is a no-go for us before noon – we’re just not willing to bend to the cult of sports on this one! (I can’t believe they would schedule a Father’s day tournament so early on a Sunday morning in the first place…). If there is an afternoon game on Sunday, let us know and we’ll get the guys there.

See you at practice tonight, barring more bad weather.”

(Can’t you just hear the “Chariots of Fire” theme song playing in the background?)

Our 12-year-old twins, who have played a heck of a season both on offense and defense – their team placed 1st in the league for the regular season and 2nd in the league play-offs – were chagrined at best when we broke the news to them. “Mooooo-oooommmm!” “Yes, guys, I know it’s disappointing, but you’ll get to play in the first two games. And, besides, soccer is just a sport; Christianity is our way of life.” Well that one went over like a fart in church.

Is it just me? I don’t think it is. Soccer, hockey, lacrosse, basketball, travel tiddly-winks – you name the sport, and there are kids staying away from church in droves because of it. “It’s just for a season,” their parents will say. “We really hate that this takes them away from youth group/Sunday School/children’s choir – but we just don’t know what to do. We’ve made a commitment to the team.” Uh-huh. Hmmph. Interesting.

Recently, I read a brilliant take on something seemingly tangential, but I think really at the heart of this hostile takeover by the junior sporting industry. Someone in an article or book somewhere smartly said something like this: (if anyone recognizes this thought, please let me know so I can give proper credit) “Parents seem to take a different approach to the faith lives of their children than to any other aspect of their development. ‘I don’t think it’s healthy to make them to go to church. I think they should make up their own minds about what they believe - but I do want to expose them to it, so we encourage them to go when we can,’ they say. But what if we took this approach with other areas of their lives? ‘I was forced to attend school as a kid and thought it was pretty boring – sometimes torturous. So, I don’t want to make my kid go to school – that would be unhealthy. We’ll take him the first couple of times to expose him to it, and then let him decide.’ Or maybe, ‘I think sports and fitness is a good thing, so I’m taking my daughter to the pool. But I don’t want to force her to swim– I just want to expose her to swimming. So I won’t make her wear a suit. I’ll just have her look at the water, maybe stick her toes in, and watch some other folks swim a bit – see what she thinks.”

This notion of “exposing” kids to faith – with a fragile level of commitment and a lack of determination and diligence on the part of parents – just seems ludicrous to me. If you don’t practice your faith, you’ll never really get the hang of it, or even know if it’s something you want to get the hang of. When you’re a member of a church, you make a commitment to the team (a.k.a. ‘the Body of Christ’) to be there – not just when you feel like it – but pretty much every darned Sunday for worship and at least occasionally during the week for ministry.

Look, I love sports. I love what sports has taught my kids. Sports are good for physical fitness, emotional development, and self-discipline. And sports can provide a good analogy for a life of faith. But playing sports is not a substitute for that life of faith. When we as parents allow sports to encroach and even supersede the practice of faith – which for Christians happens primarily on Sunday mornings – then we are compromising the most important facet of their development as responsible, compassionate, beloved children of God: an inner life of faith lived out robustly in a committed community of embrace and nurture.

The Rev. Jennifer McKenzie, keeps the blog The Reverend Mother. She is the author of “Benedictine Spirituality and Congregational Life: Living Out St. Benedict’s Rule in the Parish” from the Winter 2004 issue of Congregations Magazine.

By W. Nicholas Knisely

This week has turned out to be much “newsier” than your humble news team at Episcopal Cafe expected. The first hint that something big was developing came late on Monday with a story in the Telegraph by Jonathan Petre about a broad-based, conservative primate led rejection of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s leadership. Over the next twelve hours or so the blog-sphere was lit up with speculation about what Petre meant, what sorts of sources he had and, since pretty much everyone dismissed the story as inaccurate, what the “leakers” that had approached Petre were hoping to gain by planting the story.

By the time I woke up out in the Pacific time-zone the next morning, the rest of the story had broken. The Archbishop of Kenya announced his plans to consecrate the Rev. Canon Bill Atwood as a suffragan bishop of the Anglican Province of Kenya to serve the needs of what he would refers to as the orthodox Anglican remnant in the North American Anglican Provinces. This move was met with a bit of head scratching at first and with serious concerns about the implications. Yet, within hours the announcement from Kenya was welcomed by the Archbishop of Nigeria and his associated CANA network. Over the next day or so announcements were made by the various groups around the Communion who have decided that the North American Anglicans were in need of serious reform and pastoral care.

I followed the developments as closely as you’d expect. (I got to be a member of the news team here at Episcopal Cafe because of my, um... obsessive interest in Anglican news.) Once the story’s outlines began to become clear, I spent more than a few hours wondering what was really going on behind the scenes. Mostly I’ve been trying to think what can be intuited by the way the story was greeted when it first broke and then how it was later spun during the rise and fall of the news cycle. I shared my ponderings with the folks here on the news team, and our esteemed editor-in-chief has asked me to share them with y’all.

First a disclaimer. I have *no* inside knowledge of what’s going on. I have been blessed to know people on both sides of the debate over the Communion in the American church and I count many of them as friends and mentors. But because I am a self-proclaimed centrist, nobody trusts me enough to take me into their private councils. (And now that I’m a “member of the press”, I’m often viewed with even more suspicion.) So what I’m about to suggest is really just my own speculation. It may or may not have any real basis in fact. But still...

What has really struck me was the way that the conservative side of the Anglican blog-sphere reacted to the news of the Telegraph story. The reaction was uniformly negative and dismissive. The team here at Episcopal Cafe agreed with the other bloggers in saying that there has been a track record of secular reporters misunderstanding the implications of Anglican rumors and we cautioned taking the news too seriously. One blogger who is part of a CANA congregation was more than dismissive of the intial report and went so far as to question the motives of the people “leaking”. Other major conservative sites like Stand Firm treated the news the same way - saying in essence that it made no sense to them, and that they didn’t think it was accurate.

When the story was fully revealed by the announcement made on the Church of Kenya’s website, the conversational tone turned to confusion and concern. The concern was mostly that this unexpected move by Kenya was going to further fracture what tenuous unity there was on the “conservative” side. The movement was in danger of becoming the 2007 version of what happened to the Continuing Anglican Churches in the USA following the 1979 General Convention. Later in the day the announcements began to flow in welcoming the development. First came the pronouncement by CANA, which was followed by announcements from around the Communion and the Anglican Networks in the US welcoming the news. What had at first seemed unexpected became over the next day according to news releases and blog reactions part of a coordinated strategy.

So, is it actually part of a coordinated strategy? My first thought was “no”. The announcements had a feeling of people making lemonade of the lemons they had been given. There was the lack of any apparent advance knowledge by the American allies of the CAPA Primates. But as I looked more carefully at the wording in the announcements, especially the ones from the African provinces, I was struck that they were more nuanced than I first thought - and didn’t seem like they were thrown together.

Perhaps the African primates have decided to take coordinated action and this development is part of that decision. But what then should we make of the fact that their American allies seemed surprised at the news story? Could it be that the Primates have decided to take action on their own, an African plan if you will, rather than a Communion-wide response?

It also occurred to me that the fact that there were now three or four Primates who had created personal prelatures amongst the conservatives in North America means that it is becoming increasingly difficult for the other primates to bring pressure on their brothers to stop these initiatives. Each seemingly independent initiative would have to be dealt with individually, and given the other pressing business of the Communion, expending that sort of time and energy is not likely. Perhaps what is apparently uncoordinated is being done that way by design.

I have also noticed that the African Primates seem to be more than a little impatient with their American allies. They have been made promises that whatever money they turned down for relief and development from the American church would be replaced by gifts by those separating from the Episcopal Church. This has not happened. In addition it appears that the American folks are looking for a solution that is Canterbury centered, and that is becoming less a concern for the sub-saharan African Primates. The tone of the last couple of CAPA conferences has been that African Anglicans should work together to find an African based solution to the present crisis. Perhaps that is what is happening? And perhaps Jonathan Petre wasn’t so far off base in his reporting?

In other words, we could be seeing the first signs of a totally sub-saharan African based response to the present stresses in the Anglican Communion. It appears now that this group of Primates is working to have the broadly based invitations to the North American bishops withdrawn. And if the Archbishop of Canterbury won’t do that, then they are willing to walk on their own away from an England-dominated Communion.

What new implications would a strong and coordinated, completely non-western based strategy bring? Philip Jenkins talks about the rise of African Christianity and how it is fast becoming the leading voice of a global Church. Could we be seeing a thread of this tapestry in these very events?

The Very Rev. W. Nicholas Knisely is Dean of Trinity Cathedral in Phoenix Ariz. He serves as Chair of the Standing Commission on Episcopal Church Communication and was originally trained as an astronomer. His blog is Entangled States.

By Sara McGinley

“I’m just buying socks.” she said.

“I’m going to a wedding today. And it’s so cold I need a pair of socks.”

She is a parishioner at the church.

My husband, Aron, is her priest.

She has just paid for her new black socks she’ll wear to a wedding later today.

She not only bought the new socks and showed them to me but she showed me her old socks and the shoes she’ll wear with the new ones.

Our conversation would be of no consequence, except that for the first time in my life I have just purchased underwear that doesn’t come packaged together. Pairs of underwear that aren’t white or cotton. Underwear that might get someone’s attention. I’m a bit shy about these fancy little panties, and so I have put them at the bottom of my cart and piled the cart with several things that I know I’ll return. I don’t want to flaunt these fun little invitations by purchasing them as if they have a purpose.

And now, one of Aron’s parishioners is talking to me while the woman at the check out is removing the panties from their tiny, tiny clothes hangers. Clothes hangers so small I’m not sure infant’s clothing would fit on them. Hangers so tiny that I think a man would have a hard time returning the panties in the proper fashion. Yes these are panties. Panties I tried to purchase discreetly.

And Aron’s parishioner is telling me about her wedding socks, I feel her notice the tiny, bright, sexy things on the counter.

I feel her notice them and I decide that I’ll pretend she doesn’t see. We go into an insane time warp where I’m noticing her notice. I’m deciding not to comment, but then her arm stretches to the little well-folded pile of underwear in front of me. Horror of horrors she picks up one pair of underwear – the brightest, most stringy pair. Her fingers rub the material almost as if to test out its strength and then she comments. Yes she not only notices my new underwear, she touches my new underwear and then she comments on my new underwear.

“Oh I see you’ve made much more exciting purchases here. Oh my how fun.”

I smile. And try to look calm. I mean honestly, it’s not like buying exciting underwear is a sin. I try to look calm, as if I don’t have some bizarre issue with spending extra money on something that I’m the only one likely to see. Well me and my husband. Yes me and her priest.

I smile and try to mask what I’m thinking in my head. I feel grateful those thought bubbles they have in cartoons don’t exist in real life because mine would be screaming: “Woman you’re touching my underwear!”

I decide while time is moving along as if each second is an entire minute to make a joke.

I don’t have one.

I just keep smiling.

While Aron’s parishioner just stands there with my underwear in her hand as if I’m going to tell her where I’ll be wearing my purchase tonight.

Then time comes back to normal. And she wishes me a good day and walks away. I watch as she leaves and think I can see my red underwear stuck to her shoe like a rogue piece of toilet paper trailing after her. I imagine the woman coming in the door telling her there is porn-star colored underwear on her shoe and her laughing and saying: “Oh this. This little thing. That’s not mine. That belongs to my priest’s wife. That’s her over there.”

I have to look twice to realize that the underwear are not on her shoe. Of course they aren’t. My red underwear are here on the counter safely out of her grasp.

I take my large bag to the car. I go grocery shopping and on the way home I stop and return the pair she held in her hand. I keep the rest.

The next Sunday, sitting in my usual pew, in my usual, boring underwear I think I detect knowing looks from a few women who are well connected to the church grapevine. I'm pretty sure my new purchases have become public knowledge. Suddenly, they see me as something more than the priest’s boring, comfortable wife. Maybe they aren’t comfortable with that.

I am.

Sara McGinley, irreverent priest's wife and mother of two, writes the blog subtly named, Sara McGinley. She is a lay person from Minnesota who thinks the term 'lay person' is unnecessarily suggestive.

By Will Scott

According to the Fellowship for Intentional Community, “Intentional Community is an inclusive term for ecovillages, cohousing, residential land trusts, communes, student co-ops, urban housing cooperatives, and other projects where people strive together with a common vision.” I’ve been wondering whether one helpful way to describe the church is as an intentional community striving together toward the vision of Jesus, the reign of God, the beloved community. Whether you work in corporate America, are a missionary in Brazil, or are a social worker on the streets of Philadelphia, being a Christian in today’s world requires intentionality and community. While I don’t currently live in a residential community, below you¹ll see I’ve been thinking about it for a while.

Early in my childhood, my extended family would spend a week in a rented cabin near my maternal grandmother’s hometown, a primarily Mennonite and Amish community in Pennsylvania. I was captivated by the unique dress and practices of the Anabaptists. Something inside me ached for the apparent simplicity, communalism, purpose, and salt-of-the-earthiness these people exuded. Everything about their lives seemed to have reason, faith and intentionality behind it. Ever since then, I have been fascinated by intentional community.

When I was about 10 years old my grandmother and aunt took me for a brief visit to an ashram in western Massachusetts. As in Pennsylvania, I was moved by this community’s distinctive ways and patterns of life that seemed so obviously hospitable to the holy. I remember how in the lobby of this large center two people ran from one end to the other in the middle embracing one another saying loudly “Let’s bond.” I yearned for what these people had.

It was not that my everyday life was completely devoid of community, but for some reason the distinctive patterns and practices were less noticeable in our parish church or neighborhood because they were so familiar. Later, after spending time away from the church and studying abroad in south Asia, I returned to the church of my youth and discovered communal intentional practices. After college I spent some time in a non-religious intentional community in the Midwest made up of artists, musicians, gardeners, and activists. In seminary, I explored the communities of the ecumenical Church of the Savior and found spiritual support in a weekly small group of diverse people that went a long way toward fulfilling this yearning for community. Now in the Bay Area I have discovered a variety of manifestations of communal living from co-housing, to “new monastic” and more traditional religious orders like the Episcopal/Anglican Franciscans.

But throughout my exploration of community I have struggled with the role of change. My grandmother and other women of her generation fled the Anabaptistism of their youth because they yearned for something they saw elsewhere: growing equality for women. My grandmother has since returned to the church of her youth and found that much of the church has evolved and now many Mennonite churches have female ministers. The ashram I visited in western Massachusetts, I later discovered, had been led by a guru who was accused of abusing power and engaging in sexual impropriety. The ashram, though once closely united, split up and became a non-profit yoga center. For me these particular changes reflect justice, progress and maturity --- in a theological sense, the Holy Spirit moved these communities forward together into healthier, more just practices.

Yet not everyone in these communities was of like mind. People suffered and still ache about decisions some viewed as progress and others as heresy. For the changes to happen people had to risk something, others had to compromise, and those who bitterly disagreed had to move on. While some argue that those pushing for change in our contemporary church (blessing same-sex relationships and gay leadership especially) are advocating an “anything goes” approach, I would say we’re discerning together the call of the Holy Spirit toward justice, progress and maturity. The changes we are striving for are for the health, progress and maturing of the church, not its destruction as some suggest.

I still yearn for intentional community but I have lots of questions. My hunch is that communities that are flexible and open to change with the help of discernment are able to endure while those that are rigid on the surface may appear stronger yet in the end are more likely to break. As one person in my Bible study class said the other day, “the people in this book are just as screwed up as you and me.” The people in any community are screwed up but that doesn’t mean we can’t learn something by opening up, having a conversation, struggling together for lives of simplicity, holiness, purpose, and salt-of-the-earthiness.

The Rev. Will Scott, is associate pastor at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. He blogs occasionally at Yearns and Groans.

By Andrew Gerns

Four years ago, even one year ago, did you ever think we would hear these words?

“We are facing something that we never thought we would face. We thought we would prevail. We thought that what we believed and what the majority of the Communion believed would be provided for.”

This is what Bishop Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh and Moderator of the Anglican Communion Network told the Standing Committee, Board of Trustees and Diocesan Council of his diocese last May 21st.

This is a startling admission from a man who is at the center of the organized resistance to the authority of the Episcopal Church. Not so much a statement of surrender, it signals a risky moment for the bishops, clergy, laity and congregations who have hitched their wagons to the idea of a new separate or parallel American Anglican Province who suddenly find themselves on a different landscape than a year ago.

Last month, the leaders of the diocese weighed four options which accurately reflect the choices ahead for the conservative/reasserter movement. A news release from the Diocese says that Pittsburgh could:

1. “... simply keep doing what it has been doing, remaining on the periphery of The Episcopal Church, but not attempting to reach a concluding moment in the conflict.

2. “... submit to the will of the Episcopal Church in its majority, reversing the diocesan convention’s actions over the last four years.

3. “... attempt to separate as a diocese from The Episcopal Church, an option a number of Anglican Communion Network dioceses are considering.

4. “... attempt to create space for conserving parishes to negotiate an exit from the diocese.”

After the retreat, Bishop Duncan called for a meeting to take place after the House of Bishops meeting with the Most Rev. Rowan Williams in September. This so-called Common Cause meeting will be a gathering of Bishops from Anglican Communion Network, the Anglican Mission in the Americas (including the Anglican Coalition in Canada), the Convocation of Anglicans in North America, the Anglican Network in Canada, the Anglican Province of America, Forward in Faith North America and the Reformed Episcopal Church. The meeting will take place in Pittsburgh on September 25-28. The groups are expecting an outright rejection of the entire Dar es Salaam communiqué from last February including the supplemental “Schedule” by the House of Bishops, and some sort of compromise to be struck when Archbishop Williams and the American bishops finally meet face-to-face.

It looks for all the world as if the heart of the conservative/reasserter movement is getting ready to leave the Episcopal Church with or without the blessing of the Archbishop of Canterbury. The action could be the creation of an Anglican-heritage coalition in the USA or the precursor of a separate, smaller, Anglican-related gathering of provinces who will stay away from the 2008 Lambeth conference.

In the meantime, other important leaders of the reasserter movement have urged caution and are making the case for staying within the Episcopal Church.

The Anglican Communion Institute, Inc., cautions conservatives not to act too harshly. The Rev. Dr. Ephrahim Radner writes:

There are clearly those who want to declare the Lambeth Conference conciliarly ineffective, and to depose it from (or deny it) any conciliar role, even before it convenes. A question to be asked of these people is whether they want to declare themselves, before the fact, as letting go of the charismatic calling of the Church. For, in the context of the Christian faith and the Church’s life, they need not do so. “Talking down” the Conference or deliberately absenting oneself from it may or may not undermine the authority of Lambeth (indeed, depending on how it is done, it may in fact enhance it!). But if it so undermines it, it also may well undermine the authority of those who deliberately reject the Conference itself. For such preemptive rejection will cloud the eagerness, trouble the faith, dampen the fire, quench the Spirit.

Radner advocates a conciliar model that is strong on episcopal authority, but does not see synods where laity and clergy have a strong voice as necessarily conciliar in nature. His latest essay is a caution against those who would out of hand dismiss Lambeth because the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church has been invited, even though Bishop Robinson of New Hampshire won't be among the regular guests. He seems to be warning particularly Global South primates not to adhere too closely to their Road to Lambeth documents because they may, inadvertantly, grant more authority to Lambeth by their absence and lose their ability to influence the future direction of the Communion.

As Mark Harris has pointed out:

Radner is quite right to point out that there are no guarantees that any meeting of bishops will be anything more than just a meeting. What gives councils their authority is not their membership, not their words alone, and certainly not the political use to which the words are put, but something more, the acceptance of this or that statement it makes as increasingly informative by the whole church. (Think, for example about how the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral has taken on added value over the years.)

Still, Radner is so sympathetic to and passionate about the notion that the Episcopal Church has erred so egregiously that it ought not to be invited to pan-Anglican gathering that many assume he invented that stand. That isn’t the case, nor is this exclusion likely in the wake of Williams’ decision to invite all Episcopal bishops, except Robinson, to the Lambeth Conference. ACI, Inc. understands this and wants conservative/reasserters to hang on and stick together. Radner's caution is very significant but it remains to be seen if it will be heeded.

So what happened? After more than four years of wrangling, what has caused the reasserters’ movement to come to this crossroad?

The relationships are so complex and the issues so nuanced that it is hard to pin down one cause, and I do not believe that the Communion is out of the woods on this matter by any stretch. Moderates in search of peace and progressives in hopes of victory, both of whom may be seeing glimmers of some kind of resolution, could still be surprised. This movement still has legs and could coalesce seemingly without notice. Still, I want to highlight some changes to the landscape that suggest that we are on different ground than we were a year or even six months ago.

News of the invitations to Lambeth was certainly a shock to the reasserters’ movement. For CANA, AMIA and a similar set-up in Brazil to be ignored deprived these groups of Anglican legitimacy. They have in one stroke been reduced to splinter groups or hangers-on. Pervious attempts to set up para-Anglican jurisdictions in the United States have either failed or had minimal success because they are not in communion with Canterbury. The heart of this latest movement was to capture or at least retain Anglican bona-fides in the U.S. and Canada. The initial invitations to Lambeth have scuttled that.

There is no energy from either Lambeth nor the bulk of the Primates to impose a structure on a member of the communion against its will. Christopher Seitz, Philip Turner and Radner, who make up ACI, Inc., asked why the Primates and Canterbury haven't simply carried out what was tasked to them?

1. The Primates still have warrant to make their appointments to the Pastoral Council. Why have they not done so?

2. The Archbishop of Canterbury still has the authority to make his appointment to the Pastoral
Council. Why has he not done so?

3. The Presiding Bishop of TEC still has authority to make her appointment to the Pastoral Council. Why has she not done so?

4. The Windsor Bishops still have warrant to make their nominations for Primatial Vicar. Why have they not done so?

We believe that the credibility of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Meeting of the Primates, the Presiding Bishop of TEC, and the Windsor Bishops depends upon a speedy answer to these four questions.

Some hint may be found in part in the statement of Latin American Bishops including three Primates who met at the same time at the diocesan leadership in Pittsburgh. Calling themselves the Global Center, and building on a statement written in Panama in 2005, the group acknowledges theological differences within the group and within the communion. They indicate that they also were less than thrilled with developments in the U.S. and Canada in 2002 and 03; on the other hand, they say "we have also experienced that the plurality and diversity we represent has become a rich source for growth, rather than a cause for controversy and division."

This group of bishops and primates criticize “the polarization regarding the biblical and theological positions manifested in the Anglican Communion, during the last years; positions known as Global North and Global South, non reconcilable in their character and putting the unity in the Communion at risk."

And so, these Bishops refuse to play. They want to be identified as neither Global South or North but “as disciples of Jesus, called to live out the mandate of love (St. John 15:17), we declare our commitment to be together and with all our strength, struggle for unity, as an act of obedience to His will expressed in the Holy Scriptures." It is telling that the Church Times, which might have received this document a few years ago with a yawn, now sees it a breath of fresh air.

The Spanish-speaking Global Center shows that indeed “the church is flat,” as Bishop Minns and others have been saying, just not in the way they thought.

There are many answers to ACI, Inc.'s four questions, including polity and diplomatic answers but this document may be the most telling. No one has acted on these “warrants” because no one has a heart to. And if Primates don't want to impose on others what might be imposed someday on themselves, if it feels to most Bishops and Primates that they are being drawn into a fight that is not theirs and is a distraction to boot, then it's no wonder that there has been no action on the Key Recommendations of the Communiqué.

Recent court actions may have taken some of the romance out of the movement as well. The original plan was to bleed the Episcopal Chur