Anglicanism

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As Canterbury Turns: The mission of the church

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Time‘s Jeff Chu asked the Presiding Bishop-elect of The Episcopal Church ten questions about her view of the church’s mission, the relationship between religion and science and the exclusivity of Christianity. While the quality of her answers will be the subject of debate, I think he used a great — and simple — technique for getting information out of Katharine Jefferts Schori. And her answers are fascinating, I think. For instance, she says this about what the focus of the church should be:


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As Canterbury Turns: The center cannot hold

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As Terry has noted, the Archibishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, recently proposed a two-tier system of church membership in the Anglican Communion — the idea being that full and partial membership could save the Communion from schism. Anglican bishops in Nigeria responded this week. The Church of Nigeria is Africa’s largest Anglican church, with an estimated 17.5 million members, according to the BBC:


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Church bells, statistics and silence

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At noon today, I was in a church in north Oxford taking part in our Oxford Centre seminar on blasphemy, freedom of the press and the digital age. It was a natural place to hear the bells chime in the stone steeple high overhead, while also hearing other church bells in the surrounding neighborhood.


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As Canterbury Turns: Is the rite wrong?

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Of course it’s a theological issue, and one that is ultimately sacramental in nature. However, my original point was that in western media at least, there is a distinction made between civil unions and marriage whenever this is discussed. “Full inclusion in the life of the church” is also mentioned a lot — so, I’m curious to know how it is that civil unions are a practice of the church, for sure. But I’m also certain that no one in the western church, or not a lot of people, are really talking about developing gay marriage ceremonies, but rather same-sex-union ceremonies. Here’s a recent article that sort of deals with it.


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As Canterbury Turns: Dissing the lady bishop

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Greetings from Oxford, England, where the climate is as hot as blazes — weather-wise and Anglican-wise. I am busy all week teaching at the Oxford Centre for Religion and Public Life, where a group of 16 journalists from all over the world (I am the only person from the United States) are presenting papers on “Freedom of the Press Versus Blasphemy in the Internet Age.”


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Time for "As Canterbury turns"

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Today’s New York Times report about the sobering epistle from Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams included several passages that I am sure raised eyebrows extra high among Anglican leaders in Pittsburgh and Episcopal leaders in New York City. As you would expect, this news story by the team of Laurie Goodstein and Neela Banerjee will be carefully parsed on this side of the Atlantic, because the Times is the holy writ for leaders in The Episcopal Church (formerly the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America).


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