Saved by Faith –– Created for Good Works
When someone comes to you and tells you your own story…

newSpin 180308

newSpin, the newsletter
March 8
, 2018 – Bill Lewellis

TopSpin
• President Trump’s North Korea Gamble[Nicholas Kristof, NYT, March 8] This is stunning: President Trump has accepted an invitation from Kim Jong-un for a summit. It’s also, I think, a dangerous gamble and a bad idea. I can’t believe I’m saying that. For many years, over several trips to North Korea, I’ve argued for direct talks between the United States and North Korea, and it’s certainly better to be engaging the North than bombing it. If the choice is talk versus missiles, I’ll go with the talk. But the proper way to hold a summit is with careful preparation to make sure that the meeting advances peace — and certainly that it serves some purpose higher than simply legitimizing Kim’s regime. Kim and Trump are both showmen with a flair for the dramatic and unexpected. That would make a summit thrilling — but creates great risks if everything turns out wrong. Read on.

•  A model settlement: The wise resolution of a church property dispute [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Editorial Board, March 3] This week the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh and nine churches that broke away from the diocese in 2008 finally settled their differences over property rights, and they did so in a refreshingly evenhanded way. Read on. Also here.

• Publishers rejected her, Christians attacked her: The deep faith of ‘A Wrinkle in Time’ author Madeleine L’Engle[Washington Post, Sarah Pulliam Bailey March 8] Although L’Engle did not like denominational labels, she mostly attended Episcopal churches, serving for about four decades as a librarian and writer-in-residence at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, an Episcopal church and one of the largest cathedrals in the world.
   “The themes that are important in Christianity permeate her writing: good and bad, light and darkness,” said the Rev. Patrick Malloy, subdean of the cathedral. “She was open to questions and to looking at new ways to say old things.”
  
In the 1990s, L’Engle began attending Sunday services at All Angels Church, an Episcopal church on Manhattan’s Upper West Side known for attracting artists. She wanted the smaller community of All Angels but still attended noon prayer and evensong services at St. John the Divine. Read on.

[Patrick Malloy, ID'd in the WaPo story as "subdean," is Canon for Liturgy and the Arts at St. John the Divine. He was rector of Grace Allentown for some ten years during the first decade of this century.]

• Madeleine L’Engle’s Christianity was vital to A Wrinkle in Time. The new Disney movie has excised L’Engle’s faith. … [Vox, Tara Isabella Burton, Mar 8] Here,

• An Ignatian guide to a 'A Wrinkle in Time'[America, Eric Sundrup, March 9]
I watched “A Wrinkle in Time” sitting next to a religious sister in full habit. I was disguised in civilian garb, so it was less obvious that I was a Jesuit priest. By the end of the film, I felt a tinge of guilt. I should have been in clerics—wearing all my commitments visibly—because this film was inviting all of us to wear our hearts on our sleeves, to be honest and unabashedly earnest, to hope. It is a demanding task for adults in the age of Trump, and much to their credit, I think the children will have an easier time of it. We need to pay attention to them. Read on.

• DioBeth General News, March 1Here.
• DioBeth Leadership News, Feb. 15
Here.
• The newSpin Newsletter, Feb. 22
Here.
• DioBeth General News, Feb. 8
Here.
• Bishop Search Committee websiteHere.


********  [A DioBeth newsletter (General or Leadership) or the unofficial newSpin newsletter is published online on Thursdays in the following rotation: (1) Leadership News, (2) The newSpin newsletter, (3) General News, (4) The newSpin newsletter. If you are not receiving these newsletters by email, be in touch with Paula Lapinski (610-691-5655, [email protected]). If you find something online or in print(or if you'd like to write something) that you think might warrant inclusion in the newSpin newsletter for the sake of many, please send the link or your text to [email protected] ********

Intersection: Religion, Culture, Politics.
• In blow to Trump, Supreme Court won't hear appeal of DACA ruling [NBC News, Pete Williams, Feb. 26] The U.S. Supreme Court declined Monday to hear the Trump administration's appeal of a federal judge's ruling that requires the government to keep the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program going. Under a lower court order that remains in effect, the Department of Homeland Security must continue to accept applications to renew DACA status from the roughly 700,000 young people, known as Dreamers, who are currently enrolled. The administration's deadline of March 5, when it intended to shut the program down, is now largely meaningless. Read on.

• I
s God in this Picture? [Editors of Commonweal, March 6] Right-wing Christians support Donald Trump in the hope that he’ll change the tide of the culture wars. Despite the president’s narcissistic and debaucherous private life and tendency toward “deception, fraud, and shameless bravado,” some Christians believe that “Trump is in the White House for a reason,” that God will use this flawed instrument to reverse what supporters insist is “the nation’s precipitous cultural decline.” But this stance “seems to confuse the political agenda of conservative Evangelical Christians with God’s will.” Contrary to what these Christians believe, “to the extent that conservative Christians bind themselves to this president, all of us will have a ‘front row seat’ on the further decline of Christian influence in America.” Read on.

• The Man behind the Trump Dossier[The New Yorker, Jane Mayer, March 12] How the ex-spy tried to warn the world about Trump’s ties to Russia. Read on.

 

SpiritSpin
• Lent – Time for a Cool Change … If there's one thing in my life that's missing, it's the time that I spend alone. Listen.


• A prayer before anything [Bill] Be attentive. Be intelligent. Be reasonable. Be responsible. Be in Love. And, if necessary, change. Let us pray: Guide us, gracious God. May we be …
Attentive to our experience, to the voices and hearts of those around us, Intelligent in our interpretation of that to which we have been attentive. Reasonable in our judgments about what we have understood. Responsible in our decisions about how we will act on our judgments. And always open to inner conversion, to transformation in your truth and your love

• We're already in the presence of God[Richard Rohr] What's absent is awareness.

• Nothing is more practical … than finding God, that is, than falling in love in a quite absolute, final way.
   What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything.
  
It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you will do with your evenings, how you will spend your weekends, what you read, who you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude.

   Fall in love, stay in love and it widecide everything.
[Origin uncertain: frequently attributed to Pedro Arrupe, S.J. (1907-1991) Superior General of the Society of Jesus 1961-1984.]

• Forgiving the others as well [I’ve long been challenged by this story.] The elect, some who were greatly discriminated against in life, gather outside the heavenly gates, confident that their good works have secured their reservations inside. Suddenly, they become aware of a rumor spreading among them. The rumor is this: “He’s going to forgive the others as well.” Many of them are beside themselves over all the trouble they went through to secure their reservations. They become part of a storm of indignant protest. They question God’s justice. They feel that God’s receiving the others as well somehow diminishes their own suffering and good works. They become furious. They curse God. At that instant, they judge themselves, damned to a world where you get only justice, no more. Final judgment. They refused to acknowledge love.

• Saved by Faith –– Created for Good Works[A slightly edited excerpt from a 2006 homily, Lent 4B, by Bill Lewellis, Eph. 2:4-10] There was a time I thought faith and belief were simply two words for the same reality. I no longer think that. I have come to experience faith as quite different from belief. Read on,

• How to talk about death[Commonweal, Feb. 17] Eternity is not to be confused with perpetuity. The central Christian event is not survival but resurrection—a radical transformation at odds with the consoling continuity of “living on.” Read on.

• A Man and his Dog … A man and his dog were walking along a road. The man was enjoying the scenery. It suddenly occurred to him that he was dead. He remembered dying, and that the dog had been dead for years. He wondered where the road was leading. After a while, they came to a high, white stone wall along one side of the road. It looked like fine marble. At the top of a long hill, the wall was broken by a tall arch that glowed in the sunlight. He saw a magnificent gate in the arch that looked like mother of pearl, and the street that led to the gate looked like pure gold.
  
He and the dog walked toward the gate. He saw someone, and called out, "Excuse me, where are we?" "This is heaven,” came the answer. "Wow! Would you happen to have some water?" the man asked. "Of course, sir. Come right in, and I'll have some ice water brought right up."

   The gate began to open. "Can my friend come in, too?" the traveler asked. "I'm sorry, sir, but we don't accept pets." The man thought a moment and then turned back toward the road and continued the way he had been going. After another long walk, and at the top of another long hill, he came to a dirt road which led through a farm gate that looked as if it had never been closed. There was no fence. As he approached the gate, he saw someone inside, leaning against a tree and reading a book.
   "Excuse me!" he called to the reader. "Do you have any water?" "Yeah, sure, there's a pump over there. Come on in." "How about my friend here?" the traveler gestured to the dog. "There should be a bowl by the pump." They went through the gate, and sure enough, there was an old-fashioned hand pump with a bowl beside it. The traveler filled the bowl and took a long drink himself, then he gave some to the dog.
   When they were full, he and the dog walked back toward the one who was standing by the tree waiting for them. "What do you call this place?" the traveler asked. "This is heaven," was the answer. "Well, that's confusing," the traveler said. "Down the road, they said that was heaven, too." "Oh, you mean the place with the gold street and pearly gates? Nope. That's hell." "Doesn't it make you mad that they use your name like that?" "No. I can see how you might think so, but we're just happy that they screen out the folks who'll leave their best friends behind".

• Saying a Prayer I Don't Believe In[NYT, Jay P. Lefkowitz, March 1] Like countless Jews before me, I am saying Kaddish, the traditional Jewish prayer of mourning. Three times a day, wherever I am in the world, I strive to find a minyan (quorum) so I can recite these ancient Aramaic verses as a last measure of devotion to my father.
   The Kaddish is probably the most famous of all Jewish prayers. Leonard Bernstein set it to music in his Third Symphony; Allen Ginsberg wrote a poem by the same name upon the passing of his mother. In Tony Kushner’s play “Angels in America,” two of the characters say the full Kaddish over Roy Cohn’s dead body. And it was chanted by Neil Diamond, playing a cantor, in “The Jazz Singer,” and by all of the workers in the factory in the last scene of “Schindler’s List.” Most improbably, it is even recited by Rocky Balboa when he mourns the passing of his beloved trainer, Mickey, in “Rocky III.”

   Yet, the Kaddish is an odd prayer to have become the centerpiece of mourning. Despite its association with death and dying, it does not mention the word death. Instead, it is an endlessly repetitive celebration of the glory of God.
   Whatever its origins, the text of the prayer leaves me cold. Each day as I say the Kaddish, I struggle with the fact that I am praising a God who, according to Jewish tradition, created the world “according to His Will.” Does God really will that the world endure the cruelty and suffering we see so often? And, on a more personal level, did God will that my father, an intellectual who suffered from dementia, would lose the ability to communicate and have the mental faculties of a 5-year-old
   The essential gift of the Kaddish is that it fosters community for a person who has just suffered a searing loss of a parent or sibling, spouse or child, even when we find ourselves far from home.
   Even if the words themselves offer little comfort, I take great satisfaction in this communal act of prayer; of hearing the voices of others respond to my own prayers; and of being welcomed and enveloped by a larger and transcendent community. And in that experience, I honor and reconnect with my father. Read on.

• The Book of Common Prayer ... every edition from 1549 to 1979. Here.

• Prayers and Thanksgivings from the BCP ... Here.
• The (Online) Book of Common Prayer ... Here.
• The Daily Office ... can be read online in Rite I, Rite II or the New Zealand Prayer Book versions. At Mission St. Clare.
• The Daily Office ... from the Diocese of Indianapolis. Here.
• The Prayer Site ... a resource of Forward Movement. Here.
• Speaking to the Soul ... Episcopal Café blog. Sermons, reflections, multimedia meditations and excerpts from books on spirituality. Here.
• Spirit Resources
 ... way below


Columns, Sermons, Reflections, other Spin
• Francis invites change, but we are the change [Joan Chittister, NCR, March 10]
Five years ago, for instance, we moved from one style of church to another. It happened quietly but it landed in the middle of the faithful like the Book of Revelation. Gone were the images of finger-waving popes, stories of theological investigations, and the public scoldings and excommunications of people who dared to question the ongoing value of old ways. Read on

• A Quiet Exodus: Why Black Worshipers Are Leaving White Evangelical Churches[NYT, Campbell Robertson, March 9] Megachurches around the country were trying to racially integrate and finding some success. Then came the 2016 election. Read on.



DioBeth
• Two nominated for IX Bishop of Bethlehem
The Standing Committee of the Episcopal Diocese of Bethlehem released the names of two priests who will stand for election for the ninth bishop of the diocese. They are the Rev. Canon Kevin D. Nichols, 56, chief operating officer and canon for mission resources in the Diocese of New Hampshire, and the Rev. Canon Ruth Woodliff-Stanley, 55, canon to the ordinary in the Diocese of Colorado. The search committee had chosen three nominees, but one withdrew shortly before the slate was presented to the Standing Committee, which oversees the election. More info and photos.

• Special Electing Convention and Diocesan Convention Updates
… A Special Electing Convention with the sole purpose of electing the IX Bishop of Bethlehem will take place April 28 at the Cathedral Church of the Nativity. The new bishop will be ordained and consecrated on September 15 at The First Presbyterian Church, Allentown.
   The Diocesan Convention, including the seating of the new bishop, will take place October 12 and 13 at the Homewood Suites by Hilton Allentown Bethlehem Center Valley. Eucharist and the seating will be held at the Cathedral Church of the Nativity. Please note the change of dates and location. The seating will be held during diocesan convention rather than the Sunday morning after the ordination and consecration so that everyone in the diocese has the opportunity to attend.
   Certificates of Election of Lay Delegates, who will serve at both the Special Electing Convention and at the Diocesan Convention, were due February 28. Certificates must be completed and sent to the diocesan office through mail, fax or to [email protected].

   Download the Certificate of Election of Lay Delegates (fillable PDF).

Jubilate, Lent Year B 2018 (WORD)
Jubilate, Lent Year B 2018 (PDF)


• DioBeth General News, March 1 … Here.
• DioBeth Leadership News, Feb. 15 … Here.
• The newSpin Newsletter, Feb. 22 … Here.
• DioBeth General News, Feb. 8 … Here.
• Bishop Search Committee website … Here


Episcopal/Anglican
GC Liturgy and Music committee offers church a plan to unscramble its calendar of saints
[Mary Frances Schjonberg, March 5] ‘Situation of great confusion’ was 10 years in the making, Read on,

Evangelism/Stewardship/Church Growth/Migration/ERD
Episcopal Migration MinistriesHere.
Episcopal Public Policy Network (EPPN)Here.
Episcopal Relief & Development (ERD)Here
• Episcopal Asset Map
Here.
• Additional Resources
 ... way below

People


In the Media


TaleSpin
• In Vatican magazine exposé, nuns reveal their ec
onomic exploitation … [NYTimes, March 1] ROME — Sister Marie told of nuns who worked long hours to cook and clean for cardinals and bishops, without being asked to break bread at the same table. Sister Paule pointed out that many nuns did not have registered contracts with the bishops, schools, parishes or congregations they worked for, “so they are paid little or not at all.” Sister Cécile said that “nuns are seen as volunteers to have available at one’s calling, which gives rise to abuse of power.”
   These stories — told by sisters using pseudonyms — were revealed Thursday in an exposé about how nuns are exploited by the leaders and institutions of the Roman Catholic Church. The article, by the French journalist Marie-Lucile Kubacki, was published in the March edition of Women Church World, the monthly magazine on women distributed alongside the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano. The stories amount to a distress signal about the unfair economic and social conditions many nuns experience, as well as the psychological and spiritual challenges that many face. Read on.
   [Bill] I witnessed – at times was the unwitting beneficiary of – this exploitation, both in the U.S. and in Rome.

• The Opioid Crisis is the worst Addiction Epidemic in American History[TIME Magazine, March 5, 2018] Drug overdoses kill more than 64,000 people per year — roughly as many as were lost in the entire Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined – and the nation’s life expectancy has fallen for two years in a row. Over the last year, photographer James Nachtwey set out to document the opioid crisis in America through the people on its front lines. Alongside TIME’s deputy director of photography, Paul Moakley, the pair traveled the country gathering stories from users, families, first responders and others at the heart of the epidemic.
  
Pharmaceutical companies helped spark this epidemic by aggressively marketing opioids as low-risk solutions for long-term chronic pain. We now know that they’re anything but ­low-risk—and yet drug­makers have continued to push opioids and reward doctors who prescribe them. Attempts to crack down on prescriptions have helped, but Americans are still prescribed far more opioids than anyone else in the world—enough for almost every adult in the country to have their own bottle of pills.
  
Political efforts in Washington have also been insufficient. In October, the White House declared a public-health emergency but did not grant any additional money for the crisis. The position of drug czar remains unfilled, and a limit on Medicaid reimbursements for large facilities remains in place, though the President’s own opioid commission suggested that lifting it would be “the single fastest way to increase treatment availability across the nation.”
   T
his issue of TIME, the first in our 95-year history devoted to the work of a single photographer, is an effort to go beyond charts and policy.
  
Prescriptions gave way to cheaper, stronger alternatives. Why scrounge for a $50 pill of Percocet when a tab of heroin can be had for $5? Synthetic opioids, which have flooded into the U.S. from high-volume labs in China and Mexico, are even more potent—and a potentially fatal dose costs less than a Big Mac.
  
The actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, who fatally overdosed after years of battling addiction, left behind a family. “When Phil died four years ago, I was so overwhelmed, vulnerable and cracked open that anger became my protective shield, the only thing between me and collapse,” wrote Hoffman’s wife Mimi O’Donnell, in an essay for this project. “I wondered if I had talked to more people, asked for more help—screamed louder—if it would have saved his life.”
  
In the absence of a major national initiative, people across the country have gone to extraordinary lengths to help where they can. They bring food, medical supplies and clean needles to kids living on the streets of San Francisco, in the shadow of the tech world’s billionaire dream factories. They work to steer people into treatment programs and out of the over­burdened and ill-equipped prison system. They adopt their own grandchildren—or foster kids whose own families can no longer care for them. They open their own homes to pregnant users, offering them a reason to believe that their life—and their child’s—can be different.
  
Finding a way out will not be easy, particularly at a time of partisan division when national will is so hard to muster. But the need to act is urgent, and the map is increasingly clear: first, we need to recognize that addiction is a disease. The opioid epidemic must be seen as a public-health crisis rather than a moral failure. That means expanding access to medically assisted treatment and counseling, which is widely considered to be the most effective method of getting people off of opioids for good, yet is available to far fewer people than all those who need it. We must enhance efforts to reduce the supply, through the work of law enforcement, by regulating lawful prescriptions and by encouraging other strategies for managing pain. And, finally, we need to confront problems such as the growing economic divide, unaffordable health care and the diminished employment opportunities for those without a college degree which are helping fuel demand in the first place.
  
An effort of this order will be a massive undertaking. It will require cooperation between the federal government, local officials, law enforcement and public-health leaders—and far more money than has been set aside so far. In early February, Congress allocated $6 billion to helpTi—experts in the field say the amount needs to be at least 25 times that to make a permanent dent.
  
To see the faces and hear the stories of those with the most at stake is to begin to reckon with the crisis. As Nachtwey once put it: “We must look at it. We’re required to look at it. We’re required to do what we can about it. If we don’t, who will?”

[Bill] As I paged through this issue of TIME, viewing and reading most of it, in hard copy and online, I felt that a significant step toward the solution of the opioid crisis was in my hands and on my screen. This issue of TIME presents an insightful draft for a middle and high-school curriculum on the crisis. If local school boards cannot finance this, perhaps a combination of federal and state funds along with contributions from foundations and people such as Bill Gates and Warren Buffet might. In any event, we must be able to do better than the White House which in October declared a public-health emergency but did not grant any additional money for the crisis. Thanks. Page on.

How 'The Big Lebowski' Taught Judaism … [RNS, Jeffrey Salkin,  March 7] I know that you will kick yourself for not remembering, but March 6 marked the twentieth anniversary of one of the great cult films of our time, “The Big Lebowski.”
   “The Big Lebowski,” directed by the Coen brothers, is the ultimate stoner classic – the shaggy dog story of the Dude and his quest to seek revenge for a urinated-upon rug. It has a great cast: Jeff Bridges, Steve Buscemi (“Shut the f_____ up, Donny!”) Sam Elliott, Julianne Moore, the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, and John Turturro.
   But, Jews remember the film for yet another reason – and that would be the immortal performance of John Goodman as Walter. Read on.


Requiescant in pace
• Georgia Johnson Besecker, 88 … died February 3. She was a member of Prince of Peace Dallas. Obituary.

• Martha Grace Matos, 88 … died on February 27.
She was a member of Christ Church Forest City where she taught Sunday school. Obituary.

• Eleanor and John, 93, Deykes … John died on February 19. Eleanor died six days later. Married for 72 years, they were members of St. Mark's Moscow where Eleanor had served on the Altar Guild and John had been Treasurer. Obituaries.

• Kenneth E. Banzhof, 70 … died on February 24. He  was a member of Mediator Allentown. Obituary.

Ecumenism, Interfaith, Pluralism – or Not


Evangelical Lutheran Church
• ELCA WebsiteHere.

• ELCA News ServiceHere.
• ELCA BlogsHere.
 

Moravian Church
• Moravian Church in North America  Website.  

• Moravian Church Northern Province Website
• Moravian Theological Seminary Website.

United Methodist Church
News Service Here.
Communication Resources ... Start here.
Eastern PA Conference website Here.
Facebook Here.
Bishop Peggy Johnson's blog Here.

Presbyterian Church USA
• Website
... Here
• News & Announcements ... Here.

Roman Catholic
• The Scandal of Firing LGBT Catholics[CommonweL, John Gehring, Feb. 16] Last week’s firing of a first-grade Catholic school teacher who married her same-sex partner again raises the question of whether Catholic institutions are selectively enforcing the church’s sexual ethics in ways that unfairly target gays and lesbians. As these firings become increasingly common, Catholic leaders must acknowledge the deep wounds they are causing to people who love and serve the church. A more prudent, and ultimately, more Christian, response is needed in these complex cases. Read on.

Diocese of Scranton ... Here.

Diocese of Allentown ... Here.
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops ... Here
Catholic News Service ... Here.
Crux Now ... Here.
 

The Vatican
• Former president of Ireland tells pope to develop 'credible strategy' for women's inclusion … [NCR, Joshua McElwee, March 8] Vatican City –– Mary McAleese, the former president of Ireland, has called on Pope Francis to develop a "credible strategy" to include women at every level in the Catholic Church's global structure, saying their exclusion from decision-making roles "has left the church flapping about awkwardly on one wing." McAleese, speaking at the annual Voices of Faith event March 8, said the church "has long since been a primary global carrier of the virus of misogyny." "Today, we challenge Pope Francis to develop a credible strategy for the inclusion of women as equals throughout the church's root and branch infrastructure, including its decision-making," she told a packed crowd in a small hall at the Jesuit order's Rome headquarters outside the Vatican's walls but on the city-state's territory. Read on.

• Vatican Information Service blog
... Here.

• Vatican News/Info Portal ... Here.


Health and Wellness



Film and TV
• New 'Pope' series on CNN[America, John Anderson, March 9] Quite a few readers of America will know more going in than they will get from “Pope: The Most Powerful Man in History.” But the intent isn’t to woo scholars and theologians but rather an audience less familiar with history’s 266 pontiffs, the scope of their power, their various peccadilloes and the peculiarities of papal history. What’s the problem? That the creators of the program didn’t think their utterly fascinating subject was going to be quite fascinating enough. Read on

Media, Print, Music, Tech


Websites
The Episcopal CaféHere.

AnglicansOnlineHere.
Diocese of BethlehemHere.

The Episcopal ChurchHere.
Episcopal News ServiceHere.


Podcasts
• The Bible for Normal People

• The Daily
• Invisibilia
• The Day Explained
• The Hive
• Radio Atlantic
• Stay Tuned with Preet
• The Axe Files with David Axelrodj
• Pod Save America


Varia
• 14 Ways to Eat Healthy on the Cheap [Web MD] Keep your pantry stocked with these inexpensive, nutrient-packed foods. Most cost less than 50 cents per serving. Read on,


Abbreviations of Sources
AM … America Magazine
AO
… Anglicans Online
AP
… Associated Press
BCP
… Book of Common Prayer
CJR
… Columbia Journalism Review
COM
… Commonweal
CN
… Crux Now
CNS
… Catholic News Service
DoB
… Diocese of Bethlehem
EC
… Episcopal Café
ENS … Episcopal News Service
ERD … Episcopal Relief & Development
MC … Morning Call, Allentown
NCR … National Catholic Reporter
NYM … New York Magazine
NYT … New York Times
R&P … Religion&Politics
RNS … Religion News Service
TA … The Atlantic

TEC … The Episcopal Church
TLC … The Living Church
TNY … The New Yorker
WaPo … Washington Post
WSJ … Wall Street Journal

newSpin? … I decided years ago to call this newsletter and its related blog newSpin. The "S" in the middle suggests that some items are newS; others, Spin; others, both. Items I include as well as how and how often I present them are clues to my leanings. I think all of us spin. There's a lot more spin in the world of news than most editors own up to. Watch out for that upper case S in the middle. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Paul might be said to have spun "the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God" [Mark 1:1]. We continue to spin that good news, as we experience and dance with the Risen Lord.
   The newSpin newsletter is uploaded to the newSpin blog and posted on a newSpin list of some 2,000 addresses every other Thursday. Many recipients forward it to others. It comes, of course, with some spin from the editor. The views expressed, implied or inferred in items or links contained in the newsletter or the blog do not represent the official view of the Diocese of Bethlehem unless expressed by or forwarded from the Bishop, the Standing Committee, the Canon to the Ordinary or the Archdeacon as an official communication. Comments are welcome on Bethlehem Episcopalians (if you have joined that interactive FaceBook group).

Bill Lewellis, Diocese of Bethlehem, retired
Communication Minister/Editor (1986-2010), Canon Theologian (1998-)
Blog, Email (c)610-393-1833
Be attentive. Be intelligent. Be reasonable. Be responsible.
Be in Love. And, if necessary, change. [Bernard Lonergan]


Selected Posts from Past newSpin Newsletters that may still be of interest

• For the Poor and the Neglected[BCP] Almighty and most merciful God, we remember before you all poor and neglected persons whom it would be easy for us to forget: the homeless and the destitute, the old and the sick, and all who have none to care for them. Help us to heal those who are broken in body or spirit, and to turn their sorrow into joy. Grant this, Father, for the love of your Son, who for our sake became poor, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

• The Serenity Prayer … God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time; enjoying one moment at a time; accepting hardships as the pathway to peace; taking, as He did, this sinful worldas it is, not as I would have it; trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His Will; that I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with Him forever in the next. Amen. Read on.

• The Toolkit … of the Public Affairs Office is located on the Public Affairs pages of The Episcopal Church website here. Among the items are: Topics – topics of interest and dates of importance. Catalog – a list of important topics along with actions taken by The Episcopal Church and General Convention. Getting started - an easy how-to for getting started in preparing materials, media releases, op-eds, etc. For more information contact Neva Rae Fox, Public Affairs Officer, [email protected], 212-716-6080.

Sermons that work … The Episcopal Church welcomes many different points of view, and sermons offered during an Episcopal service may vary greatly from congregation to congregation. Although there is no “typical” or on'e-size-fits-all sermon for Episcopal congregations, the sermons in this series are selected for their universal qualities so that they may be useful to a wide variety of small congregations without full-time priests on staff, where lay leaders often shoulder the responsibility of delivering the sermons on Sunday. To assist these small congregations, the Episcopal Church offers Sermons That Work, new sermons each week for Sundays and major feast days throughout the liturgical year. Here.

Weekly bulletin inserts … provide information about the history, music, liturgy, mission and ministry of the Episcopal Church. Here. There's also an archive dating back to 2006.

• The Episcopal Churchis currently in full communion relationship with the following churches: the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Moravian Church of the Northern and Southern Provinces, the Old Catholic Churches of the Union of Utrecht, the Philippine Independent Church, and the Mar Thoma Syrian Church of India. Coordinating committees support the implementation of some of these relationships, which involve full mutual recognition of ministries and sacraments. Clergy of these churches may serve in Episcopal churches, and vice versa. We also have warm relationships with the Church of Sweden and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria.
   The Episcopal Church is in active dialogue with three traditions: the Roman Catholic Church through the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), and the United Methodist Church. Our dialogues meet regularly to discuss matters of common concern, doctrinal agreements and disagreements, and possibilities for the emergence of full communion relationships. Each diocese of The Episcopal Church has a designated officer responsible for promoting ecumenical and interreligious conversations on the local level. Canon Maria Tjeltveit of the Church of the Mediator in Allentown is the designated officer for the Diocese of Bethlehem. Read on.

 

 

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