One Iowa family received a very special Christmas surprise. It came in the form of a letter from a mother, who died two years prior. Her three wishes for her family have moved a community. NBC’s Mike Taibbi reports.
Watch it all [this is quoted in full in the sermon two posts back].
In some parts of the world, Herod’s massacre of the innocents is a living tradition. On Christmas Day in Iraq, 37 people were killed in bomb attacks in Christian districts of Baghdad. Radical Islamists mark – and stain – the season with brutality and intolerance.
The violence, of course, is not restricted by the calendar. In recent months, we’ve seen Coptic Christians gunned down in Cairo and churches burned. Thousands of Syrian Christians have fled to Turkey. “Where we live,” said one refugee, “10 churches have been burned down. … When the local priest was executed, we decided to leave.”
Across North Africa and the greater Middle East, anti-Christian pressure has grown during the last few decades, sometimes subtle, sometimes overt. This persecution has gained recent attention from the archbishop of Canterbury and the pope. “We won’t resign ourselves,” says Pope Francis, “to a Middle East without Christians.”
The most passionate advocate has been Prince Charles – an often underestimated, consistently thoughtful figure.
Why do the nations conspire, and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD and his anointed, saying, “Let us burst their bonds asunder, and cast their cords from us.” He who sits in the heavens laughs; the LORD has them in derision. Then he will speak to them in his wrath, and terrify them in his fury, saying, “I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill.”
–Psalm 2:1-6
The court struck down all three prostitution-related prohibitions ”“ against keeping a brothel, living on the avails of prostitution and street soliciting ”“ as violations of the constitutional guarantee to life, liberty and security of the person.
The ruling comes more than two decades after the court last upheld the anti-prostitution laws. It represents a historic victory for sex workers ”“ mainly women ”“ who were seeking safer working conditions.
Because thy steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise thee. So I will bless thee as long as I live; I will lift up my hands and call on thy name. My soul is feasted as with marrow and fat, and my mouth praises thee with joyful lips, when I think of thee upon my bed, and meditate on thee in the watches of the night; for thou hast been my help, and in the shadow of thy wings I sing for joy.
–Psalm 63:3-7
Watch it all–sooooo adorable!
“And to the angel of the church in Smyrna write: ‘The words of the first and the last, who died and came to life.
“‘I know your tribulation and your poverty (but you are rich) and the slander of those who say that they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan. Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested, and for ten days you will have tribulation. Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. He who conquers shall not be hurt by the second death.’
–Revelation 2:8-11
what makes this Pope so important is the speed with which he has captured the imaginations of millions who had given up on hoping for the church at all. People weary of the endless parsing of sexual ethics, the buck-passing infighting over lines of authority when all the while (to borrow from Milton), “the hungry Sheep look up, and are not fed.” In a matter of months, Francis has elevated the healing mission of the church””the church as servant and comforter of hurting people in an often harsh world””above the doctrinal police work so important to his recent predecessors. John Paul II and Benedict XVI were professors of theology. Francis is a former janitor, nightclub bouncer, chemical technician and literature teacher.
And behind his self-effacing facade, he is a very canny operator. He makes masterly use of 21st century tools to perform his 1st century office. He is photographed washing the feet of female convicts, posing for selfies with young visitors to the Vatican, embracing a man with a deformed face. He is quoted saying of women who consider abortion because of poverty or rape, “Who can remain unmoved before such painful situations?” Of gay people: “If a homosexual person is of good will and is in search of God, I am no one to judge.” To divorced and remarried Catholics who are, by rule, forbidden from taking Communion, he says that this crucial rite “is not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak.”
Through these conscious and skillful evocations of moments in the ministry of Jesus, as recounted in the Gospels, this new Pope may have found a way out of the 20th century culture wars, which have left the church moribund in much of Western Europe and on the defensive from Dublin to Los Angeles. But the paradox of the papacy is that each new man’s success is burdened by the astonishing successes of Popes past. The weight of history, of doctrines and dogmas woven intricately century by century, genius by genius, is both the source and the limitation of papal power. It radiates from every statue, crypt and hand-painted vellum text in Rome””and in churches, libraries, hospitals, universities and museums around the globe. A Pope sets his own course only if he can conform it to paths already chosen.
O God, who didst give to thy servant Ambrose grace eloquently to declare thy righteousness in the great congregation, and fearlessly to bear reproach for the honor of thy Name: Mercifully grant to all bishops and pastors such excellency in preaching, and fidelity in ministering thy Word, that thy people may be partakers with them of the glory that shall be revealed; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
What is it about Narnia that’s so special, so magical, so wonderful, so memorable?
As Chuck pointed out years ago, it’s the Gospel, from creation to redemption to consummation, smuggled (that’s Lewis’s word) into our imaginations, into our children’s imaginations, through beautiful storytelling.
In Narnia, as Chuck said, “we find talking beasts, dwarfs and giants, and even talking trees and river gods. Narnia is ruled by a majestic lion called Aslan, an allegorical representation of Christ. An evil White Witch representing Satan holds Narnia prisoner by keeping the land in perpetual winter””at least, until Aslan offers himself to be sacrificed, thereby lifting the long curse over Narnia.”
The Bishop of North West Australia has warned that if the state or federal governments legalize same-sex marriage, Anglican clergy in his diocese would no longer serve as marriage registrars.
The statement by the Rt. Rev. Gary Nelson follows the decision last month by the Australian Capital Territory to legalize same-sex marriage ”“ a move that has been challenged by the federal government as being unconstitutional.
David Moyes has been waiting for a signature victory to kickstart his short, erratic tenure at Manchester United.
Who better to get it against than the Premier League leaders?
After falling short against title rivals Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester City so far this season, United finally delivered when it really mattered by beating Arsenal 1-0 on Sunday thanks to Robin van Persie’s 27th-minute goal against his former club.
Blessed Spirit of God, come to us in all thy fullness and power, to enrich us in our poverty, to inflame us in our feebleness. Be closer to us than breathing, nearer than hands or feet. As the branches are in the vine, so may we abide in thee. Compass our minds with thy wisdom. Saturate our souls with thy righteousness. Fire our wills with thy might. Melt our hearts with thy love. Do everything at all times to make us wholly thine until thy wealth is ours and we are lost in thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
–The Pastor’s Prayerbook
O God, who art nigh to all them that call upon thee in truth; who art thyself the Truth, whom to know is life eternal: Instruct us with thy divine wisdom, and teach us thy law; that we may know the truth and walk in it; through him in whom the truth was made manifest, even Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord.
–From the thought of Saint Augustine
Stanley J. White, the Assemblies of God minister and then a postulant for the priesthood, had pushed the envelope any number of times since succeeding his father as pastor of Evangel Assembly of God. His devotional readings had led him to the Book of Common Prayer, among other sources of spirituality, and he had already grown weary of evangelicalism’s endless quest for innovation. Some time after he initiated a liturgical procession ”” perhaps still the only instance in the century-long history of the Assemblies of God ”” some complaints alerted denominational authorities in Springfield, Mo. White was quickly sacked, but, much to his surprise, a significant number of his congregants indicated their willingness to accompany him on his spiritual journey, wherever it might lead.
It led, finally, to the Episcopal Church and to that memorable Sunday evening in 1990. The evangelicals sought the structure and connectedness of historic Christianity, but they also had no intention of leaving their pentecostal enthusiasm behind. Harry Shipps, the bishop of Georgia, said that they didn’t have to, that in fact he welcomed their enthusiasm, though I don’t know that he was quite prepared for that event. After the confirmands queued up before five bishops and all the confirmations were completed, the congregation erupted in orgiastic celebration.
I was more than a tad hesitant about returning to Valdosta. I was afraid, frankly, that the journey from Assemblies of God to Episcopal Church might have been a bridge too far, that pressures from within and without might have triggered a conservative backlash….
As if married people don’t have enough to worry about, a new study suggests that the divorce of a friend or close relative dramatically increases the chances that you too will divorce.
A research team headed by Rose McDermott of Brown University analyzed three decades of data on marriage, divorce and remarriage collected from thousands of residents of Framingham, Massachusetts.
McDermott and her colleagues found that study participants were 75% more likely to become divorced if a friend is divorced and 33% more likely to end their marriage if a friend of a friend is divorced.
With U.S. unemployment still high and labor participation at record lows, the nation’s job market faces a long road to full recovery. But worker mobility is picking up as housing recovers, giving economists reason to believe that the underpinnings of a stronger market are taking hold.
Mobility, or workers’ willingness to pull up stakes and move for a new job, advanced in recent years. Some 7.1 million Americans moved across state lines last year, according to the Census Bureau’s latest American Community Survey (ACS), released in September. That is still well below the nearly 8 million pace the country enjoyed before the 2007-08 recession, but it is up considerably from the 2010 trough of 6.7 million.
“It’s a very good signal to see people moving,” said Ernest Goss, a Creighton University economist.
“Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger Games” is one example. Read it all.
The 65 volunteers line up single file beneath the silvery glow of a full moon awaiting their turns to be scrutinized by the Ridgeville prison’s security guards. Some quietly sip coffee. Others greet old buddies. A few pray….
They, like their Christian brethren, believe that Jesus was killed as a sacrifice that opened the doors of salvation to all, even the most heinous of sinners. Even murderers and child molesters and rapists ”” if they truly repent. If they believe in him.
These volunteers comprise the 50th Kairos Prison Ministry International group to enter Lieber’s towering gates to serve what Jesus called “the least among us.” An ecumenical lot, some have volunteered with Kairos for all the 25 years it has been allowed inside the prison.
“We are fishers of men,” says volunteer Billy Gaines, a past state Kairos chairman and member of John Wesley United Methodist in West Ashley.
Read it all from the Faith and Values section of the local paper.
Reinhard Bonnke might be the most famous evangelist you have never heard of.
For the past 35 years, the German-born, naturalized American pastor has been preaching the Gospel across the continent of Africa, converting an estimated 72 million people to Christianity and earning the title of the “Billy Graham of Africa.”
Now Bonnke is turning his crusading evangelism to America and starting in Orlando, Fla., where he has been headquartered since 1999…. [In late September]his first major effort in the United States – his “Good News” crusade – kicked off at the Amway Center.
On the holy mount stands the city he founded; the LORD loves the gates of Zion more than all the dwelling places of Jacob. Glorious things are spoken of you, O city of God.
–Psalm 87:1-3
I wrote two very sad letters this week ”“ one to the Primates and Provincial Secretaries of the Anglican Communion suggesting that they request prayers in churches in their dioceses for those who died in the attack on a church in Peshawar in Pakistan last Sunday; today I wrote a letter to Archbishop Wabukala after the tragic deaths at the Westgate Shopping Centre in Nairobi.
Terri Ellsworth is convinced that her 12-year-old son Billy, who has Duchenne muscular dystrophy, is being helped by an experimental drug that counteracts the genetic mutation causing his disease.
His ability to walk has not deteriorated in the two years he has been on the drug, whereas many boys with the disease would be in wheelchairs by his age. Billy opened a Gatorade bottle by himself recently, beaming from ear to ear. He even took off down an uneven dirt path without falling.
“He never would have done that, ever,” said Ms. Ellsworth, 55, a kitchen and bath designer from Coraopolis, Pa., outside Pittsburgh. “Without this drug, he would not be walking today.”
Read it all (and there is a slideshow for those interested in pictures).
It is actually reported that there is immorality among you, and of a kind that is not found even among pagans; for a man is living with his father’s wife. And you are arrogant! Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you.For though absent in body I am present in spirit, and as if present, I have already pronounced judgment 4 in the name of the Lord Jesus on the man who has done such a thing. When you are assembled, and my spirit is present, with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our paschal lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us, therefore, celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
–1 Corinthians 5:1-8
BETTY ROLLIN, correspondent: The Metropolitan United Methodist Church in Washington, DC recently had an unusual celebration. The event, called “Church Quake,” honored married couples of the same sex and the clergy who married them.
One of those colleagues, who is facing a potential church trial for performing a same-sex marriage, is 79 year old Rev. Tom Ogletree, the retired dean of Yale Divinity School.
The marriage that Rev. Ogletree performed was that of his own son, Thomas.
[THE] REV. TOM OGLETREE: I was thrilled that he asked me to play a role because I’ve known he was gay for a long time and we’ve been watching him, you know, adjust and adapt to the demands of the culture in creative ways.
“After I stepped away from my ministry, I literally stepped off the cliff,” Ms. [Teresa] MacBain, 45, recalled in a recent interview. “I didn’t know what life would be like without a church. I was depressed. I was out there in limbo all at once. There is no community. There is no social network. The majority of friendships are gone. There is no place I can go every week where I know people and they know me.”
Now, 18 months into a new life, Ms. MacBain is bringing much of her old one to the task of building congregations of nonbelievers. She has been hired as the director of the Humanist Community Project at Harvard with the mandate to travel the country helping atomized groups of atheists, agnostics, humanists and freethinkers replicate the communal structure and support that organized religion provides to its faithful.
This line of work draws directly on Ms. MacBain’s experience of seeing her father create and build congregations throughout the small-town South and of her own track record of ministering in churches, prisons, nursing homes and drug-rehab centers.
FLASHBACK: BISHOP JEFFERTS SCHORI JOINS 25 OTHER BISHOPS IN AMICUS BRIEF SUPPORTING THE AUTHORITY OF DIOCESAN BISHOP
From the Dixon v Edwards 2001 District Court decision:
Professor Lewis Weil, Professor of Liturgics at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley, California, has stated on affidavit that the diocesan bishop is at the “apex” of the Episcopal Church hierarchy “as the apostle, chief priest, pastor and ecclesiastical authority of the diocese””¦. “All of this, in the Court’s view, gives a conclusive quietus to any argument about the role of review panels within the Church or whether Bishop Dixon may have had certain ecclesiastical remedies that she declined to pursue before coming to court. She is the highest ecclesiastical authority of the Washington Diocese of the Episcopal Church.
Amicus brief of 26 bishops [including then Bishop Jefferts Schori]:
“Episcopal Church governance is hierarchical and governed by canon law, as found by the District Court.”
From the Mark McCall South Carolina Affidavit:
181. Finally, in 2001 Louis Weil, like Mullin a professor at a TEC seminary, submitted expert testimony on the hierarchical structure of TEC to the United States District Court for the District of Maryland in Dixon v. Edwards, 172 F. Supp. 2d 702 (D. Md. 2001). Among Weil’s conclusions were the following (emphasis added):
I am qualified to explain the hierarchical structure of the Episcopal Church, and the diocesan bishop’s position at the apex of that hierarchy as the apostle, chief priest, pastor and ecclesiastical authority of the diocese”¦.
The polity of the Episcopal Church is hierarchical. In fact, the name of the Episcopal Church itself denotes the authoritative framework of the Church, and direction in which authority flows. The concept of episcope,” from which episcopal is derived, means oversight. Oversight, within the polity of the Episcopal Church, is the responsibility of a bishop within his or her diocese.The diocese is the jurisdictional unit of the Episcopal Church”¦.
Taken together, the role of the bishop as apostle, chief priest and pastor of a diocese, and the ordination vows taken by every priest signify the hierarchical nature of the Episcopal Church. Within this framework, it is the bishop who is the ultimate authority on issues of ministry within his or her diocese”¦.
In summary, the bishop is the cornerstone of the diocese. The history and liturgy of the Episcopal Church support the notion that the bishop is the ultimate authority over ecclesiastical matters within his or her diocese.
Weil’s expert declaration from the court’s public records is attached as Exhibit 3.
182. The district court relied heavily on Weil’s expert testimony in its decision:
Ultimately, however, Defendants’ suggestion that the Bishop is not the highest ecclesiastical authority is contradicted by every fundamental aspect of the faith, beginning with the very word “bishop,” which is derived from the Late Latin “episcopus” meaning “bishop” or “overseer,” through the Greek “episcopus,” comprised of “epi,” meaning “on or over” and “skopos,” meaning “watches””¦.Professor Lewis Weil, Professor of Liturgics at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley, California, has stated on affidavit that the diocesan bishop is at the “apex” of the Episcopal Church hierarchy “as the apostle, chief priest, pastor and ecclesiastical authority of the diocese””¦. “The history and liturgy of the Episcopal Church,” Professor Weil concludes, “support the notion that the bishop is the ultimate authority over ecclesiastical matters within his or her diocese””¦. All of this, in the Court’s view, gives a conclusive quietus to any argument about the role of review panels within the Church or whether Bishop Dixon may have had certain ecclesiastical remedies that she declined to pursue before coming to court. She is the highest ecclesiastical authority of the Washington Diocese of the Episcopal Church.
172 F. Supp. 2d at 717.
183. When this decision was appealed to the Fourth Circuit, two TEC bishops filed an amicus brief supporting reversal of the district court decision in a brief that argued the two bishops “strongly disagree [] with the lower court’s position on the authority of an Episcopal bishop.” This in turn prompted a second amicus brief by 26 TEC bishops in support of the trial court’s interpretation of TEC polity. They stated that their purpose was to respond to the arguments of the other amicus brief “because they believe that acceptance of those arguments would undermine and, indeed, would drastically alter the authority and the role of bishops in the Episcopal Church.” These amici concluded that “Episcopal Church governance is hierarchical and governed by canon law, as found by the District Court.” (Emphasis added.) Among the 26 bishops signing the second amicus brief was the current Presiding Bishop, on behalf of whom [Robert] Mullin prepared his testimony in this case. (See paragraph 3.)
184. The Fourth Circuit affirmed the decision by the district court, concluding that “Bishop Dixon is the highest ecclesiastical tribunal of the Church for the purposes of this dispute.” Dixon v. Edwards, 290 F. 3d 699 (4th Cir. 2002).
Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And he fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterward he was hungry. And the tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” But he answered, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.'”
–Matthew 4:1-4