Ekklesia (25 May 09):

After more than three hours of debate, the Church of Scotland's General Assembly, meeting in Edinburgh, has this evening avoided a confrontation on sexuality and ministry, after a motion from anti-gay hardliners was withdrawn before it could be voted on. The development is being seen as a significant achievement by those who want reason and conciliation rather than anger and confrontation in the argument over homosexuality. Some church members claim this is incompatible with tradition and scripture but others see it as part of the variety which God blesses and uses for good in the face of fear and prejudice.

The 'overture' (the Lochcarron and Skye motion), if passed, would have had the effect of barring those whose sexual relationships fall outside heterosexual marriage from ministry and the life of the Kirk - an approach deliberately targeted against gay people. Ekklesia has been told that part of the motivation in withdrawing the resolution was for the anti-gay lobby to avoid another damaging defeat. This follows their attempts to rescind the decision by a parish and presbytery in Aberdeen to recognise the call of the Rev Scott Rennie, an openly gay minster who lives with his partner David, which were decisively rejected on Saturday night (23 May 2009).

. . .Leaders of the Church of Scotland are pleased with the outcome. They will respond to those who accuse them of a fudge or of delaying tactics by pointing out that the great majority of those involved with the Church - other than some who actively seek confrontation - want a reasoned process and discussion.

And that's the point I would make. A majority vote in a synod or assembly may be a democratic way to decide some administrative question, but it's a terrible [literally, as in terror-filled] way to determine the 'truth'. The Truth is discerned only through much time, much prayer, some discussion and great deal of patient listening.

James and I enjoyed Star Trek XI. I don't try to read deep philosophy into it—it's simply entertainment. And it's optimistic, despite the death of billions. Just before the movie, we we treated to trailers of two dark shock-horror sci-fi thrillers. What's the point of them?

As Dave Itzkoff writes (NYT 9 May 09)

It takes a certain mix of optimism and frustration to contemplate the possibility of space travel. To dream of navigating the cosmos is to assume that man has the resources and the know-how to propel himself into the heavens, but also some compelling reasons to exchange his home planet for the cold vast unknown.
[. . . ]
Forty years later, as Star Trek is returning to its past so is America: the country is again gripped by anxieties about entanglements abroad, compounded by the fear that the economy could collapse at warp speed. A cautious optimism has emerged in the afterglow of the election of President Obama (whose Vulcan-like composure has invited frequent comparisons to Mr. Spock), but a surge of foreign violence, a swine flu outbreak or any number of other events could easily dampen that mood.
[. . . ]
But at least one person closely identified with Star Trek argues that for all the ways in which the franchise has been affected by current events, its optimistic vision has persisted. "A lot of science-fiction is nihilistic and dark and dreadful about the future, and Star Trek is the opposite," Mr. Nimoy said. "We need that kind of hope, we need that kind of confidence in the future. I think that's what Star Trek offers. I have to believe that — I'm the glass-half-full kind of guy."

Similarly, in his review (NYT, 8 May 09) Manohla Dargis says that "Whether by design or accident," Director [J. J.] Abrams has succeeded in giving the forty year old concept new life for ", simply because in its hopefulness Star Trek reminds you that there's more to science fiction (and Hollywood blockbusters) than nihilism. " . . . The film comes down on the side of hope, but its apocalyptic interludes, including the image of a planet imploding into gray dust, collapsing like a desiccated piece of fruit, linger."

Despite all the high-tech wizz-bangery, the story is "fundamentally about two men engaged in a continuing conversation about civilizations and their discontents. Hot and cold, impulsive and tightly controlled, Kirk and Spock need each other to work, a dynamic Mr. Abrams captures with his two well-balanced leads. Mr. [Zachary] Quinto lets you see and hear the struggle between the human and the Vulcan in Spock through the emotions that ripple across his face and periodically throw off his unmodulated phrasing. Mr. [Chris] Pine [Pictured] has the harder job — he has to invoke Mr. Shatner's sui generis performance while transcending its excesses — which makes his nuanced interpretation all the more potent. Steering clear of outright imitation, the two instead distill the characters to capture their essence, their Kirk-ness and Spock-ness.

Written by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, the story has plenty of chatter, but Mr. Abrams keeps the talk moving, slowing down only intermittently, as when Captain Pike (Bruce Greenwood) or the wryly smiling Leonard Nimoy (!) unload some paternalistic advice on Kirk. . . . By far his finest moments take place on the brightly lighted deck of the Enterprise, where against the backdrop of limitless space, Kirk, Spock and the rest of the young crew fumble with roles that — much like the young actors playing them, including Anton Yelchin as Chekov and John Cho as Sulu — they ultimately and rather wonderfully make their own.

So, what are the implications for Australia of the decisions of the Anglican Consultative Council on the two most contentious issues before it this month?

The Council confirmed the concept of an Anglican Covenant and accepted parts 1-3 as drafted. The contentious part four has been sent to a small working group and thence to the Joint Standing Committee of Primates and the ACC for action. A text may well be sent to the member churches next year. Whether part four can be redrafted in manner acceptable to most member churches is hard to say.

Parts 1-3 are descriptive—of Christian belief and mutual expectations. But part 4 is legislative—creating structures for membership, and management of conflict. The two halves are essentially different and I believe they should be in separate documents, managed separately.

The proposed parties to the covenant are the national churches, the members of the ACC. Assent to the covenant would be difficult for the Australian church to achieve, for its constitution does not give its General Synod the power to bring such a document into force in any diocese unless it is adopted by ordinance of that diocese. It will be interestingly chaotic, I suspect.

On the work of the Windsor Continuation Group, the ACC said (in part) that it

(c) affirms the request of the Windsor Report (2004), adopted at the Primates' Meetings (2005, 2007 and 2009), and supported at the Lambeth Conference (2008) for the implementation of the agreed moratoria on the Consecration of Bishops living in a same gender union, authorisation of public Rites of Blessing for Same Sex unions and continued interventions in other Provinces.

The problem is, there are no "agreed moratoria." The recommendations of the Windsor report have not been adopted by the Churches of the Communion and there is no body with the authority to impose them—such, thankfully, is the nature of the Communion. All (again thankfully) that the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Joint Standing Committee can do is suggest, propose and persuade.

Australian Anglicans have few concerns about the cross-boundary moratorium, it would seem to me. Australia's General Synod unilaterally adopted two of the moratoria by resolving (in 2004) that it could not 'condone' ordination of people in same-sex relationships or the blessing of such relationships.

For the first time, James and I visited the National Portrait Gallery in its new building, including for a look at the 2009 National Photographic Portrait Prize exhibition of 56 portrait photographs that had been short-listed from over 1,000 entries. I would have given the prize to the picture singled out by the judges to be highly commended—Gary Grealy's photographic portrait of Sydney art gallery directors Frank Watters and Geoffrey Legge—which the judges thought to a close runner-up to the winner. I agree with the judges that "the portrait invites the viewer to enter into the empathy between the two portrait subjects—the two faces are similar yet subtly different. The photograph's strong classical composition and technical distinction are highly impressive." Indeed so.

Sadly, I do not like the judges' choice of Ingvar Kenne's picture of his sons Cormac and Callum as the prize-winning work for 2009. The judges were impressed by the "potent connection that is evoked between the subjects in the photograph and the viewer", but it doesn't do much for me, I'm afraid.

Curator Christopher Chapman notes that this year's exhibition "vividly portrays the intensities of youth." I found Petrina Hicks's portrait, simply titled 'The Boy', to be quite arrestingly beautiful. But is it the picture that is beautiful, or the boy? When looking an interest in portrait, I never quite know whether it is the artist's work or the subject of the portrait that is arousing my interest. I don't enjoy portraits in which the artist's style indulgently takes attention away from the subject. Yet, a good portraitist draws upon and interprets the subject, of course. So too with the new Gallery building. It's not large, but very fine, offering a pleasing setting for the display of the pictures while not posing as a grandiloquent work of art itself

This year sees the introduction of laws across the country that will give rights to members of the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) community that have never been seen in this country. However, many of these rights would never have been made possible if it were not for the hard work and determination of people during the early days of the HIV epidemic, fighting the fear, ignorance and stigma that was faced by many at the time.

2009 International AIDS Candlelight Memorial
Sunday 17th May

All Saints Anglican Church Multi-faith service
Cowper St, Ainslie
5:00 pm - 6:00 pm

Candlelight Memorial Ceremony
National Museum of Australia
Lawson Crescent, Acton
7:00 pm - 8:30 pm

For further enquiries contact
Megan Munro
Community Engagement Co-ordinator
AIDS Action Council
megan.munro@aidsaction.org.au
Telephone: 6257 2855

Here's at least one of the reasons why President Obama look so trim. He watches his diet. He could have anything he wants, but chooses just cheese, carrot, fruit and a few crackers for lunch/brunch on more than one occasion, snapped by White House photographers (who seem to be everywhere except the bathroom and the bedroom). Or are there three more courses to come?

Middle East (from APJN)
Resolved: 09.05.09
The Anglican Consultative Council meeting in Kingston, Jamaica between May 2-12, 2009, in response to the challenge in a sermon on May 3, 2009, of the Archbishop of Canterbury to be a people of hope to those in need of justice, forgiveness and reconciliation,

1. deplores violence wherever it is used in conflict in the land of Israel/Palestine and affirms its desire that a robust peace process in the Palestinian/Israeli conflict leading to a two state solution should be pursued by all parties without delay;
2. expresses its deep concern about recent and continuing events in Gaza, and supports and draws attention to the Statement on the situation in Gaza issued by the February 2009 Primates meeting;
3. laments the fact that current Israeli policies in relation to the West Bank, in contravention of UN Security Council resolutions, have created severe hardship for many Palestinians and have been experienced as a physical form of apartheid;
4. noting that a just peace must guarantee the security and territorial integrity of both Israel and the future state of Palestine so that all the people of the area can live in peace and prosperity, applauds President Barack Obama for his commitment to work for a just peace for both Palestinians and Israelis, and calls on him and all governments of the Middle East to work in co-operation with the United Nations for the creation of a Palestinian state alongside the State of Israel as defined by UN Security Council Resolutions;
5. welcomes the Arab League statements which indicate a readiness to make peace with the state of Israel, the resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the normalization of relations, and calls on the Israeli government to respond favourably to the Arab proposal in an effort to end all forms of belligerence on the basis of international law;
6. calls on Israel to:
   1. end its occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip,
   2. freeze immediately all settlement building with the intention to abandon its settlement policy in preparation for a Palestinian state,
   3. remove the separation barrier (wall) where it violates Palestinian land beyond the Green Line,
   4. end home demolitions, and
   5. close checkpoints in the Palestinian territories;
7. recognising that the city of Jerusalem is holy to Christianity, Islam and Judaism and is not therefore the monopoly of any one religion, upholds the view that members of all three faith groups should have free access to their holy sites; and
8. calls on all people of faith and good will to pray and work for peace so that justice and reconciliation may be achieved for all the people of Palestine and Israel.

I would not have thought the Rudd government to be anti-intellectual, but that is certainly the trend of its budgetary policies. It has spent like a drunken sailor, pouring out billions in middle-class welfare for so-called economic stimulus measures. Yet it's destroying vital national institutions to save relatively trivial amounts.

It's reported that more than 200 agricultural and environmental science jobs will be lost across Australia, following budget cuts to Land and Water Australia—which previously received the princely sum of $13million a year in federal funding. It is the nation's peak climate change research agency for farmers, rural industries and Aboriginal land management groups and has also pioneered research on dryland salinity, soil health, river systems, sustainable irrigation and safer farm chemicals.

This is just one of many cuts that have saved small amounts of money at the cost of gutting the Australian National Botanical Gardens, the National Gallery of Australia, the National Library, the National Museum of Australia and the National Capital Commission, and other bodies. What do all these have in common? They are national institutions. It seems that Labor is happy to spend billions for the mums and dads in the 'burbs, but doesn’t care for Australian science, environment and culture—especially if it happens in Canberra.

"Cry 'havoc', and let slip the blogs of war. Because that’s what it feels like, a war." Thus Ruth Gledhill decries (23 Apr 09)

blogs where authors and commenters sip vim-and-vitriol under the cover of Christian sanctimony and care not about crucifying friends because, let's face it, in our world crucifixion doesn't mean real death so why should it matter. It’s 'blog eat blog' out here. Everyone has their 'Brutus', a 'friend' stabbing them in the back, whether on Holy Smoke, Articles of Faith, Twitter, even Facebook. And some of us have people doing it to our face.

Gledhill mentions a recent editorial in Catholic weekly The Tablet "describing with chilling accuracy the 'Wild West frontier' on which we are operating" "There is a good subject here not just for libel lawyers but also for psychiatrists and moral theologians," The Tablet writes. "What is it about a computer connection to the web that can turn a Dr Jekyll into a Mr Hyde?" The Tablet refers to a recent incident in which Labour Party zealots were maliciously slandering Conservative Party people in a blog and, when found out, had to resign. The Tablet opines that, "Generally, blogs are far from an idealised forum for an exchange of intelligent ideas that would be constructive. More often they indulge in straight poison-pen character assassination without reference to any requirements of accuracy or balance."

Gledhill again:

Blogging is a compulsive medium that appeals to the addict in me. I wonder how long it will be before there is a wing of The Priory in Roehampton set aside for recovering bloggers? Or a Bloggers Anonymous meeting in London: ‘My name's Ruth, and I’m a blogger.’ We'd all be sitting there, posting on Twitter: 'Guess who's just walked through the door . . .'

I’m not sure The Tablet's suggestion of stripping the anonymity from blogs can ever be workable. Anonymity is an essential protection in the name of freedom of speech. But perhaps the blogosphere needs a set of 12 guidelines rather like those used by AA: 'Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.'

Taking a lead from Gledhill, Giles Fraser writes in The Church Times (1 May).

Of course, there are some fantastic blogs and threads, and there are many places where decent argument is respected and encouraged. Yet some sites are moral pigsties, where the most disgraceful comments are justified, and even encouraged, as a show of democracy and internet freedom. It is easy to imagine that all this unpleasantness originates with a small number of obsessive blog "commenters", operating from sweaty bedrooms that have never seen the light of day, living off pizza and pornography, and getting their kicks out of being unpleasant as compensation for their own social inadequacy.

Oh, that it were so simple! The people who are being so cruel to each other are just as likely to be wearing pinstripes or flowery dresses — or even clerical collars. Part of the problem is that too many contributors do not recognise that they are being unpleasant because they believe themselves to be justified by some higher cause. [. . . ] The other problem is that, on the internet, the other does not come with a face. The French philosopher and Talmudic scholar Emmanuel Levinas has based his ethical philosophy on the sense of responsibility for others that originates in the face-to-face encounter. Only by looking at someone's face does one properly appreciate his or her vulnerability — a vulnerability that cries out not to be harmed.

The quick-fire argument on the internet has cut itself adrift from this sensitivity, and has become cruel. This is why too much time going through blogs and comments can be bad for your spiritual health.

Yet, there's much to be found in journals and weblogs on the Internet that is glorious and edifying. I deliberately took a Lenten 'fast' from it all to check myself against contributing to the spiritual ill health about which Gledhill and Fraser caution. I may write critically, but criticism need not be spoken with evil vitriol. To write well takes thought and time, yet the Internet has so shortened response times and attention spans that if one does not speak quickly, one is not heard. We are tempted to answer in minutes questions that once may have taken years to consider.

And the picture? It's Virgil and Dante in Hell (1850, 213cm x 153cm), by French academic painter William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905), which Gledhill reproduces with her piece. It's astonishing and truly hellish. One is drawn by the eroticism yet revolted by the horror and viciousness.