Photo of Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, courtesy of Episcopal News Service

I got that question a lot this summer from friends and family who aren’t Episcopalians and who are bemused by the stuff they read about my church in the national press.  So here is my brief, idiosyncratic, and much too general take on “what’s happening.”

Every three years the Episcopal Church gathers for General Convention.  General Convention is our governing body; we don’t have an archbishop or pope who decides things for us, but instead work in a complicated, messy, democratic way to get the business of the church done, and even to decide what our business really is.  Our bicameral legislative body is noticeably similar in structure to the U.S. Congress, which is no surprise because it developed alongside it, under the guidance of some of the same “founding fathers.”  It’s big, though, with over 800 people (lay and…

Photo courtesy of Redeemer Evangelical Lutheran Church, The Bronx, NYC, where I interned while in divinity school.

This past Saturday, November 1, our child was baptized as part of the All Saints evening service at Concordia Lutheran Church in Kirkwood. (As an aside, I can now attest that one of the deepest joys of being an ordained minister is to baptize your own child.)

Later that night, our child slept through the night for the first time. Terrific timing that it fell on the night Daylight Savings Time ended. The extra hour was divine. Sunday morning, my wife quipped, “If all we had to do was baptize him, we could have done it a month ago.”

Coincidence? Perhaps. Until I talked to my mother. “You know, both of my boys [that is, my brother and me] slept better after they were baptized… Say what you want, but both of you slept better. God…

A story in the New York Times sports section Sunday about the women’s golf phenom, Lorena Ochoa delved into the rarely-coincidental worlds of sports wagering and religion.

Despite it’s headline, “Keeping Faith, Ochoa Takes Magical Tour,” and a mention in the fifth paragraph that the 26-year-old Mexican golfer is Roman Catholic, the story was a sports piece - about a golf pro whom everyone seems to like.

However, reporter Karen Crouse hooks onto an interesting anecdote toward the end of the story.

After telling us that Ochoa gives herself incentives, which “always involves candy,” we learn that during a round in Mexico City last March:

…Ochoa told Brooker, who does not belong to any organized religion, that she was worried his daughters would be shut out of heaven. How many tournaments would she have to win, she asked, for him to have his children, Hadley, 3, and Madelaine, 2, baptized?

Brooker, taken aback by the question,…