What was the Founders’ attitude toward religion in the country?

Public virtue was seen as necessary for a republic, and most believed that virtue was produced by religion. There was a strong view that religion was necessary to turn out good citizens.

Many of the Founders were well versed in religious and theological matters. How did this affect their work as architects of the republic?

They could quote Scripture. Jefferson and others were tutored by ministers. They were an extremely biblically literate generation. This certainly shaped their view of Providence. The extent to which they believed in Providence would be unimaginable today.

Adams and folks like that continually quoted [Jesus’] statement that a swallow cannot fall without God’s knowledge. Washington talks about the invisible hand of Providence. Their biblical knowledge convinced these people that there was an invisible hand of God, and that there was a moral government of the universe.

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Lord God Almighty, in whose Name the founders of this country won liberty for themselves and for us, and who lit the torch of freedom for nations then unborn: Grant that we and all the people of this land may have grace to maintain our liberties in righteousness and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Throughout the years, Christians, like many other minorities in the region, have lent their support to those regimes that have guaranteed their security and religious freedom. In Iraq, Christians rose to the highest levels of society under Saddam Hussein’s regime, while in Egypt, Coptic Christians were protected from ultraconservative Salafists under Hosni Mubarak. As secular leaders from the secretive Alawite sect, the Assad dynasty largely preserved Christian life, protecting Syria’s minorities from what was perceived as a collective threat from the country’s Sunni majority.

Watching their once-shielding dictators fall like dominos across the region, Christians have suddenly found themselves on the wrong side of history. Faced by a rising tide of radical Sunni Islam, Christians in Iraq and Egypt have fled by the thousands. In Syria, concern over Christian repression has fallen on deaf ears, drowned out by popular support for the country’s opposition in the face of the Assad regime’s brutal crackdown.

This March, months before the Qusayr ultimatum, Islamist militants from the opposition’s Faruq Brigade had gone door to door in Hamidiya and Bustan al-Diwan neighborhoods of Homs, expelling local Christians.

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Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi, will appoint a woman as one of his vice presidents and a Christian as another, his policy adviser told CNN.

“For the first time in Egyptian history — not just modern but in all Egyptian history — a woman will take that position,” Ahmed Deif told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Monday. “And it’s not just a vice president who will represent a certain agenda and sect, but a vice president who is powerful and empowered and will be taking care of critical advising within the presidential Cabinet.”

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As the first freely elected president of Egypt, Mr. Morsi has a historic opportunity, but he faces a litany of challenges that could prevent him from becoming more than just a figurehead. He will have to spar with the generals, who, just after the election, stripped much of the power from the presidency, and he must overcome the doubts of those who chose his opponent ”” nearly half of the voters ”” and millions more who did not vote.

Mr. Morsi will also have to convince Egyptians that he represents more than just the narrow interests of the Muslim Brotherhood and to soothe fears among many that his true goal is to bind the notion of citizenship itself more closely to Islam.

“The challenges are very strong,” said Mohammed Habib, a former deputy chairman of the Brotherhood who has worked with Mr. Morsi. “Everyone is watching him through a microscopic lens.”

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Definitions of class are hard to come by ”” so much so that the U.S. Department of Commerce, on behalf of Vice President Joe Biden’s White House Task Force on the Middle Class, emphasized descriptive language rather than statistics, finding that “middle-class families are defined by their aspirations more than their income. [We assume] that middle-class families aspire to homeownership, a car, college education for their children, health and retirement security and occasional family vacations.”

The government’s verdict: “It is more difficult now than in the past for many people to achieve middle-class status because prices for certain key goods ”” health care, college and housing ”” have gone up faster than income.”
Median household income has also remained stagnant for more than a decade; when the figures are adjusted for inflation, Americans are making less now than they were when Bill Clinton was in the White House.

There, in brief, is the crisis of our time. The American Dream may be slipping away. We have overcome such challenges before. To recover the Dream requires knowing where it came from, how it lasted so long and why it matters so much.

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When Paul Williams began his career, he could find no black architects to be his role models or mentors. Born in downtown Los Angeles in 1894, Williams became orphaned before he turned 4 when his parents, Chester and Lila, died of tuberculosis. A family friend raised him and told him he was so bright, he could do anything he wanted. And what he wanted was to design homes for families ”” perhaps because he lost his own so early in his life. Despite warnings from those who thought he was being impractical (“Your own people can’t afford you, and white clients won’t hire you,” was one such warning), Williams became an architect.

His work has come to signify glamorous Southern California to the rest of the country ”” and to the world. One of his hallmarks ”” a luxuriantly curving staircase ”” has captivated many a potential owner. Retired financial services magnate Peter Mullin remembers how he felt when he saw his 1925 Colonial, the first one Williams built in L.A.’s posh Brentwood neighborhood.

“The first time I saw it, I didn’t think I could afford the house, but if I could afford the staircase, I wanted to take it with me!” Mullin laughs. He bought the house ”” once inhabited by producer Ingwald Preminger, brother of director Otto ”” and has enjoyed it for 35 years.

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If Mitt Romney wins the presidential election this fall, he’ll have Harry Reid partly to thank.

The Republican presidential nominee and the Senate Democratic leader don’t have much in common politically. But they’re both members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints ”” that is, they’re both Mormons.

So whenever officials of the LDS church are asked about the once-common concern that a Mormon president might take orders from Salt Lake City, they have a ready answer: Just look at Harry Reid. Only last month, Reid endorsed President Obama’s decision to support gay marriage, a position that conflicts with the church’s views.

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The U.S. recovery is hobbled by an economic divide that separates Americans not by income or wealth but by their access to credit….

Last year, nearly 90% of all new mortgages originated went to households with high credit scores; before the financial crisis, it was about half, according to Moody’s Analytics and Equifax Inc., a credit monitoring service.

Shrunken access among credit have-nots is triggering more than personal plight. It has weakened the influence of the Fed””one of the best hopes for spurring stronger economic growth””and raised doubts within the central bank about whether it is doing much to reduce unemployment.

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The children of white middle-class, college-educated parents, Hugh Green and Turner Jenkins are just the kind of kids everyone would expect to be stepping out into the world one sunny June day, bachelor’s degrees in hand. But they both veered from the traditional American educational route.

One decided that a bachelor’s was never going to be enough, while the other concluded it was unnecessary….

Once the hallmark of an educated and readily employable adult, the bachelor’s degree is losing its edge. Quicker, cheaper programs offer attractive career route alternatives while the more prestigious master’s is trumping it, making it a mere steppingstone.

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As Egyptians celebrated the apparent victory of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi in Tahrir Square, the nation’s military power issued an addition to its constitutional declaration that limits the president’s powers in overseeing the military and puts legislative affairs in the generals’ hands.

“The military is clearly trying to turn the clock back to what existed under the Mubarak regime,” said Marina Ottaway, a Middle East analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “What is clear more and more is that the military sacrificed (Hosni) Mubarak to maintain the power of the old establishment.”

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These are anxious days for American workers. Many, like Ms. [Sherry] Woods, are underemployed. Others find pay that is simply not keeping up with their expenses: adjusted for inflation, the median hourly wage was lower in 2011 than it was a decade earlier, according to data from a forthcoming book by the Economic Policy Institute, “The State of Working America, 12th Edition.” Good benefits are harder to come by, and people are staying longer in jobs that they want to leave, afraid that they will not be able to find something better. Only 2.1 million people quit their jobs in March, down from the 2.9 million people who quit in December 2007, the first month of the recession.

“Unfortunately, the wage problems brought on by the recession pile on top of a three-decade stagnation of wages for low- and middle-wage workers,” said Lawrence Mishel, the president of the Economic Policy Institute, a research group in Washington that studies the labor market. “In the aftermath of the financial crisis, there has been persistent high unemployment as households reduced debt and scaled back purchases. The consequence for wages has been substantially slower growth across the board, including white-collar and college-educated workers.”

Now, with the economy shaping up as the central issue of the presidential election, both President Obama and Mitt Romney have been relentlessly trying to make the case that their policies would bring prosperity back. The unease of voters is striking: in a New York Times/CBS News poll in April, half of the respondents said they thought the next generation of Americans would be worse off, while only about a quarter said it would have a better future.

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Joy [McNair] was just 18 months old in 1986 when the unthinkable happened and the space shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after liftoff. Her father, astronaut Ronald McNair, and his six colleagues lost their lives, prompting President Reagan to call them true American heroes.

Now a 27-year-old Washington-based attorney, Joy experiences Father’s Day very much like any other day.

“I’ve never had Father’s Day to celebrate. So in a weird way it’s not something that I feel a loss for….”

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Charles Dickens died on [June 9th]…in 1870, burnt out at 58. But his books live on. What makes them endure?

Charles Dickens often recalled that as a boy he went on long walks with his father. It was during these outings that he first noticed Gad’s Hill Place, a grand family home. His father told him that, should he work very hard indeed, he might one day own such a house. Dickens not only worked hard but also wrote with such an obsessive frenzy that he was able to buy the house in 1856.

In the context of literary immortality, Dickens stands second only to Shakespeare. His novels have complicated plots, sentimentality, melodrama and comic flourishes, and are populated by some of the most vivid characters ever created. To read a Dickens novel is to live it….

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Pittsburgh is beginning to restore its long-dormant reputation for innovation and entrepreneurial excellence.

It was here that high-profile entrepreneurs the likes of Andrew Carnegie and George Westinghouse built companies that came to define entire industries and generate vast wealth. But the region’s emergence as an industrial center came at a price: a large-company mentality took hold and lingered for decades, even as the foundations of its manufacturing economy began to crumble.

As recently as the 1980s, the notion of working for a large, stable company was more socially acceptable than risking failure by starting a company. That attitude has begun to change, and Pittsburgh’s entrepreneurial spirit is stirring anew. Hundreds of startups have emerged in recent years, producing everything from medical devices to data storage equipment to online shoe-fitting software.

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Confusion reigns in Egypt after stunning court rulings threw the country’s awkward transition toward democratic rule into turmoil.

The decision sparked cries that Egypt’s military leaders have engineered a “soft coup” to thwart their longtime foes — Islamists who just weeks ago captured a majority of seats in the Egyptian parliament in the first election in Egypt in generations. The court’s decision dissolves parliament, and the military was quick to say it now controls legislative affairs in Egypt, actions that raised the prospect of renewed mass street protests.

The dizzying developments sent shock waves across Egypt just 16 months after a popular uprising toppled former President Hosni Mubarak and two days before Egyptians go to the polls to elect a new president.

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The hundreds of billions of dollars that banks, insurance companies and other international investors poured into this country after the advent of the euro financed roads and houses, raised wages and helped Constantine Choutlas sustain a 1,000-person construction firm with projects such as building the athletes’ village for the 2004 Olympics.

What it did not do was build a competitive economy, and when the rest of the world woke up to that fact and the money rushed away, so did Choutlas’s business.

“You could see it wouldn’t last. The country was just borrowing money,” Choutlas, whose Proodeftiki Technical has been scaled back to a handful of employees, said as he jabbed a finger in the air for emphasis. “Nobody, nobody, nobody, said lets take a look at where we are going.”

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Sitting in the choir section of Grace and St. Stephens Episcopal Church, Marianna McJimsey can’t help but get excited when she talks about the history of the place.

The former Colorado College professor and head of the church’s archival project can spout off facts for hours if given the prompt. She’s not the only one who finds the church significant.

The church was recently placed on the National Register of Historic Places….

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You can check here and there. This is what stood out to me:

1841–The first Canadian parliament opened in Kingston.

1919–The US Congress passed the 19th amendment granting suffrage to American women.

1936–G.K. Chesterton (b.1874), English poet-essayist, died at his home in Beaconsfield, England.

1940–German troops occupied Paris and Marshal Philippe Petain became the head of the French government and sued for peace.

What stood out to you–KSH?

Most of the renovated library will look the same as it does today. Its special collections and manuscripts will remain in place, and readers will be able to consult them in the same quiet setting of oak panels and baronial tables. The great entrance hall, grand staircases, and marble corridors will continue to convey the atmosphere of a Beaux-Arts palace of the people. But the new branch library on the lower floors overlooking Bryant Park will have a completely different feel. Designed by the British architect Norman Foster, who will coordinate the renovation, it will suit the needs of a variety of patrons, who will enter the building from a separate ground-level entrance and may remain only long enough to consult magazines or check out current books, videos, and works in other formats. But it will also be used by scholars and writers who want to take home selected books that formerly could only be read in the building.

Will the mixture of readers who take home books and researchers who work inside the library, of premodern and postmodern architecture, of old and new functions, desecrate a building that embodies the finest strain in New York’s civic spirit? Some of the library’s friends fear the worst. A letter of protest against the plan has been signed by several hundred distinguished academics and authors, including Mario Vargas Llosa, the Nobel Prize”“winning novelist, and Lorin Stein, the editor of The Paris Review. A petition of less-well-known but equally committed lovers of the library warns that the remodeling “will be ruining a functional element of its architecture””and its soul.” Blogs and Op-Ed pages have been sizzling with indignation.

The shrill tone of the rhetoric””“a glorified Starbucks,” “a vast Internet café,” “cultural vandalism”””suggests an emotional response that goes beyond disagreement over policy.

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It had never been done by a San Francisco Giants pitcher. It had never happened to the Houston Astros. It had only happened 21 times in Major League Baseball history.

But that was before Matt Cain joined the exclusive perfect game club on Wednesday.

Cain reached perfection in style. He struck out 14 batters along the way, tying Sandy Koufax (1965) for the most strikeouts in a perfect game since 1900.

Read it all and you can watch an ESPN video summarizing it there.

The Church of England faces its biggest rupture with the State in 500 years under government plans to legalise gay marriage.

Senior church sources warned that if the legislation goes ahead as proposed, the only way forward will be to cut an important tie between Church and State.

Divorcing the Church from its role as religious registrar for the State would not amount to total disestablishment, but it would be a significant step in that direction and would generate enormous passion and anguish from the pews upwards.

Read it all (requires subscription) and there are other articles there (as of this posting the Independent, the Guardian, the Press Assocation, the Daily Mail and the Telegraph). Note that you may also find a picture of the front page of tomorrow’s [London] Times there.

Spain’s banking crisis did not come out of the blue.

In the 1990s, the Spanish suffered a bout of collective madness. Interest rates fell from 14 per cent (with the peseta) to 4 per cent (with the euro) in a matter of weeks.

In 1998, the centre-right government passed a law that increased the amount of land for development. Developers got rich, selling the idea that property would always go up in value. You could buy a flat on the Mediterranean for $156,000 and sell it the next day for $234,000; by the end of the month it would be worth $390,000…..

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Every generation has an incentive to borrow money from the future to spend on itself. But, until ours, no generation of Americans has done it to the same extent. Why?

A huge reason is that earlier generations were insecure. They lived without modern medicine, without modern technology and without modern welfare states. They lived one illness, one drought and one recession away from catastrophe. They developed a moral abhorrence about things like excessive debt, which would further magnify their vulnerability.

Recently, life has become better and more secure. But the aversion to debt has diminished amid the progress. Credit card companies seduced people into borrowing more. Politicians found that they could buy votes with borrowed money. People became more comfortable with red ink….

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…the [recent Margaret Farley] episode raises anew the question, always lurking in the cathedral, of who decides what we’re allowed to read, and how we’re supposed to read it. In religion, who controls the books?

In the Reformation, Protestants were persecuted for making the Bible available in vernacular translations, so that laypeople, in addition to priests, could read it. But translation was just one battleground in the war over who controls religious literature. And while the battles have been particularly fierce in the Catholic Church, they are not unique to Catholicism, or Christianity.

“The papacy was not the first to begin this idea of censoring books,” said John W. O’Malley, a Jesuit priest and historian at Georgetown University. “The indices of books that were prohibited, at the universities of Paris and Louvain and so forth, started in the 16th century. It all began with printing.”

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While there is scepticism whenever those who represent Caesar in the political realm invoke God, [and there is great wisdom in the consequent reticence displayed by politicians] it has been possible for the Queen with her very different role to be steadily more explicit in her Christmas broadcasts about her own lively faith in Jesus Christ which sustains her work.

The cost of this call and way of life is so great that it is proper to regard it in sacrificial terms. As a notable republican said to me the other day ”“ “I don’t believe that we should ask anyone to do the job”

But the job has been done with conspicuous dedication over the past sixty years. The Queen embodies the truth at the heart of our life as a nation that the kingdom of God and a humane society is built, yes by raw political power and programmes but also and perhaps most profoundly by the human touch, loving and unwearied service, attention to others.

Christian monarchy today embodies not a set of policies or the pinnacle of a hierarchical social order but a life, a fully human life, lived in the presence and calling of God who dignifies all humanity. Such a life which is open to us all is the essential ingredient from which the Kingdom; God’s plan for the human race, grows.

The spectacle of such a life properly evokes loyalty.

Reread it all should you care to do so.

Some people complain that the Second World War still exerts a dominating influence nearly seven decades after its end, as the disproportionate number of books, plays and films shows, while museums continue to spawn a remembrance industry. This phenomenon should hardly be surprising, if only because the nature of evil seems to provide an endless fascination. Moral choice is the fundamental element in human drama, because it lies in the very heart of humanity itself.

No other period in history offers so rich a source for the study of dilemmas, individual and mass tragedy, the corruption of power politics, ideological hypocrisy, the egomania of commanders, betrayal, perversity, self-sacrifice, unbelievable sadism and unpredictable compassion.

–Antony Beevor, The Second World War (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2012), page 782 [my emphasis]

Despite a terrorism threat, tens of thousands of Christians visited Namugongo to honour 26 Ugandans who were killed because of their faith 126 years ago. Some of the pilgrims walked for hundreds of kilometres before reaching the shrines.

On the concrete floor next to Namugongo’s Catholic Martyrs shrine sits Regine. The old lady doesn’t know her exact age. For the last three nights she has been sleeping here, next to the church. Nobody accompanied Regine when she travelled across Uganda. “Last night it rained and we all got wet. I didn’t care about that. We have to endure some suffering to strengthen our faith. Just like the martyrs here did,” she says.

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Mockery of Mormonism comes easily for many Americans. Commentators have offered many reasons, but even they have found it difficult to turn their gaze from Mormon peculiarities. As a result, they have missed a critical function of American anti-Mormonism: the faith has been oddly reassuring to Americans. As a recent example, the Broadway hit “The Book of Mormon” lampoons the religion’s naïveté on racial issues, which is striking given that the most biting criticisms have focused on the show’s representations of Africans and blackness.

As a Mormon and a scholar of religious history, I am unsurprised by the juxtaposition of Mormon mocking and racial insensitivity. Anti-Mormonism has long masked America’s contradictions and soothed American self-doubt. In the 19th century, antagonists charged that Mormon men were tyrannical patriarchs, that Mormon women were virtual slaves and that Mormons diabolically blurred church and state. These accusations all contained some truth, though the selfsame accusers denied women the vote, bolstered racist patriarchy and enthroned mainstream Protestantism as something of a state religion.

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Euro-zone governments have around three months to ensure the survival of the single currency, billionaire investor George Soros said in a speech on Saturday.

“We are at an inflection point. After the expiration of the three months’ window, the markets will continue to demand more but the authorities will not be able to meet their demands,” he warned in a speech at the Festival of Economics in Trento, Italy. (Read the text of his speech.)

The European Union is “like a bubble” ”“ not a financial bubble but a political bubble — that could pop as a result of the euro -zone crisis, Soros said.

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