Presiding Bishop's Statement on World AIDS Day

December 1, 2006

'Words, words, words won't help us in our fight against the pandemic. Now is the time for action.'

As people across the world pause to commemorate another World AIDS Day, my mind is drawn to these words, spoken by my brother Archbishop, Njongonkulu Ndungane of Cape Town, earlier this year at the United Nations High-Level Meeting on HIV/AIDS.

My purpose in writing on World AIDS Day, then, is not simply to add more words to a debate that is already long on rhetoric but short on action. Rather, I hope my words will remind Episcopalians that our voices if united as ONE can make a critical difference in the fight to rid the world of a pandemic that claims the lives of 8,000 of God's people each day, destabilizes entire regions, and keeps hundreds
of millions of people living in extreme poverty.

On this World AIDS Day, I urge all Episcopalians to join the 'One Episcopalian' campaign, a unique partnership between the Episcopal Church and One: The Campaign to Make Poverty History. By becoming a One Episcopalian, you can unite your voice with more than 2.4 million Americans who are working, One by One, to create a world free of AIDS and deadly poverty. You can sign up online at
www.episcopalchurch.org/ONE, and it takes less than One minute.

The resources and strategies for preventing HIV and treating AIDS are fully within humanity's reach. Mobilization of resources by the United States and other countries over the past four years has increased treatment rates more than eight-fold in Africa and brought new hope to millions of people. Still, HIV-prevention efforts lag as infection rates continue to rise in many of the world's hardest hit regions. At least 4.3 million new infections occurred in the past year alone, with more than six in ten coming in Sub-Saharan Africa.

In order to turn the tide, governments must put full resources behind efforts like the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). Moreover, existing programs have to be continually adapted to ensure that they are as dynamic as possible in meeting the needs of local communities. Most importantly, prevention and treatment efforts must be combined with efforts to fight poverty, empower women, and build the
sustainable communities envisioned by the Millennium Development Goals.

2007 promises to be a significant year as both the U.S. Congress and the international community will face key decisions in the fight against AIDS and poverty worldwide. More than ever, the voices of
citizens like us will be critical, and by joining the ONE Episcopalian Campaign, we can ensure that our voices are heard.

On Sunday, Christians around the world will enter into Advent, the season of preparation for the great feast of the Incarnation. Our belief that, in order to redeem the world, God put aside all heavenly glory to make his dwelling in our midst - challenges us to carry our worship of God out of our churches and homes and into the world around us. May the Child of Bethlehem, the tiny and vulnerable One in whom all the fullness of God is pleased to dwell, inspire us anew to worship him in the world by working to end HIV/AIDS and build a creation that truly shows forth the glory of God.

The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori
Presiding Bishop and Primate
The Episcopal Church

A Bit More Early History of Epiphany and St. Paul's in Coffeyville

The first dozen years of our parish in s.e. Kansas (1872-1884), we shared priests-in-common with Coffeyville our neighboring community to the south. We attribute our founding to The Reverend Archibald Beatty, who met with a group of interested persons to form Friends of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Independence, Kansas on April 22, 1872.

St. Paul's Church in Coffeyville [which had been founded in 1869 by Colonel Coffey] was also started by Reverend Beatty, whom they have described in their historical documents as a missioner. Reverend Beatty served Coffeyville for two years in 1872-73.

But St. Paul's says that Reverend Levi Holden was their first full time vicar between 1873-76.

Our historical records show that Levi Holden was our second full time pastor, between 1876-78. Apparently, Reverend Holden left Coffeyville and 'came north' to Independence that year to stay with us for a couple years.

Then, Reverend Beatty returned to Epiphany in Independence for another year in 1878-79. In 1879-1880, Reverend Charles H. Canfield -- whom our records indicate was a missioner -- served Independence in that capacity, however St. Paul's records in Coffeyville show 'Reverend C.H. Canfield' was the rector there between 1878 and 1881. Apparently Reverend Canfield did 'double duty' during much of that time serving both Independence and Coffeyville.

On the first meeting of Epiphany Parish in April, 1872, Bishop Vail attended services, administered confirmation to a small class, and conferred with the newly formed Vestry regards other duties for Father Beatty. Father Beatty would be given a salary of $500.00 per year, and his duties would include missoner work in Neodesha, Elk City, Fredonia, and Coffeyville (my emphasis).

Reverend Beatty was primarily employed as a chaplain for the Santa Fe Railroad while all this was going on. Santa Fe, then as now, ran passenger trains from a terminal in Chicago, Illinois to the west coast, passing through Topeka, Kansas en-route. (Thus the name, 'Atchison [Kansas], Topeka [Kansas] and Santa Fe [New Mexico] Railroad'. Its a good thing Father Beatty had some other source of income (the railroad). Southeast Kansas was /still is a very rural area and we were not able to pay him all that well. Plus which, in 1873 his rectory burned to the ground, and among other tragedies for the Beatty family, an epidemic of Spiral Menengitis spread through town and affected one of the children.

Then November 23, 1879 through February, 1880, Reverend C. H. Canfield took charge of Epiphany Parish in Independence. He is listed as the third rector at St.Paul's in Coffeyville, 1878-1881.

Coffeyville then had a succession of pastors over the next twenty years through the early years of the twentieth century while Epiphany/Independence was essentially dormant. Arthur S. Freese, the pastor at St. Paul's in Coffeyville, 1903-1908 took on Independence as one of his responsibilities in 1903 for about one year.

Then, as you know, if you have been following this blog for a few months now, 1904 saw a renaissance at Epiphany Church in Independence, and lots of very nice, very major changes. But just as Epiphany and Ascension Church (Neodesha) have much in common from our early years, so does Epiphany and St. Paul's in Coffeyville. Where we were incorporated in 1873, St. Paul's was incorporated in 1878 and Neodesha in about 1900. St. Paul's opened their 'new' building at 7th and Elm in Coffeyville in 1912, Ascension in Neodesha opened their 'new' building in 1904 and of course we at Epiphany opened our new building in 1924-28 at 4th and Maple Streets in Independence.

When an Archbishop Stands up to an Airline

Rome/London: Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, has frequently felt impotent in the face of a divided and troublesome Church congregation he leads. On Friday, however, he proved he was a force to be reckoned with when he stepped into the row over whether a British Airways check-in worker could wear a crucifix on a necklace at work.

Speaking in Rome, where he had met the Pope, Dr. Williams said consultations had begun on a possible disinvestment of BA shares. A few hours later, faced with the possible sale of the Church's £10.25 million-worth shares in British Airways and the lingering possibility of a boycott, the U.K.'s flag carrier suddenly announced a review of its 34-page uniform policy, saying it was "unfairly accused" of being anti-Christian.

Dr. Williams spoke with fervour, declaring that, if the airline felt the cross was a source of offence, then he himself would find that fact to be "deeply offensive."

The Church's Ethical Investment Advisory Group, which advises its investment bodies, contacted BA shortly after Dr. Williams's comments and sent a letter to chief executive Willie Walsh requesting a meeting.

Nadia Eweida will hear next month the outcome of an appeal against the company's decision that she cannot openly wear a crucifix on a necklace at work. Ms. Eweida, 55, has refused to go back to her job at Heathrow Airport.

Mr. Walsh did not suggest she would be able to wear her necklace, but said: "Our staff has suggested that we allow the wearing of religious symbols as small lapel badges. This will be considered..."

Dr. Williams is not only leader of the Church of England, but also of the 77 million-strong worldwide Anglican community. If the Church of England sold its shares — small in comparison with the £5.6 billion stock market value of BA — it might have a passing effect on BA's share price. But an Anglican boycott could damage sales and angry customers had been contacting the airline.

Asked at a Rome press conference if he would support a boycott, Dr. Williams noted the dispute had erupted after his own flight to Rome on BA had been booked. "I have a responsibility for the proper use of the resources of staff and money and reorganising at short notice expensively and complicatedly didn't seem to me a responsible use of them," he said.

But then he added: "I'm actually consulting with others in the Church of England about our whole attitude to BA in which, as you know, we have some financial investment. And that's a question that's already been raised for discussion with the Church Commissioners in London."

The Church owns around £10.25 million shares through its church commissioners body, which owns £9 million, and the pension fund which owns £1.25 million.

The Archbishop said: "People of any faith should have the right to display the signs of their faiths in public."

Dr. Williams had clearly made the best use of his time in the air. "It is just perhaps worth noting with some irony," he said, "that amongst the duty-free jewellery items for sale are some crosses."





— © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

© Copyright 2000 - 2006 The Hindu

Arson Suspected in Church Blaze

Officials say Topeka church fire was arson

BY JOHN HANNA
Associated Press

TOPEKA - Arson was the cause of a Friday morning fire that gutted the interior of a Topeka church, including its sanctuary, a local official said.

Authorities estimated damage to St. David's Episcopal Church at between $2.5 million and $3 million, though its walls and most of its roof were intact after firefighters from five engine companies subdued the blaze.

No injuries were reported, but the congregation faces rebuilding the church.

"Fire officials have determined this to be an arson fire," said Greg Bailey, the local fire marshal, declining to give more details because an investigation was continuing.

Church and fire department officials said the fire might have started in a chapel and spread through the adjacent, larger main sanctuary.

Authorities' conclusion that the blaze was no accident stunned church members.

"We're processing the information," said Margaret Telthorst, the head of the church's governing council. "We're grieving, and we're comforting each other."

She wouldn't speculate on who might have set the fire. "Every organization is going to have people who disagree with it, but there's nothing we can even begin to speculate about," she said.

The church, founded in 1953, has 600 to 700 members and is among Kansas' 10 largest Episcopal parishes.

"We may be experiencing a total loss here," said Dean Wolfe, the Episcopal bishop for Kansas. "It's more substantial than we originally thought."

Wolfe and the Rev. Don Davidson, the church's rector, said several area churches from different denominations immediately offered the use of their buildings. St. David's, which normally has services at 8 a.m. and 10:30 a.m., plans to have its Sunday service at 1:30 p.m. at a nearby Lutheran church.

The Episcopal church moved its offices to a nearby vacant home it owns.

Davidson said the loss is difficult for church members because the building is where important events in their lives, including marriages and funerals, occur.

The church's chapel normally is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The blaze was reported to Topeka firefighters shortly after 5 a.m., and they had it under control within the hour, though it wasn't reported as fully out for several more hours.

Our New Presiding Bishop Takes Charge

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori preached at her November 4 investiture service, which was set in the context of Holy Eucharist at Washington National Cathedral. The full text of Jefferts Schori's sermon follows:

Investiture
4 November 2006
National Cathedral

Where is home for you? How would you define your home? A friend in Nevada said to me just before I left that he had thought I would only leave Nevada to go home, and in his mind, that meant Oregon. But in the six years I spent there, Nevada became home. The state song is even called, "Home means Nevada." And for a place filled with folk who have come from elsewhere, that is quite remarkable – all sorts and conditions of rootless people trying to grow new roots in the desert.

So where is home for you? Des Moines or Anchorage or Taipei or San Salvador or Port au Prince?

What makes it home? Familiar landscape, a quality of life, or the presence of particular people?

Some people who engage this journey we call Christianity discover that home is found on the road, whether literally the restless travel that occupies some of us, or the hodos that is the Way of following the one we call the Christ. The home we ultimately seek is found in relationship with creator, with redeemer, with spirit. When Augustine says "our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee, O Lord" he means that our natural home is in God.

The great journey stories of the Hebrew Bible begin with leaving our home in Eden, they tell of wandering for a very long time in search of a new home in the land of promise, and they tell later of returning home from exile. And eventually Israel begins to realize that they are meant to build a home that will draw all the nations to Mount Zion. Isaiah's great vision of a thanksgiving feast on a mountain, to which the whole world is invited, is part of that initial discovery of a universal home-building mission, meant for all. Jesus' inauguration and incarnation of the heavenly banquet is about a home that does not depend on place, but on community gathered in the conscious presence of God.

In Death of the Hired Man, Robert Frost said that "home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in." We all ache for a community that will take us in, with all our warts and quirks and petty meannesses – and yet they still celebrate when they see us coming! That vision of homegoing and homecoming that underlies our deepest spiritual yearnings is also the job assignment each one of us gets in baptism – go home, and while you're at it, help to build a home for everyone else on earth. For none of us can truly find our rest in God until all of our brothers and sisters have also been welcomed home like the prodigal.

There's a wonderful Hebrew word for that vision and work – shalom. It doesn't just mean the sort of peace that comes when we're no longer at war. It's that rich and multihued vision of a world where no one goes hungry because everyone is invited to a seat at the groaning board, it's a vision of a world where no one is sick or in prison because all sorts of disease have been healed, it's a vision of a world where every human being has the capacity to use every good gift that God has given, it is a vision of a world where no one enjoys abundance at the expense of another, it's a vision of a world where all enjoy Sabbath rest in the conscious presence of God. Shalom means that all human beings live together as siblings, at peace with one another and with God, and in right relationship with all of the rest of creation. It is that vision of the lion lying down with the lamb and the small child playing over the den of the adder, where the specter of death no longer holds sway. It is that vision to which Jesus points when he says, "today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing." To say "shalom" is to know our own place and to invite and affirm the place of all of the rest of creation, once more at home in God.

You and I have been invited into that ministry of global peace-making that makes a place and affirms a welcome for all of God's creatures. But more than welcome, that ministry invites all to feast until they are filled with God's abundance. God has spoken that dream in our hearts – through the prophets, through the patriarchs and the mystics, in human flesh in Jesus, and in each one of us at baptism. All are welcome, all are fed, all are satisfied, all are healed of the wounds and lessenings that are part of the not-yet-ness of creation.

That homecoming of shalom is both destination and journey. We cannot embark on the journey without some vision of where we are going, even though we may not reach it this side of the grave. We are really charged with seeing everyplace and all places as home, and living in a way that makes that true for every other creature on the planet. None of us can be fully at home, at rest, enjoying shalom, unless all the world is as well. Shalom is the fruit of living that dream. We live in a day where there is a concrete possibility of making that dream reality for the most destitute, forgotten, and ignored of our fellow travelers – for the castaways, for those in peril or just barely afloat on life's restless sea.

This church has said that our larger vision will be framed and shaped in the coming years by the vision of shalom embedded in the Millennium Development Goals – a world where the hungry are fed, the ill are healed, the young educated, women and men treated equally, and where all have access to clean water and adequate sanitation, basic health care, and the promise of development that does not endanger the rest of creation. That vision of abundant life is achievable in our own day, but only with the passionate commitment of each and every one of us. It is God's vision of homecoming for all humanity. [Applause]

The ability of any of us to enjoy shalom depends on the health of our neighbors. If some do not have the opportunity for health or wholeness, then none of us can enjoy true and perfect holiness. The writer of Ephesians implores us to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace – to be at one in God's shalom. That is our baptismal task and hope, and unless each of the members of the body enjoys shalom we shall not live as one. That dream of God, that word of God spoken in each one of us at baptism also speaks hope of its realization.

The health of our neighbors, in its broadest understanding, is the mission that God has given us. We cannot love God if we fail to love our neighbors into a more whole and holy state of life. If some in this church feel wounded by recent decisions, then our salvation, our health as a body is at some hazard, and it becomes the duty of all of us to seek healing and wholeness. As long as children live exposed on the streets, while seniors go without food to pay for life-sustaining drugs, wherever peoples are sickened by industrial waste, the body suffers, and none of us can say we have finally come home.

What keeps us from the tireless search for that vision of shalom? There are probably only two answers, and they are connected – apathy and fear. One is the unwillingness to acknowledge the pain of other people, the other is an unwillingness to acknowledge that pain with enough courage to act. The cure for each is a deep and abiding hope. If God in Jesus has made captivity captive, has taken fear hostage, it is for the liberation and flourishing of hope. Augustine said that as Christians, we are prisoners of hope – a ridiculously assertive hope, a hope that unflinchingly assails the doors of heaven, a hope that will not cease until that dream of God has swallowed up death forever, a hope that has the audacity to join Jesus in saying, "today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."

And how shall that scripture be fulfilled in our hearing? In the will to make peace with one who disdains our theological position – for his has merit, too, as the fruit of faithfulness. In the courage to challenge our legislators to make poverty history, to fund AIDS work in Africa, and the distribution of anti-malarial mosquito nets, and primary schools where all children are welcomed. In the will to look within our own hearts and confront the shadows that darken the dream that God has planted there.

That scripture is fulfilled each time we reach beyond our narrow self-interest to call another home.

That scripture is fulfilled in ways both small and large, in acts of individuals and of nations, whenever we seek the good of the other, ifor our own good and final homecoming is wrapped up in that.

God has spoken that dream in us, let us rejoice! Let us join the raucous throngs in creation, the sea creatures and the geological features who leap for joy at the vision of all creation restored, restored to proper relationship, to all creation come home at last. May that scripture be fulfilled in our hearing and in our doing.

Shalom, chaverim, shalom, my friends, shalom.

[Congregation responded: Shalom]

The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori
Presiding Bishop and Primate
The Episcopal Church