In September 2022, I traveled to Oberammergau, Germany, to attend the village’s world-famous, once-a-decade Passion play. I’m working on a book about how local communities reinterpret the Stations of the Cross to claim divine solidarity in the face of injustice, a project that has led me to Passion rituals of many kinds. Last Good Friday, students invited me to join an ecumenical Atlanta congregation composed predominantly of people living on the street as they carried a cross down a gentrified stretch of busy Ponce de Leon Avenue to lament the racialized displacement wrought by recent urban redevelopment. The next day, a community in Atlanta’s Peoplestown neighborhood memorialized Jesus’ Crucifixion beside the burned-out Wendy’s parking lot where police officers killed Rayshard Brooks in 2020. I’ve become captivated by the question of what it is about the Stations of the Cross—this quintessentially traditional, medieval devotion and its fourteen-station template—that makes it such a rich site of theological agency for communities on the margins.
… Read more » … lire la suite »

Our Lord Jesus prays in His High Priestly prayer in John 17: “Holy Father, keep them in Your name, which You have given Me, that they may be one, even as We are one” (v. 17). Our Lord Jesus is praying for His disciples. He is praying for His Church. He is praying for you and me today.

Our Lord’s prayer can be understood in this way: that His Church would remain one—not that we would somehow achieve this oneness by our actions. Our Lord is praying that the oneness that we already have in Him would be preserved. That we would remain one. The Lutheran Reformers expressed this in the Augsburg Confession in saying that after coming to agreement on what we teach and confess we would live “in unity and concord in the one Christian Church” (AC Preface 4).
… Read more » … lire la suite »

At least 494 religious buildings in Ukraine have been destroyed, damaged, or looted as a result of the Russian invasion—and seizure of religious buildings for use as Russian military bases increases the scale of destruction of religious sites in Ukraine, reports the Institute for Religious Freedom.

The Institute for Religious Freedom (IRF Ukraine), a non-governmental human rights organisation founded in 2001 in Kyiv, Ukraine, presented the data on the impact of the war on Ukrainian religious communities during the Summit on International Religious Freedom in Washington, DC on 1 February.
… Read more » … lire la suite »

For too many Catholics, ordained or lay, the responsibilities of the laity are those “delegated” by the priest or bishop.

As the continental assemblies for the Synod of Bishops make clear that hot-button issues — like sexuality, climate change and the role of women in the church — are not going away, the Dicastery for Laity, the Family and Life is pointing at a more fundamental issue at stake in learning to be a “synodal church”: What responsibility comes from baptism and unites all Catholics?
… Read more » … lire la suite »

A new collaboration of faith and science looks to equip Catholics with the knowledge and means to turn prayers into actions on the multitude of environmental challenges around the globe, from climate change and pollution, to the rapid loss of species and ecosystems.

“Our Common Home: A Guide to Caring for Our Living Planet,” is a just-released digital and print resource to help Catholic communities respond to Pope Francis’ calls to protect the created world and develop a more sustainable future. It was the result of a joint initiative between the Vatican Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development and the Stockholm Environment Institute, a scientific research and policy organization headquartered in the Swedish capital. The idea was first raised in 2020 by the Swedish embassy to the Holy See. The embassy funded the project.
… Read more » … lire la suite »

Members of the global Anglican Consultative Council took time out from their week-long 18th plenary meeting (ACC-18) in Accra today to visit a 17th-century castle on Ghana’s Cape Coast. At the height of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, many enslaved Africans were held at Cape Coast Castle before being transported to the Americas on British slave ships. After touring the castle and visiting the basement dungeons, known as slave holes, and the cells for condemned prisoners, members of the ACC took part in a Service of Reflection and Reconciliation at the adjacent Christ Church Anglican Cathedral.

They were joined by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, President of the ACC; the Archbishop of Ghana and Primate of West Africa, the host province of ACC-18, Cyril Ben-Smith; and the Archbishop of the West Indies and Bishop of Jamaica, Howard Gregory, attending ACC-18 in his role as Chair of the Commission on Theological Education in the Anglican Communion.
… Read more » … lire la suite »

A proposal for a piece of work to “explore theological questions regarding structure and decision-making [in the Anglican Communion] to help address our differences” has been welcomed by members of the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC).

Today (Tuesday 14 February), at their week-long meeting in Accra, Ghana, members of the ACC, gathered for their 18^th plenary meeting (ACC-18), affirmed “the importance of seeking to walk together to the highest degree possible, and learning from our ecumenical conversations how to accommodate differentiation patiently and respectfully.”
… Read more » … lire la suite »

The Episcopal Church’s representatives to the Anglican Consultative Council participated Feb. 14 in a discussion on the challenges of maintaining – and, in some ways, restoring – unity among the worldwide Anglican Communion’s 42 provinces at a time of stark divisions over human sexuality and marriage equality.

About 110 representatives from 39 of those provinces are in Accra, Ghana, this week for the 18th meeting of ACC, one of the Anglican Communion’s four Instruments of Communion and the only to include laity. The other three are the Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops, the Primates’ Meeting and the archbishop of Canterbury, an office known as the “focus of unity.”
… Read more » … lire la suite »

In a post-colonial world, the Church must find ways of demonstrating unity without one powerful group imposing its values on another, the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby said today.

In a presidential address to the 18th plenary meeting of the global Anglican Consultative Council (ACC-18), gathered in Accra, Ghana, Archbishop Justin said that “no one group should order the life and culture of another. Such control is often neo-colonial abuse.”
… Read more » … lire la suite »