Here's some exciting news that's breaking this first day in April:

(by email)

As a part of opening week festivities, Commissioner of Baseball Bud Selig and Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori announced today that the Episcopal Church has been designated the Official Denomination of Major League Baseball. The move was announced today in a teleconference with reporters.

"Faith oriented promotions have increasingly become a part of many minor league team," Selig said. "We felt that it was time to tap into this important demographic."

"We also want to reinforce our family friendly image while at the same time reaching out to a wide cross section of life-styles, incomes and tastes," Selig said. "We are pleased that the Episcopal Church will join us in this first partnership between a major sport and a church."

Many denominations were considered for the endorsement. Some traditions did not make bids for theological reasons, but unnamed sources described the behind the scenes competition as intense.

"The Baptists and Catholics both made strong bids," said a baseball official familiar with the negotiations. "And it is true that both traditions brought strong numbers to the table." Few commentators expected the Episcopal Church's bid to be as strong as it was.

Selig said that Episcopalians bring the right mix of arcane tradition, an appreciation of minutiae and a tolerance for long stretches of relative inaction that make them "a good fit for us."

"We believe that Episcopalians understand the nuances of the game and won't meddle with our traditions too much."

As part of the agreement, Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori said that a Suffragan Bishop for Baseball will be appointed. A name will be presented at a special House of Bishops meeting called for the purpose in May. The ministry of the Suffragan Bishop for Baseball will be to coordinate the ministries of the church in the baseball environment.

"The designation of Official Denomination will be a boon to our evangelism," said the Rev. Jan Nunley. "Reflective MLB logos will soon appear as a part of the well known Episcopal Church Welcomes You signs in front of every Episcopal Church and along many streets in towns and cities across the US."

Observers also noted that the designation will also help the public differentiate Episcopal Churches from other churches that have recently appropriated the Anglican "brand" for their own use.

"The Episcopal Church encompasses many nations that differ along language and cultural lines—from the Dominican Republic to Taiwan--but we all share a love for Baseball," Nunley said.

"Theologians and poets have long described how the rhythms and traditions of baseball speak to us on many levels," Jefferts Schori told reporters. "Baseball shows us the presence of God in everyday things, that sublime combination of individual and team effort which reminds us of the Body of Christ and in the end God wants us all to come home."

Saying only that the marketing possibilities have "yet to be worked out" neither Selig nor Jefferts Schori would comment on rumors that pre-packaged Holy Communion and box-score editions of the Book of Common Prayer would be offered at kiosks at major league parks.

While some religious and sports commentators expressed skepticism at the move, and some wondered if the Presiding Bishop had the canonical authority to establish such a relationship, others were more forgiving.

"Baseball and Jesus." Nunley said. "They go together like peanuts and Cracker Jack."

Great news for a great day.

The Visalia Times-Delta reports overnight:

"About 40 former members of Visalia’s St. Paul’s Episcopal Church have decided to break away from the current Anglican church and reform their congregation as the Continuing Congregation of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church of Visalia, Calif.

The new congregation has been meeting in the cafeteria of Pinkham School. About 30 members attended services on Easter Sunday and about 40 last weekend.

The larger St. Paul’s Anglican Church remains with the San Joaquin Anglican Diocese."

Read the rest here.

The Living Church has a report by Timothy Roberts describing the events which took place over the weekend as the Episcopal Church took action to reconstitute the Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin. (We have other reports here.)

The article in the Living Church points out that the actions that were taken by the Episcopal Church in this situation are possibly going to serve as a model to be used in other similar situations:

"About 500 people from 18 congregations gathered at St. John the Baptist Church in Lodi, Calif., March 29 to declare themselves the representatives of The Episcopal Church in California’s Central Valley and to elect a provisional bishop.

Delegates were certified from 17 congregations previously belonging to the Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin and one new mission congregation; 42 former Episcopal congregations had no delegates certified.

The action by Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and the remaining parishioners could become a model for dealing with breakaway dioceses, Bishop Jefferts Schori told TLC during a break in the convention.

‘This is the first time this has happened, but it could become a pattern for other places,’ she said.

The convention voted unanimously by voice vote to reverse the actions taken by delegates to the annual convention last December that made the Diocese of San Joaquin the first entire diocese to leave The Episcopal Church in its 219-year history. In December, delegates voted overwhelmingly to affiliate with the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone which has its metropolitan headquarters in Buenos Aires, Argentina."

Read the rest of the Living Church article here.

Tom Ehrich sees opportunity where others have voiced frustration when looking at the results of the recent Pew survey on Religion and Public Life. If people are seeking and moving from church to church, rather than bemoan the fact, we should be getting prepared for those who are going to be coming.

"The Pew findings that religious behavior is marked by 'fluidity,' not consistency, might frustrate institutional managers who had hoped brand loyalty would last a lifetime. But it strikes me as good news that people take their faith seriously enough to examine it and to go in search of real bread.

Rather than pout about brand disloyalty, I'd suggest that denominations and congregations prepare themselves to receive these seekers when they go seeking. After all, it was the refusal of major denominations to notice that baby boomers started leaving in 1964 that caused their steep decline in membership. If you don't see the churn, how do you examine your enterprise and respond to the churn?

If 'none of the above' is the fastest-growing American religious affiliation, then we need to ask: What do adults in America find missing? What movement of the human spirit are we in the religious world failing to sense? What matrix of needs are we ignoring in our stubborn insistence on tradition? What questions are we unable to hear?

Rather than complain about the inadequacies of young adults in failing to grasp the virtues of Protestantism, for example, Protestant course-setters should examine the lives of today's young adults and build bridges to them. There is no virtue in ignoring one age cohort in order to keep an older age cohort satisfied. We should try self-examination, not blame."

We covered the release and some initial reactions to the Pew Reports earlier on the Lead.

Read the rest here.

An article in the Baltimore Sun this morning reports on clergy in a number of denominations and religions who are beginning to refuse to solemnize weddings between men and women as a form of protest against what the clergy perceive as discrimination by the state in not allowing legal forms of same-gender blessings to be recognized.

From the article:

"Some rabbis and ministers in states including Virginia, Minnesota, Michigan and Connecticut have told their congregants that when it comes to weddings they are in the business of religious ceremonies - only - and they have redirected couples to the local courthouse for the paperwork.

'There's sort of a steady drip, drip, drip of people starting to do this,' said the Rev. Donald Stroud, minister of outreach and reconciliation at That All May Freely Serve Baltimore, an organization that advocates for the full inclusion of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people in the Presbyterian Church.

'I think it does raise people's consciousness - that's one element. But I think a lot of ministers who do this do this first because their conscience compels them,' said Stroud. The Presbyterian Church does not sanction same-sex marriage, but it also does not compel pastors to sign licenses, he said. And like some of his colleagues, he would decline to do so if the issue arose because of what he sees as the state's discriminatory laws.."

The article continues with quotes from a number of clergy around the country who discuss the reasons for their actions and the various ways their congregations and communities have responded.

Read the rest here.

There are plenty of anecdotal stories about hostile responses to any attempt to talk about Christian faith on today's college campuses. There are also stories about how that sort of conversation is gratefully received by students. Which view, hostile or grateful, is right?

Most people tend to imagine that hostility toward faith and christian belief is the more commonly encountered reception.

But new evidence shows something different:

"The conventional wisdom, as it turns out, is not quite right.

From the pollsters come recent data showing that religion and spirituality are alive and well at colleges and universities. A recent study by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA finds that more than half of college juniors say 'integrating spirituality' into their lives is very important. Today's juniors also tend to pray (67%, according to the UCLA study) and 41% believe it's important, even essential, to 'follow religious teachings' in everyday life.

In these and similar measures, the college population tends to lag behind the population at large, but not by much. Other new research suggests that one's experience in higher education is not the cause of any falling away from faith. Survey results from University of Texas researchers find that students are less likely to be secularized than others ages 18-25. In other words, navigating the working world takes a larger toll on a young person's faith than braving the nation's supposedly godless college campuses.

It's not just trendy Eastern or New Age religions to which students are gravitating. Christianity is holding its own, too, in part because many campus Christians are showing a different side of their religion than the one that has lent irresistible fodder to comedians and given it a bad reputation in some quarters.

Young Christians, college students or otherwise, tend to emphasize different public concerns than the old-guard Christian Right. Like the older Christian generation, they do consider abortion an important issue, according to a survey by Relevant magazine, but the same survey finds that they tend to care less than their elders about asserting Christian prerogatives in the public square and resisting the advance of gay rights."

Read the rest here.

Publisher's Weekly has an interview with Honor Moore, Bishop Paul Moore's daughter, whose recent book about her father and family has stirred controversy within the family and within the Episcopal Church and the diocese that Bishop Moore served. The article helps to put Honor's effort into a fuller context within her own life journey.

From the article:

"In The Bishop's Daughter, Moore shares center stage with her subject. Intensely personal, this complex family saga is compelling in the contrast between Paul's public career as a charismatic religious leader active in such progressive causes as the civil rights movement and his conflicted private life.

[...]Moore decided to write about Paul for the magazine the American Scholar, when he became sick with cancer in his 80s. ‘I tried a memoir about my father twice before, but I abandoned it because I had no story. I was too angry, too unresolved,’ she says. Ann Fadiman, editor of the American Scholar, suggested she do a piece in the form of a journal, which was published in the fall after Paul's death in 2003 as ‘My Father's Ship.’

This article caught the attention of Jill Bialosky, who would later become Moore's editor at Norton. ‘I was so struck by the beautiful writing,’ says Bialosky, who's excited by the book's prospects. Moore, already well-known in poetry circles as a great reader, is lined up for several appearances on the East Coast. An excerpt ran in the March 3 issue of the New Yorker.

The Bishop's Daughter can be considered a kind of detective story, full of dramatic emotional surprises, in which Moore pieces together the secret side of her father's life. One of the more poignant sections chronicles her getting to know a longtime male lover of her father's in the years after his death. ‘I came to see who my father was in his terms,’ says Moore. ‘He saw himself as a normal person who had a conflict and did the best he could with it.’"

Read the rest here.

From a Guardian op-ed today:

As the late Robert Runcie said: "It cannot be irrelevant to evangelism that so many unbelievers think that the place we give to women is absurd."

That is why I cannot support any of the proposed amendments to the bill, which call for the appointment of a male bishop with jurisdiction for those who oppose the authority of a woman bishop. To do so, moreover, would be to sanction schism, to threaten the unity of the church.

If the Church in Wales refuses today to ordain women to the episcopate, it will be in danger of giving the impression that: the maleness of Jesus is more important than his humanity; only men can really represent God and his church to the world; men are the really important members of the human race; the church does not value the gifts and talents of women; and the church is not interested in testing the vocation of women, or even willing to consider their suitability as bishops, because their gender has automatically debarred them from such consideration.

None of these things may be true, but try explaining that to a class of sixth-formers who are interested in what the gospel may be offering them, but for whom that gospel is proclaimed by a church that refuses even to consider the possibility of opening up the episcopate to women.

Bishop Thomas E. Breidenthal (Southern Ohio) writing in the Cincinnati Enquirer:

As some know, the parish of St. Michael & All Angels has been closed, owing to dwindling numbers. This is understandably a sad time for those who are losing their accustomed weekly gathering for worship in a place they love. But this is not the whole story. The Episcopal Church is not leaving Avondale. On the contrary, we are convinced that now, more than ever, we are called to stand with those who seek peace and justice and the possibility of common life in the inner city. God has provided us in St. Michael's with a strategic location for such a ministry, and we intend to move forward as quickly as possible to make this a reality.

I know there are Episcopal parishes in Cincinnati who stand ready to pledge financial and personal resources to create an effective urban mission at St. Michael's. I dream of a powerful ministry to children in Avondale - providing a space on St. Michael's ample property for tutoring, athletics and after-school events. A focus on children would make great sense, given the proximity of Cincinnati Children's Hospital.

But these are just my thoughts. We cannot know what St. Michael & All Angels should become until we have sat with the people of Avondale and learned from them what their needs are and how we can fit into that.
...
It will take time - six months or more - for these conversations to take place and for a clear vision of the future role of the Episcopal Church in Avondale to emerge. In the meantime, the ministries operating out of St. Michael & All Angels will carry on. These include a health clinic and a food pantry, both of which have been fully funded by the diocese, and both of which will continue to receive funding.

One thing is clear: the church cannot turn its back on the city. The Bible and Christian tradition see the city as a central image for the kingdom of God.

New York Times:

The lawsuit, filed against Boulder County by the Rocky Mountain Christian Church in Niwot, Colo., is an important test of a federal statute aimed at protecting churches and other houses of worship from discriminatory zoning.

The church says it has outgrown its current home, on a 54-acre site in one of the buffer zones the county established decades ago to preserve open space around its towns and villages. In February 2006, the county refused to permit the church to double the size of its buildings. The church sued under the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000, saying the decision limiting its growth also limited its religious liberty.

icWales:

Senior clerics with the Church in Wales have rejected a controversial Bill which would have allowed women to be ordained as bishops.

The 140-strong Governing Body narrowly rejected the Bill which would have seen the creation of female bishops in the principality for the first time.

A vote saw the Bill defeated by just three after a day of heated debate on the subject.
...
Under the governing body’s voting system the Bill needed to attract a minimum two-thirds majority to be passed.

Voting was split into three separate sections, the House of Laity, the House of Clerics and the House of Bishops.

The House of Clerics voted 27 to 18 in favour of the Bill but, with abstentions, missed the required two-thirds majority. The other two houses attained the required minimum.

Archbishop Barry Morgan made his case for the Bill here.

Displaying a level of intolerance that might make Archbishop Akinola blush, a lay member of the General Synod of the Church England has said "There are enough mosques for Muslims in this country, they don’t need any more." The Telegraph describes Mrs. Alison Ruoff as a conservative evangelical. She also sits on the Council for the Bishop of London. Spokespersons for the Diocese of London and for Church of England say the remarks are her own and do not represent the church.

For an excellent roundup of the story go to Thinking Anglicans.

Lambeth Palace has announced that the Revd Jonathan Jennings, Press Secretary to the Archbishop of Canterbury since 2001, will leave in the summer to take up appointment as Priest in Charge at St Augustine’s, Gillingham in the diocese of Rochester. Mr Jennings, a former Press Officer for the diocese of Manchester, joined Lambeth Palace at the invitation of Dr Carey after six years at Church House, Westminster, as Head of Broadcasting.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, paid tribute to his contribution to the work of the church:

“Jonathan has been a tower of strength to all at Lambeth, and we shall miss both his professional competence and his warmth and friendship”.

Archbishop Peter Akinola and the Standing Committee of the Church of Nigeria have released a pastoral letter that is notable for two reasons: it is less belligerent than usual, and it makes clear that the Church is still unwilling to disclose who is funding the realignment of the Anglican Communion.

We are told that the Lord raised up "those who have felt sufficiently committed to the need to preserve the sanctity of our historic faith that they have committed huge resources to cover all the cost of the conference." But we aren't told who these people are, and what their interests might be.

The Falls Church News Press reports on this notice from Judge Bellows' clerk:

Judge Bellows has asked me to advise you that the Court anticipates it will issue its opinion regarding the applicability of 57-9 this Friday, April 4. It may, however, issue the opinion a day earlier or later.

The ruling is expected to be on the first phase of issues to determine ownership of the church properties, pertaining to whether an 1867 Virginia statute (57-9) applies in the current case although other rulings may be included.

Read the article here.

Recent stories and background from The Lead here and here.

Dear Members of the House of Representatives:

As Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, I write to offer our Church’s strong endorsement of the U.S. Global HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Act passed by the Foreign Affairs Committee and awaiting House floor consideration. The committee-passed bill builds on the successes of our nation’s efforts to fight deadly disease around the world over the past five years, and forges a new bipartisan consensus for expanding and intensifying those programs in the years to come.

The Episcopal Church is a member of the worldwide Anglican Communion, more than half of whose members live in countries hardest hit by AIDS, TB, and malaria. Through our relationships with churches around the world, we are deeply aware of the suffering and upheaval experienced by communities affected by deadly disease, and we are actively involved in efforts to restore health and healing through prevention, care, and treatment. A world that has conquered AIDS, TB, and malaria would be not just healthier and more prosperous, but more stable and secure.

As vital as the work of faith communities and other private actors are in the fight against poverty and disease, however, true transformation can only come when the resources and energies of governments are brought to bear. That’s why the United States government’s efforts over the past five years – along with the work of multinational organizations like the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria – have been so vital.

Read it all.

The United Church of Christ is leagues ahead of The Episcopal Church in its efforts to establish and protect a distinctive Christian indentity. Today's full page advertisement in The New York Times, prompted by the controversy surrounding Sen. Barack Obama and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, is just the latest example of the UCC's aggressive approach to refuting its detractors. Our passive Church has yet to grasp the danger in allowing its opponents to define it. We are also behind the UCC in our understanding of viral issue-oriented fundraising, as a nugget from this story makes clear:

An online campaign to raise $120,000 to purchase the ad began on March 27. In less than a week, UCC members, churches and Conferences had gathered enough money to pay for the ad.

Imagine what might have been accomplished had the folks calling the shots for the UCC been calling the shots in our Church after the consecration of Gene Robinson. It's painful to consider how little we did with that phenomenal opportunity to reach out to people who appreciated what we had done.

(Meanwhile, Dan Burke of Religion News Service has a two-part (1, 2) interview with UCC leader the Rev. John Thomas)

Lisa Keister has scanned the Bible and found nearly 2,000 verses in the New Testament that touch on the topic of money. It's those very verses that may be keeping many conservative Protestants from building up long-term wealth, she says.

Keister was surprised that when demographic factors -- such as education, age and race -- were held as constant, religion still proved to be an influential factor in wealth accumulation. Conservative beliefs had a larger impact among black Protestants, she found, but also remained significant among whites.

Read it all.

Drake Bennett of The Boston Globe writes:

In the community of people dedicated to analyzing poverty, one of the sharpest debates is over why some poor people act in ways that ensure their continued indigence. Compared with the middle class or the wealthy, the poor are disproportionately likely to drop out of school, to have children while in their teens, to abuse drugs, to commit crimes, to not save when extra money comes their way, to not work.

To an economist, this is irrational behavior. It might make sense for a wealthy person to quit his job, or to eschew education or develop a costly drug habit. But a poor person, having little money, would seem to have the strongest incentive to subscribe to the Puritan work ethic, since each dollar earned would be worth more to him than to someone higher on the income scale. Social conservatives have tended to argue that poor people lack the smarts or willpower to make the right choices. Social liberals have countered by blaming racial prejudice and the crippling conditions of the ghetto for denying the poor any choice in their fate. Neoconservatives have argued that antipoverty programs themselves are to blame for essentially bribing people to stay poor.

Charles Karelis, a professor at George Washington University, has a simpler but far more radical argument to make: traditional economics just doesn't apply to the poor. When we're poor, Karelis argues, our economic worldview is shaped by deprivation, and we see the world around us not in terms of goods to be consumed but as problems to be alleviated.

Read it all.

Michael Learmonth of Silicon Alley Insider writes:

Good news for "Friday Night Lights" fans: NBC didn't cancel it! Bad news: Fans of the show without DirecTV have to wait until February to see the season when it airs on NBC.

Wait-- did someone say filesharing?

The backstory: NBC sold first-run rights for the third season to DirectTV, which will put the show on the air next fall. NBC did that to help finance the show, which has plenty of buzz, but low ratings. NBC gets to air the show (which it also owns) in February after the Super Bowl, six months after it starts on DirecTV.

The show won't be on the Web legitimately until February, when it will be released to NBC.com and Hulu after the first airing on the network.

So here's the conondrum for rabid "Friday Night Lights" fans (we know at least one) this fall: Wait until February while the privileged few DirecTV subscribers get to go back to Dillon, Texas (a non-starter); subscribe to DirecTV (a hassle, and costly); or familiarize themselves with Bittorrent (cheap and free.) Predictions?

Good questions, but the real questions are how to handle the "graduation" of key cast members who should be off to college, and what to do when some of the actors, who are pushing 30, start to look their ages?

The good sports at Bus Leagues Baseball picked up our April Fool's story and took it a step further. As Bull Durham fans, we are delighted.

Updated 8:27 a. m.

The ruling is here. The Diocese of Virginia's response is here. At least one newspaper has erroneously reported that in making this ruling, the court has awarded the breakaway congregations the property. That is not the case, and the diocesan release clears that up well.

We will be updating throughout the day.

Judge Randy Bellows writes:

The Court finds that the evidence presented at trial establishes that the definition of "division" as that term is used in 57-9(A) is in fact that assigned to it by the CANA Congregations, which is "[a] split ... or rupture in a religious denomination that involve[s] the separation of a group of congregations, clergy, or members from the church, and the formation of an alternative polity that disaffiliating members could join."81 (CANA Congregations Opening Post-Trial Mem.7.) In so concluding, the Court first looks to the language of the statute.

And:

Finally, ECUSAjDiocese argue that the CANA Congregations' definition of division would permit a division to be "foisted upon [a hierarchical church] by the acts of a few disgruntled individuals." See Post-Trial Reply Br. for the Episcopal Church and the Diocese 5 n.3. The CANA Congregations' definition, argues ECUSAjDiocese, would make the division statute too "easily applicable." The Court finds no merit in this position. The CANA Congregations' definition requires three major and coordinated occurrences: 1.} a "split" or "rupture" in a religious denomination; 2.} "the separation of a group of congregations, clergy, or members from the church;" and 3.} the formation of an "alternative polity that disaffiliating members could join." The ECUSAjDiocese is correct that division, under 57-9(A}, ought not be "easy." Under the CANA Congregations' definition, it is not.

And:

it blinks at reality to characterize the ongoing division within the Diocese, ECUSA, and the Anglican Communion as anything but a division of the first magnitude, especially given the involvement of numerous churches in states across the country, the participation of hundreds of church leaders, both lay and pastoral, who have found themselves "taking sides" against their brethren, the determination by thousands of church members in Virginia and elsewhere to "walk apart" in the language of the Church, the creation of new and substantial religious entities, such as CANA, with their own structures and disciplines, the rapidity with which the ECUSA's problems became that of the Anglican Communion, and the consequent impact-in some cases the extraordinary impact-on its provinces around the world, and, perhaps most importantly, the creation of a level of distress among many church members so profound and wrenching as to lead them to cast votes in an attempt to disaffiliate from a church which has been their home and heritage throughout their lives, and often back for generations. Whatever may be the precise threshold for a dispute to constitute a division under 57-9(A), what occurred here qualifies. For the foregoing reasons, this Court finds that the CANA Congregations have properly invoked 57-9(A). Further proceedings will take place in accordance with the Order issued today.

What next?

For the reasons stated in the Letter Opinion issued today, hereby incorporated by reference, the Court finds that the Plaintiff Congregations in the above-entitled matters have properly invoked Va. Code § 57-9(A). The Court further ORDERS and schedules the following: The Court hereby schedules oral argument for lOam on Wednesday, May 28, 2008, on the following three issues:

1.) Whether 57-9(A), as interpreted by this Court, violates the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution;

2.) Whether 57-9(A), as interpreted by this Court, violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

3.) Whether 57-9(A), as interpreted by this Court, violates the religious freedom provisions of the Virginia Constitution.

On May 28th, 2008, the Court will hear from the Diocese, ECUSA, the CANA Congregations, and the Office of the Attorney General of the Commonwealth of Virginia (amicus).

In its response, the diocese said:

In its opinion, the Court explicitly acknowledged that constitutional issues remain and there will be a hearing on those issues on May 28, 2008. At issue is the government’s ability to intrude into the freedom of the Episcopal Church and other churches to organize and govern themselves according to their faith and doctrine. We strongly believe that, while we may have theological disagreements within the Episcopal Church, those disagreements are ours to resolve according to our faith and governance.

Background on the case is here.

Updated 10:25 a.m.

Thinking Anglicans has a roundup of links including press releases from the Anglican District of Virginia and CANA.

Summary
The only way in which this Court could find a “division” not to exist among the pertinent entities in this case is to define the term so narrowly and restrictively as to effectively define the term out of existence. The ECUSA and the Diocese urge upon this Court just such a definition and further assert that any definition other than the one for which they argue would render the statute unconstitutional. The Court rejects this invitation. Whether or not it is true that only the ECUSA’s and the Diocese’s proposed definition can save 57-9(A) from constitutional infirmity, there is no constitutional principle of which this Court is aware that would permit, let alone require, the Court to adopt a definition for a statutory term that is plainly unwarranted. Rather, the definition of “division” adopted by this Court is a definition which the Court finds to be consistent with the language of the statute, its purpose and history, and the very limited caselaw that exists. Given this definition, the Court finds that the evidence of a “division” within the Diocese, the ECUSA, and the Anglican Communion is not only compelling, but overwhelming. As to the other issues in principal controversy, the Court finds the Anglican Communion to be a “church or religious society.” The Court finds each of the CANA Congregations to have been attached to the Anglican Communion. Finally, the Court finds that the term “branch” must be defined far more broadly than the interpretation placed upon that term by ECUSA and the Diocese and that, as properly defined, CANA, ADV, the American Arm of the Church of Uganda, the Church of Nigeria, the ECUSA, and the Diocese, are all branches of the Anglican Communion and, further, CANA and ADV are branches of ECUSA and the Diocese.

Update 10:45 a.m.

AP reports at WTOPnews:

In an opinion released late Thursday, Circuit Court Judge Randy Bellows ruled that Virginia's Civil War-era "division statute" applies to the lawsuit. The language in that law is favorable to the departing congregations.

The judge still has to decide whether the state law is constitutional and whether the departing congregations properly conducted their votes to realign.

Update 2:45 p.m.

AP reports at Richmond Times Dispatch, "The judge is still a long way from deciding who ultimately controls church property."

Washington Post:

Scott Ward, an attorney for several of the congregations, noted that the state statute calls itself "conclusive" and said that might ultimately render a fall trial unnecessary.

But Henry Burt, a spokesman for the diocese, said his side believes that ownership of church property is determined by other things, including a denomination's laws and deeds and the history of how the property has been managed and controlled over time.

Some faith groups said the ruling could impact other religious organizations in Virginia. The Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy called it "chilling."

Update: 3:15 p.m. and 6:00 p.m.
Concerning the Virginia Court Ruling
From the Office of the Presiding Bishop

"We are obviously disappointed in yesterday's ruling by the trial judge against the Episcopal Church and the Diocese that involved one Virginia statutory issue in the case. While we believe that the Court's conclusion that Virginia's unusual "division" statute applies to the current situation in the Diocese, the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion is incorrect, there will time enough in the future to seek review of that decision if it becomes necessary. In the meantime, we shall present to the Court at the scheduled argument in May our contention that if the statute means what the Court has held, it plainly deprives the Episcopal Church and the Diocese, as well as all hierarchical churches, of their historic constitutional rights to structure their polity free from governmental interference and thus violates the First Amendment and cannot be enforced.

"We also note that this decision does not bar the contentions of the Episcopal Church and the Diocese regarding control over the property of the departing congregations that will be presented to the Court in the fall."

Neva Rae Fox
Program Officer, Public Affairs
The Episcopal Church
212-716-6080
Mobile: 917-478-5659

TIME has a story.

UPDATE: April 4, 6 p.m.
Letter from The Rt Rev Peter J Lee of the Diocese of Virginia follows below (link):

UPDATE: April 5, 9 a.m.
The New York Times reports here.

Read more »

USA Today reports on how conversation about God is changing on college campuses.

Filmmaker Dan Merchant stood before an auditorium of students assembled for the first campus screening of his forthcoming movie, Lord Save Us From Your Followers. Merchant, a Christian, was at Lewis & Clark College, a school in Portland, Ore., deemed by the Princeton Review college guide to be one of the least religious in the USA.

Yet one conspicuous reality defied a key premise of the event from the moment the college chaplain brought Merchant to the stage: Students packed the good-sized hall, overflowing into the aisles and entry ways, for a chance to see what most knew was a Christian-themed movie with a Gospel message.

And by the time they had finished watching the film — a humorous and heartfelt examination of the culture wars featuring a Michael Moore-meets-Monty Python style — those students could not wait to talk to Merchant about his movie and his faith.

"What struck me," Merchant said later, "was their openness to this conversation."

Students open to a conversation about Christianity, even on a campus with an ultrasecular reputation? Such is the state of affairs at the nation's colleges and universities, where religion is experiencing something of a renaissance, although not necessarily in the shapes and forms older generations are used to seeing.

Lewis and Clark College, Portland OR, reports:

In February, Lewis & Clark hosted the first college-campus screening of a forthcoming documentary exploring the collision of faith and culture in America, titled “Lord, Save Us from Your Followers.” Sponsored by the chapel office and the Christian student group Agape, the special event welcomed secular and religious students to a discussion with producer-director Dan Merchant about the issues raised by the film.

About 300 students filled Council Chambers to be among the first viewers of the documentary, which opens nationwide in June. A short film about the Lewis & Clark event captures the students’ emotional and intellectual responses to the film’s message of compassion and cooperation.

USA Today article is here.

Lewis and Clark College report is here.

More on the film here.

You Tube video of Lewis and Clark event follows:

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Many churches and cities are marking the fortieth anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. today.

The AP reports from Memphis:

On the 40th anniversary of his assassination, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was remembered Friday in the city where he died as a man who came to Memphis "to lead us to a better way."

Presidential candidates, civil rights leaders, labor activists and thousands of citizens were coming together to honor King for his devotion to racial equality and economic justice.

King was cut down on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel on April 4, 1968, while helping organize a strike by Memphis sanitation workers, then some of the poorest of the city's working poor.

Members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which represented the workers then and now, marched Friday from their downtown headquarters to the motel.

A line of several hundred people carrying umbrellas in a steady rain set off on the mile-long route.

"Dr. King was like Moses," said Leslie Moore, a 61-year-old sanitation worker who began working for the city in 1968. "God gave Moses the assignment to lead the children of Israel across the Red Sea. He sent Dr. King here to lead us to a better way."

Read the story here.

The American Prospect carries on essay by Kai Wright on the message of King and its words for today.

The Washington Post discusses King's legacy:

Forty years after King was gunned down by an assassin in Memphis, it is this sharper-edged figure who has come into focus again. To mark today's anniversary, several scholarly reports have been released charting the nation's uneven social and economic progress during the past 40 years. Some scholars and former King associates are using the occasion to zero in on the two issues -- war and poverty -- that were consuming him at the time of his death.

Both have particular resonance now: The United States is engaged in a war in Iraq that has grown increasingly unpopular, and the poor -- despite the concerns highlighted by Hurricane Katrina and the subprime mortgage crisis -- are as voiceless as they were in King's day, advocates contend.

"His challenge was much bigger than being nice," said Taylor Branch, author of a three-volume history, "America in the King Years." "It was even bigger than race. It was whether we take our national purpose seriously, which is the full promise of equal citizenship."

Video, photos and more at More Than An Icon.

Also the United Church of Christ is calling for a nationwide discussion on race according to Newsweek

The United Church of Christ, the parent denomination of Barack Obama's church, announced Thursday that it will begin a conversation on racial issues beginning next month in response to sermons by Obama's pastor that were critical of the U.S.

Leaders of Obama's church, Trinity United Church of Christ, meanwhile, asked reporters for respect, saying threats and a media onslaught are disrupting worship at the South Side church. The church has increased security in response to threatening telephone calls, letters and e-mails, they said.

At a news conference, the United Church of Christ's national leadership said the furor over comments by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright demonstrated the complexity of racial issues in the country and the need for churches nationwide to talk about them.

"The members of Trinity United Church of Christ are going through a very difficult time right now. The intersection of politics, religion and race has heightened our awareness of how easy it is for conversations about race to be anything but sacred," said the Rev. John Thomas, the denomination's president.

The Rev. Michael Kinnamon, general secretary of the National Council of Churches, echoed the call for a national discussion, beginning May 18. Kinnamon said he objects to seeing Trinity portrayed as an extremist sect, saying it and the UCC "are part of the wider Christian community."

The New York Times reports that youth in Iraq are becoming disillusioned by religion in the wake all the violence:

After almost five years of war, many young people in Iraq, exhausted by constant firsthand exposure to the violence of religious extremism, say they have grown disillusioned with religious leaders and skeptical of the faith that they preach.

In two months of interviews with 40 young people in five Iraqi cities, a pattern of disenchantment emerged, in which young Iraqis, both poor and middle class, blamed clerics for the violence and the restrictions that have narrowed their lives.

“I hate Islam and all the clerics because they limit our freedom every day and their instruction became heavy over us,” said Sara, a high school student in Basra. “Most of the girls in my high school hate that Islamic people control the authority because they don’t deserve to be rulers.”

Atheer, a 19-year-old from a poor, heavily Shiite neighborhood in southern Baghdad, said: “The religion men are liars. Young people don’t believe them. Guys my age are not interested in religion anymore.”

The shift in Iraq runs counter to trends of rising religious practice among young people across much of the Middle East, where religion has replaced nationalism as a unifying ideology.

The host of Public Radio International's Speaking of Faith found herself on the other side of the interviewer's mike recently, in a profile on PBS's Religion and Ethics Newsweekly. The show won a Peabody award this week, and the R&E piece took a closer look at what Krista Tippett allows might be "a ministry of listening rather than preaching":

ABERNETHY: Most of her interviews are remotes with guests in distant cities, and when she's doing them, alone in her studio, you can see the intensity of what she calls her "life of listening."

What Tippett and her producers create is spiritual and theological insight expressed in everyday language without doctrinal certainty.

Ms. TIPPETT: No one who is listening to the program is hearing someone else say, "This is the truth." But they are hearing people of integrity and wisdom say, "This is my truth. This is how I came to it. This is how I live with it," and that's listenable. You can disagree with a person's doctrine. You can't disagree with his or her experience.

Tippett, who has been an Episcopalian but considers herself in denominational limbo these days, talks about some of the things in her recent book, that shares its title with her radio program. Among the topics: depression, her divorce, conveying faith to her children:

ABERNETHY: And your divorce, along with the pain -- what were there lessons there?

Ms. TIPPETT: Divorce is a death, and it's a failure -- or that's how it feels. That's just another way in which life is not what we wish it to be, and we have to live gracefully with what it is. I'm quite proud of how my former husband and I now are friends and absolutely co-parents to our children.

ABERNETHY: Tippett's children are Aly, 14, and Sebastian, nine, and sometimes when she revisits St. John's Abbey she takes them with her. I asked her why.

Ms. TIPPETT: This experience of mystery that we talked about, I have that experience in the Abbey church here. It's a feeling. It's -- it's a transcendent experience. I want them to experience that, that mystery.

Tune in to the interview/profile here.

Minto, Alaska, is home to about 180 people. While it's situated less than 80 miles northwest of Fairbank as a bird flies, it takes nearly five hours to get there by car. As Christy McKerny of the Washington Post describes, accompanying the Rev. Bessie C. Titus on the drive to visit Minto's new worship center was a breathtaking experience:

On the way to Minto, we went over some particulars. Some 180 people live in the village, said Bessie. Most who live there are descendants of Athabaskan Indians. The elders speak Athabaskan as well as English.

The journey to Minto climbs through mountain passes, along snowy ridges, through marshes, and past stubbly fields of stunted pine trees. About two hours out of Fairbanks, you turn off the highway and head for the hills on a gravel road for 40 minutes. Along the way, men can be seen unloading dogs from a vented truck and hitching them to a sled. Occasionally, Bessie would point out a trailhead or a hot spring.

Rolling into town, we passed the cemetery where Bessie’s parents are buried, the air strip, log cabins, and then the new Worship Center.

The worship center was built to satisfy the needs of the village residents, many of whom attended both village churches—the Episcopal Church in the morning, and the Assembly of God church in the evening. In an accompanying video, one resident explains that they are not interested in denominational boundaries (owing partly, she says, to their lack of access to education), but rather their relationship with Jesus Christ. But when the Assembly of God minister left, the worship center became the solution.

You can read the article and see the accompanying video here.

Since the first Earth Day, April 22, 1970, Earth Day has been an annual event for people around the world to celebrate the earth and renew our commitment to building a safer, healthier and cleaner world for all of us. It is a wonderful opportunity to embrace all of God's creation, raise awareness and pray for "this fragile earth, our island home" (Eucharistic Prayer C, Book of Common Prayer).

There are many resources and websites to assist in the planning of your education offerings and worship celebrations on this day - click on resource for link:

Earth Day Network

Take the Ecological Footprint Quiz!

Green Stories from Episcopalians

Update on Greening Efforts around the Episcopal Church

Worship and Formation Resources

Sample Sermons

Congregational Greening Resources and Ideas

Millennium Development Goal #7 resources

Climate Change and the Church

Healing God's Creation

Lord of Creation: Celtic Spirituality

Lessons Plans from the NCCC Eco-Justice Network! The Poverty of Global Climate Change . .

Green Resolutions passed at General Convention over the past 30 years

Episcopal Environmental Conference in Seattle April 2008.

Letter from Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori to the U.S. Senate regarding climate change.

HT to Living In-Formation - a newsletter from Church Publishing. and the Episcopal Ecological Network.

A message from the leadership team of Episcopal Ecological Network (EpEN) follows:

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Former Prime Minister Tony Blair, a new convert to the Roman Catholic Church, gave his first major speech on religion earlier this week. Here is the Christianity Today report on the speech:

In his first major speech on religion, Tony Blair said last night that religion must be rescued from extremism and irrelevance and used as a force for good at a time of global turmoil.

Blair, who converted to Catholicism last year, made the call in a lecture on faith and globalisation at Westminster Cathedral, the first in 'The Cardinal’s Lectures’ series organised by Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor to examine faith and life in Britain.

“For religion to be a force for good, it must be rescued not simply from extremism, faith as a means of exclusion; but also from irrelevance, an interesting part of our history but not of our future," said Blair.

"Faith is reduced to a system of strange convictions and actions that, to some, can appear far removed from the necessities and anxieties of ordinary life. It is this face that gives militant secularism an easy target,” he added.

Blair declared his strong desire to “awaken the world’s conscience” to widespread poverty, illiteracy and poor health, and said that the Tony Blair Faith Foundation would set the Millennium Development Goals as one of its priority areas for engagement when it launches next month.

The foundation will bring together different faith organisations to foster friend