epiScope

Pass the peace, not the pathogens

Flu raises concerns over cup for communion
By Nancy McLaughlin
Greensboro (NC) News-Record
Feb. 23, 2008 3:00 am

He didn't need scientific data to tell him that this year's flu outbreak might be one of the worst in recent memory. The visual, as the Catholic priest walked through the hospital emergency room two weeks ago, told him that. Just about everyone was suffering from flulike symptoms.

"So in an unscientific and pastoral way I said, 'We've got to take the cup out' " temporarily, said the Rev. Anthony Marcaccio, who pastors St. Pius X Catholic Church on Elm Street, referring to the communal cup shared by the congregation.

That shared communal cup, used by Catholics and Episcopalians, can be another possible mode of transmission for germs, especially during a flu season when even those who got flu shots are coming down with symptoms.

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Evolution revolution

Ministers To Preach Evolution, Scientific Research
WESH-TV

POMPANO BEACH, Fla. -- More than 800 congregations in nine countries will lead discussions this weekend about Christian support for scientific research.

Evolution Weekend was created two years ago by a Butler University dean who wanted to find common beliefs in evolution and religion.

The Rev. Hub Nelson of St. Stephen Lutheran Church in Pompano Beach is among the clergy who plan to preach about evolution to his congregation. Nelson said he believes everything begins and ends with God, but he also wants rigorous scientific research.

The Rev. Nancy McCarthy of St. Mary's Episcopal Church in Deerfield Beach is also participating. She said creation stories in the Bible convey "greater truths about human beings," but Christians should not treat the stories as scientific fact.

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Scientists say evolution fits

Classroom off-limits to other teachings, group's book asserts
By Frank D. Roylance and Michael Hill
Baltimore (MD) Sun
January 5, 2008

Facing continued challenges to evolutionary science from religious conservatives who insist that public schools teach alternative explanations, the National Academy of Sciences has issued a new book that outlines the scientific evidence for evolution.

…The Rev. Joseph Pagano, rector of Emmanual [sic] Episcopal church in Mount Vernon, said he read the booklet and found it compelling.

"It comes down to how certain people understand the nature and authority of the Scriptures," he said. "If one reads them in an extremely literalistic fashion, then one is going to have a problem with evolution. But of course that is not the only way to read them."

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Particle? Wave? Yes

A brief exploration of the point where religion and medicine meet
Kurtis Sauder
Staunton (VA) News Leader -
July 30, 2007

…
On the areas of convergence of science and religion, I most appreciate the perspective of Sir John Polkinghorne, a Cambridge physicist turned Anglican priest. He uses light, which is recognized to have characteristics of both particles and waves, as an analogy for our understanding of truth. When doing research with light, he states that if one asks a "particle-like" question, one gets a "particle-like" answer, and if one asks a "wave-like" question, one gets a "wave-like" answer. Both answers may be right, even if different.

Similarly, if one asks a spiritual or religious question, one is likely to get a spiritual or religious answer, while scientific questions lead to scientific answers. Trying to prove (or disprove) one with the other is not likely to lead to anything productive.

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PB testifies at senate hearing on global warming

Climate change, global poverty linked, Presiding Bishop tells Senate committee
Jefferts Schori calls for immediate action on urgent concerns
Episcopal News Service
By Neva Rae Fox
June 07, 2007

[Episcopal News Service] Calling global warming "one of the great human and spiritual challenges of our time," Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori addressed the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee June 7 during a hearing titled "An Examination of the Views of Religious Organizations Regarding Global Warming."

Representing the National Council of Churches USA (NCC) and the Episcopal Church, Jefferts Schori said, "As one who has been formed both through a deep faith and as a scientist I believe science has revealed to us without equivocation that climate change and global warming are real, and caused in significant part by human activities."

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Faith Leaders Debate Effects Of Limits on Emissions
Washington Post
By Alan Cooperman
Friday, June 8, 2007

As President Bush resisted mandatory limits on carbon emissions at a G-8 summit in Germany yesterday, several U.S. religious leaders urged Congress to speedily enact such limits to avoid a catastrophic rise in global temperatures that would particularly hurt the poor.

But in sharply divided testimony before the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works, some evangelical Protestant leaders took the opposite tack, also citing concern for the poor.
 
Trading the same admonitions from Jesus to protect "the least of these," the climate-change activists said the poor would suffer most from extreme weather; skeptics of climate change said the poor would be hit hardest by the cost of shifting to cleaner energy sources.

Katharine Jefferts Schori, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church and a former oceanographer, argued that "global poverty and climate change are intimately related."

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Religious leaders testify in Senate on warming
Those called by Democrats urge action; GOP witnesses aren't so sure
MSNBC
Reuters

WASHINGTON - Several religious leaders — Episcopal, Catholic, Jewish and evangelical Christian — agreed on Thursday on the need to confront global warming, while other faith representatives questioned the climate change threat.

The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church and a former oceanographer, told the Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee that most religious people have reached accord on the need to act.

"While many in the faith community represented here today may disagree on a variety of issues, in the area of global warming we are increasingly of one mind," Schori said. "The crisis of climate change presents an unprecedented challenge to the goodness, interconnectedness and sanctity of the world God created and loves."

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Christian Leaders Debate Global Warming Before Senate
Christian Post
By Michelle Vu
Fri, Jun. 08 2007

WASHINGTON – Evangelical, mainline and the Catholic traditions were all citing scriptures from the same Bible as support for their stance on global warming, yet they still remained intensely divided over the issue as they shared their views before a U.S. senate committee on Thursday.

The U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works first heard from the presiding bishop of The Episcopal Church, the Most Rev. Dr. Katharine Jefferts Schori, who strongly supports the belief that global warming is real and mainly human induced.

“As one who has been formed both through a deep Christian faith and as a scientist, I believe that science has revealed to us without equivocation that climate change and global warming are real and caused in significant part by human activities,” said the Episcopal Church head.

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Religion, politics mix at warming hearing
San Jose Mercury News, Calif
By Frank Davies
June 8, 2007

WASHINGTON - Religious leaders and senators invoked the Old Testament, the teachings of Jesus, modern-day polls and hard-edged politics Thursday in a lively hearing that turned into a debate about the role of faith and doctrine in tackling global warming.

Using her prerogative as committee chair, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., scheduled the hearing to highlight the growing importance of religious groups, including evangelicals, in grass-roots campaigns to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

After weeks of hearings on climate change that brought scientists, snowmobilers, CEOs, environmental activists and retired admirals before the Environment Committee, this hearing featured the nation's presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, a leader of reform Judaism, a representative of Catholic bishops, evangelical leaders and theologians.

Several leaders said denominations that often disagree over moral issues and policies have found widespread accord on the need to protect Earth and future generations by aggressively combating global warming.

"Faith communities, in the area of global warming, are increasingly of one mind that action is needed," said Episcopal Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, who also spoke for the National Council of Churches, which represents about 45 million Americans.

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Healing prayer

Physician-priest leads healing workshop
Dana Clark Felty
April 18, 2007
Savannah Morning News)

The Rev. Dr. Anne C. Brower prefers to define disease first by what it is not.

Disease is not a punishment from God, she says.

It is not a consequence of sin and doesn't result from lack of spirituality or prayer.

"You are NOT guilty, bad or out of sync with God when you suffer from disease," Brower writes in her book "I'm Not Ready to Die Just Yet: Stories of Healing."

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Ultimate questions

Religiosity noted in Alzheimer caregivers
Saturday, March 24, 2007
RENEE K. GADOUA
RELIGION NOTEBOOK
Syracuse (NY)

An Episcopal priest who formerly ministered in Syracuse isn't surprised by a recent survey that found about a third of people caring for a loved one with Alzheimer's disease say the experience makes them feel more religious.

"When you're dealing with disease, sickness and tragedy, people get shaken out of their lethargy and begin to ask the ultimate questions," the Rev. Paul Kowalewski told the Los Angeles Times. "And when they do, they find God, or God's presence."

Kowalewski has been rector of St. James Episcopal Church in Los Angeles since fall 2005. He was a chaplain at Syracuse University, rector of St. David's Episcopal Church in DeWitt and served as canon visionary for formation and leadership for the Episcopal Diocese of Central New York.

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Reconciling God and Einstein

"Quantum Physics and Theology"
By John Polkinghorne (Yale) - Out 3/20
Published On Thursday, March 15, 2007  10:34 PM
By MADELINE K.B. ROSS
Harvard Crimson Staff Writer

In recent years, the uneasy tension between science and faith has escalated into a full-out war of attrition.

It began with the debates over teaching creationism and evolutionary theory in the early 1990s, and 9/11 further opened the door for accusations about the harm religion and fundamentalism can cause. The ongoing debate over intelligent design is only the latest battlefield in this increasingly contentious culture war. Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris have introduced a new level of vehemence to the attacks on religion with their best-selling anti-religion polemics, which are at least as extreme as a hellfire and brimstone sermon from Jerry Falwell.

In a debate so frenzied on each side, John Polkinghorne’s “Quantum Physics and Theology: An Unexpected Kinship” is a refreshing addition to the discourse: its thesis is actually arguable and not merely a didactic attempt at persuasion. Though Polkinghorne’s book will not provide the reader with conclusive answers on the superiority of religion or science, it thoughtfully examines the intersection of the two—and in doing so, contributes much more to the debate.

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Evolution Sunday coming up

Churches to address debate over evolution
Sermons to explore religion, science

Evolution Sunday: www.evolutionsunday.org

By William Moyer
Binghamton NY
Press & Sun-Bulletin

The observance will not rival Christmas or Easter, but some Christians in Southern Tier churches will mark Evolution Sunday on Feb. 11 to find common ground between religion and science to explain the origins of life.

Advocates of a nondenominational movement -- which has attracted modest support among local clergy -- want to dispel the notion that Christians must choose between religious interpretation and Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. Others, though, contend religion and science is not a marriage made in heaven.

"Science answers the question how. Religion answers the question why," said the Rev. Noreen Suriner, pastor of Trinity Memorial Episcopal Church in Binghamton. "They are two different questions, but they are not mutually exclusive. We can embrace both."

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