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At the National Cathedral a few Sundays ago, The Rev. Dr. George Regas, Rector Emeritus of All Saints Episcopal Church of Pasadena, California, corrected the Son of God: “I am the way, and the truth and the life. No one comes to God except through me.” The first thing I want you to explore with me is this: I simply refuse to hold the doctrine that there is no access to God except through Jesus. I personally reject the claim that Christianity has the truth and all other religions are in error. Unfortunately, this is the position of the new...

I am turning a corner—full and total appreciation of being an Episcopalian. I have said numerous times, and I believe it to the core of my being, that all congregations need to have a ministry which clearly defines them and helps them stand out in a crowd. So it is for dioceses and denominations. Perhaps New Hampshire’s election of one of our nominees for Bishop in Rochester has given us a gift, one that we cannot and will not forsake. That gift is the reminder that we have put our practice where our mouths are. We are living the words,...

St. Nicholas' Episcopal Church parishioners peacefully worshipped together Sunday, even as the congregation is splitting over denomination politics and biblical teachings, resulting in the charter of a new Midland church. "It was a beautiful Mother's Day service, but going in and out, it was all about stopping each other to say, 'Whatever happens, we still care about you,'" said longtime member Edna Hibbitts, who is among 31 of more than 500 members voting to stay. Almost 90 percent of members and their pastors were ordered by the Northwest Texas Diocese to leave St. Nicholas' for dissenting with the Episcopal Church's...

Darien, Conn. ONE rarely hears of God-fearing, Bible-loving Episcopal priests being banished to purgatory, but that is where the Rev. Christopher Leighton of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in upscale Darien finds himself residing these days. Purgatory is, in his case, a chalet-style suburban church with a matching rectory in a sylvan setting that might seem downright heavenly were he not in imminent danger of being evicted from his pulpit and his home of seven years. He loves both and wants to leave neither. According to him, God wants him to stick around and fight the good fight, too. In this...

Bishop Seabury Church is a vibrant, growing, and spirit-filled Episcopal church in Groton, Connecticut that would just as soon stay out of the headlines. However, the bishop of Connecticut has brought worldwide attention to them, to five other of his nearly 190 congregations, and to himself. Each of the rectors of these six churches has been under the threat of inhibition, presumably for the same thing. I say presumably because the specific charges brought against these six are unknown. The bishop has brought these charges to his Standing Committee but he has not revealed his reasons to the six priests...

Anglicanism has long been a communion containing within itself a diversity of theological opinions and various worship styles, which have often been characterized as "parties." In recent years diversity has been stretched to the breaking point, such that many groups of "Anglicans" have felt unable to continue to participate in the Communion. Cultural diversity has also emerged as Anglicanism has moved beyond being an "English" church and has taken root in various parts of the globe. This essay explores what might still be held to be "changeless," what needs to change, and what is actually changing in the way Anglicanism...

Many people on all points of the Compass Rose have been waiting to get a clear statement of where the Anglican Communion stands on the limits of sexual activity. Waiting and waiting … six years and counting since the Lambeth Conference of 1998. Lambeth 1998 is the fixed knot in our Communion’s skein of history, because it firmly tied the issue of homosexual activity to another fixed knot: the teaching and authority of holy scripture. Lambeth’s Resolution 1.10 on human sexuality stated that “in view of the teaching of Scripture, [this Conference] upholds faithfulness in marriage between a man and...

D iane Knippers, a religious strategist who helped conservative Christians raise an increasingly loud and unified voice in the traditionally liberal bastions of mainline Protestantism in recent years, died on Monday in Arlington, Va. She was 53. The cause was cancer, according to the Institute on Religion and Democracy, a small but influential Washington group, of which Mrs. Knippers, a laywoman, was the longtime president. The institute is a resource center for conservative members of the mainline denominations - primarily the Presbyterian, Methodist and Episcopal Churches - disaffected by their churches' policies, especially on sexuality. When the Episcopal Church consecrated...

The Anglican Communion got a wake up call this week when the supreme governing body of the Roman Catholic Church elected a conservative to head its one billion members worldwide. Bavarian-born Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, 78, has been called, among other names, "God's Rotweiller", "the enforcer", "authoritarian", "unyielding" and more, was elected on the fourth ballot after the liberals threw in the towel and realized they hadn't a prayer of getting one of their own in to lead the church. The man who sat at the right hand of Pope John Paul II for more than 20 years as his doctrinal...

A Commission to Study Reparation for Slavery Passed by the Episcopal Urban Caucus, February 25, 2005 Resolved, that the Episcopal Urban Caucus, meeting in Newark, New Jersey, February 25, 2005, endorses a federal Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African Americans, which proposal is embodied in Congressman John Conyers' bill, designated HR 40 since its initial introduction in 1989; and be it further   Resolved, that this meeting of the Episcopal Urban Caucus calls on the General Convention of the Episcopal Church meeting in June, 2006, and all of the dioceses of the Episcopal Church meeting in convention over the...

An Open Letter to Bishop John Chane From the American Anglican Council of Washington, Inc. 13001 Brandywine Road, Brandywine MD 20613 March 31, 2005 The Right Reverend John B. Chane Bishop of Washington Mount St. Alban Washington, DC 20016 Dear Bishop Chane, We write to you regarding your February 25th statement on the recent Primates' Meeting in Dromantine, Northern Ireland. In our considered opinion, you addressed the outcome of that historic gathering and the decisions arising from it in a way that failed to communicate the true seriousness of the matter for the Episcopal Church. The fact that for the...

A conservative Anglican theologian says the head clergy in the Episcopal Church USA (ECUSA) are acting more like lawyers than apostolic leaders in their efforts to ease Anglican tensions over the American denomination's consecration of an openly homosexual bishop. Last month at a crisis meeting of world Anglican leaders, the U.S. Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada were asked to withdraw from an Anglican governing council because of the American church's consecration of V. Gene Robinson, an openly homosexual priest, as Bishop of New Hampshire, and the Canadian churches blessings of same-sex couples. The ECUSA leaders made limited...

There is currently a struggle between two distinct Anglican ecclesiologies, each with its own camp, but the two need not be opposed, according to the Most Rev. Frank T. Griswold. The Presiding Bishop participated in a liturgical foot washing on Maundy Thursday, heard confession on Good Friday and performed confirmations on Holy Saturday this year at the historic Anglo-Catholic parish of St. Paul’s on K Street in Washington, D.C. Speaking to adult baptismal candidates on Holy Saturday in response to a question about the state of the Anglican Communion, the Presiding Bishop said he defined the two different doctrines as:...

While the Episcopal Church’s General Convention has not specifically addressed the situation of Terri Schiavo -- the Florida woman who suffered severe brain damage in 1990 and has relied on a feeding tube to keep her alive since -- several resolutions have been passed regarding end-of-life issues. These include a 1991 resolution regarding prolongation of life.

Based in Arkansas and licensed under the Anglican Mission in America(AMiA),Bishop T.J. Johnston oversees the 11 member-churches of the Anglican Communion in Canada (ACiC). He spoke with BCCN during a recent pastoral visit to British Columbia. BCCN: Do you have any sense that especially because of the latest statement from the primates (see http://www.canadianchristianity.com/cgi-bin/na.cgi?nationalupdates/050323snubbed that many more churches will see fit to leave the Anglican Church of Canada and join the ACiC? T.J. Johnston: With the Ireland communiqué, it's clear to many who are still within the Anglican Church of Canada that that church has taken a position that is...

n late January 2005, the Very Rev. Dr. Paul Zahl, president and dean of Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry, in Ambridge, Pa., gave a keynote address at the Epiphany West conference hosted by the Church Divinity School of the Pacific, in Berkeley, Calif. The meeting was focused on biblical interpretation, diversity and dialogue in the Anglican Communion, subjects that are at the heart of Anglicanism's divisions. Zahl, a leading spokesperson among conservative Episcopalians, is the author of several books, including the forthcoming Understanding the Windsor Report: Two Leaders in the American Church Speak Across the Divide (Church Publishing Inc., 2005),...

Frank Griswold, Episcopal Presiding Bishop, says conservative activists are using deceptive tactics. Interview by Deborah Caldwell Beliefnet.net For nearly two years, Frank Griswold, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, has been in the vortex of his denomination's controversy over its election of an openly gay bishop. Since then, those opposed to the church's liberal stance on homosexuality have been taking steps to circumvent the bishop's authority in order to "replace" the Episcopal Church with conservative leadership. At a meeting last month in Ireland called by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams (head of the Worldwide Anglican Communion), the communion's top...

(Special to VirtueOnline) This week our office accessed information on the position of the Diocese of Central Pennyslvania USA, concerning their position on the consent on New Hampshire Election. It reads "Yes" for the Clergy order and for the sitting Bishop. This places a theological conflict between our two Dioceses because South Rwenzori Diocese upholds the Holy Scriptures as true word of God. Consequently, all the activities we had planned to do with the Diocese of Central Pennyslvania have been postponed. Last year, we requested them to support our HIV/AIDS Programme with $352,941; this request too, is hereby withdrawn. By...

“The good news is that perhaps Griswold is at last getting the message about how serious the Global South is about this crisis. It won’t just go away. It’s hard to say exactly what nefarious deeds he thought a handful of Americans were up to in Newry, the little town near Dromantine. But, if he thinks these Americans could even pretend to have a major influence on the Primates, he remains clueless. Worse, if he thinks Western whites will call the shots – either of his theological ilk or mine – he is entrapped in racist assumptions that will blind...

Shortly after the Reformation began, in the first few years after Martin Luther posted the Ninety-Five Theses on the church door at Wittenberg, he issued some short booklets on a variety of subjects. One of the most provocative was titled The Babylonian Captivity of the Church. In this book Luther was looking back to that period of Old Testament history when Jerusalem was destroyed by the invading armies of Babylon and the elite of the people were carried off into captivity. Luther in the sixteenth century took the image of the historic Babylonian captivity and reapplied it to his era...