Two Sunday school teachers meet to discuss God and faith from the Protestant and Catholic perspectives. Hilarity ensues.

Anne gives as good as she gets, and gets her message across.

Ostensibly, their meeting is to discuss Lamott's book, Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith.

We are celebrating our first anniversary today. We actually began operations in this incarnation on April 19, but we’ve decided that today is easier to remember, and probably represented the first day we had most of the bugs worked out and were getting a relatively clean read on our Web statistics.

We’d like to thank all of our visitors, especially those who make us a part of their daily routine. You make doing this work seem worthwhile.

As the Café’s creator, I’d also like to thanks our partners Episcopal Church in the Visual Arts and Trinity Television and New Media, without whom we’d be nothing more than words.

Thanks also to our terrific line-up of contributors, who recently won the Polly Bond Award for best Web writing from the Episcopal Communicators.

I owe my deepest thanks to the people who are elbows (and sometimes neck) deep in the works of the blog every day: Andrew Gerns (Mondays); Ann Fontaine (Tuesdays); John B. Chilton (Wednesdays); W. Nicholas Knisely (Fridays); Helen Thompson (Saturdays); Chuck Blanchard (Sundays) and Mel Ahlborn (art).

In our first year, we received about 1.36 million visits and 3.36 million page views. Our biggest sensation was an essay on a Japanese tourist begin kicked off a train for taking pictures, which drew nearly 60,000 visitors to the site in November—not quite double the 30,000 visitors (and 125,000 visits) per month we’ve been averaging since then. More people visit The Lead, our news blog, than any of our other offerings, but all of the blogs receive an average of at least 250 visits per day.

While people visit to keep up with the Anglican controversies and news of the Episcopal Church (and to read rip-snorting essays like this address by Marilyn McCord Adams to the Chicago Consultation), we’ve also had some off-beat hits like this April Fool's piece on the Episcopal Church being named the official denomination of Major League Baseball and Carol Barnwell’s interview with one of the students portrayed in Denzel Washington’s recent movie The Great Debaters.

Now comes the part where we ask for money.

The Diocese of Washington provided what might be called our start-up capital, but we no longer draw on its budget. As we’d like to redesign the home page of the Café and several of the blog pages (so that all of features and recent postings are visible at a glance) and as we’d like to throw you all a party at General Convention in 2009, we could use a little financial help.

Please consider making a donation to the 2008 Bishop’s Appeal, and marking your contribution “Episcopal Café.” You can do the job here.

Thanks again. Now back to the news.

Cheers,
Jim Naughton

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori has written to the Church in advance of Pentecost. The letter is available on Episcope. This passage may stir some discussion among those who parse her every utterance for evidence of heresy.

Jesus is Lord. In the same sense that early Christians proclaimed that Jesus, not Caesar, is Lord, remember that no one else - not any hierarch, not any ecclesiastical official, not any one of you - is Lord. We belong to God, whom we know in Jesus, and there is no other place where we find the ground of our identity.

We haven't had a chance to keep up with the controversy surrounding the National Day of Prayer, but Frederick Clarkson of the blog Talk2Action has. He writes:

The congressionally authorized event is held annually, and the franchise to host official, and often controversial Day- related events is held by Shirley Dobson, wife of James. The official National Day of Prayer Taskforce operates out of the HQ of Focus on the Family in Colorado Springs. The legislation authorizing also reveals the role of the secretive network known as The Family, in shaping our national culture and political conversation, as detailed in the forthcoming book by Jeff Sharlet, who gave me permission to reveal some important facts from the manuscript of The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power.

Have a look.

Gregg Zoroya of USA TODAY writes:

High-ranking Shiite and Sunni leaders are preparing to issue a religious decree condemning suicide bombings and other forms of violence, according to an Anglican minister who has led efforts to bring the two Muslim sects closer.

The draft decree, also called a fatwa, cites Quranic verses and says, "The prophet Mohammed prevents the spilling of blood, Muslim against Muslim, and thus suicide bombings are totally prohibited," the Rev. Canon Andrew White said during a dinner Monday with Pentagon officials. The draft calls on Iraqis "to reject and forsake all violence, forsake all killing and provocation," White said.

"What is new is that this will be a fatwa from Shiite and Sunni," White said in an interview. "It's not going to solve all of our problems, but it's the beginning of the process toward the reduction of violence."

From the Fort Worth Star Telegram:

Delegates at the United Methodist Church's General Conference voted Wednesday to adhere to the church's position that marriage should not include same-sex unions and that homosexual acts are not compatible with Christian teaching.

Those guidelines are included in church's Social Principles, which do not have the force of church law but are to instruct the denomination's 11 million members. The nearly 1,000 delegates at the international conference at the Fort Worth Convention Center are struggling with social issues at the conference that ends Friday.

While affirming the existing guidelines about sexuality, delegates also approved a resolution Wednesday opposing homophobia.

WEDNESDAY'S VOTES

Approved, 517-416, keeping the statement that the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching.

Rejected, 574-298, a measure that would have changed the church's definition of marriage to include same-sex unions.

Approved, 544-365, a resolution opposing homophobia and discrimination against lesbians or gays.

Read it here.

Mike Croghan, the Rude Armchair Theologian, examines a day in the life of The Lead (yesterday as it happens) and asks some pertinent quesitons about the usefulness of hierarchy. Have a look.

Boating season is getting under way in the northern United States, and priests on Lake Erie's Ohio shoreline have wisely found a way to make themselves present in marking this rite of spring. There are few things that knit congergation and community together better than shared rituals, as these two accounts from Ohio make clear.

The Mad Priest presents a report from the UK launch party of Bishop Gene Robinson's new book, In the Eye of the Storm.

Correspondent Mary Clara writes of Robinson:

Looking ahead to the Conference itself, he does plan to be there in the public areas surrounding the meetings and available for conversation. He reported that bishops of The Episcopal Church plan to host two evening events at which other bishops and their spouses will be invited to come and meet him. He emphasized the importance of opportunities of this kind to reach out to the great numbers of people in the broad middle, who do not want to exclude, judge or harm those who are different, but who, perhaps because they haven’t had direct experience of LGBT people living normal lives, are “not yet ready to celebrate us”.

Paul Bagshaw of the Modern Churchpeople's Union blog Only Connect has created a flow chart of the disciplinary process contained in the appendix of the St. Andrew's Draft of the proposed Anglican Covenant. It puts one in mind of Dilbert.

The Dallas Voice reports:

Speaking at the predominantly gay parish that was the site of her first official visit to Dallas, the leader of the Episcopal Church said Monday, April 28 that she expects the denomination to sanction same-sex union ceremonies “in our lifetimes.”

Katharine Jefferts Schori, presiding bishop of the U.S. branch of the 80-million-member worldwide Anglican Communion, also said she believes openly gay bishop Gene Robinson’s exclusion from the upcoming Lambeth Conference will only serve to increase his impact on the event.

And Jefferts Schori assured supporters from Fort Worth that the church hasn’t forgotten them even though their diocese took steps last fall toward leaving the denomination as a result of a dispute about the role of gays and women.
...
“A number have people have asked me, ‘How did you decide to come here?’” said Jefferts Schori, who was invited by members of the congregation to bless the garden. “Well, somebody asked, and that’s really all it takes — that and the consent of your bishop here in Dallas.”

Alan Jones, the Dean of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, has written a commentary on the controversy surrounding the statements of The Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright and those of his parishioner, Barack Obama about him.

In the op-ed piece published in the San Francisco Chronicle, Dean Jones writes that the underlying reason for the nation's reaction to the controversy is due to our inability to place the events into historical context:

"As a people, we are in great danger because of our poor short-term memories; our state of perpetual amnesia puts our fragile democracy at risk. Imagine, for example, what it was like for the parents and grandparents of Rev. Wright growing up in the 1920s. The worry then, among some white 'intellectuals,' was why America was growing stupid! There must, they thought, be a 'scientific' explanation.

Pseudo-scientific racism became very popular. Why were we so stupid as a country? Immigration, of course! Despite the evidence that the longer immigrants were in the United States, the better they performed on IQ tests, the aim of Princeton psychologist C.C. Brigham's 'A Study of American Intelligence' was to show that the southern and eastern peoples of Europe, and Negroes, were of inferior intelligence.

[...] In the late 1980s, American Enterprise Institute Fellow Ben Wattenberg created a firestorm with his book, 'The Birth Dearth,' which forecast the dilution - even destruction - of Western culture by comparatively greater birth rates among non-white peoples of the world. Wattenberg, reflecting fear and disdain, wrote, 'Will we worship cows? ... Will the world backslide?'

It would be a great exercise in patriotism to place the Rev. Wright's possibly-intemperate remarks in the context of history. Obama was right to comment on his pastor's 'memories of humiliation and doubt and fear.'

It's hard to imagine now that many TV commentators or journalists have read any history. We don't expect it of political strategists. It's their job to exploit our ignorance, but journalists have no excuse. We need to know our history because the present is what the past is doing now."

Read the full op-ed piece here.

Helping returning veterans reenter civilian life has always been a challenge. It's particularly so for veterans (and their families) these days, who might see might see multiple deployments and repeated cycles of immersion into battle and then return home for training and re-equipping.

A congregation at St. Timothy's Episcopal Church in Cincinnati is becoming involved in a ministry called "B.O.O.T.S." or the Benevolent Order of Those Serving, as a way of supporting veterans making the transition from battle to peace.

According to an article in

"'You get so used to fear and leading troops,' said Jeffcott, who is a Gunner's Mate 2nd Class. '(Troops) are expected immediately to be the way they were before.'

Jeffcott said he was struggling with returning from war and turned to Rev. Roger Greene of St. Timothy's for help.

Greene said when Jeffcott came to him last summer, he discovered that there was no coordinated effort for reintegration.

'In a situation where people have very different perspectives on this war, this was something they could do together,' Greene said. 'Everyone wants to respond to the things these people are going through, whether they agree with the (war) effort or not.'

Both Greene and Jeffcott agree the support from the parish for this ministry was extraordinary. More than 50 members immediately signed up to help, including veterans from the Vietnam and Korean wars.

The biggest concern for troops when they are deployed is their families, Jeffcott said. When he left for Iraq in August 2006, his wife, Julie, was left to care for a teenage son and triplets.

[...]'We try to concentrate on keeping the family structure strong to ease reintegration,' Jeffcott said.

The ministry also sends phone cards to the troops and has helped soldiers make free videograms.

Rev. Greene said the ministry is willing to help 'anyone, anywhere, anytime,' and the challenge is making the services known."

The article contains additional information about how the congregation was able to use their program to support not only troops from the area, but even their own parishioners as they were deployed.

Read the full article here.

The Catholic News Service reports on calls by Roman Catholic bishops that the Church must respond to expected continued rise in the price of basic food commodities.

According to the article:

"Already this year, demonstrations linked to spiraling food prices have struck more than a dozen countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Protests forced Haitian Prime Minister Jacques-Edouard Alexis out of office April 12, and demonstrators have been killed in Cameroon, Peru and Mozambique.

The price increases are fueled by a variety of factors that 'are all coming together at once,' said Lisa Kuennen, director of the public resource group at Catholic Relief Services, the U.S. bishops' international relief and development agency.

[...]Price increases hit poor countries -- and their poorest citizens -- hardest. "

In response:

After violent protests in Haiti in early April, the country's Catholic bishops urged the government to implement both emergency and long-term policies to tackle hunger. In a statement issued April 12, the Haitian bishops' conference condemned the violence that began with protests in the southern city of Les Cayes and left at least five people dead.

Although "the right to demonstrate is sacred," the statement said, "this does not authorize anyone to take lives or attack property belonging to others."

In their statement, the bishops warned that peaceful demonstrations should not be infiltrated by "agitators and interested manipulators." Many Haitian analysts had suggested that the demonstrations over high food prices had been hijacked by politicians trying to turn the unrest to their political advantage.

The article ends with a call for the development of long-term policies in areas such as land reform, export controls and monetary policy changes that together are hoped to be able to "keep large numbers of people from slipping back into hunger and poverty".

Read the full article here.

Anglican Communion News has the text of a statement released by the Anglican "Church of the Province of West Africa on the state of the Anglican Communion". The statement reiterates the Province's objections to the actions being taken by other Anglican Provinces in ordaining partnered gays and lesbians and in allowing the blessing of the unions. But the statement is notable for what it does not say.

Rather than insist on discipline for the Provinces described in the statement, the call is rather that all parties "tread very cautiously" in these moments. Additionally the statement closes by calling all parties to refrain from intemperate "name-calling", pointing out that such behavior is only making things more difficult.

It's probably also noteworthy that while the Primate of West Africa was among those who refused to take communion with the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in Dar es Salaam, this statement does not describe the Province as being out of communion with the Provinces with whom it is in disagreement.

The full statement follows:

Read more »

A group of Episcopalians and their friends have banded together to raise money for the Millennium Development Goals. A core of a dozen bikers riding across Iowa, joined by friends along the way, will be collecting money from their sponsors for each mile peddled.

They're supporting the Waters of Hope.

A report in the Hawk Eye gives more details:

"The Waters of Hope's concept of success includes raising $150,000 for clean water projects such as chlorinators and deep water wells for the people of Swaziland and the Sudan in Africa.

[...]Iowa Episcopal Bishop Alan Scarfe will hold a service and blessing at 8:30 a.m. today at St. John's before seeing the riders off at 9 a.m., said organizer the Rev. Mitchell Smith of the Trinity Episcopal Church in Waterloo.

The cyclists will average about 100 miles a day. Each evening they will stop at a different Episcopal church to talk about their mission at a 6:30 p.m. service at the host church."

The overall efforts goal is to raise $150,000 by the end of the event.

Read the full article here.

You can follow along at the Waters of Hope website here. Great pictures from Sudan, of the pedaling, and ways for you to donate.

We are linking to this report in the increasingly tendentious Living Church to correct the mistaken impression it attempts to create.

George Conger writes that Gene Robinson has not been banned from preaching in England. This is technically correct. Williams doesn't have the authority to ban Robinson. However, Robinson told Williams several years ago that he would not preach without Williams' permission. Williams did not grant it. And in an email he sent to Robinson earlier this week he said that he did not think that "any extenstion" of the previous arrangement "in terms of permissions" would be appropriate because any public celebration "or even a sermon" would create controversy for Williams and whichever bishops gave Robinson permission to preach.

We don't typically promote local events, but this one seems particularly cool. For three nights beginning on May 9 the south and west faces of Washington National Catheral will be lit in ways that require a visit to the Web site to appreciate.

In other matters we might have missed during this incredibly busy month of news from various faith channels, former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani apparently caused quite a ruckus last month by taking communion at a papal mass held at St. Patrick's Cathedral. Seems he and Cardinal Edward Egan had a "tacit understanding" that Giuliani wouldn't take mass because of his support of abortion rights, according to an RNS story picked up at the Pew Forum. When it happened, Reuters ran the story that it was his divorced-and-remarried status that barred him from receiving communion, and tabloids ran rather amok with the report.

But Egan seems to be taking the matter very seriously. The RNS report published at Pew notes his official response, earlier this week, as well as a spokesperson-issued response from Giuliani that highlights the tension between faith-corporate and faith-personal that exists for many people of faith:

Egan said Monday (April 28) that he had a tacit agreement with Giuliani that "he was not to receive the Eucharist because of his well-known support of abortion."

"I deeply regret that Mr. Giuliani received the Eucharist during the papal visit here in New York, and I will be seeking a meeting with him to insist that he abide by our understanding."

Sunny Mindel, a spokeswoman for Giuliani, told The New York Times that Giuliani considers his faith "a deeply personal matter and should remain confidential."

The RNS report is here.

Bishop Gene Robinson gets another spotlight this week from PBS's Religion and Ethics Newsweekly, talking about his upcoming civil union and his ongoing safety concerns. Civil unions became legal in New Hampshire as of Jan. 1, and for Robinson, this allows him and his longtime partner Mark Andrews to enjoy "some 400 of the protections that out of 1,100 that are accorded to heterosexual couples," as he says in the interview with R&EN's Kim Lawton.

Part of the reason for the June ceremony, he adds, is to ensure security for their relationship prior to his going to England during the Lambeth Conference. But, he says, he's not trying to be in anyone's face about it.

In addition, Robinson says that while he's upset that he has not been invited to the conference, he is now able to be a more vocal advocate for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people "at sessions outside the conference," according to the article. He certainly seems aware that people expect him to act in this capacity, but notes that he has surprises for people on either side of the aisle:

Bishop ROBINSON: I think I go with a greater sense of focus on gay and lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people around the world. I think they are looking to me to represent them and be their voice in some way. I'm sure that's not what the Archbishop of Canterbury was hoping for, and I suspect he would prefer me not to come at all.

LAWTON: U.S. bishops are planning two unofficial meetings where international bishops can meet Robinson.

Bishop ROBINSON: I know there are so many bishops around the world who have never had the opportunity to sit and talk with someone who is both openly gay and Christian.

LAWTON: Robinson says he's discouraged by the divisions and what he sees as a lack of listening across the Communion. But in his new book, IN THE EYE OF THE STORM, he writes of the spiritual lessons he has learned amid the controversy.

Bishop ROBINSON: I don't remember a time in my life when God seemed any more present, almost palpably close. Prayer has almost seemed redundant to me because God has seemed so close during all of this. It will surprise both conservatives and liberals how orthodox I am.

Read the entire transcript -- or even better, watch the video -- here.

Renowned radio host Diane Rehm found herself on the other side of the interviewing mike last week at the National Cathedral's Sunday Forum. Rehm, an Episcopalian, related that her faith grew stronger and deeper while she was undergoing treatment for spasmodic dysphonia, the condition which makes it difficult for her to speak. In spite of her condition, Rehm has hosted a call-in radio show at Washington's talk-oriented public radio station, WAMU, for more than a quarter century.

During her conversation with Cathedral Dean Samuel T. Lloyd III, she described how a good interview is nothing without good listening, and how listening is a multi-sense process that one must finely tune:

“My focus is on listening, and watching, interpreting, being led by how the conversation goes, being led by callers, being led by the spirit in the room, being led by body language of that individual, and learning to listen to each and every aspect of that,” she says. “Someday—someday—I hope to write a book on what it is to listen.”

“Listening is really about hospitality, isn’t it?” Lloyd asks. “It’s creating a space into which someone else steps.” Rehm tells of the emotional hardships of her childhood and youth, and then says:

“One of the ways I learned to listen—I was punished a great deal, and my bedroom was upstairs above the living room. We had constant visitors, because my dad’s family was always here. And when I was by myself, up in my room, I would get down on the floor and put my ear to the floor so I could hear everything. I knew exactly what was going on in that room, and I think that was part of learning to listen.”

An MP3 and a downloadable video of the event are both here.

Two things that the church gets right, says Guardian columnist Simon Jenkins over at Comment Is Free, are architecture and unofficial welfare. Describing the apparently magnificent restoration of St. Martin-in-the-Fields at Trafalgar Square, Jenkins provides a singular portrait of the architectural anomaly of steeple-upon-portico that became, in the 18th century, the template for many a church to come. But more than that, he adds, are the features that are at once just as permanent and, as individuals, totally transient:

The church is resplendent and the crypt still a refuge for those who have faltered in the battle for urban survival. Yesterday the homeless, the addicted and the miserable were still dozing on the seats among the tourists.

Critics of the Church of England should give credit where it is due. Its house journal, the Church Times, may be filled with feuding bishops, gay rights, embryo conflicts and health-and-safety woes. But there are some things the church does well. One is architecture and the other is unofficial welfare.

Across Britain's cities historic neighbourhoods are being demolished and civic institutions fleeing to the suburbs, to be replaced by shopping malls. The police station is gone, the primary school closed, the youth club defunct, the library and post office shut, their staffs unionised into apathy or regulated beyond financial viability. Yet the old church plods on. The sooty spire soars over the wilderness while round its base fusses the exhausted vicar.

...

The network of rebuilt crypts beneath the church is a warren of activity. Here are a clinic, a chapel and even a small concert hall. The homeless and other lost souls find beds, showers, laundry, counselling and comfort. They find a surgery, pedicurist and help with alcoholism and mental illness. Given the proximity to Chinatown these services are also available in Chinese. St Martin's offers a one-stop urban welfare state, at an annual cost of £4m.

Jenkins is no big fan of the Church of England, mind. But he's happy to give credit where he sees it fit. You can read the whole thing, including the critical bits and the comments on what Jesus would have done with the £36m it cost to refurbish St. Martin-in-the-Fields in the first place, here.

It's common enough that Christian universities hire Christian faculty, according to a front page article in this week's Chronicle of Higher Education. Some places even require that one sign off on a "statement of faith" that includes doctrinal declarations about such things as Original Sin or the inerrancy of Scripture. But one Presbyterian university, Whitworth, in Spokane, Wash., tries to find a balance between the extremes of being a nominally Christian institution and dictating faith to its faculty, and requires that applicants write their own statement of faith as part of the application process.

One applicant to Whitworth University is Jennifer Stafford Brown, who talks about her experiences teaching at secular university and why she's attracted to Whitworth:

In Ms. Brown's experience, at secular colleges "there's a suspicion of people who are Christian." And that gave her pause in the classroom. If, for example, she happened to mention to students her plans to go to church that Sunday, she would be sure to toss in an explanation about her "culture" or how she was raised. "You learn to tiptoe around the subject," she says.

Yet Ms. Brown, a scholar of French literature, felt she couldn't teach her field without discussing religion. "You can't understand the literature of the Middle Ages without understanding faith intellectually," she says. "The church governed everything in the Middle Ages. Unless you can see that point of view, you can't understand why someone would go on a crusade or write a poem about their faith." Ms. Brown expects to be more able to integrate discussion of religion into her lectures at Whitworth.

The faith statement is actually about inclusivity and diversity, say university officials. Faculty range the spectrum from liberal to conservative and from mainline to evangelical. The statement also allows them to hire people who genuinely want to work there, they say. But it's not always an easy fit: some folks aren't as comfortable talking about their faith. Others are clearly not Christians, and still others think Whitworth isn't Christian enough.

Brown, however, found it a good fit, and will begin teaching at Whitworth in the fall. Her faith statement "began with a quote from C.S. Lewis and went on to discuss the Anglican/Episcopalian theology of the 'three-legged stool' of faith: Scripture, reason, and tradition":

As she moved through the hiring process, Ms. Brown was surprised at how many people had read her statement — the search committee, the French department, the dean, the president — and how often it came up. "It's clearly very important to them," she says.

Those discussions not only helped Whitworth evaluate Ms. Brown, but they also helped her determine whether or not she would fit in there. In particular, Ms. Brown says, she wanted to be sure the institution didn't encourage homophobia or discourage feminism. In the end, she was persuaded on both counts.

You can read the article, for as long as it as available free, here.

Signs are pointing to increasing dissent among conservative Christian leaders with regard to their involvement in politics. Recently we've seen acknowledgment of climate change from Southern Baptist leaders, and the growing influence of Sojourners within the faith-meets-politics landscape. Now, the Associated Press tells us, a group of conservative christian leaders are working on a "starkly self-critical document saying the movement has become too political and has diminished the Gospel through its approach to the culture wars":

The statement, called "An Evangelical Manifesto," condemns Christians on the right and left for "using faith" to express political views without regard to the truth of the Bible, according to a draft of the document obtained Friday by The Associated Press.

"That way faith loses its independence, Christians become `useful idiots' for one political party or another, and the Christian faith becomes an ideology," according to the draft.

The declaration, scheduled to be released Wednesday in Washington, encourages Christians to be politically engaged and uphold teachings such as traditional marriage. But the drafters say evangelicals have often expressed "truth without love," helping create a backlash against religion during a "generation of culture warring."

"All too often we have attacked the evils and injustices of others," they wrote, "while we have condoned our own sins." They argue, "we must reform our own behavior."

The document is the latest chapter in the debate among conservative Christians about their role in public life. Most veteran leaders believe the focus should remain on abortion and marriage, while other evangelicals - especially in the younger generation - are pushing for a broader agenda. The manifesto sides with those seeking a wide-range of concerns beyond "single-issue politics."

There's a nice piece on the newly Right Reverend Stephen Taylor Lane, who was consecrated the ninth bishop of Maine today, in this morning's Bangor Daily News, who caught up with him at a press conference yesterday. He will be bishop coadjutor of the diocese until Bishop Knudsen retires. From the write-up:

Lane said ... that he already has put 2,300 miles on the "bishopmobile" and has been Down East to Machias. He plans to continue his travels this summer as he gets to know the state and its people in a position Lane admitted he was not sure he was ready for a year ago.

"I’ve always felt powerfully called to be a minister of the gospel and to be an agent of transformation in the world," he said. "But I was pretty happy and pretty settled where I was, doing my work until I got challenged [at a retreat]. I made a commitment at that retreat to myself and to God to be open to a new call and very shortly thereafter things came from the diocese of Maine."

Lane was overwhelmingly elected bishop on Oct. 26 at the diocesan convention in Bangor. He began working at the diocesan office in Portland on April 1.

"I think for me the struggle has been being open to hearing the call," he said Friday. "Not having my mind already made up about what I thought I was supposed to be doing, and [because I was] being open, here we are in a wonderful new adventure with wonderful people in a wonderful state."

Lane said that his experience with small congregations — a membership of fewer than 150 — in New York and his administrative skills fit well with what the Maine diocese needs at this time in its history. He said what many small churches need is a change in attitude so that they can look outward and discern what their mission is in the community rather than worrying about what kind of shape the church building is in.

From here.

Mak Galli has a very interesting essay in Christianity Today about the increasing relevance of traditional liturgy to many evangelicals:

We've recently featured in CT's pages a story about evangelicals who are attracted to liturgical worship, but in the context of American youth culture, many wonder why. The worship leaders wear medieval robes and guide the congregation through a ritual that is anything but spontaneous; they lead music that is hundreds of years old; they say prayers that are scripted and formal; the homily is based on a 2,000-year-old book; and the high point of the service is taken up with eating the flesh and drinking the blood of a Rabbi executed in Israel when it was under Roman occupation. It doesn't sound relevant.

Yet many evangelicals are attracted to liturgical worship, and as one of those evangelicals, I'd like to explain what the attraction is for me, and perhaps for many others. A closer look suggests that something more profound and paradoxical is going on in liturgy than the search for contemporary relevance. "The liturgy begins … as a real separation from the world," writes Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann. He continues by saying that in the attempt to "make Christianity understandable to this mythical 'modern' man on the street," we have forgotten this necessary separation.

It is precisely the point of the liturgy to take people out of their worlds and usher them into a strange, new world—to show them that, despite appearances, the last thing in the world they need is more of the world out of which they've come. The world the liturgy reveals does not seem relevant at first glance, but it turns out that the world it reveals is more real than the one we inhabit day by day.

. . .

I thank God for the liturgy. The liturgy does not target any age or cultural subgroup. It does not even target this century. (It does not imagine, as we moderns and postmoderns are tempted to do, that this is the best of all possible ages, the most significant era of history.) Instead, the liturgy draws us into worship that transcends our time and place. Its earliest forms took shape in ancient Israel, and its subsequent development occurred in a variety of cultures and subcultures—Greco-Roman, North African, German, Frankish, Anglo-Saxon, and so on. It has been prayed meaningfully by bakers, housewives, tailors, teachers, philosophers, priests, monks, kings, and slaves. As such, it has not been shaped to meet a particular group's needs. It seeks only to enable people—people in general—to see God.

Read it all here.

Over at the Catholic group blog Vox Nova, M.Z. Forrest is trying to compile a list of great Catholic fictional literature, which he defines to include "Catholic, Orthodox, and high Anglican authors." To get the discussion going, his initial list includes four authors, one of whom was an Anglican:

Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, Brothers Karamazov

C.S. Lewis, Chronicles of Narnia

J.R.R. Tolkein, Lord of the Rings

Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, War and Peace

There is now a lively discussion on the blog about what else belongs on the list--and why it qualifies as Catholic. You can join the discussion here, but be sure to let us know here what else you think belongs on ths list.

Michael Powell provides a useful tutorial on black liberation theology in today's New York Times:

As a young, black and decidedly liberal theologian, James H. Cone saw his faith imperiled.

“Christianity was seen as the white man’s religion,” he said. “I wanted to say: ‘No! The Christian Gospel is not the white man’s religion. It is a religion of liberation, a religion that says God created all people to be free.’ But I realized that for black people to be free, they must first love their blackness.”

Dr. Cone, a founding father of black liberation theology, allowed himself a chuckle. “You might say we took our Christianity from Martin and our emphasis on blackness from Malcolm,” he said.

Black liberation theology was, in a sense, a brilliant flanking maneuver. For a black audience, its theology spoke to the centrality of the slave and segregation experience, arguing that God had a special place in his heart for the black oppressed. These theologians held that liberation should come on earth rather than in the hereafter, and demanded that black pastors speak as prophetic militants, critiquing the nation’s white-run social structures.

Black liberation theology “gives special privilege to the oppressed,” said Gary Dorrien, a professor of social ethics at Union Theological Seminary in New York. “God is seen as a partisan, liberating force who gives special privilege to the poorest.”

. . .

“The black church has always existed along a continuum, from a focus on healing to a focus on liberation,” noted Dwight N. Hopkins, a professor of theology at the University of Chicago Divinity School. “The liberationists emphasize this earth and the more fundamentalist emphasize the resurrection and the life after.”

Language, too, has defined the black church from slavery to liberation theology. Pastors, whether prophetic or fundamentalist, drew unambiguous inspiration from the diamond-hard words of the Old Testament, in which little store was placed in talk of man’s innate goodness. God might love, but He was a deity of forbidding judgments and punishments.

“The Old Testament God is a God who addresses nations, and judges nations and holds them to account,” Professor Noel said. “The prophets are concerned about social sin and God judges nations for their unrighteousness.”

Nor can black liberation theology be divorced from its historical moment. Throughout the 1950s, black church leaders like Dr. King, often steeped in white liberal Protestantism, led the fight for civil rights. But as the struggle turned violent, as black leaders perished and riots swept American cities and revolutions upended third world nations, black religious leaders sought new answers.

Even as Dr. Cone and others such as the Rev. William A. Jones at Bethany Baptist in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, crafted a theology of black liberation, Catholic theologians in Central and South America crafted their own liberation theology, arguing that God placed the impoverished peasants closest to his heart.

There is little evidence that one liberationist talked to another; rather, these were cornstalks rising in a fertile and revolutionary field. “These were remarkable similar arguments, that oppressed people have their own way of hearing the Gospel,” said Dr. Dorrien of the Union Theological Seminary.

Read it all here.

This past week featured Carrier, a ten hour PBS miniseries that followed the men and women aboard the U.S.S. Nimitz during a cruise to the Persian Gulf in 2005. It was well worth watching. Fortunately, if you missed any episode, you can still watch entire episodes on the PBS website here.

Of particular interest to readers of The Lead is Episode 8, ("True Believers"), which focused on faith onboard the carrier:

This episode explores the many expressions of faith onboard the USS Nimitz: faith in self, faith in one’s shipmates, faith in the mission of the ship and the president’s call to arms. The major religious groups on board are Catholic and Protestant, but there also is a coven of Wiccans, as well as a Pentecostal group whose newest member is challenged by the duality of his beliefs and the temptations of liberty as the ship drops anchor in Perth, Australia.

(This editor was particularly fascinated by the coven of Wiccans on board. When I was up for Senate confirmation as General Counsel of the Army, Senator Strom Thurman indicated that he might hold up my nomination unless the Army ceased allowing a coven of Wiccans at Ft. Hood. Fortunately, the good Senator backed off, I was confrmed, and the First Amendment rights of the Wiccan soldiers at Fort Hood were respected).

N.T. Wright, the Bishop of Durham, has written a new book, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, that is raising anew a debate in evangelical circles about the public nature of faith. Christianity Today summarizes the discussion:

As with his other works, Wright has encouraged his many fans on both sides of the Atlantic even as he has provoked some critics. Wright's position as a leader in the Church of England exposes him to jabs from all sides. But this role also makes him quite influential. He wants to hold out the gospel for a largely post-Christian United Kingdom, in part by refuting the faulty scholarship of biblical critics. But he also wants to challenge Christians to see the gospel in a new way. Thus, he takes issue with Luther's view on justification by faith alone. He also worries that many Christians have unbiblically privatized the gospel, stripping the Good News of its public imperative.

This last point has renewed a vigorous theological debate. Wright argues in Surprised By Hope that the "mission of the church is nothing more or less than the outworking, in the power of the Spirit, of Jesus' bodily resurrection. It is the anticipation of the time when God will fill the earth with his glory, transform the old heavens and earth into the new, and raise his children from the dead to populate and rule over the redeemed world he has made."

Echoing the long-standing concerns of evangelical leaders such as John Stott, Wright goes on to explain that Christians must never choose between saving souls and doing good works.

"Thus the church that takes sacred space seriously (not as a retreat from the world but as a bridgehead into it) will go straight from worshiping in the sanctuary to debating in the council chamber; to discussing matters of town planning, of harmonizing and humanizing beauty in architecture, green spaces, and road traffic schemes; and to environmental work, creative and healthy farming methods, and proper use of resources," he writes.

Given the distain that many conservatives seem to have for the Episcopal Church's focus on the Millennium Development Goals, the Bishop has shocked many of his admirers with the issue he thinks should be the focus for Christians:

Wright says the "number one moral issue of our day" is relieving Third World debt.

"I've studied the problem of global debt quite intensively," Wright told blogger Trevin Wax. "In fact, I've read probably more books about contemporary economics recently than I have contemporary biblical studies. Curiously, I find myself drawn into that world, and it's quite likely that I'm getting a lot of things wrong."
Idaho pastor and blogger

Douglas Wilson sure thinks so. He believes relieving Third World debt could only end in "horrific humanitarian disaster" or "resurgent neo-colonialism." In typically pointed fashion, he says Wright is inadvertently "insisting on the humanitarian disaster option … in the name of Jesus." In response, Wright says he is calling for mercy, not a complicated debate over the effect of debt on national economies.

In his talk two weeks ago at the Together for the Gospel conference, pastor Mark Dever also criticized Wright. Dever's lecture, "Exercises in Unbiblical Theology," (mp3) became the meeting's hot topic. Unlike Wilson, Dever did not engage Wright's politics. In fact, he wondered whether church leaders should enter such discussions at all.

"As I read the New Testament, I do not see any example of the church understanding its gospel or its mission to be the direct shaping of the laws of the land or the improving of its structures," said Dever, senior pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C. "Certainly, the apostle Paul never tells the church to spend its time explicitly instructing the Roman emperor or shaping the pagans' view of culture."

Read it all here.

Reuters reports that Pope Benedict XIV and Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, are set to meet today.

Pope Benedict is expected to meet the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams on Monday in only the second official meeting between the two religious leaders, a Vatican source said on Sunday.

The meeting comes less than two months after the Vatican's top officials for relations with Islam criticised Williams as mistaken and naive for suggesting that some aspects of Sharia law in Britain were unavoidable.

The spiritual leader for the world's 77 million Anglicans, Williams -- who sparked a political storm with the Sharia comments -- last held talks with the Pope in November 2006.

Ties between the two churches have been strained over the past decade over the issue of women priests and homosexual bishops in the Anglican Church, which both leaders have acknowledged as obstacles to unity.

Read it here.