ON THIS DAY: JOHN BOSWELL

"It is possible to change ecclesiastical attitudes toward gay people and their sexuality because the objections to homosexuality are not biblical, they are not consistent, they are not part of Jesus' teaching; and they are not even fundamentally Christian." - John Boswell

Historian John Eastburn Boswell was born 20 March 1947 in Boston, Massachusetts. He published 4 books, including Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality (1980). Boswell died of complications from AIDS when he was only 47 years old.

I remember hearing him speak, either at a Integrity/Houston convention or at Autry House, Houston. Well all I can say is praise be. What a gift John Boswell is in his writings that live on.

The Episcopal Church Exposes the Doctrine of Discovery

This video is intended to inform people about the impact of the Doctrine of Discovery in an effort to respond to God's direction; that we, the Episcopal Church, "act with justice and...do what is right" (Psalm 106:3, Book of Common Prayer), and about the unjust way the Americas were settled, and the on-going consequences of those events. Resources Now Available at http://www.episcopalchurch.org/page/doctrine-discovery-resources

On This Day: Clement Clarke Moore

Clement Clarke Moore was born July 15, 1779 in New York City; he grew in the family home in Elmhurst, Queens. This professor of Oriental and Greek literature at Columbia College had great effect on New York City. The neighborhood "Chelsea" is still named for his family estate, which he inherited from his mother's father and later divided and developed. He gave an apple orchard as land to develop the General Theological Seminary. He helped Trinity Church organize St. Lukes in the Fields. And, of course, children around the world who celebrate Christmas, know and love his poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas" (better known as "'Twas the Night Before Christmas."

AN ORDINATION ANNIVERSARY: 4/29/77

This is the 2,000th post for Blazing Indiscretions! And what a better way than to celebrate this anniversary:

On April 29, 1977, the Episcopal Diocese of Texas ordained its first woman priest, Helen Havens. In 1981 St Stephens parish at Woodhead and W. Alabama, Houston - where I was a member - was the first church in the Diocese of Texas with the vision to call a woman rector. Guess who? From the parish history pages:

Clax [Monro, the rector at the time] appointed Bob Evans to chair a search committee and the work began. Members visited other churches to hear their candidates, and received recommendations from parishioners. Helen Havens, an assistant at St. Francis, was recommended and some members of the committee were alarmed. The idea of a woman rector was very new. In fact, there were not women rectors in the Diocese of Texas and very few in the United States. Three members of the committee agreed to meet the prospect and were quickly convinced that she was the best choice. After numerous meetings, debates, and prayers, the vestry finally and miraculously recommended that the church call Helen Havens. The Vestry vote was close, but favorable, and Bob Evans and Sidney Mitchell called on Bishop Benitez to request the call.

The Bishop was concerned about St. Stephen's choice and took the unusual step of requiring the Vestry to reconsider its vote. The Vestry met again and voted with a greater majority to sustain its original vote. Messrs. Evans and Mitchell met again with the Bishop who was still concerned and again asked the Vestry to reconsider its action. At this, Bob Evans said that he would comply, but that he wanted the Bishop to explain to the Vestry why he wanted another vote. This ended the matter, and Helen Havens was called to St. Stephen's. The first woman to be called as rector to a parish in the Diocese of Texas, Helen began her ministry with us on Thanksgiving Day, 1981.

Richard Hooker, Priest and Theologian, 1600

The Episcopal church commemorates Richard Hooker, one of the great theologians of our tradition, today. Hooker's writings, in particular Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, stressed tolerance and inclusiveness and the middle way of Anglicanism between what he saw as the extremes of Catholicism and the Puritan movement.

And in recent years, I remember this day in 2007 when the presiding bishop preached about him at the Diocese of Vermont's convention Eucharist.

Hooker is a remarkable example of what wisdom in the flesh looks like—which is probably why he made it onto our list of saints. He wrote his most famous work in response to controversy with another wing of the church. And you don't have to look much beyond the first page to see the connections with current controversies in this church.

Richard Hooker was appointed Master, or Rector, of the Temple Church in London in the late 1500s. He had an assistant there, from the Puritan wing of the church, named Walter Travers. Hooker's duty was to preach in the morning. Travers followed him in the afternoon, and he took the opportunity one day to refute what the rector had said in the morning, when he preached about salvation and the possibility that all of us will be saved. The Puritan position, along with Calvin, believed that some may be damned even before they can do anything. Hooker insisted that that understanding took away the possibility of God's grace.

Hooker's focus on reason and tolerance and inclusion is foundational to that broad stream of Anglican thought. This isn't just academic theologizing. It has to do with the basic identity of our tradition—that we can be comprehensive and inclusive as we search for a larger truth. And that rather than being a cop-out, that focus on comprehension is a sign of the spirit at work.

That focus on comprehension lies underneath the challenging and uncomfortable place we are trying to stand in as a church today—affirming that gay and lesbian, bisexual and transgendered Christians are deserving of the best ministry of this church, AND that there is a place for those who take a different theological position. We say that we are willing to live in that uncomfortable and unsettling place because we believe that only God has truth in its fullness.

Wisdom, and the search for it, is one of the gifts and vocations that the body of Christ always needs. None of us ever has it all, and it is only in the wisdom of the body gathered that we can even begin to think that we might have the mind of Christ.

Hooker's statue stands outside Exeter Cathedral.

A Gentle Witness

Today the Episcopal Church celebrates one of my heros - Florence Li Tim-Oi, who on this day in 1944 was ordained as the first woman priest in the Anglican Communion.

Collect of the Day:

Gracious God, we thank you for calling Florence Li Tim-Oi, much-beloved daughter, to be the first woman to exercise the office of a priest in our Communion: By the grace of your Spirit inspire us to follow her example, serving your people with patience and happiness all our days, and witnessing in every circumstance to our Savior Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the same Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Icon of Florence Li Tim-Oi in the General Theological Seminary, New York City, 2005; painted by Sr. Ellen Francis, OSH.

R.I.P. John Worrell, priest, chaplain and friend in Texas

The circumstances of our lives may already have given us a simple way of living. But for most of us the call to simplicity is a call to examine the way we live, the things on which we spend our resources of money and time and strength.

Simplicity is a spiritual discipline and a spiritual goal. We can in times of privation or limited resources have our sacrifices extorted from us, as we are forced backward step by step into a simpler life. Or we can embrace an opportunity to learn new ways of living sacrificially, new ways, and spiritually richer ways, of growing closer to God as we re-order and re-arrange the priorities of things and activities in our lives. We face a new encounter with the reality of God, our need of him, and the power of his grace. -- John Worrell on Simplicity

THE LEAD

Though he accomplished much in his long career as a working priest, John will likely be remembered chiefly as the force behind Nevertheless: A Texas Church Review - founder, publisher (along with wife Vivian), and head writer of a thoughtful publication that prided itself on being an independent voice crying for a little sanity in the Anglican Communion - no, not just in Texas ... and not just in the years before before 2003, but especially, and with hard vigor, in 2003 and beyond, until finally just a few years ago Nevertheless and other small occasional pubs like it were forced to run up the white flag and surrender (swearing many cautions to the rest of us) to the immediacy of the Internet.

John was profoundly captured by the notion that The Episcopal Church was a place capable of having a wide, fair, giving, and intellectually honest conversation about faith and the politics of faith. (He was also less apt to confuse the two, as we sometimes are now, in our rush to keep the story going.) He was, simply, a broad churchman who did not accept the smallness one sometimes perceives in clergy - including bishops - and who never shied from pointing out both the location and remedy of faults. Upon handing over the reigns of Nevertheless to an editorial board, he noted, with a tinge of melancholy, that

... [w]e never quite succeeded in providing, as we had hoped, a place where very different views were argued out in "charitable yet rigorous" debate, at least not often. Perhaps the times had already turned to discomfort with diversity and serious exploration of important differences in a shared environment. It is also likely that our willingness, on the rare occasions when it seemed needed, to question the wisdom or fairness of our Bishops gave us a partisan reputation we had not desired ... I hope that our shared concern for the success of the Gospel and the welfare of the Church will continue and grow.

Let's remember that The Episcopal Church, like any American expression of Christian thought, was upheld by many in the last century who cared enough about her fortunes to do something to in the hope of making a lasting impact upon them. There were many who toiled with blue pencils, pica-poles, and reduction wheels to make their drafts better - who would stay up late copying, folding, applying stamps and fueling it all with cold coffee, because they loved their Church enough to sacrifice for it in ways that just made sense to them. And if today entirely web-based news-and-views organs like Episcopal Café succeed, they do well to recall their forebears in this lineage.

So farewell, John, and thanks for all the carp. We owe you.

I knew John Worrell chiefly as the celebrant of the 8 o'clock Holy Communion at my parish during my years in Houston, St Stephen's Episcopal Church on West Alabama, Houston. When the (former) rector Clax Monro retired, John was interim priest and was for a time in the running as a candidate for the rectorship of St Stephen's (it eventually fell to Helen Havens, another prophetic witness in the church). St Stephen's always attracted not renegades, but rebels who were thoughtful and challenging in their arguments for the faith. I also knew John as the chaplain for Rice University and Texas Medical Center students at Autry House. He was a good friend of the Houston chapter of Integrity.

Ken Kesselus and Robby Vickery writing a retrospective on John Worrell in the Easter 2008 issue of Nevertheless

In 1959, he came to the Diocese of Texas to serve at Beaumont's St. Matthew's Church and as Chaplain to students at Lamar State College. Shortly after arriving, a young black college student was confirmed in St. Matthew's Church. This new Episcopalian took part in sit-in demonstrations seeking desegregation of lunch counters and public facilities. A dangerous impasse threatened as city officials resisted. On the strength of their pastoral relationship, John went to a critical meeting about the crisis. Unexpectedly, he was designated as an unofficial emissary for the black protesters to business leaders and City of Beaumont officials. Along with other local clergy from both communities in the city, he aided a process that achieved a measure of justice in a peaceful manner. He came to know, practically, the reality that people with differing views could meet to reason with one another and find a good and peaceful agreement.

Similarly, after moving to Houston in 1965, he worked with an interdenominational, multi-racial group of clergy which was informally named the "Crisis Commission." They met regularly to build community and trust, strategizing how to avoid the violence and race riots that were spreading across America. Their strategies were opening conversation, learning to appreciate those on the other side, and finding the leverage to bring feuding parties together enough to at least prevent tense situations from getting out of hand.

John sought to use Autry House, which housed his ministry to students at Rice University and schools within the Texas Medical Center, as a meeting place for such gatherings. He passionately promoted processes that would put people with different perspectives at the same table, working to better understand one another. He labored to bring diversity into that holy place, seeking to sanctify it through reconciliation and understanding.

Local Vermont: Soup, Glorious Soup!

Did you know...?

For the past fourteen years, the Full Ladle Soup Kitchen has been a rich and rewarding ministry for many at Christ Church, Montpelier. Every Wednesday, the Soup Kitchen serves a nutritious noon meal to 65-85 guests from the community.

(From the Mountain E-News of the Episcopal Diocese of Vermont.)

How Do We Respond As People of Faith to the Gulf Oil Spill?

Join members of VT Interfaith Power & Light, St. Paul's Earth Care Ministry, Quaker Meeting, Ohavi Zedek and other faith groups for an interfaith prayer service on Sunday, June 13 at 7:30 p.m. at St. Paul’s Cathedral, 2 Cherry Street, Burlington. As the tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico continues, we’ll come together for a time of prayer, reflection and readings. We'll pray for the Earth Community suffering from this catastrophe, and for wisdom, hope and courage in this challenging time.

Contact for more information: info@vtipl.org or sknight@gmavt.net

Quote of The Day

"Christianity is dying in Western Europe, even in Spain and Ireland. It is not exactly in robust health in the United States either with church membership and attendance declining across the board, especially among the young. The moral authority that Christianity once enjoyed among non-Christians eroded away long ago by scandal, hypocrisy, and identification with right wing reactionary politics (just ask the Spanish Catholics). Though Africa now has the embattled convert's fervor, it is not unreasonable to think that the same process of decline could happen there too. There are times when I think the Christian religion should die in order that the Christian faith might continue. But, a lot of babies would be lost with that bath water, perhaps too many to make the sacrifice worthwhile."
- Doug Blanchard/Counterlight's Peculiars in a much broader, lengthy essay, The Perils of Episcopalianism - "on the current tensions between the Episcopal Church and the Archbishop of Canterbury," - well worth the read in its entirety.

A Lesson from the Gulf Oil Spill: We Are All Connected (and There Is No Escape)

Katharine Jefferts Schori's career as an oceanographer and university lecturer (a B.S. degree in biology from Stanford University, an M.S. and Ph.D. in oceanography from Oregon State University) preceded her studies for the priesthood (an M.Div. from Church Divinity School of the Pacific) and her election as bishop of Nevada in 2000. Since June 2006 she has been the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church.

She writes recently in the Huffington Post

"The original peoples of the North American continent understand that we are all connected, and that harm to one part of the sacred circle of life harms the whole. Scientists, both the ecological and physical sorts, know the same reality, expressed in different terms. The Abrahamic traditions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) also charge human beings with care for the whole of creation, because it is God's good gift to humanity. Another way of saying this is that we are all connected and there is no escape; our common future depends on how we care for the rest of the natural world, not just the square feet of soil we may call "our own." We breathe the same air, our food comes from the same ground and seas, and the water we have to share cycles through the same airshed, watershed, and terra firma.

"The still-unfolding disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is good evidence of the interconnectedness of the whole."

To read the full article go to Huffington Post.

Feast of Julian of Norwich, Contemplative

Lord God, who in your compassion granted to the Lady Julian many revelations of your nurturing and sustaining love: Move our hearts, like hers, to seek you above all things, for in giving us yourself you give us all; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Today is the Feast Day of Julian of Norwich, one of my most favourite spiritual writers and saints. She celebrated God and Nature. If you don't know much about her, why don't you read a bit.

Her book is a tender meditation on God's eternal and all-embracing love, as expressed to us in the Passion of Christ.

She describes seeing God holding a tiny thing in his hand, like a small brown nut, which seemed so fragile and insignificant that she wondered why it did not crumble before her eyes. She understood that the thing was the entire created universe, which is as nothing compared to its Creator, and she was told, "God made it, God loves it, God keeps it."

She was concerned that sometimes when we are faced wiith a difficult moral decision, it seems that no matter which way we decide, we will have acted from motives that are less then completely pure, so that neither decision is defensible. She finally wrote: "It is enough to be sure of the deed. Our courteous Lord will deign to redeem the motive."

A matter that greatly troubled her was the fate of those who through no fault of their own had never heard the Gospel. She never received a direct answer to her questions about them, except to be told that whatever God does is done in Love, and therefore "that all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well."

And you can read more about her here!

Video: Lord of the Streets Episcopal Church in Houston

Lord of the Streets (LOTS) Episcopal Church began in 1990 as an outreach program of Trinity Episcopal Church to help serve the homeless population near downtown Houston. In 1993, the Episcopal Diocese of Texas made Lord of the Streets a Special Evangelical Mission. At this same time, a Bishop’s Committee was appointed to help with the governance of the mission. In 1994 the National Episcopal Church Executive Council named LOTS a Center for Jubilee Ministry, a designation for ministry affirming the biblical priorities of God—in partnership with the poor, the powerless and the vulnerable. Jubilee centers are charged with emphasizing four action ideas; these are empowerment, education, outreach and advocacy.

LOTS is one of the many ministries in Houston which offer service to people living downtown on the street. I was a member of another parish, but attended services there frequently when I lived in Houston.

Thanks to Episcopal Cafe.

Episcopal Diocese of Vermont wins environmental award

Episcopal News Service reports:

Members of the Diocese of Vermont's Earth Stewards Committee accepted an Environmental Merit Award from the New England Office of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency at a ceremony at Boston's Faneuil Hall on the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, April 22.

The annual EPA awards recognize "outstanding environmental advocates who have made significant contributions toward preserving and protecting our natural resources," according to a letter from Curtis Spaulding, director of the EPA's New England Office.

A 2007 diocesan convention resolution required congregations to conduct energy audits, develop implementation plans for addressing energy inefficiencies, and to report the results to the 2009 diocesan convention. Bishop Thomas Ely appointed an environment committee -- now the Earth Stewards Committee -- to assist congregations in meeting these requirements. The group uses its page on the diocesan website to share results of congregational efforts, as well as resources.

The diocese's church buildings are typically more than 50 years old and are either stone or wood frame with little to no insulation. Vermont Interfaith Power and Light estimated that energy consumption could be reduced by 15-20 percent in churches where opportunities identified in the energy audits are implemented.

"Winning this award is very exciting for us, as it pays tribute to the teamwork of the Earth Stewards Committee that has been built on a 'green' foundation in the Diocese of Vermont," said the Rev. Anita Schell-Lambert, Earth Stewards Committee chair. "This foundation is seen in environmental resolutions over the past few years that underscore our commitment to live more simply and to decrease our carbon footprint one vital step at a time."

The Triduum

Kelvin Holdsworth, Provost of St Mary's Cathedral, Glasgow, writing about the challenges of the Triduum,

The Stripping of the Altar was particularly brutal this year. Furniture dragged around, lots of noise and lots of unease. Many servers and clergy involved and a choir ready to pitch in and shift the altar and platform as well as their own stalls. The inadequate lighting which we currently have (to be fixed next week) simply added to what was happening.

I was struck when it was all going on that such a rabbling is in our DNA as a congregtation. More than once, a mob descended on the Episcopalians and ripped up their meeting house and ran them out of town.

One of the ways I often think about Holy Week is to think it through in terms of the fickle mob. That mob seemed very real as everything lovely was taken from the altar of the Lord.

There was much to think about as we gathered in a lovely garden of repose at the end to keep watch until late into the night.

Thus it was that we gathered in a bare, stark space today for what worship we could muster. God is gone. The font is closed. There will be no sacraments now.

This morning, we venerated the cross. A touch, a kiss, a look.

Haiti Earthquake: Cathédrale Sainte Trinité (Holy Trinity Cathedral) in Port-au-Prince

Wikipedia:

The Episcopal Diocese of Haiti (French: Eglise Episcopale d'Haïti) is the Anglican Communion diocese consisting of the entire territory of Haiti. It is part of Province 2 of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America. Its cathedral, Holy Trinity (French: Cathédrale Sainte Trinité) located in the corner of Ave. Mgr. Guilloux & Rue Pavée in downtown Port-au-Prince, has been destroyed six times, including in the 2010 Haitian earthquake.

It is the largest diocese in the Episcopal Church, with 83,698 members...

Episcopal Life Online:

"Please tell our partners, the people of the Episcopal Church, the people of the United States and indeed the people of the world that we in Haiti are immensely grateful for their prayers, their support and their generosity," [diocesan bishop Jean Zaché] Duracin wrote. "This is a desperate time in Haiti; we have lost so much. But we still have the most important asset, the people of God, and we are working continuously to take care of them."

The Haitian diocese suffered greatly with the quake. A number of the diocese's 254 schools, ranging from preschools to a university and a seminary, were destroyed or heavily damaged, including the Holy Trinity complex of primary, music and trade schools adjacent to the demolished diocesan Cathédrale Sainte Trinité (Holy Trinity Cathedral) in Port-au-Prince.

A portion of the St. Vincent School for Handicapped Children, also in the Haitian capital, collapsed, killing between six and 10 students and staff. Many of the students are living at the camp while arrangements are being made for them to be housed elsewhere.

More than 100 of the diocese's churches have been damaged or destroyed, Duracin has said.

As many as 3,000 quake survivors, including many members of the diocese, have congregated on a rocky field next to College Ste. Pierre, a diocesan secondary school that the quake destroyed. Duracin, who was left homeless by the quake, has led the effort to organize and maintain the camp, where conditions are described as grim.

Keeping Alive those Ancient Uncouths

From Louie Crew, some eye-opening background history on the treatment of LBGTs. He does not excuse the Archbishop of Canterbury's silence vis-à-vis the proposed horrendous Ugandan anti-gay laws, but gives an historical context to the current situation in that country. We've come far and yet we keep alive those ancient uncouths.

Anglicans in Uganda are currently encouraging passage of a harsh new law that would institute the death penalty for some homosexual acts and would punish with severe prison sentences those who fail to report the homosexuality of those whom they counsel or even just know. The legislation will encourage the most vicious kinds of witch hunts. One Anglican priest in Uganda has likened lesbians and gays to "cockroaches." International human rights organizations are alarmed that this legislation may actually pass.

This violence has a long history, especially among the British and those whom the British have influenced.

The Napoleonic Code (1804) led to radical reform of almost all law in most of Europe. One of its effects was the decriminalization of consensual homosexual acts throughout most of Europe, EXCEPT in England.

That was no accident, and the Church of England was one of the main obstacles to reform of Britain's sodomy laws.

Britain continued to execute homosexuals for five more decades. England's last execution for sodomy occurred in 1857.

While the death penalty was still on the books, many visitors from the Continent wrote of their horror at the flagrant public pillorying of homosexuals in Britain. (See a brief account of the Vere Street Coterie --1810 -- at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vere_Street_Coterie).

The British obsession led Lord Byron to spend most of his adult life on the Continent. He and his homosexual friends called themselves "Methodists" as code for "homosexuals" in their private correspondence. (See extensive accounts in Louis Crompton's BYRON AND GREEK LOVE, University of California
Press, 1985; see also Crompton's HOMOSEXUALITY AND CIVILIZATION. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.)

Even after the death penalty was removed, the British fervor against gays continued little abated. Witness the conviction with jail and hard labor sentence for Oscar Wilde in 1895.

Wilde died only five years later, in 1900, a completely broken man, and it took more than six decades thereafter before Britain decriminalized consensual homosexuality (1967), almost a decade after decriminalizing heterosexual prostitution.

Britain's decriminalization of consensual homosexual acts would likely have been delayed further had not the Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey, supported the reform.

There is much lgbt blood on the hands of the Church of England. Uganda is merely keeping alive those ancient uncouths, with help from the silence of Rowan Williams. Rowan Williams is no Michael Ramsey.

In the early 1971 one of the bishops from Florida shocked the Episcopal House of Bishops by asking on the floor of the house how he was to handle a priest whom he had discovered to be "queer." His raw candor shocked the House, which immediately established the House of Bishops Task Force on Homophiles and the Ministry (1971-76) so that such discussions could go underground. (Only Episcopalians could have come up with such a prissy name as "the House of Bishops Task Force on Homophiles and the Ministry"!)

In October 1974 I took out ads for a new publication, INTEGRITY: GAY EPISCOPAL FORUM in THE EPISCOPALIAN, THE ADVOCATE, and THE LIVING CHURCH.

Immediately I received a letter from Bishop John Walker, a member of this Task Force, asking me to meet with the Task Force in Washington as soon as possible. We met at Epiphany in Washington, DC, and to that meeting I brought with me copies fresh off the Xerox, of the first issue of the FORUM, in which I called for chapters to be formed.

A priest named Tyndale and a layman named Wycliffe (who says the Holy Spirit does not have a sense of history?!), both from Chicago, but neither knowing the other, called me wanting to start a chapter. I put them in touch. Theymet in December and the following summer (1975) hosted the first national convention of Integrity at St. James Cathedral in Chicago.

In my papers stored in archives of the University of Michigan is a thick binder labeled "Episcopal Snide," a collection of hostile mail that I frequently received from bishops. Long ago I decided not to keep that collection near me. From the day I took out the ads, I understood that we all have much better news to tell to absolutely everybody. It is not ourselves whom we proclaim but Jesus as Lord and ourselves your servants for
Jesus' sake.

Louie Crew, professor emeritus of English at Rutgers University, is the founder of Integrity, and a longtime deputy to General Convention from the Diocese of Newark.

WORLD AIDS DAY, 2009

"Together we can do more."

Today is World Aids Day. It is especially fitting to remember family, friends, and those people we might not even have known, who have died of HIV/Aids. On this day, I remember my first close friend who died of Aids, Chelsea Fretland Williams - in 1986, one year after his diagnosis. In those mid-80s years, before hospice, after several stays in hospitals, people would go home to die. The diagnosis then was indeed a death sentence (Now more testing is available and treatment advances make HIV more manageable.) Chelsea's family in Alabama disowned him, his brother and mother would not even see him when he was close to death. So it was his small group of friends who became his primary caregivers and parishioners at Palmer Church in Houston who sat with him as death neared and organised his memorial service at the church.

The full text of the Presiding Bishop's statement for World AIDS Day is available here. She writes,

In the United States, HIV/AIDS has lost much of its visibility in the past decade with many Americans growing complacent about the threat of the disease. It is not always immediately obvious who in our communities is suffering from HIV/AIDS, and the stigma of diagnosis further isolates and alienates those who need our love and support. As Christians, our ministry to those living with HIV/AIDS in our communities is more essential than ever. World AIDS Day is an excellent opportunity to evaluate the ways in which your congregation and community are welcoming and serving those living with the disease.

President Obama announced an enormously encouraging initiative, Act Against AIDS, earlier this year as a five-year, $45 million effort aimed at enhancing AIDS awareness within the United States. While the initial funding is small, this initiative is a much needed response to the diminishing public awareness of the AIDS crisis in our own communities.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has released his World Aids Day video. It highlights the plight of expectant mothers who are HIV positive and the support they need to prevent the transmission of HIV to their babies:



Religious Dispatches reports here on the role churches are playing.

Today is a good day to get tested, as well. Vermonters can learn how by going to the site Get Tested Vermont.

Information is power.

Knowing your HIV status allows you to make important decisions about your health. People who know their status can get life-saving medical care and better protect their sexual partners and those they care about.

If you are negative learn how to stay that way.

Well, it's about time

Episcopal Church House of Deputies President Bonnie Anderson has issued a statement condemning the pending Ugandan legislation that would imprison for life or execute people who violate that country's anti-homosexuality laws saying it would be a "terrible violation of the human rights of an already persecuted minority."

Anderson was responding to a Nov. 16 request that Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, Archbishop Henri Orombi of Uganda and she speak out against the legislation. Anderson is the first to issue a statement.

Food for Thought on this First Sunday of Advent

The Bush Administration called them "nutritional aid." On its front page today, the New York times reports at length on the growing number of people on food stamps and the stigma of relying on them for groceries has faded.

Episcopal Cafe, however, links to another story in the Houston Chronicle about a Houston attorney who wants to close The Beacon, a program sponsored by Christ Church Cathedral, which helps the homeless in the city center.

According to The Beacon's web site, the four-day-a-week service "[provides] hot meals, clothing, private shower and lavatory facilities, laundry services, and case management to people living on the streets of Houston," all in hopes of eventually getting people off the street.

The Houston Chronicle reports that Arthur's suit is based the simple fact that since The Beacon came on the scene, his business has been compromised.

“What started as a good and noble idea has instead grown and turned into a danger to the health and safety of others in the adjacent areas,” the suit states. “The individuals sing, play music, dance, fight and (do) other undesirable activities. On Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, when The Beacon's operation is closed, things are once again quiet and pleasant.”

Cathedral leadership remains clear-eyed.

“The Cathedral is engaged in the business of feeding the hungry and caring for the poor, as it has been for 170 years,” [Christ Church Cathedral Dean Joe] Reynolds said. “Any time you do that, there are going to be challenges involved. We try to address those challenges. We have a stake in being good neighbors in ways that are consistent with the mission we have as a Christian community.”

....

“This is nothing new... We don't want to go about it in a cavalier way, but the Christian community has been in the business of feeding the hungry for 2,000 years. We're not going to stop.”