One of my favorite hobbies

Every so often I volunteer time a the Arizona Science to help operate their amateur radio station, W7ASC. Not only do I get to operate their equipment (far better than mine) but I also get the satisfaction of talking to school kids about radio. Its a great hobby and I highly recommend it. If you want to find out more, take a look at the information from the American Radio Relay League

Vitality of the Gobal South

As I visit the parishes in this Diocese and talk with them about the future of the church, I often remind them of the tremendous vitality being displayed in the Anglican Communion in Africa and Asia. I like to contrast my experience with Confirmation services with that of my African collegues. The greatest number I have ever confirmed at one service was 45. One bishop I know reported a seven hour service at which almost 5,000 new members were welcomed. He was so tired that he had to have his assistants hold up his arms.

I like to point those interested to the excellent studies of Philip Jenkins and his conclusions that the future of Christianity lies in the Third World.

However, there is also an important corrective, picked up this week in the The Daily Episcopalian.



"'Global South' implies a monolithic body when in reality the group's membership appears to be porous, driven by a small number of special interest advocates primarily in Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, and their American franchise holders. Membership and financial data about the group is as difficult to come by as that of a Cayman Islands registered corporation. The organization projects a billboard slogan North-South divide. Northern churches are cold, dwindling in numbers, and ignore the Bible. In contrast, the growing South is energetic, biblically correct, and the home of ready judges waiting to declare what is acceptable practice throughout the Anglican Communion.

This slick North-South divide is no more accurate than numerous other discredited religious clash-of-civilization comparisons that have appeared and disappeared during recent centuries. Amartya Sen, the Pakistani-born Nobel-Prize-winning author, has warned about the dangers of such distorted religious reductionism: 'The hope of harmony in the contemporary world lies to a great extent in a clearer understanding of the pluralities of human identity, and in the appreciation that they cut across each other and work against a sharp separation along one single hardened line of impenetrable division.' (Amartya Sen, Identity and Violence, The Illusion of Destiny (New York: Norton, 2006), xiv.)



You can read all about it over at Episcopal Life Online here

A Church in Decline?

In the last few days there has been considerable discussion on the national church's listserve about whether or not the Episcopal Church is dying. I won't get into the statistical arguments (my view is there is both good and bad news), but I will share a comment made by one of the delegates to our Diocesan Convention which was held this past Friday and Saturday:

We rejoiced today at the Diocesan Convention in Arizona with Christ Church of the Ascension in Paradise Valley and its new priest -- it's the parish which most definitely did not leave. We accepted as a companion the Diocese of Western Mexico with great opportunities for mutual support as together we straddle the border.And we accepted as mission congregations the three start-ups of the last couple of years, one of which is a Sudanese congregation -- the first in the country, we were told, to have its own church building.We passed a budget with .7 % for the MDGs and encouraged all congregations to do the same by 2009.

I would simply add, Does this sound like a church in decline?

Courageous Parish in Cave Creek

Good Shepherd Church in Cave Creek, just north of Phoenix has for some time been assisting migrant workers in their day workers program. Every weekday morning the parish provides workers, most of them undocumented, with food, counseling, and referrals for work. They have been furiously resisted by local citizens and the County Sheriff. Tonight on "Nightline" (Channel 15 at 10:30 PM in the Phoenix area, others check local listings), you can learn all about their struggle.

You may also read about it here.

Kudos to the parish and to their rector, The Rev. Glenn Jenks, for their courageous support of people in need.

Science and Religion

The Dean of Trinity Cathedral, the Vy. Rev. Nicholas Kniseley is a scientist by training and so devotes a lot of his excellent blog, Entangled States (http://www.entangledstates.com/) to issues of science and religion. This is also an interest of mine, although I am not nearly so qualified, being more of a dilettante and (very) amateur astronomer. Still, discussions of the intersection of the two disciplines always sparks my interest, as did this recent comment from English Rabbi Jonathan Sachs in the London Times. It was reported by Nick and I am reprinting it here:

"Any account of the human condition that reduces the human spirit to an accidental by-product of evolutionary pressures tells less than half the story of who we are. We may be — on this, the Bible and neo-Darwinism agree — ‘dust of the earth’, the reconfigured debris of exploded stars. But within us is the breath of God. Scientists call this ‘emergence’: the process whereby systems of self-organising complexity yield something new, more than the sum of its parts. That is where religion and science both began: when life became conscious, then self-conscious, then able to ask the question: ‘Why?’
The current argument between ‘religion’ and ‘science’ is deeply unnecessary. It involves a caricature of religion and a parody of science. It is structured around a set of absurd oppositions, between science and superstition, reason and revelation, knowledge and wishful thinking, as if scientists and religious believers were incapable of realising the limits of their respective domains. We need both: science to tell us how the world is, religion (and philosophy) to tell us how it ought to be."

An ancient art form for a modern church

My wife Laura has become quite an accomplished iconographer. She has recieved a number of commissions for her work, and her license-plate even reads "Ikon" (this is the Greek spelling!).

Icons aren't painted, they are "read" or prayed. Many people from a variety of religous traditions have found meaning in these "windows into heaven."

Today she will be giving a class about them for the Episcopal Church Women at Church of the Advent in Sun City. More importantly, she will be helping them to try their own hand at this form for devotion.

For more information see Laura's web site: http://www.ikonarts.net/

Some feedback from the Digital Generation

Last week I visited with the students of our Canterbury Group at the campus of Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff (www.naucanterbury.org). Over dinner, I asked them however many of them had their own blogs (about half). How many of them read other peoples' blogs (about half). I thought that number low and asked how come. "You need to remember, Bishop Smith," said one, "Your generation things all this web stuff is exciting. We just take it for granted as part of life."

There is some truth there to be sure. But if the next generation takes it for granted, that it even more reason for us old foggies who are now running the church to make sure that we are technically savvy, not because it is the cool thing to do, but because it is expected.

The church no longer has a monopoly on information about religion and spirituality. The spiritually hungry person can find anything they want on the internet. Hopefully what they can also find an effective presentation of the faith as we understand and value it.