Musings of an Anglican/Episcopal Priest

Tag: cultural criticism

The Christian Vision Project: Powering down

I thought this was a good example of the benefits and dangers of missions and things like micro-lending. Whenever cultural patterns change there are those–with or without reason–who will react negatively. This also illustrates something interesting regarding development. As much as we may decry child-labor in the west, we do so out of our own experiences of the industrial revolution, and without some form of aid from more industrialized nations to allow them to leap-frog certain levels of development, it’s no surrprise that child labor is a problem in other parts of the world. We only have to look at periods of our own history to see why. As one of my college professors put it, he doubted that any of us in the class room–no matter how capitalist–if transported back in time to the height of the industrial revolution, could resist the pull of socialism in the face of such abuse.

Nine years ago, World Vision staff discovered pervasive bonded child labor in the district of Gudiyatham in India: parents indenturing their children to moneylenders, in payment of debts as small as $20. The children rolled cigarettes, tanned hides, or made matches without freedom to go to school—and with little prospect of ever repaying loans made at ruinous interest rates.

Today, according to World Vision’s extensive house-to-house surveys, child labor in the Gudiyatham district has been reduced by more than 80 percent. Children out of school can be counted in the dozens, rather than the hundreds.

Jayakumar Christian oversees this and other projects that serve the poor. One would think that all Indians would welcome such efforts. Not quite.

{read it all}

UC Berkley comes up with a “moral compass”

{HT: Whitehall}

Some folks at the journalism department at UC Berkley decided to develop a “moral compass” application to inform people of where different faith groups fall on different questions. Unsurprisingly the most liberal voices within the Episcopal Church were given “official” weight. The following are some comments I left on the site which are still awaiting moderation from last night, so I thought I’d go ahead and post them here so the wouldn’t be completely lost to posterity:

# Jody+ Says: Your comment is awaiting moderation.
July 31st, 2007 at 7:36 pm

This is an interesting and informative web site. However, as an Episcopal Priest, I think it is important to point out that the response as to homosexual relationships are blessed by the entire Episcopal Church, thereby making it an official position is incorrect. At the most it should be listed as “varied” or “discerning,” since the item you refer to as indicating official blessing was merely a resolution indicating that some Episcopalians are exploring this as a legitimate position and we are not sufficiently of one mind to condemn them. That is hardly a unified and official position, and I would hazard a guess that while the majority of the Episcopal Church voted not to reject such practices at General convention, a majority of Bishops have not approved such rites, nor would they encourage priests in their dioceses to use them. A little more clarity about our confusion would be appreciated :-p

# Jody+ Says: Your comment is awaiting moderation.
July 31st, 2007 at 7:44 pm

Ditto for several other answers… perhaps you need an Episcopalian “fuzzy” label. Most dioceses would require that homosexuals be celibate in order to be ordained, there are several dioceses of the Episcopal Church that will not ordain women. I understand why some statements must be sweeping when you will find individuals in any faith group that disagree with official teaching, but when official teaching is clearly unclear and/or conflicted while in the process of change you should probably have a way to indicate that for honesty’s sake.

Now, while the folks at Berkley aren’t technically correct in how they have presented the matter, I don’t share the illusions of some of the folks who voted for Gene Robinson or local option for Same Sex blessings at General Convention that these decisions somehow didn’t change our doctrine. They changed them through practice, and it’s sad that people weren’t able to grasp that before they hit the big red button that has almost destroyed our church and communion. Be that as it may, the issues are more nuanced, and I certainly don’t think it’s fair to list those as the “official position” of the Episcopal Church when we are in a struggle over that very thing at the moment.

Perhaps they need to spend some time over at the “Get Religion” blog to straighten them out.

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