Monthly Archives: July 2008

Garden Update

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In spite of getting started late (around Memorial Day) and being in the midst of drought, our garden is remarkably productive. As of last week (July 21) we had shared over 200 pounds of produce with the Hispanic Ministry at St. Francis. That’s amazing. So far, the harvest has been squash, beans, peppers, but the tomatoes are beginning to ripen. More than ten people are involved in caring for the garden and harvesting. What a wonderful gift to St. James, and to the community.

I’ll share a couple of photos of the produce

This was taken early in the season

This was taken early in the season

This picture shows last week’s haul

Lambeth Update

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The bishops have been meeting all week and there has already been a great deal of speculation in the press and blogosphere. I encourage you to read the reports of the “blogging bishops.” They are often informative and full of insight into what it’s like to be meeting with 600 other bishops from across the world. The cultural, socio-economic, and even religious differences are vast, but it seems that people are talking to one another.

Of course the press sensationalizes. Thus we heard about the bishops of Sudan condemning The Episcopal Church for consecrating Bishop Robinson. What we didn’t hear in the press is that the deep ties between the Anglican Church in the Sudan and the Episcopal Church are strong and that many Sudanese bishops reassured their American colleagues of the importance of those relationships.

There is also a great deal in the press about the Windsor Continuation Group, with the screaming headlines across England: Anglicans to institute the Inquisition! The report of that group was met with considerable skepticism and will hardly be accepted as it stands.

The bishops marched in London on behalf of the Millennium Development Goals, and then they had tea with the Queen at Buckingham Palace.

It will probably get interesting later this week when the Bishops’ discussion groups finally take up the issues of sexuality and authority. Stay tuned!

Small coincidences

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This past Sunday was the culmination of another incredibly busy week at St. James. I thought things were supposed to slow down in the summer! We had at least six visitors at the early service–hardy souls! Among them were a couple from Kansas. They were in town for a church and synagogue librarian conference. That in itself raises all sorts of interesting questions.

After the service, they made sure to meet me. She was carrying a book in her hand. They introduced themselves, saying they were from Lawrence, KS (home of the University of Kansas). The book she gave to me was one that had found itself into their church’s library, but had a bookplate identifying it as property of St. James, Greenville.

It wasn’t very old, having been printed in 2000, but I am very curious how it got from here to there. Any ideas?

By the way, I’ve been wondering about the usefulness of church libraries. Ours at St. James seems to be used primarily as a meeting room. Few of the books circulate and most of them are decades old. I remember when I was a child reading many of the books in our church library. There were lots for young readers, but they were carefully censored. Even the Laura Ingalls Wilder books had all the dirty words like “gee” and “gosh” carefully blacked out.

Information on Lambeth

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The Lambeth Conference begins today. Meeting every ten years, it brings together bishops from across the Anglican Communion for prayer and conversation, and occasionally to decide matters of doctrine and practice. There has already been a great deal of news about Lambeth–much of it having to do with who got invited and who didn’t, and about those boycotting.

Many of the primates from the Global South, most notably Nigeria and Uganda, announced they, and their bishops wouldn’t be attending. Others have boycotted less noisily. But it turns out that there is only one province (Uganda) with no bishops in attendance.

As always, Episcopal Cafe and Thinking Anglicans keep up with everything that’s going on. In addition, Episcopal Cafe has listed all of the blogging bishops here. Jim Naughton, one of the best Episcopal journalists is also present and blogging.

It will be interesting to follow the action, but I don’t expect a great deal to happen, especially legislatively. The Archbishop of Canterbury has made it quite clear that he wants to focus on bible study and reflection rather than on resolving the deep divisions. But we’re all likely to be surprised in the next couple of weeks.

Of course, the Archbishop of Canterbury has his hands full. The General Synod of the Church of England voted to ordain women bishops. It was a vote that sparked an uproar among conservatives, many of whom are threatening to leave the Church. There was a well-written profile of Archbishop Williams in the Guardian.

A “Dead Sea Scroll” in stone

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The New York Times reports on the recent discovery of a text, written in ink, in a stone, found probably near the Dead Sea. Scholars date it to the late first-century BCE, in other words, just a few years before Jesus. It is a messianic text, full of imagery derived from  the biblical books of Zechariah and Daniel. The Times article focuses on one scholar’s reconstruction of the text. It’s a reconstruction because it is not quite clear what the text says at this very crucial point. He offers “In three days you shall live, I Gabriel, command you.” It may be that this is evidence of a belief in a Messiah who will die and be resurrected on the third day.

What’s significant about this is that most New Testament scholars have argued that belief in a Messiah who dies and is raised again is the attempt by Jesus’ followers to make sense of their experience after the crucifixion and resurrection, and that such beliefs did not exist prior to Jesus.

The article is available here. I’m sure there will be much more discussion of this in the media in the near future.

Schism after all?

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GAFCON has spoken. Their concluding communique is available here. The Archbishop of Canterbury has responded. So, too has the Presiding Bishop. One should probably see this as another volley in a long-term struggle over Anglicanism. From the Archbishop of Canterbury’s statement, it is clear that he has grave theological and ecclesiological reservations about the communique and about the path the leaders of GAFCON are taking.

If you want to understand something of the theological background of the conflict, GAFCON appeals to the 39 Articles and to the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. The 39 Articles have been relegated to the “historical documents” section of our BCP. You should read them some time. The traditionalists bring together several streams of Anglicanism. One is Reformed, Calvinistic, which emphasizes human sinfulness. Another is Anglo-Catholicism, which draws on the rich theological, spiritual, and liturgical traditions of Catholicism. These two strands are mutually incompatible and are allied only because they have a common enemy–everyone else.

The 1662 prayer book has been mentioned before as one of the marks of Anglicanism. I’m not sure why contemporaries appeal to it. In fact, there is a strong tradition of alternatives to it, beginning with the Scottish Book of Common Prayer, with which the first American prayer book of 1789 was closely allied.

Most disturbing perhaps is the discussion by GAFCON of a “primates council” made up only of like-minded primates, self-selected. What this points to is an alarming trend, not just among conservatives, but throughout the Communion, of appealing to some central, hierarchical authority, independent of any lay involvement. The church, to thrive, needs to hear the voices of lay people at every level of government. It may be messy, but the alternative is authoritarianism.