A twin bomb attack has killed at least 30 people in a busy area of the Nigerian city of Jos.
The two bombs exploded in quick succession in a marketplace near the scene of a major bombing in May.
Jos has a mixed population of Muslims and Christians, and in recent years Boko Haram militants have attacked churches and mosques there.
The group has killed more than 2,000 people this year. No group has said it carried out the latest bombings.
When members of St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church celebrate their patron saint’s feast day on Dec. 6, they may be able to mark the occasion with prayers on newly blessed ground in lower Manhattan.
It depends on work schedules at the construction site for their new sanctuary, which will overlook the National September 11 Memorial. This is a problem Greek Orthodox leaders welcome after a long, complicated legal struggle to rebuild the tiny sanctuary — located 80 yards from the World Trade Center’s South Tower — which was the only church destroyed in the 9/11 maelstrom.
“It’s all of this powerful symbolism, and its link to that September 11 narrative, that lets people grab on to the effort to rebuild this church and see why it matters,” said Steven Christoforou, a youth ministry leader at the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America.
Bess has long served as an unlikely apostle to New Urbanists and conservatives alike, neither of whom seem to get the other. He tells New Urbanists that building good neighborhoods is a necessary condition for building good communities, but not a sufficient one: they must integrate their architectural vision with a broader vision of the good life. To put it in an Augustinian way, you can’t build a city fit for man without a vision of the city of God.
“Urbanism is about human flourishing, and human flourishing requires virtues, which are character dispositions that lead toward certain goods. People aren’t passive receivers of urbanism,” he says. “New Urbanists do a lot of things right, but good urbanism is more than bioswales”””environmentally friendly alternatives to storm sewers””“bike lanes, good coffee, and olive oil.”
Yet the bigger challenge, from Bess’s point of view, is to convince conservatives that New Urbanism is something they should embrace. In a 2005 address presenting New Urbanism to the right, Bess made the familiar Aristotelian claim that “the best life for human beings is the life of moral and intellectual excellence lived in community with others.” The built environment is an indispensible foundation for that.
The pastor of a Sacramento megachurch had already raised the money he sought for a program to provide food and shelter to the homeless. But Rick Cole, who began the fundraiser with a stunt where he would live on the streets, couldn’t leave after only a few days. So, he spent the next two weeks living life as the homeless do ”” and the experience opened his eyes.
“I’ve walked past people that stay in some of the places of homelessness. And really almost not even noticed them, not considered their plight and what’s going on in their life. Now I was living among them,” Cole told NBC News.
Unrecognized by his new neighbors, the 57-year-old pastor spent his days looking for food and worrying about where he’d sleep at night. He didn’t preach he didn’t proselytize. He just listened. “I think I began to experience how people ignore others. I became the one ignored. People walked by me like I didn’t exist.”
Read it all or watch the video.
The decision not to indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson will further divide our communities and saddens us as leaders of nearly three dozen of our region’s congregations, faith and ethical communities.
Frustrated youth and law enforcement officials worship together within our doors. Our Clergy Caucus is called to consecrate the streets of St. Louis as safe places for all our citizens, and in particular our black and brown children and brothers and sisters. We are called to discern and name all systems, institutions, and processes that dehumanize black and brown people and that distort the purposes of justice, peace, and equality that we believe God intends for this region.
All of St. Louis owes a debt of gratitude to the 12 St. Louis County citizens who served on the grand jury that has decided that Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson will not stand trial for the Aug. 9 shooting death of Michael Brown.
The debt is owed not for the decision. The debt would have been owed had the grand jurors come back with an indictment.
The debt is owed for hanging in there while all about them the experts and would-be experts speculated about what happened on Canfield Drive shortly after noon on that warm Saturday afternoon.
As St. Louis-area clergy urge a nonviolent response to a grand jury’s decision about whether to charge a white police officer in the killing of an unarmed black teenager, they’re re-evaluating their role in the struggle over race relations.
Religious leaders have become complacent in the decades since the civil-rights movement ended legal segregation, said Carl Smith Sr., 59, pastor at New Beginning Missionary Baptist in Woodson Terrace, Missouri. The August shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson and the weeks of unrest that followed awakened people of the cloth, he said. A decision on charges that could come any day and the prospect of renewed violence have forced religious leaders to the forefront and, for some, into a period of introspection.
“We have stopped doing what we were supposed to do,” Smith said in an interview after an interfaith service Nov. 22 in St. Louis. “We have stayed confined to our four walls, instead of coming outside of these four walls.”
Will Vancouver’s experiment work? Studies conducted in Europe””where prescription heroin is common””reveal that the programs have produced improved public health outcomes as well as reduced crime. Prescription narcotic abuse has been a significant problem in the United States, and heroin abuse is a large and growing problem in the country. A recent study from the Center on Disease Control found that heroin use increased 74 percent from 2009 to 2012, and that in 2012 Americans were twice as likely to suffer a fatal overdose than they were in 2010.
While the success of Vancouver’s experiment is far from assured, the city’s willingness to offer prescription heroin reflects a willingness to provide new opportunities for beleaguered addicts.
One80 Place, formerly Crisis Ministries, is spending its first Thanksgiving in a new home – and is giving hope to the hundreds who will pass through its new doors this season without food or shelter or much reason to feel thankful or merry at all.
Many arrive here after crashing hard onto the rock bottom of substance addictions. Others struggle with chronic mental illnesses. Few, if any, know the prosperity of local growth and development.
And most have suffered traumas such as sexual abuse and physical assaults. A surprising number have landed here, with only temporary shelter separating them from the streets, due to domestic abuse.
Read it all from the local paper.
Our mission is to nurture children in Charleston’s Eastside by providing a safe environment where they can learn and grow.
The Biblical Family Center provides hope and optimism to the Eastside Community of Charleston.
Through our summer camps and after school programs,we provide year round mentoring and support for families. The Biblical Family Center has created a safe space to address risky behaviors, build on protective factors, and improve relationships. We are addressing: school attachment, avoiding self-harm, positive body image, avoiding tobacco, drugs, and alcohol, communicating needs of families, making healthy choices regarding nutrition, self care, recreational activities, and abstinence.
Gordon Smith doesn’t leave the house without at least a couple of pairs of socks. The memory of seeing what he calls “hideous” feet ”” toes eaten by frostbite, or reddened and peeling from trench foot ”” reminds him that the gift of a warm pair of clean socks can go a long way on the streets of Edmonton.
“It is such a minuscule gift that I can give them,” Smith said during a Friday morning breakfast at the All Saints Cathedral Anglican Church organized for homeless people in the city.
“They need more, they have nothing and when you give them something that they personally have and own and it’s brand new, it’s their own.”
Smith has been giving out socks for a decade in Edmonton and figures he’s amassed 70,000 pairs of socks, enough to fill an average-sized bedroom, and enough to crown him with the title “sock man,” among some who know him.
See how many you can guess on a sheet and then go and read it all.
[This week]…Canadians are grieving the deaths of two members of the Canadian Armed Forces at the hands of terrorists this week.
Our military has a proud history; hundreds of thousands have given their lives in the defence of freedom ”“ not only for our freedom, but for the freedom of people in distant nations. They serve valiantly to maintain our security. This week they were attacked on home soil.
Please join me in praying for everyone in our armed forces and specifically for the families and friends of the fallen men ”“ Corporal Nathan Cirillo and Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent.
The attack yesterday on our Parliament was an attack on every Canadian, because it was an attack on our democracy, our values and our way of life. Although it was intended to instill fear, I pray God will cause us ”“ and our leaders ”“ to turn instead to Him.
Reflecting on how other soldiers are responding to the deaths of Cirillo and Vincent, the Bishop Ordinary to the Canadian Forces, Peter Coffin, emphasized the professionalism of Canadian troops. “[They] know that they stand in danger. In our country it’s not really expected, but when something like this happens, they just react with the professionalism that is so characteristic of their work.”
However, Coffin was also clear about the grief that soldiers feel when a comrade falls, noting that “Military units are very close, and what happens to one happens to all. That closeness is such that the pain is widely shared and carried together.”
When asked if this event is likely to change anything about the way the Canadian Forces operate, he said, “People are always aware that this can happen, and I don’t think there will be any changes.” He added that “our Parliament Hill has always been an open place, and we don’t want it to become a fortress.”
There was the voice of Dr. Tom Frieden of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the telephone Thursday night, at the news conference that Gov. Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio and others were holding now that Ebola had come to New York City.
“It is very important that people understand how Ebola is spread and what the risk is,” Frieden said, but then that is something he has been saying all along.
This wasn’t about the state of preparedness at Bellevue Hospital now that Dr. Craig Spencer has been admitted there and officially diagnosed with Ebola. It is quite clear that the city was ready and the state was ready. It’s just as clear that there is no reason for panic.
Fellow Canadians, we’ve also been reminded today of the compassionate and courageous nature of so many Canadians like those private citizens and first responders who came to provide aid to Corporal Cirillo as he fought for his life, and of course the members of our security forces in the RCMP, the City of Ottawa Police and in Parliament who came quickly and at great risk to themselves to assist those of us who were close to the attack.
Fellow Canadians, in the days to come, we will learn more about the terrorist and any accomplices he may have had, but this week’s events are a grim reminder that Canada is not immune to the types of terrorist attacks we have seen elsewhere around the world.
We are also reminded that attacks on our security personnel and on our institutions of governance are by their very nature attacks on our country, on our values, on our society, on us Canadians as a free and democratic people who embrace human dignity for all. But let there be no misunderstanding: we will not be intimidated. Canada will never be intimidated.
The stone halls of Parliament Hill echoed with gunfire and were stained with blood Wednesday as a terrorist struck at the heart of the federal government after gunning down a sentry at the National War Memorial.
The gunman was shot and killed near the Library of Parliament, according to Ottawa police sources, by House of Commons Sergeant-at-Arms Kevin Vickers, a former RCMP officer and the man responsible for security on the Hill.
A witness said the gunman, carrying the rifle at his hip, walked deliberately up the west ramp of Centre Block and through the main doors of Parliament as bystanders cowered. It was just before 10 a.m.
Terror reached Canada this week when a “radicalized” convert to Islam on Monday ran down and killed a soldier with a car and a gunman yesterday invaded the capital. He murdered a soldier at a war memorial before entering Ottawa’s parliament building where he was shot to death.
Canada had until now dodged a terror attack even as Prime Minister Stephen Harper and others had warned that the nation, whether from Islamist extremists or lone wolves looking to settle some real or imagined grudge, was vulnerable.
“It’s hard to see how this won’t change things,” said Andrew MacDougall, a former director of communications for Harper who’s now a consultant in London at MSLGroup. “To see my former place of work lit up in a blaze of gunfire is shocking, disheartening and worrying.”
Federal sources have identified the suspected shooter as Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, a man in his early 30s who was known to Canadian authorities.
Sources told The Globe and Mail that he was recently designated a “high-risk traveller” by the Canadian government and that his passport had been seized ”“ the same circumstances surrounding the case of Martin Rouleau-Couture, the Quebecker who was shot Monday after running down two Canadian Forces soldiers with his car.
Parliament Hill came under attack today after a man with a rifle shot a soldier standing guard at the National War Memorial in downtown Ottawa, before seizing a car and driving to the doors of Parliament Hill’s Centre Block nearby.
MPs and other witnesses reported several shots fired inside Parliament, and a gunman has been confirmed dead inside the building, shot by the House of Commons Sergeant-at-Arms, according to MPs’ eyewitness accounts.
The soldier’s condition has not been confirmed.
MP John Williamson tweeted that the Conservative has been told “one CAF soldier was killed,” adding “a moment of silence followed.” CBC News has confirmed the soldier is a reservist from Hamilton
A struggling Presbyterian congregation with roots going back more than a century has decided to close its doors.
Beset by financial problems ”” brought on in part by a for-profit day care center it opened ”” New Life Presbyterian Church at 3410 W. Silver Spring Drive voted last month to dissolve itself. The church is the latest iteration of a Milwaukee congregation founded as Newminster Presbyterian in the late 1800s.
Now, the Presbytery of Milwaukee will take up the issue at a special meeting at 2 p.m. Tuesday at Greenfield Avenue Presbyterian Church, 1455 S. 97th St., in West Allis. The presbytery, which has contributed some $250,000 to New Life over the years, will spend an additional $60,000 to get its financial affairs in order.
Sean Kidd, a co-author of the report and a clinical psychologist with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, said 24 per cent of those involved in the study lost stable housing and cycled back into homelessness over the course of the year.
“I think what it has to do with is a number of points of adversity. It takes a tremendous amount of resilience and strength and support to exit the streets in the first place, but you’ve got many, many years of homelessness, the adversity therein, the challenges that led to becoming homeless,” he said in an interview on CBC Radio’s Metro Morning.
“These are often young people that have never in any way managed a home and all that goes into that, so there’s a lot of skills to learn ”¦ and what we found over the course of the year is for most they experienced declining hope ”” they weren’t engaging in communities that they had access to and mental health was faltering.”
The leader of the Anglican Church of Hong Kong has issued a statement calling for “dialogue” between pro-democracy protestors and government officials.
Archbishop Paul Kwong issued the statement Tuesday where he said that he was “saddened and distressed by the increasing social conflict.”
“In order to engage in real dialogue, we need to develop greater trust in one another. However this is not yet happening,” stated Kwong.
Photographer Charlie Phillips talks to Dan Damon about the rituals and fashions of Afro-Caribbean funerals in London. Starting with the Windrush generation in the 1950s to today. Charlie’s work will be published in the book ‘How Great Thou Art’. The title for this book is borrowed from the popular hymn sung at funerals.
Most of the tutors, not all of whom are church members, have just finished a full day at work. “We never start by just opening the books,” said Jon Findley, a bank data-base manager who has been volunteering for 24 years. “These kids bring their day with them. So you listen. It’s important that they know someone wants to hear about their lives. I don’t want to be another person who lets them down.”
Since the program started in 1964””one night a week, that first year, in the church basement””more than 6,000 children have been taught. Now tutoring is available four nights a week. The children who journey downtown from some of the city’s bleakest, most dangerous neighborhoods could be excused for complaining about the hand life has dealt them. But complaining is easy; working to better oneself is hard. The volunteers could be excused””even commended””if they chose only to give money to charities instead. But writing a check is easy; being the person who does something””the one who shows up””is hard.
The rewards, though, are lasting. Tamatha Webster’s daughter no longer has to struggle to learn in chaotic classrooms. She has been a faithful attendee on tutoring nights for seven years now, and because of her intelligence and diligent work has been awarded a scholarship to one of Chicago’s finest private schools.
Turkey is warning that the city of Kobani, which sits on the Syria-Turkey border, could at any moment fall to fighters affiliated with the Islamic State. That development would represent a huge setback for the U.S.-led air campaign in Syria and could portend a humanitarian catastrophe. Kurdish forces are warning of a possible massacre if Kobani falls to the Islamic State, which would solidify the group’s control of a large chunk of territory along Syria’s border with Turkey.
Kobani is now the sole remaining Kurdish-controlled town along a huge stretch of the Syrian border. To understand how isolated it is from the rest of the country, consider the map below. Syrian Kurds have in recent weeks been battling with Islamic State militants elsewhere in Syria, but it is in Kobani where that fighting has entered a key phase, as the militant group attempts to consolidate its rule in the north. Kobani is the small blot of yellow due east from where the Euphrates crosses into Syria.
St Mary le Strand, which is located in the middle of the Strand, has a long and interesting history. The original medieval church was pulled down in 1549 by Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset, to make way for Somerset House. The current church was then rebuilt between 1714 and 1724, by the celebrated architect James Gibbs and St Mary le Strand has since been remembered as his Baroque Masterpiece.
The current St Mary le Strand was one of fifty new churches built in London under the Commission for Building Fifty New Churches, an Act of Parliament in England in 1710, with the purpose of building fifty new churches for the rapidly growing conurbation of London. Despite this ambitious plan, only twelve of these churches were ever built, with St Mary le Strand being the first.
Unlike many London churches, St Mary le Stand managed to escape severe damage during the Second World War, as the inspecting architect would sit in the church’s muniment room during the bombings, to push incendiary bombs off the roof.
Anyone hoping for ecclesiastical preferment in London should have been at the launch last night of London Witness at the Bishop of London’s home, where the bishop, the Rt Rev Richard Chartres, revealed his approach to making appointments ”” never choose anyone who puts himself forward.
London Witness is a group of Anglicans committed to bringing a Christian perspective to London, and the bishop revealed that none of those present had volunteered their services. “You all had to be asked,” he said approvingly. “By definition, anyone who puts themselves forward would have been unsuitable. That’s my own philosophy when I’m making appointments.”
The bishop observed with relief that, unlike him, all the members of London Witness were spreading news of the CofE’s good work on social media. “I never read anything after 1649,” he confessed. “In many ways it makes you very avant garde”. Peculiar, because we were just thinking how similar Chartres’ philosophy was to Douglas Adams’s argument that it’s “a well-known fact that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it” ”” and we could have sworn Adams started writing the Hitchhiker’s Guide series later than 1648.
Yesterday, after much prayer and deliberation and after consulting our legal counsel, the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees of The General Theological Seminary voted with great regret to accept the resignations of eight members of the Seminary faculty. The Board came to this decision with heavy hearts, but following months of internal divisions around the future direction of General Seminary, some faculty member’s demands for action not possible under the governing structure of the Seminary, and the eight faculty members’ refusal to teach, attend meetings, or even worship, it has become clear that this is the best path forward in educating our students and shaping them into leaders of the church. However, even after accepting the resignations, the Seminary is willing to meet with any former faculty member about the possibility of reconsidering the resignation.
Officials with the Centers for Disease Control have confirmed that a person in Dallas definitely has the Ebola virus. Tuesday’s official determination makes the Dallas patient the first diagnosed Ebola case in the United States.
Officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are holding a press conference at 4:30 p.m.