We just launched a Make Me an Instrument: A Guide to Civil Discourse For Individuals and For Groups. This free 5-week online curriculum was built in conjunction with The Episcopal Church’s Office of Government Relations and its Department of Faith Formation. The course is free to anyone who would like to take it.

Presiding Bishop Michael Curry has said: [L]ove the neighbor you like and love the neighbor you don’t like. Love the neighbor you agree with and the neighbor you don’t agree with. Love your Democrat neighbor, your Republican neighbor. Your black neighbor and your white neighbor, your Anglo neighbor, your Latino, your LGBTQ neighbor. Love your neighbor. That’s why we’re here.

In this curriculum, representatives and teachers from across the church teach civil discourse as a skill that we can develop and use to build healthier communities through building relationships across divisions within those communities.

The course instructors teach civil discourse as a specific style of conversation that requires particular skills and practices. Civil discourse is engagement in conversation intended to enhance understanding. Rabbi Steve Gutow, speaking at the Episcopal Church’s event Civil Discourse in America, remarked that “civility is simply demonstrating respect for the dignity of our fellow humans—even those humans with whom we have sharp disagreement. Civility is allowing others to speak, and having the humility to admit that we may have something to learn. Civility favors truth over cheap gain, and patience over knee-jerk judgment.”

The goal of these conversations is to be in deeper relationship and to more truly know each others’ dignity and worth. We strive for this deeper relationship so that when we go out to do our own advocacy, activism, and community engagement, we are better informed about who the “other” is without dehumanizing or demonizing them.

As well as explaining the practice of civil discourse, the reasons for using it, and its grounding in scripture and the sacraments, the instructors address challenges that can arise with the “listen and learn” approach they advocate. What if one group has been exploited by another? Is it unjust to expect the marginalized to listen to the privileged? What is the risk a conversation becomes mired in theory rather than allowing us to deepen our relationships with one another? And what if we all listen and value each other’s conversations and find that in the end, we simply do not share the same values? Or what if we do share values but are so hopelessly divided over how to achieve our goals that the values shared seem unimportant? What if the other conversational partner won’t abide by the “respectful listening” rules? All of these important questions, and many others, are covered in this curriculum.

This civil discourse curriculum offers hope that by using the tool of civil discourse, we can find new ways to love our neighbor. We look forward to exploring it with you.

For a preview of one of the courses, please click here.

Thursday Night Bible Study is back! (Ok, so it’s not exactly “back,” because last year it was Wednesday Night Bible Study, but let’s not get caught up in technicalities. ) This Epiphany, anyone who is interested in learning more about the Gospel of John can take Introducing John, a 6-week free, live online course on Thursday nights with Vicki Garvey, long-time Canon for Lifelong Christian Formation in the Diocese of Chicago, and a respected author, public speaker, and biblical scholar.

Staring this Thursday, January 23, participants will meet once a week for six weeks on Thursday nights at 8 p.m. E.S.T. in a zoom online classroom to discuss important ideas in John’s Gospel with Vicki Garvey. Themes that Vicki will cover include (but are not limited to):

• John’s portrayal of “the Jews” and, despite that enmity in this gospel, the many revisited themes from the Hebrew Bible.
• The surprising place of women in John’s Gospel.
• The Johannine community and radical commitment.
• Concern for the various strata of communities, covering those contemporary with Jesus through the Johannine circle of Jesus’ followers — those who “believe but do not see,” including 21st-century followers.

Class meetings will include both lectures from Vicki on John and online discussion opportunities.

This class is ideal for people participating in the Good Book Club this year and anyone who would like to learn more about John’s unique and fascinating Gospel.

Photograph of Fred Rogers on the set of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood in the late 1960s. Photo: Wikicommons.

We have just launched Mr. Rogers’ Simple Faith For Individuals and For Groups.

Adults who grew up in the decades from the 1960s through the 1990s are likely to remember the opening to the iconic television show Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. The rest of you might be wondering what all the fuss is about. With the 50th anniversary of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood in 2018 and the premiere of A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood with Tom Hanks, Mr. Rogers-centered dialogue has remained more relevant than ever while other popular children’s show hosts have come and gone.

Fifty years after his show began and almost twenty years after it ended, why are Mr. Rogers and his neighborhood still important?

Mr. Rogers’ television persona was authentic. According to the people who knew him, he was really like that. When he got on the screen and sang simple songs about how he loved children; how he thought each was special just as they were, he meant it. He let his show model values that he found important — quiet, kindness, a deliberate pace, the use of imagination, and getting to know and value many different kinds of people.He remains important because children (and the rest of us) still need what he offered. His message, and his authenticity still have much to offer.

In this course, contemplative spirituality director and author Westina Matthews discusses Mr. Rogers’ lasting impact on the world. In the first lesson, she offers details about Fred Rogers’ life and personality. In the second lesson, she discusses Rogers’ work in the context of Christ’s teachings. In the third lesson, she examines Mr. Rogers’ show in the context of contemplative spirituality — slowing down, examining and appreciating the world as it is. In the last lesson, she talks about Mr. Rogers’ authenticity, and his value for people’s being sincere — and being accepted for their authentic selves.

This class is ideal for anyone interested in Mr. Rogers, contemplative spirituality, reaching out to children, or everyday spiritual practices. If you’d like to view a preview, please click here.

Holy Trinity Brompton (often affectionately called HTB) has been especially successful in creating new worship communities in London.

We’ve just launched Learning From London with Jason Fout For Individuals and For Groups .

There has been much discussion both in the media and among Christians about the church’s decline in recent decades. A Pew Research Study released in 2015 revealed that in the U.S., Christians as a whole declined by almost 8% between 2007 and 2014. Mainline Protestant church membership declined by 3.4%; Roman Catholic church membership declined by 3.1%; evangelical churches declined at a slower, but steady rate. Meanwhile, the number of Americans, particularly younger Americans, who identified themselves as atheists, agnostics, or as nothing in particular, rose by 6.7%.

The Anglican Church is experiencing this decline. The reasons for it have been analyzed and re-analyzed, along with many suggestions for how the church can remain relevant, spreading the good news in a society that no longer orients itself around the church as it did for so many years. The church needs to adapt to not being the cultural center it used to be, and the Diocese of London is modeling creative and effective ways to make that happen.

Under the circumstances, we should pay close attention to the fact that in a city that is largely disengaged with the church (only around 8% of London’s population attends church on Sunday), the Diocese of London has been growing. It grew by 16% between 2002-2012, and it has maintained those numbers since then. It has been experimenting with new approaches to building worship communities, and those communities have proven remarkably effective. Jason Fout, an associate professor of Anglican theology at Bexley Seabury Seminary Foundation, spends a lot of his time teaching in London and has studied the Diocese of London extensively to discover the reasons for its great success in a time of decline.

In this class, Jason describes what the Diocese of London is doing and why it works. In his first lesson, he offers an overview of the Diocese of London’s approach and its success. In the second lesson, he discusses ways in which Diocese of London churches (Holy Trinity Brompton in particular) have reduced the thresholds that were keeping them from connecting with people in their communities. In the third and fourth lesson, he examines the Diocese of London’s approach to planting churches and building new worship communities and why these ventures have been successful.

This class is ideal for anyone interested in learning about revitalizing churches and connecting effectively with people in their communities. For a preview of the course, please click here.

I just returned from a week-long trip with my husband to the Cotswolds, one of the most stunningly beautiful and peaceful areas of England. (In fact, this collection of rural cottages, villages, farmlands, and footpaths has been officially designated an AONB: an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.) The Cotswolds experienced their commercial heydey during the Middle Ages, as their sheep were the sought-after source of the best wool in Europe. The cottages and towns were built, improved, and expanded during this time with the wealth acquired in the wool trade, and each village has a church that was either built or renovated during the Middle Ages, usually by the lord of the village, using wool-trade riches. These churches are beautiful, welcoming, historic, and solid.

Perhaps not surprisingly, though, time brought change to this area. The rise of cotton dealt a serious blow to the economy of the Cotswolds; these villages are now mostly run on tourist dollars and the village churches in many areas have banded together to share clergy and resources, offering services at one parish each Sunday, on a rotation.

The name Cotswold is popularly believed to be a combination of cote (enclosure) and wold (hillsides). The fields that surround the villages do host flocks of sheep and doves; sheep-cotes and dove-cotes offer shelter; trees and ruins of old manor houses provide shade to weary hikers and livestock alike. And the parish churches of The Cotswolds, too, feel like cotes — housing and protection — for those of us sheep of the Good Shepherd who wander in from the streets and fields around. The churches are cool, quiet, shaded, peaceful. Plaques and engraved stone signs tell the histories of those who worshipped, married, and were buried over the centuries. One gets a sense of the thousands of seekers and believers, the hundreds of years’ worth of song, prayer, and worship, that these churches have witnessed.

No matter the changes and chances of life — the stories of violence and suffering, forecasts of economic doom that seem to surround us — these country churches remind us that our Good Shepherd remains, and that there is always a place of shelter and protection — the same source that has been and always will be — for those who seek it, or those who stumble upon it.

May we always remember that there is shelter when we need it — whether we enter a stone church, open our Bible, or log on to the internet. The Good Shepherd will be waiting.

To learn more about the Church of England and its traditions, consider any of the following courses:

English Origins of the Book of Common Prayer
The Spirituality of the Prayer Book
Introducing Episcopal Worship

Ashley Denham Busse
Senior Course Producer