Redesigned ENS website highlights enhanced news outlets, multimedia, and social media
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redesigned Episcopal News Service website now enhances its news and commentary with myriad advances, including expanded multimedia and a range of social media offerings and share tools, all designed to help you keep up-todate on the Episcopal church. The site is at http://episcopalnewsservice.com. “The new website incorporates the latest social media options to enable visitors to share, tweet, like, email and print articles from a single module,” explained Matthew Davies, Episcopal News Service editor/reporter. Among the new features are a Twitter feed available for real-time Episcopal church and Anglican Communion news, and an Episcopal News Service blog for a wide range of information and live coverage. Twitter: @episcopal_news. The website will continue to present its award-winning news and feature coverage, divided into sections: Top Stories, Churchwide, Worldwide, Commentary, and Noticias. The new site has been designed to spotlight a commitment to video coverage and multimedia. Also new to the site will be the ability to comment and engage in conversation on articles and videos. An enhanced search function allows for quicker and easier
access to archival information. “Based on feedback from an Episcopal News Service survey, the new site has been streamlined so that visitors can access the most important news and navigate the site more easily,” explained Mary Frances Schjonberg, Episcopal News Service editor/reporter. “We have tried to ensure that the changeover runs as smoothly as possible. However, there is one change that might affect some external websites: we have had to abandon the old JavaScript headline feed and replace it with RSS feeds that are compatible with the new publishing platform,” Davies told Episcopal communicators in an e-mail. “If your site has been using the old headline feed, we would encourage you to inform your web administrator to switch to one of our new feeds available at http://episcopaldigitalnetwork.com/ens/rss-2.” While the old feed will continue to work for some time, the articles will no longer be updated, Davies said. The Episcopal News Service’s improvements will continue in 2012. Next will be the redesign of the daily round-up of Episcopal News Service distributed by email (http://episcopaldigitalnetwork.com/ens/email-signup), which will be presented as an HTML version.
Continuing the conversation on inclusive and expansive language from page 20
new direction was needed. The group felt that much scholarship had been written, and many denominations have even adopted gender, race, and ability inclusive language policies at governing levels. But most members of the group felt that they did not see the scholarship and policies lived out on a congregational level. They wanted to bring the conversation out of academia, out of the high reaches of church government, into the stories of people’s lives. The J4WWG decided to organize a conversation, held in Chicago in August 2010, on expansive language through two primary questions: How does our language for God, one another, and our world move us toward God’s justice? What new or other imagery is there to help us connect with God? The stories they heard called for expansion of the way people of faith think and talk about themselves, others, and their God. Instead of restricting language, the stories called for adding more diverse language. The stories called people to expand contextual cultural attentiveness — understanding that language speaks differently in different contexts. The stories called people to expand their understanding of how language is tied to systems of power and has been and can be harmful, oppressive, and death-dealing. And the stories showed that in an environment created through respectful intentional listening, compliance to rules about specific words was not as helpful as commitment to understanding the impact of language.
This kind of commitment can lead to real, meaningful analysis of systems of power that oppose the Gospel; extending a life-affirming hospitality within the church and community. Finally, the stories called people to spread this conversation to as many different places as possible. “I hope there will be many conversations as we continue to explore ways to welcome and value every person who walks through the doors of our churches,” said Kim Robey, chair of the J4WWG and former director of the Women’s Desk at the Episcopal Church Center. In addition to the conversation guide, devotional resources for Advent and Lent are available on the WordMatters website. To learn more about the WordsMatter project, visit http:// wordsmatter.org. There is an Episcopal church-focused WordsMatter site at http://expansivelanguage.blogspot.com and a WordsMatter.Episcopal Facebook page, which continue the conversation on expansive language begun at General Convention 1985 with resolution AO95 authorizing the creation of inclusive language texts for the regular liturgies of the church. This story was compiled from information on various websites, including those of the NCC, the WordsMatter project, and the Episcopal WordsMatter and Facebook sites. www.episcopalwomenscaucus.org • Ruach
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