Episcopal Press and News
News Briefs
Episcopal News Service. January 8, 2003 [2003-002-1]
Australian law restricts use of names on prayer lists
(Daily Telegraph) A Privacy Act that took effect December 21, 2002, in Australia restricts churches from placing names on prayer lists in bulletins unless they are given specific permission. Clergy are also finding it increasingly difficult to visit patients in hospitals because of privacy legislation restrictions.
"If there is any doubt about what the individual's reasonable expectations are, it is good privacy practice to check with them first, especially where sensitive matters such as health or personal troubles are involved," said deputy privacy commissioner Timothy Pilgrim.
According to Anglican Bishop Roger Herft of Newcastle, the act detracts from the spontaneity of comfort a person derives when they unexpectedly hear their name read aloud on the prayer list. He said that, while he understands an individual's legal rights must be respected, people also were part of the human family and should be able to care for each other without restrictions. "It would seem to me that the Privacy Act, if it is not used sensibly, can contribute to the biggest disease of mankind and that is loneliness. People can feel completely left out of the loop if we are not careful."
Some clergy complained about getting access to sick people in hospitals because hospitals now cannot release that information. Patients must sign a permission form before they go to the hospital.
Schools help impart religious knowledge, British survey finds
(ENI) When researchers at Exeter University surveyed more than 500 youngsters about their religious knowledge, they received some surprising but also reassuring answers. More than half (54 percent) did not know that Easter celebrates the resurrection of Jesus but three-quarters of them (77 percent) knew that, according to the gospels, he was raised from the dead.
The survey, sponsored by the Jerusalem Trust, an organization supporting Christian education, found that 44 percent of the children could name a specific biblical parable, with the story of the Good Samaritan by far the best known. Just over half were able to cite one of the Bible's miracle stories.
In Britain, schools are required by law to teach religion which must "reflect the fact that the religious traditions in Great Britain are in the main Christian, while taking account of the teachings and practices of other principal religions represented." According to Terence Copley of Exeter, principal author of the survey, "the common idea among Christian groups that schools are failing to deliver on religion is not borne out by the survey. Jesus, however, often comes across as just a good man in a secular, 21st-century sense."
Copley said that one of the surprises, however, was that children were getting most of their religious education from school, even if they came from religious families. Some schools do not give Jesus any particular prominence. One school in Brighton has banned the use of the terms BC, "before Christ," or AD, "anno domini" or "year of the Lord."
"It is not the job of the school to lead a pupil towards a particular faith," said John Thorne, a school official. "We teach about religion, not just one religion."
Virginia Seminary's library chosen as archive for African American Episcopalians
(ENS) Under an agreement between Virginia Theological Seminary and the Historical Society of the Episcopal Church, the seminary's library in Alexandria, Virginia as been designated as the home for the documents illustrating the history of the church's African Americans.
In the new archival project, the African American Episcopal Collection will include a variety of media--oral histories, institutional records and other documents, as well as photographs--chronicling the lives and experiences of blacks in the church. The agreement also includes a plan to expand the collection, obtain additional funding and materials, and improve its accessibility. This summer the library will construct additional archival space to accommodate the collection.
The seminary library is named in honor of the Bishop Payne Divinity School, a seminary for the education of African and African American Episcopalians that merged with Virginia Seminary in 1953. The primary goal of the new collection is to make its materials available for both scholarly research and education of the wider church.
The seminary is asking that prospective donors to the collection or those who want additional information about the collection contact head librarian Mitzi Budde or archivist Julia Randle at 703-461-1731.
Tutu slams U.S., Britain over Iraq action
(SAPA-AFP) Retired South African archbishop Desmond Tutu criticized the U.S. as an arrogant superpower bent on unilateral action in an interview on the Iraq crisis telecast in Britain on January 6.
"I'm shocked to see a powerful country use its power frequently, unilaterally," said Tutu, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for opposing apartheid in South Africa. "The U.S. says: 'You do this' to the world. 'If you don't do it, we will do it.' That's sad."
Tutu said it is "mind-boggling" that British prime minister Tony Blair is strongly backing President George W. Bush in the showdown with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. "Many, many of us are deeply saddened to see a great country such as the U.S. aided and abetted extraordinarily by Britain," the archbishop said.
Tutu also questioned why Iraq is being singled out when India and Pakistan are confirmed nuclear powers. "What do you do with weapons of mass destruction in Europe? What do you do with them in India? What do you do with them in Pakistan?" he asked. "Where do you stop?
"America should remember they supported some of the most repressive governments," he said. "Let's hear what [UN weapons] inspectors get to see. But if you are going to apply UN resolutions there, you ask why there and not in other places. Why not in Palestine?"
Tutu was interviewed for the Jonathan Dimbleby Newsmakers program for the commercial ITV television network.
Tutu joins University of North Florida faculty
(South Florida Sun-Sentinel) In 1984, Archbishop Desmond Tutu helped a young friend named Oupa Seane flee from South Africa. The teenager had come of age under apartheid and later was jailed for fighting it. Almost two decades later, Seane, an adjunct political science professor at the University of North Florida, brought Tutu to North Florida for a lecture in 1999 and persuaded his old friend to return this spring for a semester as a scholar in residence.
"I've been here before and was thrilled by my engagement with the students. And there was a young South African on the faculty who twisted my arm a little bit," said Tutu, now retired, who will be paid $76,000 for his work.
With 13,000 students, North Florida is hardly small, billing itself one of the 100 Best College Buys in America. But it does not have the prestige of a University of Florida or a Florida State, much less Harvard--an institution that granted Tutu an honorary doctorate in 1979.
David Kline, the university's interim president, hopes Tutu's name will help with fund raising and faculty and student recruitment by "raising the intellectual environment."
At North Florida, Tutu will teach a one-semester class focusing on his time heading South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a body that investigated the abuses of apartheid in the mid-1990s, and three mini courses.
Australian author takes on "suicidal church"
(The Age) Is the Anglican church in Melbourne committing suicide? Art historian Dr. Caroline Miley thinks so--and the Archbishop of Melbourne, Peter Watson, is inclined to agree.
Miley is the author of a new book, The Suicidal Church: Can the Anglican Church be Saved?, that Watson is recommending to the church's leaders. It says the church is timid, institutionalized, racist, sexist, homophobic, and impedes the message of the Gospel. The book argues that the church has to take risks, be willing to offend, offer unconditional love and acceptance and, above all, strip away the institutional trappings that allow timid Christians to shelter inside and avoid their biblical responsibilities.
"In business you'd talk about your core business, but church people don't like that kind of talk. She calls it religion. I'd say our core business is God, or the message about God, about Jesus Christ. When the institutional forms stop us doing what we are here to do, we have to change," said Watson.
Watson's approval was a pleasant surprise for Miley, who had a sharp divergence of views with Sydney's conservative Anglican archbishop, Peter Jensen, in a radio interview.
"The discrepancy between what the church is like and what the gospels are like is really the cause of the book. The gospels are about empowerment, and the church is frightfully disempowering; the gospels are about love and acceptance, and the church is not accepting. It's mediocre and drab. I realized it was the culture of the church--it was basically English 19th century middle-class culture. You know, don't talk about sex, it's not nice."
Another barrier, she says, is the lack of diversity. "There's terrible snobbism. Someone said to me once at an upmarket church when I complained they had no women serving, 'If you want that sort of thing, you should go somewhere else.' And I felt like saying, 'It's not your church, actually; it's God's. You're a guest here as well.'" Miley is also scathing about Anglican attitudes to women. She says the wider church shamefully discriminates against women, and has done for 2000 years.
She believes the church need not continue its steady decline. The way ahead is backwards: back to biblical basics, modeling Christ, evangelism. And this means taking risks, offending people, accepting setbacks, which a crippling culture of timidity doesn't allow, she said.
UK evangelical groups threaten to look abroad for leadership
(AP) Evangelical groups in the Church of England, angered by the new archbishop of Canterbury's view on homosexuality, said that they would consider looking abroad for alternative spiritual leadership. Archbishop of Sydney Dr. Peter Jensen is one of the contenders being considered.
The Rev. George Curry, chairman of the conservative Church Society, said there might be a "breaking point" if divisions between the traditionalists and Archbishop Rowan Williams were not resolved. "We hope that things don't go from bad to worse, but if they don't get better all options will be considered," Curry said. "That's not because we want to be awkward customers or have a sideswipe at the liberal establishment. When you have leaders teaching error you must do something about it."
The Rev. David Banting, Reform's chairman, said arguments over homosexuality were part of a much wider split between traditionalists and liberals among the world's 70 million Anglicans. "In 10 years' time there will be a realignment between orthodox Christians and those who want a much more culturally based Christianity who will only pay lip service to the historic foundations of the Bible," he said.
Pittsburgh bishop removes himself from Philadelphia row
(ENS) Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan has removed himself from an ongoing feud between Bishop Charles E. Bennison of Pennsylvania and the Rev. David Moyer. Moyer, for 13 years the rector of Church of the Good Shepherd in Rosemont, a Philadelphia suburb, was deposed in September by Bennison after repeatedly refusing to allow Bennison and two of his predecessors to make formal visitations to the church.
Moyer, president of the North American chapter of the traditionalist group Forward in Faith, was nominated by the group at its annual meeting last summer to be consecrated as a bishop outside the Episcopal Church's canonical structures. According to the diocesan standing committee, Moyer had "abandoned" his ministry in the Episcopal Church, and they voted to have Moyer deposed.
Following notice of the deposition, it was announced that Moyer had been accepted by Archbishop Bernard Malango of the Province of Central Africa as a priest of the diocese of the Upper Shire. One day later, Duncan accepted Moyer as a priest in the Pittsburgh diocese, later saying that he had "purposely occasioned a constitutional crisis " to open a discussion about "limiting episcopal power." Moyer did not move to Pittsburgh and continues to live in the Rosemont parish rectory.
Bennison then sent Duncan a letter asking him to remove Moyer, according to Ronda Carman, a spokeswoman for the diocese. Duncan didn't want to defy the canons by refusing the request and didn't want to remove Moyer, she said, so in a December 16 letter, Duncan transferred Moyer back to the African diocese.
"Father Moyer is still welcome to function in Pittsburgh," Duncan said in an interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "He's just no longer (canonically) under me." Carman said Duncan transferred Moyer to remove himself from the controversy, which includes a lawsuit by Moyer accusing Bennison of fraud, misrepresentation, collusion and denial of due process. "To some extent it is more of a battle than Bishop Duncan wants to be in," Carman said. Members of Duncan's immediate family are part of the Rosemont congregation.