Week Ending 05/21/18

Fort Worth Priest Elected Bishop of Newark

The diocese of Newark broke two barriers with the election of the Rev. Carlye Hughes of Fort Worth.  Hughes will be the diocese's first African-American Bishop and it's first female bishop.  Deputies to the diocesan electing convention made her a clear choice on the first ballot.  Hughes has spent the last several years as rector of  Trinity Parish and helping Episcopalians in Fort Worth rebuild their diocese.  Hughes came to the ministry after a full career in corporate training in the Northeast, and her first parishes were in New York.  The Diocese of Newark covers the parts of New Jersey most linked to New York City, thus making her election something of a homecoming.  Hughes is the second African-American woman to head an Episcopal Diocese, the first being Jennifer Baskerville-Burrows of Indianapolis. 

Texas School Shooting Brings New Responses from Church

The shooting at a high school in Sante Fe, Texas, southeast of Houston left 8 students and two teachers dead.  Nearby Episcopal Churches responded by opening their doors for those seeking a place to pray.  The Episcopal Church in Dickinson hosted an evening prayer service for the community in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. Bishop Doyle and other Episcopal Church officials sent their messages of condolence.  But as the Update has noted on numerous occasions, the Church's efforts to end this violence go well beyond "thoughts and prayers."  Churches in other dioceses organized forums, and urged parishioners to both pray and act.  In 2015 General Convention passed a resolution (2015-C0005) that covers the full gun control agenda.  The 2018 convention has a resolution on its agenda addressing "lunch box" or "ghost" guns (Resolution C015).

Presiding Bishop Hits a Home Run at Royal Wedding

Last week the planners of the royal wedding announced that the Episcopal Presiding Bishop, Michael Curry would preach the wedding address for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.  After he preached on Saturday,  the press announced that the Bishop "stole the show." If you want to see Bishop Curry's whole address, Episcopal News Service has video of the sermon from the BBC and from the large screens outside where you can hear crowd reaction. Both videos and transcripts of his sermon were on every major media channel, website, and print media.  The BBC not only covered the talk positively, but included more information on the Presiding Bishop. The reporter from Esquire ended his piece with the comment "Now, if you’ll excuse me, I am going to join the Episcopal Church." Slate's reporter analyzed the sermon as a radical theological statement. One of the most interesting comments was the analysis of the sermon by the a regular columnist on Jewish matters for Religion News.  The Anglican Communion News Service posted a piece summarizing the media attention, as did the Episcopal News Service and the Episcopal Cafe.   The Archbishop of Canterbury  declared that Curry's sermon "blew the place open." He also referred to it in a talk given at an evangelism conference on Pentecost.   Saturday Night Live did a sketch based on an "interview" with Curry, and the Presiding Bishop found himself an invited guest on network morning shows, PBS, and others.  There were criticisms.  Some found the 13:47 minute address too long.  Some of the British Royalty seemed uncomfortable with parts of the address and delivery style.  The GAFCON group was clearly unhappy with all the attention given the talk and criticized it as "Christianity-Lite" (i.e. pandering to the public by focusing on the positive feature of love and leaving out sin, the need to amend one's life, and Christ's Death on the cross).  The best response to the Christianity-Lite claim is found on a British blog.