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An Episcopal priest competing in a Jeopardy Tournament failed to advance to the finals, the result of falling badly behind and also being stumped by a question on the New Testament, according to the Episcopal News Service. David Sibley is the LGBTQ+ affirming rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Walla Walla, Washington, who recently participated in a Jeopardy Tournament. He previously competed in 2022, where he won $79,098 through four straight episodes. During that contest, he failed to answer a $1000 question: “It’s the ascension heavenward by true Christians both living and dead at Christ’s second coming.” Rather than...

No, it wasn’t a service intended to facilitate worship of music superstar Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, as one Nigerian publication incorrectly reported, but the recent “Beyoncé mass” at San Francisco’s Grace Episcopal Cathedral was predictably over-the-top. According to glowing reports from California media, the gathering themed around the song catalogue of the former Destiny’s Child lead singer attracted approximately 900 participants to the April 25 midweek worship service. The crowd size was far in excess of the Episcopal congregation’s average Sunday attendance, which has dropped from 900 to 600 in the past decade. The Beyoncé mass joins a long list of themed...

In an interview with GQ earlier this week, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby dodged the question of whether gay sex is sinful. He admitted to acting like a politician and to "copping out" on the answer, despite the fact that most Anglicans in the global church agree that gay sex is wrong, as it has been consistently condemned by the Bible and church tradition. GQ's Alastair Campbell asked Welby point-blank: "Is gay sex sinful?" After balking at the question, the archbishop gave a very telling answer. "You know very well that is a question I can't give a straight answer...

* Church of England suggests offering transgender Christians re-christenings * Move is believed to provoke a furious backlash among some traditionalists* Last year committee said rules that might stop people changing sex should be abolishedThe Church of England yesterday suggested it will offer transgender Christians ‘re-christenings’ with their new names. Vicars cannot re-baptise those who have changed sex but could use existing ‘services of welcome’ to announce a new name before God, the most senior official said. The advice is likely to be endorsed next month by the Church’s parliament, the General Synod. It will ease pressure on Archbishop of...

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.

The Very Rev. Katherine Ragsdale, lesbian cleric and then president and dean of Episcopal Divinity School, delivers 2009 'abortion is a blessing' address (National Organization for Women/Flickr) Via the Episcopal News Service, a press release revealing that the ultramegaliberal Episcopal Divinity School is winding things down: Episcopal Divinity School will cease to grant degrees at the end of the upcoming academic year, the seminary’s board of trustees decided July 21 on a 11-4 vote. During the next year, the board will explore options for EDS’s future, some of which were suggested by a specially convened Futures Task Force to...

The attempt to change God the Father to God the Mother is full bore idolatry—a syncretism of the spirit of the age. I remember some of the most emotionally powerful moments of worship that I have experienced occurred in a context where there was the least amount of belief. There was a time in my life when I regularly went to worship at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, a beautiful church building that had this glorious liturgy. And it would be my habit to go there on Sunday morning and to sit in the pew and listen to the music...

WASHINGTON – An openly transgender Episcopal priest is set to preach at Washington National Cathedral. The Rev. Dr. Cameron Partridge, the Episcopal chaplain at Boston University, will be a guest preacher on Sunday. He'll be the first openly transgender priest to preach from Canterbury Pulpit at the cathedral.

The Episcopal Church is in a death spiral. Why is the Episcopal Church near collapse?Prominent bishops are pulling out. Convention-goers were told headquarters had spent $18 million suing local congregations. Members are leaving at a record rate. This is no longer George Washington’s church – once the largest denomination in the colonies. The headlines coming out of the Episcopal Church’s annual U.S. convention are stunning — endorsement of cross-dressing clergy, blessing same-sex marriage, the sale of their headquarters since they can’t afford to maintain it.The American branch of the Church of England, founded when the Vatican balked at permitting King...

Gene Robinson made headlines in 2003 as the first openly gay Anglican bishop. Eleven years later, the Episcopalian has announced that he is filing for divorce from his partner of 25 years. In a post published by the Daily Beast, Robinson explained the situation. Recently, my partner and husband of 25-plus years and I decided to get divorced. While the details of our situation will remain appropriately private, I am seeking to be as open and honest in the midst of this decision as I have been in other dramatic moments of my life—coming out in 1986, falling in love,...

Bishop Gene Robinson, whose 2003 election as the first openly gay Episcopal bishop rocked Anglican Communion, has announced his divorce from his longtime partner and husband. Robinson, who retired in 2013 as the Bishop of New Hampshire, and his partner of 25 years, Mark Andrew, were married in a private civil union in 2008. The announcement was made public Saturday (May 3) in a statement to the Diocese of New Hampshire. “As you can imagine, this is a difficult time for us — not a decision entered into lightly or without much counseling,” Robinson wrote in a letter. “We ask...

Here comes the bride. And another one. And another one! Meet world's first married lesbian THREESOME . . . and they're expecting a baby in July. Doll, Kitten and Brynn, all from Massachusetts, married last August. Kitten is expecting a daughter in July. The world's only "married" lesbian threesome are expecting their first child. Kitten, 27, is pregnant after undergoing IVF treatment using an anonymous sperm donor. The trio eventually plans to have three children - one for each of them, according to news reports. Apparently, there is a word for this: throuple. When asked what the benefits are to...

Bishop of Buckingham says gay priests should marry despite orders not to and claims several serving bishops are themselves in same-sex partnerships, urging them to go public for the sake of 'honesty and truthfulness' Gay clergy should follow their conscience and defy the Church of England’s restrictions on same-sex marriage, a prominent bishop has said as the most radical change ever made to the legal definition of marriage in Britain comes into force. The Rt Rev Alan Wilson, the Bishop of Buckingham, said priests should be “creative” to get around restrictions on blessings for same-sex couples and that gay clergy...

The pediment of The Cathedral Church Of St. Paul in Boston has stood empty for 190 years, as the builders of the impressive Greek Revival structure ran out of money during the initial construction phase. It was finally completed in May of 2013, but since then it's come under fire for its unusual design, which features a backlit nautilus sculpture.

The President of the Episcopal Church's lay and clergy House of Deputies, the Rev. Gay Jennings has blasted laws in parts of Africa that she says, "are brutally repressive to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people."

NEW YORK CITY, NY --- The Episcopal Church's COO, Bishop Stacy Sauls announced this week that Katharine Jefferts Schori, the church's Presiding Bishop, had "abolished sin" after well-known intellectual and gay theological heavy-weight Bishop Gene Robinson wrote that she had effectively done so through her words and beliefs. The exchange took place following a meeting of Integrity, the rambunctious, noisy Episcopal Gay organization, following a night on the town (NYC) that was described by one participant as "a night of unbridled debauchery and lechery" in memory of the now deceased Bishop Otis Charles, the first outed gay TEC bishop. The...

LONDON (Reuters) - Church of England clergy would be able to "bless" same-sex relationships under long-awaited proposals unveiled on Thursday as the church adopts a more open - but disputed - approach to homosexuality. Although gay couples would still not be able to legally marry in a church, the proposed change would officially sanction clergy to let gay and lesbian couples mark and celebrate same-sex marriages and civil partnerships in a church service. Critics swiftly condemned the "blessing" proposal as contrary to the church's teaching on sexual conduct. The proposal was among 18 recommendations put forward by a working group...

Note that it does not require a mandatory three, but rather a permissible three. Just as a polygamist at heart might voluntarily opt to limit himself to one spouse (for various reasons of his own), there is absolutely no reason in the logic of our relativistic and floundering marriage laws to require him to limit himself to one. Keep in mind also that this logic is obvious enough to those who have been pushing for homo marriage. They are foolish, not stupid. They have only denied it for practical political reasons — so as to not give us a legit...

With apologies to C.S. Lewis My dear Wormwood, The Screwtape Letters It's hard to fathom, even by our standards of non-compliance with the Other Side, what a marvelous catch this John Shelby Spong fellow has turned out to be. I doubt we could have created a more perfect model of apostasy and heresy all wrapped up in one man. For more than four decades, he has steadfastly aided and abetted our cause of disbelief. Atheists and skeptics are obvious sinners, but they are not a patch on a man who wears the cloth of his religion while defaming and declaiming...

At 82, retired and enjoying life, Bishop John Shelby Spong doesn’t have to be the liberal enfant terrible whose pronouncements for gay rights and against traditional dogmas once scandalized Christendom. Indeed, many of the views that once turned the Charlotte native and former Episcopal bishop of Newark into a lightning rod are now regarded as so matter-of-fact that they barely occasion much notice: Ordaining gay clergy and blessing same-sex marriages, for example, or having a female presiding bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori, the first woman elected to lead a national church in the Anglican Communion. On a range of issues, Spong...