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A great day to sleep late in Jersey, as long as you’re not within earshot of St John’s in Montclair. via Interfaith Service at St. John’s Parish in Montclair | Baristanet. This Sunday morning, May 22, at 10 a.m., the sounds of the adhan — the Muslim call to prayer — will ring out in St. John’s Episcopal Church Montclair. While there’s no minaret at the church, the words of “Allahu akbar,” (God is greater) will none-the-less invite both Christians and Muslims to worship side by side. During the interfaith service, verses from the Holy Qur’an will complement readings from...

FAIRFAX, Va. (AP) — A years-long fight between The Episcopal Church and several conservative congregations has landed back in a courtroom in Virginia. Several prominent congregations with roots dating to Colonial times, including Truro Church in Fairfax and The Falls Church, voted in 2006 to split from The Episcopal Church and align with a group of conservative Anglican churches. The congregations disagreed with what their members felt was liberal Episcopal doctrine on homosexuality and other issues.

Yet another denomination has voted to ordain openly homosexual candidates to its ministry. Yesterday, the Presbyterian Church (USA) presbytery of the Twin Cities in Minnesota voted to approve a change to the church’s constitution that will allow the denomination’s 173 presbyteries to ordain persons without regard to sexual orientation. The Twin Cities presbytery cast the deciding vote in what is now a 33-year effort to remove all restrictions on homosexuals serving in the church’s ordained ministry. It became the 87th presbytery to affirm the action of the church’s 219th assembly last summer authorizing the constitutional change. The action not only...

http://www.saintthomaschurch.org/music/services/show/1785 click listen now

I’m still here in Israel on an Act For Israel media fellowship. After many days, packed with meetings, yesterday we visited the Golan Heights. On our way from there, we stopped at Yardenit, a site on the Jordan River where, in honor of Jesus’ baptism near there, some are baptized into the Christian faith.While there, a young woman was wearing a white robe indicating she was to be baptized. I overheard a conversation she was having with someone else. She said she was going to be baptized but “not really” as she’s not very religious and just wanted to...

I made a solemn New Year's resolution (complete with a long, unblinking stare while swearing with my hand placed upon a copy of "O" magazine) to not waste much more time or cyber ink on Alberto Cutie. But then I read this interesting bit of "news":Alberto Cutie, a priest who was forced out of the Catholic Church because of the fact that he married a woman is now getting his own reality TV show (Fox) in a bizarre turn of events.I thought, "That's strange: I don't remember Cutie being forced out of the Catholic Church." I do remember that he...

The most powerful propaganda is often the most subtle. If a person is portrayed as doing great, humanitarian things versus doing divisive or hurtful things, that person's cause and message are also given a psychological boost. In today's culture wars the mainstream media does this in spades. When writing about people involved in these issues, there is rarely any middle ground -- as we've warned pro-family people for years. Although the casual reader may not realize it, the media takes this very seriously. On Dec. 5 the Boston Globe ran a prominent feature article on Bishop V. Gene Robinson, the...

The historic marriage of Episcopal Divinity School, dean and president, the Very Reverend Katherine Hancock Ragsdale and Mally Lloyd, Canon to the Ordinary, took place today at the Cathedral Church of St Paul in Boston.The Episcopalian bishop of Massachusetts began 2011 by solemnizing the first lesbian marriage - of two senior Episcopalian clergy - at Boston's St Paul's Cathedral Saturday (January 1). The marriage of Episcopal Divinity School, dean and president, the Very Reverend Katherine Hancock Ragsdale and Mally Lloyd, Canon to the Ordinary, was the first lesbian marriage solemnized by the Right Reverend M Thomas Shaw SSJE, Bishop Diocesan...

With Pope Benedict XVI's Anglicanorum Coetibus clearing away the obstacles for Anglicans to reunite with Rome, some Episcopal parishes are doing that very thing. This past Sunday, Baltimore's Mount Calvary Episcopal Church voted to join the Catholic Church, making it the first congregation in Maryland to do so.The small Anglo Catholic parish at Madison Avenue and Eutaw Street was feeling increasingly alienated from the Episcopal Church as it accepted priests who did not believe in what most of the congregation saw as the foundations of the faith, according to Warren Tanghe, a former Episcopal priest who is now attending...

Cathedral of St. John the Divine, NYC: The Grand Procession of the Ghouls, Blessing of the bicycles, the creepy Peace Fountain, The Peace Altar, Paul Winter’s Earth Mass and Summer/Winter Solstice concert, Blessing of the Animals, Rev. Dr. James A. Kowalski, The Temple of Understanding, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, William Irwin Thompson, The Lindisfarne Association, Madeleine L’Engle, Rev. James Parks Morton, United Nations Sunday, and Christa: a crucifix depicting Christ as a woman… and more!

On Tuesday night, a group of 40 Episcopal bishops from around the country attended a weekly vigil in Douglas, AZ, held for those who have died trying to cross illegally into the U.S. The advocacy group known as Frontera de Cristo has been conducting the vigils along the Pan-American Highway since 2000. The group placed crosses on the sidewalk and spoke the names of those who died attempting the illegal crossing. The bishops are in Arizona for a meeting of the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church, and have been visiting with illegal aliens and listening to their stories...

One God of Love and Peace: Muslim/Christian Event on Saturday, September 11 Submitted by sdaughtry on Thu, 09/09/2010 - 10:49am. St. Thomas Episcopal Church invites you to gather on Saturday, September 11 at 2pm to celebrate and give thanks for our common humanity as brothers and sisters created by one God. Dr. Imad Damaj of the Virginia Muslim Coalition and the Rev. Susan N. Eaves will read passages from the Koran and the Christian Scriptures that speak of our shared understanding of the God who calls us into community, love of God, and love of neighbor. Please join us for...

Katharine Jefferts Schori, the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, will ordain an Episcopal cleric from New York State as the Episcopal bishop of Alaska on September 4. The ceremony will take place at a Catholic parish in Anchorage. Until recently, Lattime was a member of the Episcopal Diocese of Rochester’s Committee for Gay and Lesbian Ministry, which “seeks to further the cause of recognition and legitimization of lesbian and gay relationships within the church and in civil society.” Lattime is married and has three children. “Catholic churches are consecrated or blessed buildings which have an important theological and liturgical...

An Episcopalian bishop has been restored to authority in the Diocese of Pennsylvania, despite an earlier suspension for his gross mishandling of sex-abuse complaints. An ecclesiastical tribunal found that the bishop could not be deposed for his misconduct, because it occurred 35 years ago and the statute of limitations had tolled. The decision came down on Wednesday. What do you suppose happened on Thursday? The major television networks led their morning news coverage with the story?The New York Times launched a 5-part series of front-page reports on sexual abuse in the Episcopal Church?SNAP held a press conference demanding that the...

A United Methodist congregation should conduct same-sex marriages despite the possibility of negative consequences, according to Bishop Gene Robinson of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire. "I'm here to tell you that when you speak about God's limitless, boundless and unimaginable love, you will get into trouble: I promise you, I know this," Robinson said to the congregation. Robinson both gave a sermon at the invitation of Foundry's Senior Pastor, Dean Snyder, as well as answered questions from church members during an informal session following the Sunday morning worship services. Robinson's sermon was part of a month-long "outstanding preacher" series...

Decrying as “missionaries of hate” U.S. Christians who preach in Africa against homosexual practice, a former bishop of the Anglican Church of Uganda spoke June 8 at a liberal think tank in Washington, D.C.Christopher Senyonjo was hosted by Bishop Gene Robinson of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire, the first openly gay bishop to be consecrated in the Anglican Communion. Robinson has served as Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress (CAP) since March. The two spoke about anti-homosexuality legislation in Uganda, which they blamed upon U.S. evangelicals. They also called for a broader effort to decriminalize homosexual practices...

LONDON, CA (AP) -- The Anglican Communion has suspended U.S. Episcopalians from serving on some interfaith bodies because of the election of a lesbian as a bishop in California. The U.S. church opened a rift in the global communion, and within its own ranks, seven years ago by electing a gay man, V. Gene Robinson, as bishop of New Hampshire. Conservative African Anglicans have taken a lead in opposing moves in the United States and Canada to promote gays and to bless homosexual relationships.

Over the past two years, economic hard times have loomed as large at Washington National Cathedral as the Gothic spires that grace the city's skyline. The cathedral has slashed its budget from $27 to $13 million, outsourcing its gift shop operation and shuttering its popular greenhouse and its continuing education college for clergy. Three rounds of layoffs have reduced the staff from 170 to 70, including, at the end of this month, the cathedral's conservator and the liturgist who oversaw the April memorial service for civil rights pioneer Dorothy Height.

The Consecration of Mary Glasspool as an Episcopal bishop on Saturday was incredible. They had odes to Mother Earth, random pagan rituals, a smudging ceremony to increase their relationship to plants or something, a smidge of ancestor Worship thrown in, and don't forget the dancing Girls. And, of course, there's guitars. There's always guitars. And by the way there didn't seem to be a whole lot of Jesus at least in the first hour or so that I saw. You can see the video here. AFP reports:A 56-year-old lesbian was ordained as a bishop by the Episcopal church here Saturday,...

The Anglican rift over homosexual clergy has grown deeper than ever after the ordination in California of the Church’s first lesbian bishop. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, had previously called the move regrettable and warned that it called into question the place of the US Episcopalian Church in the global Anglican Communion. Mary Glasspool, 56, was ordained on yesterday in front of 3,000 supporters — and two protesters — in the Long Beach Arena, south of Los Angeles. Canon Mary Glasspool after her ordination as bishop in a Los Angeles arena Calling herself a “reconciling person”, she offered...