I was surprised to learn from Episcopal Life that the ARCIC document on Mary states the Assumption and Immaculate Conception dogmas are not contrary to Scripture.  That is like saying Goldilocks and Little Red Riding Hood are not contrary to Scripture.  The Bible says nothing about any of these myths and fables.

With regard to the Assumption, the Oxford Dictionary of The Christian Church states, "It is now generally agreed that the belief was unknown in the earliest ages of the church."  As for the Immaculate Conception, the New Testament text traditionally cited in its defense is Luke 1:28 (in which the Angel Gabriel says to Mary: "Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.")  However, "The Lord is with you" is said to the judges of Israel (Judges 6:12) Are we to conclude from this that the judges of Israel were immaculately conceived? More important, must we swallow non-biblical teachings about Mary in order to continue in theological conversation with Rome?

Thank you for the fine issue on the structures of our global Anglican family (“Listening process affirmed,” cover story July/August). I would like to add to the information on the four Instruments of Unity that you describe so well an additional observation. These four Instruments of Unity (the archbishop of Canterbury, the 38 primates, the 700-plus bishops and the 70 members of the Anglican Consultative Council) add up to more than 800 people. Of these people only 30 are women.

At the ACC meeting in June, the body passed a resolution that among other recommendations calls for the Standing Committee of the ACC to identify ways in which equal representation of women in decision making may appropriately be adapted for incorporation in the structures of the Instruments of Unity.

This will be an immense challenge but certainly worth the effort to include women and their agendas for the full flourishing of the human family so sorely missing in the public dialogue of our church. I know that women are eager to assist the ACC in fulfilling its goal of equal representation in however ways they can be helpful.

The Rev. Dr. Ian Douglas' answer to the question about why we should care about the Anglican Communion has much to recommend it.  While it is true that it takes the whole world to understand the whole meaning of the gospel, there is another opinion that is coming into focus for some Episcopalians.

People I have talked to about remaining a part of the worldwide Anglican Communion are beginning to wonder if remaining loyal to it is an idea that has lost its meaning.  When other parts of the Anglican Communion insist that ECUSA (and Canada) completely ignore the culture to which we minister and adhere to the cultural norms of those to whom others minister, it is clear that they are not as eager as Dr. Douglas is to have us all embrace a worldwide understanding of the gospel.

Isn't it just as problematic for one part of the Anglican Communion to insist that all of us focus our ministry in narrow terms as defined by others and ignore our ministry to some because they don't fit that narrower definition?  This is not "unity in diversity." It is forced conformity.

I read with great interest Robert Odabashian's article concerning the genocide of the Armenian people in 1915, especially since I visit northern Syria on a regular basis and worship in the Armenian Protestant Emmanuel Church in Aleppo, Syria.

I hope that it will encourage him to know that the Armenians in Syria are a wonderful community of faith and are well-respected among the other Orthodox Christians and Muslims in this country. It was heartening to know that many of the Armenians who have lived between the borders of Turkey and Syria for this past century now have been given Syrian citizenship and have made their home here.

As an ECUSA missionary in Syria, with a parish in Damascus, I travel to Aleppo once a month to celebrate Holy Communion with the English-speaking Anglicans in that area, and we are graciously given an altar and worship space at the Armenian Emmanuel Church.  It is a reminder that out of the unbelievable hatred of a holocaust, or the cross, God can bring about something good like we are seeing today in northern Syria.   The prayers of the saints and the church are what make it happen.

I continue to be deeply disturbed by the amount of emotional, institutional and spiritual energy being expended over the ordination of a gay bishop.  It is a flashback to the days of the fight over the ordination of women. Both, in their focus on ordination, further distort, downgrade and marginalize the ministry and calling of all the baptized.  Both continue to play into the dominating heresy of the church, namely clericalism.

When will we rid ourselves of our ordination fixation and addiction, as if real ministry rests with the clergy?  The more effort we expend to “protect” ordination, the more we reinforce the image that ordination is where the real action is in the life of the church; that the ministry of all the baptized is a sideshow, something that sounds nice, even biblical, but is given little traction or affirmation or formation, being overwhelmed by the clericalism that commands the church’s attention.

As I continue to read Episcopal Life, I find your use of titles at least interesting and identical to what I observe in most Sunday church bulletins.  Consistently, titles precede the names of those ordained.  In contrast, the names of the adult baptized are seldom titled.  I would be interested in learning what your criteria is.  My impression is that ordination is somehow more solemn and significant than baptism.  I would hope that I have missed some subtlety and would love to be enlightened and learn that this is not institutional clericalism.

Let me suggest an alternative for the front-page caption in the July/August edition of Episcopal Life:  "Arrival at Nottingham”: Frank T. Griswold, presiding bishop, arrives with fellow Episcopalians who made presentations to the Anglican Consultative Council.  From left, Jane Tully, founder of PFLAG, an organization for clergy parents with gay and lesbian children; Neil Alexander, bishop of Atlanta; Griswold; Charles Jenkins, bishop of Louisiana; Michael Battle, theologian and biblical scholar; Susan Russell, priest and president of Integrity.  Catherine Roskam, suffragan bishop in the Diocese of New York, has been a member of the ACC and also participated."

Editor’s note: Tom Ray, former bishop of the diocese of Northern Michigan, signed his name with no titles either fore or aft.

Many thanks for Jennifer Phillips’ very provocative article (“When the vow breaks,” July/August).  I wonder how many places can honestly say that the blessing and celebration of Holy Matrimony takes place in the midst of the community of faith.  Is it your experience that marriage vows are being exchanged as part of the Sunday liturgy?

We have a task force looking into marriage and the role of the church, here in the diocese of Missouri.  One of our observations has been that the couple usually makes no commitment to the community of faith.  The vows are exchanged, and those in attendance -- most often not representative of the community of faith -- vow to "uphold the couple in their marriage." Very often it is only the parish priest who has any relationship with the couple.  Some places have guidelines that indicate the need for a relationship with the congregation, but those are only guidelines.

If we could improve this situation, it would make a great deal of sense to develop a simple rite for blessing those who are facing the tests of divorce. Thank you for publishing Phillips’ insights and vision.

As a retired physician and cradle Episcopalian, I want to thank [Presiding Bishop] Frank Griswold for his beautiful reflection on how practices of prayer and sacrament deepen our lives. I have cut out, and placed with my treasured writings, his last paragraphs concerning the use of the authority of Scripture as a weapon of self-defense, and the better way.

The better way is for all of us together to move through the challenges of the present day by adhering to scriptural word and sacramental acts. We can do it, despite our differences, "if we invite the risen Christ, through the agency of the spirit of truth, to make himself known in the power of his reconciling love." I hope everyone has read it. Let us all, with all our hearts, stop doing the Pharisee thing and start doing the Jesus thing in terms of tolerating the earthly differences among ourselves (earthen vessels that we are) and loving the heavenly potential within each neighbor.

What pearls the church has lost in plain sight! We all know that nowhere in the Gospels does Jesus speak about same-sex issues. But who remembers that Jesus deals conclusively with the issue of excommunication – whether Episcopal/Anglican provinces for espousing same-gender relations in marriage and the episcopate; Roman Catholic politicians for voting in favor of the rights to abortion and stem-cell research; or 11th- century Roman pope and Greek patriarch for being rude to each other?

I cite Matthew 13: Not one, but two parables, with the same message. The kingdom of God is like good wheat growing amidst bad weeds, and like good and bad fish all caught up together in a big fishing net. The farmer’s workers want to start pulling weeds, but they are forbidden, lest they destroy part of the crop as well. Jesus says that good and bad baptized people, like fish and plants at harvest, must be separated, not prematurely by congregation or bishops, but only by the angels of God on Judgment Day.

Check it out. Elsewhere, of course, in reinforcement, Jesus says that the first will be last , last first; and the criterion for judgment will be not theology but caring for the hungry, naked, sick, thirsty, homeless and imprisoned. Again, chapter 18: Matthew gives us only three basic rules to govern the church: 1) We must all be like children to one another; 2) priority of care must always be given to the little ones – those who cannot fend for themselves; 3) we must never stop forgiving one another.

I have heard people say that it is with great integrity that some of Africa’s primates are refusing to accept funds of support from the Episcopal Church. But I think that we must all be aware of the hidden cost of this stand that many are taking. I am newly ordained in the Diocese of Oklahoma, and for as long as I can remember growing up in Oklahoma, we have had an active and vibrant relationship with the diocese of West Ankole in Uganda. For more than 20 years, countless Oklahoma Episcopalians, young and old alike, have traveled to, welcomed guests from and prayed for our brothers and sisters in Uganda. Our common lives have become profoundly enriched by this companion relationship.

But now all of this is at risk because the archbishop of Uganda has imposed a decree upon the Ugandan Church, refusing to accept money from us. Do the children of Bihanga care about General Convention 2003? The parish I now serve, Church of the Savior, has been sending money, without strings, to Bihanga for several years so children there can receive a primary education. Can the archbishop of Uganda, with any integrity, deny these children an education, or the facilities in which they receive it?

Since when should issues, complicated as they may be, get in the way of our common ministry in Christ our Lord? Can anyone, with any integrity, look the children of Bihanga in the eye and say they do not deserve an education? I know that I cannot.

The Rev. Jeffrey C. Huston
Yukon, Okla.

Recently, I have had to ask myself a painful question: Why do I stay in the Episcopal Church, when I feel such disappointment with the battles over homosexuality and foreign policy, when there seems so little of the unity Paul exhorted the early church to achieve? I happen to be one Episcopalian who is baffled when some among us can reconcile war-making, or condemnation of other people's sin, with the gospels. I can't begin to see these practices as consistent with the leading of the Holy Spirit. I have been praying for acceptance of, and peace with, those Episcopalians whose views I don't understand. I hope they will do the same, should they read this.

I stay because I love the liturgy for what it can do in my heart; because I love the blending of ancient and contemporary worship achieved at our little local church; because I still believe this mix offers the best hope for evangelism in the long term, an evangelism that preaches eternal life, not temporal politics. What I have seen of the mega-churches -- the Krispy Kreme donuts, the Integrity Worship bookshops, the stadium seating, the mega-multimedia systems and most crucially the preaching that seems to reek of earthly empire -- convinces me more than ever that God has granted us something precious in our church, despite our apparent numeric and institutional failures.  I continue to pray that we do not squander it.

What is collegiality?  It seems to me that the Anglican church has never read a dictionary! To me, collegiality in the following sense means that one side respects the other side yet has some difference of interpretation of a given issue. If the Anglican Church truly accepted and understood what collegiality meant in the ECUSA’s decision to not consecrate any bishops until the worldwide church decides what to do with us, then the worldwide Anglican Church would have agreed to not consecrate any bishops throughout the world as well.

As it is, the Anglican community has accepted the ECUSA’s self-slap on the hand as a sort of punishment for a purported wrongdoing. When will the ECUSA stop apologizing for, in my opinion, a Christ-like decision to recognize a significant group of men and women who have been ostracized by the world community? Collegiality indeed!

Three times, 1948, 1967 and 1973, Arab armies attacked Israel.  The Israelis defended themselves.  In the years that followed, Israel, prodded by the United States, traded land for peace and now has neither the land nor peace.  Yet article after article in Episcopal Life blames the victims of these criminal aggressions for the Mideast conflict, 9/11, the war in Iraq and terrorism in general. I wonder what's next – obesity in the United States.

As an example “Crisis in the Holly Land” (July/August) laments Israel’s security measures. Nothing is said about why the fence and why the checkpoints. How many delays and how much inconvenience equals the life of a child?  How high a wall would you build to save a bus transporting your child to school from attack from Hezbollah?  How many checkpoints would we build to shield our teen-agers from barbaric terrorist attacks by Hamas?

Why doesn’t the Peace and Justice Committee visit an Israeli hospital and comfort the maimed and wounded innocent children victims of Arab terror?  There will be peace in the Mideast when Arab mothers and their supporters love their children and truth as much as they wish to kill Israeli children.

The lead article in the July/August edition of Episcopal Life, "Listening Process Affirmed," was written with the apparent view that some kind of victory had been achieved at the June meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council. Yes, we still have friends in the Anglican Communion who don't want to see us banished entirely, but it was a very close vote indeed that prevented exactly that from happening.

We have caused the problem with the idea that a so-called "prophetic act" could lead the rest of the church into the direction that some of our more liberal members would like it to go … never mind that this act was in violation of more than 2,000 years of biblical teaching. This act represents an arrogance on the part of the Episcopal Church that we know better than the rest of the members of the Anglican Communion.

We have created the mess, and it is up to us to fix it. I don't know if what has already been done can be undone, but, at the very least, we owe the rest of the church an apology for having erred in our actions, and we need to promise not to do it again, at least until the church as a whole makes a change in its doctrine regarding homosexuality. Perhaps then we will be forgiven and allowed once again to participate fully in all the activities of the Anglican Communion.

We wonder why the Episcopal Church keeps losing members. I say that it is because the leadership keeps getting too far out in front of the rest of the church and tries to lead it in directions that the people don't want to go. The actions of General Convention 2003 are a good example of that. We keep shooting ourselves in our collective foot and the wounds still bleed badly. Let's bandage up those wounds and try not to repeat the errors we have made.

J. M. Phillips suggests in her article "When the vow breaks" (July/August) that when a marriage ends, the church should "observe the divorcing of its members with a ritual in its worship."  Later in the article, Phillips writes that "when a marriage comes apart, there is undoubtedly an aspect of sin involved."  May I point out that it is not the role of the church or the congregation to affirm sin?  A divorce is a failure, and its cause may or may not be justified in the eyes of others.  But neither the church nor the congregation should be asked to sanction through ritual the very sad and often sinful tragedy that is divorce.

I question calling the postcard offered by the Diocese of Southern Ohio a great idea (July/August).  Its message -- "Summer sermons will be shorter.  Priests play golf, too" -- promotes all the worst stereotypes of the Episcopal Church -- namely that we are a church of upper-crust theological lightweights.

Come on, you can do better than that! (I did go to the webpage, and some of the materials were better than the example shown.  Surely you could have chosen a better example.)  I can only hope use of this postcard does not become widespread in the Episcopal Church, as I can't imagine it would do much for evangelism.

In 2003, the latest year for which the FBI released statistics, there were 9,100 reported hate-crime victims in the United States, of whom 52 percent were victimized due to race.  Victims of religious and sexual-orientation bias tied for second place at 16 percent.  Of course, hate crimes are notoriously underreported, especially by gay people, many of whom are closeted and do not trust law enforcement.

The FBI defines hate crimes as those motivated by bias against race, religion, ethnicity, disability and sexual orientation -- and investigates all of those categories except sexual orientation.  There is no federal hate-crime law covering sexual orientation that would give the feds jurisdiction to investigate.  Keep statistics?  Yes.  Investigate?  No.

The Local Law Enforcement Enhancement Act, a federal hate-crime bill covering sexual orientation, languishes in our far-right Congress.  Is this the compassionate conservatism we were promised?  And the state hate-crime laws that do exist are simply inadequate. As one whose life has twice been threatened and who has been verbally gay-bashed more times than I could remember, I say there can be no reason why my life and welfare are not as worthy of safeguarding as is that of other minorities.

Robert Odabashian (“Recalling days of horror,” July/August) gave a broad-brush painting of the Armenian plight heaped upon them by the Turks at the turn of the Century. He is correct about the genocide that occurred that was perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire. I would like to point out that many Armenians sought and took refuge in the northern hills of Lebanon, where the Lebanese Christians protected them. Turkey governed Lebanon at that time. When the Turks came looking for the Armenians, the Lebanese people (Christians) helped hide them in their homes and in the caves of the northern mountains.

My family is from that area, and, as Maronite Catholics, they did their best to protect those folks. Our people risked their own lives to help our fellow Christians and did an excellent job with all their limitations. Many Armenians know that these people saved countless hundreds, even thousands of Armenians from the tortures of the Turks. I wish Mr. Odabashian would remember this act of kindness by the Christian Lebanese as he relates his story and remembers that the Christians of that area are still at risk by the Moslems, not only from Turkey, but of Lebanon as well.

I read with some pain, but no surprise, the lead story about the actions of the Anglican Consultative Council. I have no sorrow on leaving the Anglican Communion. I was brought up in the Episcopal Church. As the son of a single mother, the church provided guidance that I will long cherish. I chose to seek to become a clergyman, but on a retreat at a nearby monastery of the Episcopal Church, I was told, “Get out we don’t need your kind in the church.” I had told him I was gay. I could not leave at that time but had to stay the night and later in the evening was visited by a member of the order looking for sex.

Later, in the Diocese of New York, I was asked to leave a parish as the members and wardens would not be happy with an out gay man as a member. Later in life, I was asked to leave two churches in Wisconsin for the same reason. In one, I was physically removed from the altar rail at Communion. Although I currently live within a parish that is truly welcoming, I refuse to pledge and have told the rector to use none of the money I do give for missions.

When the bishops in Africa and South Asia say they are embarrassed by the Episcopal Church, I can understand but not sympathize. If Christ is about love, then they have been sending the wrong message to their flock. The Rev. Dr. Ian Douglas’ comments in the recent issue make no sense. Why should the Anglican Communion exist? To spread the word of Jesus. We obviously have not done a very good job so far. Why continue?

Palestinian propaganda seems to have taken its toll on the usually fair-minded Episcopal Life. I have visited the West Bank several times, and, in my experience, the schools and hospitals built by the Israelis for Palestinians far outweigh the negative aspects of occupation. Remember, the occupation wouldn’t have happened in the first place if the Arabs hadn’t many times invaded Israel through the West Bank. Their goal was and is to eradicate Israel.

Since the Golan Heights and West Bank were taken by Israel, Arab invasions of that tiny, beleaguered country have ceased. The Israelis would be foolish to completely surrender their buffer zone. It is a measure of their effort to be fair that they are willing to give back most of what they took while defending themselves against a giant Arab military force. Now that we know the pain of Islamicist attacks in the West, we should think twice before blaming Israel for doing everything possible to protect her citizens from terror.

Perhaps we need to rethink our knee-jerk endorsement of Palestinian corruption and terrorism and instead embrace our besieged Jewish brothers and sisters. Perhaps we will wake up and learn from them that the real threat to peace is Muslim fundamentalism, not Israeli self-defense. Or are we so wedded to our misguided, sentimental support of the so-called underdog in this conflict that we will sell out Christ’s own people to make a politically correct point?