If you can't run the race, change the rules.

Just when you thought it was safe, the Anglican Wars pop up again. The usual suspects have come with a new scheme designed to force an outcome of their own liking.

The Episcopal Cafe reports:

Mouneer Anis, Primate of Egypt has resigned from the Joint Standing Committee of the Primates Meeting and the Anglican Consultative Council, and urged others to do the same.

His resignation coincides with the release of a typically verbose missive from the Anglican Communion Institute in which the four guys with a Web site urge the following:

But since there is no body currently recognized, either by the Instruments or the Churches of the Communion, as authorized to exercise the responsibilities of the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion in coordinating the implementation of the Covenant, we think it is necessary and appropriate for the covenanting Churches themselves to fulfill this task initially by convening a provisional committee drawn from the Primates and ACC representatives of Churches that adopt the Covenant to coordinate the implementation of the Covenant within the Churches and dioceses wishing to participate.

...Many Episcopalians have been critical of the Covenant, but they've never advocated anything as radical as what Anis and the ACI have called for tonight.

On reading this: I wrote this comment on The Lead:

From the very beginning, the ACI and their like-minded friends have operated this way. If you cannot get what you want from the structure you are in, create a new one and drive around it.

Having failed to get their way through the General Convention, they declare that the Episcopal Church is somehow beholden to the entire Anglican Communion. They say this, rewriting history as they go, even though the first bishops of the first Lambeth Conferences specifically warned against such a notion.

Then when the Anglican Consultative Council was insufficiently punitive, they get the Primates Council to assume authority it was never granted.

They take a "report" (called Windsor) and turn it into a blue print for a re-design of the Anglican Communion with the emphasis on punishment and enforcement.

When one of their parishes or dioceses don't like the decisions of their Province, they convince other Primates from other jurisdictions to intervene calling it a rescue mission, even as those same Primates would never allow such a thing on their own turf.

They encourage the creation of an alternative province and when it becomes clear that it will not (and cannot) take over the Anglican franchise in the US, they abandon it.

And now that the Anglican Covenant, which they themselves clamored for and rammed through processes that they themselves subverted, is going to have to be vetted and approved by the very councils and synods that they have driven around, they declare the process broken and propose an entirely new structure and process more to their liking.

Every time they have reached a constitutional or legislative impasse, their solution is to create a new structure tailor-made to assure the outcome they want. Now even the distorted, biased, and bloated processes of their own design cannot get the job done. Once more they want to change the rules to get a result they can rely on.

The Covenant is a solution in search of a problem. It is a structural and political solution to a theological problem. As such, the more we try to make it work the more artificial it becomes.

The Covenant is a failure because it is a fake solution to a real problem. It claims to be about unity and common life, when it is all about (despite the protestations of Archbishop Williams on YouTube) punishment and exclusion. The only outcome the ACI, Annis and the rest want is punishment and ultimate exclusion of the Episcopal Church, the Anglican Church of Canada and anyone else they don't like from a purified Anglican Communion.

Even if they succeed, and these latest statements prove that they won't, the Covenant will not solve the fundemental theological challenge of the ekklesia. We Christians are called to live in unity, and we have been promised that we will share in the Oneness that Christ shares with God and with us. The problem is that we Christians have a hard time living into the unity we have already been given. Communion is not a document or covenant to be enforced, it is a grace to be accepted and discipline to be lived. To live in Communion requires risk, faith and above all humility.

What the ACI and Annis propose is sheer arrogance. They cannot get what they want so they have invented yet another false scheme to get their way. If we haven't learned from the so-called Windsor "process" and the whole flawed Covenant process, we should learn it now: no amount of fake structuralism can do what Christ has already promised...to make us one.

Amid the ruins, Episcopalians in Haiti respond to the earthquake

This is a video from the Wall Street Journal describing what life is like in Port au Prince, Haiti, after the earthquake on January 12th and the response of the Episcopal Diocese of Haiti, the largest and fasting growing diocese of the Episcopal Church.

The Wall Street Journal writes:

In earthquake-stricken Haiti, an Episcopal bishop is providing relief to as many survivors as he can while they wait for the arrival of official aid. Jean Zache Duracin speaks with WSJ's Charles Forelle on how he's trying to help.

Here is the Episcopal Relief and Development page on Haiti, with links for donation and other ways you can help.

H/T TrinEast.

Where is God in the earthquake?

Fr. Frank Logue from King of Peace Episcopal Church in Kingsland, Georgia (the "Episconinja" video people...) gives a very fine reflection in response to the question "where is God in the Haiti earthquake?"

His video is in response to certain t.v. preachers who would blame the tragedy on the Haitians themselves as a sign of their sin and God's wrath.

Resolved

I originally wrote this for the secular press in 2000 just after the turn of the new year, when I was doing a weekly column for the Parkersburg (WV) News and Sentinel. I found it while looking for something else. I dusted it off and updated it a bit for my parish newsletter. It was written for a secular audience at time when religiosity, particularly Christianity, was taking a hard turn towards the angry and rigid. I was also thinking about the rise of fundementalisms across the board--not only Christian, but Jewish, Islamic and even militant Hindu movements in South Asia. Ten years later, I only had to dust it off a little.

If your New Year’s resolutions are at all like mine, then these are resolves that are filled with hope and good intentions that soon fall hard to reality. I know I should eat less and exercise more, but somehow I always manage to get these two backwards. And, two weeks into the New Year, I know that many of my best intentions already a by-gone memory.

Just the same, I know that there are things in my life that I would like to do better. These are behaviors that one just cannot will to make better, but really need to be cultivated into a habit. And I am not just talking about the usual vices; I am also talking about the spiritual life.

All religious people can resolve to pray more and worry less (something I also tend to reverse!). I have been considering some New Year’s resolutions that, if lived by, might make having faith less a source of contention and pride and more a source of hope and power. These are resolutions that we people of faith can make and then start new every day. The power for these resolves does not come from good intentions alone. If our faith has any meaning at all, then we know that the power for these come from the grace of God.

Here are my twenty religious resolutions for the New Year:

1. I will allow my religion to change me
2. I will resist telling other people how to change.
3. I will seek to make my religion a channel for gratitude and appreciation.
4. I will avoid using my religion as a channel for my anger.
5. I will expect my faith to challenge me to be live ethically.
6. I will give up needing to be certain about everything.
7. I will allow my religion to both care for and challenge my insecurities.
8. I will pay attention when my culture and my faith are in conflict.
9. I will be wary of leaders who use religion to sow hatred, fear or division.
10. I will allow my religion to temper my passion with humility.
11. I will work to be for something good even when it easier to be against something bad.
12. I will not allow my religion to become a fad or a trend.
13. I will allow my religion to keep pace with my maturity.
14. I will remember that my religion is for the benefit of the people and world around me.
15. I will avoid holding on too tightly to my religion as a personal possession.
16. I will give up punishment and shame as tool for religious persuasion.
17. When I fail, I will expect my religion to challenge me to be responsible.
18. I will not let the fact that I am an imperfect practitioner of my religion deter me from living my faith.
19. I will not let the imperfection of other people’s faith deter me from having faith.
20. I will accept beauty, fun, spontaneity and companionship as signs of God at work.

Have a blessed New Year.

See also DioBeth newSpin.

History from the future

Any similarities to the challenges of attempting to interpret a certain book (or collection of books) for the purposes of modern ethical and theological thinking and spiritual living is purely intentional.

What would Supply Side Jesus do?

Andrew Schlafly thinks the Bible is too liberal. Way too liberal. Not too theologically liberal. Too politically liberal. So the founder of conservapedia.com is out to fix that.

The Lead at the Episcopal Cafe reported last fall on the Conservative Bible Project. The goal of the project is to "develop a conservative translation that can serve, at a minimum, as a bulwark against the liberal manipulation of meaning in future versions." Some of their guidelines include:

Framework against Liberal Bias: providing a strong framework that enables a thought-for-thought translation without corruption by liberal bias

Not Emasculated: avoiding unisex, "gender inclusive" language, and other modern emasculation of Christianity

Not Dumbed Down: not dumbing down the reading level, or diluting the intellectual force and logic of Christianity; the NIV is written at only the 7th grade level

Utilize Powerful Conservative Terms: using powerful new conservative terms as they develop; defective translations use the word "comrade" three times as often as "volunteer"; similarly, updating words which have a change in meaning, such as "word", "peace", and "miracle"

Express Free Market Parables; explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning

Exclude Later-Inserted Liberal Passages: excluding the later-inserted liberal passages that are not authentic, such as the adulteress story

Some ideas for work include:

The earliest, most authentic manuscripts lack this verse set forth at Luke 23:34: Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing."

Is this a liberal corruption of the original? This does not appear in any other Gospel, and the simple fact is that some of the persecutors of Jesus did know what they were doing. This quotation is a favorite of liberals but should not appear in a conservative Bible.

The idea is not going away. The AP reported this week:

The project's authors argue that contemporary scholars have inserted liberal views and ahistorical passages into the Bible, turning Jesus into little more than a well-meaning social worker with a store of watered-down platitudes.

"Professors are the most liberal group of people in the world, and it's professors who are doing the popular modern translations of the Bible," said Andy Schlafly, founder of Conservapedia.com, the project's online home....

...This liberal slanting, Schlafly argues, ranges from changing gendered language — Jesus calling his disciples to be "fishers of people" rather than "fishers of men" — to more subtle choices, like the 2001 English Standard Version of the Bible, which uses "comrade" and "laborer" more often than the conservative-friendly "volunteer."

The problem, Schlafly says, is the professors. Professors are overwhelmingly liberal and therefore have slanted the Bible in their direction. So avoiding those pesky scholars, the Conservative Bible Project is depending on their revision to be done wiki-style with contributions coming via the internet.

"The best of the public is better than a group of experts," said Schlafly, whose mother, Phyllis, is a longtime conservative activist known for her opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment.

(Timothy Paul Jones, a professor at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., who calls himself a theological conservative) says the project is a misguided effort to read contemporary politics back into the text.

Dierdre Good at General Seminary looked at their Gospel of Mark and responded:

"No one thinks any translation is perfect. But does substituting "The Divine Guide" for the term "Spirit" in e.g. the baptism narrative convey Mark's ideas about Jesus' Baptism or the Spirit itself? And the translation of the verb in Mark 1:12 "the Divine Guide then led Jesus into the desert" is just wrong. I simply disagree that translations not using the term "man" to speak of Jesus emasculate him. Changing "scribes" or "Pharisees" to "intellectuals" in passages reporting controversies pits the latter against Jesus. Is this the message we want a bible translation to convey? Finally, the proposed translation of Mark 1:34b: 'he commanded the devils to be silent, because they knew Jesus as God' introduces a description of Jesus that simply isn't in the text."

Okay. So there are a few bugs. I mean, heck, translating the Bible is hard. And what do these Bible scholars know, anyway?

Well, they can cease their labors. Another Biblical non-scholar beat them to it. In 2006, Al Franken came up with this version of the story of Jesus, and it seems to meet all the requirements of the wiki-translation, except maybe for the "dumbing down" part. Presenting "The Gospel of Supply-Side Jesus."

Health care paperwork applied to churches

MEMORANDUM
To: All Parishes
From: Diocesan Office

Starting this year, in order to standardize parish contributions and better predict parish cash flows, we have implemented a fee-for-service Eucharistic coding and billing system. Rather than rely on haphazard donations from parishioners, pledges turned in at the last minute, etc., parishioners will be billed for each Eucharistic encounter.

For the purposes of coding and billing, all bishops, priests, and deacons will simply be referred to as “Eucharistic Service Providers” (ESP’s). Parishes are free to establish billing rates for services, as long as they are not below the minimum allowable billing rate as established by the Diocese (printed on the Diocesan web site). It is unscriptural to entice members from another parish to your ESP by offering a rate lower than the minimum allowable billing rate for Eucharistic services, and is considered against the mandate in Prayers of the People, form III, that ESP’s be “faithful ministers of your Word and Sacraments.”

Parishes will submit weekly billing to the Diocese: At the end of the month the Diocese will issue statements that will consist of an Explanation of Eucharistic Benefits (EoEB) as well as a monthly bill for Eucharistic services rendered.

Parishioners are free to purchase individual Communion Insurance Policies (CIP’s). The names of these providers should be turned in to the church secretary of each parish and this information submitted to the Diocese. Parishioners should keep in mind, however, that some policies require pre-approval from the Bishop, and may only authorize a given number of trips to the Communion rail per calendar year or only pay for Eucharistic services performed in our Diocesan network. For a list of all network providers, again please refer to our web site. All parishioners also need to sign and file a statement with the Diocesan office that they will be responsible for any Eucharistic billing over and above amounts allowed by their CIP, or for all services rendered if they do not have a CIP.

Parishioners who wish to donate over and above their billable Eucharistic services are also free to establish Home Parish Savings Accounts (HPSA’s) and can also donate to the parish by this means. Some employers may have pre-tax benefits for HPSA’s and parishioners should also check with their employers for these possible options.

Statements for billable Eucharistic services will be due 30 days after the issue date; a 2.5% surcharge will be added to payments in the 30-60 day due range. Payments in arrears of greater than 60 days will be turned over to the Lucifer, Inc. collection agency.

Parishes who submit weekly Diocesan billing electronically will receive a 1.5% discount on their Diocesan pledge. Mission congregations, because of their rural location, will receive a 2.5% bonus in Diocesan aid if billing statements are electronically submitted within 48 hours following Sunday services.

How Eucharistic Fee-for-service Billing works:

As each parishioner enters the church, the greeter will distribute tucked within the bulletin, a Eucharistic Encounter Form (EEF). Pencils should be readily available for parishioners at the pews; we suggest your Altar Guild add this to their duties.

Each parishioner should check the parishioner demographic and level of service most applicable for EACH member of your household. A sample EEF is provided in this bulletin. Feel free to personalize these with your church logo, and use fonts that you feel would be attractive for your parishioners. Statements that major credit cards or PayPal payments are welcome at the bottom of your EEF often result in faster payment. Billing code groups are Parishioner Demographic (PD), Eucharistic Level of service (ELOS), Spiritual Need (SN), and any applicable modifier.

Parishioners should sign the statement at the bottom that they are intending to receive only the Eucharistic services they predict will be rendered.

EEF’s should be turned in the collection plate at the offertory. This method also frees bursars from handling large amounts of $1 bills and loose change, which can be time-consuming. Following church services, we suggest bursars arrange the EEF’s in alphabetical order in order to expedite submission of Eucharistic billing by your church’s secretary.

Any parishioner questions about Eucharistic coding and billing should be directed to parish clergy or to a Eucharistic billing specialist (usually only available in larger parishes.)

Sample Eucharistic Encounter Form

(Your parish name, address, logo, etc.)


Parishioner name __________________________________________

If you are a visitor or have changed address, please provide it in the space below:



Parishioner Demographic Code:

❏ PD31601 Regular attendee, baptized, confirmed (attends services more than 2x/month)
❏ PD31602 Occasional attendee, baptized, confirmed (attends services less than 2x/month but more than 1-2x/year
❏ PD31603 Eucharistic screening exam only (Christmas/Easter)
❏ PD31604 Baptized but not confirmed
❏ PD31605 Heathen
❏ PD31606 Out of network attendee (visitor in good standing from another church)
❏ PD31606 Other attendee, not otherwise specified___________________________________

Eucharistic Level of Service:

❏ ELOS14301 Eats wafer, drinks wine from chalice
❏ ELOS14302 Dunks wafer in chalice, eats intincted wafer
❏ ELOS14303 Wafer only (small children/alcoholics/wine allergy)
❏ ELOS14304 Blessing only; no wafer, no wine (Infants/unsure if should partake)
❏ ELOS14305 Sat in pew, didn’t go up
❏ ELOS14306 Dropped wafer on floor, looked sheepish
❏ ELOS14307 Other Eucharistic level of service, not otherwise specified _________________

Spiritual Need

❏ SN66601 Usual and Customary Life Stressors
❏ SN66602 New or Temporary Acute Life Stressor(s)
❏ SN66603 Recent Illness(es)/Death(s), whether self/family member/friend
❏ SN66604 Domestic Partner Life Stressor(s)
❏ SN66605 Other family member/friend/extended family Life Stressor(s)
❏ SN66606 Deep dark secret unknown to clergy
❏ SN66607 Deep dark secret of a sexual nature, unknown to clergy
❏ SN66608 Other Spiritual Need, not otherwise specified ______________________________

Modifier Codes:

❏ -59 Sudden decrease or cessation of income
❏ -60 Unchurched person who suddenly felt need to attend church
❏ -61 Won lottery or had sudden windfall to income

Certification:
I, the undersigned, state that the Eucharistic services checked are a reasonable and accurate account of the Eucharistic services I intend to receive at Communion, and understand that failure to code accurately is considered “bearing false witness” as outlined in Ex. 20:16.

____________________________________________________
Name and Date

h/t to Maria L. Evans
See the original here.

The only thing I see missing here are services provided in the home by certified eucharistic technicians (CETs). Or is that a separate form? --atg+

Easier than you think

Prediction is harder than it looks, but I can tell you one thing with some certainty. If past years are any guide, come late February or mid-March, our Archdeacon (who is a stubborn and unrepentant Yankee fan) will invite us clergy and some folks on diocesan staff who love baseball to predict who will win the pennants and the World Series in the upcoming season. I still owe him a lunch because he was, alas, more correct in his prediction than I was. But both Father Stringfellow and I did better than some serious, professional sports prognosticators. I looked back at one respected sports magazine to find out that, according to them, the Tampa Bay Rays were supposed to have beaten the New York Mets four weeks ago in the World Series. (Sorry, Fr. Wayne. Even in a fantasy universe, your team can’t seem to catch a break. What a shame!) But, as I said, prediction is harder than it looks.

Even though we are not so good at interpreting signs and wonders, I think that most of us tend to agree on one thing…whatever happens at “the end” (whenever that is) it will probably be very, very big.

Just this month, there was a new popular television series depicting visitors from outer space whose almost angel-like (but too perfect to be true) appearance reassure us from up in the sky not to be afraid, because they bring peace to the earth. This new series has recycled an idea from 1980’s, which of course is an idea much older that than that.

I remember a time when another sort of visitor appeared at my front door. You would think that when these characters with their newspapers and tracts are greeted at the door by a person wearing a clerical collar they’d just clear their throats and move on to the next house. But, no! I become a personal challenge instead! So they begin to preach to me about the end of the world. Now ever since my first-grade teacher taught me how to “duck and cover” when the whistles go off, I have been dreading this, so I suggested to the visitors that they might consider preaching a different gospel. Maybe one about how much God loves us and forgives us and offers us a new life of grace. They said no; this was their story and they were sticking to it even (especially!) if it means scaring people to death.

Episcopal priest Barbara Brown Taylor says that we should be alert, yes, but "[n]ot so you will know when to grab your crash helmet and head for the basement, but so you will know when the kingdom is near. So you will not miss God when God comes"

The intent of the church on the First Sunday of Advent is not to spoil a perfectly good holiday season with talk of the end of the world while the culture around us is set for weeks of parties, gift-giving, family reunions. The idea to take a moment at the start of this New Year to take the long view, to have an end in mind, so that we have some idea of where we are going on this journey of faith. And it is in fact helpful and comforting to know when and where God’s kingdom is being set-up, so we won’t be caught off guard.

Allow me to offer a hint, maybe in a way more useful that my front-door (and other alien) visitors.

Jesus does tells us that there will be “…signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations….” He says “People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world …”

But he also offers another sign of what God is up to. This pointer is an invitation to step out of the hub-bub and into a daily, practical, attitude of expectation that underscores what Advent means. If you really want to know what God is up to, look to small, everyday things. "Look at the fig tree and all the trees,” Jesus says. “As soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near."

Leo Tolstoy, whom we tend to associate with the epitome of The Great Big Novel, wrote a short story about a cobbler whose hope for a dramatic revelation of God is answered by the everyday sightings of God as love in action, in charity, justice, and compassion toward the people the cobbler meets each day. If one is looking for the kingdom of God, the signs are closer than you think. The real challenge of Advent is not to look for God’s arrival in the big, the dramatic, and the cosmic. It appears that where God shows up most powerfully is right here, right around the corner, maybe right before our eyes.

Christians live in hope. Christians live in faith that looks forward. We live knowing that in Christ God will, and does, draw all people to himself. We know that God made all things, the Holy Spirit animates creation and the risen, ascended Christ fills all things. We Christians believe that God shows up in unexpected places and shakes up the cosmos. But even we Christians are often surprised when we are reminded that this happens in ways we don’t expect. Take Christmas. It is a celebration that the same Word of God that ushered forth creation is born a little baby. God has this way of sending us great big wonderful gifts in wondrous little, everyday packages.

Everyday we see the buds on Christ’s kingdom tree. Look at our Ark Soup Kitchen every Saturday. Look the food pantry that the churches and synagogues of Easton comes together and support at our ProJeCt of Easton. Look at the crew who goes about delivering Meals on Wheels from our parish or who routinely give blood in our name. Look at that Angel Tree covered with tags in the back of church. Look at the volunteer from a church men’s group who rings the bell for the Salvation Army. Look at the woman who drives an elderly person who no longer drives to the store to help her with her Christmas shopping. See God’s reign established around the world with the bikes, soccer balls and solar lanterns we will send to our sisters and brothers in Kajo-Keji this Christmas. See God’s reign being established in the people who visit the homebound and shut in or who bring communion to them as well as those in hospital. And God’s kingdom may just arrive in the mail from the hands of other folks, some homebound, who write birthday, get well and baptismal anniversary cards for our parish.

The signs of God’s merciful kingdom come through the hands and hearts of the many, many faithful Christians who persist in corporal acts of mercy no matter who is in office and even if they happen to disagree with whatever the local city council or state legislature decides. These everyday acts of mercy and kindness show us that God’s kingdom is coming right here, right now, right where we live. We don’t need to wait. We can be ready now.

And it easy to get a front row seat for God’s kingdom arrival. Just go to our Mission Table and pick out a time and a ministry when you can see for yourself how God changes lives and shakes up the cosmos.

Because it turns out that prediction is easier than it looks. It’s easy to see when the kingdom of God comes, if you know where to look. Look for the moments when we choose love and forgiveness and so overcome hatred and fear.

These are the moments when we know that our prayer “Come, Lord Jesus” is never prayed in vain.

1 Advent, Year C - 11/29/09

Stephen Colbert's liturgical dance

I don't know the context for this, but it seemed like a good way to celebrate the Feast of St. Andrew. Why? Why not?

Seeing the face of Christ everyday

Sister Patricia-Michael is a vowed solitary in the Diocese of Bethlehem, a spiritual director and the parish administrator in my parish, Trinity Episcopal Church in Easton, PA.

She has been inspired to start a blog that focuses on the theme of seeing the face of Christ in ordinary people in everyday places. It is called "When did I see you?", which she describes as "the daily intention of seeking and finding Christ in all things, in all places and in all ways." This is an outward expression of part of Patty's rule.

This is a discipline that is close to my heart and I invite you to follow her blog here.