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Home at Last: Church of the Apostles Ready to Reach A New Community Thanks to David Harper, shepherd of 26 years; Nick Braunschneider, our new Joshua; & especially Joe Acanfora, our Moses. During the service of consecration and thanksgiving for Church of the Apostles’ new church home in Fairfax, Virginia last month, I was surprised and filled with joy when I closed my eyes. Remaining behind closed eyelids was the image of the cross that was against the back wall of the chancel. I suddenly remembered how I used to love “seeing” that cross while praying at Church of the...

Episcopalians in Maine took part in the consecration of their new bishop this past weekend, the first openly partnered gay man to be installed as a diocesan bishop in the U.S.-based Episcopal Church since Gene Robinson in 2003. The Rt. Rev. Thomas James Brown was consecrated Saturday as the 10th bishop of the Diocese of Maine at the Cathedral Church of St. Luke in Portland. The service was led by the Most Rev. Michael Curry, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church. A video posted on the diocese’s YouTube channel showed participants, including Brown, calling the Holy Spirit a “she” during...

A chapel named for retired Episcopal Church Bishop Gene Robinson was dedicated Thursday as part of the consecration of a newly redeveloped Washington, D.C. church building. St. Thomas’ Episcopal Parish chose to honor the former New Hampshire bishop who was the first openly partnered gay man to be consecrated a bishop in the Episcopal Church and the wider Anglican Communion. The chapel is envisioned as a pilgrimage site for youth who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT). Robinson’s 2003 consecration as bishop was one of several contested actions fueling a broader Anglican realignment in North America and beyond....

SAGINAW, MI — As a federal judge weighs Michigan's gay marriage ban, the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Eastern Michigan issued a statement supporting the overturn of the ban. Bishop Todd Ousley on Thursday, March 13, stated that ending the ban, which U.S. District Judge Bernard Friedman may do after hearing eight days of testimony during a trial for a Hazel Park couple's case against the state, would extend “justice and equality to all of God's children.” “My own experiences with same-sex couples and the experiences in communities and congregations across our diocese have show that there is holy...

New numbers reveal that the collapse of the Episcopal Church dramatically accelerated in the last ten years. The denomination is literally falling apart, with attendance down 25% between 2000 and 2010. For a link to the PDF file with the numbers, and for Rod Dreher’s comments on them, look here; but it’s important to note that the effect of these numbers on the life and the well being of local churches is even greater than the raw figures might suggest. Many mainline Protestant congregations today are stuck with an infrastructure built in the 1950s and 1960s. There are buildings to...

The Episcopal Church's 77th General Convention concluded Thursday with the adoption of a long list of resolutions, from one that calls on the U.S. Congress to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act to another providing rites for pet funerals. Episcopal leaders, who met in Indianapolis for over a week, considered dozens of resolutions – the most controversial being the approval of transgender ordination and rites for the blessing of same-sex unions. In protest, leaders from the Diocese of South Carolina, including its bishop, left the convention early after expressing clearly their belief that the decisions mark a departure from Scripture...

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 Henry VIII to continue executing any wife who failed to bear him sons, is in trouble. Somehow slipping out of the headlines is a harsh reality that the denomination has been deserted in droves by an angry or ambivalent membership. Six prominent bishops are ready to take their large dioceses out...

Breaking news: House of Bishops affirms gay commitment ceremony Posted on July 9, 2012 by cherie Cherie Wetzel reporting from the 77th General Convention in Indianapolis July 9, 2012 This afternoon, the House of bishops voted in roll call vote, to affirm A049 the resolution endorsing the same-sex commitment ceremony. The vote was 111 yes, 41 no and 3 abstained. As I listened to the 1:45 minute discussion prior to the vote, I continued to have hope as clearly 19 bishops stated they would vote no that I had not expected. At the end of the process, after announcing the...

The Episcopal Church (TEC) and the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) are vying for ecumenical partners as each jockeys for recognition by the wider Christian community. TEC recently celebrated the 10th anniversary of the Episcopal-Lutheran Concordat wherein the Episcopal Church USA and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) entered into full Communion. While this was initially met with much enthusiasm and idealism in the hope that the two denominations would usher in a new era of inter-denominational cooperation, the occasion went mostly unnoticed. In February of this year, the Northern and Southern Provinces of the Moravian Church in...

The spiritual head of the Anglican Communion, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, will resign his position next year almost a decade before he is due to retire in order to return to academic life, a newspaper reported on Sunday. Williams, 61, who has worked hard to prevent the worldwide Anglican community from splitting over the ordination of women and gay bishops, may take up a senior post at Cambridge University, the Sunday Telegraph said. ...Williams has regularly come under fire for his outspoken comments, most recently making headlines in June with an attack on the British government’s deficit-cutting austerity programme....

“[We must] talk of hard financial issues and church decline and growth, to address elephants in the room, and to speak truth to one another in love." Executive Council of the Episcopal Church A month long investigation by Virtueonline into the numerical state of The Episcopal Church reveals that more than one third of all 6825 Episcopal parishes in the U.S. have an average Sunday attendance (ASA) of 40 or less. VOL believes that the figure of 2.3 million Episcopalians, regularly stated by TEC leaders and officials, does not reveal the true state of church attendance. More than two-thirds of...

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.

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The Anglican bishop of Massachusetts, the Rt Revd M Thomas Shaw SSJE, witnesses the "marriage" of the Very Reverend Katherine Hancock Ragsdale and Mally Lloyd, Canon to the Ordinary on New Year's Day 2011.By Father James Bradley of St John the Baptist Church, Sevenoaks, Kent who, by the way, are using the Evangelium course to learn about the Catholic Faith.

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...

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...

I have been looking for God my whole life. I first recognized Him in the black foster parents I worked with who manifested Christ-consciousness. I then found him four years ago, when my parents died three weeks apart and I was carried by a force stronger than myself. And more recently, as I’ve gone from left to right, I have discovered him in the many conservatives guiding me, such as AT readers.

(ENS, Rome) The Emperor of Rome, Gaius Caligula, announced yesterday that he had become a convert to Christianity, and that the Roman Empire would now become the "Episcopalian Empire." In celebration of this momentous event, he said that he would make his horse, Incitatus, a bishop in the Episcopal Church. "I have learned that the Episcopal Church is a very inclusive church," he said in an interview with Empirical News. "Their Presiding Bishop has said that she will take orders to consecrate any bishop elected in accordance with the rules. Incitatus has been baptized, and so now under the Church's...

Dear Diocesan Family, A panel of the Virginia Supreme Court will hear our petition for appeal on October 21 and, while it is unfortunate that these legal proceedings were necessary, I trust that this hearing will bring us one step closer to resolution. I am proud that the Diocese of Virginia and the Episcopal Church have chosen the path consistently to defend loyal Episcopalians, and to safeguard and to protect the Church's legacy and the Church from unwarranted governmental and legislative interference. It is with the same determination to stand by the people, traditions and legacy of our diocese that...