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"Be on your guard. Stand firm in the faith. Be brave. Be strong. Be loving in everything you do." - I Corinthians 16:13-14 |
UPDATE: The good news is that Katrina appears to be weakening very quickly, and it looks like Jackson and much of the western part of Mississippi is going to be spared the worst. Even New Orleans isn't getting what was being predicted (although at this point the destruction still appears to be considerable and widespread). The bad news is, the eye has to go somewhere, and it looks like the area on the Mississippi Gulf Coast from the Pearl River to Biloxi is getting the worst of it, particularly the Bay St. Louis - Pass Christian area, which took it on the chin from Camille 36 years ago. Here's a satellite photo of the Pass Christian small craft harbor from before the storm. In this photo, from left to right, are the Superdome, the French Quarter, and the Mississippi River (click "Hybrid" to see street names superimposed on the photo). Use the map tools to zoom in, zoom out, and move around. It's a fascinating part of the country and this is a great way to get the lay of the land. It will be interesting to see what all this looks like tomorrow.
In addition to your continued prayers, please consider donating to or volunteering for one of these disaster relief organizations.
UPDATE: Note to all broadcast professionals - it's pronounced "buh-LUCKS-ee."
UPDATE: Here's a round up of links where you can follow the storm. Some live-blogging and webcams. And for those who haven't seen it, read this "what to expect" advisory from the National Weather Service.
Well, it's definitely "Wrath of God Sunday" here in the south. My wife's aunt, uncle, and grandmother, who yesterday were determined to ride out the hurricane in Mandeville (a suburb of New Orleans on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain), have heeded the mandatory evacuation and left the city. I climbed up on my roof to look at a way of sealing an opening that has a habit of letting in swirling rain like the kind we're expecting, and in the process disturbed a wasps' nest that was hidden in the eaves. Moments later, standing on my roof in the blazing sun, I was stung on the side of the head by one those little monsters. The numbness, which extended down into my left ear, is only now starting to subside.
I managed to climb back down off the roof with no injury, and as we were standing in the back yard plotting a different strategy, my wife and I noticed a small black leaf float down and hit the ground. Then another one. I picked it up, and it was charred to a crisp. We looked around and saw, 4 blocks to the east, a towering plume of thick dark smoke that rose well above the 80-foot oaks that dominate our neighborhood. We hadn't heard the first fire engine siren, so I got in my truck and drove over to see what was happening. The fire was coming from an area near the Pearl River behind an "authorized personnel only" police department gate, but is a well-known trouble spot where transients making their way up and down the Pearl River stop to camp. Several years ago a couple of them burned down a historic old trestle bridge. I called 911, and 45 leisurely minutes later heard the first truck headed that way.
But we've got it easy. Right now 30,000 people are lined up to get into the Superdome. Interstate 10 is a parking lot. Tens of thousands of people along the path of this storm have no way to leave.
On TV and around the web people are making their dire predictions about storm surge, flooding, the threat of tornadoes spawned by high winds, even the possibility of chemical poisoning and rampant spread of disease following the flooding.
What I haven't heard anyone speculate on yet is something even more macabre. All locals, and many southerners, know that in New Orleans there are vast cemeteries (click here for photo) where the dead are "buried" above ground. So for all the misery New Orleans is in for already, add to it the prospect of thousands of corpses floating through the streets.
Lord have mercy.
The past couple of hurricane seasons have been sporty to say the least. Now Katrina, oddly reminiscent of Andrew in 1992, takes aim at Louisiana after slicing across the Florida peninsula.
Evacuation has begun in southeastern Louisiana, but despite Interstates 55 and 59 being contraflowed northward, emergency officials have advised evacuees not to head north to Jackson, Mississippi, as Katrina looks to slam head-on into our fair city. Please add us to your hurricane prayer list. Category 4 storms (which Katrina is predicted to be at landfall) are often still packing hurricane- or tropical-storm-force winds even this far inland.
UPDATE: Yep, this is Officially Bad.
UPDATE: This is pretty sporty, too.
The Rev. Susan Russell, president of Integrity, is rallying Episcopalians to support Cindy Sheehan:
Russell's call to arms follows:
The news this morning was filled again with pictures of Cindy Sheehan's "one-woman-stand-turned-peace-movement" in Crawford TX. The news also included reports of the predictable backlash that has begun in earnest -- the orchestrated efforts to dismiss the grieving mother as a political opportunist bearing down on Crawford -- fueled by the hot air generated by the conservative pundits and bloggers just as Hurricane Katrina is strengthened by the warm waters of the Gulf as she bears down on the Gulf coast.
Just as New Orleans coastal dwellers are "boarding up" in preparation for the onslaught I believe the Crawford peacemakers should be doing likewise. And so I think it's time for us to help in that effort -- to start a new support system for Cindy: "The Guild of the Persistent Widow" ...... per the example given by Our Lord in the Gospel According to Luke (18:1-8)
"Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. He said: "In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared about men. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, 'Grant me justice against my adversary.' For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, 'Even though I don't fear God or care about men, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won't eventually wear me out with her coming!' And the Lord said, "Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly."
So there you have it -- scriptural warrant for Cindy Sheehan's witness and the promise that our Lord does INDEED promise that justice will one day roll down like waters -- and righteousness like an ever flowing stream. Our job is to pray and not give up -- even when the odds seem stacked against us and the neo-con bloggers dismiss our witness as the ramblings of the politically correct liberal fringe.
Pray without ceasing -- for the peace that passes understanding AND for the resolve to be agents of change for that peace on earth, good will to all that has so far eluded us as a human race -- but we believe God intends for us as a human family.
That's the agenda I move for "The Guild of the Persistent Widow." Do I hear a second?
Trouble is on the horizon for the Diocese of Upper South Carolina (DUSC), which heads into its annual diocesan convention October 21 & 22. The vestry of Holy Cross in Simpsonville has introduced a resolution that seeks to prevent 16 churches from participating in the convention's proceedings because they have not met their full diocesan assessment.
The text of the resolution:
WHEREAS, the Diocese of Upper South Carolina Statement of Mission is experiencing a $500,000 shortfall, and
WHEREAS, as a result of this shortfall, the body has been unable to carry out the mission work planned for this year, and
WHEREAS, that shortfall is primarily the result of the willful withholding of funds by certain parishes in the Diocese, and
WHEREAS, without prejudice as to the intent of such withholdings, it is the hope of the body that some alternative responses may be found for addressing disagreements among ourselves with the National Church,
NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that delegates to this Convention representing those parishes that have willfully withheld funds from the Diocese are asked to abstain from participating in debate and from voting on any issues pertaining to the Diocesan Statement of Mission that may come to the floor of this 83rd Convention of the Diocese of Upper South Carolina.
According to the letter, the diocesan budget was reduced by $477,890, and 16 parishes did not accept their full diocesan assessment (according to the table at the end of the letter, +Henderson's claim of 13 appears to be in error).
If you look carefully at all the figures listed in the letter, you'll note that two churches accepted only 1/3 of their assessment (All Saints, Clinton and Christ Church, Lancaster); two churches 1/2 of their assessments (Good Shepherd, Columbia and St. James, Greenville); and one church a mere 1/6th of its assessment (St. David's Columbia).
Christ Church, facing a serious loss in reduced giving of nearly $500,000 from its budget alone, lowered its pledge to the diocese by half to make up some of the shortfall. The remainder of the loss it covered by reducing its own parish budget by 20%.
The budgets of these 16 parishes are in trouble for one reason: The actions of General Convention 2003.
If passed, what Holy Cross Simpsonville's resolution will do is punish those parishes even more, by taking away their voices and votes on budgetary issues. If successful, it will likely leave the vestries and congregations of those churches wondering exactly what is the point of DUSC membership.
The asymmetry of the punishment is striking. While all 16 churches gave at least some money to the diocese, the resolution seeks to strip them of all their voice and vote at convention.
What the vestry of Holy Cross and DUSC either ignore or fail to understand is that they could have avoided this crisis by giving parishes a sound means of withholding their pledges from ECUSA. DUSC is not alone in this failure to reconcile the crisis within its borders to its financial commitments to 815. Had it provided such a means, it's entire possible - perhaps even likely - that it would be facing no shortfall at all.
You can email Holy Cross rector Fr. Michael Flanagan and let him know what you think about it. You can also visit the directory page of Holy Cross's web site for more contact information.
You can let the Diocese of Upper South Carolina know what you think by calling them at 803-771-7800, emailing them at diocese@edusc.org, or writing them at:
Episcopal Diocese of Upper South Carolina
Attn: Bishop Dorsey Henderson
1115 Marion Street
Columbia, South Carolina
29201
Promising remarks from Catholic youth gathered in Germany for World Youth Day:
...
"We don't want to hear only what pleases us," said Pascal Straszewski, 21, a Frankfurt law student. "Faith means holding fast to ideals."
"Nobody wants to hear a lie," added Felicity Elvis, 18, a journalism student from Brisbane, Australia. "Politicians lie to us all the time. We're tired of being lied to."
"Why should the Church change with the times?" asked Mexico City student Ibanez Monserrat, 19. "What it says works for all kinds of people."
Binky the web-elf has been a tireless supporter of the conservative Anglican blogosphere, directing huge amounts of traffic our way from the daily digest at Classical Anglican Net News. Normally he doesn't do commentary, but when he does it's usually well worth the read. This is a perfect example:
After all, Canada has no abortion-law – we trash at least 100,000+ unborn Canadians a year. Tax-funded, in most cases. Around the same time as the Binklings were born and plonked in neo-natal, that local children's 'health-center' – having finally just kicked out the fundamentalistical religious bigots who had run the institution for generations – started doing occasional abortions. The dismemberment of pre-borns, top-dollar health-care for the unborn and for preemies – all in the very same building. But we have rules about washing our garbage.
...
It is Canada, after all – become the nightmare-playground of social engineers, moral busybodies, politically-correct malcontents, confused utopians, and government-funded misadventures of various sorts. A land of forgetting and unmaking. And a place where you must wash your garbage.
Moving Mountains has compiled a jaw-dropping list of quotes by some of ECUSA's highest-profile clergy and lay leaders. Head over there and vote on your "favorite," and explain why.
Yesterday (8-15-05) in California Judge David C. Velasquez of the Orange County Superior Court threw out a suit by the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles against St. James Episcopal Church in Newport Beach. St. James is one of three breakaway parishes that one year ago left the ECUSA, and is being sued by the diocese in attempt to prevent them from keeping their property. News summary here.
By Bill Boniface
Congratulations to St. James in Los Angeles in particular, but to all in the Episcopal Church who think standing up and being counted in this battle for our Church is important.
God watches over His people, especially when oppressive tactics are applied against them. This decision has the potential to have huge implications for the Episcopal Church. We must remember that each case is specific, and that trust law varies from state to state, but the bottom line is that the Dennis Canon - designed to cow all believers into towing the line by threatening their properties - is going to be exposed before long as 1) having no legal basis, having not been properly passed in 1979 in accordance with church law, 2) having no basis in property rights law in many states since ECUSA is not on most deeds they claim to have a trust interest in; and 3) an illegal way of stealing parish properties as a way to stifle religious dissent from apostate doctrine.
The state courts have taken the Moyer case against the Bishop of Pennsylvania (a major exposure of a priest being deposed without the requisite due process in canon law, by a bishop who tolerates Druids in his diocesan clergy).
The Bishop of Connecticut who stormed St. John's Church in Bristol with a team of thugs and locksmiths, hacked into the computers, removed all financial and private counseling records, took over the parish and won't give the vestry the keys faces more civil charges than you can count on one hand.
And you've seen the decision last week of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA), who count twice our number in the Episcopal Church with almost 5 million members, which has decided it will continue including all Christians in its church, but in a way that remains consistent with Scripture.
Don't just stay tuned. Get off your couch and do something to help restore Anglican beliefs and some modicum of sanity in our Church.
Don't find yourself flat-footed when your children and grandchildren one day ask you what part you played during the assault on the Church. Have an inspiring story to tell them about how, when Christ's church was under assault, you put on the armor of God and fought for Him - and that's why they're still able to attend church and hear the Word rather than visit a museum that used to be a place of worship.
Bill Boniface is a retired U.S. Navy pilot, and author of Why I Left My Liberal Parish.
Fox News is reporting:
The measure would have affirmed the church ban on ordaining sexually active gays and lesbians, but would have allowed bishops and church districts called synods to seek an exception for a particular candidate — if that person was in a committed relationship and met other restrictions.
When it rains it pours: Yet more sad news from across the pond, this time with lots of numbers.
In 12 major European countries, 38% of people say they never or practically never attend church, according to the World Values Survey in 2000. France's 60% non-attendance rate is the highest in that group. In the USA, only 16% say they rarely go to church.
[The Rev. Tim Jones, interviewed here last year, offers this explanation, from the perspective of an English priest, of the recent vote by Church of England bishops to allow same-sex unions in England. Fr. Jones is vicar at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Corinth, Mississippi.]
By The Rev. Tim Jones
There are many around the world who have expressed surprise and dismay that nearly all of the Anglican bishops in the United Kingdom's House of Lords recently voted in favour of legislation designed to allow gay people to enter into non-religious civil partnerships which are clearly analogous to marriage.
To many outside the UK it seems bizarre that Christian bishops could vote for something that seems to them so, well, un-Christian. The powerful Anglican archbishop of Nigeria is furious, and reports are circulating that he is contemplating proposals for the Anglican Communion to discipline the Church of England, its historical 'mother-church'. It is part of a wider debate about sexuality and church order that the Anglican Communion, the world's third largest Christian denomination, may not survive intact.
In addition to the two archbishops of the Church of England (Canterbury and York) there are over 100 other bishops in the Church of England's 43 dioceses. The archbishops and 24 senior bishops have seats in the House of Lords, the upper house of the British Parliament, very approximately akin to the Senate of the USA. They therefore have the right to debate and vote on proposed legislation for the British nation.
The cultural mood of much of Europe, particularly northern Europe, is deeply, virulently and increasingly secular. Great Britain - especially England and Wales - is absolutely involved in that massive post WW2 cultural shift. In the UK the process of cultural secularization is reflected and fuelled by the various broadcast and print media. Religious belief attracts ever more open contempt from those who form or pander to public opinion. Any notion that people of faith (including theologians or the leaders of faith communities) might have something valuable, important, or even useful to say to society at large is met with a greater degree of hostility every year. The long standing calls to reform the House of Lords are well underway, and concrete government plans to remove the bishops are in the pipeline.
In Europe, the age of Christendom is truly ended; even to many committed Anglican Christians, the participation of bishops in government or parliament seems at best anachronistic and at worst a real conflict of interest. The direction and thrust of civic legislation is all to do with individual freedom and personal choice, with no reference to God or religious faith except as a personal leisure pursuit.
Many clergy - and bishops - of the Church of England, being English, share this outlook. Insofar as they accept a role for bishops in Parliament, it is certainly not to impose Christian moral strictures into legislation for society at large. Such an approach would be considered by most to be an outrageous abuse of power. Rather, the general expectation is that the bishops will speak and vote to protect the rights of the under-privileged and to represent the concerns of the religious community, not just for the Church of England, but for all people of faith in general. Many bishops seek to show that they are not partisan in either a political or religious sense.
In practical terms the most direct use which parliament makes of the bishops is their appointment to parliamentary working parties which report on matters perceived to be of a particularly difficult or controversial ethical nature. Their participation is helpful because, for the most part, they are the among the very few parliamentarians with any education in or working knowledge of the discipline of ethics.
So when those bishops vote, they vote not according to what they see as right for a Christian community, but according to what they see as fair for a diverse secular community in which Christians should not be (or be seen to be) bullies or busybodies. In this they understand themselves as fulfilling the vocation of the Church of England to serve the people of England, irrespective of religious faith or discipline.
About one million people attend worship at Church of England churches on any particular Sunday (out of England's total population of 50 million), though if one counts all those who show up for an ordinary Sunday service at least once per month there are more like two million, and those who show up for an ordinary Sunday service at least once a year probably number about 4 million (my wild guess, extrapolated from experience of eight years' parish ministry in England). Recent statistical studies have shown that it is not simply the total number of churchgoers that is declining, but also the number of times any one churchgoer might attend an act of worship in the course of a year. About another million people attend Roman Catholic worship on any one Sunday, and about another million attend worship in churches of the many other Christian denominations. Probably another million people in England attend worship according to some non-Christian faith tradition each week.
Which is all to say that religious faith and practice, while it is in a state of serious, even desperate challenge, is hardly yet moribund. The big change is that people live their faith within the framework of a culture which is ever more irreligious. Personal Christian belief is held within a paradigm of public secularism.
Therefore, in sharp contrast to Christian discourse in the USA, the churches will be very active and outspoken in the fields of secular justice, such as poverty (domestic and global), the environment, international trade, the arms industry, and civil rights. This is surely a good thing; Rick Warren, minister of California's Saddleback Church and author of the important and influential books Purpose Driven Life and Purpose Driven Church has acknowledged that American Christians have been far too reticent in these fields of public, secular justice.
Yet British Christians are much more muted in fields of personal morality than their American siblings, because in the UK these are further outside the socially acceptable range of political debate for religious voices. In a political system which has known no formal separation of Church and State (indeed, there is a formal unity of Church and State) friction has been largely avoided by the tacit withdrawal of Christians from active, vocal, committed political involvement in matters of personal morality. There is little clarity of understanding of where a Christian activist should stand on matters such as abortion or sexuality, because these are seen by society as a whole as being first and foremost matters of civil rights in which Christians should either support the oppressed or keep their noses out of other people's secular business. Those Christians who do speak to these issues do not receive a sympathetic reporting in the media, and indeed, their voices are often too shrill to be effective in public debate as it is usually conducted in the UK.
Clergy, of course, are Christian activists. Church of England clergy, unlike their Roman Catholic counterparts, are not subjected to clear centralized instructions about official social policies to endorse or attack, because part of the Anglican self understanding is that such instructions are inappropriate. Anglican clergy have a wide latitude to develop their thinking, theology and preaching according to their conscience. When it comes to the intimate demands of discipleship, there is little agreement about what is right or proper, and so no clear 'Anglican' position exists. The criticism, of course, is that priests should develop their conscience according to their theology, not vice versa.
Many American conservatives castigate much of what results as tepid liberalism. But there is nothing tepid about the ministry of most Anglican clergy in England, for whom faith and ministry are lived as a constant, severely sacrificial grind to serve wider society, ungrateful, secular and contemptuous though it may be. Priests and bishops are drawn from and inevitably reflect the mores and attitudes of that wider society, even as they struggle, because of their faith in Jesus Christ, to ameliorate its injustices. They mostly believe all people to have an absolute right to the supportive ministries of the Church of England, no matter what their faith or worship habits happen to be. Clergy do not want to judge, and certainly do not want to be perceived as judgmental; they generally just slog away in their ministry to defend the rights and the dignity of people who are overlooked, forsaken or despised by the godless society at large - the grieving, the poor, the immigrant, and the unusual (including, in most places, the homosexual). They do this with little pay, little thanks, and little practical support (and mostly in the rain!).
Ordinary churchgoers rejoice quietly when new people come to church, as much because most church communities bump along at a barely viable rate and any new hands on the financial deck are appreciated. The Church of England's local communities are responsible for the colossal financial and bureaucratic burden of thousands upon thousands of beautiful Medieval, Georgian and Victorian buildings. The Great Commission is not rejected, but is hardly embraced. This is not because people do not want to share their faith, but because they do not know how best to do it, or even feel that they have the social right to do it. Back breaking work for the church mostly involves keeping the roof on and the low stipends paid.
There are signs, though, that British Christians are seeking a greater clarity of moral direction, and a more vibrant engagement with the social issues of the day by the Christian community as a whole. Church attendance has even increased slightly in recent years. It is much too early, though, to say whether various recent polls and statistics are evidence of a new direction or a brief respite.
The bishops in the House of Lords voted as would have been expected. The surprise for most of them is that anyone might have expected them to vote differently. They did their duty to see that the legislation was fair and that some safeguards were in place. They were helpful and conciliatory. That is, after all, the main public function of the Church of England, and it is exhausting.
A sad comment on religion in England today, and a warning for America:
"At the end of the 19th century, there were comparable levels of religiosity in Britain and the United States. The British lived in a culture in which the assumptions of Protestant Christianity were taken for granted," Davies wrote in The New Criterion.
But he said that, generally beginning after World War II, the nation's morality collapsed, and the U.K. saw dramatically worsening trends in illegitimacy, substance abuse, crime and other sorts of behavior that were once considered sinful.
In 2000, the Anglican archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. George Carey, also noted Britain's moral decline. "A tacit atheism prevails. Death is assumed to be the end of life. Our concentration on the here-and-now renders a thought of eternity irrelevant."
St. Thomas Becket
Well educated, Becket (?1120-1170) was appointed in 1155 by Henry II to be Chancellor of England. At this time Becket lived in luxury and was the king's favorite companion. When, in 1162, he was elected Archbishop of Canterbury at the instigation of the King, he accepted the office with reluctance, knowing a break to be inevitable. He became an active champion of the church and the people.
A series of bitter conflicts with the King followed. In 1170, the King in irritation said, "Have I not about me one man of enough spirit to rid me of a single insolent prelate?" Four of his knights took this remark as a commission. They went at once to Canterbury and murdered the Archbishop while he was at vespers in the cathedral.
The murder provoked great indignation throughout Europe. Miracles were soon recorded at Becket's tomb, and he was canonized in 1173. In 1174 Henry did public penance at the shrine. Becket's shrine at Canterbury was a favorite place of pilgrimage until it was destroyed under Henry VIII.
