Exploring the Connections

CHRISTIAND AND POVERTY, Session 4, March 25, 2007

Session 4 of CHRISTIANS AND POVERTY will convene in the Brides' Room (on the first floor of Latham) on Sunday morning at 10:05 AM.

Notes for this specific session - "Solidarity or Patronage?"  can be downloaded below.

Download solidarity_or_patronage.pdf

See you there and then!

Leaving Church

The following letter was posted on the Walking with Integrity 'blog with the permission of the writer.

14 March 2007

The Right Reverend Marc Andrus, Bishop of California

Dear Bishop Andrus,

As a member of your diocese, I am writing to I inform you of my decision to leave the Episcopal Church. This decision is precipitated by the recent actions of our Presiding Bishop in Tanzania , resulting in an ill-named "season of fasting" during this Lent, wherein we have been asked to refrain from blessing gay unions as a gesture of regret and repentance. I have written one letter already on this subject and obviously this one will be my last.

When I made the painful decision to leave the church, to my surprise the main thing I felt immediately and thereafter was relief. I was freed from being caught and dragged along in the tortuous machinations of a collapsing, human-built structure as it wrestles in such ungainly fashion with the radical idea of treating gay people like fully enfranchised human beings. I no longer have to construct justifications for my friends and colleagues who ask how I can bring myself to belong to a religious organization that supports the oppression of gay people.

I have always been proud of the historical association of such a wide spectrum of opinion and liturgical practice in the Anglican communion. Unfortunately that association is being rent asunder, and in the process gay members of the church are being cast into the breach as sacrifices, which may delay the inevitable but will not prevent it. This insult to our integrity will not even purchase something of value - it is merely a delaying tactic. How I wish that my personhood was worth more to my church.

I have waited patiently and listened to all of the well-reasoned arguments why I should be patient, and charitable, and turn the other cheek, and indulge my weaker co-religionists, etc. Ironically, no gay spokesperson in the entire communion that I am aware of has ever suggested that any conservative or evangelical group or individual should be removed, or rejected, or limited to auxiliary membership, no matter how strident or tiresome their calls for our persecution. It is only the conservatives who are permitted to indulge in such un-Anglican harassment of others, and are then rewarded for it.

In particular I refuse to be associated with any actions or pronouncements in support of the bigoted campaigns of Peter Akinola, who has spearheaded a legal bill in Nigeria imposing criminal penalties on homosexuals who dare even to associate with one another. While we as a body are making conciliatory gestures of enforced regret about confirming a gay bishop, gay Anglicans in Nigeria have had to go into hiding in fear of their safety. I do not understand why the Episcopal Church and the entire Anglican Communion is not rising up to speak with one voice against this outrage.

One thing is clear to me: I know of no heterosexual who would for one minute align themselves with a church which refused to recognize and bless heterosexual marriage; or, worse, which decreed a period of fasting from blessing heterosexual relationships in order to display a sufficiency of regret about having had the temerity to act in any way as if heterosexuals deserved equal rights.

Thankfully, none of this in any way affects my relationship with God. I am a child of God and loved by God, and my daily communication with the experience of the Sacred both within and without is untarnished by the tragic limitations of human religious structures. I remain a Benedictine Oblate. I continue to pray the psalms. I sing the hymns of my culture and heritage. But I will not submit to bigotry in the room where I pray, and I certainly will not fund the continuance of such bigotry.

I should add that although I have left the Episcopal Church, I will always remain a friend of Church of the Advent of Christ the King in San Francisco, which is a sanctuary for diverse ages, races, opinions, gender identities, and economic brackets, and whose parish priest has my perpetual respect for his eloquent and loving championship of inclusivity and respect for all.

With regret,

Jude Morton

cc: The Reverend Paul Burrows, Rector, Church of the Advent of
Christ the King, San Francisco , California

The Most Reverend Katharine Jefferts Schori
Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America

CHRISTIANS AND POVERTY, Session 3, March 18, 2007

Session 3 of CHRISTIANS AND POVERTY will convene in the Brides' Room (on the first floor of Latham) on Sunday morning at 10:05 AM.

Notes for this specific session - "What Role Should Government Play?"  can be downloaded below.

Download what_role_should_government_play.pdf

See you there and then!

Children's health, poverty focus of faith-based Ecumenical Advocacy Days

by Nan Cobbey
Episcopal News Service, March 15, 2007

Marian Wright Edelman, founder and president of the Children's Defense Fund,  made the plea: ''Each child is God's own beloved… How we treat each child is how we treat God... Every child needs and deserves health coverage.''

She addressed her words to the 1000-plus members of the faith community present in Washington, D.C., for Ecumenical Advocacy Days March 9-12.. ''God didn't make different classes of children and the U.S. should not continue its current inequitable treatment of children.''

This is the year that the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) expires. Funded only through September, Congress must reauthorize the program, cut it or expand it. That reality helped keep participants focused on how to influence Congress.

''This is the time for action,'' declared Lindsey Wade, policy associate with the Children's Defense Fund, to those preparing arguments for the legislators they would visit the final day of the gathering.

Advocacy Days, now in its fifth year, drew the religious community to Washington to lobby for a range of human rights and justice issues. Several days of workshops and training preceded their descent on Capitol Hill.

More than 50 churches and faith-based organizations, including the National Council of Churches and Church World Service, sponsor Advocacy Days. The theme this year, ''And How Are the Children?'' aimed a spotlight at ending child poverty. Speakers addressed domestic and global issues: unaccompanied children crossing the border, fixing the No Child Left Behind program, effects of the Middle East conflict on the region's children; the impact of U.S. security policies on children; effects of debt on Africa's children; escalating violence in Burma and the Philippines and a dozen more.

In the workshop on expanding health care insurance to cover all children in the country, Jennifer Beeson, co-director for government affairs for Families USA, spelled out the situation. ''We have 9 million children without health insurance in this country. That's the bad news. The good news is we've come a long way and we have an achievable goal in sight. It is very easy for us as a wealthy country to reach the rest of those kids and get them covered.''

Seven out of 10 uninsured children already qualify for public programs, said Beeson. Medicaid covers 25 million low-income children, pregnant women and elderly and Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) covers another 4 million whose ''parents are working but who don't make enough to afford health insurance,'' Beeson explained.

''We know that children without health insurance are much more likely to suffer significant developmental problems or health problems,'' said Beeson. ''They are less likely to have a single source of care – less likely to go back to the same pediatrician. They do worse in hospitals. Children who have health insurance do much better in school, have better attendance records.''

Beeson told her fledgling lobbyists that ''the ask,'' the proposal they should be making to the legislators, is $60 billion over the next five years.  ''When you go to the Hill and you ask for a lot of money you always get push back. It is your job to use your moral arguments and your faith arguments'' to convince the lawmakers. ''You can also use economic arguments,'' she said. Then she gave them a bit of ammunition.

''I want to tell you a story that happened here locally. It illustrates the stakes.''  Beeson described a family that lost their Medicaid coverage when they had to move into a shelter. The renewal form, sent to their old address, was never returned. The son, 12-year-old Deamonte Driver, had an abscess tooth that needed to be pulled. His mother didn't have $80 for a dentist. The infection spread to Deamonte's brain. He died.

''That's nuts,'' said Beeson. ''We could have spent $80 to send that kid to a dentist and saved a life. It's very bad economics.''

Wade provided more ammunition. ''No child should be a victim of the lottery of geography,'' she said, explaining that differing state regulations meant thousands went without health care. ''We want to create one program so that every child has access to the same health care package.''

She outlined another change advocates should request: insurance that ''covers  everything a child needs'' including adequate mental health services. ''Twenty visits per year or less – that's not even twice a month,'' she said, describing what CHIP provides now.

''We know families across the country that can't afford to get their children the mental health care they need,'' said Wade. ''Those families are forced to resign custody and put those children in public institutions because they cannot access the services in this wealthy country.''

The solution is simplification, said Wade. She described the program the Children's Defense Fund wants to see adopted: coverage for every child in families with income levels below 300 percent of the poverty line ($60,000 for a family of four); automatic enrollment when the family enrolls for any ''means tested '' service such as school lunches; an end to premiums so that children aren't penalized when parents forget to pay or cannot pay; and an increase in reimbursement rates to care providers so that doctors will be more willing to accept the children as patients. The CDF also wants children who ''age out'' of the foster care program to receive health coverage at ages 19 and 20 as they start their working lives.

''The cost of our proposal,'' said Wade, ''the five-year total to get all children covered would be about $70 billion. To include the [increased] provider reimbursement rates, the five year total would be $137 billion for five years.''

The annual cost would be $26 billion. ''That's less than three and a half months in Iraq,'' said Wade. ''It's 16 days of military spending.'' Or, as Beeson pointed out, ''If we rolled back President Bush's 'extra' tax breaks that he gave the wealthiest 1 percent, just for this year, we'd have more than $60 billion.''

''So don't let your members of Congress tell you that they can't find the money,'' said Wade. ''We know that when they have the right pressure… when they feel that they can't get away with something, that something is in their best interest, they will find the money. And this is in their best interest. This is in the best interest of all our children.''

-- Nan Cobbey is associate editor of Episcopal Life, the national newspaper for the Episcopal Church.

When it's about WOMEN, you've gone too far

From Where I Stand by Joan Chittister, OSB
March 15 2007, Vol. 4, No. 37

Try to remember this: It is possible to go too far. Remember this, too: It will all depend on what you're talking about whether it turns out to be too far or not.

I got another lesson on that one recently. Last week, in Ireland, Trocáire, the official overseas development agency of the Catholic Church in Ireland, began its regular Lenten ad campaign.

The interesting thing about the campaign -- which is not uncommon to most churches in Lent -- is that it is about more than "charity." It does not ask for alms alone. It asks people to contribute to movements that seek justice. It puts its resources to the service of social consciousness and social change. It always calls for change in the system that is creating the oppression, contributing to the poverty, or justifying the discrimination.

So, in previous Lenten campaigns, for example, it called attention to apartheid in South Africa and channeled money to organizations there who were working to develop a democracy in that country. The Irish government and the church supported that campaign.

Then, in another year, Trocáire concentrated on the liberation of child soldiers and Ireland supported them in that campaign, too.

Finally, Trocáire turned the light and the money on the plight of slave laborers around the world and were applauded for their efforts there, too.

In all their Lenten drives Trocáire uses public information spots on Irish television. It mounts a poster campaign across the country. It publishes public information brochures throughout the republic to focus attention on issues that are at the base of oppression or poverty and collects money to be used to change the system as well as to alleviate the effects of the oppression.

All of these campaigns have revolved around clearly political issues. And all of them have gotten widespread support.

Till this one.

This one features an unending grid of diapered babies, black and white, all infants, all charming and bright-eyed and lively. Finally the voice-over says, "These children will have less education, live in more poverty, contract more disease, suffer more violence, face more disadvantage than if they had malaria or HIV. They will never even be given a chance. Why? Because they're female."

Bingo!

This ad, on gender equality, the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland (BCI) has decreed, must be removed from its commercial airwaves because it is "political."

Oh, give us a break.

Racism isn't political. Child soldiers aren't political. Slave labor and human trafficking aren't political. But gender equality is?

The ad is "political" and contrary to the Radio and Television Act of 1988, BCI argues, because it "calls upon the Government to produce a National Action Plan and seeks public signatures for a petition in this regard."

Protests about the ban are coming from everywhere, true. RTE -- Radio Television Erin -- refuses to comply, for instance. They will show the ads, but they will confine the ads to noncommercial television and public radio channels only. The kind that don't have sponsors, apparently. The implication seems to be that sponsors would -- at least could -- withdraw their own advertising support from programs that are 'political,' meaning in support of gender equality.

The campaign itself has also not been withdrawn. And in columns and Letters to the Editor everywhere, the Irish are raising some very pointed questions.

They are asking things like why Trocáire doesn't focus on the Catholic church itself, its sponsoring institution, as a justifying agent of female discrimination. (Irish Times, Saturday, March 10, 2007, Patsy McGarry, "Trocaire's young girl without a chance lives far closer to home," p. 13.)

They want to know how it is that a government commission can dare to question the need for this ad in a world where two-thirds of the poor are women.

They are pointing out that 66 percent of the illiterate of the world are women who are being denied the right to an education.

They are not unaware that 70 percent of the refugees and internally displaced population of the world in war-torn countries are women.

They know that women, even in Ireland and in developed countries in general, are still earning only 69 percent of male wages for the same level of work.

A people in an agricultural country who have known desperate starvation themselves, realize in a way most don't in our part of the world, that women produce 80 percent of the planet's food but get less than 10 percent of the world's agricultural assistance and aid, even from nations like the United States. (Irish Times, Thursday, March 8, 2007, Mary Raftery, Trocáire ad deserves an airing, p. 16.)

And, finally, they are acutely conscious of the fact that women who are the backbone of the church everywhere, including in Ireland, are barred from the theological formulations of the church. They know that, however much women serve the church, they are nevertheless left out, even of its restored diaconate -- "not even given a chance" -- simply because they are female. Best of all, the questions are getting more numerous, more pointed, more revealing every day.

Why the problem with only this campaign and not with any of the others? Is it because this campaign is so much closer to home for all of us than malaria and child soldiers and apartheid will ever be?

Is it because down deep they -- and maybe even we -- know that this is discrimination in our own society that is hiding in plain sight?

Is it because a change in this social issue would turn both society and church upside down? Or maybe, more to the point, would a change finally turn society and church right side up?

From where I stand, the objection to the ad is far more to be contested than the subject matter of the ad itself. Gender discrimination enslaves or suppresses the development of half the population of the world. The very idea that the attempt to focus on the issue of gender equality can be gagged, can be denied public consciousness, on the grounds that it is a "political problem" -- for whatever reason -- is itself the real problem. The ery idea that we cannot discuss the questions of women in church and society without facing either theological or social recrimination is the issue behind the issues.

And we have the nerve to question the treatment of women in other cultures of the world? Now that's going too far.

In View of the Fact

In View of the Fact

The people of my time are passing away, my
wife is baking for a funeral, a 60-year-old who

died suddenly, when the phone rings, and it's
Ruth we care for so much about in intensive care:

it was once weddings that came so thick and
fast, and then, first babies, such a hullabaloo:

now, it’s this that and the other and somebody
else gone or on the brink: well, we never

thought we would live forever (although we did)
and now it looks like we won’t: some of us

are losing a leg to diabetes, some don't know
what they went downstairs for, some know that

a hired watchful person is around, some like
to touch the cane tip into something steady,

so nice: we have already lost so many,
brushed the loss of ourselves ourselves: our

address books for so long a slow scramble now
are palimpsests, scribbles and scratches: our

index cards for Christmases, birthdays,
Halloweens drop clean away into sympathies:

at the same time we are getting used to so
many leaving, we are holding on with a grip

to the ones left: we are not giving up on the
congestive heart failure or brain tumors, on

the nice old men left in empty houses or on
the widows who decide to travel a lot: we

think the sun may shine some day when we'€™ll
drink wine together and think of what used to

be: until we die we will remember every
single thing, recall every word, love every

loss: then we will, as we must, leave it to
others to love, love that can grow brighter

and deeper till the very end, gaining strength
and getting more precious all the way …

A.R Ammons, Bosh and Flapdoodle (Norton, 2005)

This = that?

As the brickbats keep flying as to the events at the Anglican Primates' recent meeting in Tanzania, and their significance, I couldn't help but notice this dry little comment from Stephen Bates of The Guardian:

"Inspiring news from South Africa where Rowan Williams, our beleaguered Archbishop of Canterbury has had a meeting with the Bishop of Harare. You might think that on the scale of things Nolbert Kunonga, a crony of the Mugabe regime - who has been accused by his black parishioners of inciting murder against his opponents, embezzlement, seizing a white farm for his own use and demanding that Zimbabwe's starving churchgoers should all contribute to a wedding anniversary present for him and his wife - might be considered a little beyond the pale even for the famously inclusive Anglican communion, on a par, say, with Gene Robinson, the American gay bishop, about whom African archbishops are constantly critical. But no: Dr Williams merely asked Kunonga "to encourage the development of an independent voice" in Zimbabwe. So that's all right then."

I could manage a solemn word or two about "the need to get our priorities right", but I think I'll just leave Bates' comment to make the point.

CHRISTIANS AND POVERTY, Session 2, March 11, 2007

Session 2 of CHRISTIANS AND POVERTY will convene in the Brides' Room (on the first floor of Latham) on Sunday morning at 10:05 AM.

Notes for this specific session - "The Bible and Wealth"  can be downloaded below.

Download the_bible_and_wealth.pdf

See you there!

Listening: Anglican women reaffirm commitment to church's mission, unity

'Rebuilding and reconciling the world is central to our faith,' UNCSW delegates say

By Matthew Davies
Sunday, March 04, 2007

[Episcopal News Service]  A group of Anglican women, as an expression of their faithfulness to the church's mission, issued a statement March 3 reiterating their unequivocal commitment "to remaining always in 'communion' with and for one another," and emphasizing that "rebuilding and reconciling the world" is central to their faith.

The statement came as more than 80 Anglican women are meeting in New York February 26-March 9 for the 51st session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (UNCSW).

The Anglican delegation is the largest non-governmental representation at the UNCSW, an annual meeting that brings thousands of women from around the world to New York, in part to address the challenges raised by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), especially Goal 3 which calls for the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women.

"We remain resolute in our solidarity with one another and in our commitment, above all else, to pursue and fulfill God's mission in all we say and do," the statement said.

Citing the global tensions "so evident in our church today," the women refused to accept "that there is any one issue of difference or contention which can, or indeed would, ever cause us to break the unity as represented by our common baptism.

"Neither would we ever consider severing the deep and abiding bonds of affection which characterize our relationships as Anglican women."

The women noted that they had been challenged in their time together "by the desperately urgent issues of life and death faced by countless numbers of women and children in our communities."

In their conclusion, the women proclaimed: "This sisterhood of suffering is at the heart of our theology and our commitment to transforming the whole world through peace with justice. Rebuilding and reconciling the world is central to our faith."

The statement will be publicly presented by UNCSW delegate Jenny Te Paa at "Towards Effective Anglican Mission" (TEAM), a March 7-14 conference in Boksburg, South Africa, that will focus on the church's contribution to achieving the MDGs.

Te Paa is the ahorangi or dean of Te Rau Kahikatea (College of St. John the Evangelist) in Auckland, New Zealand.

"Over the past two years since Windsor the women of the Communion have I believe moved from bewilderment to outrage at the ways in which a small cabal of leaders have continued to insist that the issues exercising them alone over human sexuality are inevitably to preoccupy us as well," said Te Paa,  who was a member of the Lambeth Commission on Communion, which produced the Windsor Report. "What these leaders have failed to realize is that the priority focus for Anglican women always has been the pressing issues of life and death which are daily facing too many of the women and children of God's world -- how can we compare the needless horrific suffering of women and girls being brutally raped when collecting firewood or water with the endless hysteria of male leaders wanting to debate whether gay men have full humanity or not? How can we compare the daily horror of living with war, with death, with utter human futility with the missiological preferences of those who want to argue a fine line argument about whose method of biblical interpretation is best? Now I know the comparisons may be seen as very unfair but for global Anglican women the unrelenting determinations of any church leader to distract us from our primary mission agenda to heal God's world is what is also being seen not only as unfair but theologically reprehensible."

The statement, Te Paa said, "is intended as a clear, confident, Gospel-based, deeply pastoral reminder of how we see our ministry as being first and foremost among those who are the least among us. It was a statement which emerged with ease among the women gathered at the UN -- it was a statement which emerged with profound urgency for the work needing to be done and with deep love and respect for the Church to which we each proudly belong -- a Church which in spite of its occasional faltering still enables us to be prophetic witnesses to Christ's love and compassion in and for the world."

"This statement comes following a 'sacred space listening process' that we invited delegates to participate in," Nomfundo Walaza, an Anglican UNCSW delegate from South Africa, said in an email to the Anglican Communion's secretary general, the Rev. Canon Kenneth Kearon. "Women were given an opportunity to share their concerns about the consequences of the current tensions within the Communion and the effect that these have on their work and ministries."

Walaza said that the statement was "passionately received" by all Anglican UNCSW delegates during a working session on March 3 and that more than 80 women signed it.

Walaza asked Kearon to relay the statement to Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams with a request that it be sent to the Communion's 38 Anglican Primates -- the Communion's presiding bishops, archbishops and moderators.

The effort to bring the women from all 38 provinces of the worldwide Anglican Communion is that of the Office of the Anglican Observer at the United Nations and Anglican Women's Empowerment (AWE) -- an international grassroots movement founded in 2003 to use the power of women's voices and presence to pursue a humane agenda for women worldwide.

The delegates, selected by their Primates, attend nearly two weeks of meetings with the commission, an arm of the United Nations Economic and Social Council. The delegation this year includes 10 teenage girls, aged 13 to 18, and the focus on this year's gathering is to create policies for member nations that will "eliminate all forms of discrimination and violence against the girl child."

The full statement follows:

From the Anglican Women gathered at the 51st Session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women

March 3, 2007

In the name of God, Saviour, Redeemer, and Giver of Life.

We, the women of the Anglican Communion gathered in New York as the Anglican Consultative Council delegation to the 51st Session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, and as members of the International Anglican Women's Network representing the diversity of women from across the world-wide Anglican Communion, wish to reiterate our previously stated unequivocal commitment to remaining always in "communion" with and for one another.

We remain resolute in our solidarity with one another and in our commitment, above all else, to pursue and fulfill God's mission in all we say and do.

Given the global tensions so evident in our church today, we do not accept that there is any one issue of difference or contention which can, or indeed would, ever cause us to break the unity as represented by our common baptism. Neither would we ever consider severing the deep and abiding bonds of affection which characterize our relationships as Anglican women.

We have been challenged in our time together by the desperately urgent issues of life and death faced by countless numbers of women and children in our communities. As a diverse delegation, we prayerfully reflected on these needs.

We thus reaffirm the conclusion of the statement presented by our delegation to this year's Session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women:

This sisterhood of suffering is at the heart of our theology and our commitment to transforming the whole world through peace with justice. Rebuilding and reconciling the world is central to our faith.

Amen.

-- Matthew Davies is international correspondent for the Episcopal News Service.

Archbishop of Cape Town to lead international conference on MDGs

Towards Effective Anglican Mission (TEAM) set for March 7-14 in Boksburg, South Africa

[ENS] The strategies embodied in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) will be the focus of a March 7-14 international conference titled "Towards Effective Anglican Mission" (TEAM) at the Birchwood Conference Centre in Boksburg, Gauteng, South Africa.

Hosted by the Anglican Church in Southern Africa, under the leadership of Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane, the conference will bring together key representatives from the worldwide Anglican Communion, including as keynote speaker the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams.

In an interview with the Episcopal News Service, ++Ndungane speaks about the importance of the TEAM conference in focusing the Anglican Communion on the issues represented by the MDGs, in particular the fight against global poverty and HIV/AIDS.

Video and audio streams of ++Ndungane's interview are available at http://www.episcopalchurch.org/3577_82947_ENG_HTM.htm.