[Episcopal News Service] In a March 9 email to the diocese, the Council of Trustees of the Episcopal Diocese of Kansas, which functions as the standing committee, said that the search for the diocese’s next bishop is being extended. The original timeline had called for a slate of between three and five nominees to be announced on March 9, with an election on June 13 and consecration on Oct. 10. However, the council’s email said, “This past week, the search committee notified us that while there were enough applications for a robust process, following their discernment, their recommendation is to invite additional applications, thereby extending the search process,” adding that it accepted the committee’s recommendation. The email said that search committee co-chair, the Very Rev. Torey Lightcap, told the council, “I believe that procedurally, we are exactly where we need to be, and I am grateful the Search Committee was unified in all decisions along the way. We feel the guidance of the Holy Spirit upon this process, and we believe that with trust and respect we can move to the next logical step.” The council said it has shifted the timeline “to accommodate an open application period and subsequent discernment process.” Plans now call for a combined diocesan convention and bishop election Oct. 23-24, 2026, with a consecration service on April 17, 2027, pending the required consents from diocesan bishops and standing committees. The email stated that the search committee will develop the next phase of the application and discernment process, with more information to be released over the next few weeks. The diocese’s former bishop, the Rt. Rev. Cathleen Bascom, resigned on Jan. 31 to serve as a consultant to The Episcopal Church to help create eco-region networks in the U.S. and Province IX.

[Episcopal News Service] The Episcopal Church is supporting its military service members, including chaplains, as some of them who are stationed in the Middle East prepare to serve during wartime and others prepare to deploy to the region. An undisclosed number of Episcopal chaplains are serving on military bases in the United States and worldwide. All of those serving in the Persian Gulf region have been accounted for, the Rt. Rev. Ann Ritonia, The Episcopal Church’s bishop suffragan for Armed Forces and Federal Ministries and a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, told Episcopal News Service. Part of her job overseeing military chaplains requires that she be in regular communication with them. “I’m making sure they have all that they need and that they know they have the prayers and support of the church for the work that they do,” Ritonia said. The United States and Israel launched a series of joint attacks on Iran on Feb. 28. Iran responded by launching attacks throughout the Middle East. The attacks have continued to escalate across the region. About 3,000 active-duty, reserve and National Guard chaplains of many faiths serve the U.S. military, according to the most recent military data available, from 2023. Chaplains offer service members and their families spiritual and moral support. They provide religious services, including rites and sacraments, and religious formation. They also provide counseling and help service members keep calm during operations such as “Operation Epic Fury.” Military chaplains complete basic training and, like their fellow service members, sometimes deploy to active war zones, though their duties are noncombatant, meaning they’re unarmed and are not permitted to fight. And, just like their fellow active-duty service members, they must follow the Department of Defense’s code of ethics and remain nonpartisan while on duty, in uniform or acting in an official capacity. This means they cannot publicly comment on the war. “Right now, [the chaplains] are continuing to do their work whether or not they agree with this incursion into Iran. They’re still faithfully taking care of their soldiers and their airmen and their Marines and their sailors, as they’ve been called to do,” Ritonia said. “Obviously, they’re concerned. They are worried about families. There’s a lot of fear, because there doesn’t seem to be an endgame in place.” As of March 9, seven U.S. service members, 13 Israeli civilians, including two soldiers, and at least 1,230 Iranians have been killed since the armed conflict began, according to government reports. Immediately following the initial attacks, Anglican and Episcopal leaders lamented the long-term effects they and Iran’s counterstrikes would have on civilians, including death and suffering. Archbishop Hosam Naoum, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem and primate of the Anglican Province of Jerusalem and the Middle East, in a Feb. 28 letter called for prayers “to protect the innocent – the mothers, the children and the elderly – who are caught in the crossfire of ‘Operation Epic Fury’ and the subsequent ‘crushing responses.’” His province includes the Diocese of Iran, which has four churches. Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe also asked Episcopalians to pray for members of the Diocese of Iran and for all Iranians, in a Feb. 28 letter. “As Christians who follow a Prince of Peace, we mourn that … [these] attacks will surely mean further hardship for the most vulnerable Iranians and, as retaliation inevitably follows, suffering that will spread across the entire region,” he said. On March 10 at 12 p.m. Eastern, Rowe and other faith leaders will lead a virtual interfaith prayer vigil for peace in the Middle East. Registration is open to everyone. Outside the church, lawmakers and legal experts have questioned the legality of the U.S. strikes, which were launched without prior congressional approval. The Republican-led House and Senate last week both voted against limiting President Donald Trump’s ability to conduct further military operations in Iran. Additional discourse began last week after the nonprofit Military Religious Freedom Foundation reported that it had received more than 200 complaints from service members alleging that commanders had been invoking far-right Christian nationalist rhetoric to justify going to war with Iran. One anonymous complaint from a noncommissioned officer claimed that their commander “urged us to tell our troops that this war was ‘all part of God’s divine plan’ and he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the Book of Revelation referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus Christ.” Ritonia said she hasn’t heard any of these claims from Episcopal chaplains, but if the allegations are true, “it would be a violation of the oath that the secretary of defense and every military officer and enlisted person have taken, and they are not upholding the Constitution.”  “As Christians, we must never, ever seek out war. It’s against everything that Jesus Christ taught,” she said. Armed Forces and Federal Ministries’ web page includes information about military chaplains and just war theory, a tradition of military ethics that establishes moral, legal and theological boundaries for engaging in armed conflict. The Rev. Andrea Baker, a retired U.S. Army Episcopal chaplain who lives in Hawai’i, told ENS that she believes the claims are credible, “and it’s extremely concerning.” “I already didn’t get a good night’s sleep when I went to bed [on Feb. 27 – Iran is 13.5 hours ahead of Hawai‘i] and looked at my phone and saw that the war had begun,” Baker said. “Then I started thinking that there are going to be people who would be happy about this because they believe we are hastening the second coming of Christ, and that is absurd.” News of the latest armed conflict in the Middle East triggered Baker’s post-traumatic stress disorder stemming from her 2014 deployment in Afghanistan. She said she suddenly could hear helicopters whirring and sirens, reminding her of nonstop air raid sirens going off in Kandahar. As part of her deployment, Baker had to stand and salute caskets carrying the remains of fallen U.S. service members. “Immediately after reading the news

[Episcopal News Service] Episcopal leaders have released a collection of essays offering perspectives on the Nairobi-Cairo proposals, which will be taken up this summer by the Anglican Consultative Council as it considers structural reforms to the Anglican Communion. The Nairobi-Cairo proposals, named for the cities in which they were first drafted, were released in December 2024 and revised this month by the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order, or IASCUFO. The commission is recommending two primary reforms, focused on how the Anglican Communion is defined and the way it assigns leadership in certain representative bodies. On March 9, The Episcopal Church unveiled a 157-page document collecting 11 essays and two pastoral reflections on the proposals, in response to Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe’s call to the House of Bishops’ Ecclesiology Committee. Contributors include members of that committee as well as the Task Force on the Anglican Communion and Countering the Colonial Mindset, which was created to fulfill a resolution passed by General Convention in 2024. “The Nairobi-Cairo Proposals: Voices in Response from The Episcopal Church” was edited by Bishop Mark Edington, who leads the Convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe and was one of nine bishops who contributed to the collection. Edington said in a foreward that the essays are not intended as an official churchwide response to the proposals. “What this volume reveals is deep reflection on the part of leaders in the church in both episcopal and parochial ministry, as well as in academe, to a newly envisaged Anglican Communion as described in the proposals,” he said. The authors include current and retired bishops, a seminary professor, a university professor, two parish priests and a member of the presiding bishop’s staff. The full collection can be accessed here. The Nairobi-Cairo proposals were developed partly in response to longstanding theological divisions between some of the provinces, and it remains to be seen whether the proposed changes could mend what some conservative bishops have described as their “impaired” communion with provinces like The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada that are more progressive on issues of LGBTQ+ inclusion. The first proposal offers an updated statement of what binds the 42 autonomous provinces to each other: “shared inheritance, mutual service, common counsel in conference, and historic connection with the See of Canterbury.” That final principle’s wording differs slightly from the Anglican Communion’s existing definition, which since 1930 has required member churches to be “in communion with the See of Canterbury,” commonly understood as the Church of England. The second proposal seeks to broaden and diversify the leadership of three Anglican Communion bodies known as the “Instruments of Communion” – the Anglican Consultative Council, the Primates’ Meeting and the Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops. The office of the archbishop of Canterbury is considered a fourth Instrument of Communion. The Anglican Consultative Council, or ACC, is scheduled to meet June 27-July 5 in Belfast, Northern Ireland, hosted by the Church of Ireland. It will be the first meeting convened by Archbishop of Canterbury Sarah Mullally, who serves as ACC president. Each Anglican province is invited to send two or three representatives to the ACC. The Episcopal Church’s representatives are Puerto Rico Bishop Rafael Morales Maldonado; the Rev. Ranjit Mathews, canon to the ordinary of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut, and Yvonne O’Neal, a lay leader from the Diocese of New York. This meeting of the ACC will be closely watched for which provinces send representatives. The Anglican provinces of Nigeria, Uganda and Rwanda have refused to participate in past Anglican Communion meetings. More recently, those provinces have pressed the conservative leaders of other Anglican provinces to separate from the existing Anglican Communion and forum a new coalition through a movement known as GAFCON that has been influenced by schismatic former Anglicans.

[Anglican Communion News Service] Four global Christian communions have issued a joint call for renewed efforts towards the “gift of peace” in response to escalating conflicts and growing instability around the world. In the statement, leaders of the Anglican Communion, the Lutheran World Federation, the World Communion of Reformed Churches and the World Methodist Council express deep concern at the human cost of war and call on governments and international institutions to renew their commitment to diplomacy, justice and peacebuilding. The statement highlights the devastating impact of ongoing conflicts in regions including Ukraine, Sudan, Gaza and Myanmar, and urges greater investment in humanitarian assistance, grassroots peacebuilding and multilateral cooperation. Read the entire statement here.

[Episcopal News Service – Charlotte, North Carolina] Archbishop Hosam Naoum, bishop of the Diocese of Jerusalem and primate of the Anglican Province of Jerusalem and the Middle East, spoke by video from his home March 5 to address attendees of the Episcopal Parish Network conference here, thanking them for their support of his province as the U.S. and Israel wage war on Iran. Since Feb. 28, the bombardment of Iran and Iran’s retaliatory strikes on Israel and U.S. military bases in the region have posed a constant threat to civilians in the region. Naoum said he had hoped to attend the Episcopal Parish Network conference in person but was unable to travel because of the sudden violence so close to home. “The situation here in the Middle East has been very difficult,” Naoum said in his video remarks during a panel discussion on various developments in the Anglican Communion, of which Naoum’s province and The Episcopal Church are members. Naoum’s province includes the Diocese of Iran. Naoum thanked The Episcopal Church and Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe for their support, as well as all those attending this week’s conference. “Thank you for your witness and your ministry,” he said. The Diocese of Jerusalem holds distinction within the Anglican Communion as the church’s enduring presence in the Holy Land, including in the occupied Palestinian territories of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The diocese often welcomes Episcopal pilgrims and operates several ministries serving Palestinians there, including Al Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City. Rowe had urged Episcopalians to pray for Naoum and his province in a Feb. 28 letter to The Episcopal Church. “I had planned to be with Hosam today and tomorrow when he made a long-planned visit to our church,” Rowe wrote. “Many Episcopalians who had hoped to see him and assure him of our support will feel his absence keenly in the coming days.” On March 5, Naoum sought to draw a closer connection between the work of his province and diocese and the wider Anglican Communion. “We are your ambassadors on the ground here in the Middle East,” he told those gathered in a ballroom at the Sheraton Charlotte Hotel. The Anglican ministries in the Middle East are “also done in your name.” He also referred back to a pastoral statement he released after the initial U.S. and Israeli attack on Iran, and he restated a call for peace and an end to violence. “We refuse to hate. We are called to love and transform,” he said. – David Paulsen is a senior reporter and editor for Episcopal News Service based in Wisconsin. He can be reached at dpaulsen@episcopalchurch.org.