OOF

Well, my life has been rather crazy these past 2 weeks+. There's been to much to do and barely enough time to do it in. Hopefully things will get a little bit better over the next couple weeks.

The biggest headline recently has been huricane Katrina and I'm sure you can find plenty on that without my help. I will only say this, I've heard really good things about Episcopal Relief and Development (there website is http://www.er-d.org/) including that most if not all money sent to them goes straight to those in need.

There has been a little news in the Anglican Communion. The Igreja Episcopal Anglicana do Brasil (the Anglican church in Brazil) has been disinvited to the upcoming South/South Encounter. This is more than slightly odd as they, or at least their primate were founding members of the Encounter (story here). More recently the Province of Nigeria has edited its constitution to remove being in communion with the Archbishop of Canturbury as necessary for being Anglican (press release here).

Going along with the news about the South/South Encounter, there are rumors flying that the bishops gathered for the Encounter will break communion with Canturbury and set up Archbishop Akinola as the new first among equals for an Anglican Communion that excludes the US, Canada, Scotland, and England. There may be others they would exclude, probably including the Anglican church in Brazil. Going along with these rumors has been a bit of a debate about whether or not the ABC should attend the Encounter. Some think he shouldn't, some think he should, and everyone in the debate has been assuming that the rumors are essentially true. Personally, I have no idea which answer would be best in the long run and trust the ABC's judgement in the matter.

All this fighting, fingerpointing, and rumor of schism (darn almost had an alliterative trio, anyone have thoughts on what I could have said to make it alliteration?) has been leading me to think more about the Church and the ecumenical movement. There is a great deal I don't know about the ecumenical movement, but it seems to me that the long term goal should be to bring all the various denominations together such that it can be accurately said that there is only one Church. I think this might be called organic unity, I figure it might also be called one structure of church governance. I believe that the greater focus at the moment is on working towards doctrinal agreement, but it seems to me that work on melding the governing authorities would probably pay the most dividends. It would certainly be hard work and could easily take decades if not centuries, but once that sort of unity was achieved the church would be able to hold truly ecumenical councils again, and, with the help of lots of charity, that would enable the church to be truly definative about what the Church believes. Course everyone would also have to remember that the only way to tell if a councel is authoritative is to wait at least a hundred years and then see if everyone agrees with it.

Lord I pray for your church in this world, that it may become one for everyone to see.

Jon