Episcopal News Service

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, House of Deputies President Bonnie Anderson and Executive Council member Rosalie Simmonds Ballentine are calling on all Episcopal congregations to engage in discussion of the proposed Anglican Covenant at some time during the next two years.

Plans by a Florida-based Christian pastor to burn copies of the Quran on Sept. 11 -- the anniversary of the World Trade Center terrorist attacks -- and a recent surge in violence against Muslims is being met with widespread condemnation by church groups and leaders who are calling for religious tolerance and an end to anti-Islamic attitudes.

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, House of Deputies President Bonnie Anderson and Executive Council member Rosalie Simmonds Ballentine are calling on all Episcopal congregations to engage in discussion of the proposed Anglican Covenant at some time during the next two years.

President of the House of Deputies Bonnie Anderson has said that she wishes the Rt. Rev. Charles Bennison would have the "wisdom and generosity of spirit to resign" as bishop of the Diocese of Pennsylvania.

In Episcopal News Service Weekly bulletin inserts for Sept. 12, Mary Getz, grassroots and online communications officer for the Episcopal Public Policy Network, explains EPPN's issues advocacy work, its roots in General Convention resolutions, and how Episcopalians can take part in its actions.

As the All Africa Bishops Conference in Entebbe, Uganda, drew to a close Aug. 29, participants said they'd been encouraged by the bishops' determination "not to be distracted from the urgent business of leading the church in the 21st century," the Rev. Canon Petero Sabune, Africa partnerships officer for the Episcopal Church, told ENS.

Five years ago as New Orleanians struggled to survive in the wake of the Hurricane Katrina, few if any of them were thinking about trying to plant an orchard somewhere in the Uptown neighborhood.

If you live on the Gulf Coast, says the Very Rev. James "Bo" Roberts, it's not a question of whether a natural disaster will strike, but rather when the next one will come.

Lessons learned and relationships built in the wake of the Gulf Coast's ongoing recovery from 2005's Hurricane Katrina and subsequent storms are being put to work as the region deals with the impact of the BP oil spill.

In ENS Weekly bulletin inserts for Sept. 5, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori calls on Episcopalians to join in the current debate on immigration. With a reminder of the many biblical admonitions to welcome the stranger, Jefferts Schori also acknowledges the complexity of the issue. "We all agree that American immigration law is broken," she writes.

More than 400 Anglican bishops from Africa are being joined by international partners, diplomats and representatives from relief and development organizations for a weeklong gathering in Entebbe, Uganda, to focus on issues of conflict, poverty, corruption and disease on the continent.

The Rev. Michael Pierce Milliken was elected Aug. 21 as the fifth bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Western Kansas, pending the required consents from a majority of bishops with jurisdiction and standing committees of the Episcopal Church.

Twenty years ago, Curt Armstrong went to France, intending to learn French and pick grapes before heading for graduate school. He ended up becoming an assistant in a L'Arche community, where people with and without cognitive disabilities live together, and found a calling.

Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania Bishop Charles Bennison said Aug. 17 that since he returned to the diocesan offices the day before he has "concentrated on listening." "I have learned a great deal, and my listening has been very productive," Bennison said in a statement emailed to Episcopal News Service by Ceisler Media and Issue Advocacy, a Philadelphia media relations firm

Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania Bishop Charles Bennison returned to the diocesan offices in downtown Philadelphia Aug. 16 amid continued calls for his retirement or resignation. "We do not believe that Bishop Bennison has the trust of the clergy and lay leaders necessary for him to be an effective pastor and leader of the Diocese of Pennsylvania, nor that he can regain or rebuild the trust that he has lost or broken

For those who live on the Gulf Coast, it's not a question of whether a natural disaster will strike, but rather when the next one will come, says the Very Rev. James "Bo" Roberts, rector of St. Mark's Church in Gulfport, Mississippi, one of six churches in the Diocese of Mississippi that Hurricane Katrina destroyed on August 29, 2005. ENS Weekly bulletin inserts for Aug. 29, 2010 look at the situation in the Gulf Coast area five years after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita

The 45th anniversary of the death of Jonathan Myrick Daniels, an Episcopal seminarian-activist killed in Alabama during the civil rights movement, was commemorated in congregations during the Aug. 14-15 weekend.

"Episcopalians are part of a church with a long history of interreligious relations," writes Bowie Snodgrass in ENS Weekly bulletin inserts for Aug. 22. "The 2009 'Theological Statement on Interreligious Relations' passed by General Convention reminds us that 'prominent Episcopalians were involved in the first World Parliament of the Religions in 1893.'"

Episcopalians joined thousands of Californians at celebratory rallies and prayer vigils Aug. 4 after a federal judge overturned as unconstitutional Proposition 8, the state's voter-approved ban on gay marriage.