Coverage of Episcopal Church Lift of Gay Ban

A good summary here from Religion News Service on the rescinding of the ban on homosexual bishops by the Episcopal Church last week.

ANAHEIM, Calif.—The Episcopal Church on Tuesday (July 14) overwhelmingly voted to lift a three-year-old moratorium on consecrating gay and lesbian bishops, despite warnings that the ban was necessary to preserve unity in the wider Anglican Communion.

A large majority of Episcopal bishops, priests and lay delegates gathered here for the church’s triennial General Convention asserted that “God has called and may call” gays and lesbians in lifelong committed relationships “to any ordained ministry in the Episcopal Church.”

More than 70 percent of lay and clergy delegates in the church’s House of Deputies approved lifting the moratorium on Tuesday; the church’s House of Bishops had approved it Monday by a 2-to-1 margin.

While the resolution clears the way for gay and lesbian bishops, it does not mandate that dioceses must consider them, nor does it guarantee that, if elected, they will receive the necessary ratification votes to serve.

“This is a day to rejoice for the Church—no, let me be more specific, this is a day to rejoice in the Episcopal Church, which once again has stood for the full inclusion of all,” openly gay Bishop V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire wrote on his blog late Monday . . .

Religious Groups Provide a Quarter of All U.S. Aid to Developing Countries

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Churches and ministries are making a significant contribution to developing countries.  Ministry Today explains,

A new study indicates that religious organizations make up almost a quarter of all U.S. giving to developing countries. In fact, churches, ministries and similar entities sowed a whopping $8.6 billion into foreign soil in 2007.

According to the study by Hudson Institute’s Center for Global Prosperity (CGP), church donations to international relief organizations based in the U.S. jumped 17 percent from 2006 to 2007, with 74 percent of American congregations giving toward global aid agencies. The average church gave $11,960, and more than a quarter of those gave directly to programs in other countries for a combined $3.3 billion. Other means of church giving included short-term mission or service trips (34 percent of all congregations did this), as well as long-term development projects (30 percent) that contributed more than $1.4 billion to aid countries.

Contrary to what many claim, Christianity is doing a world of good.

Over-Marketing Church

An insightful observation by an Arizona pastor and blogger named Jonathan Foster.

“The more churches I visit the more I realize we are less and less wrestling with heart-formation and more and more obsessing over how to market ourselves. … I’m a proponent of being a student of the culture. I think great effort should be made to come up with a medium that contextualizes. I get that. I’m on board. But the scales are in danger of being tipped. Over-contextualizing leads to positioning, posturing and marketing. I don’t think that’s the business we’re in. I’m left in some cases to wonder whether we have decided that the strategy to reach our media-savvy generation revolves around packaging a cool, hip religious experience rather than life transformation through Jesus Christ.”

—pastor, church planter and blogger Jonathan Foster of Phoenix, Ariz., pondering the timeless medium vs. message dilemma as it relates to current church marketing [theproblemwithreligion.com, 4/27/09]

(Via Ministry Today)

The Emerging Movement – R. I. P.

This is too good not to pass along – and I appreciate the spirit in which it’s written.  Michael Patton acknowledges the positives and strengths of this movement, but rightly points out the significant weaknesses – which were serious enough, I think, to lead it to an early grave.

From Parchment and Pen:

Obituary: The Emerging Church (1994-2009)

For those of you who want to criticize the tone of this post, please make sure you read my previous posts on the emerging church. One is listed at the bottom. Take this post in the spirit is was intended and lighten up.

Today, at 12:33pm, while most of you were having lunch, the Emerging Church was taken off of  life support.

The Emerging Church was not around long enough to be declared alive, so the announcement of its death comes with an apathetic “ho-hum” for many of you. But it is true. Stop the “What is the Emerging Church?” seminars. Edit the “Beware of Brian McLaren Sermons.” And don’t even entertain starting an Emerging blog. As far as I can see, the Emerging Church is dead at 15.

It got some cries out, made some very good points, called for changed, and then died. Its leaders are disappearing or have disassociated themselves from the movement. Publishers won’t even entertain books with this title. Those, like myself, who were very well acquainted with the “movement” get nauseous when the topic is even brought up. In fact, I am nauseous now.

Did this even last as long as the “Jesus Freaks”?

Supposing I am right, let me conduct a funeral. Please, step up to the mic and tell of your association with the movement. No takers. Ok, let me. Better—I will give an autopsy. As a sympathizer of the “movement” I feel I am quite qualified to do so.

Why did the emerging church die?

1. Lack of Tact Theory: I remember learning in seminary that when one pastor replaces another, the new pastor must be very careful not to attempt change too quickly. One thing at a time. Work with wisdom. Slowly, slowly, slowly. Don’t come in and beat up the old way of doing things thinking that your passion and belief in the necessity of change with be shared by others. It won’t. In fact, your demand for change will solidify people in their own places. You will be politely asked to leave. The emerging church lacked tact. It never gained the ear of the home base. Movements such as this need to be changed from the inside out, not the outside in. That is unless you are willing to go all the way and break completely from the home base (e.g. the Reformation).  (Continue reading)

New Pew Forum Study on Changing Religions

Image by The Library of Congress via Flickr

Ministry Today summarizes some interesting findings of a new Pew Forum study released on Monday on how often Americans change their religion.

Last year a massive nationwide survey discovered that 44 percent of Americans switch denominations in their lifetime. Now an in-depth study is taking it a step further by uncovering how many change religions —and exactly why they do.

A report released Monday by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that roughly half of Americans change their religious affiliation at some point in their lives. Most people who change do so before they are 24 years old, and many of those actually switch multiple times. Not surprisingly, most believers settle into their faith at an older age, with very few people leaving their religion after turning 50. (The majority of those surveyed found their current church home at age 36.)

Among Protestants, more than half who become unaffiliated with any denomination or religion say it’s because they “stopped believing its teachings.” In addition, almost 40 percent of those who no longer attend church remain unaffiliated because of their spiritual needs not being met.

Although the reasons for changing religions —or leaving a faith altogether —range from theological disagreements to simple spiritual drifting, pastors will be interested to find that the majority of Protestants who have changed denominations have done so because of life circumstances (marriage, relocating to different community) rather than doctrinal differences. Still, a full 36 percent say they leave their denomination because of their church, practices or people.

The Church Sex Fad

Has all of this gone overboard?

“Apparently the shortest route to relevance in church ministry right now is for the pastor to talk about sex in garishly explicit terms during the Sunday morning service. If he can shock parishioners with crude words and sophomoric humor, so much the better. The defenders of this trend solemnly inform us that without such a strategy it is well-nigh impossible to connect with today’s ‘culture.’ Sermons about sex have suddenly become a bigger fad in the evangelical world than the prayer of Jabez ever was. Everywhere, it seems, churches are featuring special series on the subject. … I would be the last to suggest that preachers should totally avoid the topic of sex. … But the language Scripture employs when dealing with the physical relationship between husband and wife is always careful —often plain, sometimes poetic, usually delicate, frequently muted by euphemisms, and never fully explicit. There is no hint of sophomoric lewdness in the Bible. … Above all, Scripture never stoops to the lurid level of contemporary sex education. … I keep encountering young pastors who are now [choosing the latter], and I’m rather surprised that the trend has been so well received in the church with practically no significant critics raising any serious objections.”

—renowned pastor and Bible teacher John MacArthur, who responded to the recent “sex trend” in churches by writing a series of articles titled “The Rape of Solomon’s Song“

(Via Ministry Today)

The Church, Race, and Justice

David Swanson shares some insightful and challenging commentary on the church and race at Out of Ur.  This is an area where we need to be more proactive, and aware of minorities’ experiences.  It’s not easy to know what that’s like if you’re in the majority here in the U. S.  If you’ve spent some time in a foreign country, though, you can begin to get an idea.  The world can begin to look very different when you look different from most of the people around you.  It’s a good thing for those of us in the majority ethnicity in the U. S. to be aware of that.

Swanson writes,

Whatever the reason for our silence when it comes to race, the result is the same: increasing irrelevance in a culture schooled in diversity. How strange this must seem to a nation whose multi-ethnic population will soon eliminate any one racial majority. What does our ambivalence say when ethnic and class injustice appear in our neighborhoods or local news? The ability to speak to a generation raised within this milieu is compromised by our ongoing silence. In a culture that laughs at buffoons like Stephen Colbert and Michael Scott and sympathizes with the fantastically diverse cast of Lost, our silence may be the loudest voice of all.

With so much media and entertainment chatter around issues of race and racism, why do our churches struggle to join the conversation? (To be clear, there are churches—many African American congregations among them—whose contributions to racial awareness and justice have been many. I’m writing here about the mostly white churches of the evangelical tradition; churches that, in my experience, say very little about these issues.) It can’t be that we don’t care about issues of justice. The faithful care for the unborn has more recently been joined by an active concern for those suffering from extreme poverty and the AIDS pandemic. “Too heavenly minded to be any earthly good,” is an accusation that rings hollow for most of us. So why the ambivalence about race and the ongoing racism experienced by many Americans? . . .

In addition to fear, our silence might be traced to our relationships. Without diverse friendships how can we expect to understand the individual and systemic racism that many experience? While serving at a suburban church, an African American friend would sarcastically joke about how often the police pulled him over in our mostly-white town. His crime? DWB: driving while black. Without this man’s friendship I wouldn’t have realized how he experienced our seemingly idyllic and peaceful town. In the weeks before Halloween a couple years ago, one of the homes in this same suburban town featured a dummy hanging from a tree. While I doubt it was the intention, to many it was a horribly accurate depiction of a lynching. Surely this family would have thought twice about their Halloween decor if they had friends whose personal histories of slavery and oppression were known to them. Perhaps some of us simply need to make friends whose lives and stories look different than our own . . . (continue)