John 3:16

Over in Leeds on the fourth Sunday in Advent, Doorman Priest preached on "what is probably the most famous Gospel text known to Christians."

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son so that all who believe in him may not perish but have everlasting life.

D-P writes "Taken literally this passage from John suggests that those who do not believe in the son will perish," and then proceeds to argue against taking the passage literally. Now I liked D-P's sermon, but I have to say "Sorry, D-P, but that is not correct. Taken literally, this passage (unlike John 14:6) asserts nothing at all about those who do not believe in the son."

A 2004 paper by Samuele Antonini points out that for students of mathematics, the false equivalence of a statement and its inverse is intuitive and the true equivalence of a statement and its contrapositive is not intuitve. The same is true for most people who are not trained in mathematics or formal logic. But what do the terms inverse and contrapositive mean? Taking the statement in John 3:16 as an example (and restating the may as will):

1. Statement: Those who believe in the son will not perish.
2. Inverse: Those who don't believe in the son will perish.
3. Contrapositive: Those who perish don't believe in the son.
There is a fourth possibility, the converse:
4. Converse: Those who do not perish, believe in the son.

Now we take 1, the statement, as true, based on our view of scripture. For most people, it is not intuitive that 3, the contrapositive, says exactly the same thing as 1, and so is also true.
2, the inverse, and 3, the converse, also say the same thing as each other, but, despite our intuition, their truth value cannot be deduced from the truth of 1.

But to leave the realm of logic and return to the substance of the sermon, D-P points out a corrective to those whose intuition tells them that statements 1 and 2 are equivalent. In the passage before this, Nicodemus mistakenly takes Jesus literally (John 3:4). In a 2006 sermon entitled No One Comes to the Father But By Me, John Thatamanil makes the same point about John 14:6.

I'll say more about this topic in my next post.

Litany in Time of War

Last year I hoped I would not be posting the following email this year:

Subject: Great Litany at the Isaiah Wall From: Earl Kooperkamp To:

Dear sisters and brothers:

Please be aware of the following and pass it on to others who may be interested:

The Great Litany chanted in Solemn Procession:

The Fifth Friday in Lent, March 27, 2009 12 noon
The Last Friday in Lent, April 3, 2009 12 noon

Ralph Bunche Park (The Isaiah Wall) NW corner of 42nd Street and First Avenue
(across from the United Nations)

Vestments: Cassock, surplice, tippet and hood (clergy are asked to vest, and if lay members of Altar parties in parishes care to vest, please come in cassock and surplice)

Please join us as we ask for God's mercy on us for the continuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and we mourn the deaths of the children, men and women of those nations and the death United States and other military personnel.

Sponsored by: St. Mary's Episcopal Church - Episcopal Peace Fellowship chapter

For more information, please contact Earl Kooperkamp, (212) 864-4013 or revkoooperkamp@aol.com

Thank you for your kind attention and may you observe a blessed Lent.

Peace, Earl Kooperkamp

The United States invaded Iraq six years ago in the small hours of March 20, 2003. Here in New York, it was still St. Joseph's Day, March 19. We began chanting the Litany at Ralph Bunche Park during Lent in 2003. We've done it at least once or twice every Lent since. We intend to keep it up at least as long as there are US combat troops in Iraq. I'm going to lobby for continuing the practice while we have troops in Afghanistan.

If you are able to make it on either Friday, you will be welcome. As it turns out, I won't be able to participate on April 3rd and it's not likely I'll be there March 27th either. At the beginning of April, Liz and I are going to Vermont to see our granddaughter Aamnda and her parents. More on that later.

This coming Thursday, March 26, Liz and I are going to Bethlehem, PA, to attend the 2009 Campbell Lecture sponsored by the Lehigh County Conference of Churches. The speaker will be the Rev. Ian Douglas, of Episcopal Divinity School, speaking on Living into Unity in a Time of Disunity. We're staying overnight in Bethlehem and depending on the weather we might pop up to Heart Lake on the way home.

Bishop Katharine on Morningside Heights

This past Monday evening, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori gave the Episcopal Lecture at Columbia University. The event was jointly sponsored by the Canterbury Club and the Episcopal Chaplaincy at Columbia.

After some brief introductory remarks, Bishop Katharine fielded questions from the audience. I made a few notes on her remarks – these are not verbatim quotes and represent only what I took away from the evening-- they are the equivalent of a few sound bites.

“The Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society”
I have interspersed some comments of my own in [brackets.]

The corporate name of The Episcopal Church lifts up the missionary calling of our church. Bishop Katharine describes it as working towards God’s reign – by feeding the hungry, striving to end poverty, healing the sick, working for peace, for justice, for environmentally responsible actions.

The word “Society” in our corporate name highlights our interconnectedness – that we are interdependent. Churches in the Anglican tradition place a good deal of emphasis on the incarnation. As a consequence we take bodies seriously. As Christians, we say that the church is the body of Christ. [It should be obvious that this is a metaphor.] Theologian Sally McFague talks about all of creation as being the body of God. [Another metaphor.] When one part of the body suffers, the whole body suffers. [“God hath created nothing simply for itself: but each thing in all things and of everything each part in other hath such interest that in the whole world nothing is found whereunto anything created can say, I need thee not.”– Richard Hooker: Learned Sermon on Pride. Compare specifically 1 Corinthians 12:21, Romans 12:4-5 and Ephesians 4:15-16, and more generally, 1 Corinthians 12: 12-31; Romans 12: 3-8;Ephesians 4: 11-16.]

On Sexuality

Taking the Incarnation seriously and taking bodies seriously means, in the Episcopal Church, that we take sexuality seriously.

Some of the tensions in the Anglican Communion over sexuality arise from the fact that in some cultures sexuality isn’t discussed at all and it is deeply embarrassing to have to discuss it.

Another characteristic of Anglicanism is lex orandi, lex credendi. We have very few systematic theologians – our theology is contained in our prayer books and our worship. The question of developing a liturgy for the blessing of same sex unions is fraught with tension, because the existence of such a liturgy would bring same sex unions right into the center of our life as a church – into our worship.

On Intra-Anglican Relations

Both the election and consecration of Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire and the election of Bishop Katharine as Presiding Bishop were seen in some parts of the world as just another example of American arrogance, alongside the arrogance of the Bush administration. The change in Washington, as well as the conversations in last summer’s Lambeth Conference, have helped ease things somewhat.

Americans who are bishops in African churches [Nigeria, Rwanda, and Uganda] do not attend synods in those countries. The local bishops do not like that and wish their primates (some of whom are near retirement) to correct the situation. This is a hopeful sign.

On Ministry

In our thirty year old “new prayer book” the Episcopal Church emphasizes the ministry of all the baptized. What used to be “Canon 9 priests” or priests ordained for a purely local ministry need to be viewed in the light of the ministry of al the baptized.

On Emerging Church

Because we take the incarnation seriously, we recognize that things don’t necessarily need to be the same everywhere.

On the proposed Anglican Covenant

In the latest draft, the first two parts seem ok. The objections are to the third part. The next draft is scheduled to be presented to the Anglican Consultative Council in May. We’ll have to wait and see what its contents are and what the ACC does with it.

The exercise itself may be the most important part of the process.

On the role of the Archbishop of Canterbury

We view him as first among equals. He has the authority to call people together for conversation.

All of the questions were friendly,but there were three questions that were somewhat challenging. First, there was a young man who asked Bishop Katanrine how she responded to those who challenge the validity of her ordination as a women -- after all, Jesus chose only men as the twelve.

Mary Magdelene was called "the apostle to the apostles." Women in leadership positions are referred to in Acts and in Paul's letters. We don't know very much about actual ordination in the early church. There's some evidence that the rules against ordaining women are post Constantinian.

[I'm reconstructing and perhaps making up this part.] Our incarnational theology of people and our baptismal theology of ministry both lead us to support the ministry of all persons.

Bishop Katharine was asked about the prophetic ministry of the Episcopal Church and mentioned two issues -- our stand against the death penalty and our stance for the right to abortion while we recognize that abortion is a moral tragedy. The same young man asked how we could support the right to an abortion while calling it a moral tragedy. In this case, my notes don't have Bishop Katharine's exact answer and I am not going to put words in her mouth.

The third challenging question was about a hypothetical ordinand who admitted that he no longer believed in the Resurrection -- the question was whether she would ordain him. Three things stick with me from her answer:

He seems on the face of it to be unusually honest.
She would want to have a long talk with him.

and finally,

God calls us to keep wrestling with our faith.

I have left out a good deal, but I hope I've given a flavor of what it was like to hear Bishop Katharine.

The audience included a dozen or so members of the Canterbury Club, other Columbia students, six or eight clergy unknown to me, and a group from Grace Church in Nyack, New York, including the Rev. Emily Sieracki, the assistant to the rector at Grace. Emily was sponsored for ordination by St. Mary's and the Columbia Episcopal Chaplaincy. Others there associated with St. Mary's, besides Liz and me, were Dean James Parks Morton and Pamela Morton, who are current members of the parish, and the Rev. Winnie Varghese, Episcopal Chaplain at Columbia and member of Executive Council, who was at St. Mary's while she was in seminary. And since our former rector Bob Castle ("Cousin Bobby") used to say to those who came to church at St. Mary's that they were now members of our parish, Bishop Katharine herself is now associated with St. Mary's.

Facebook

This morning I received an invitation to be become a Facebook friend of one of my Florida cousins. I joined Facebook in January 2008, but have been very inactive. In October, I became a friend to a Massachusetts cousin, but was still incative. In January, i became a friend to an internet store, Betterworld Books, but still was otherwise inactive. But tonight, I have acquired new friends from a 17 year old high school junior (I'm her uncle and godfather) to an 84 year old retired pastor (he's my uncle.) And just now I became Facebook friends with a blog friend -- one who came to Of Course I Could Be in New York. It opens up lots of possiblilities -- this person has lots of friends who I know -- some in person and some through blogs.

And so to bed.

Baptismal Covenant

The time changed this morning – Liz and I almost missed the change and would have been late for church. This morning we had some special guests – women from the Plainfield Community Church in Plainfield New Hampshire. The Rev. Suellen Luegers, pastor of the church was our preacher. The women had been here for a week, working in various community outreach programs – some based at St. Mary’s and some nearby. But most important, they brought us quilts which the Episcopal Church Women will give to families in a homeless shelter at the end of our block.

Today we had four baptisms of children – all siblings or cousins. As a result, we got to say the Baptismal Covenant – to my mind the best new thing in the 1979 Prayer Book. We promised, with the help of God,

• to continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers,
• to persevere in resisting evil, and whenever we fall into sin, to repent and return to the Lord,
• to to proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ,
• to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourself,
• to strive for justice and peace among all people, and to respect the dignity of every human being.

We have a fair number of baptisms at St. Mary’s each year, so we get to renew this covenant frequently.

If you Google “Baptismal Covenant Episcopal” you will find that some on the right hand side of the aisle find that the promise to “respect the dignity of every human being” is problematic. In 2007, Canon Gary L'Hommedieu of the Diocese of Central Florida wrote “What is unarguable is the novelty of the final promise to "strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being." It is this final promise that distinguishes the 1979 baptismal liturgy from all previous ones, apart from incidentals of language. ... It is the final promise that comprises the spirit of the Baptismal Covenant. Or rather, the final promise IS the Baptismal Covenant. ... Even though the language of [the Baptismal Covenant] is purely abstract and non-specific, it typically finds application that is politically motivated and unabashedly partisan, and invariably to the left.”

Canon L'Hommedieu is spot on, save for one thing. He does not acknowledge, perhaps he does not recognize, that opposition to the “invariably left” application of “respect the dignity of every human being” is also “politically motivated and unabashedly partisan.”

I have only recently become acquainted with the relatively new field of cognitive linguistics and cognitive science in general. Central to that discipline is the discovery that most of human thought and reasoning is not conscious, is based of cognitive frames sometimes called metaphors, and, because we exist in our bodies, is embodied and inextricably tied to our emotions. Most of my reading in this field is in the writings of George Lakoff. Lakoff observes that much of our political, and I would say also religious, thought is informed by the metaphor of the family. Now there are at least two models of the family out there. One is the nurturant parent model and the other is the strict father model.

Very recently I read on some blog or other a definition of politics as being about decision making and a refutation that said no, it was about power and who gets to exercise it. In either case, I think I’m right is saying that the ecclesial and theological perspective of both religious progressives and religious conservatives are politically motivated.

to be continued ...

BTW, tomorrow evening PB KJS is speaking at Columbia University, a few blocks from here, and I intend to be there. I hope to report on what she says.

Annual Meeting

Yesterday we had our Annual Meeting at St. Mary's.

I made a motion, which was carried unanimously, that we communicate to our diocesan delegates to General Convention that we urge the repeal of B033. I originally forgot to include support for same sex blessings, but we managed to tack it on before the meeting broke up.

I know that the support of one parish is not terribly significant, but it's important for our small congregation to be reminded of our connection to the wider church.

At one point in the discussion, it was mentioned that St. Mary's was the sponsor of two of the Philadelphia Eleven (the first women in the Episcopal Church to be ordained to the priesthood in 1974, not the 2004 anti-gay demonstrators) and that my signature, as Clerk of the Vestry, appears on the documents sent to Bishop Paul Moore in support of the ordination of Carter Heyward and Emily Hewitt. I mention it only to make the point that we (and I) have been pushing issues for quite a while. It's part of who we are.

I'm put in mind of another part of who we are by MadPriest's recent sermon on Mark 1:9-15. We minister to the marginalized. For several years we operated a weekly soup kitchen -- just over a year ago we urned it into a food pantry. The siginificant point is that a large part of the staff consists of people who first came to us on the food line. Many people from the line have become involved in the church. These days we also provide bag lunches in a Saturday outreach program to homeless people in our general neighborhood.

Three weeks ago, Estelle, a sometime member of our choir, passed away. Her passing was noted by Padre Mickey as well as several others who remember The Ronettes. Estelle is just one of the many fragile folks who have gotten some fellowship at St. Mary's.

S words

In October 2004, the website Radical Calendar said of Fr. Luis Barrios that he “doesn’t hesitate to call God, Goddess.” This past Saturday, February 28, MadPriest, picked up a Living Church story that said that in an open letter, Fr. Barrios said it is his “duty to our Goddess to build a better world.” At the Living Church website, this “news” is dated February 26, 2009. The actual open letter appears on a website where the posts are not dated. The letter itelf is dated January 27, 2009. In a comment to the post at MadPriest, at first I said I did not believe the quote and then I had to admit that it was accurate. In this case, I posted first and googled later – not a good idea. In the course of googling, I came to realize what is going on. Later on, in the comments at MadPriest’s, David [Dah + veed] Allen put it better than I could: “The statement was issued in English and Spanish and it says Our Goddess (Nuestra Diosa) in the Spanish as well. It appears that Padre Luis is an alternating inclusive, using both masculine and feminine language for Our God (Nuestro Dios) in the same passages.”

The problem for me is that “our Goddess” is an imperfect translation of what Fr. Barrios means when he say “nuestra Diosa.” This is partly because English no longer has grammatical gender (differentiated third person pronouns do not constitute grammatical gender.) So “Goddess” is not simply the feminine form of “God,” it has other connotations, especially the form “the Goddess.” Moreover, “-ess” words in general are now problematic for many people.

That said, now that I understand it, I am not bothered by Fr. Barrios’s use of the word “Goddess.”

Of course the pseudo Anglicans of the radical right are all over the story, mostly because of the protest for which Fr. Barrios was arrested, but also because of some of his earlier activism and what I admittedly intemperately call their own inability to comprehend inclusiveness in any form or to tolerate diversity of opinion. But that's to be expected.

Taking Hold

As I noted way back at the end of October, my computer failed just a day after we drove home from Heart Lake through a snow storm that delayed us and turned a three hour trip into an eight hour trip.

The problem was diagnosed as hard drive failure and I paid around $1,000 for data recovery. I bought a new hard drive and I finally got my computer back just before Thanksgiving. In the meantime, I was using Liz’s notebook computer. Well, it soon became apparent that there was still something wrong with the computer, as it kept giving me the blue screen of death. So I took it back to the shop.

I picked it up again on December 3rd; the diagnosis was a software problem. However, I soon began encountering bluescreens again, so I took it back once more. The technician, Irit, took quite a long time to pin down the problem. I was away twice, she had a bad case of flu, but finally, after a good deal of trial and error, she determined that the problem was the video card, which unfortunately is part of the motherboard, so I needed a new computer. Since I had already spent so much on data recovery, I looked hard for a desktop replacement laptop for under $700.

Now I finally have my new computer and have finished the slow process of installing all of the software I normally use. It’s been a long three months. I still have to clean up behind myself on Liz’s laptop and I have a lot of catching up to do. But I don’t feel crippled anymore.

I’m Back

On Monday afternoon, around 4:45 pm, Liz and I arrived home from our Florida trip. I’m very happy we went and especially happy that I got to see my Aunt Joyce and my cousins Eric and Sven in Miami.

When we got home, as we came into the building we saw a notice that our neighbor Bob Seaver, a retired professor at Union Theological Seminary, had died last Wednesday. Then when we up to our tenth floor apartment, we discovered that our next door neighbor, Aimee Scheff, had died early Sunday morning.

Both funerals are this afternoon -- Aimee's at 2 pm at a funeral chapel on 91st Street and Amsterdam Ave. and Bob's at 4 pm at The Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, at 112th Street, also on Amsterdam Avenue. So they are a mile apart. It remninds me of the time we had invitations to two weddings, one at the cathedral and one at St. Michael's Church, at 100th Street and Amsterdam. It was not possible to attend both weddings, we had to pick one and go to both receptions. It will be possible to attend both funerals.

We didn't have high speed internet access for most of last evening, so we didn't check all of our emails. This morning we saw that there are some delightful new pictures of our granddaughter Amanda. I'll be posting one or two of them later -- as well as some pictures from our trip.

I'm still using Liz's laptop, since mine is still in the shop -- I'm betting I'll need a new one, but until I know definitely whether the problem is the video card or the motherboard, I'll keep hoping.

Greetings to all, especially my cousin Eric my only follower), my cousin Sven, and my Aunt Joyce. Gotta get dreesed for the funerals. Bye.

UPDATE 8:45 PM

We didn't get to the second funeral after all -- we spent the afternoon in a lunch with Aimee's brother and sister-in-law and several Morningside Gardens friends.

Greetings from Florida

My only computer access here on Anna Maria Island is at the library, where I am in competition for computers with several others, but the wait is never too long.

Liz and I are enjoying our vacation so far and we are looking forward to going to Miami tomorrow. We'll visit my Aunt Joyce whom I have not seen for half a century.

I'll have more to say when we are back in New York.

Away to Florida

We're off to Florida for a week.
While we're away, we'll miss author Thomas Cahill preaching at St. Mary's tomorrow, January 25, Prisosn Ministry Sunday in the Diocese of New York.
We'll also miss a special service on February 1 in which the Harlem Episcopal churches will honoe the ministry of Bishop Don Taylor, assisting bishop in the Diocese of New York, on the occasion of his retirement.
Too bad we can;t be in two places at the same time.

I probably won't post anything until I'm back.

Marion Hatchett on the American Church and Anglicanism

The Anglican arrived yesterday. It contains a "Response to the Distinguished Alumnus/a Award at The General Theological Seminary" by Marion J. Hatchett. The whole response is worth reading and I wish I had been there last October to hear him deliver it. Here are the last two paragraphs:

The American Church always seems to jump way out ahead of the Church of England and our other sister churches, and in a number of respects. One was in giving voice to priests and deacons and to laity (as well as to bishops and to secular government officials) in the governance of the national church and of dioceses and parishes. The American Church revised the Prayer Book in a way that went far beyond revisions necessitated by the new independence of the states. From its beginning the American Church legalized the use of hymnody along with metrical psalmody more than a generation before use of "hymns of human composure" became legal in the Church of England. At an early stage the American Church gave recognition to critical biblical scholarship. The American Church eventually gave a place to women in various aspects of the life of the church including its ordained ministry. The American Church began to speak out against discrimination against those of same-sex orientation, and the American Church began to make moves in establishing full communion with other branches of Christendom.

Historically the American Church has been the flagship in the Anglican armada. It has been first among the provinces of the Anglican Communion to take forward steps on issue after issue, and on some of those issues other provinces of Anglicanism have eventually fallen into step behind the American Church. My prayer is that the American Church will be able to retain its self-esteem and to stand firm and resist some current movements which seem to me to be contrary to the principles of historic Anglicanism and to the teachings of the Holy Scriptures.

The full talk is online here. The Anglican is a publication of the Anglican Society. 2008 Dues/Subscription = $15 US ($20 foreign) -- I think this is the latest rate -- the figures on the website are out of date.

Updated Friday to point to the text of the paper.

Gratitude

Thanks to Mad Priest several vistors dropped by my blog early this week. I'll be returning the favor and updating my blog roll, but probably not for a couple of weeks -- for reasons stated below.

Here are three other things I am grateful for.

Barack Hussein Obama is now President of the United States of America. Thanks be to God.

There is a ceasefire in Gaza -- or rather two unilateral ceasefires. Thanks be to God.

In about a week and a half I'll be seeing my Aunt Joyce for the first time in about 50 years. Thanks be to God.

Here we are 70 years ago (actually more, since it was in the summer of 1939). As you can see, Aunt Joyce is only seven years older than I. Joyce is my father's youngest sister and the sole survivor among my father and his siblings. She moved to Miami about 50 years ago. Here is a picutre taken while she still lived in New York State. She was a TV personality at the time.


A little more than 10 years ago, I reconnected with Aunt Joyce by email and telephone. I've been meaning to arrange a trip to Florida ever since, but it wasn't until this year that Liz and I got to it.

This coming Saturday, January 24th, we are flying to Tampa for almost a week with Liz's cousin Oliver on Ana Maria Island, just below St. Petersburg. Then we drive to Miami for a couple of days visting Aunt Joyce and part of her family.

I most likely will not be taking a laptop, so I don't know how much internet access I'll have.

I'm grateful that after half a century I'm going to see my beloved Aunt Joyce.

About blogging

It took me five days to write the last post. At first, I didn't know where it was going. I also don't know whether I have an audience, but no matter -- I will press on. I wonder what's next.

Jesus loves you more than you will know (Wo wo wo).

Mrs. Robinson will be moving into the White House next week, as will her daughter and son-in-law, along with her granddaughters. I learned about this the other day from the New York Times. I was going to write about it.

On Monday, I learned about another Robinson -- Bishop Gene Robinson has been invited to deliver the invocation at the opening event of the inauguration festivities next Sunday. I first learned it at Of Course I Could Be Wrong and I wasn't sure it was true until I checked The Lead at Episcopal Cafe. At The Lead, Jim Naughton, who apparently broke the story, reports that it became the biggest blog event of the day at 4:30 Monday afternoon.

There were a few other things in the past few days that I wanted to take note of. Last week, our local weekly The Westsider had an aricle about a shelter for homeless LGBTQ teenagers here in New York City. It's not online, so I can't link to it, and we gave the paper to someone in our church who works with homeless people. The article makes the point that for these kids there are more pressing issues than same-sex marriage (or ordination of bishops and other clergy.) Bishop Robinson is quoted in the Concord Monitor as having told Beliefnet "The difficult thing is that [Rick Warren]'s said, and continues to affirm, some horrendous things about homosexuality." The horrendous things that Bishop Gene is referring to lead to horrendous consequences -- as witness the incidence of suicide among LGBTQ youth, the family rejection that many of the homeless LGBTQ youth have experienced, and violence against LGBTQ persons.

On Saturday I learned, also from MadPriest, that a church in my home town had lost its bid to keep the property ater the congregation seceded from the Episcopal Church. The Church of the Good Shepherd, on the south sde of Binghamton, is one of three parishes in the Diocese of Central New York that withdrew from the Episcopal Church at least in part in protest over the consecration of Bishop Robinson in 2003. Good Shepherd, whose rector is Matt Kennedy, is the only one of the three parishes which actually pursued the legal battle to the end (see this article in the Press & Sun-Bulletin.) Monday or Tuesday, I read in a post by Matt Kennedy over at Stand Firm (I will not link there) that they were given a a little more than a month to vacate the premises -- and they had to pay while they stayed. Well, on the church blog Matt reports they have found a disused RC rectory to house the Kennedys. and the gym of a Baptist Church for Sunday worship -- both within less than a mile and a half of their old church.

In a comment at OCICBW last week, Matt Kennedy wrote

Say what you will about me and my parishioners...as you have...but believe it or not, in all sincerity, we believe those who promote same sex sexual behavior are, albeit unintentionally, hurting people by leading them away from Christ.

I certainly believe he is sincere -- I also think he is dead wrong in his approach to the bible and the true nature of orthodox Christianity. I also think he is wrong about Anglicanism, but this is ground that has been contested at least since the days when Richard Hooker and his cousin Walter Travers preached at the Temple Church in the 1570's. I hope to write more about the significance of contested ground, but for now I want to take a close look at Matt Kennedy's statement.

"Those who promote same sex sexual behavior" is an odd choice of words. It isn't about promoting any kind of sexual behavior. It's about affirming people, accepting who they are, and where necessary encouraging them to accept who they are.

Affirming people does not lead them away from Christ. Telling people that God hates what they do when what they do is intimately related to who they are does indeed lead many people away from Christ.

I'll leave it to others to talk about why it is right for Gene Robinson to be a bishop in the Episcopal Church and wrong for Matt Kennedy to teach that same sex sexual behavior is contrary to God's will.

I conclude with part (slightly updated) of a 17th century prayer written when there was contested ground in the church:

O God, the Creator and Preserver of all humankind, we humbly beseech thee for all sorts and conditions of people; that thou wouldest be pleased to make thy ways known unto them, thy saving health unto all nations. More especially we pray for thy holy Church universal; that it may be so guided by thy good Spirit, that all who profess and call themselves Christians may be led into the way of truth and hold the faith in unity of spirit, in the bond of peace, and in righteousness of life.

KJS at St. Mary's (Just Another Sunday)

Situated as we are in the Manhattanville valley, a few blocks from Union Theological Seminary and the Columbia University campus, we get a fair number of interesting visitors at St. Mary's. Just before the 10 AM service this morning, I noticed that Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and her husband Richard Schori were in the congregation. They were just visiting.

Today in place of a sermon we had the annual Sunday School Christmas Pageant -- the topic was the Slaughter of the Innocents and the Flight into Egypt. Under the direction of Jim White, the slaughter took place in the sacristy, so all we heard were terrible screams. In the last scene, the soldiers had a change of heart -- that is, they repented -- and joined the Holy Family as refugees in Egypt. Then each soldier, or rather each child actor, presented gifts to the baby Jesus commemorating the names and ages of children killed in Iraq. I think the PB was as appreciative of the pageant as the rest of us.

Most of the congregation were not aware that Bishop KJS was there until announcement time, which we have just before the blessing and dismissal.

New Year's Day

Picking up where the last post left off ...
It was a real time away for us -- no internet, no TV news, very little radio news, no newspaper most days. I can't remember when I became aware that all hell had broken loose in Gaza.

I spent most of my personal time reading and trying to write a coherent piece about what I was reading. On the way to Jane and Scott's on Christmas Eve, we stopped for gas in Brattleboro, Vt and bought the New York Times. The was a front page article on Jewish response to the Bernard Madoff scandal. I was particularly struck by a statement made by Rabbi Jeremy Kalmanofsky of Congregation Ansche Chesed which is about a mile and a half from our apartment in Morningside Gardens.

In a recent sermon, Rabbi Kalmanofsky described Mr. Madoff as the antithesis of true piety. “I said, what it means to be a religious person is to be terrified of the possibility that you’re going to harm someone else,” he said.

The first time I read that, it struck a chord but I thought that "terrified" was a little over the top. The more I ponder it, though, the less extravagant I think it is.

As we started out from New York on Christmas Eve, I turned on the radio to catch the end of the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from King's College Cambridge. After I listened to the ninth lesson (John 1:1-14) I mentioned to Liz that I had read a wonderful rendering of John 1:14a at Preludium:

The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood... (1.14a, The
Message)

(As an aside, I had never consciously encountered The Message before and in fact it was only after I got back to New York that I discovered where that rendering came from. In the course of looking The Message up, I found an otherwise perceptive review that oddly thinks the rendering "moved into the neighborhood" is facetious.)

We got to Jane's house too late to go to the afternoon Christmas Eve service at Christ Episcopal Church in Montpelier, so we went to another church a little later. -- I won't say which one. We did get to Christ Episcopal Church on Sunday and got to hear the opening of John again. The rector, David Hall, preached a fine sermon. We go to that church whenever we are visiting Jane on a Sunday. and we like it.

While at Jane's, I was also reading Helene Cooper's The House at Sugar Beach, a large part of which is about the bloody events in Liberia that began in April 1980. As I thought about the evils of war as exemplified by the Liberian events, about Rabbi Kalmanofsky's observation that to be religious is to be fearful of inflicting harm on another, and about the Incarnation, which is central to my own religious faith, I contemplated writing a brilliant blog post on the subject -- even though almost no one reads this blog. Since I didn't have my computer with me, I began composing in a spiral notebook.

I got far enough to observe that not doing harm was not enough -- we actually have to do good.

Another book I began reading in Vermont was Barack Obama's The Audacity of Hope. On Sunday after I learned that Israel had begun bombing Gaza, I was particularly struck by Obama's observation on the difference between values and ideology.

Values are faithfully applied to the facts before us, while ideology overrides whatever facts call theory into question.

Rather than getting into a rant about Israel and Palestine, I just want to observe that it appears obvious to me that the public statements of Israeli officials are dripping with ideology. The statements of the weaker party, Hamas, are also dripping with ideology.

In that article on the Madoff scandal, Rabbi Jennifer Krause said

The Talmud teaches that a person who only looks out for himself and his own interests will eventually be brought to poverty.

I believe that principle extends to security -- even national security.

The End of the Year

A week ago, on Christmas Eve, Liz and I left New York and drove to Jane and Scott's house in Vermont. We had a great time there, not least because we got to spend a good bit of time with our granddaughter Amanda. On the way home we stopped first and ahd lunch and a nice visit with Liz's brother and sister-in-law Peter and Cynthia. Afterwards we drove on down to the Berkshires and spent the night with our friends Roger and Holly, who are building a house near where Holly grew up. Finally we drove home, getting here midafternoon on Tuesday the 30th.

More to come.

The first week of December

Let's see.
Barack Obama named Hillary Clinton as his Secretary of State.
A group of former Episcopalians and others formed what they call a province of the Anglican Church in North America, but which is in fact a new denomination.
The Episcopal Bishop of Los Angeles promulgated a rite for the blessing of same sex blessings.

Closer to home:
I picked up my computer, but it has crashed again. Probably I need to have Windows reinstalled.
On Saturday evening, Liz and I went to dinner in a Venezuelan restaurant with four three generations of the family of a friend of Liz's from her Union Seminary days. It was in honor of the birthday of the friend's granddaughter. Among the party were a female same sex couple who attend another St. Mary's Church -- this one in Rockport. MA. It was fun talking to them, and I'd like to get better acquainted.
Not technically part of the first week, on December 7th at St. Mary's, the celebrant was the Rev. Patricia (Patty) Ackerman. Patty was at St. Mary's as a seminarian, and has been actively ivolved on several progressive fronts. The Gospellers were Lysander Puccio and Miguel Escobar (we hear the gospel in both English and Spanish.) The sermon was by Betty Reardon, in honor of the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. During the service I counted seven known lesbian and gay people among the thirty or so people there. I think there might be others, but my gaydar isn't what it used to be. In an interesting and unplanned way, this service was St. Mary's answer to the "Duncanites."

It's Monday morning, and I'm off to the computer shop again.

My Computer

I got my computer back last Thursday, after three weeks without it. Then, the same day, it crashed again with a blue screen. I took it back to the shop and am again working with Liz's laptop, but not before I had managed to get almost all of the files I need backed up -- either on external media or on Liz's computer.

I feel curtailed in two or three ways -- first, although I now have access to my files, in order to use them effectively I would have to take over Liz's computer. Second, projects I was working on during the summer and into the fall are now at a standstill. Third, I am limited in what I can take on new. In short, I need my own computer.