Dean Sam Lloyd of the Washington National Cathedral and the Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, explore the state of the church in the twenty-first century.

Watch it here. (54 Minutes)

Barring late schedule changes, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori will be today's featured guest on NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross, which is produced at WHYY-FM in Philadelphia.

Find out where and when you can hear Fresh Air with Terry Gross here.

According to a new study, religious faith does make people more generous--but only in certain circumstances. Here is the Science Daily report:

Belief in God encourages people to be helpful, honest and generous, but only under certain psychological conditions, according to University of British Columbia researchers who analyzed the past three decades of social science research.

Religious people are more likely than the non-religious to engage in prosocial behaviour – acts that benefit others at a personal cost – when it enhances the individual's reputation or when religious thoughts are freshly activated in the person's mind, say UBC social psychologists Ara Norenzayan and Azim Shariff

Their paper "The Origin and Evolution of Religious Prosociality" appears in the October 3, 2008 issue of the journal Science.

Read it all here.

Lost in all of the news about the deposition of Bishop Bennison and the actions of the Diocese of Pittsburgh, was a rather important event in the history of the Episcopal Church. Yesterday more than 500 worshippers from across the nation, including over 12 Bishops, took part in a service of public atonement for the Episcopal Church's silence about slavery:

The "Day of Repentance" started in silence. More than a dozen Episcopal bishops from around the country yesterday morning slowly walked down the aisle of the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas in West Philadelphia.

There were no trumpets, no organ, only the sounding of a lone gong.

From the start, this service would be like no other in the history of the two-million-member denomination.

The bishops led more than 500 worshipers in a day of public atonement for the silence of the official church during slavery, segregation and racism over the centuries.

The service began with an unflinching look at the church's past.

People heard how church members in the Continental Congress permitted slaves to be counted merely as three-fifths of a person.

How the Episcopal Church often disallowed African Americans from entering churches to worship.

How the church kept black members from being ordained as priests and, even today, often sends African American priests to depressed or resource-barren areas.

And with this litany, the worshipers responded, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

But what started solemnly at St. Thomas, the nation's oldest black Episcopal church, ended after more than an hour later with a joyful blast of music. With trumpets and organ, people sang out the words of a spiritual often sung during the civil-rights era: "Oh freedom, oh freedom, oh freedom over me."

Read it all here.

Author Julian Barnes, a self-described atheist turned agnostic, devotes his most recent book, Nothing To Be Afraid Of, on his fear of death. In today's New York Times Book Revew, Garrison Keillor, describes the effort:

I don’t believe in God, but I miss Him,” the book begins. Julian Barnes, an atheist turned agnostic, has decided at the age of 62 to address his fear of death — why should an agnostic fear death who has no faith in an afterlife? How can you be frightened of Nothing? On this simple question Barnes has hung an elegant memoir and meditation, a deep seismic tremor of a book that keeps rumbling and grumbling in the mind for weeks thereafter.

. . .

Religious faith is not an option. “I had no faith to lose,” he writes. “I was never baptized, never sent to Sunday school. I have never been to a normal church service in my life. . . . I am constantly going into churches, but for architectural reasons; and, more widely, to get a sense of what Englishness once was.”

The Christian religion has lasted because it is a “beautiful lie, . . . a tragedy with a happy ending,” and yet he misses the sense of purpose and belief that he finds in the Mozart Requiem, the paintings of Donatello — “I miss the God that inspired Italian painting and French stained glass, German music and English chapter houses, and those tumbledown heaps of stone on Celtic headlands which were once symbolic beacons in the darkness and the storm.” Barnes is not comforted by the contemporary religion of therapy, the “secular modern heaven of self-­fulfilment: the development of the personality, the relationships which help define us, the status-giving job, . . . the accumulation of sexual exploits, the visits to the gym, the consumption of culture. It all adds up to happiness, doesn’t it — doesn’t it? This is our chosen myth.”

So Barnes turns toward the strict regime of science and here is little comfort indeed. We are all dying. Even the sun is dying. Homo sapiens is evolving toward some species that won’t care about us whatsoever and our art and literature and scholarship will fall into utter oblivion. Every author will eventually become an unread author. And then humanity will die out and beetles will rule the world. A man can fear his own death but what is he anyway? Simply a mass of neurons. The brain is a lump of meat and the soul is merely “a story the brain tells itself.” Individuality is an illusion. Scientists find no physical evidence of “self” — it is something we’ve talked ourselves into. We do not produce thoughts, thoughts produce us. “The ‘I’ of which we are so fond properly exists only in grammar.” Stripped of the Christian narrative, we gaze out on a landscape that, while fascinating, offers nothing that one could call Hope. (Barnes refers to “American hopefulness” with particular disdain.)

. . .

All true so far as it goes, perhaps, but so what? Barnes is a novelist and what gives this book life and keeps the reader happily churning forward is his affection for the people who wander in and out, Grandma Scoltock in her hand-knitted cardigan reading The Daily Worker and cheering on Mao Zedong,while Grandpa watched “Songs of Praise” on television, did woodwork and raised dahlias, and killed chickens with a green metal machine screwed to the doorjam that wrung their necks. The older brother who teaches philosophy, keeps llamas and likes to wear knee breeches, buckle shoes, a brocade waistcoat. We may only be units of genetic obedience, but we do love to look at each ­other. Barnes tells us he keeps in a drawer his parents’ stuff, all of it, their scrapbooks, ration cards, cricket score cards, Christmas card lists, certificates of Perfect Attendance, a photo album of 1913 entitled “Scenes From Highways & Byways,” old postcards (“We arrived here safely, and, except for the ham sandwiches, we were satisfied with the journey”). The simple-minded reader savors this sweet lozenge of a detail. We don’t deny the inevitability of extinction, but we can’t help being fond of that postcard.

. . .

I don’t know how this book will do in our hopeful country, with the author’s bleak face on the cover, but I will say a prayer for retail success. It is a beautiful and funny book, still booming in my head.

Read it all here.

Samuel Freedman's "On Religion" column in the New York Times this week was devoted to how the financial meltodown has created "teachable moments" for all faiths:

Several weeks ago, before the earth cracked open on Wall Street, Imam Khalid Latif had a chat with one of his regular worshipers at the Muslim center at New York University. This young man, a business student, had a theological complaint to register. Why did Islam make such a big deal about the principle of mutual benefit? What was the matter with just taking care of yourself?

About 10 days later, with the landscape marked by the bankruptcy, emergency sale and federal bailout of some of the nation’s most venerable financial companies, a more abashed version of that same student returned. “Now I know why I can’t define security by the number of zeroes on my paycheck,” Imam Latif, N.Y.U.’s Muslim chaplain, recalled the man saying.

Presented with the spiritual equivalent of what educators call a “teachable moment,” Imam Latif spoke to the student about the humility, perseverance and especially the Islamic concept of sabr, meaning “patience.” He offered a hadith from the Muslim tradition: “Patience comes at the first sign of calamity.”

Variations of the imam’s conversation have been proceeding in virtually every faith these last few weeks, especially for clergy members who have a following among the investors, executives and employees of the shaken financial industry. They are practicing ministry for a meltdown.

. . .

As the United States staggers from its credit binge to a straitened future, the religious holidays demand their own form of self-denial. Jews fast on Yom Kippur and, for the most observant, the Fast of Gedalia, which comes the day after Rosh Hashana. Devout Muslims did not take food or drink during daylight hours for the entire month of Ramadan, which ended this week.

“The purpose of the fast goes beyond a physical one,” Imam Latif said. “It puts into perspective a lot. When you have that drink of water at sundown, when you eat that date to break the fast, you have a deeper appreciation of what you have.”

The Rev. George W. Rutler, pastor of the Roman Catholic Church of Our Saviour in Midtown Manhattan, has been giving a similar message to the younger of his parishioners. Unlike the older generation, which lived through the Great Depression, these men and women had known nothing except exuberant days for investment banks, hedge funds and the stock market.

“They’re just astonished; they have no historical reference,” said Father Rutler, the former national chaplain of Legatus, a group of prominent Catholic executives. “I’ve said to them: ‘You’re part of history now. And in the future, you will learn to be more practical about value.’ This was a necessary purge, painful in many ways.”

Read it all here.

A statement from the President of the House of Deputies, Bonnie Anderson.

The Episcopal Church spent two days in solemn observance and belated repentance for its involvement in the institution of transatlantic slavery last weekend. It was truly a landmark event.

Although General Convention resolution A-123 named the site for the Service of Repentance as Washington National Cathedral, the event was held at the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas in Philadelphia. There was no public explanation offered regarding the change of venue named in the resolution. The welcome and hospitality from the clergy, staff and membership of St. Thomas’, however, set an example of the highest order for the whole of the Episcopal Church.

The solemn observance event marked the commencement of a comprehensive program called for in resolution A-123 that asks every diocese to:

• collect and document detailed information in its community on the complicity of The Episcopal Church in the institution of slavery;
• collect and document detailed information in its community on the subsequent history of segregation and discrimination
• collect and document detailed information in its community on the economic benefits The Episcopal Church derived from the institution of slavery

It is my hope and expectation that every diocese in The Episcopal Church that participated at the 75th General Convention in Columbus, Ohio and voted in favor of resolution A-123, and has not already initiated this work in their diocese will begin now.

Link to resolution A-123:
http://www.episcopalarchives.org/cgi-bin/acts/acts_resolution.pl?resolution=2006-A123

Mark Galli responds in Christianity Today to the effort by some pastors to challenge the IRS rules that bar the use of the church for political purposes:

This yearning to tell congregations how to vote arises out of a godly desire to teach how to live daily the Christian life, in political season and out. Politics is nothing if it is not about daily life. Whether it's the place of creationism in the local high-school curriculum, or how many immigrants to welcome into the country, or how much to spend on defense versus welfare — all political decisions affect our Day-Timers or our Form 1040. They influence things like how much our investments earn or what values our children imbibe in the public square.

Pastors are driven by a righteous desire to shape not just church members but also their communities according to biblical standards of justice and mercy.

But these same pastors often hanker to be relevant — and this is nothing but the Devil's third temptation of Jesus. When chatter about candidates and platforms fills the airwaves, when everyone pontificates about the last debate or recent TV appearance, you can seem out of touch with reality or too timid if you don't join in the national conversation and take a public stand. Who wants to go to a church led by an irrelevant coward?

These pastors — and congregations that are egging them on — don't realize that in endorsing political candidates or platforms, they are selling their inheritance for a mess of pottage. Two examples should suffice: the late Jerry Falwell, and the current Jim Wallis — both Christian ministers. When all is said and done, what are they both known for? Falwell was considered a champion of political what most call "the Religious Right", and Wallis is usually identified as a "[politically] liberal evangelical."

Both have said — sincerely, I believe — that their highest priority is serving and proclaiming the truth of Jesus Christ. But given the insidious nature of politics (it aims to co-opt everything and everyone into its service), ministers' Christian identity gets swallowed up by their political views. They were ordained to be heralds of the Great King. Instead they end up, like it or not, being seen as marketers for a partisan agenda. What a waste of an ordination.

. . .

Pastors are right about this much: The election season is a unique moment in a church's life, but not because the pastor has the chance to lobby for his candidate. No, the Christian preacher has the unparalleled opportunity to act as the only sane person in a nation mad for power, the only voice in an ephemeral season filled with lies and half-lies to speak abiding truths — that elections (even "the most important in a generation") come and go, that princes (even "the most gifted in a lifetime") appear and pass away, that nations (even "the greatest in history") rise and fall.

And that something greater remains after the first Tuesday in November.

Read it all here.

UPDATED 7:30 p.m.
Click here to go directly to the update with several new developments, and please remember, commenters, to sign your full name so we can approve your comments.

Progressive Episcopalians of Pittsburgh (PEP) and Across the Aisle, two groups formed in opposition to the departure of the diocese from the Episcopal Church, have posted their reactions to today's events. Jim Simons, a member of the standing committee of Pittsburgh, has written that he is determining who else among the standing committee is staying with the Episcopal Church:

Once that has been established I will appoint several other members to serve on the Standing Committee, Episcopal Church leadership will recognize that body as the ecclesiastical authority of the Diocese and we will call for a special convention to be held sometime before the end of the year. At that Convention we will elect individuals to vacated offices and do such reorganization as is necessary.

The initial steps may take several weeks and we will do everything we can to communicate with you in a timely fashion.

Personally I am excited by the days that are before us. Twenty-five per cent of the parishes in the diocese have already contacted us about their desire to remain in The Episcopal Church, and we know that over the next months more will follow. I see a Diocese of Pittsburgh which will be diverse, vibrant, and most of all getting back to the work of proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

This is from the Across the Aisle website, here.

Several members of Progressive Episcopalians of Pittsburgh shared comments in a press release this afternoon:

“The schism we have seen today has been long in coming,” said Lionel Deimel, PEP board member and PEP’s first president. “It is an unhappy outcome and one we would like to have avoided. Although we see challenging times ahead, we also see an opportunity to build an Episcopal diocese that is less contentious and more focused on the gospel imperative to minister to a troubled world.” “PEP has always worked to bring traditional Anglican diversity to our diocese,” explained Joan Gundersen, PEP’s president and one of six people on the steering committee of Across the Aisle, a broad coalition of Episcopalians who have sought unity and reconciliation in Pittsburgh. “We hope the individuals who have left The Episcopal Church today find the spiritual home they are seeking. The Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh will always be ready to welcome them should they want to return to The Episcopal Church. Our task now is to make our diocese a model of how people of different views can work together for Christ.” One challenge that is still ahead is access to property belonging to the church. PEP expects that the current efforts by Calvary Episcopal Church will result in a favorable decision regarding diocesan property. “We hope that the involvement of the courts in resolving distribution of parish property can be minimized,” said Kenneth Stiles, a local attorney and a PEP vice president. “Clearly, the continuing diocese and everyone in it, those who have chosen to ‘realign,’ and The Episcopal Church itself are all interested parties that must resolve parish property issues. As much as possible, we hope to preserve the possibility of a future reconciliation between the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh and at least some of the departing congregations.”

That release is available here.

Also, in case you missed the update, we included Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori's comments in our earlier post, visit that post here; click the 2 p.m. update for Jefferts Schori's comments. We've also corrected the vote count.

Other updates that have come through since then are that the "special convention" called for to restore Bp. Duncan to the diocese is slated for the very same dates that the diocesan convention was originally scheduled for, and those dates were being held apparently in anticipation of a second convention being needed.

UPDATE: 7:30 p.m.
First, a couple of blog entries to note. The Rev. Bruce Robison has written his impressions here in a pastoral note to his congregation, which includes moving witness to some of the lovelier things he experienced at the convention, as well as this note:

On leaving St. Martin's this afternoon canonically resident Pittsburgh clergy were asked to take certificates licensing them as deacons or priests of the Diocese of Pittsburgh in the Southern Cone Province, and I declined to receive the one with my name on it. As I have indicated to you, I will remain a priest of the Episcopal Church, U.S.A.

Again: much sadness, and a sense of profound loss. I personally have expressed my deep respect and love for many dear friends and colleagues who have chosen today to walk in a different direction--and my hope and prayer that in many ways the spirit of friendship and shared ministry that we have known in the past may be able to continue. But of course there will be changes, and it will be necessary to move forward to the new challenges that await us without being overly-encumbered by what lies in our past. We'll have to figure that out as we go on.

I am glad to note that those clergy, laity, and congregations of Pittsburgh intending, like us, to remain in the Episcopal Church, have prepared carefully over the past months for this possibility, and I am confident in the strength and vision of our ordained and lay leadership.

Additionally, Lionel Deimel Progressive Episcopalians of Pittsburgh founder points us to a brochure distributed at the end of the convention: “Realignment Realities: What You Need to Know.” He has excerpts, commentary and a scanned version of the brochure at his blog, here.

Lastly, for now, Episcopal Life Online has posted the more complete version of its coverage of today's events here.

Timothy O'Toole has a column in today's Albany Union-Times on the abundance and diversity of church music.

Church music is limitless. Throughout America, sanctuaries resonate with the sound of the classics (Mozart and the 3 B's — Bach, Brahms and Beethoven), Gregorian chant and plainsong, jazz (Duke Ellington's "Come Sunday"), folk (Michael and his boat that never quite makes it to shore), and ethnic melodies from Africa, Asia and South America (best sung in the original language). Even the predictable two-dimensional "praise music," which enlists drums, mikes and electric guitars — in keeping with John Wesley's 1761 instruction "Sing lustily and with good courage."

I am reminded of Harvard psychologist William James' 1902 book, "The Varieties of Religious Experience." Just as there are different ways of experiencing the divine in our daily existence, there are different ways of raising our voices in song, and opening our ears and minds to inspiration.

Most hymnals have work derived from European sources, but America is blessed with an exceptional variety of home-grown music. Drawing from Charles Wesley's English experience, what was once secular can become sacred with a few lyric modifications. In 1882, Salvation Army founder William Booth wondered, "Why should the devil have all the best tunes?" To which we Presbyterians might add, "Why do the Methodists have all the best hymns?" Need gender-neutral lyrics? Call Brian Wren, an Englishman who now lives in New Hampshire and specializes in non-sexist imagery.

We resonate to William Billings' energetic New England hymns; the raucous, nasal sound of Sacred Harp and shape note singers, cousins of Southern harmony, spirituals and gospel; even bluegrass renditions with their own bittersweet quality.

Read it all here.

UPDATED
2 p.m. Update: Comments from Presiding Bishop here.

The Standing Committee of the portion of the Diocese that has voted to realign, has announced a special convention in November to elect a diocesan bishop and to admit into the Diocese of Pittsburgh any additional parishes that wish to join the Diocese of PIttsburgh of the Province of the Southern Cone. The Convention will be held at Trinity Cathedral. The first order of business on the second day of the special convention will be the Bishop's Address and Vision. All clergy of the diocese are now able to pick up licenses as clergy of the Province of the Southern Cone. The back of the license spells out the terms they agree to when they accept that license.

Archbishop Venables announces that he has appointed Bishop Robert Duncan to serve as the "Episcopal Commissary" of the diocese.

Immediately following that announcement Bishop Duncan greeted the Convention. He reports that the existing Standing Committee is still the ecclesiastical authority until the new bishop is elected. It is explained to be a temporary measure in effect while this diocese and is expected to last until there is a new Orthodox diocese of "faithful Anglicans here in North America."

UPDATE:

The vote has been taken and its result is being reported as:

121 aye, 33 nay, 3 abstentions (clergy)
119 aye, 69 nay, 3 abstentions (laity)

At the moment the Diocesan Convention is reorganizing its committees and reporting the results of other elections.

UPDATE 2 p.m. - comments from Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori:

"I believe that the vast majority of Episcopalians and Anglicans will be intensely grieved by the actions of individuals who thought it necessary to remove them from The Episcopal Church," Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori said after the vote. "I have repeatedly reassured Episcopalians that there is abundant room for dissent within this Church, and that loyal opposition is a long and honored tradition within Anglicanism. Schism is not, having frequently been seen as a more egregious error than charges of heresy. There is room in this Church for all who desire to be members of it. The actions of the former bishop of Pittsburgh, and some lay and clergy leaders, have removed themselves from this Church; the rest of the Church laments their departure. We stand ready to welcome the return of any who wish to rejoin this part of the Body of Christ.

"We will work with remaining Episcopalians in Pittsburgh to provide support as they reorganize the Diocese and call a bishop to provide episcopal ministry. The people of The Episcopal Church hold all concerned in our prayers -- for healing and comfort in time of distress, and for discernment as they seek their way into the future.

This from Episcopal Life Online, which promises a fuller story later today.

----------

The Diocese of Pittsburgh moved its annual convention up a month earlier this year when it became clear that Bp. Duncan might be deposed; so after a morning Eucharist and lunch, the Diocese will move to the business at hand: to wit, voting on Resolution One: whether to leave the Episcopal Church and affiliate with the Southern Cone.

Thinking Anglicans has a roundup of morning papers and other stories on today's vote in Pittsburgh here.

Information on the convention and its resolutions are at the diocesan website, here.

Progressive Episcopalians of Pittsburgh has some resources here.

More as it unfolds.

Joe Eszterhas is perhaps most infamous for having penned the screenplay for one of Hollywood's worst movies, the raunchy Showgirls that, after a much-hyped release in 1995 (mostly owing to its NC-17 rating) tanked on the big screen—only to become a camp classic in its video-release afterlife. His other credits include films like Basic Instinct, Jagged Edge, Flashdance and Music Box. But now he's writing about something different: after being diagnosed with throat cancer in 2001, he sat down in a moment of despair and found a part of him asking for God's help.

NPR has an interview with Eszterhas, in which he talks about his conversion experience, and answers skeptics who think that he's going through a phase. That he was able to survive the cancer, he says, is a miracle, and proof of God's existence to him

He wrote a bit more about it in an essay at On Faith:

Why did God save the life of a man who had trashed, lampooned, and marginalized Him most of his life? Why did He take the time and the trouble to save me? It certainly wasn't because I had written Basic Instinct and Showgirls, right? Was it because my wife and I had four little boys we were trying to raise? Possibly.

Or was it God's divinely impish sense of humor? "Who, you? You're praying? After everything you've done to break my commandments and after every nasty, unfunny thing you've written about Me and those who follow Me - now you're sobbing? Praying? Asking Me to help you? Hah! Okay, fine, I'll help you. But if I do, know this: My help will obliterate the old, infamous you. You'll wind up turning your life inside-out. You'll wind up stopping all of your excesses. You know what will happen to you? You'll wind up telling the world what I did for you. You'll wind up carrying my cross in church. Yes, I make all things new - and you will be new, too."

He was startled to find that actually happened.

The NPR interview is here (click on "listen now"), and the On Faith essay is here.

The Daily News has a report on the national event taking place this weekend in Philadelphia. According to reports we've gotten here that Cafe, there are over four hundred people in attendance.

The event in which the Episcopal Church, at the direction of General Convention, represents a formal apology for any role the Church had in the support of the institution of slavery in the early part of the United States' history.

"Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori will conduct the service at the church, founded in 1792 by Absalom Jones, a former slave and the first black Episcopal priest.

Jayne Oasin, staff officer for the New York-based Episcopal Church Center, said that the church can't deny its complicity in slavery even after the trans-Atlantic slave trade was outlawed in 1808.

She noted that some historic Episcopal churches were built using slave labor and that members owned or profited from industries associated with it.

'Slavery went against God's law of equality and justice,' she said. 'This apology is made to the descendants [of those] who were wronged.'"

Read the full article here.

Episcopal News Service has a story and pictures here.

The Bishop of Pennsylvania has been deposed. Details are still coming out, but there are news reports describing the decision of the special court that was convened. He was deposed because of his actions in covering up a case of sexual abuse that occurred earlier in his ministry.

Deposition means that Bishop Bennison is to be removed from the clergy of the Episcopal Church and will not be allowed to exercise any ordained ministry in Episcopal churches.

The Standing Committee of the Diocese of Pennsylvania has released the following statement:

The Standing Committee of the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania has received the news that the Court for the Trial of a Bishop has rendered its decision and sentencing recommendations. The Court denied Bishop Bennison's motion for a new trial and for a sentencing hearing, and recommended that Bishop Bennison be deposed.

The Standing Committee's prayers and thoughts are with those affected by the trial, the verdict and now the sentence. We pray for healing for all.

The canonical process is long and not over. Under the Canons, Bishop Bennison has thirty days within which to file an appeal with the Court of Review. If the conviction and sentence are upheld by the Court of Appeal, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church would impose the sentence. The Standing Committee will be continuing its responsibilities as the Ecclesiastical Authority in the diocese until the matter is finally concluded.

According to a newspaper account:

Charles E. Bennison Jr., 64, deserved to be ousted from the clergy because of his "very significant failures to fulfill his responsibilities" and "a fundamental lack of professional awareness," the special Court for the Trial of a Bishop said in documents released Friday.

The unanimous nine-person panel of bishops, priests and church members chose the harshest sentence for Bennison, who has been bishop of the nation's fifth-largest Episcopal diocese for a decade. He could have faced a reprimand or a temporary suspension of his duties.

"The court finds that even today (Bennison) has not shown that he comprehends the nature, significance and effect of his conduct and has not accepted responsibility and repented for his conduct and the substantial negative effects of that conduct," the ecclesiastical panel wrote.

The full court decision (in PDF) is here.

The court order (also in PDF) is here.

A video from Episcopal Life Media:

"Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori addresses the events and the controversies facing the Episcopal Church this fall in Room for All. The Presiding Bishop offers her remarks during a visit to the Diocese of Georgia following Eucharist with Christ Church Savannah, currently worshipping at St Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church in Savannah."

Watch the video here.

There is a legal case in the courts of Britain that, depending on the decision, could have the effect of allowing clergy in Britain to unionize. Up until now, the custom has been to say that clergy are employed directly by God and therefore exempt from existing employment law. Depending on the way the court decides, its decision could, by implication, allow clergy to claim otherwise.

The Church Times Blog has an excellent overview:

"Unite is claiming that the case of Reverend Mark Sharpe, Rector of Teme Valley South in Worcestershire, will have significant implications for the employment rights of ministers. From their website:

Should Revd. Sharpe’s case be upheld after any appeal, it will mean that ministers across the UK will be subject to legislation covering: health & safety, the national minimum wage, paid holidays, ‘whistle-blowing’, anti-discrimination, paid holidays, family-friendly flexible working policies, the working time directive, and unlawful deduction of wages.

Rachael Maskell, Unite’s National Officer, Community and Non Profit Sector said: “We are poised for the biggest raft of employment benefits for ministers in the Church of England since it came into being under Henry VIII’s Reformation in the 1530s. It will also have implications for other faith groups.”

The union is claiming that that the Church of England has conceded for the first time that its ministers are employed by the Church rather than by God.

However, the Church is denying that the case will have such implications. From Charity Finance website Church denies union claims of employment rights revolution:

The Church, however, says that the tribunal case has no impact on the status of any clergy outside the case itself. Agreeing to consider Revd. Sharpe a ‘worker’ was a requirement to allow the case to move forward, said Sam Setchell, a spokesperson for the Diocese of Worcester."

Read the full article here. (There are links on there to all the primary material.)

Thinking Anglicans has coverage here.

ABC News reports that a genetic analysis of two old strains have pushed back the estimated date of origin of HIV to 1908.

Previously, scientists had estimated the origin at around 1930. AIDS wasn't recognized formally until 1981 when it got the attention of public health officials in the United States.

The new result is "not a monumental shift, but it means the virus was circulating under our radar even longer than we knew," says Michael Worobey of the University of Arizona, an author of the new work.

The results appear in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. Researchers note that the newly calculated dates fall during the rise of cities in Africa, and they suggest urban development may have promoted HIV's initial establishment and early spread.

Scientists say HIV descended from a chimpanzee virus that jumped to humans in Africa, probably when people butchered chimps. Many individuals were probably infected that way, but so few other people caught the virus that it failed to get a lasting foothold, researchers say.

But the growth of African cities may have changed that by putting lots of people close together and promoting prostitution, Worobey suggested. "Cities are kind of ideal for a virus like HIV," providing more chances for infected people to pass the virus to others, he said.

Perhaps a person infected with the AIDS virus in a rural area went to what is now Kinshasa, Congo, "and now you've got the spark arriving in the tinderbox," Worobey said.

Key to the new work was the discovery of an HIV sample that had been taken from a woman in Kinshasa in 1960. It was only the second such sample to be found from before 1976; the other was from 1959, also from Kinshasa.

Researchers took advantage of the fact that HIV mutates rapidly. So two strains from a common ancestor quickly become less and less alike in their genetic material over time. That allows scientists to "run the clock backward" by calculating how long it would take for various strains to become as different as they are observed to be. That would indicate when they both sprang from their most recent common ancestor.

The new work used genetic data from the two old HIV samples plus more than 100 modern samples to create a family tree going back to these samples' last common ancestor. Researchers got various answers under various approaches for when that ancestor virus appeared, but the 1884-to-1924 bracket is probably the most reliable, Worobey said.

Read the rest here.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, sent a greeting to Jewish leaders and communities for the festival of Rosh Hashanah, marking the start of the Jewish New Year.
In his greeting the Archbishop spoke of the "mutual and public support for the Millennium Development Goals" at the Lambeth Conference, and also paid tribute to "the way in which all the religions and their leaders can act together for the common good of humanity".

The text of the greeting begins:

To our Jewish friends in the household of faith

As you move from one year towards another and into the High Holy days, marking the creation of humankind, I am glad once again to be able to extend my warm greetings of friendship and appreciation to you on the occasion of Rosh Hashanah.

We have been able to share much together in this year past which has been significant, enjoyable and fruitful for the future and I look to be able to build on this in the year ahead.
In the Lambeth Conference held in Canterbury the bishops of the Anglican Communion were able to welcome Sir Jonathan Sacks to address them and with Rabbi Dr Tony Bayfield and Rabbi Danny Rich to share in mutual and public support for the Millennium Development Goals in the presence of the Prime Minister. These were both an unprecedented witness to our friendship and esteem, and also a sign of the way in which all the religions and their leaders can act together for the common good of humanity.

Read the rest here.

Mad Priest pointed us to this video, which speaks in opposition to California's Proposition 8 and is based on 1 Corinthians 13.

The San Jose Mercury News writes:

Ratcheting up a media barrage that will spill into millions of California living rooms, proponents of a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage broadcast their first TV ads Monday, charging that permanent legalization could endanger religious freedom or change schools' curriculum, charges whose veracity were challenged by legal experts.

ProtectMarriage.com's $10 million media buy puts its new pro-Proposition 8 television ad in every major media market in the state "” more markets than its chief opposition group is currently targeting.

With Prop 8 trailing in the polls, ProtectMarriage.com is trying to highlight the broader effects of gay rights legislation and court decisions in its specific support for a ban on same-sex marriage, a strategy that underscores the different tactics the two campaigns are using to woo undecided voters.

The anti-Prop. 8 group Equality California's first ad, which aired last week, focuses on the effect the initiative would have on one family, featuring a gray-haired couple married for 46 years, Sam and Julia Thoron, talking about how they want all of their three children to have equal rights to marry, including their lesbian daughter.

"Please don't eliminate that right "” for anyone's family," says Julia Thoron.

Mad Priest says simply: "This will get you through the day whatever is thrown your way. If it doesn't then you are a clanging cymbal."

The Mercury News: Gay Marriage: Both sides unleash Prop. 8 TV ads

Canon James M. Rosenthal, is stepping down from his position as Director of Communications for the Anglican Communion Office.

Conservative evangelicals believe that the crisis on Wall Street is the direct result of the moral crisis on Main Street.

Ed Stoddard, writing for Reuters, explains:

The narrative goes roughly like this: the "collapse" of the traditional family, widespread divorce and a "permissive" culture have led to a disregard for personal responsibility.

A culture focused on instant gratification -- through the overuse of credit cards to buy consumer goods, for example -- has also lost other "traditional values" such as thrift and hard work.

"You can't have a strong, vibrant society when you don't have strong, vibrant families. It's a crisis of commitment, it's a crisis of responsibility," said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, a conservative lobby group with strong evangelical ties.

"If you don't live up to your responsibility you are going to see that in the broader culture. You see this on Wall Street," he told Reuters.

It is a view that has been echoed by other conservative commentators, on Christian radio stations and on popular "Talk Radio" programs.

"To spend more than you've got is not the way we brought up our kids ... You have a whole credit industry that grew up around people wanting what their parents had without working 20 years to get it," said Gary Ledbetter, spokesman for the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention.

The immediate significance of this narrative may show up in the House of Representatives on Friday when they vote on the latest version of the financial "bailout/rescue" package passed by the Senate last night.

The next place this narrative may show up is in the voting booth. It remains unclear how conservative Christians and evangelical Protestants will react to McCain's support of the package, even though they've been energized by his pick of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate.

Tying "values" to economic problems is one way that religious conservatives can keep some focus on the "culture" issues they have long fought over as public attention is riveted on Wall Street, job security and house prices.

Upholding "traditional" values which they say have been under assault since the 1960s informs much of their outlook, ranging from their opposition to abortion and gay rights to a professed aversion to heavy debt loads.

"Although debt is not a sin, it also is not a normal way of life, according to Scripture ... debt is a dangerous tool that must be used, if at all, with extreme caution and much prayer," says the conservative evangelical advocacy group "Focus on the Family" on its web site.

While, at first blush, it may appear that the narrative of moral decay leading to credit frenzy appears to co-exist nicely with the views of, say, the Archbishop of Canterbury, it is not so simple. Long ago, these same preachers conflated their theology with a politics that valued deregulation and embraced unfettered capitalism.

"Essentially the Christian Right did not do serious biblical reflection on economics, it just borrowed its model from the Republicans," said David Gushee, a professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University in Atlanta.

"Conservative Christians who accepted the unregulated free market ethos must bear some of the responsibility for its consequences," said Gushee.

Washington Post: Evangelicals see moral decline in Wall St. woes.

Updated. As we move towards another big weekend of Episcopal conflict, we find that one of the chief weapons of those who denegrate the Episcopal Church is spin and distortion. A favorite charge of these folks is that we are no longer Christian. Sometimes the MSM takes the bait. Today's New York Times is a case in point.

In an otherwise fair piece on the situation in Pittsburgh, Sean D. Hammil writes:

“The dispute includes complaints that the national church allows open debate on whether Jesus is the Son of God, or that the only way to God is through Jesus — tenets of faith that conservatives find indisputable.”

To our knowledge, there is no debate in our church over whether Jesus is the Son of God.

We do know of at least one attempt to stir up such a debate, and it was instigated by very people who know repeat this charge against the church endlessly. During the 75th General Convention in Columbus, the deputation of the Diocese of Fort Worth wanted convention to vote up or down on the Lordship of Jesus. The motion was dispensed with administratively by a majority of the House of Deputies without a vote on the motion itself because it was redundant.

The teaching of the Episcopal Church on this point is clearly stated in the Prayer Book over and over again, itself a document of General Convention.

The point of the resolution was to embarrass the church and embolden it's detractors because, passed or not, the resolution would have been used against the Episcopal Church either to charge us with hypocrisy or apostasy.

The truth is that there is no debate.

Jim Naughton observes:

I don’t know whether everyone who finds his or her way into a church on Sunday believes it, but it isn’t as though the issue is open to dispute in any serious way. We proclaim that Jesus is the Son of God in our Prayer Book. This understanding infuses our hymns. We profess it every Sunday as part of our Creed. We teach it in our seminaries. There is absolutely no movement to change this bedrock element of our faith.

To suggest that we do not believe that Jesus is the Son of God is to call the integrity of our faith into question for political ends. Bishop Duncan and his followers want readers to believe that the controversy in the Episcopal Church isn’t “about” homosexuality, but some greater intellectual and spiritual division. This explanation removes the taint of bigotry from a movement led by the notoriously bigoted Peter Akinola of Nigeria. I don’t know if reporters of the time allowed secessionists to argue that slavery wasn’t a racial issue but a Scriptural one, but that’s basically what is going on here. To excuse his own self-glorifying behavior, the Bishop and his followers must allege ever greater crimes against the faith. I get that. I don’t get why the New York Times can’t see through it.

On the second point, whether Episcopalians believe that the only way to God is through Jesus there are leaders in the Episcopal Church who believe that an intellectual assent to Christian doctrine isn’t necessary to be saved. This is more or less than position of the Roman Catholic Church; it can hardly be classified as outside the Christian mainstream.

Why is the New York Times allowing people who seek to destroy our Church to define for the public the nature of our beliefs?

Updated: epiScope had the following:

The following letter has been sent to the reporter: Thank you for your in-depth article which appeared in today’s New York Times, Pittsburgh Episcopalians Weigh Division. However, I must point out that the Episcopal Church has never disputed that “Jesus is the Son of God”. While there may be debate in some quarters about beliefs of the Episcopal Church, there has never been “open debate” or any debate in councils or conventions on our core belief that Jesus is the Son of God.

The Roman Catholic Church has a wide range of teachings on social issues, and recently there have been signals that sexuality issues has taken a disproportional place in the public sphere.

France has tried twice to appoint an ambassador to the Vatican but failed when one candidate was divorced and another a partnered gay man. Reuters reports:

For a country keen to improve relations with the Vatican, France has made some surprising faux pas this year. Things have been going well on the surface. President Nicolas Sarkozy has sung the praises of religion in public life several times this year. Pope Benedict was warmly welcomed during his visit to Paris last month. But behind the scenes, Paris has apparently flubbed what should be a routine procedure — naming a new ambassador to the Holy See.

The Foreign Ministry refuses to comment on ambassadorial nominations until they are accepted by the country involved. But with the post open for an unusually long period of 10 months, newspapers in Paris and Rome have begun writing about the delay. Even the Paris Catholic daily La Croix got into the story today. It seems Paris has been rebuffed twice for proposing a gay candidate and a divorced one. The Argentinians could have told Paris to play safe with a solid family man.

Douglas Kmeic told National Catholic Reporter that the Catholic voter should look at the broad spectrum of Catholic teaching when choosing a candidate:

Kmiec, a law professor at Pepperdine, is author of Can a Catholic Support Him? Asking the Big Question about Barack Obama, in which he argues that the pro-life teachings of the church can be reconciled with voting for Obama despite the Democratic candidate's pro-choice stance. Kmiec spoke this morning to reporters in a conference called organized by the “Matthew 25 Network,” a coalition of Christian groups that has endorsed Obama.

Relations with the United States are a diplomatic priority in the Vatican, and some analysts have speculated that an Obama victory would create new tensions between Rome and Washington because of differences over the “life issues,” above all abortion. Kmiec, however, offered a different forecast.

“An Obama presidency would open the door to what is frequently called the best-kept secret of the Catholic church, which is the balance of its social teaching,” Kmiec said. He argued that many of the Vatican’s social concerns are broadly congruent with the likely priorities of an Obama administration, including health care, a living wage, economic policies that promote the well-being of families, and environmental protection.

Kmiec also pointed to a broad meeting of minds between Obama and the Vatican over the war in Iraq.

“The mindset that took us to war is not his,” Kmiec said. “He believes that our greatest strength as a country comes not just from military defense but international diplomacy, for the kind of understanding which the Vatican has repeatedly asked America to have of other cultures and other religions.”

For those reasons, Kmiec predicted, “relations between Benedict XVI and the Holy See under an Obama administration would be very, very positive.”

Reuters: Gays and divorced need not apply as ambassador to Vatican

National Catholic Reporter: Pro-Obama Catholic predicts 'very positive' ties with Vatican

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, has sent his greetings to Muslim communities for the festival of Eid ul Fitr, marking the end of Ramadan.

To Muslim friends and co workers in the Common Good

It is a great pleasure once again to be able to send my warm greetings to friends and colleagues of the Muslim communities on the occasion of Eid ul Fitr and to wish you the joy of celebrating the breaking of the fast.

The celebration of Eid provides opportunities for putting the past behind and for opening doors into a renewed future which is a constant task for all people of faith. There are aspects of our society's attitude to religious faith and practice which need to be addressed; and there are matters relating to religious freedom in some countries of Islamic governance that need to be challenged. Christianity and Islam can do much, together with other religions, to encourage an openness to a better future for all in these and many other respects.

See Episcopal Life Online: Archbishop sends greeting to Muslims for Eid ul Fitr, end of Ramadan

Steven Waldman:

Inspired by the Twelve Tribes of Biblical Israel and based on the new National Survey of Religion and Politics conducted by the University of Akron, the Twelve Tribes looks at the unique behavior of different faith groupings such as Heartland Culture Warriors, Whitebread Protestants, Convertible Catholics and others. (Click here for the full Twelve Tribes lowdown.)

Overall, the Twelve Tribes survey showed that just 13% of voters listed moral issues as their primary concern, half the percentage as in 2004.

Among members of the Religious Right, the percentage emphasizing social issues plummeted to 37.2% from 50.7%, while the portion emphasizing the economy rose to 40% from 18%. Among the Heartland Culture Warriors – consisting of conservative Catholics, conservative mainline Protestants and Mormons — 57% now list the economy first, compared with 28% in 2004.

The Guardian has two opinion pieces this week on attempts by fundamentalists to censor books.

Philip Pullman:

When I heard that my novel The Golden Compass (the name in the USA of Northern Lights) appeared in the top five of the American Library Association's list of 2007's most challenged books, my immediate and ignoble response was glee. Firstly, I had obviously annoyed a lot of censorious people, and secondly, any ban would provoke interested readers to move from the library, where they couldn't get hold of my novel, to the bookshops, where they could. That, after all, was exactly what happened when a group called the Catholic League decided to object to the film of The Golden Compass when it was released at the end of last year.
...
My basic objection to religion is not that it isn't true; I like plenty of things that aren't true. It's that religion grants its adherents malign, intoxicating and morally corrosive sensations. Destroying intellectual freedom is always evil, but only religion makes doing evil feel quite so good.

The firebomb attack this weekend on the publishing house Gibson Square in London was an assault on one of the bravest publishers in the business. Three men were arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000 on Saturday morning, suspected of attempting to set fire to the premises. Martin Rynja, who runs Gibson Square, is due to publish Sherry Jones's novel about Mohammed's wife Aisha, The Jewel of Medina, next month. Random House had pulled out of publishing the novel in August, stating that it had been advised that "the publication of this book might be offensive to some in the Muslim community" and that "it could incite acts of violence by a small, radical segment".
...
Random House's actions show just how far we have lost our way in this debate over free expression and Islam: the level of intimidation, fear and self-censorship is such that one of the biggest publishers in the world no longer felt able to publish a work of creative imagination without some kind of dispensation. Jones's book does not claim to be a piece of history - it's a work of invention.

It was also disingenuous of Random House to suggest that the novel might incite violence. Certain members of the population might choose to commit an act of violence, but that is not the same as the book itself inciting violence.
...
Respect for religion has now become acceptable grounds for censorship; even the UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, has declared that free speech should respect religious sensibilities, while the UN human rights council passed a resolution earlier this year condemning defamation of religion and calling for governments to prohibit it.

Peter Akinola has written a letter. Andrew Brown has an observation:

His answer seems to me quite clear: British Muslims must suffer as Iraqi or Pakistani Christians do. Otherwise it's not fair and "Religious tolerance [becomes] a one sided principle that favours one particular religion and inimical to the other. [But] What is good for the goose is good for the gander. It is only if we all embrace the divine injunction: 'do unto others, as you want them do unto you' that we can truly and in all sincerity preach peaceful coexistence and religious tolerance."

If I have followed his reasoning, he is claiming that since "we all" – i.e. "you Muslims" – have not embraced this divine injunction, they must themselves be treated as they treat others, and Christians can no longer preach peaceful coexistence and religious tolerance.

This is the logic of ethnic cleansing and civil war and it is coming from a man who is taken very seriously by millions of otherwise respectable Christians.

Check out Brown's new belief blog starting at the introductory post. Welcome to the religious blogosphere, Andrew.

Related Episcopal Cafe posts: Mark Harris responds to Akinola