Congratulatioins to Bishop-Elect, The Rev. Dr. Nathan Baxter

It looks like after a year-and-a-half of worry and wonder the Dicoese of Central PA has a new Bishop elected. I heard some mixed reviews when it was announced that Father Baxter was on the short list, but at this point those opinions don't matter much. In what turned out to be a very tight election, now Bishop-Elect Baxter recieved the required number of votes from the lay and clergy orders on the fifth ballot. Read the ENS article below for more info.

Personally, I knew only one candidate well, and had only cursory interactions with a few others, including Bishop-Elect Baxter. Central PA seems an odd place for such a big name in Episcopal/Anglican circles, but he was born and raised in Harrisburg, and spent a lot of time at Lancaster Theological Seminary. So congratulations Bishop-Elect Baxter, I look forward to many years of our working together in the diocese I love.

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Former National Cathedral dean elected Bishop of Central Pennsylvania

By Mary Frances Schjonberg
Saturday, July 22, 2006

Bishop-elect Nathan D. Baxter

[Episcopal News Service] The Rev. Dr. Nathan D. Baxter, 57, rector, St. James' Church, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and former dean of Washington National Cathedral, was elected July 22 bishop of the Diocese of Central Pennsylvania.

The election, on the fifth ballot, came during the diocese’s 136th annual diocesan convention, which began July 21 at Bucknell University, Lewisburg.

An election required a simple majority in both the clergy and lay order. Thus, of the 96 votes cast in the clergy order on the fifth ballot, 49 were needed for election and 84 of the 166 votes in the lay order. Baxter had 49 clergy votes and 88 in the lay order.

Under the canons the Episcopal Church (III.16.4(a)), a majority of the bishops exercising jurisdiction and diocesan Standing Committees must consent to Baxter’s ordination as bishop within 120 days of receiving notice of the election.

After this process is complete, the consecration of the new bishop will take place at Trinity Lutheran Church in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, on October 21. Baxter will succeed Bishop Michael Creighton, 65, who has been bishop since January 1996 and will retire later this year.

Baxter has been rector of St. James, the largest parish in the Diocese of Central Pennsylvania, since October 2003. The diocese has more than 16,000 Episcopalians in 71 congregations and one mission.

A native of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the seat of the diocese, Baxter was graduated in 1976 from the Lancaster Theological Seminary. After canonical studies at the Diocesan School of Christian Studies, he was ordained deacon in June 1977 and priest the following December by Bishop Dean T. Stevenson.

From 1991 to 2003, Baxter was the dean of Washington National Cathedral. During that time, he led the National Day of Prayer and Remembrance Service following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and officiated at the memorial service for the crew of the space shuttle, Columbia. He presided over the funerals and memorial services of many prominent Americans including Thurgood Marshall, William Colby, William Fulbright, Clark Clifford, Pamela Harriman, Ron Brown and Katherine Graham, as well as the American memorial service for Princess Diana.

Previously, he was administrative dean at Episcopal Divinity School, Cambridge, Massachusetts; dean, Lancaster Theological Seminary; chaplain, St. Paul’s College Lawrenceville, Virginia; rector, St. Cyprian’s Church, Hampton, Virginia; and curate, St. John’s Church, Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He serves as a member of the diocesan finance committee, Bishop's Council of Advice, and is chair of the diocesan deputation to General Convention.

In l984, he completed the Doctor of Ministry degree at Lancaster Theological Seminary, where he is presently adjunct professor of preaching. Lancaster Seminary and Washington National Cathedral have established endowed lectureships in his name. Harvard Divinity School named him a Charles E. Merrill Fellow in 1998 and Philadelphia Lutheran Seminary named a classroom in his honor in 2006.

A decorated veteran, he received the Vietnam Cross of Gallantry with Palm. He is an associate of Holy Cross Monastery and a chaplain in the Order of St. John of Jerusalem. His publications include "Visions for the Millennium" and the award winning "Challenge and Comfort: A Pastor’s Thoughts for a Troubled Nation."

In 1969, Baxter married Mary Ellen Walker Baxter of York, Pennsylvania. She is a musician and educator. They have two children, two foster children and 9 grandchildren.

The other nominees were: the Rev. Stephen T. Ayres, 51, vicar, Old North Church, Boston, Massachusetts; the Rev. Catherine A. Munz, 52, rector, St. Brendan's Church, Franklin Park, Pennsylvania; the Rev. Dr. Gary Nicolosi, 55, rector, St. Peter's Church, Morristown, New Jersey; and the Rev. Canon Mark Scheneman, 57, rector, St. John's Church, Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

Information about all the nominees is available at http://www.diocesecpa.org/discernment/candidates.cfm

-- The Rev. Mary Frances Schjonberg is national correspondent for the Episcopal News Service.

called to the carpet

Warning - what follows is a clear indication that I am still sitting the right of center on matters relating to theology. The following article has re-opened my eyes to I had the other day. What if the decline in mainline churches is the direct result of the teaching of mainline churches? Why in the hell would someone want to waste 10% of their time, talents, and treasure as well as one of two days when they can sleep-in to go to a church that tells them that God doesn't care what they do as long as they "love their neighbor"? What if people are actually listening to their priests and pastors, inwardly digesting their words, and doing what they want because God (in the form of a liberal priest) says its ok?

The op-ed piece below is some great fodder for conversation, anybody willing to join?

Liberal Christianity is paying for its sins

Out-of-the-mainstream beliefs about gay marriage and supposedly sexist doctrines are gutting old-line faiths.

Source: The Los Angeles Times

July 9, 2006
By Charlotte Allen, CHARLOTTE ALLEN is Catholicism editor for Beliefnet and the author of "The Human Christ: The Search for the Historical Jesus."

The accelerating fragmentation of the strife-torn Episcopal Church USA, in which several parishes and even a few dioceses are opting out of the church, isn't simply about gay bishops, the blessing of same-sex unions or the election of a woman as presiding bishop. It also is about the meltdown of liberal Christianity.

Embraced by the leadership of all the mainline Protestant denominations, as well as large segments of American Catholicism, liberal Christianity has been hailed by its boosters for 40 years as the future of the Christian church.

Instead, as all but a few die-hards now admit, all the mainline churches and movements within churches that have blurred doctrine and softened moral precepts are demographically declining and, in the case of the Episcopal Church, disintegrating.

It is not entirely coincidental that at about the same time that Episcopalians, at their general convention in Columbus, Ohio, were thumbing their noses at a directive from the worldwide Anglican Communion that they "repent" of confirming the openly gay Bishop V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire three years ago, the Presbyterian Church USA, at its general assembly in Birmingham, Ala., was turning itself into the laughingstock of the blogosphere by tacitly approving alternative designations for the supposedly sexist Christian Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Among the suggested names were "Mother, Child and Womb" and "Rock, Redeemer and Friend." Moved by the spirit of the Presbyterian revisionists, Beliefnet blogger Rod Dreher held a "Name That Trinity" contest. Entries included "Rock, Scissors and Paper" and "Larry, Curly and Moe."

Following the Episcopalian lead, the Presbyterians also voted to give local congregations the freedom to ordain openly cohabiting gay and lesbian ministers and endorsed the legalization of medical marijuana. (The latter may be a good idea, but it is hard to see how it falls under the theological purview of a Christian denomination.)

The Presbyterian Church USA is famous for its 1993 conference, cosponsored with the United Methodist Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and other mainline churches, in which participants "reimagined" God as "Our Maker Sophia" and held a feminist-inspired "milk and honey" ritual designed to replace traditional bread-and-wine Communion.

As if to one-up the Presbyterians in jettisoning age-old elements of Christian belief, the Episcopalians at Columbus overwhelmingly refused even to consider a resolution affirming that Jesus Christ is Lord. When a Christian church cannot bring itself to endorse a bedrock Christian theological statement repeatedly found in the New Testament, it is not a serious Christian church. It's a Church of What's Happening Now, conferring a feel-good imprimatur on whatever the liberal elements of secular society deem permissible or politically correct.

You want to have gay sex? Be a female bishop? Change God's name to Sophia? Go ahead. The just-elected Episcopal presiding bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori, is a one-woman combination of all these things, having voted for Robinson, blessed same-sex couples in her Nevada diocese, prayed to a female Jesus at the Columbus convention and invited former Newark, N.J., bishop John Shelby Spong, famous for denying Christ's divinity, to address her priests.

When a church doesn't take itself seriously, neither do its members. It is hard to believe that as recently as 1960, members of mainline churches — Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans and the like — accounted for 40% of all American Protestants. Today, it's more like 12% (17 million out of 135 million). Some of the precipitous decline is due to lower birthrates among the generally blue-state mainliners, but it also is clear that millions of mainline adherents (and especially their children) have simply walked out of the pews never to return. According to the Hartford Institute for Religious Research, in 1965, there were 3.4 million Episcopalians; now, there are 2.3 million. The number of Presbyterians fell from 4.3 million in 1965 to 2.5 million today. Compare that with 16 million members reported by the Southern Baptists.

When your religion says "whatever" on doctrinal matters, regards Jesus as just another wise teacher, refuses on principle to evangelize and lets you do pretty much what you want, it's a short step to deciding that one of the things you don't want to do is get up on Sunday morning and go to church.

It doesn't help matters that the mainline churches were pioneers in ordaining women to the clergy, to the point that 25% of all Episcopal priests these days are female, as are 29% of all Presbyterian pastors, according to the two churches. A causal connection between a critical mass of female clergy and a mass exodus from the churches, especially among men, would be difficult to establish, but is it entirely a coincidence? Sociologist Rodney Stark ("The Rise of Christianity") and historian Philip Jenkins ("The Next Christendom") contend that the more demands, ethical and doctrinal, that a faith places upon its adherents, the deeper the adherents' commitment to that faith. Evangelical and Pentecostal churches, which preach biblical morality, have no trouble saying that Jesus is Lord, and they generally eschew women's ordination. The churches are growing robustly, both in the United States and around the world.

Despite the fact that median Sunday attendance at Episcopal churches is 80 worshipers, the Episcopal Church, as a whole, is financially equipped to carry on for some time, thanks to its inventory of vintage real estate and huge endowments left over from the days (no more!) when it was the Republican Party at prayer. Furthermore, it has offset some of its demographic losses by attracting disaffected liberal Catholics and gays and lesbians. The less endowed Presbyterian Church USA is in deeper trouble. Just before its general assembly in Birmingham, it announced that it would eliminate 75 jobs to meet a $9.15-million budget cut at its headquarters, the third such round of job cuts in four years.

The Episcopalians have smells, bells, needlework cushions and colorfully garbed, Catholic-looking bishops as draws, but who, under the present circumstances, wants to become a Presbyterian?

Still, it must be galling to Episcopal liberals that many of the parishes and dioceses (including that of San Joaquin, Calif.) that want to pull out of the Episcopal Church USA are growing instead of shrinking, have live people in the pews who pay for the upkeep of their churches and don't have to rely on dead rich people. The 21-year-old Christ Church Episcopal in Plano, Texas, for example, is one of the largest Episcopal churches in the country. Its 2,200 worshipers on any given Sunday are about equal to the number of active Episcopalians in Jefferts Schori's entire Nevada diocese.

It's no surprise that Christ Church, like the other dissident parishes, preaches a very conservative theology. Its break from the national church came after Rowan Williams, archbishop of Canterbury and head of the Anglican Communion, proposed a two-tier membership in which the Episcopal Church USA and other churches that decline to adhere to traditional biblical standards would have "associate" status in the communion. The dissidents hope to retain full communication with Canterbury by establishing oversight by non-U.S. Anglican bishops.

As for the rest of the Episcopalians, the phrase "deck chairs on the Titanic" comes to mind. A number of liberal Episcopal websites are devoted these days to dissing Peter Akinola, outspoken primate of the Anglican diocese of Nigeria, who, like the vast majority of the world's 77 million Anglicans reported by the Anglican Communion, believes that "homosexual practice" is "incompatible with Scripture" (those words are from the communion's 1998 resolution at the Lambeth conference of bishops). Akinola might have the numbers on his side, but he is now the Voldemort — no, make that the Karl Rove — of the U.S. Episcopal world. Other liberals fume over a feeble last-minute resolution in Columbus calling for "restraint" in consecrating bishops whose lifestyle might offend "the wider church" — a resolution immediately ignored when a second openly cohabitating gay man was nominated for bishop of Newark.

So this is the liberal Christianity that was supposed to be the Christianity of the future: disarray, schism, rapidly falling numbers of adherents, a collapse of Christology and national meetings that rival those of the Modern Language Assn. for their potential for cheap laughs. And they keep telling the Catholic Church that it had better get with the liberal program — ordain women, bless gay unions and so forth — or die. Sure.