Archive for July 9th, 2009

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Archbishop Addresses Global Economic Crisis

Thursday, July 9th, 2009

news-blueDWTX from Anaheim – Saying the global economic situation is a crisis of truth, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, spoke on the topic to an audience of several hundred persons Wednesday evening. Williams is making a brief appearance at the 76th General Convention; on Thursday he will lead Bible study during the daily Eucharist.

“We have been lying to ourselves,” said Williams. “We are in a crisis of truthfulness and worthiness.”

Over the past decade, he said, there has been an erosion of trust in our financial institutions because, at very high levels, our word has not been our bond. Further, he said, “We have lied to ourselves about our limitless wants in a limited world. We have lied about the possibility of profit without risk.”

Thirdly, said Williams, we have lied about our relations to each other, telling ourselves that one group’s profit can be isolated from the rest of the human family.

The task before the global village, said Williams, is not simply to restore financial stability, but to look at the truth that we must learn to speak. Truth doesn’t happen simply because someone says “trust me” said the Archbishop. “We need to build a culture of patience if we are going to build a culture of transparency.” We also, he said, must speak truth about the world we live in; it is a world with material limits, and it cannot tolerate forever a human race living as we are.

What is good for human beings collectively is not simply the sum of what is good for individuals, said Williams, so we must begin to tell the truth about the common good. What the market can bear is not necessarily what should be charged. What can be done doesn’t have to be done.

Christians, said Williams, recognize the importance of the common good. “We are made so that what is given to us is made to be given to others.” He said the church is well-placed to lead the way in such things as microenterprise in which people of a community have ownership of growing their local economy. “Churches have a unique role because of what churches believe,” said Williams. “Churches believe we are made in the image of God, and that vision of human beings growing together is what we want to say to the economy.”

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Presiding Bishop Stresses Need for Community

Thursday, July 9th, 2009

news-blueDWTX from Anaheim – The 76th General Convention can regard challenges as opportunities for “ubuntu” or togetherness, or can choose “business as usual” and fail, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori told a joint session of bishops and deputies Tuesday, July 7, in the Anaheim Convention Center.

Ubuntu, the theme of the 76th General Convention, is from an African concept that means, “I can only become a whole person in relationship with others,” Jefferts Schori said. “There is no ‘I’ without ‘you,’ and in our context, you and I are known only as we reflect the image of the one who created us.”

In addition to inclusivity and poverty, she cited as crises the financial meltdown and the “great Western heresy — that we can be saved as individuals, that any of us alone can be in right relationship with God.” In some quarters it occurs through “insisting that salvation depends on reciting a specific verbal formula about Jesus.”

“That individualist focus is a form of idolatry, for it puts me and my words in the place that only God can occupy, at the center of existence, as the ground of all being. That heresy is one reason for the theme of this convention,” she added.

“If we want to be faithful we need to be continually rediscovering that my needs are not the only significant ones. We are our siblings’ keepers and their knowers, and we cannot be known without them — we have no meaning, no true existence in isolation. We shall indeed die as we forget or ignore that reality.”

The economic crisis underlies “all the conversation and debate. That we do not have the same kind of financial resources to address them as we had three years ago — that is another kind of crisis both local and global,” she said.

The temptation for deputies and bishops will be to see “one small part of God’s mission” as the overarching reason for the church’s existence, she said. But she added that: “the structures of this church are resources for God’s mission but are not God’s mission in themselves.

“We will fail if we choose business as usual. There will be cross-shaped decisions in our work; but if we look faithfully, there will be resurrection as well. This is our moment of judgment, our crisis. We can make our decisions in hope, and we can speak the love of God through this church. And we can do it together.”

Source – Episcopal News Service

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Anderson Calls Church to Deeper Mission

Thursday, July 9th, 2009

news-blueDWTX from Anaheim - House of Deputies President Bonnie Anderson invited deputies and bishops to a deeper sense of mission to the poor in her opening presentation to General Convention on Tuesday, July 7. Anderson, who is serving her first term as presiding officer of the House of Deputies, said this commitment to mission has to occur because of, not in spite of, today’s tough economic times.

She said that those who attended the previous 75 General Conventions could have described their own tough times, but she said today’s struggles are different because they are globally visible. “Our technology enables us to see and to know not only how we are affected,” she said, “but how the global economic crisis disproportionately affects the poorest people in the world. It is within our reach to do something about that, and that is the toughest thing about our tough times.”

Anderson applauded the dioceses and parishes that have made a commitment to mission through the Millennium Development Goals – an eight-pronged effort to halve global poverty by 2015 – but said that to close the gap between the needs of the world and the response of the church, the Episcopal Church needs the efforts of those outside its walls. “We must no longer be afraid to ask other people to join us in action,” she said. Public narrative, a tool being taught to General Convention deputies and bishops to help tell their faith stories, has great capacity to help church members engage others in action on behalf of mission, she said.

That intersection between faith and mission is an essential part of one’s Christian identity, Anderson said. “We find our place in creation where the story of Jesus Christ intersects our own stories.”

Source: Episcopal News Service

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Philippine Church Recognized at Opening Eucharist

Thursday, July 9th, 2009

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DWTX from Anaheim – During the Wednesday morning Eucharist that drew an estimated 3,000 people to the Anaheim Convention Center, Episcopalians got their first experience of worshipping together at the 76th General Convention. While the congregation will hear from a variety of preachers during the daily Eucharists, this opening ceremony was the province of Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori.

A portion of the service was devoted to recognition of the journey of The Episcopal Church in the Philippines, which became financially independent in 2008. The church had been planted there in 1898 with services held by chaplains of the occupying U. S. Army. “The miracle of life happens even in war,” said Jefferts Schori, “and it happens despite colonial structures.”

In 1901 General Convention established the Missionary District of the Philippines and elected Charles Henry Brent as bishop. Fortunately for the church, Brent chose to take the gospel to the indigenous peoples rather than “founding an altar against an altar” in the cities. In 1937, the church became a diocese, and by 1971 there were three dioceses, each with an indigenous bishop. In 1990 the church became an autonomous province of the Anglican Communion, gaining financial independence in 2008.

At the Wednesday Eucharist, the Rt. Rev. Edward Pacaya Malecdan, the Prime Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the Philippines, presented Jefferts Schori with a gift as a token of friendship and solidarity with The Episcopal Church.

In her sermon, Jefferts Schori held up the Philippines church as an example of what “a healthy and life-sustaining heart looks like.” The church’s mission, said Jefferts Schori, is to offer “heart transplants to the languishing.” The heart of The Episcopal Church, said the presiding bishop, “is mission, domestic and foreign mission, in partnership with anyone who shares that passion.”

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