Are They Liberals or Libertines?

I was wandering through the exhibitions at General Convention one day when I spotted Mark Harris and Sarah Dylan Breuer in front of The Witness booth. I couldn't pass up the opportunity to snap this picture of two of my favorite online authors.

Mark has another good essay up, titled Liberal or Libertine and other questions beyond Covenant. He points out that the Living Church used a poor choice of words in their title for an article on Dr. Williams' latest communication. He then tries to tease out a little more meaning from the Archbishop's words:

...The problem with the Archbishop’s remark is that it supposes an either / or sort of situation: either there is “just a loose grouping of people who care to describe themselves as Anglicans but enjoy unconfined local liberties,” or there are the real Anglicans, who do not “enjoy unconfined local liberties.” If the either / or were indeed the choice, an all or nothing choice, the gang “describing themselves as Anglicans” would perhaps rightly be called, as the Living Church article announce, “libertine.”

But this is not the situation in the Episcopal Church. The Episcopal Church, acting in General Convention, our notion of a synod, does not “enjoy unconfined local liberties.” To think that that was what General Convention had in mind in its difficult and bloodied debates on the issues presented in the Windsor Report requests would be an insult to the faithfulness of that gathering. To think it of the Episcopal Church as a whole is simply false...

A member of the community posted on the forum an announcement found in the Diocese of Michigan's newsletter:

The Jazz Mass at Canterbury House at UM on Saturday, July 22, at 5 p.m., will feature guest speaker Sarah Dylan Breuer, to help celebrate the commemoration of St. Mary Magdalene.

Breuer is a prominent lay activist in the Episcopal Church, especially for the full inclusion of TBLG persons in church ministry and leadership; serves as president of Gathering the Next Generation (the national network of Generation X [born 1961-1981] Episcopalians), and is the part-time editor of The Witness magazine --- among other things. Her lectionary blog, which offers reflections on biblical readings for the coming Sunday, was recently named among "The Best Spiritual Blogs on the Internet" by Beliefnet.com. As a longtime U2 fan, she contributed six meditations to the recent book Get Up Off Your Knees: Preaching the U2 Catalog. Breuer was a member, together with Presiding Bishop-elect Katharine cJefferts Schori, of the Special Commission on the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion, which worked to draft a response to the Windsor Report for the recent General Convention.

For more information on Canterbury's Jazz Mass, visit http://canterburyhouse.org/jazzmass.html.

So if you are anywhere near Ann Arbor on July 22, you'll want to hear Dylan preach. She is an exceptionally gifted homilist, as many desperate preachers who visit her site for inspiration late Saturday night will confirm!

J.