August 2012
St. Mark’s News Volume 15/Issue 7
From the Rector July 17 is the day we remember William White, Bishop of Pennsylvania from the date of his consecration in Lambeth Chapel on February 4, 1787, until his death on July 17, 1836. William White of Pennsylvania and Samuel Provoost of New York were the second and third bishops (Samuel Seabury being the first) of the newly independent American Episcopal Church. He was the Presiding Bishop at its organizing General Convention in 1789 and again from 1795 until his death. +White was the chief architect of the Constitution of The Episcopal Church and the “wise overseer of its life during the first generation of its history.” +White’s major innovation was the inclusion of lay people in the decision making process of General Convention. It was William White who established In This Issue the bicameral system of governance for the Episcopal From the Rector .................................... 1 Church, with a House of Bishops and a House of Deputies Outreach ............................................... 3 (clergy and lay people). 223 years have passed since that Parish Life ............................................. 4 first organizing General Convention, and this summer the Music Notes........................................... 6 77th General Convention of the Episcopal Church met in Christian Formation ............................... 7 Indianapolis July 5-12. Parishioner Highlights ........................... 8 Caffeine Ministry.................................... 9
In the days following the General Convention there have Celebrations .......................................... 10 been a number of articles written about the Episcopal August ROTA ....................................... 11 The Calendar can be found on our web site: Church in the national press, and not all of them positive. On the last day of Convention Jay Akasie published a piece http://stmarksaustin.org/communications/cale ndar/ in the Wall Street Journal entitled “What Ails Episcopalians?” This article was full of misrepresentations about the Episcopal Church and about actions taken during General Convention. Its tone verged on vicious. On July 14 Ross Douthat published an op ed piece in the New York Times: “Can Liberal Christianity Be Saved?” Douthat’s article was not exclusively about the Episcopal Church though we served as the paradigm for his criticisms of liberal Protestantism. Unfortunately I think that the readers who were off-put by Douthat’s perspective may not have read his most salient and important point: “What should be wished for is that liberal Christianity recovers a religious reason for its own existence.” He suggested that the most compelling voices for social reform argue in the context of a “personal transcendent God…the divinity of Christ, the need of personal redemption and the importance of Christian missions.” Douthat contends (rightly I think) that the church needs to offer something we can’t simply get from our culture. He is wrong, however, in his pessimistic conclusion that our constant change will result in our demise as a church. In the days since the publication of these articles there has been a flurry of response, both in agreement and disagreement.
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