Episcopal Cafe

Mission statement as hymn

2013-05-20T00:04:57Z

Would your church remember its mission statement better if it was set to music? Here is an idea from St Peter's Episcopal Church, Del Mar, CA. Listen here.

The power of story

2013-05-19T20:39:41Z

Moyers and Company explore how story can shape advocacy and public life. Marshall Ganz reflects:

Public narrative is central to movement building, organizing and advocacy. It’s an articulation of the challenge, of the sources of hope, and of a pathway to action required to realize that hope; a response to those three questions posed by first century Jerusalem scholar, Rabbi Hillel: If I am not of myself, who will be for me? If I am for myself alone, what am I? If not now, when? A story of self, a story of us, and a story of now.
....
Narrative is how we learn to make choices, how we learn to access the moral resources (hope, empathy, self worth) to respond mindfully and courageously to urgent challenges. As St. Augustine observed, it is one thing to “know” the good, but another to “love” it – and loving it calls forth action. Because values are emotional in content, they are sources not only of information about what we “ought” to do, but also of the motivation to do it. I say values, not interests, because while self-interest is sufficient to sustain the status quo, our values are sources of the courage to take the risks, make the commitments, and reach out to others that challenging the status quo requires.

Read more of how this works here. Video of interview (transcript here) and other ideas about how change can happen:

How do you see the church offering "story"? The particular church you serve? How does this go beyond a "vision or mission statement"?

Priest suspended for plagiarizing sermons

2013-05-19T16:08:15Z

All clergy use material from one another and read others' thoughts and sermons on the Sunday lectionary but how much is too much to use?

An Episcopal priest in Massachusetts has been suspended for plagiarizing sermons according to theCape Cod News,:

The Rev. John E. McGinn, 65, who has led the 300-plus families at St. John's Episcopal Church since 1993, was placed on administrative leave amid allegations that he plagiarized sermons dating back to 2006, said the Rev. Mally Lloyd, canon to the ordinary for the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts, a position equivalent to the bishop's chief of staff.

As many as 15 sermons have been identified as direct copies, Lloyd said. They were allegedly taken from a book called "Dynamic Preaching," which can be accessed only with an online subscription.

The bishop's office pointed out a Dec. 11, 2011, sermon as an example. The sermon is still on the church's website.

Not all seminary grads take church positions

2013-05-19T12:05:58Z

A growing number of seminary graduates are exercising their ministries outside of churches according to this Washington Post article:

Alethea Allen, a Virginia resident, graduated this week from Wesley Theological Seminary in Northwest Washington after years of divinity classes. But she has no intention of becoming a[n ordained] minister.

Instead, Allen plans to keep practicing as a pediatrician in the Winchester area. Her seminary training, she said, will help her be a better doctor. Allen is one of an increasing number of divinity students who don’t plan to become pastors. Instead, they envision using their degrees to “minister” in any number of professions, from filmmaking to medicine to nonprofit management.

“I see what I’m doing as a form of ministry,” said Allen, 36. “Particularly with parents whose children are dying. I approach the situations more with my spiritual eyes open. This isn’t just a medical event taking place.”

How does education in your church enhance the ministry of all in the world?

h/t to frequent Daily Episcopalian contributor Eric Bonetti

How long O Lord

2013-05-19T08:09:48Z

by Maria L. Evans

In the wee hours of May 3, at a time of year we're enjoying the luscious green of the grass, the budding of the wild plums and the redbud trees...it SNOWED.

The latest I have ever remembered it snowing in Northeast Missouri was April, most significantly the Great Easter Blizzard of 1973. Never in May. Allegedly the last time it snowed in Kirksville in May was either 1903 or 1904, I can't remember which. But no matter, you understand the issue here.

I walked outside to take the dogs out, looked at the sky, shook my finger at the clouds, and yelled at the top of my lungs, "NO! Stop it! You put spring back RIGHT NOW!" Yeah, right. Like THAT had an effect.

Sounds a little bit like "How long, O Lord," doesn't it?

If we spent the time to index the Psalter by topic, it doesn't take long to realize impatience with God is one of the major themes in the Psalms. Elements of "How long, O Lord?" can be found in several Psalms, perhaps most notably in Psalm 13. "How long, O Lord?" addresses a tough topic--our impatience with the time frame for God to reveal what God does--both on a personal and societal level.

Perhaps at a personal level, we most acutely feel it in times of transitions that seem to take too long--when we're between jobs, when we're trying to straighten out or finances, or when we're dealing with a chronic issue in our family dynamics. Why is it that, at times, joy seems to be so fleeting, but misery seems to last forever?

Likewise, at a societal level, we probably most acutely feel it in the wake of tragedies. How long, O Lord, will innocent people fall victim to shootings and bombings? How long, O Lord, will women in the developing world die in childbirth? How long, O Lord, will drunk drivers slam into pedestrians? How long, O Lord, will people use the Bible to foster hate and exclusivity?

Nothing ever seems to move fast enough, and some things don't seem to move at all. Yet deep down I realize there really have been changes for the better, both in myself, and in the world.

I suppose a lot of that painful anxiety of a sense of inertia has to do with the personal relativity of time. Think of that four-year-old who's just been put in "time out." How many times have we heard the pitiful voice in the corner wail, "I've been here forever! I'll be good, just let me out!" over a five minute punishment? I used to think that was just pure drama, but one day the thought crossed my mind, "Well, you know, when a person's four, five minutes is a much more significant chunk of that kid's life than it is of mine."

In the same vein, I imagine a God who hears our petitions and understands our pain and angst and fear, and yearns to help us understand that this difficult thing we are going through is not as big a chunk of time as we think it is. Our entire sphere of experience is confined to our lives we've lived up to now.

Take that May snowfall. All day in the office, as people went in and out, the chit-chat was all about the snow. Some were absolutely convinced it's global warming. Others were divulging their apocalyptic Christian beliefs. Still others were denying global warming and saying "it's nothing--it's just the weather."

When I was asked my opinion, I said, "Well, it's hard to say, I think. I really do think there's global warming going on--but I also know that we've only been keeping accurate weather records in this country since about the 1880's. It's kind of like the blind man and the elephant. We have only this 135 year window to try to figure out what "normal" is in something that's been going on for millions of years. Really, we can only get a handle on the little cycles of weather. The big ones, not so much." (I avoided that Apocalypse stuff.)

That's probably true with God's plan, too. We can study the cycles in our own life and see in retrospect how God might have been there all along, even though we didn't see it at the time...and just as we can study the weather records, we can look back at the stories passed on to us through the Bible and see the cycle of Creation, Sin, Judgment, Repentance, and Redemption in the Hebrew people, the people of the early church, and in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We're not the only one on the planet who had trouble seeing God's intent at the time something was happening.

The challenge for us in any of these difficulties, personal or societal, is to not get caught up in the tar pit of our despair. For those of us who regularly do some aspect of the Daily Office, it's a place where the regular reading of the Psalms can help. We cycle through them every seven weeks in the Daily Office, and the mere repetition of that practice offers opportunities for the Psalmist to match our mood more than random chance would seem to suggest. I've always been amazed at how often "How long, O Lord?" pops up at a time I'm thinking "How long, O Lord," myself, or when the "My enemies are ganging up on me," psalms line up with the times I feel surrounded. Likewise, the Daily Office will cycle back around to the ones with the "Praise God for this, that, and the other," theme, and when they match my mood, I can shout them with gusto...or when things are rough, they remind me to find something to praise, despite my difficulties. I admit, I'm biased, but it's why I would recommend doing at least a tiny snippet of the Daily Office every day as a #1 spiritual practice. If it does nothing else, it at least makes me aware of the cycles that make up more cycles that make up the big cycle of a God who both desires justice and gives mercy--and how to discover my role in it.

Ultimately, though, we are back to the blind man and the elephant without the lynchpin of that little thing called faith. Maybe it's a little less about God "doing something" for us or "stopping something" for us than it is about us learning to see the cycles and trust them in the same way we trust the sun will rise in the east and set in the west, or that even when the snow falls in May in Missouri, the sun will come out and melt it--and that God will provide the courage and the grace to live out today whether things happen on our time frame or not.

What were the cycles in the story behind the last time we looked at the clouds and yelled, "How long, O Lord?"

Maria Evans, a surgical pathologist from Kirksville, MO, writes about the obscurities of life, medicine, faith, and the Episcopal Church on her blog, Kirkepiscatoid

Pentecost and pair o' cleats

2013-05-19T08:04:35Z

Psalm 118 (Morning)
Psalm 145 (Evening)
Isaiah 11:1-9
1 Corinthians 2:1-13
John 14:21-29

The Koine Greek word used for "advocate" in our reading today is paraclete, literally, "one who is called to someone's side."

Here's an embarrassing childhood confession: The first time I heard the word "paraclete" used in a sermon, I thought the preacher was saying "pair o' cleats." I kept thinking, "Why's Jesus talking about cleats? Baseball and football hadn't been invented yet!"

The word "advocate" for us, in the 21st century, has actually taken on a legal overtone in some ways. Our relationship with our attorney as an advocate implies that the attorney fights for us against someone or something else. Courts appoint advocates to minors to fight for their rights in a complex legal system. Patient advocates act as protectors of patient welfare in a medical system that can suck a person down into a perverse rabbit hole where everyone is only a number and a statistic.

In short, we've come to see the word "advocate" as one that carries with it the potential for an adversarial relationship with our unseen or unknown enemies.

Actually, trying to discern the original meaning of paraclete isn't as easy as it looks. It seems to be, as best as I understand it, a word that was mostly used by Jewish Greek-speakers than it was non-Jewish Greek speakers. It seems to refer to a helper in something of a greater good, and in some instances, a slave called in for help. Some authors believe it was a way of Hellenizing the Hebrew word "Menahem," or "comforter."

Well, as it turns out, my childhood notion of a pair of cleats, perhaps, isn't so crazy in adding to the meaning of the word "advocate" in a fuller sense.

I remember the first time I was old enough to play softball in cleats. Actually, if one has ever coached kids, it's a hoot to watch kids in cleats for the first time. Wearing cleats is a foreign sensation. It requires lifting one's feet a little higher than one is used to doing, or the end result is suddenly finding oneself in a horizontal position on the ground. Kids in cleats for the first time look like a bunch of chickens walking around with exaggerated upward steps.

It doesn't take long, though, for the wearer to intuitively realize that there are advantages to hugging the earth a little more tightly. I remember that suddenly I realized I could put more "zip" on a throw by trusting my back foot to hold more securely. I could leap at fly balls with a little more effort. I could turn and adjust to grounders a little quicker. I could round the bases a little tighter, and yes, even slide toward a fielder's legs and hope she backed off of me or dropped the ball.

Yet the fact is, those cleats don't do a thing in their own right but connect the wearer to the ground. Most of the changes occur in the person wearing the cleats. The wearer learns how to be a better ballplayer through them.

I suspect it's no different with our Paraclete, the Holy Spirit. She connects us to the ground of our being, and when we feel more connected, we become free to move a little more quickly, round the corners of the basepaths of our life a little more tightly, and try to turn a little sharper and jump a little higher than we would have if we only could trust in ourselves, with no help.

When have you sensed, in your life, that the Paraclete truly has been a pair-o-cleats?

Maria Evans, a surgical pathologist from Kirksville, MO, writes about the obscurities of life, medicine, faith, and the Episcopal Church on her blog, Kirkepiscatoid

Holiness of Beauty: interview with Carl Daw

2013-05-18T23:18:32Z

Cowley Magazine offers in interview with the Rev. Dr. Carl P. Daw, Jr. focussing on how he translates and paraphrases psalms for hymn texts:

Why do we need new paraphrases of the psalms today?

A great danger with psalm translations – as with anything that we sing or do in church – is the possibility of making one text into an idol, such that it seems it cannot be changed. It has been said about church architecture that anything in the worship space that cannot be changed becomes an idol. This is true also of what we sing in worship. So it’s valuable to have different psalm paraphrases, as well as different tunes to pair with psalm and hymn texts, because these different versions will enable us to notice new things that we might not have seen in the familiar version.
.....
How does chanting the psalms, like we do at the Monastery, add to the experience of the texts?

Chanting the psalms emphasizes the timelessness of them, especially in the space of the Monastery Chapel. There is a kind of sonic memory that is evoked by hearing those sounds in that space, which, to me, communicates a sense of transcendence that doesn’t come by singing ordinary ditties from our culture or reading the texts on their own. Chanting the psalms here opens a door to a memory we didn’t know we had. Among other things, chanting the psalms seems larger than any one person or any one community or any one time, and so it invites us to be part of that timelessness.

And the prayer book translation of the psalms chanted at SSJE is a fine vehicle for this timelessness, because it was created specifically for singing. You can see the difference if you compare it with the RSV or NRSV or NIV or any other recent translation.

Read the entire interview here.

This is water

2013-05-18T19:57:55Z

In 2005, author David Foster Wallace was asked to give the commencement address to the graduating class of Kenyon College. The resulting speech didn't become widely known until 3 years later, after his death.

The talk has gone viral and we thought it would be an appropriate reflection during this graduation season and the 49th Day of Easter.

Here is the full text:

Again, please don't think that I'm giving you moral advice, or that I'm saying you're "supposed to" think this way, or that anyone expects you to just automatically do it, because it's hard, it takes will and mental effort, and if you're like me, some days you won't be able to do it, or you just flat-out won't want to. But most days, if you're aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her little child in the checkout line - maybe she's not usually like this; maybe she's been up three straight nights holding the hand of her husband who's dying of bone cancer, or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the Motor Vehicles Dept who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a nightmarish red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness. Of course, none of this is likely, but it's also not impossible - it just depends on what you want to consider. If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is and who and what is really important - if you want to operate on your default setting - then you, like me, will not consider possibilities that aren't pointless and annoying. But if you've really learned how to think, how to pay attention, then you will know you have other options. It will be within your power to experience a crowded, loud, slow, consumer-hell-type situation as not only meaningful but sacred, on fire with the same force that lit the stars - compassion, love, the sub-surface unity of all things. Not that that mystical stuff's necessarily true: the only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're going to try to see it. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. You get to decide what to worship.

Whayne Houghland elected bishop of Western Michigan

2013-05-18T18:43:13Z

The Episcopal Diocese of Western Michigan elected the Rev. Whayne Houghland, Jr. to be the ninth bishop of the diocese on the eighth ballot.

Electronic voting was used in this election. The eight ballots were cast in less than an hour and half.

The Candidates were:
The Rev. Jennifer Adams, Rector, Grace Episcopal Church, Holland, Michigan The Rev. Whayne Hougland, Jr., Rector, St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Salisbury, North Carolina The Rev. Canon Angela Shepherd, Canon for Mission, Diocese of Maryland The Rev. Canon William Spaid, Canon to the Ordinary, Diocese of Western Michigan

PDF of candidate booklet is here.

86% of immigrants to the US are Christian

2013-05-18T16:30:00Z

A new study by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life examines where immigrants to the United States come from and their religious affiliation.

Over the past 20 years, the United States has granted permanent residency status to an average of about 1 million immigrants each year. These new “green card” recipients qualify for residency in a wide variety of ways – as family members of current U.S. residents, recipients of employment visas, refugees and asylum seekers, or winners of a visa lottery – and they include people from nearly every country in the world. But their geographic origins gradually have been shifting. U.S. government statistics show that a smaller percentage come from Europe and the Americas than did so 20 years ago, and a growing share now come from Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East-North Africa region.
With this geographic shift, it is likely that the religious makeup of legal immigrants also has been changing. The U.S. government, however, does not keep track of the religion of new permanent residents. As a result, the figures on religious affiliation in this report are estimates produced by combining government statistics on the birthplaces of new green card recipients over the period between 1992 and 2012 with the best available U.S. survey data on the religious self-identification of new immigrants from each major country of origin.

While Christians continue to make up a majority of legal immigrants to the U.S., the estimated share of new legal permanent residents who are Christian declined from 68% in 1992 to 61% in 2012. Over the same period, the estimated share of green card recipients who belong to religious minorities rose from approximately one-in-five (19%) to one-in-four (25%). This includes growing shares of Muslims (5% in 1992, 10% in 2012) and Hindus (3% in 1992, 7% in 2012). The share of Buddhists, however, is slightly smaller (7% in 1992, 6% in 2012), while the portion of legal immigrants who are religiously unaffiliated (atheist, agnostic or nothing in particular) has remained relatively stable, at about 14% per year.

Unauthorized immigrants, by contrast, come primarily from Latin America and the Caribbean, and the overwhelming majority of them – an estimated 83% – are Christian. That share is slightly higher than the percentage of Christians in the U.S. population as a whole (estimated at just under 80% of U.S. residents of all ages, as of 2010).2

The complete study is here.

"The Big Bang" of the Church

2013-05-18T13:00:00Z

The Archbishop of Canterbury says the Holy Spirit “gives us a love for the world around us, and the capacity to both speak and act in a way that is revolutionary," in a short film produced by Lambeth Palace and released two days before Pentecost.

Archbishop Justin adds that the Holy Spirit “draws Christians from very different background and tradition together, in a body that loves one another”.

Alongside the Archbishop, the film features Joel Edwards, international director of Micah Challenge, the Revd Jan McFarlane, Archdeacon of Norwich, and Holy Trinity Brompton’s Hayley Bisosfky, who works with women who have been victims of sex trafficking.

Cornerstones

2013-05-18T08:07:03Z

Come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For it stands in scripture:
‘See, I am laying in Zion a stone,
a cornerstone chosen and precious;
and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.’
To you then who believe, he is precious; but for those who do not believe,
‘The stone that the builders rejected
has become the very head of the corner’,
and
‘A stone that makes them stumble,
and a rock that makes them fall.’
They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people,* in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.
Once you were not a people,
but now you are God’s people;
once you had not received mercy,
but now you have received mercy. -- 1 Peter 2:4-10

Reading the passage this morning, my brain suddenly began playing a favorite hymn of mine, "Christ Is Made the Sure Foundation." Reading the scripture accompanied by the tune in my head laid some emphasis on both and their interconnectedness.

Christ is made the sure foundation,
Christ the head and cornerstone,
chosen of the Lord, and precious,
binding all the Church in one;
holy Zion's help for ever,
and her confidence alone.*

There are two definition of cornerstone. One is a stone that forms the base of the intersection of two walls of a building. Often it is a decorative as well as functional part of the building, often carrying some mark such as the date the cornerstone was laid or some other commemoration. It is sometimes used to mark the official beginning of construction even though the foundations may have been poured days, weeks or months before. It's a visible sign of hope and progress.

The second definition is a bit more abstract, giving "cornerstone" as a feature or quality upon which something is based, like a thesis statement or creed. This epistle, whether written by Peter, an amanuensis or even someone not so closely related to Peter, used the imagery already established in Psalm 118:22 and also in Acts 4:11. The metaphor of a rejected piece of stone being chosen as the very thing upon which the building stands is a perfect one for Jesus, even though the Psalm wasn’t itself directly or indirectly referencing him. It is through him, however, that the church is built even though he was rejected by many of his fellow Jews and definitely by the Romans during his lifetime. We also know that as Christians, Jesus has to be the cornerstone of our faith and even though the cornerstone is strong is up to us to make the building of our faith match that strength.

Earlier this week we had a reading from Hebrews that referenced the priesthood of Melchizedek, a non-Israelite King who acted as a priest in the story of Abraham. The author of this epistle seemed to also pick up on the priesthood theme in the statement, “chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s chosen people.” Unlike the Levitical priesthood of Judaism, the priesthood of those who follow Christ includes the whole of the people, not just a single tribes set apart or a heretical hierarchy of priests. Again, building on the cornerstone image, the priesthood of the entire church is given through Jesus to all people. Yes, we did develop a sacramental priesthood just as we developed a role for deacons when the need arose. Still, all Christians are priests by virtue of their baptism and that baptism is the laying of the cornerstone of Christ in each Christian’s life.

All that dedicated city,
dearly loved of God on high,
in exultant jubilation
pours perpetual melody;
God the One in Three adoring
in glad hymns eternally.

To this temple, where we call thee,
come, O Lord of Hosts, today;
with thy wonted loving-kindness
hear thy servants as they pray,
and thy fullest benediction
shed within its walls alway.

Here vouchsafe to all thy servants
what they ask of thee to gain;
what they gain from thee, for ever
with the blessèd to retain,
and hereafter in thy glory
evermore with thee to reign.

Somehow, I think that when I sing this hymn again or hear it again, I’ll have a slightly different perspective of what it has to say. It’s an invitation for God to enter the building of faith we construct in our own lives as well as the physical buildings in which we worship. It’s a request for God’s continual presence and blessing both in this life and in the world to come.

The cornerstone. Without it the building would not be a building and the Christian life would be like a tent blowing in the wind. Without Jesus as the focus and , faith would be just as flimsy

You know, I think I like this hymn even better now.

*Hymnal 1982, New York: The Church Hymnal Corporation, (518).

Linda Ryan co-mentors 2 EfM Online groups and keeps the blog Jericho's Daughter

Anglican network offers a way to talk about fracking

2013-05-18T00:30:00Z

The Rev. Dr. Jeff Golliher, offers a way to engage with local stakeholders about hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," through respectful dialogue. He brings a Christian faith-based perspective to a technical and scientific conversation.

Golliher is a priest in the Diocese of New York, Program Director for the Environment and Sustainable Communities, Anglican United Nations Office, New York, NY and an adviser to the Anglican Communion Environmental Network.

His letter to Anlgicans confronting fracking in their communities may be found here.

Dear Brothers and Sisters,
I’m writing with love for God, great concern about our environment, and about an increasingly troubling subject - a method of drilling for natural gas called hydraulic fracturing, or more simply “fracking.” This has been a contentious practice in many parts of the Anglican Communion (especially the United States, Canada, South Africa, and parts of Europe) for several years, and the concern is spreading more widely, which is one of the reasons that I’m bringing it to your attention now.

Fracking involves deep vertical and then horizontal drilling in order to extract natural gas. Drilling can extend for distances measured not in feet/meters, but miles/kilometers. It requires millions of gallons/liters of water per well, mixed with chemicals that are known to be toxic, despite the fact that they might not be revealed. For the most part, the controversy involves the consequences of this drilling method: the risk of contaminating drinking water and the impact on climate change (fracking wells can release methane, a greenhouse gas much worse than carbon dioxide). Issues of local rights and community decision-making also come into play - in the United States, the fracking industry was given an unwarranted exemption from environmental standards set years ago by the Clean and Clean Water Acts. In addition, how this issue is portrayed and explained can vary a great deal from one country to the next, which can complicate understanding. Obviously the fracking industry has their own agenda and they use the media, some elements of government, and, in some cases, universities to get their message out. In the United States, a number of university programs were closed, once it was realized that their studies of fracking were secretly supported by the industry. My point is that it’s not very easy to know what anyone is actually talking about or how reliable the information is.

I also need to explain the capacity in which I am writing. In addition to working with the Anglican Communion Environmental network (ACEN) I’m the Program Director for the Environment and Sustainable Communities at the Anglican Communion Office at the United Nations. Our mandate is to educate and organize around issues primarily on the basis of Resolutions passed by the Anglican Consultative Council, but also in connection with official statements made by individual Provinces, ACC Networks, and/or other Anglican organizations. Given that fracking is a relatively specialized form of technology, there are no existing ACC Resolutions that specifically mention it, nor are there likely to be in the future. In this instance, I’m responding to several members of the Anglican Communion Environmental Network who have raised questions and concerns about fracking and asked me to share my views.

I’m also a parish priest in the Episcopal Church USA, in the Diocese of New York. In that capacity, I’ve been deeply involved with local and regional anti-fracking campaigns, and I’ve worked diligently to ensure a ban on fracking in my hometown. Without hiding or playing down my point of view, my purpose is to encourage you to discover for yourselves what the facts are (which may not be easy) wherever you live. In fact, that’s exactly what I encouraged local town officials to do where I live. The majority of those elected officials had been inclined to favor fracking - until they investigated the matter on their own.
In most areas, fracking represents a “boom or bust” economic expansion – quick profits for a few, with little concern for the long-term impact. Communities often jump at the promise of large financial returns without examining the environmental and social costs. In places where public debate has actually taken place, the controversy has generally turned on this essential question: Is fracking safe? Pro-fracking advocates (including the industry) argue, as you can imagine, that the drilling technology is safe for groundwater and public health, and that it poses no threat whatsoever. Their point of view suggests an “out of sight, out of mind” mentality – whatever happens deep underground could not possibly affect life on the surface. Independent studies have shown otherwise. In fact, some scientific studies in North America link earthquake activity to the impact of fracking. For all these reasons, concerned citizens in over 130 local municipalities of my home State (New York) have either banned or declared moratoria on fracking (temporarily halting the practice until further study is done) through democratic processes. In other words, local communities have taken action by educating themselves, organizing themselves politically, and sometimes challenging the industry in courts of law.

Pro-fracking constituencies also say that because the burning of natural gas (and gas drilling) is relatively clean (it emits much less carbon dioxide than coal or oil), it offers an important transitional step toward renewable energy. This can be a persuasive argument, and there is some truth to it. For example, let’s imagine the thoughts of someone living in a region of the world, like the Pacific Islands, who feels the impact of sea level rise as a result of fossil fuel use in North America. That person would reasonably wonder why anyone in the United States would want to ban a new, apparently “cleaner” technology – especially since people in the Pacific are not so dependent on fossil fuels, but are suffering the consequences of them anyway. The answer has several parts: First, the issue is not the fuel (natural gas, which is much cleaner than petroleum), but the consequences of a specific method for extracting it. Second, governments and energy industries should be pursuing genuinely renewable energy, rather than taking half-way measures. Third, the technology of fracking could do much more harm (to drinking water) than good, and it could make climate change worse (as a result of methane emissions). Fourth, do we really want to put ourselves in a position of trading one kind of hazard/risk for another – telling ourselves that we’re willing to risk public health and possible groundwater contamination for the sake of a halfway measure that “might” alleviate only a portion of climate change? That’s just one example of the difficulty in discerning the difference between fact and fiction in this issue.

With regard to the question, “Is fracking safe?” or “Can it possibly be safe?” with better technology and regulations, the answer is very controversial. Many anti-fracking activists would say no – that it will never be safe. I’m reluctant to say “never.” If scientific studies, someday, find that new drilling methods of this kind are safe, then I would want real proof. But if that proof exists, then I would probably favor it, for the sake of climate change, water, and public health – that is to say, for the sake of the future and God’s green earth....

...If fracking is practised where you live, my suggestion is to familiarize yourself with the materials provided here, contact local groups that have probably formed, and discuss the issue with your bishop. And you can always contact me at the Anglican UN Office with any questions or concerns that you might have.

Faithfully yours,

The Rev. Canon Jeff Golliher, PhD.
Program Director for the Environment and Sustainable Communities, Anglican United Nations Office, New York, NY.

Thurgood, Jonathan, and Pauli, Pray for us

2013-05-17T20:54:00Z

Today we remember Thurgood Marshall, Lawyer and Jurist who died in 1993 who, along with other Episcopalians, Jonathan Daniels and the Rev. Pauli Murray, blazed a trail of freedom witnessing to Christ along the way.

From an essay by Byron Rushing on the House of Deputies web site:

Today, May 17, in the Calendar of the Episcopal Church, we commemorate Thurgood Marshall, who served as a deputy to the 61st General Convention in 1964. Born in Baltimore in 1908, Marshall had an exceptional career as a civil rights attorney and was appointed Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court in 1967. He retired from the Court in 1991 and died January 24, 1993. The church chose May 17 as his day to also commemorate the unanimous ruling of the U. S. Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education, released on that date in 1954.
Beyond ruling that racially separate public schools were inherently unequal, the Court not only overruled the legal concept of separate but equal, but its action was also a spark for the modern civil rights movement. Over the next 14 years African Americans and their allies would struggle to end all aspects of legal segregation.

By 1965, the central strategy for the civil rights movement was to restore to all black citizens the right to vote. This right, guaranteed specifically to them in the Fifteenth Amendment, had been denied to virtually all black Americans in the South since the end of Reconstruction.

Early that year the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) invited Martin Luther King to Selma, Alabama, to join and invigorate their voting rights work there. The Selma to Montgomery marches began on March 7 with a violent attack on the marchers by Alabama state troopers seen on television news by Americans throughout the country, including President Lyndon Johnson. Johnson filed the Voting Rights Act ten days later. Meanwhile, King and SNCC called on Americans to join and complete the march from Selma to Montgomery on March 25th. Among the hundreds of Episcopalians who came responding to a call from the Episcopal Society for Cultural and Racial Unity (ESCRU) were Judy Upham and Jonathan Daniels, students at what is now Episcopal Divinity School.

Daniels completed the march and returned to work that summer in Alabama. He was arrested in a demonstration and on August 20, 1965, and after being released from jail, was murdered protecting seventeen-year-old, Ruby Sales, from a threatening, armed, deputy sheriff. The Voting Rights Act had passed Congress and was signed by Johnson on August 6....

...Daniels was murdered in Lowndes County, where more than 80 percent of the residents were African Americans. Yet the jury that acquitted Tom Coleman, the man who shot him, was entirely white. State law and local practice made it all but certain that juries in Alabama would be composed entirely of white men, and on the heels of the verdict in Daniels' case, a team of lawyers, including Pauli Murray, who later become the first African American woman ordained to the priesthood in the Episcopal Church, prepared to challenge the law.

Murray had already played an important role in the civil rights movement. In 1950, she wrote States' Laws on Race and Color, a critique of existing statutes that Marshall and lawyers for the NAACP drew on in shaping their arguments in Brown v. Board of Education and other important cases. Marshall referred to the book as "the bible" of the civil rights movement.

As a result of the work of Murray and others, a U. S. District Court in Alabama ruled in 1966 in White v. Crook a ruled that jury service was a right guaranteed to all citizens under the 14th amendment.

Prayers for Bishop Tom Shaw, SSJE

2013-05-17T19:49:00Z

Update The following was sent via e-mail list to clergy and lay leaders in the Diocese of Massachusetts Canon to the Ordinary Mally Lloyd.

Bishop Tom noticed over the past week that he wasn’t remembering things well, so on Thursday he went to see his primary care doctor and had some tests. Those tests revealed a mass on his brain. He is having surgery this afternoon to remove the mass. After that we will know more about his recovery and any other required follow-up treatment. He is expected to be awake and conversational after surgery and to be headed home to the monastery within two to three days, with an anticipated two-week recovery period at home with his brothers in the community.

Please pray for him.

Update:

Canon Mally Lloyd sent the following note to the clergy and lay leaders of the Diocese of Massachusetts at 9:42 pm EDT.

I'm glad to be able to send this update about Bishop Tom (text of my e-mail sent earlier today is copied below). I've just heard from Brother Geoffrey Tristram that Bishop Tom's surgery went well, the doctors are pleased and there were no complications. Bishop Tom is in an ICU room, which is standard for this type of procedure, and is coming out of anesthesia. They expect after a good night's sleep he will be fully awake tomorrow morning. It will be a week or so before we know whether further treatment is necessary.
Brother Geoffrey wanted me to let you know that he and the SSJE community are grateful for all your concern and continued prayers, as are we.

Wishing you a restful night.

Peace,
Mally