Bishop Ackerman, Diocese of Quincy, says cancel The Episcopal Church General Convention 2009

From Hans Zeiger in Canterbury for Virtue Online:

A leading orthodox bishop of The Episcopal Church has proposed canceling the 2009 Episcopal Church General Convention in order to fund the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Following the Thursday march on London by over 600 Anglican bishops and their spouses in support of the MDGs, the Rt. Rev. Keith Ackerman, Bishop of Quincy, said that "there should be no General Convention this year, and all the money for the convention should be sent to fund the goals."

Ackerman furthermore called for The Episcopal Church to "cancel all meetings that require face to face and conduct nothing but video conferencing." He said that the American wing of the Anglican Communion should "donate its money to churches that would be positively affected."

Though leaders of The Episcopal Church have stated their commitment to the MDGs and made their biggest stand yet in London on Thursday, Ackerman has doubts that The Episcopal Church has yet made a true commitment.

"If the church is absolutely, totally committed to these goals, there are three things it needs to do," Ackerman said.

"First, place the goals in the context of the Gospel itself.

"Second, leaders must make the necessary changes in their own personal lifestyle so that they can make their own commitment to model what God wants done.

"Third, the church must corporately find a way to fund this."

In response to Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori's invitation to African bishops to join her for drinks at a Canterbury reception (despite the Sudanese bishops' abstinence from alcohol), Ackerman offered a specific MDG funding proposal. "Do not invite the Sudanese to a reception. Cancel the reception and give the money to the Sudanese church."

Check it out. And here is an interview I did with Bishop Ackerman in March of last year for AnglicanTV. He is such a gentle soul, but so strong in the faith.

DioBytes: eNews from the Diocese of California

Just by chance I happened upon the Diocese of California's DioBytes web page for June 24. It is described as "a newsletter for clergy, lay leaders, and members of the Diocese of California. We welcome submissions that have a connection to the ministry of the diocese and/or the approval of a diocesan department or commission. Inclusion of submissions is at the discretion of the editors."

Interesting that on this page for June 24, 4 out of the first 7 items dealt with areas of interest for Oasis California, including an invitation to join Bishop Andrus in San Francisco's Pride Celebration this weekend, as well as to participate in the Lambeth "Listening" process through their Letters to Lambeth program.

But the most interesting to me was this:

Youth Confirmation Program

Confirm not Conform, the innovative confirmation program developed by St. John's Oakland, is available for your congregation! Already used by St. John's, Ross; Epiphany, San Carlos; and over 30 parishes nationwide, CnC is a 16-session curriculum that encourages youth to claim and articulate their faith while taking action to change the world and promote the Millennium Development Goals. . .

What can I say? No longer a church, but an arm of the United Nations.

Book of prayers by Anglican women and girls to focus on MDGs

Quick, call Christopher Johnson! It's the MDGs [peace be upon them] now in prayer book form.

From EpiscopalLife Online [boldface mine]:

While worldwide attention is focused on discord and divisions within the Anglican Communion, Anglican women and girls are uniting to make their voices heard on issues of poverty and women's empowerment, express the power and depth of their faith, and to reveal their connections across cultural and economic differences, by contributing to a new book of women's prayers, with a foreword to be written by Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori.

Following on the popularity of Women's Uncommon Prayers: Our Lives Revealed, Nurtured, Celebrated, this all-new collection of prayers, with its multicultural global reach, will be organized according to themes of the Millennium Development Goals. Prayers will show the connections between the global concerns of women and girls and their personal lives. . .

Other general editors for the project are Abagail Nelson, vice president for programs at Episcopal Relief and Development; the Rev. K. Jeanne Person, co-author of Where You Go, I Shall: Gleanings from the Stories of Biblical Widows; and Dr. Jenny Te Paa, Ahorangi (Dean) of Te Rau Kahikatea, the College of St. John the Evangelist in Auckland, New Zealand, and a well-known leader in the Anglican Communion.

An international editorial board of clergy and lay women and girls, representing national and cultural heritages within the Anglican Communion, will review prayers for inclusion in the book. Among those serving on the editorial board is Phoebe Griswold, founder of Anglican Women's Empowerment (AWE) and wife of Frank Griswold, former presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church.

The new book will debut in May 2009.

Editors say that the book will reveal how Anglican women are envisioning a way forward for the welfare of creation, including within the Anglican Communion itself. "At a time when a small cabal of male leaders are insisting on dividing the Anglican Communion over issues of human sexuality," said Dr Te Paa, "Anglican women are offering a way forward. We are committed to prayer, to the unity of the Anglican Communion around Christ's table, and to a common mission that leads to the full flourishing of all people."

Each chapter of the book will focus on one of the eight Millennium Development Goals. The MDGs, which were agreed to by all member states of the United Nations, form a blueprint for radically improving the lives of the world's poor. . .

Read it all.

The U.N., the MDGs, and Google: They're everywhere

From FoxNews, a troubling story on the power of the U.N. and its desire to look good and Google, censoring the news (I've heard other stories of Google determining who is "legit" and who is not - very worrisome given Google's power and influence):

NEW YORK — How big do you have to be to earn the wrath of the United Nations and Internet giant Google?

If you're journalist Matthew Lee, all it takes are some critical articles and a scrappy little Web site.

Lee is the editor-in-chief, Webmaster and pretty much the only reporter for Inner City Press, a pint-sized Internet news operation that's taken on Goliath-sized entities like Citigroup since 1987.

Since 2005, he's been focusing almost entirely on stories that deal with internal corruption inside the U.N., posting several stores online almost daily.

He's been especially interested in the inner workings of what could be called the practical-applications arm of the international organization, the United Nations Development Programme.

Many of Lee's stories were featured prominently whenever Web users looked for news about the U.N. using the powerful Google News search engine, a vital way for media outlets both large and small to get their articles read.

But beginning Feb. 13, Google News users could no longer find new stories from the Inner City Press.

"I think they said, 'If we can't get this guy out of the U.N., let's disappear him from the Internet,'" Lee said.

It began with an innocuous-sounding yet chilling form letter from Google to Lee, e-mailed on Feb. 8:

"We periodically review news sources, particularly following user complaints, to ensure Google News offers a high quality experience for our users," it said. "When we reviewed your site we've found that we can no longer include it in Google News."

As soon as he read it, Lee immediately suspected one thing: That someone at the UNDP had pressured Google into "de-listing" him from Google News — essentially preventing Inner City Press from being classified on Google News as a legitimate news source and from having its stories pop up when someone conducts a Google News search. . .

Though his writing is clunky, his methods unorthodox (and often highly annoying) and his news judgment sometimes more than a little off the mark, Lee has hit his share of bullseyes and became an outlet for whistleblowers inside the U.N.

In 2006, for example, he drew attention to human-rights abuses by the Ugandan People's Defense Force during a U.N. disarmament program, including incidents in which four people were killed and over 100 homes destroyed.

In November 2007, during a press conference in which Google announced its partnership with the UNDP to achieve anti-poverty goals, Lee earned a less-than-friendly response when he asked why the Internet company hadn't signed a global human-rights and anti-censorship compact — elements in the U.N.'s Millennium Development Goals. . .

It was this incident, says Lee that put him in the crosshairs. Lee said he felt certain that the Internet company and the international agency had now joined forces to make his work less accessible to the public.

"I've been covering almost U.N. stories, three to four a day, for two years, and for the last two years there's been no problem at all," Lee said. "Then that Friday, I received the e-mail. There's something a little skeezy here. I think that Google got involved with the U.N. on these Millennium goals and thought, this is the United Nations, if they tell you some small Web site is a thorn in their side and there's a credible reason you could remove them from your news service, you do it."

According to [Google spokesman Gabriel] Stricker, on Feb. 1 someone e-mailed Google a complaint about Lee's Web site, alleging that Inner City Press was a one-man operation, thus violating the Google News ground rule that news organizations it lists must have two or more employees.

Lee is vague about how many people work for the Inner City Press, but said there's at least one woman who works for the organization full-time, as well as "about half a dozen" volunteers.

"If people work for us as volunteers, why does it not count?" he said. "Is it their business?"

Strickler said it is the only complaint that Google has ever received about Inner City Press and doesn't publish the qualifications it requires for being included, to thwart those who want to abuse the system.

But on Feb. 8 Google notified Lee about his new "de-listing" status.

When Lee received the e-mail from Google, he responded immediately, noting that Inner City Press had been accredited by the U.N. and was mentioned frequently in other media as an important U.N. watchdog.

A Google representative answered that Inner City Press would be restored to the Google News service as usual, but that the process might take "a couple weeks," according to Lee. Still, from Feb. 13 on, Inner City Press stories stopped showing up on Google News, something Google attributes to a technical error. . .

The reaction to the de-listing, however temporary, has been furious. The non-profit Government Accountability Project lambasted the company, calling Inner City Press "the most effective and important media organization for UN whistleblowers."

"We're alarmed," said Bea Edwards, GAP's international-program director. "The question is, is what user sent the complaint? And it's probably not too hard to guess. We would guess the complaints came from the UNDP."

Tuyet Nguyen, president of the U.N. Correspondents Association, said he was fully behind Lee, who was elected first vice president of the association in December 2006.

"The sad story about Google is that they're shutting people up and not doing a good thing for society by only defending their business interests," he said. "They have a responsibility to society in letting people speak out. And I'm not surprised that those U.N. agencies are trying to hide."

But UNDP spokesman David Morrison called allegations of the agency's involvement preposterous.

"It wasn't us," he said. "We did not contact Google."

Google refuses to reveal who sent the complaint against Inner City Press, citing privacy concerns. . .

Read it all.