video interview with gregory venables, anglican primate of the southern cone

AnglicanTV interviewed Archbishop Gregory Venables near the close of the Lambeth Conference. The archbishop is our primate at CHS, and his evangelical spirit is a joy to experience.

Check out the video here.

summer teaching

I work full-time at our church, but the powers-that-be allow me to do some teaching on the side at Tulsa Community College. This summer it has been a history class. It was quite stressful--it was a four-week class, four days a week, in an area (US History) that is certainly not my specialty. I would go to class at nine, then go to the office until early evening, plus pastoral calls or whatever, since for three of those four weeks the rector was out! Then it was home, eat supper, and start preparing for the next day until the wee hours of the morning.

One neat thing about the summer class that I didn't experience during the school year was students of other schools trying to earn some credits. One such student was a young man named Jonah who attends Berklee College of Music in Boston. Check out his video (he's on the piano):

lambeth report from bishop peter beckwith

The Rt. Rev. Peter Beckwith, Bishop of Springfield (IL), speaks strong words about the Lambeth Conference:

“In my Bible study group I apologised for the behaviour of our province that has brought us to the brink of schism. Two hundred and seventy bishops are not here because they refuse to sit down with people who refuse to repent. Gene Robinson is a nice guy, but his lifestyle is not appropriate for a leader of the Church. Sure he’s a bishop, we ordained him. But that says something about our integrity. On the second day of our retreat, I had the feeling we were on the edge of a 10-storey building and the Archbishop of Canterbury was trying to talk us down without a safety net. He’s a wonderful guy, with a lot of integrity but he assumes everyone else has integrity too. The Episcopal Church is not representing the scriptural authority of Christ. In the Episcopal Church, the biggest lie of all is that sexual morality doesn’t matter, or that it’s changing, that God is doing a new thing. Yet prophetic voices in our history have always taken us back to basics. It will be very interesting to see how things develop here. Will enough be done to preserve the integrity of the Communion? We won’t hold together if we continue like this. It will end with a lot of fragments if this conference isn’t able to give a strong confident way forward. In the meeting with the Southern Cone, they were concerned to send a strong signal from this gathering that the Anglican Communion is going to stand for Orthodoxy. It was said in that meeting that the Western Church says things that are not Anglican and not Christian. But, as the Archbishop of Sudan has said, we can’t predict the future. We have to wait and see. The proof will be in the pudding. The time for procrastination and equivocation is over. ”

From here.

x-files--i think i want to believe

This weekend sees the release of the movie, The X-Files: I Want To Believe. When I first heard that this film was coming out, my immediate reaction was, "who called for an X-Files movie?" I have heard no hue and cry about the need for this movie, nobody lamenting the absence of Mulder and Scully on the TV, much less on the big screen. The show has been off the air for 6 years (with Mulder hardly involved the final two seasons), and the first film, which was released in 1998, wasn't great.

X-Files is a phenomenon that worked on the small screen, as episodes, but, in my opinion, did not work well on the large screen. At least when they released the first movie, the TV show was still being produced and the film fit into existing story lines. What now? They have to reintroduce the characters, catch us up, and only then can they tell a story. I don't know--I even found the trailer underwhelming.

And I liked the X-Files television show. The relationship of Mulder and Scully was really well done, especially when they didn't give it the old "Moonlighting" treatment and bury the show! More interesting was that Mulder and Scully harbored mirror versions of a skepticism/faith dialectic. Scully was a skeptic concerning aliens and the paranormal but had a deep Catholic faith. Mulder eschewed traditional religion but believed heartily in the existence of UFO's, psychics, etc. This double paradox was, in my mind, one of the best aspects of X-Files. It's hard to live that in a 90 minute film after being gone for several years.

when the lambeth hits the fan

At the Lambeth conference today, Sudanese archbishop Daniel Deng Bul spoke openly about the necessity of Gene Robinson's resignation as Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire.

Here is a portion of the statement:

"He should resign for the sake of the church," Archbishop Daniel Deng Bul told reporters at a once-in-a-decade summit of Anglican leaders.

"God is not making a mistake creating Adam and Eve. He would have created two Adams if he wanted," he said.

A quarter of the world's Anglican bishops have boycotted the Lambeth Conference in an angry war of words between conservatives and liberals over the ordination of Robinson, the first openly gay bishop in the 450-year-old church's history.

"We are for the Anglican world and we want the Anglican world to remain united," the Sudanese archbishop said.

"Over 300 bishops have stayed away from this conference because of Gene Robinson," he added. "The norms of the Anglican communion have been violated."

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, spiritual leader of the world's 77 million Anglicans, decided not to invite Robinson to the Lmabeth Conference -- but he still came to the cathedral city on Monday to meet supporters on the fringes of the summit.

In a joint statement, Sudanese bishops accused North American church leaders of ridiculing Anglicanism and destroying its credibility by ordaining gay American clergy and blessing same-sex unions in Canada.

"We appeal to this Lambeth Conference to rescue the Anglican Communion from being divided," they said.

summer pictures

At Rebecca's birthday party July 4: Jonah, Elijah, Lily

Being Daddy to a baby girl is kinda awesome

Lily: 4th of July

for greek geeks only

Back in ye olde HSBC days, Matt Johnson and I were mercilessly ridiculed as "Greek geeks." OK, maybe it wasn't so merciless [except for Julia--she was especially brutal :) ], but the label fit--you know we were geeked for it--NT Greek was at 6:40am, MWF--and, just to make it interesting, I had security duty Sunday night until 3am Monday.

Anyway, after several years of studying Classical and New Testament Greek, I'm still a Greek geek--use it all the time. So I was especially geeked to learn about the online Codex Sinaiticus Project. What is Codex Sinaiticus, you ask. Glad you asked. It is a 4th century Greek manuscript of much of the Bible, and is the oldest manuscript extant of the entire New Testament. Now these pages will be available to all for study and making huge posters for your wall.

Run, don't walk, to The Codex Sinaiticus Project -- goes online Thursday, July 24!