Open Minds

The Newsletter of Albany Via Media

December, 2007

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Our new title honors two essential characteristics of the Episcopal Church and, indeed, the Anglican tradition. “Open” refers to our Church’s (and Christ’s) embrace of all manner of people and the new ideas that they bring with them. “Mind” reflects our willingness to use our Godgiven reason, and not just scripture and tradition, to keep Christ’s message ever new, ever relevant.

Bob and Marya Dodd

Although Albany Via Media will sponsor this meeting with one of the Church’s foremost leaders, it will be advertised throughout the Diocese of Albany and will, we hope, attract Episcopalians and others of every persuasion.

Albany Via Media will hold its Annual Meeting from 1 to 3 PM on Saturday, February 9, 2008 at St. Andrew’s Church, Albany. Other parts of the Annual Meeting agenda remain to be determined, but a necessary component is the election of Board members. Our Nominating Committee has proposed the following slate:

Mrs. Dodd, Mrs. Hamilton, and Fr. Smith are running for a second three-year term. Nominations from the floor are also welcome.

The Rev. Barbara Morgan Retires

The Rev. Barbara Jean Morgan, Rector of the Church of St. John in the Wilderness, Copake Falls since 1998, has retired and moved to nearby Great Barrington, MA, where she and her two cats, Toby and Julie, are enjoying life in the Berkshires.

Rev. Morgan was born in Roselle Park, New Jersey, raised in Delaware, and graduated from Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, MA. Before she came to St. John’s, she served as an assistant at Trinity Church, Alpena, Michigan, where she ran a women’s shelter for six years. Committed to an inclusive Episcopal Church, Barbara was a charter member of Albany Via Media and served on its Board of Directors.

Barbara saw the greater community as her parish. Anyone in need of a sympathetic ear, a ride to the doctor, or just a gentle smile, found a blessing in her ministry. Her many friends in Copake, both within and beyond St. John’s, will miss her devoted care to all of her “flock.” She was indeed a true pastor.

Milbrey Zelley and Robert Dodd

Bonnie Anderson: A Profile

Some people do so many things so well that they give the rest of us an inferiority complex. Bonnie Anderson, who will visit St. Andrew’s Albany on Saturday, 19 January, is a good example. A veteran of 35 years of lay ministry at the congregational, diocesan, provincial, national and international levels, Anderson has a resume’ that can only be described as formidable. She served as a lay deputy to six General Conventions and was elected Vice President of the House of Deputies in 2003 and President thereof in 2006. As President, her responsibilities include presiding over the House of Deputies, appointing Deputies to legislative committees (and appointing new committees as needed), and naming clerical and lay members to TEC’s committees, commissions, etc. In addition, she is Vice Chairperson of the Executive Council and Vice President of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society (DFMS), the corporate entity of TEC.

Bonnie’s interests and expertise touch almost every aspect of the Church. As three-term Chairperson of the Joint Standing Committee on Program, Budget and Finance, she championed the concept of a “missiondriven budget” and developed a consensus building process for General Convention.

Long committed to youth and their full inclusion in TEC, she wrote the resolution at the 71st General Convention that granted seat and voice to an official youth presence at General Convention.

In addition to Bonnie’s church work, which has brought her an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree from the Episcopal Divinity School and an honorary Doctor of Canon Law degree from Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, she has been a strong voice for enlightened public policy. The governor of Michigan appointed her as a public member of the Michigan Environmental Review Board. She has also been an adjunct lecturer at the University of Michigan in the School of Natural Resources and in the Women’s Studies Department. Bonnie’s publications include “Spirituality and the Earth: Exploring Connections”, “A Citizen’s Guidebook to the Great Lakes Ecosystem” and “White Racism: Look Me in the Eye.”

Married for 41 years, Bonnie and her husband Glen live in southeastern Michigan. They have three grown children and three grandchildren.

Bonnie Anderson’s resume’ is so daunting that it comes as a relief to find one tiny area where she’s running behind us. Marya and I have an 8 to 3 lead in grandchildren. Of course, it’s still early in the game...for Bonnie!

Bob Dodd

A Movie Review by Betsy Hamilton

 I saw Dan Karslake’s acclaimed film because I wanted to know more about the controversy between those who advocate full acceptance of homosexuals in our society and as clergy in our churches and those who say Scripture forbids it. I was not disappointed.

Prominent theologians discussed in a non-provocative way the reasons that they do not take as literal commands the ritual prohibitions derived from man’s understanding of our nature in the era of the development of the Bible.

But far more important than its theology was the film’s depiction of the experience of five families (including those of former House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt and New Hampshire’s Bishop, Gene Robinson) who learned to accept the fact of their children’s homosexuality, though not without suffering. One mother, who learned to accept gays only after her daughter’s suicide, later became a zealous advocate for gay rights.

Never again will I be able to witness the easy tossing about of conflicting Scripture passages about what our Church permits without a feeling of despair at our capacity to ignore the suffering that we allow because of humanity’s capacity to persecute “the others” in our midst.

A recent cartoon from Cartoon Church, “The End of the World in Progress,” shows a view of the Earth from space. There is obviously some serious shooting going on as depicted by the four mushroom clouds and several other continent-wide explosions. A closer look reveals an ICBM wending its way from one continent to another. Off to the side one notes what looks like a church with the caption “Debate about Gay bishops continues.”

Well, that’s it in a nutshell. Like a movie you’ve seen before, events in the Anglican Communion and the Episcopal Church are playing themselves out in an ohso-familiar way. For the last four years or so, the Chapman Memo1 has provided a quite accurate blueprint for the march out of the Episcopal Church by the extreme right.

Mssrs. Bena and Herzog have followed their own paths along the trail marked out by Geoff Chapman’s reply to a query from some interested party back in January of 2004.

So where do things stand today? The short answer is: where they did four years ago, just farther along. What follows are some thoughts/observations from “reading the mail,” as they say in the ham radio world.

http://www.thinkinganglicans.org.uk/ss/archives/000405.html

of anything TEC says or does. Nothing we offer is acceptable to them. Why do we still try? Fair mindedness, the liberal’s Achilles heel.

Chris Smith+

The priests and the princes
are praising process
while the prophets rage
and the poets weep.
The sheep bleat softly.

The shepherd and staff
are busy, as scheduled,
but make a note
to “comfort the sheep”
the first thing in the morning.

The priests and the princes
are still at the altar
in prayer and in praise
Of things as they are.
They’re deaf to the bleating.

The prophets have left;
they camp out side
where they might be heard;
And the poets have gone
in search of stars.

The sheep have strayed,
but the shepherd’s in committee,
and has no time
To look for the lost....
O Lamb of God, have mercy upon us!