'What do you know about Joseph Stalin?' asks Bishop Steven Charleston.

[Louie Crew <lcrew@andromeda.rutgers.edu>]

Suppose Jesus had simply made the Good Samaritan disappear.  That would
have been easy enough, and even if Jesus didn't, the Gospel writers might
have done the same thing; and who now would know?

It is not our job to decide whom God may or may not love.  It is our job to
proclaim that God loves absolutely everybody.  Any lesser claim diminishes
Christianity and reflects ill on those who claim to be Jesus' disciples.

Pity the Lambeth Conference for selling its Christian birthright for a mess
of Respectability.   

Don't ask God to forgive you your trespasses as you forgive +Gene's unless
you are prepared to live with the consequences.   Be sure that you love
your lesbian and gay neighbor as much as you love yourselves.

Louie Crew, PhD, DD, DD, DHL, Queer for Christ's Sake!

> From the Episcopal Cafe

   The empty space in the photograph

   By Steven Charleston 

   What do you know about Joseph Stalin? I ask that odd question because
   a momentary glance back to his era in the old Soviet Union gives us a
   useful image (or perhaps, the lack of one) to use in considering our
   situation in the Anglican Communion.

   Stalin liked for people to disappear. Those he purged actually did
   vanish in a very real physical sense because he had them executed, but
   they also vanished from memory by being erased from public
   photographs.

   This idea was nothing new. Egyptian pharaohs had been chiseling out
   the face of unpopular or discredited predecessors thousands of years
   before Joe Stalin took the hint. .....

   Read the rest at http://www.episcopalcafe.com/daily/anglican_communion/the_empty_space_in_the_photogr.php