With the launch of a new website, the former RSS and JavaScript headline feeds for Episcopal News Service are being terminated. Please subscribe to one of the new feeds.

In observance of World AIDS Day on Dec. 1, Christian leaders are calling for continued support for the nearly 34 million people living with HIV around the world and encouraging renewed education and advocacy efforts to bring an end to the global pandemic. Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson issued a joint letter for World AIDS Day 2011

Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) have issued a joint letter for World AIDS Day 2011, Dec. 1.

The Episcopal Church's Disciplinary Board for Bishops Nov. 28 said it cannot certify that Diocese of South Carolina Bishop Mark Lawrence has abandoned the communion of the church. "Based on the information before it, the board was unable to make the conclusions essential to a certification that Bishop Lawrence had abandoned the communion of the church," the Rt. Rev. Dorsey F. Henderson Jr., board president, said in a statement e-mailed to Lawrence and reporters

The Rev. Canon Ogé Beauvoir, dean of the Episcopal Theological Seminary in Port-au-Prince, was elected Nov. 25 to be the Episcopal Diocese of Haiti's first bishop suffragan, pending the required consents from a majority of bishops with jurisdiction and standing committees of the Episcopal Church. Beauvoir was elected on the second ballot with 68 lay votes and 25 priest votes, according to an email from the Rev. Kesner Ajax

The possibility that the adjacent Episcopal dioceses of Fond du Lac and Eau Claire could form a new diocese in northern Wisconsin has been laid aside due to "an irregularity" in the counting of the Fond du Lac vote. The irregularity appears to have occurred in the reporting of the vote of the Fond du Lac lay order

Yifei Shen kept her conversion to Christianity and the Episcopal faith a secret from her family for months. After a childhood practicing Buddhism in Taiwan, Shen knew her conversion would devastate her mother, a faithful follower of Buddha. But after years as an adult searching for spiritual fulfillment, Shen's long hunt came to an end on a hot, humid June day in 2010

"Trunks or treats," ghoulishly gripping music, eek-o friendly organic pumpkin giveaways, and commemorative ancestor altars — both real and virtual — are just some of the ways Episcopal churches are planning to observe the tricky triduum of Halloween, All Saints Day and All Souls Day

Although Jesus commanded his followers to go out and preach the kingdom and heal the sick (Luke 9:2), the Rev. Nigel Mumford wonders if the Episcopal Church has only gotten it half-right. "The church has done a great job preaching the kingdom, but not a very good job of healing the sick. That's 50 percent of what the Lord told us to do

When the Episcopal Church's Province III Youth Ministry Network earlier this month issued a set of guidelines for interacting with young people through social media, it was on the cutting edge of a growing effort to help guide ministers as they walk through the digital landscape.

The Sept. 21 release of U.S. hikers Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal from an Iranian prison "affirms the importance of the role of religious dialogue and its end product in this case, public diplomacy, as we seek ways to define common ground between our two countries," said Diocese of Washington Bishop John Chane, who returned from a weeklong visit to Iran on Sept. 19

For the "sake of the diocese" the leadership of the Episcopal Diocese of Central Ecuador – including members of the Standing Committee, Bishop Luis Fernando Ruiz, the chancellor, its legal representative and all other diocesan leaders – have agreed to resign by Oct. 1. Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori Sept. 20 convened a meeting of the leadership, along with Bishop Victor Scantlebury and Bishop Clay Matthews, the Episcopal Church's bishop for pastoral development

The Episcopal Church's chief operating officer has asked the House of Bishops to engage the laity and clergy in their dioceses in conversation in support of a potential structural reform that he said could shift the church's focus toward mission.

Retired Diocese of Iowa Bishop Walter C. Righter, 87, died Sept. 11. He had lived just outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori asked the congregation gathered Sept. 11 at St. Paul's Chapel in lower Manhattan, across the street from Ground Zero, to pray for those who perpetrated the violence, those who sought vengeance and for the families and friends of those who died in the terrorist attacks 10 years earlier.

In the days after the World Trade Center towers fell, heaven and hell stood side by side in lower Manhattan. St. Paul's Chapel in New York became the focal point of a remarkable effort to support the workers at nearby Ground Zero after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Before voluntarily evacuating on Sept. 8, Camp Allen staff moved resident horses, snakes, and birds to safety, installed sprinklers on roofs and closed up buildings in hopes that the beloved Episcopal Diocese of Texas campground would be spared damage from a devastating wildfire burning a few miles away