News Brief
Episcopal News Service. May 10, 1984 [84103]
The Center for Christian Spirituality-West opens this month at Church of the Angels here. Headed by the Rev. George Trippe, it is a branch of the Center for Christian Spirituality at the General Theological Seminary in New York. For the past three years, Trippe has worked closely with the Center at General and with its founder-director, the Rev. Alan Jones. Like its eastern counterpart, Center-West will offer educational programs in spirituality; help design spirituality programs for congregations; and serve as a focal point for the establishment of an ongoing training program for spiritual directors. While Center-West is a branch of the original Center, it receives no funding from the parent body. Trippe says, "We begin operations on a shoe-string... and would be happy to receive donations, which will be tax deductible."
In the October issue of the Diocese of Albany's Northern Adirondack Deanery Quarterly, readers were invited to respond to the hypothesis that Episcopalians are apathetic about their faith, as evidenced by their non-support of Christian Education programs. It appears that residents of the Deanery agree; no responses were received.
A Baptist minister and a Church of England vicar are making history here with a job-sharing partnership. Since May 9, the Rev. Michael Land (Anglican) and the Rev. Brian Carpenter (Baptist) have been working together at High Hill Ecumenical Project in northeast London. The project, believed to be the first in which a Baptist minister has had his pay made up by both the Anglican and Baptist churches, originated when Land needed more full-time parish help. Rather than seek a curate, he asked the other Christian congregation in the area, the Baptists, to join him in serving the community of 17,000 people. The churches will worship independently except for a joint Sunday evening service. According to a spokesman, "The two churches saw that to be effective, uniting in an ecumenical project would allow the two clergy to work together as partners, and everyone would benefit from pooling resources and people."
Despite a statement by Bishop David Gitari that "you cannot prove strongly from the Bible that it is against the ordination of women", a proposal to do so has been voted down, 79-110, by the Mount Kenya East Diocese of the Anglican Church of the Province of Kenya. One of the reasons, according to a report here from the All Africa Press, was the opponents' belief that "Since a woman belongs to the man, who has paid dowry for her (in marriage), how can she then become his pastor?"
A group of Christians here had been providing meals and accommodations for homeless people in a church during the winter, but when they sent a delegation to the city welfare department to demand enforcement of legal protection for unemployed laborers, city officials called the police. Three people were arrested, two of whom, Matsumato Hiroshi and Tsunose Sakae, are active lay members of the Nippon Sei Ko Kai (the Anglican Church in Japan). They were held for over two months before being released on bail of one million yen.
The Rt. Rev. John Acland Rawmahani, Bishop of Zanzibar and Tanga, was recently named as new Primate of the Anglican Church of the Province of Tanzania. He succeeds the Most Rev. Musa Kahurananga, who retired last year. Prior to his 1930 consecration, Ramadhani was, for four years, warden of St. Mark's College, Dar es Salaam, one of two theological colleges in the Province. He was educated at the University of Dar es Salaam and the University of Birmingham in Great Britain. Under the provincial constitution, Ramadhani will continue as diocesan bishop. He also represents his Province on the Anglican Consultative Council.
A Gallup Poll conducted for the Sunday Telegraph here found that among British Protestants, 70 percent support the ordination of women to the priesthood, with only 16 percent opposed. Among Roman Catholics, the figures were 37 percent in favor and 49 percent against. This represents a significant change since 1978, when only 25 percent of Roman Catholics approved of women priests. As the effort to attain unity with the Roman and Orthodox Churches has been used to argue against ordination of women, those surveyed who supported the priesting of women were asked whether this were more important than church unity. Of those who answered, 31 percent thought women priests were more important and 38 percent chose church unity.
Archdeacon Mark S. Sisk of the Episcopal Diocese of New York has been named president and dean of Seabury-Western Theological Seminary in Evanston, Ill. and will take office on July 1. A graduate of the University of Maryland and the General Theological Seminary, he has served as archdeacon in New York since 1977. At Seabury-Western, he will succeed Dean O. C. Edwards, Jr., who resigned the post to teach homiletics at the school. The seminary, which has about 60 full-time and 20 part-time students, was the product of a merger, 50 years ago, of an evangelical and an Anglo-Catholic seminary. According to Sisk, parts of both traditions have remained.