(I’m working on a piece about General Convention but it’s not ready to post yet. So in the meantime, here’s something for y’all to chew on.) The cause of the Roman Empire’s collapse has been variously attributed. Gibbons thought that it had to do in part with the empire’s adoption of Christianity. I just finished a book that argued it had to do with the fundamental need of the Roman economic model to constantly grow, […]
Swine Flu Update21 July 2009 The World Health Organization has recently announced that the new H1N1 strain of swine flu is “unstoppable” and that every country should vaccinate its citizens against the virus. This statement came as New Zealand researchers announced further that H1N1 has replaced seasonal influenza as the dominant strain during that country’s current wintertime flu season. Of significance, Sue Huang, head of New Zealand’s influenza center, said it’s the most contagious bug […]
I'm still processing what has happened at General Convention in Anaheim. I think I'll try to post something of a reflection at some point this week. Probably sooner than later. While I'm tired following Convention, I'm not as absolutely blown as I was following the conventions in 2003 and 2006. That's probably because there was so much less question about what was going to happen once we took the vote of D025 in the form […]
Warning: This post is not on the topic of what the Episcopal Church should do, or what the Anglican Communion should do, it’s what *I* personally intend to do on Monday and Tuesday… When I returned home from Convention in Columbus, I was emotionally drained. The intensity and the anguish felt by so many over the last few days of that Convention took a massive toll. When I got home, besides sleeping for a day […]
Those of you who know me, know that I’m not the sort of person who uses the word “prophesy” lightly. So pay attention when I tell you that we may have seen a prophet speaking to us in the halls of General Convention yesterday. And it had nothing to do with who held hands with who. Bishop Stephen Charleston explicitly asked God to grant him the mantle and voice of a prophet as he spoke […]
So now what? What’s going to happen now? Yesterday, to my surprise, the House of Bishops voted the way most of us expected them to vote going into General Convention and acted to begin a process that allows the Episcopal Church to respond to the context in which we are doing ministry. (To my surprise because I had heard from a number of bishops that they thought they would act to table the resolution that […]
So what exactly has happened here at Anaheim. Truthfully? No one is really completely sure. But some people appear certain. The Episcopal News Service had what some bishops have described as a very unfortunate headline on Monday that declared confidently that the Episcopal Church had decided to "open ordination to gay and lesbian Christians". (Or something to that effect… I believe the headline has been pulled and the story spiked.) I’m told that something close […]
Over the weekend, the work of the House of Deputies was interupted for 20 minutes when the President of the House invited a group of speakers from parts of the Anglican South to address the deputies. It was an unexpected event and Bonnie Anderson was pretty mysterious about what was going to happen when she proposed suspending the rules to allow our guests access to the floor of the House. Something like six visitors from […]
What happened yesterday in the House of Deputies? According to many, not much. According to some, full steam toward Anglican Schism. It depends who you read. A resolution was passed (D025) by wide margins in the House of Deputies that was clearly understood to be a compromise. It intends, according to the committee that wrote its final form, to do nothing more than state the truth of where we are and what are practice is […]
There’s one major change I noticed in the open committee discussion of B033 that happened yesterday on the floor of the House of Deputies. Only one of the 30 or so people who spoke even came close to arguing that same-sex relationships were fundamentaly wrong and even that person insisted on saying the behavior didn’t trump his love for his lesbian daughter. That’s different from the way the conversations were happening in 1997,2003 and 2006 […]
