The Rev. Kevin M. Baker, who had raised questions about Phoenix's name change when it was announced at the Baltimore- Washington's annual meeting in May, said he wasn't surprised by the Judicial Council's decision.
However, "it seems to me that we need more discussion on this issue," said Baker, pastor of Oakdale Emory United Methodist Church in Olney. "We need a chance to talk about the implications of it."
He said he wishes that the Judicial Council had called for more examination of theological issues raised by transgender people. For example, it's unclear to Baker whether transgender clergy could be married. United Methodism does not perform marriages of gays or lesbians and requires unmarried clergy to remain celibate.
"This just is, in my opinion, another chink in a long fence of issues that we're not dealing well with in the church," such as pornography and divorce, he said.
I felt the choice of the fence metaphor was an interesting one. Christianity has relied too much on the metaphor of division: the profane versus the sacred. However, I believe that Jesus came to welcome all. Even if he kept to the profane vs sacred metaphor, he deliberately chose to move the fence to include people, rather than to keep them out.
Bishop Trevor Mwamba of Botswana has sharply criticized Bishop Nolbert Kunonga of Zimbabwe, whose name was mentioned in infamy several times previously here. Kunonga has moved to take his diocese out of the Province of Central Africa; both bishops are in this province.
Apparently, Kunonga has moved to withdraw his diocese because some other bishops support "full Christian rights" for LGBT people. I do not believe that Bishop Mwamba allows same-sex marriages to be blessed, or ordains partnered LGBT people, but he has committed to the listening process and reconciliation demanded by the Windsor Report, and presumably supports legal protections against discrimination. He feels that Kunonga is using LGBT people as a scapegoat in his quest for personal power. Kunonga, in turn, had accused Bishop Mwamba of being an "avowed homosexual" in print.
Clerical Whispers, a blog by an Irish Catholic priest, reports on Fernando Lugo, a RC bishop who resigned his orders to run for political office in Paraguay. Lugo is reportedly very supportive of the poor. The RC hierarchy is displeased. The Catholics view ordination as a lifelong sacrament, so Lugo is still a priest in their tradition. However, from a secular standpoint, he does not exercise his authority in the church, so there are hopefully no grounds for the government to challenge his candidacy; Paraguayan laws forbid religious leaders from seeking office.
Additionally, the blog reports that Bishop Martinus Muskens took an early retirement amidst controversy over his promotion of condoms for the purpose of AIDS prevention. Madpriest asks, sarcastically, whether he jumped or whether he was pushed. Muskens said that use of condoms is permitted by the Catholic doctrine of lesser evil.
Lifesite (urk) describes condom promotion in Uganda as "the imposition of the international condom campaign". They quote Martin Sempa, a minister and AIDS activist, who says that abstinence must remain the main thing. In fact, Uganda is about 42% Catholic and 35% Anglican, so their assertions do bear a second look.
Lifesite argues that Uganda was a major AIDS success story (this is true, although some dispute the statistics) due to high level political commitment, and the religiosity of the populace. They argue that since the condom campaign was "imposed", Uganda's AIDS prevalence has risen. I don't have data to support or refute their contention right now. But I will say that people have sex. They have it before they are married, and they also have sex outside of marriage. Perhaps Ugandans decreased rates of non-marital sex during the initial outbreak, but they may now be reverting to the mean. Human Rights Watch also argues that abstinence education in Uganda takes part in exclusion about provision of condoms. Sex education has in fact spread false information about condom ineffectiveness, or has left out information about condoms at all.
Interestingly enough, to promote religious tolerance, Bishop Muskens (he's still a Bishop in my book) asked Danish Catholics to pray to God using the name Allah. The latter simply means God in Arabic; it is not any sort of special name. Wikipedia reports that Arabic Christians say Allah as well, and that in fact their use of the term predates Islam by several centuries. Neither contention should surprise anyone.
Addition: Lastly, a US judge has dismissed a key part of Johnson and Johnson's suit against the American Red Cross, namely J&J's contention that ARC agreed to never sell products with the red cross on them.
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