Strangely Warmed

According to reports, the Vatican has decided to copyright all papal documents, It's none of my business what Vatican does, but some of my own denomination's copyright rules disturb me greatly. I'm all for the publishing house making a buck, but certain products of the church should be made freely available to all, among them: the official worship services of the church the Discipline (an official public record of the church's faith and law) Judicial Council decisions (an official public record of the church's court decisions) When I say "freely available," I don't mean that the publishing house shouldn't charge for the dead-tree editions of these resources. Paper, ink and labor all cost money. What I mean is that the publishing house should not treat these official documents as their own possession. The words are products of the general church. They should not be hidden from the world; they express our very being as a church. The...

John Wesley was, for a time, a military chaplain, as was his brother Charles. The Wesley brothers came to Georgia in 1735/1736 to serve as clergy for the colony. John was posted to Savannah, but Charles was assigned to to Fort Frederica on St. Simon's Island (at south end of the Georgia coast). Frederica was a British military garrison and Governor Ogelthorpe's military headquarters. It existed solely to check Spanish expansion out of Florida and it eventually played a role in the War of Jenkins Ear. In the 1742 Battle of Bloody Marsh, British troops from the garrison defeated Spanish invaders from Cuba. As minister to the military garrison of Frederica, Charles Wesley was in effect a military chaplain. He was not, however, a successful military chaplain. He was unpopular with both soldiers and civilians, with both the rank-and-file and the chain of command. A campaign of rumor and innuendo against him sealed his fate. A bare two months following his arrival at Frederica, he ...