[Office of Public Affairs] “We seek to address the need for healing in all parts of society, and we stand in solidarity with indigenous peoples globally to acknowledge and address the legacy of colonial occupation and policies of domination,” Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori states in her Pastoral Letter on the Doctrine of Discovery and Indigenous Peoples.

She continues, “Our Christian heritage has taught us that a healed community of peace is only possible in the presence of justice for all peoples. We seek to build such a beloved community that can be a sacred household for all creation, a society of right relationships.”

On May 7, Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori joined other religious voices in repudiating the Doctrine of Discovery at the 11th session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII). The theme for the UNPFII meeting is “The Doctrine of Discovery: its enduring impact on indigenous peoples and the right to redress for past conquests (articles 28 and 37 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples).”  In 2009, General Convention repudiated the Doctrine of Discovery.

The Presiding Bishop’s letter, issued on May 16, is presented here:

Pastoral Letter on the Doctrine of Discovery and Indigenous Peoples

Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.”[1]

The first biblical creation story tells of the creation of earth, sky, waters, creatures, and gives human beings dominion over the rest.  God pronounces what has been created good.  At the end of the original week of creation, with the advent of human beings, God blesses all of it, and pronounces the work very good[2].

The second creation story tells of what goes wrong – the first two earth creatures eat what they have been forbidden to eat, and are then expelled from the garden[3].  They have misunderstood what it means to exercise dominion toward life in the garden.  Through the millennia, many of their offspring have continued to misunderstand dominion, or to willfully twist the divine intent of dominion toward the conceit of domination.  Through the ages, human beings have too often insisted that what exists has been made for their individual use, and that force may be used against anyone who seems to compete for a particular created resource[4].  The result has been enormous destruction, death, despair, and downright evil – what is more commonly called “sin.”

The blessings of creation are meant to be stewarded, in the way of husbanding and housekeeping, for the true meaning of dominion is tied to the constellation of meanings around house and household.  There have been strands of the biblical tradition which have kept this sacred understanding alive, but the unholy quest for domination has sought to quench it, in favor of wanton accumulation and exclusive possession of the goods of creation for an individual or a small part of the blessed family of God.

After that eviction from the primordial garden, the biblical stories are mostly about how human communities strive to return to a homeland that will be a source of blessing for the community.  Through the long centuries, the prophetic understanding of that community broadens to include all the nations of the earth.  Even so, the seemingly eternal struggle between dominators and stewards has continued to the present day.

Most of the passages in the Bible that talk about land are yearning for a fertile place, where people are able to grow crops, tend flocks, and live in peace.  The offspring of those first human beings gave rise to peoples who hungered for land, and many of them did a great deal of violence through the ages in order to occupy and possess it.  They weren’t alone, for the empires of Alexander, Rome, and Genghis Khan were also the result of amassing conquered territory.  The Christian empires of Europe were consumed with battles over land for centuries, and eventually sent military expeditions across the Mediterranean in a quest to re-establish a Christian claim on what they called the Holy Land.

The explorers who set out from Christian Europe in the 15th century went with even broader motivations, in search of riches and abundantly fertile lands.  They also went with religious warrants, papal bulls which permitted and even encouraged the subjugation and permanent enslavement of any non-Christian peoples they encountered, as well as the expropriation of any territories not governed by Christians.[5]  Western Christian religious authorities settled competitions over these conquests by dividing up the geography that could be claimed among the various European nations.

These religious warrants led to the wholesale slaughter, rape, and enslavement of indigenous peoples in the Americas, as well as in Africa, Asia, and the islands of the Pacific, and the African slave trade was based on these same principles.  Death, dispossession, and enslavement were followed by rapid depopulation as a result of introduced and epidemic disease.  Yet death and dispossession of lands and resources were not a singular occurrence that can be laid up to the depredations of benighted medieval warriors.  They are not akin to Viking raids in the British Isles, or ancient struggles between neighboring tribes in Europe or Africa.  These acts of “Discovery” have had persistent effects on marginalized, transported, and disenfranchised peoples.

The ongoing dispossession of indigenous peoples is the result of legal systems throughout the “developed” world that continue to base land ownership on these religious warrants for colonial occupation from half a millennium ago.  These legal bases collectively known as the Doctrine of Discovery underlie U.S. decisions about who owns these lands[6].  The dispossession of First Peoples continues to wreak havoc on basic human dignity.  These principles give the lie to biblical understandings that all human beings reflect the image of God, for those who have been thrown out of their homeland, had their cultures largely erased, and sent into exile, are still grieving their loss of identity, lifeways, and territory.  All humanity should be grieving, for our sisters and brothers are suffering the injustice of generations.  The sins of our forebears are being visited on the children of indigenous peoples, even to the seventh generation.

There will be no peace or healing until we attend to that injustice.  The prophets of ancient Israel cried out for justice when their ability to live in the land they saw as home was threatened.  A day laborer named Amos challenged those around him with the word of God, “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream”[7].  Where there is no justice, there can be no peace for anyone.

In the North American context, the poorest of the poor live on Native reservations.  The depth of poverty there is closely followed by the poverty among ghettoized descendants of the indigenous peoples of Africa who were transported to these shores as slaves.  That kind of poverty is also frequent in other parts of the world where indigenous people have been dispossessed and displaced.  Healing is not possible, it is not even imaginable, until the truth is told and current reality confronted.  The basic dignity and human rights of first peoples have been repeatedly transgressed, and the outcome is grievous – poverty, cultural destruction, and multi-generational consequences.  The legacy of grief that continues unresolved is visible in skyrocketing suicide rates, rampant hopelessness, and deep anger.  In many contexts it amounts to pathological or impacted grief – for when hope is absent, healing is impossible.

The legacy of domination includes frightful evil – the intentional destruction of food sources and cultural centers like the herds of North American bison, the intentional introduction of disease and poisoning of water sources, wanton disregard of starvation and illness, the abuse and enslavement of women and children, the murder of those with the courage to protest inhumane treatment, the repeated dispossession of natural resources, land, and water, as well as chronically inadequate Federal management and defense of Native rights and resources.

There have been some glimmers of justice in decisions that have returned Native fishing and hunting rights, and some improvements in tribal rights to self-determination.  There is a very small and slow return of bison to the prairie, and wolves have begun to return in places where they are not immediately hunted down.  Yet many of these recoveries continue to be strenuously resisted by powerful non-Native commercial interests.

There are signs of hope in returning cultural treasures to their communities of origin, and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act[8] is returning remains for dignified burial.  The legacy of cultural genocide is slowly being addressed as indigenous traditions, languages, and cultural skills are taught to new generations.

The Episcopal Church has been present and ministering with Native peoples in North America for several centuries.  That history of accompaniment and solidarity has hardly been perfect, yet we continue to seek greater justice and deeper healing.

The Episcopal Church’s relationship with Native peoples in the Americas begins with the first English colonists.  We remember the story of Manteo, a Croatan of what is now North Carolina.  He traveled to England in 1584 and helped a colleague of Sir Walter Raleigh learn to speak Algonquin.  He returned here the next year, became something of an ambassador between the two peoples, was baptized, and is counted a saint of this church[9].

Episcopal missionaries have served in a variety of indigenous communities and contexts.  Henry Benjamin Whipple was Bishop of Minnesota in 1862, and his powerful petition to Abraham Lincoln saved the lives of some 265 of the Dakota men sentenced to hang the day after Christmas in Mankato[10].  The Dakota people called him “Straight Tongue.”  Today many Dakota and Lakota people are part of this Episcopal tradition.

This Church has stood in solidarity with native peoples in Alaska, Hawai’i, and the American southwest, especially the Diné (Navajo), as well as in urban Indian communities.  The Poarch Band of Creek Indians (in Alabama) achieved federal recognition in the 1980s with the aid of baptismal records maintained by this Church, which also assisted in returning a piece of land to the Poarch Band[11].  A large group of indigenous people in Ecuador is seeking recognition as worshiping communities in the Episcopal tradition, and we have other indigenous members and communities in Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, and Micronesia.  Our historical presence in the Philippines began with the indigenous Igorot peoples of the mountains and highlands.

Healing work continues across The Episcopal Church.  In 1997 Presiding Bishop Edmond Browning apologized for the enormities that began with the colony in Jamestown[12].  Today our understanding of mission has changed.  We believe that God’s mission is about healing brokenness in the world around us – broken relationships between human beings and the Creator, broken relationships between peoples, and damaged relationships between human beings and the rest of creation.  We seek to partner in God’s mission through proclaiming a vision of a healed world; forming Christians as partners in that mission; responding to human suffering around us; reversing structural and systemic injustice; and caring for this earthly garden[13].  We partner with any and all who share a common vision for healing, whether Episcopalian or Christian or not.

Work with indigenous peoples in recent years has been intensely focused on issues of poverty and the generational consequences of cultural destruction, the reality of food deserts and diabetes rates on reservations, unemployment and inadequate educational resources, as well as the ongoing reality of racism and exclusion in the larger society[14].  Mission and development work in Native communities is locally directed, honoring the gifts and assets already present[15], and moves toward a vision of healed community.  We partner with White Bison in community organizing that develops training programs for community healing[16].  This is a historic development, the first such partnership between a traditional Native American non-profit and The Episcopal Church.

This Church has worked to alleviate systemic and structural injustice in many ways, and our repudiation of the Doctrine of Discovery in 2009 is a recent example[17].  Since at least 1976, our advocacy work has included support for First Nations land claims in Canada, advocacy with the U.S. government for improved health care, religious freedom, preservation of burial sites and repatriation of remains and cultural resources, increased Federal tribal recognition, and critical Federal Government self-examination around Native American rights.  We have affirmed and reaffirmed our desire to strengthen relationships with Native peoples by remembering the past, recognizing the deficits and gifts in our historic and current relationships, and continued work toward healing[18].  We are currently advocating for the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, with provisions directly affecting Native women.

The Doctrine of Discovery work of this Church is focused on education, dismantling the structures and policies based on that ancient evil, support for the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples[19], and challenging governments around the world to support self-determination for indigenous peoples.

We seek to address the need for healing in all parts of society, and we stand in solidarity with indigenous peoples globally to acknowledge and address the legacy of colonial occupation and policies of domination.  Our Christian heritage has taught us that a healed community of peace is only possible in the presence of justice for all peoples.  We seek to build such a beloved community that can be a sacred household for all creation, a society of right relationships.

But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.  For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us… and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it.  So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near…  So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God[20]

 We pray that God will give us the strength and courage to do this work together for the good of all our relations, in the belief that Christ Jesus ends hostility and brings together those who were once divided.

The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori

Presiding Bishop and Primate

The Episcopal Church

[1] Genesis 1:26

[2] Genesis 1:1-2:3

[3] Genesis 2:4-3:24

[4] Commodification or what Heidegger called Bestand, cf. The Question Concerning Technology or Being and Time

[5] Doctrine of Discovery resources:  http://www.episcopalchurch.org/page/doctrine-discovery-resources

[6] cf. Johnson v M’Intosh:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnson_v._M’Intosh

[7] Amos 5:24

[8] http://www.nps.gov/history/nagpra/

[9] http://kingofpeace.blogspot.com/2009/05/manteo-virginia-dare.html

[10] http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/dakota/dakota.html

[11] http://www.poarchcreekindians.org/assets/pdf/newsletter_jun_2007.pdf

[12] http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1298&dat=19971101&id=LOwyAAAAIBAJ&sjid=UwgGAAAAIBAJ&pg=6997,143732

[13] a shorthand summary of the Five Anglican Marks of Mission

[14] http://archive.episcopalchurch.org/native/109407_123131_ENG_HTM.htm

[15] through Asset-Based Community Development

[16] http://www.coloradospringsindiancenter.com/2010/04/partnership-white-bison-episcopal-church-alleviate-poverty/

[17] http://www.nativevillage.org/Archives/2009%20Archives/Oct%202009%20I%20201%20NV%20News/Episcopal%20Church%20Repudiates%20Doctirine%20of%20Discovery.htm

[18] cf.  Decade of Remembrance, Recognition, and Reconciliation:  http://www.okiv2010.com/images/03_c008_res_rrr.pdf

[19] http://social.un.org/index/IndigenousPeoples/DeclarationontheRightsofIndigenousPeoples.aspx

[20] Ephesians 2:13ff

 

 

 

 

MORRISTOWN, NJ James Carroll, noted author and historian, will speak on "Beyond Nostalgia and Survival, a New Direction for the Church" at St.

[Huffington Post] On May 10 the Washington National Cathedral dedicated a new stone carving of Rosa Parks. It will be displayed in the cathedral’s Human Rights Porch.

The area already includes likenesses of Oscar Romero, the brave Catholic Archbishop of El Salvador, who spoke out against the U.S. for giving military aid to his country’s military junta and was killed in 1980 for his activism with workers and peasants fighting the regime; Eleanor Roosevelt, who came from a privileged background but used her position as first lady to be an ally with unions, civil rights groups, feminists, and other progressive movements; and John T. Walker, the first African American bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington and an activist who was an ally of South Africa’s Archbishop Desmond Tutu and was once arrested at a protest rally against apartheid at the South African Embassy.

In a piece about the event broadcast on Saturday, National Public Radio’s Scott Simon reported that the statue of Parks was commissioned along with a carving of Mother Teresa that will be dedicated later this year.

“They may have much to talk about,” Simon proclaimed at the end of the four-minute segment.

A conversation between Rosa Parks and Mother Teresa would indeed be interesting. But it would probably not go along the lines that Simon’s glib comment implied, as if the seamstress and the nun shared a common approach to addressing the world’s ills. In fact, the statement on the National Cathedral’s website, that Parks and Mother Teresa belong in an area honoring “those who struggle to bring equality and social justice to all people” is incredibly misleading. Parks certainly fits that description, but Mother Teresa most certainly does not.

Mother Teresa (1910-1997) dedicated her life to providing comfort to society’s victims, primarily neglected children, the sick, and the very poor. She founded the Missionaries of Charity, a Catholic order that now has 4,500 sisters and 610 missions in 123 countries that include orphanages, soup kitchens, hospices for the dying, homes for people with HIV/AIDS, leprosy and tuberculosis, and schools. Members take vows of chastity, poverty, obedience, and “wholehearted and free service to the poorest of the poor.”

This is worthy work for which Mother Teresa deserves praise and received the Nobel Peace Prize. But it is a far cry from any “struggle to bring equality and social justice to all people.” Mother Teresa raised millions of dollars for her efforts, but she never challenged the system that caused such widespread suffering. To the contrary, Mother Teresa believed, according to people who worked with and wrote about her, that suffering would bring people closer to Jesus.

Colette Livermore, a former Missionary of Charity, admired Mother Teresa’s courage and dedication, but ultimately left the order. As she describes in her book Hope Endures: Leaving Mother Teresa, Losing Faith, and Searching for Meaning, Livermore did not agree with what she called Mother Teresa’s “theology of suffering.”

According to Mother Teresa’s philosophy, it is “the most beautiful gift for a person that he can participate in the sufferings of Christ.”

In an article in Free Inquiry, writer Judith Hayes reported that Mother Teresa once approached a dying cancer patient not with pain killers but with a bit of theology. “You are suffering like Christ on the cross,” Mother Teresa allegedly told the patient. “So Jesus must be kissing you.” According to Hayes, the patient replied, “Then please tell him to stop kissing me.”

The British newspaper The Guardian noted the “charges of gross neglect and physical and emotional abuse” in her orphanages. Two highly-respected medical journals — The Lancet and the British Medical Journal — reported that the quality of care in the Homes for the Dying was “haphazard.” Patients endured poor living conditions. Staff failed to use modern medical techniques and volunteers lacked basic medical knowledge. The staff didn’t distinguish between curable and incurable patients, putting some patients, who might otherwise survive, at risk of dying from infections. Sanal Edamaruku, President of Rationalist International, criticized her practice of failing to use painkillers. In her Homes for the Dying, one could “hear the screams of people having maggots tweezered from their open wounds without pain relief. On principle, strong painkillers are even in hard cases not given.”

Rather than reduce suffering, in other words, Mother Teresa’s approach may actually have increased it.

But even if Mother Teresa’s hospices, orphanages, and other institutions had been models of modern medicine and social work, the reality is that her approach to suffering was that of charity and pity.

Mother Teresa accepted the economic and social conditions are they were and sought to relieve the immediate suffering of a handful of society’s victims. There was not even a pretense of seeking more “equality and social justice” — that is, a redistribution of economic resources or change in institutional practices and public policies, like land reform or more resources targeted for improved public health, education, and job creation.

Rosa Parks (1913-2005) had an entirely different approach to suffering and injustice. Parks is often portrayed as an exhausted middle-aged seamstress from Montgomery who, wanting to rest her tired feet after a hard day at work, simply violated the city’s segregation law by refusing to move to the back of the bus. She is therefore revered as a selfless individual who, with one spontaneous act of courage, triggered the Montgomery bus boycott and became, as she is often called, the “mother of the civil rights movement.”

What’s missing from the popular legend is the reality that Parks was a veteran activist whose defiance of segregation laws was not an isolated incident but a lifelong crusade. Also downplayed is that Parks was part of an ongoing movement whose leaders had been waiting for the right moment to launch a campaign against bus segregation. In Parks’ worldview, society’s victims required neither pity nor charity, but dignity and empowerment.

Parks recalled, “I had almost a life history of being rebellious against being mistreated because of my color.” Discussing her grandfather, Sylvester Edwards, she wrote, “I remember that sometimes he would call white men by their first names, or their whole names, and not say, ‘Mister.’ How he survived doing all those kinds of things, and being so outspoken, talking that big talk, I don’t know, unless it was because he was so white and so close to being one of them.”

In the 1930s, she and her husband, Raymond Parks, a barber, raised money for the defense of the Scottsboro Boys, nine young, black men falsely accused of raping two white women. Involvement in this controversial cause was extremely dangerous for southern blacks.

In 1943, Parks became one of the first women to join the Montgomery chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and served for many years as chapter secretary and director of its youth group. In the 1940s and 1950s, the NAACP was considered a radical organization by most southern whites, especially politicians and police officials. Joining the NAACP put its members at risk of losing jobs and being subject to vigilante violence.

Also in 1943, Parks made her first attempt to register to vote. Twice she was told she didn’t pass the literacy test, which was a Jim Crow invention to keep blacks from voting. In 1945, she passed the test and became one of the few blacks able to exercise the “right” to vote. As NAACP youth director, Parks helped black teenagers organize protests at the city’s segregated main public library because the library for blacks had fewer (and more outdated) books, but blacks were not allowed to study at the main branch or browse through its stacks.

During the summer of 1955, Parks attended a ten-day interracial workshop at the Highlander Folk School, a training center for union and civil rights activists in rural Tennessee. Founded by Myles Horton in 1932, Highlander was one of the few places where whites and blacks — rank-and-file activists and left-wing radicals — could participate as equals. At the workshop that Parks attended, civil rights activists talked about strategies for implementing integration.

For Parks, “One of my greatest pleasures there was enjoying the smell of bacon frying and coffee brewing and knowing that white folks were doing the preparing instead of me. I was 42 years old, and it was one of the few times in my life up to that point when I did not feel any hostility from white people.”

The Highlander experience strengthened Parks’ resolve, showing her that it was possible for blacks and whites to live in “an atmosphere of complete equality” and without what she called “any artificial barriers of racial segregation.”

Parks and other NAACP leaders had frequently talked about challenging Montgomery’s segregated bus system and the bus drivers’ abusive treatment of black riders. Bus segregation had long been a source of anger for southern blacks, including those in Montgomery, the state capital. “It was very humiliating having to suffer the indignity of riding segregated buses twice a day, five days a week, to go downtown and work for white people,” Parks recalled.

In 1954, soon after the Supreme Court’s Brown decision outlawing school segregation, Jo Ann Robinson, an African American professor at the all-black Alabama State College, and a leader of Montgomery’s Women’s Political Council (WPC), wrote a letter to Montgomery mayor W.A. Gayle, saying that “there has been talk from 25 or more local organizations of planning a city-wide boycott of buses.” By the following year, the WPC made plans for a boycott and was waiting for the right person to be arrested — someone who would agree to test the segregation laws in court, and who was “above reproach.”

In 1955, two teenage girls — Claudette Colvin and Mary Louise Smith — were arrested in separate incidents for refusing to give up their seats, but NAACP leader E. D. Nixon decided that neither of them was the right person around whom to mobilize the community. Parks, in contrast, was a pillar of the black community. She had graduated from high school, which was rare for a black woman in Montgomery then. At forty-two, she had a wide network of friends and admirers from her church and civil rights activities.

On Thursday, December 1, 1955, Parks finished her work at the Montgomery Fair department store, boarded a city bus, and sat with three other blacks in the fifth row, the first row that blacks were allowed to occupy. A few stops later, the front four rows were filled with whites. One white man was left standing. According to law, blacks and whites could not occupy the same row, so the bus driver asked all four of the blacks seated in the fifth row to move. Three acquiesced, but Parks refused. The driver called the police and had Parks arrested.

“People always say that I didn’t give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn’t true,” Parks later explained. “I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. . . . No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.”

Because of her reputation and web of friendships, word of Parks’ arrest spread quickly. What followed is one of the most amazing examples of effective organizing in American history. The bus boycott lasted for 381 days, organized by the Montgomery Improvement Association, a coalition of churches and civil rights groups. Throughout the year, MIA leaders successfully used church meetings, sermons, rallies, songs, and other activities to help maintain the black community’s spirits, nonviolent tactics, and resolve against the almost monolithic opposition of the city’s white business and political leaders who harassed the boycotters using every economic, legal, and police tool at their disposal. The segregationists also resorted to violence. They bombed the homes of boycott leaders, including Rev. Martin Luther King. On December 20, 1956, the Supreme Court ruled that the segregated bus system was unconstitutional. That day, an integrated group of boycotters, including King, rode the city buses.

During the boycott, Parks and her husband lost their jobs. In 1957, they moved to Detroit, where Parks continued her quiet involvement in the civil rights movement. She worked for several years as a seamstress at a small factory in downtown Detroit. From 1965 until her retirement in 1988, Parks worked as an assistant in the Detroit office of U.S. Representative John Conyers, a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus.

A deeply religious woman, Parks did not believe that human suffering — whether from racism, low wages, or police abuse — was either inevitable or holy. She was part of a movement — network of organizations and activists who, over many years, battled segregation and injustice in the streets, churches, and courts. She believed in justice, not charity.

As Martin Luther King once said, “Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary.”

Rosa Parks deserves to be in the same human rights pantheon as Bishop Romero and Eleanor Roosevelt. But not Mother Teresa.

— Peter Dreier is the E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics and chair of the Urban & Environmental Policy Department at Occidental College. His new book, The 100 Greatest Americans of the 20th Century: A Social Justice Hall of Fame, will be published by Nation Books in June. This commentary first appeared on Huffington Post.

The Episcopal Church's General Convention faces questions about who may receive communion. Photo/Mary Frances Schjonberg

[Episcopal News Service] The young woman who called St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Hood River, Oregon, was upset and asked if the church offered communion.

“I really need some support right now and I feel like it starts there,” she told the Rev. Anna Carmichael, the parish’s rector.

The wrinkle was that while the woman had attended various churches she had “never formally been baptized and yet somehow this needing to be in community and needing to be supported, in her mind, had something to do with communion as well,” Carmichael recalled.

“I just couldn’t tell her no, I’m sorry we can’t offer that to you,” the Diocese of Eastern Oregon rector recalled during a recent interview.

There is a tension, Carmichael said, between “the theology behind the importance of baptism,” something she said is “incredibly significant to me,” and “the very lived reality that people need to be supported in their community.”

Therein lies an example of the thinking behind Eastern Oregon’s proposal that General Convention allow the church’s congregations to “invite all, regardless of age, denomination, or baptism to the altar for Holy Communion.” Eastern Oregon’s Resolution C040 would pave the way for this invitation by eliminating Canon 1.17.7, which says “no unbaptized person shall be eligible to receive Holy Communion in this Church.”

It is one of two resolutions on this topic the convention will consider when it meets July 4-12 in Indianapolis. The Diocese of North Carolina has proposed a longer-term look at the issue. Resolution C029 calls for a special commission to conduct “a study of the theology underlying access to Holy Baptism and Holy Communion” and recommend to the 78th General Convention any amendment to Canon 1.17.7 it believes is needed.

The texts of both resolutions are available here. Eastern Oregon’s is accompanied by a diocesan statement explaining its stance.

This will be the second time in recent years that what is variously called open communion, open table and communion of the non- or unbaptized has come to convention. In 2006, the General Convention affirmed Canon 1.17.7 (via Resolution D084) and asked for the House of Bishops Committee on Theology and the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music to provide to the 2009 meeting of convention “a pastoral and theological understanding of the relationship between Holy Baptism and eucharistic practice.”

In its report to the 2009 convention, the SCLM said it had been in contact with the bishops’ committee and “stand[s] ready to cooperate with them on this important issue in the future.”

The bishops reported that a study was “on-going.” In June 2009, the committee circulated “Reflections on Holy Baptism and the Holy Eucharist: A Response to Resolution D084 of the 75th General Convention,” which was later published in the Anglican Theological Review. The committee called it a “promissory note” because “we do not assume this is our last word on these matters.”

“It is essential to understand the doctrinal and liturgical connections between baptism and eucharist, especially in a church that has been rediscovering the centrality of baptism,” the members wrote in their conclusion. “We invite the church into this work.”

This year, the bishops’ theology committee reported in the Blue Book (beginning on page 51 here) that it is “undertaking a renewed engagement with the theology of the Eucharist.” They noted what they call “the continuing (and controversial) practice of inviting the un-baptized to receive communion” and suggested what is needed is “a renewed and fundamental understanding of the eucharistic assembly and of eucharistic celebration as the quintessential gathering of the people of God.”

Carmichael said Eastern Oregon began discussing what she called this “issue of practice versus theology” during its 2010 convention and agreed to submit a resolution to General Convention.

“For many of the folks out here in the diocese we have already started living into the practice, which I know gets us in a sticky situation but it’s reality,” she said, adding, “we don’t check ID at the door” and strangers who come up to receive communion are not asked if they have been baptized.

“We feel like it’s been a lived reality for us and we imagine that that may be true in other dioceses as well,” Carmichael said.

The Rev. Canon Beth Wickenberg Ely, canon for regional ministry in North Carolina and chair of that diocese’s convention deputation, echoed that sentiment. “Our gut reaction is that we’re not the only ones facing this,” she said in a recent interview. “We think that this is probably true for every single diocese.”

“Every Sunday we face this,” she said. “It’s not just a Christmas and Easter thing. If something is that much part of our lives together, we really need to bring this out in the open and talk about it.”

Hence, the diocese’s proposal that the church study the issue.

Deputy Joe Ferrell, a professor of public law at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, championed his diocese’s resolution not because he opposes an open table, but because “we have a canon that specifically prohibits it and my view has always been we don’t get to pick and choose the laws that we will obey unless we’re impelled by a higher moral authority, and I don’t think this issue is compelled by higher moral authority, so we need to do something about the canon.”

Ferrell said that if he “could wave my magic wand” the canon would be repealed.

“We’d be left with rubrics of the Prayer Book, which I think are perfectly adequate,” he said in an interview. Reminded that the Book of Common Prayer is silent on the issue, he chuckled and replied, “that’s right, that’s right.”

Having been raised in the Episcopal Church, Ferrell, 73, remembers prior to the 1979 Book of Common Prayer when Eucharist was not the principal service each Sunday and when communion was rarely a part of weddings and funerals.

“Now it’s commonplace and, particularly at weddings and funerals, you’ve got severe pastoral problems if you attempt to restrict who is going to be welcome at the altar,” he said. “And you have it to some extent on Sunday mornings.”

His “bottom line” is this: “clergy who feel that this is important from a pastoral point of view should not be put in a position of knowingly violating a canon that could not be more explicit.”

The Episcopal Church’s canons have contained a version of Canon 1.17.7 only since 1982, even though baptism as a pre-requisite for Holy Communion is rooted in the earliest part of the early Christian church. It appears that explicitly stating the tradition in the Episcopal Church canons happened due a legislative compromise between two competing resolutions. At the 1982 meeting of convention in New Orleans, deputies and bishops faced two resolutions dealing with the canon titled “Of Regulations Respecting the Laity” (then numbered Canon 16 of Title I).

Resolution A48 (submitted by the Standing Commission on Ecumenical Relations and available beginning on page 60 here) was prompted by a mandate from the 1979 convention that it show how the church could implement the then-six-year-old ecumenical statement, “Toward a Mutual Recognition of Members,” which called for an understanding that baptism initiates people into the entire Christian church, according to the 1989 supplement to Edwin White and Jackson Dykman’s classic Annotated Constitution and Canons (available via a link here).

Resolution A78 (submitted by the Standing Liturgical Commission and available beginning on page 154 here) was based more specifically on the understanding that the Episcopal Church now considered baptism to be one’s entrance into the full life of the church. (In many, if not most, parts of the Anglican Communion, confirmation is still required before receiving communion.)

“The two resolutions reflected specific persuasions and purposes that differed sharply,” the supplement’s authors wrote. “Deputy Charles Crump of Tennessee, sensing the problems inherent in these proposals and the vast legislative time and debate which would be consumed on the floors of each House, crafted Resolution A048 as a compromise.”

The changes reflected in all three resolutions felt revolutionary to many. Allowing unconfirmed people to receive communion was a major change, as was the accompanying implication that children did not have to reach an undefined “age of reason” before coming to the altar rail.

The age tradition lingers in some families and in some parts of the Episcopal Church. The Episcopal Church is still working to rewrite its canons to conform to the 1979 Book of Common Prayer’s baptismal theology. A summary of some of that work done by the Standing Commission on Lifelong Christian Formation and Education begins on page 153 of this year’s Blue Book.

Still, the requirement of baptism before Eucharist remains and hearkens to the early church. For example, the Didache, a catechism dating from the late 1st or early 2nd century, tells Christians, “… but let no one eat or drink of your Eucharist, unless they have been baptized into the name of the Lord …” And scholars suggest there is evidence from early church liturgical sources, including The Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus of Rome that non-baptized members of the Christian community had to leave the eucharistic liturgy altogether after the proclamation of the word.

Carmichael would hearken to an even earlier source.

“This is our construction around this issue because Jesus never said you have to have baptism before you have dinner with me,” she said. “So, this is our mess that we’ve created and sometimes I wonder in the grand scheme of all things how much this really matters. When we get to heaven is Jesus going to be more excited that we invited people or is he going to be more excited that we said you can come, but you can’t?”

Wickenberg Ely in North Carolina places at least part of the issue against the question of diversity. “I think we’ve had the diversity conversation ad nauseum but, I don’t think we’ve had it in the context in the open table,” she said in an interview. “To me that’s about diversity, so who are were going to leave out? The answer, the biblical answer to that is: [leave out] nobody who wants to come.”

The open-table issue is also part of the Episcopal Church’s struggle “about who are we as a church in the 21st century,” she said.

Wickenberg Ely noted that many people who come to church are often “looking to be welcomed wherever they go and whatever they believe.” Yet, there are some churches that say “if you are to be a member of our community in Christ this entails discipline and commitment, so that belonging is not just by virtue of being a child of God, but it is by virtue of being willing to pledge yourself to this way of being of a child of God,” she said, adding that this is the stance of the Roman Catholic church.

The Episcopal Church could be “known as a church that is welcoming of anyone at the Lord’s Table, willing to entertain questions, willing to dialogue with people of all beliefs and no beliefs — a generous stance as a church,” she suggested.

“Do we want to be known as a church like that going into the future? Or do we want to be known as a church that has some boundaries, [legal and canonical] expectations, also with [practice] and educational expectations, or do we want to be in the middle?” she asked. “I mean, who are we going to wind up being? This is just one of the things about that big discussion in my mind.”

Those questions frame up an even larger context for the communion issue. Removing the baptismal requirement for participation in communion would undoubtedly have major ecumenical implications. In 2008 the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Ecumenical Relations rooted its opposition to an open table in the once-revolutionary recognition of a common baptism, noting that that acceptance “has made ecumenical ventures possible.”

In The Vision Before Us the commission warned that “a move toward the official communion of the non-baptized undercuts, threatens, and in the end denies basic ecumenical tenets.” The members also noted that Anglican credibility in ecumenical conversations is threatened when Anglican texts say one thing, but practice suggests another.

“The practice of admitting non-baptized people to the Eucharist overthrows a century of ecumenical insight and growth,” they conclude.

The women who called St. Mark’s looking for support has been coming to the parish regularly, and Carmichael said the two of them have “regular conversations about how she can become more involved in the community and that that includes, when she’s ready, the decision to be baptized.”

“It’s not a prerequisite to being able to participate in community life, but that it is an adult decision about her faith and that I am happy to walk in the journey with her when she’s ready,” Carmichael said.

Read more about it

Here is a selected list of additional resources (beyond those linked to above) about the issue of unbaptized people receiving communion:

“Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry (Faith and Order Paper No. 111, the ‘Lima Text’), World Council of Churches Faith and Order commission (1982)

Open, the journal of the Associated Parishes for Liturgy and Music, essays

• “Baptism and eucharist: challenges,” Andrew Waldo (2000)
• “Baptism and communion,” Stephen Reynolds (2001).

Anglican Theological Review essays

• “Baptism, Eucharist, and the Hospitality of Jesus: On the Practice of ‘Open Communion,’” James Farwell (2004)
• “In Praise of Open Communion: A Rejoinder to James Farwell,” Kathryn Tanner (2004)
• “A Brief Reflection on Kathryn Tanner’s Response to ‘Baptism, Eucharist, and the Hospitality of Jesus,‘” James Farwell (2005)
• “Opening the Table: The Body of Christ and God’s Prodigal Grace,” Stephen Edmondson (2009).

— The Rev. Mary Frances Schjonberg is an editor/reporter for the Episcopal News Service.

Not surprisingly, a slew of bishops, gay clergy and laity emerged from the Episcopal woodpile to express their support for President Obama's new found "evolutionary" stand on gay marriage ...

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[Chicago Consultation] In October, some 25 Anglican leaders from across Africa gathered with more than a dozen Episcopalians from the United States for a consultation on issues of justice and human sexuality.

For three days the group prayed, studied the Bible, listened to presentations and talked about issues of theology, sexuality and culture. When formal sessions ended, they talked into the night, all in an attempt to better understand one another and the unique context in which each participant lived and ministered.

The Chicago Consultation was proud to sponsor this event at the Salt Rock Hotel in Durban, South Africa with our partners from the Ujamaa Centre at the University of KwaZulu Natal.

The 11-minute video captures some of the high points of the gathering, including moving personal testimony from several participants.

The “Listeners’ Report,” written by a team led by the Rev. Canon Janet Trisk, the Church of Southern Africa’s clergy representative to the Anglican Consultative Council, gives a comprehensive account of the time the group spent together.

The list of participants includes several people who attended at some risk to their careers and ministries, but permitted their names to be made public nonetheless.

Members of eight African provinces participated in the consultation, including a bishop from Nigeria, the general secretary of the Council of Anglican Provinces of Africa, the provincial secretary of the Church of Tanzania and numerous seminary faculty.

The delegation from the Episcopal Church included Bishops Jeff Lee of Chicago and Mark Beckwith of Newark, the Rev. Gay Jennings, the Episcopal Church’s clergy representative to the Anglican Consultative Council and the Rev. Bonnie Perry, co-convener of the Chicago Consultation.

Interfaith and ecumenical guests included a gay imam, representatives of the Church of Sweden and clergy of the Methodist and Dutch Reformed Church.

During much of the recent upheaval in the Anglican Communion over issues of sexuality we have been told that those of us who favor the full inclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in the church have no partners for conversation, in Africa no brothers and sisters who will join us in ministry.

The experience of the consultation tells us that this is not true, that the bonds of affection that sustain the Anglican Communion remain strong, and that generous-spirited Anglicans around the globe are more eager than ever to enter into the deep, prayerful, scripturally informed conversations on which the future of the Communion will be built.

[Episcopal News Service] The Rev. Burgess Carr, a Liberian-born priest who in the late 1980s served as the Episcopal Church’s partnership officer for Africa and who for seven years in the 1970s headed the All Africa Council of Churches (AACC), died May 14 in his sleep, according to an announcement from St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church in Snellville, Georgia.  He was 76.

“During his tenure as General Secretary of AACC, he brought a new energy to the work of the Anglican Church in Africa and made a few enemies, including Idi Amin. May his soul rest in peace,” said the Rev. Canon Petero Sabune, the church’s global partnerships officer for Africa, in an e-mail sent to church center staff May 14.

In that same e-mail, Margaret Rose, the Episcopal Church’s deputy for ecumenical and interfaith collaboration, said: “Many here at the Church Center knew Burgess Carr when he was on staff here.  In addition to being one of my professors in Divinity School and the preacher at my ordination, he was an executive director of the All African Council of Churches, a great ecumenist and a negotiator of one of the first peace agreements in the Sudan.”

Carr graduated in 1958 with a bachelor of science degree in agriculture from Cuttington College, in Suakoko, Bong County, Liberia, and earned a master of divinity degree from Harvard Divinity School in 1961. He was ordained a deacon in 1961 and a priest in 1962 in the Diocese of Liberia, which was a diocese in the Episcopal Church until 1980, when it became part of the Anglican Province of West Africa.

Additionally, Carr served as the secretary for Africa with the World Council of Churches; Geneva, Switzerland, from 1967-1970. He was the executive director of Episcopal Migration Ministries from 1990-94; held various teaching appointments over the years at schools including Union Theological Seminary, Harvard Divinity School, Boston University, Episcopal Divinity School, and Berkeley Divinity School at Yale; and was a consultant to The World Bank, the United Nations Development Programme, and the Economic Commission for Africa. In 1972 he served as moderator on the Addis Ababa Agreement on Southern Sudan, which ended 17 years of civil war in Southern Sudan.

Carr moved to Georgia sometime in the 2000s and served as vicar of St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church in Decatur, Georgia, for three years.  Carr and his wife, Francesca, had five children.

The funeral will be at 10 a.m. Friday, June 1, at the Cathedral of St. Philip in Atlanta. Bishop of Atlanta J. Neil Alexander will preside.

[General Theological Seminary] The Chapel of the Good Shepherd and the beautiful garden-like campus of General Theological Seminary will be the scene of the Seminary’s 190th Commencement Exercises beginning at 11 a.m. on May 16. Faculty members in colorful academic regalia will be joined by friends, trustees, and students of the historic institution for the majestic ceremonies, which are preceded by joyous pealing of chimes from the Chapel’s bell tower.

Fifty-four women and men will receive degrees, diplomas, or certificates conferred by the Seminary’s Associate Dean, the Rev. Dr. Patrick Malloy. Additionally, the Seminary’s honorary doctorate will be conferred on the Most Rev. Martín Barahona, Bishop of El Salvador; David Booth Beers, Esq., Chancellor to the Presiding Bishop; the Rev. Canon Carl Gerdau, distinguished church leader; and the Rev. Dr. Richard Pfaff, Professor Emeritus at the University of North Carolina.

The Most Rev. Martín Barahona, is Bishop of El Salvador and the former Anglican Primate of Central America. Consecrated in 1992, he has served as a leader in growing the vibrant parish life of the diocese and has been an historic advocate for the rights of women, LGBT persons and those in economic distress. He has served as president of El Salvador’s National Council of Churches and enjoys broad ecumenical respect, having formed deep bonds with his colleagues, especially the Lutheran Bishop of El Salvador. Despite an assassination attempt in 2010, Bishop Barahona remains deeply committed to his ministry and his people. He stated shortly after the attempt on his life, “I have learned several things from this, that I love my people more and more, I won’t stop being a bishop, and I love God.”

David Booth Beers, Esq. is a noted attorney and Chancellor to the Presiding Bishop. He is of counsel to the law firm Goodwin Proctor where he has an extensive national and international practice in the non-profit sector. He has led the legal effort of the Episcopal Church to safe guard the rights and property of the church, dioceses and parishes from the plans of those who have broken away from the church and yet attempted to take church property with them. He has worked closely for many years with the Church History faculty of the Seminary in his support of the church and enjoys wide and deep respect. He is an active layman in St. Patrick’s Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Washington.

The Rev. Canon Carl Gerdau has served as canon to two Presiding Bishops, having served the Most Rev. Frank Griswold in his tenure and the Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori during her transition into office. He has a particular interest and expertise in seminary education, and served as Chair of the Board of Bexley Hall Seminary. Having served the Church Pension Fund and numerous boards and committees during some of the most challenging times, he is an extraordinary leader and example for the Seminary’s students.

The Rev. Dr. Richard Pfaff is Professor Emeritus at the University of North Carolina. A deeply accomplished scholar, his research and teaching interests center on the ecclesiastical, cultural and historical aspects of medieval England. Widely published and respected, he has focused on liturgical manuscripts and monastic scriptoria, architecture, hagiography and the Church Fathers. Having devoted four decades to the study the study of medieval liturgy, his landmark work, The Liturgy in Medieval England: A History, was published in 2009 by Cambridge University Press. Equally noteworthy was his 1970 study, New Liturgical Feasts in Later Medieval England. Dr. Pfaff is a 1966 alumnus of GTS.

The General Theological Seminary, founded in 1817, prepares women and men for both ordained and lay ministries through a wide variety of degree and certificate programs. Its historic campus in the heart of New York City is also home to the Desmond Tutu Center, a modern, full-service conference facility. The Seminary conferred its first honorary degree in 1885. The ceremonies of Commencement, including the sections recited in Latin, were devised during this period and continue to be used today with few changes.

[Diocese of Central Tanganyika] On Sunday, May 6, at the concluding worship service of the Synod of the Diocese of Central Tanganyika, with more than a thousand in attendance, Bishop Mdimi Mhogolo, made the Rev. Sandra McCann of the Diocese of Atlanta a canon of the Diocese of Central Tanganyika. McCann is the first foreign priest to be awarded such an honor. She was commended for her long-standing commitment to the spiritual formation and training of priests for the church in Africa. Mhogolo saluted her for the raising of funds for the improvement of Msalato Theological College and for her current devotion to raising an endowment for student sponsorships and faculty salaries.

Rev. McCann also made history when she became the first person to be ordained by an American bishop in Tanzania. In 2005 Bishop Neil Alexander of the Diocese of Atlanta traveled to Africa to ordain McCann to the priesthood at the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit in Dodoma, Tanzania. After being made a canon in this same cathedral, McCann stated that she has always felt that she belonged to both the Diocese of Atlanta and to the Diocese of Central Tanganyika.

“In fact, my entire working life as an ordained person has been primarily in Africa. I came to Africa not ordained. My call was actually confirmed while serving as a lay missioner at St. Philip’s College in Maseno, Kenya, where we worked for our first year,” she said.

McCann, a physician-turned-priest, graduated from the Virginia Theological Seminary in 2003 with a Master of Divinity degree. She and her pathologist husband, Dr. Martin McCann, are appointed missionaries of the Episcopal Church, and have served in Africa full time since her graduation. McCann currently serves as the communications director for Msalato Theological College in Dodoma.

For more information about the work of the McCann’s you may visit www.mccannmission.org and www.footstepsinfaith.net.

[Episcopal Diocese of New York] Diocese of New York Bishops Mark Sisk, Andrew Dietsche and Andrew Smith have each written letters transmitted electronically to the people of the diocese commending President Obama’s recent expression of support for marriage equality.

The texts of the letters follow.

From Bishop Sisk
Dear People of the Diocese of New York,

I welcome President Obama’s expression of support for marriage equality for gay and lesbian people. Given that equality before the law is a fundamental principle of our republic, it seems to me that our President has reached an eminently appropriate conclusion.

In earlier statements I have made known my support of marriage for gay and lesbian people. I am convinced that this support is entirely in keeping with the familiar call to respect the dignity of every human being. It is, moreover, in accord with our Lord’s promise that we are all, fully and equally, beloved children of God.

Faithfully yours,
+Mark
The Rt. Rev. Mark S. Sisk
XV Bishop of New York

From Bishop Dietsche
Brothers and Sisters,

I heartily join Bishop Sisk in commending President Obama for his public statement supporting the legality of marriage for gay and lesbian couples. There is a clear and growing majority in America which believes that marriage equality is fair and just, and that it is a moral imperative for a country founded on principles of the equality of all people. We in New York can justly take pride that our state has been a pioneer in providing this equality under the law, and in the Diocese of New York we rejoice with all those who have found, in these new freedoms, the public validation of loving relationships that in many cases represent decades of shared joys and sacrifices.

At our General Convention this summer our own church will consider new liturgies for the blessing of same sex relationships. Happily, in New York, such blessings have long been part of our common life. We pray for the Episcopal Church as it gathers in Convention that it will hear the courageous declaration of our president, the convictions of our own bishop, and the witness of those who have already found comfort, joy and solace in our marriage equality laws, as we work together toward true equality for all people in a church which follows our Lord Jesus. It was he who taught us that in every person we may find the face of our God, and that in every marriage we may hope to see “a sign of Christ’s love to this sinful and broken world.”

+Andy
The Rt. Rev. Andrew M.L. Dietsche
Bishop Coadjutor of New York

From Bishop Smith
Dear Sisters and Brothers,

I, too, heartily endorse the initiative and action of President Obama in affirming the appropriateness of marriage between persons of the same sex, and I wish to “second” the reasoning so clearly enunciated by Bishop Sisk and Bishop Dietsche.

+Drew
The Rt. Rev. Andrew D. Smith
Assistant Bishop, Diocese of New York

[Lambeth Palace] The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has sent a message of support to a meeting of Episcopal and Catholic Bishops in South Sudan.

The fourteen bishops, representing the Catholic and Episcopal Churches of South Sudan, met in Yei, South Sudan, from 9th – 11th May 2012.  Led by Archbishop Paulino Lukudu Loro and Archbishop Daniel Deng Bul, the bishops met to pray and reflect together on the relationship between the two Churches, their wider ecumenical responsibilities, and the role they can play in bringing peace and understanding between Sudan and South Sudan. Their brother bishops from the Republic of Sudan were unable to attend the meeting due to the current political situation.

The message from Archbishop Rowan Williams to the bishops follows: 

My dear brothers in Christ,

Greetings to you all in the name of our risen Lord Jesus Christ.

I send you warmest greetings and hold you in special prayer as you meet together in Yei.  Your coming together as ECS and Catholic bishops is a great sign of hope for the people of Sudan and South Sudan and for all God’s people.

When I visited in 2006, there were so many hopes after the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA).  We have journeyed with you through times of great celebration and severe stress and we will continue to walk with you, grateful as your brother and sisters in Christ for your steadfast witness both in sorrow and in joy.

We are keenly aware of the great suffering caused by the non-implementation of several key parts of the CPA.  The cry of pain continues to be heard from South Kordofan, Blue Nile and Abyei, as well as from those affected by the escalation of conflict in the border region between Sudan and South Sudan.  I pray that the UN Security Council Resolution and the AU Roadmap will result in real progress in settling the outstanding issues.

The church’s dedicated efforts in peace-building and advocacy continue to represent a powerful witness to the gospel.  We are inspired by the untiring efforts to bring peace in Jonglei.  We also stand in special solidarity with the church’s situation in the Republic of Sudan and will continue to press for freedom of religion and worship and the safety of the Christian community.

It is a great tribute to the Sudanese Church that it continues to set before the world the vision of a just and peaceful Sudan and South Sudan and to work for its transformation through holistic and equitable development for all.  I hope that this joint meeting will be a time of refreshment and encouragement for you.  May the risen Christ come among you as he did among his disciples and give you his peace.   May his Spirit come upon you and empower you mightily in this calling.

With every blessing,

+Rowan Cantuar

The Archbishop of York, the Most Reverend John Sentamu, and facilitators from the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference, attended the meeting in a demonstration of solidarity by the Universal Church.

 The Special Representative of the UN Secretary General, Ms Hilde Johnson, visited the bishops, who expressed to her their appreciation for the work of UNMISS, particularly in the Jonglei peace process. The bishops welcomed the peace accord signed by leaders of the six communities of Jonglei State and urged all stakeholders to implement the resolutions and recommendations.

The bishops analysed the events which led to the current crisis between Sudan and South Sudan. While thanking the International Community for all its support over the years, the bishops nevertheless called for greater understanding of the aspirations of the South Sudanese people as they build a new and sovereign nation.

They welcomed UN Security Council Resolution 2046 and called for its immediate and full implementation. They expressed their concern about the situation of South Sudanese and other marginalised peoples in the Republic of Sudan, and condemned the continuing aerial bombardment of civilans by Sudan Armed Forces.

The bishops recommitted themselves to work ecumenically, and considered how they could strengthen the Sudan Council of Churches in this period of transition and crisis between the two nations.

The bishops released a Message of Peace entitled “We have a dream”, stating:

“We dream of two nations which are democratic and free, where people of all religions, all ethnic groups, all cultures and all languages enjoy equal human rights based on citizenship. We dream of two nations at peace with each other, cooperating to make the best use of their God-given resources, promoting free interaction between their citizens, living side by side in solidarity and mutual respect, celebrating their shared history and forgiving any wrongs they may have done to each other. We dream of people no longer traumatised, of children who can go to school, of mothers who can attend clinics, of an end to poverty and malnutrition, and of Christians and Muslims who can attend church or mosque freely without fear. Enough is enough.

There should be no more war between Sudan and South Sudan!”

The communiqué can be downloaded here as a Word document.

[Anglican Communion News Service] The historic Anglican mission agency CMS (Church Mission Society) is re-advertising for an executive leader after not appointing first time around.

The search process for a new person to lead the mission agency began late last year following the appointment of the organization’s community leader, the Rev. Canon Tim Dakin, as bishop of the Diocese of Winchester.

The agency, founded in 1799, now has more than 2,500 members and more than 200 global mission partners. It is seeking “a spiritually mature, committed Christian, passionate about mission and prayer, who can be a compelling role model for the ideals, ethos and values of CMS, working primarily within the Anglican Communion.” They must be a “clear communicator of vision, inspiring faith and hope in others, a team player with proven leadership skills, able to lead, motivate and manage staff, partners and members, confident in relating to people at all levels.”

CMS also is looking for someone with experience of cross-cultural working, collaboration and partnership and a strong track record of leading change in an influential, complex organization.

To learn more about the position, visit the CMS website here.

[Anglican Communion News Service] Episcopal and Catholic bishops from South Sudan have said that together they “stand committed to do all in [their] power” to realize an end to war between Sudan and South Sudan.

Following a three-day meeting in Yei, South Sudan, lead by Roman Catholic Archbishop Paulino Lukudu Loro and Episcopal Church of Sudan Archbishop Daniel Deng Bul, the 14 bishops issued a “Message of Peace” which laid out their hopes and plans for an end to conflict.

Referencing the famous Martin Luther King Jr. speech, the bishop’s said: “We dream of two nations which are democratic and free, where people of all religions, all ethnic groups, all cultures and all languages enjoy equal human rights based on citizenship. We dream of two nations at peace with each other, cooperating to make the best use of their God-given resources, promoting free interaction between their citizens, living side by side in solidarity and mutual respect, celebrating their shared history and forgiving any wrongs they may have done to each other.

“We dream of people no longer traumatized, of children who can go to school, of mothers who can attend clinics, of an end to poverty and malnutrition, and of Christians and Muslims who can attend church or mosque freely without fear. Enough is enough. There should be no more war between Sudan and South Sudan!

“Blessed are the peacemakers; they shall be recognized as children of God (Matthew 5:9). We take this very seriously, and we stand committed to do all in our power to make our dream a reality. We believe that the people and government of South Sudan desperately want peace. We believe the same is true of the people and their liberation movements in the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile. We do not believe, however, that a lasting peace will come unless all parties act in good faith. Trust must be built, and this involves honesty, however painful that may be. We invite the International Community to walk with us on the painful journey of exploring the truth in competing claims and counter-claims, allegations and counter-allegations. We invite them to understand the peaceful aspirations of the ordinary people, and to reflect that in their statements and actions.”

The bishops’ document was, however, more than just aspirational — it included calls to both the international community and the nations of South Sudan and Sudan, specifically ones requesting the implementation of U.N. resolution 20461 and for protection for the marginalized.

The bishops — who welcomed to the meeting Archbishop of York John Sentamu and the Special representative of the U.N. secretary general, Hilde Johnson — also committed themselves to renewed ecumenical efforts to build peace. “During the civil war the strength of the churches’ role on the ground and in international advocacy lay in their unity and ecumenical spirit,” said the statement, “…since peace came in 2005 the ecumenical project has dwindled.

“The Catholic and Episcopal churches have much in common in their history, theology and praxis, both are founder members of the Sudan Council of Churches (SCC) and both are international institutions with a great deal of influence in the world for the well-being of all. Working together we believe we have much to offer to SCC as it restructures to meet the new reality of two nations, and as it faces new challenges due to the current military and political tensions.”

Bishops from the Republic of Sudan were unable to attend the meeting due to the current political situation.

The full text of the letter, along with its signatories, is available here.

[Church of Ireland] The General Synod of the Church of Ireland, meeting May 12 at Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, passed a motion on Human Sexuality in the Context of Christian Belief affirming the church’s traditional teaching on marriage. The full text of the motion follows.

The General Synod affirms that:

The Church of Ireland, mindful of the Preamble and Declaration, believes and accepts the Holy Scriptures as revealing all things necessary for eternal salvation through faith in Jesus Christ;

The Church of Ireland continues to uphold its teaching that marriage is part of God’s creation and a holy mystery in which one man and one woman become one flesh, as provided for in Canon 31:

‘The Church of Ireland affirms, according to our Lord’s teaching that marriage is in its purpose a union permanent and life-long, for better or worse, till death do them part, of one man with one woman, to the exclusion of all others on either side, for the procreation and nurture of children, for the hallowing and right direction of the natural instincts and affections, and for the mutual society, help and comfort which the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity.’

The Church of Ireland recognises for itself and of itself, no other understanding of marriage than that provided for in the totality of Canon 31. The Church of Ireland teaches therefore that faithfulness within marriage is the only normative context for sexual intercourse. Members of the Church of Ireland are required by the Catechism to keep their bodies in ‘temperance, soberness and chastity’. Clergy are called in the Ordinal to be ‘wholesome examples and patterns to the flock of Jesus Christ’.

The Church of Ireland welcomes all people to be members of the Church. It is acknowledged, however, that members of the Church have at times hurt and wounded people by words and actions, in relation to human sexuality.

Therefore, in order that the Church of Ireland is experienced as a ‘safe place’ and enabled in its reflection, the Church of Ireland affirms:

A continuing commitment to love our neighbour, and opposition to all unbiblical and uncharitable actions and attitudes in respect of human sexuality from whatever perspective, including bigotry, hurtful words or actions, and demeaning or damaging language;

A willingness to increase our awareness of the complex issues regarding human sexuality;

A determination to welcome and to make disciples of all people.

The Church of Ireland is mindful that for all who believe ‘there is no distinction’ and that ‘all have sinned and come short of the glory of God’ (Romans 3:22-23) and are in need of God’s grace and mercy. We seek to be a community modelled on God’s love for the world as revealed in Jesus Christ. We wish that all members of the Church, through the teaching of the scriptures, the nourishment of the sacraments, and the prayerful and pastoral support of a Christian community will fulfil their unique contribution to God’s purposes for our world.

The General Synod requests the Standing Committee to progress work on the issue of Human Sexuality in the Context of Christian Belief and also to bring a proposal to General Synod 2013 for the formation of a Select Committee with terms of reference including reporting procedures.

Bishops, Priest, Deacons, Venerable Monastics, Deputies, and all those appointed to serve at General Convention,

Christ is Risen.

It is not long before you all gather to take council on behalf of the Episcopal Church and Anglican Communion in this country, and such is the reason for my letter. I am a convert to the Episcopal Church, and my love for this Church and the Anglican Tradition is of immense proportions, but the path we are treading seems to be leading suspiciously away from beliefs and practices that have shaped, defined, and refined the Church of Jesus since the time of the Apostles. For the sake of Christ's Church and the Gospel of Jesus, I beg you to reconsider.

We have been in a steady, and now precipitous, decline for nearly 50 years. Rather than pull back the reins, pause, reflect, and consider, we have dug in the spurs and whipped it up ...

Katharine Jefferts Schori, Episcopal Presiding Bishop, told the Huffington Post this week that the movement toward legalizing same-sex marriage and the acceptance of gay people as clergy and lay members of religious groups is "a done deal" that represents "phenomenal" progress ...

AROUND 800 people were expected at a special service in St Mary's Episcopal Cathedral today for the consecration and installation of the new Bishop of Edinburgh.