The Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney, who has died aged 74, was described by Robert Lowell as “the most important Irish poet since Yeats”. Widely acclaimed for his many notable achievements, he was undoubtedly the most popular poet writing in English, and the only one assured of a place in the bestseller lists. His books sold, and continue to sell, in the tens of thousands, while hordes of “Heaneyboppers” flocked to his readings. His earliest influences, Robert Frost and Ted Hughes, are reflected throughout his work, but most especially in his first two collections, where he recollected images of his childhood on the family farm in Co Derry. Other poets, especially Gerard Manley Hopkins, William Wordsworth and Thomas Hardy, as well as Dante, also influenced his work….

[About him] the critic Helen Vendler wrote: “Seamus broadened my view of Ireland, north and south ”“ its geography, its history, its labour, its sounds, its euphemisms, its crises of conscience, its bog bodies, its bombs, its weather, its sectarian stand-offs, its twilights.” Poet and critic Robert Pinsky praised Heaney’s “gift for laughter and for friendship, a generosity entirely congruent with the qualities of his great gift and accomplishment in art”.

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Details of the millions of people who risked persecution for refusing to join the Church of England have been made available online.

Beatings and thrashings were once commonplace for religious rebels and, by the 19th century, tens of thousands of people had been put to death by beheading, hanging or burning.

Archive records showing the full extent of non-conformist courage have been published in digital form to mark the 200th anniversary of the 1813 Doctrine of the Trinity Act, seen as the landmark acceptance of non-conformity.

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The remains of an 18th-century Connecticut slave whose abuse continued long after his death will finally be given a dignified burial.

On Sept. 12, more than two centuries after his death, a slave known as Fortune will be interred at Waterbury’s Riverside Cemetery with all the trappings of a state funeral.

It will be a ceremonial end to the life of a man whose mistreatment serves as a reminder of the North’s participation in slavery.

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[James] Harris felt jolted, as if King were speaking directly to him, to his deepest, most impossible desire. In the coming month, Harris would begin his junior year at Carroll High School, returning as the starting quarterback for a team that had gone 12-0 and won a state championship the previous fall. His dream was to play professional football.

The prevailing opinion, however, was that a black man was not intelligent enough to play the position. The most promising black prospects, as Harris well knew, were routinely switched to receiver or defensive back….

Now King’s words told him change was coming, not in the hereafter, not in some distant, redeemed era, but imminently.

“I had no chance, I knew that,” Harris said. “But then I started listening to that speech.”

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To be a great leader such as King, you have to love, you have to set an example, you have to take action, and you have to dream. You have to have that vision and belief that you can make it better. Remember too, that it was also the courage and resolve of a single woman that got the ball rolling. Too often, people believe that their own contribution is not important. I tell you friends, one drop of water can turn a waterwheel. Always aim high and never give up hope. – See more at: http://www.archbishopofyork.org/articles.php/2955/martin-luther-king-jnr-i-have-a-dream-speech#sthash.bzECikiN.bz8BF3vG.dpuf

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Millions of students heading back to school are finding significant changes in the curriculum and battles over how teachers are evaluated, as the biggest revamps of U.S. public education in a decade work their way into classrooms.

Most states are implementing tougher math and reading standards known as Common Core, while teacher evaluations increasingly are linked to student test scores or other measures of achievement. Meantime, traditional public schools face unprecedented competition from charter and private schools.

Supporters say the overhauls will help make U.S. students more competitive with pupils abroad. But others worry that the sheer volume and far-reaching nature of the new policies is too much, too fast. Already, the changes have sparked pushback.

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The bottom line: Have products inspired by the “Jesus Phone” turned into rosaries for narcissists?

The omnipresent “iPhone provides some of the comforts and a sense of security that religious faith provides,” said [University of Notre Dame business professor Brett] Robinson. “It promises to connect you to the world and to the transcendent. … Yet most people spend most of their time looking at the same five or six sites online ”” like Facebook ”” that primarily are about themselves.

“They spend hours and hours in this intimate ritual of touching those phones, clicking and clicking their way through their own interests, their own desires, their own lives. …”

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In the suburbs of Seattle, an ancient West-African religion is gaining followers. Yoruba, from the Yoruba people of Nigeria, has been spreading across the U.S. for the last 50 years.

The religion is particularly popular with African-Americans who find it offers a spiritual path and a deep sense of cultural belonging.

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If anyone warrants a footnote in history, it’s Mahalia Jackson. If anyone deserves a modicum of recognition for what transpired before 250,000 people crammed at the foot of Washington’s Lincoln Memorial on a sweltering afternoon 50 years ago, it’s surely Mahalia Jackson.

Yet her story remains unsung, her involvement in one of the greatest speeches of all time unheralded.

Jackson was a gospel singer blessed with a contralto voice, album sales in the millions. Yet she was more than that – an activist who lent her formidable presence to the awakening civil rights movement and was described as ”the most powerful black woman in the US”.

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Society is “losing the plot” as it becomes more secular and less trusting, the UK’s outgoing Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks has said.

Lord Jonathan Sacks told the BBC the growth of individualism over the past 50 years was responsible for a pervasive breakdown in trust.

He highlighted the 2008 financial crisis and the declining marriage rate.

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For centuries ”“ from Florence Nightingale to ER ”“ the medical professionals who treated patients have been nurses and physicians.

Yet in a world with a dearth of such trained individuals, new professions in the healthcare system have emerged to attempt to fill the void. While the expansion of health professions in the US and other Western countries has been rapid, recognizing and welcoming nurse practitioners (NPs), physicians’ assistants (PAs) and nurse anesthetists (NAs) has been a very slow process, especially in a country like Israel whose union-oriented conservative medical establishment is not enamored of change.

The NP is Israel’s first new medical profession to be recognized by the Health Ministry, which organized a first, year-long course that turned 19 veteran nurses from around the country into recognized NPs.

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For years, conservative Christians have decried the “hookup culture” among young people that they believe is eroding the foundation of our nation. America’s youth, they claim, is having sex more frequently and with more partners. But according to new data, these Christians are wrong.

A sweeping new study conducted by sociologist Martin A. Monto of the University of Portland demonstrates that today’s young people are having no more sex than did their parents and they aren’t having sex with more partners, either. In a paper presented at the American Sociological Association, Monto stated there is “no evidence of substantial changes in sexual behavior that would support the proposition that there is a new or pervasive ”˜hookup culture’ among contemporary college students.”

How did so many Christians get this one so wrong? The answer seems to be a little thing called confirmation bias, which is the tendency of people to favor information that confirms their preconceived notions or beliefs.

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Five decades after Martin Luther King’s historic “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington, D.C., a new survey by the Pew Research Center finds that fewer than half (45%) of all Americans say the country has made substantial progress toward racial equality and about the same share (49%) say that “a lot more” remains to be done.

Blacks are much more downbeat than whites about the pace of progress toward a color-blind society. They are also more likely to say that blacks are treated less fairly than whites by police, the courts, public schools and other key community institutions.

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[KIM] LAWTON: Close relationships across racial lines are still not all that common. According to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll, about 40 percent white Americans and 25 percent of non-white Americans said they are surrounded exclusively by friends of their own race. Even when the circle was widened to include coworkers, about 30 percent of Americans said they do not regularly mix with people of a different race.

[THE REV. VINCENT] HARDING: Churches have a great opportunity and a great responsibility to find the ways to bring us together, not just to worship, quote, together, but to live together.

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LAWTON: Vincent Harding believes Americans need to take a deeper look at one of the iconic lines from King’s March on Washington speech, when he said he dreamed that his children would one day live in a nation where they would not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

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No one knows exactly when the Virgin Mary Church was built, but the fourth and fifth centuries are both possible options. In both cases, it was the time of the Byzantines. Egypt’s Coptic Church””to which this church in modern-day Delga belonged””had refused to bow to imperial power and Rome’s leadership over the nature of Christ. Constantinople was adamant it would force its will on the Copts. Two lines of popes claimed the Seat of Alexandria. One with imperial blessing sat in the open; the other, with his people’s support, often hid, moving from one church to the other. Virgin Mary Church’s altar outlasted the Byzantines. Arabs soon invaded in A.D. 641. Dynasties rose and fell, but the ancient building remained strong, a monument to its people’s survival.

Virgin Mary Church was built underground, a shelter from the prying eye. At its entrance were two ancient Roman columns and an iron door. Inside were three sanctuaries with four altars. Roman columns were engraved in the walls. As in many Coptic churches, historical artifacts overlapped earlier ones. The most ancient drawing to survive into the 21st century: a depiction, on a stone near the entrance, of two deer and holy bread. Layers and layers of history, a testament not only to the place’s ancient roots but also to its persistence. Like other Coptic churches, the ancient baptistery was on the western side, facing the altar in the east. Infants were symbolically transferred through baptism from the left to the right. The old icons were kept inside the church, the ancient manuscripts transferred to the Bishopric in modern times.

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Finitude, contingency, transience. These three linked words signal basic elements of what it is to be a human””and especially to be a historian. David Tracy, noted theologian and next door study-neighbor, taught me this connection, and I’ve let it color my life and scholarly preoccupations. It will help us interpret the almost reflexive use of the rubric “decline” in relation to the western Christian presence. Specifically, do a search for “mainline Protestant” and “decline” and you will get the picture, millions of times over.

Everything and everyone dies, is subject to accidents and change, and all human endeavor will pass and be forgotten. What can a church historian do with this obvious insight at such a time as ours? Given my parallel calling as a peregrinating lecturer, I use the vantage acquired there to try to sense the comings and goings of topics for inquiry. One way to measure public curiosity is to listen to questions asked after a lecture.

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Restraint on all sides is a necessary prelude to the beginning of political processes, which will have to include all sides and which must take place sooner or later. The future must lie in a peaceful and negotiated transition to an Egypt that is not simply “majoritarian”, but where democracy also means the rule of law and respect for fundamental freedoms, including those of expression, belief, and movement, regardless of gender or religion.

I have, for long, argued that if the gains of the authentic Nahda, or Renaissance, over a century ago, are not to be lost, Egypt needs a bill of rights. It is, perhaps, inevitable that, in a country like Egypt, Sharia will play a role in framing the law of the land, but how much of a role, and what understanding of Sharia, are the crucial questions here. There should be no compromise on the basic principle of one law for all, the equality of all before the law and respect for the common citizenship of all Egyptians.

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Few Western observers predicted the scale of the recent military crackdown in Egypt, or the nation’s sudden lurch to something like civil war. The next question troubling policymakers is just how bad the violence will become, and history does give us some strong indicators about the near future. The resulting picture is alarming.

I begin with a useful principle: Egyptian state security is very good at counter-subversion, but not as good as it thinks it is. For decades, Egyptian officials have prided themselves on their ability to penetrate radical organizations, including the Muslim Brotherhood, which for years has operated under constant surveillance. Unless the organization was so riddled with government informers and double agents, the Egyptian state would never have risked its recent decapitation attempt against the group and its leadership.

History, however, suggests that official activities are strictly limited in their usefulness. Time and again, state security has won dazzling victories against subversion, only to have the state’s enemies rebuild their infrastructures over the following years. Repeatedly, the Egyptian state has been wrong in its claims about the end of Islamist radicalism.

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Osama Makram Amin woke to the sound of gunfire, looked out his window and saw what he says were young men throwing gasoline bombs at the nearby Coptic Christian church.

Earlier that morning, security forces in Cairo had attacked two predominantly Islamist sit-ins, leaving hundreds dead. Now, hours later on Aug. 14, attackers in this Upper Egyptian city were embarking on a day of burning and looting that would target 14 Christian churches, homes and businesses. It was the work of Islamists enraged by the Cairo crackdown, said police and many Christian residents.

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The report, by Michael Tanner and Charles Hughes, is a follow-up to Cato’s 1995 study of the subject, which found that packages of welfare benefits for a typical recipient in the 50 states and the District of Columbia not only was well above the poverty level, but also more than a recipient’s annual wages from an entry-level job.

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R&L: Why did you want to write this book? Tell us what crony capitalism means to you and give us a sense of its greatest threat.

Peter Schweizer: I wanted to write the book because for years I’ve been involved in policy and the philosophical debate in D.C. concerning the growth and size of government. I’ve come to the conclusion that while that debate is important and needs to continue to take place, the bottom line is that whether conservatives or liberals are in charge, the government continues to expand.

We’ve got to change the incentive structure that exists in Washington, and that incentive structure is driven by cronyism, where the state and private sector intersect. If I were to define crony-capitalism, I really use the term cronyism because I don’t think that it speaks of capitalism per se, but cronyism is essentially where economic decisions in terms of who accumulates wealth and who doesn’t, is not based on merit, it’s not based on economic prowess or success or meeting needs in the marketplace. It’s based on political connections and relationships whereby you are able to either manipulate the state to your advantage, and to the disadvantage of your competitors.

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For two years, the conversation on Egypt centered on how to build a democracy. Suddenly the discussion has turned much darker, with some wondering aloud whether the largest Arab nation is hurtling toward civil war.

The bloody crackdown by Egypt’s security forces has raised the specter of a protracted conflict pitting the military against the Muslim Brotherhood, the country’s most powerful political force.

Egypt’s escalating crisis is far too volatile for any declarative statements, analysts say. But here are three possible scenarios that could play out:

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The Archbishop of York Dr John Sentamu has today announced that there will be an independent review of all files relating to deceased clergy who served in the Diocese of York from before 1950 to the present.

On July 22nd 2013 the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, announced the launch of an Independent Inquiry, led by HH Judge Sally Cahill QC, into the Church’s handling of reports of alleged child abuse by the late Robert Waddington, a former Dean of Manchester.

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[Russell Moore]… is definitely pushing a new tone for this generation of evangelicals. “This is the end of ‘slouching toward Gomorrah,’ ” he says. Not only is the doomsaying not winning Christians any popularity contests, but he doesn’t think it’s religiously appropriate either. “We were never promised that the culture would embrace us.”

He also questions the political approach of what was once called “the religious right.” Though his boyish looks bring to mind the former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed, Mr. Moore is decidedly not a fan of the “values voter checklists” the group employs. “There is no Christian position on the line-item veto,” Mr. Moore says. “There is no Christian position on the balanced-budget amendment.”

Which is not to say that Mr. Moore wants evangelicals to “turn inward” and reject the larger U.S. culture. Rather, he wants to refocus the movement on serving as a religious example battling in the public square on “three core issues”””life, marriage and religious liberty.

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For reasons unknown, the government finally has admitted that Area 51 ”” the Shangri-La of alien hunters and a sturdy trope of ­science-fiction movies ”” is a real place in the Mojave Desert about 100 miles north of Las Vegas.

It presumably does not house hideous squidlike ETs, but at least you can see the place on a map. Area 51 is confirmed in declassified CIA documents posted online Thursday by the National Security Archive at George Washington University. A dogged researcher pried from the CIA a report on the history of the U-2 spy plane, which was tested and operated at Area 51.

The military, which runs the base, always denied that Area 51 was called by its famous moniker, preferring a designation connected to the Groom Lake salt flat, a landing strip for the U-2 and other stealth aircraft.

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“You wouldn’t have a civil war unless there were people who were really willing to fight the army with arms,” [ Elliott] Abrams said. “It’s not, I think, going to look like Syria.”

Phyllis Bennis, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, added that because the military controls 35 to 40 percent of the economy, it was unlikely the military would splinter like it did in other countries.

“In Egypt, you don’t have a huge armed population, and the chance of the military splitting the way it happened first in Libya and later in Syria is less likely because the role of the military in Egyptian society has been very separate from the population, and very privileged.”

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You can thank brainy billionaire Elon Musk’s for bringing electro-magnetic-powered transportation and the linear induction motor back into the public consciousness.

The Hyperloop is a system for really-really rapid transit. If built, Musk claims it can carry people about 800 miles per hour, which could get you from Los Angeles to San Francisco in about 30 minutes.

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For this surely is the point: the Bible is at the heart of our national culture, just as Shakespeare is, perhaps even more so. For centuries it was found in any home where someone could read. The family Bible might be the only book there; often it might sit next to John Bunyan’s allegorical Christian novel, The Pilgrim’s Progress. This makes one thing clear: our historical culture, which has formed the country we have inherited, is a Christian one. Many today may no longer think of themselves as believers. Perhaps a majority of us have abandoned the faith, and yet we have been formed by it. Our ideas of what is right and what is wrong remain essentially Christian, and have been inculcated by the reading of the Bible over generations. We may have come to disregard many of its prohibitions, but whatever is admirable and generous in our morality derives from it, and especially from what Jesus taught, notably in the Sermon on the Mount.

Desert Island Discs is not itself important. It is agreeable easy listening, no more than that. And yet in one way it is significant. It has always been a favourite programme of Middle Britain. If it were to decide that its castaways should no longer be provided with the Bible, this would say something about the BBC’s understanding of the country it exists to serve. It would be tantamount to a rejection of our inherited culture, a rejection of our history, and an acceptance that the National Secular Society is more representative of Britain today than the Churches. Lord Reith, the BBC’s first Director-General who established the ethos of the corporation, would surely be whirling in his grave.

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Mona Siddiqui, a professor at Edinburgh University’s school of divinity, makes no secret of the various strains of thought that inform her study of Christians, Muslims and Jesus. Parts of her book are rigorously academic and arcane, other parts are very personal. Unlike Mr Aslan, she does not confine her meditations on her own faith to an introduction. Rather, she ambitiously weaves her personal and scholarly views throughout.

She presents certain basic facts: Muslims revere Jesus as a uniquely inspired prophet who was born of the Virgin Mary, ascended to heaven and will come again. Yet Muslims cannot accept that Jesus was the son of God. This, they believe, reflects a flawed view of both Jesus and God. As Ms Siddiqui shows, Christians and Muslims sparred with one another intensely during the early centuries after Islam’s rise, with each side vying to be the ultimate revelation of God. But the two faiths did at least grudgingly acknowledge one another as monotheistic, despite Islam’s firm rejection of the Christian view of God as a trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

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Former U.S. Senator Harry Byrd, Jr. was buried on Saturday in Winchester Virginia after a brief funeral at Christ Episcopal Church, with which the Byrd dynasty was long associated. Presiding at the funeral was his former colleague retired U.S. Senator John Danforth, an ordained Episcopal clergyman who also presided at President Reagan’s funeral….

At the funeral at Christ Episcopal, Danforth, who said Byrd invited him to conduct his funeral several years ago, hailed Byrd for his “cheerfulness and civility.” The old Episcopal elite is largely fading from the scene, as that denomination becomes marginal, and its historic ethos, once rooted in Virginia’s socially stratified agrarian Tidewater, is mostly forgotten in the modern world of suburbs and megachurches.

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