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The Northern Illinois Conference on the evening of June 4 commissioned an openly transgender individual as a provisional deacon. The United Methodist Church has ordained transgender clergy before. However, the Rev. M Barclay is the first openly “non-binary trans person” to become a United Methodist deacon, according to Reconciling Ministries Network. Non-binary means Barclay identifies as neither male nor female but as gender neutral. Barclay — who uses singular they pronouns — serves as director of communications at Reconciling Ministries Network. The unofficial United Methodist group, based in Chicago, advocates for full inclusion of LGBTQ people in all aspects of...

The ecumenical Monastery of Bose recently hosted a conference on “justification, the Gospel of grace,” and L’Osservatore Romano has published excerpts of three of the talks. André Birmelé, a Lutheran scholar and pastor in Alsace-Lorraine, spoke about “the logic of God,” and Sarah Coakley, an Anglican theologian who teaches at Cambridge, discussed “mercy and clemency.” Cardinal Walter Kasper, the president emeritus of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, spoke about the “ecumenical Luther.” The prelate argued that a key conclusion of the 1910 World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh—that Christian division is a leading obstacle to evangelization—is more true than...

The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland has approved an apology to gay people for the history of discrimination they have faced in the Church. Commissioners also approved a report which could pave the way to allow some ministers to conduct same sex marriages in the future. The Assembly voted in favour of instructing the Legal Questions Committee to conduct new research into the availability of legal protection for any Minister or Deacon who refuse to officiate ceremonies as a matter of conscience.A report of the committee’s findings will be presented to the General Assembly next year for further...

The Church of England will be asked to denounce gay conversion, consider special services for transgender people and re-examine its teaching on marriage as between one man and one women in a raft of measures to be debated at its forthcoming General Synod meeting in July. In its first meeting since the surprise rejection of a bishops’ report recommending keeping the status quo on marriage, the CofE’s parliament will debate whether to join medical experts and condemn so-called ‘gay cures’ as ‘unethical, harmful’ and having ‘no place in the modern world’. Tabled by senior synod member Jayne Ozanne, the private...

FULL TITLE: New York ‘Concerned Clergy for Choice’ Group Gathers in State Capitol in Support of Abortion, Contraception ALBANY, N.Y. — A group known as “Concerned Clergy for Choice” and others recently gathered in the New York state capital to advocate for access to abortion and contraception, and to express support for the sexually-centered organization Planned Parenthood. “As pastors, we believe in New Yorkers’ ability to get the health care that is supported by their religious teachings and personal beliefs,” Director Dennis Ross, a Reformed Jewish rabbi, told the Legislative Gazette. “People of all faiths believe in safe and legal...

The Church of Scotland is preparing to take a significant step towards same-sex marriage. The Kirk's General Assembly - gathering in Edinburgh - will be asked to approve more work on how such weddings could take place in church. Equal marriage remains a divisive issue within the church. Since 2014, Scotland has allowed same-sex couples to marry but individual church traditions can each decide whether to participate. A report on the issue prepared for the General Assembly invited the church to take stock of its history of discrimination against gay people and to apologise "individually and corporately". Moderator Designate the...

Your persuasion is merely my heart in motion carrying the offer of Zion's gates to all those that surrender to my love . . . A force of Mercies wrapped in the Grace of Total forgiveness given freely. So you "ARE" My Postman of Heaven's inheritance ( (( Christ in you )) ) . Now continue on . . . Romans 8:27-29 God Works In All Things 27And He who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. 28And we know that God works all things...

A blueprint for schism seen by Christian Today reveals extensive plans by conservative evangelicals to form a rival Anglican structure to the Church of England in the UK. The proposals, born out of concerns about liberal teachings on homosexuality, include suggestions for a new synod, new liturgy, an appointments system for new bishops, new church canons and new statements of belief. First mooted at ReNew, a conference of traditionalist church leaders last autumn, the 15-page discussion document outlines how the new faction could take shape and establish credibility as an alternative Anglican church. 'Widespread credible bishops serving conservative evangelicals here...

Leo XIII’s remarks that Anglican orders are “absolutely null and utterly void” have been a major stumbling block to Catholic-Anglican unity. One of the Vatican’s top legal minds has opened the way for a revision of the Catholic position on Anglican orders by stressing they should not be written off as “invalid.” In a recently published book, Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio, President of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, calls into question Pope Leo XIII’s 1896 papal bull that Anglican orders are “absolutely null and utterly void.” “When someone is ordained in the Anglican Church and becomes a parish priest in...

JESSUP, Md. - Heather Cook, a former Episcopal bishop, was denied in her first, and only, parole hearing since entering prison for fatally striking a bicyclist while driving drunk, and leaving the scene, in December 2014. Cook fled the scene after killing Tom Palermo, who was riding a bicycle, on Roland Avenue just days after Christmas. She returned thirty minutes later while driving drunk almost three times the legal limit.

Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (popularly known as “Ahok”), the outgoing Christian governor of Indonesia’s Jakarta province, has been convicted of blasphemy against Islam and faces a two-year prison sentence. Ahok, a Protestant, angered some Muslims when, in a campaign appearance, he argued that Muslims were misusing the authority of the Qu’ran in suggesting that Muslims must reject the leadership of non-Muslims. His invocation of the Qu’ran enraged Islamic fundamentalists, and prompted massive public demonstrations against the governor. He was handily defeated in his bid for re-election as governor in April. The criminal charge against Ahok, pressed by Islamic militants, had divided...

The Pontifical Committee of Historical Sciences and the US bishops’ Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs are among the sponsors of “Luther and the Shaping of the Catholic Tradition,” an upcoming three-day conference at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. Cardinal Kurt Koch, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, will be among the Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant scholars speaking at the conference. References: Luther and the Shaping of the Catholic Tradition, May 30 to June 1, 2017 (CUA)

College-aged millennials today are far more likely than the general population to be religiously unaffiliated. This is true when they are compared to previous generations as well. In fact, the Pew Research Center documents that millennials are the least outwardly religious American generation, where “one in four are unaffiliated with any religion, far more than the share of older adults when they were ages 18 to 29.” Just over 60 percent of millennials say that Christianity is “judgmental,” and 64 percent say that “anti-gay” best describes most churches today. In ministry circles, it has long been reported that of youth...

A lot of people don't want to hear it, but it's true: in the future, you will either be a religious conservative, or secular. The religious left will evaporate. Don't take my word for it. Take the word of Daniel Cox, the head of research at PRRI, a firm whose religious views tend towards progressivism. Excerpts: The first and perhaps most significant reason for skepticism is that there are far fewer religious liberals today than there were a generation ago. Nearly four in 10 (38 percent) liberals are religiously unaffiliated today, more than double the percentage of the 1990s, according...

Electing Lesbian Bishop Violates Church Law, United Methodist High Court Rules The United Methodist Church's highest court has ruled that a regional body violated the denomination's rules when they elected an openly lesbian clergywoman as bishop and she can be removed from her position. In a 6–3 decision released Friday, the United Methodist Judicial Council decided that the Western Jurisdiction's election of Karen Oliveto to the position of bishop violated church law. "It is not lawful for the college of bishops of any jurisdictional or central conference to consecrate a self-avowed practicing homosexual bishop," read the decision, as reported by...

The first openly lesbian bishop in the United Methodist Church can stay on the job for now, but she is subject to a disciplinary review that could lead to her removal, the top church court ruled Friday. Bishop Karen Oliveto's civil marriage to another woman violates church law that bars clergy who are "self-avowed practicing homosexuals," the Judicial Council said. However, a decision over whether she can remain in the position must come from a separate disciplinary process, the court ruled.

The United Methodist Church’s highest court has ruled that the consecration of its first openly gay bishop violated church law, compounding a bitter rift over homosexuality that has brought the 13-million-member denomination to the brink of schism. In a 6-to-3 vote made public on Friday, the church’s Judicial Council found that a married lesbian bishop and those who consecrated her were in violation of their “commitment to abide by and uphold the church’s definition of marriage and stance on homosexuality.” Still, the court ruled that the bishop, Karen P. Oliveto of Denver, “remains in good standing” pending further proceedings, offering...

Asparagus is so venerated in Worcester that it has been blessed in a special ceremony in the city's cathedral. But the thanksgiving service celebrating the local crop has been criticised by other Anglicans who have called it "absurd". The bizarre Sunday evensong service was defended by the cathedral's Precentor, who said the vegetable was "a sign of the abundant provision and generosity of God".

“The government won’t approve it, but the question is if they’ll shut it down.”China, the world’s rising superpower, is experiencing an explosion of faith. The decades of anti-religious campaigns that followed the 1949 communist takeover are giving way to a spiritual transformation—and among the fastest-growing drivers of that transformation are unregistered churches. Once called “house” or “underground” churches because they were small clandestine affairs, these groups have become surprisingly well-organized, meeting very openly and often counting hundreds of congregants. They’ve helped the number of Protestants soar from about 1 million when the communists took power to at least 60 million...

In the wake of a recent critical overview of the four years of Pope Francis’ papacy as presented by the German Catholic journalist Matthias Matussek, another German journalist (who is not a Catholic) has now raised his voice of resistance with respect to Pope Francis. We speak here about Jan Fleischhauer, who is an editor of the influential secular weekly magazine Der Spiegel, and who, in 2009, wrote a book about his change of conviction away from a leftist to a more conservative viewpoint.On 17 April, Fleischhauer published a column in Der Spiegel which is entitled “Self-Secularization: The Sponti-Pope [i.e., the...