The Church of England’s stance on sexuality would be thrown into disarray if the government pushes ahead with scrapping civil partnerships.

Officials within the CofE are urging ministers against the move which came as figures suggest this form of union has been made almost obsolete by the introduction of same-sex marriage.

Civil partnerships legislation was introduced in 2004 to give same-sex couples legal recognition of their relationship without changing the definition of marriage. But the Marriage (Same-Sex couples) Act in 2013 allowed gay couples to marry, or convert their civil partnership into a marriage.

This meant that in 2016 there were just 890 civil partnerships registered in England and Wales, down from 6,305 from 2007 to 2013.

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Marriage may have changed over millennia, but it still offers partnership to two individuals. Given that loneliness is the scourge of our times would it not make sense to campaign for a relationship that counters isolation? Even uber-feminists might be reconciled to such a support network.

Then there are the health statistics. Married people are less likely to suffer strokes, stress or heart attacks, and more likely to adopt safer behaviour, like driving within the speed limit, and drinking the right number of units. Studies also continue to show that marriage is good for mental health – boosting confidence and communication skills. Think of the savings to the NHS, if our parliamentarians could fog-horn the benefits of getting hitched.

But it is children, most of all, who benefit from marriage. Children thrive when their biological parents stay together and marriage is almost twice as likely to survive a child’s birth than cohabitation. A recent study found that children of married couples did better on a vocabulary test than those of cohabiting or single parents. Marriage, especially now that it is being freed from expensive trappings like white weddings and Magaluf-bound hen parties, could emerge as the secret weapon in the battle for social mobility.

A social enterprise that promotes well-being normally has politicians rushing to champion it. What are you waiting for, Mrs May? Give us some policies that show marriage tops your agenda. Like the forthcoming Royal Wedding, this is a good news story. That’s a rare thing, these days: let’s celebrate it.

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A short stack of South Carolina legislators is pushing to allow sports betting in the Palmetto State following a U.S. Supreme Court decision Monday that overturned a federal ban.

But the odds are long.

The ruling by the nation’s high court leaves states to decide whether people can legally bet on football, basketball and other sports. Under the 1992 federal law it struck, Nevada was the only place where people could bet on results of a single game.

About three dozen states could offer sports betting within five years — from California to Iowa to Delaware. At least five states including New Jersey, Mississippi and West Virginia have passed laws awaiting the high court’s ruling.

But don’t bet on those including South Carolina, where even church raffles weren’t legal until 2015.

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South Carolina unlikely to legalize sports betting, despite U.S. Supreme Court ruling https://t.co/mvCuwLkeV1 via @postandcourier

— LexisNexis State Net (@StateNet) May 15, 2018

You can find the full 17 page pdf here–read it carefully and read it all. Please do continue to note that you can follow all the documents as they become available there.

In the Diocese of SC Supreme Court Case–The Diocese has now filed its response to TEC and the new TEC Diocese https://t.co/J4Sy0yksXU #law #history #churchhistory #parishministry #polity #religion #usa #JonesvWolf pic.twitter.com/5tLtmrp5x8

— Kendall Harmon (@KendallHarmon6) May 15, 2018

The Supreme Court’s court decision reversing that outcome will make it easier to open the door to sports betting.

But the status quo struck down by the Supreme Court looks almost quaint in light of increased pressure to legalize sports betting across the board.

The American Gaming Association estimates that illegal sports betting has grown to $150-billion-a-year market. And cash-starved states are salivating at the thought of raising billions from legalizing and licensing that activity, not to mention taxing the proceeds.

New Jersey, home to at least a half dozen shuttered Atlantic City casinos, is a state where Republicans and Democrats since 2011 have been trying to overturn the federal ban or somehow get around it.

After oral arguments in December, then-Gov. Chris Christie, R-N.J., said on the Supreme Court steps, “If we’re successful here, we can have bets being taken in New Jersey within two weeks of a decision by the court. We’re like boy scouts; we’re prepared.”

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Bishop Ibezim, who spoke in his Presidential Charge at the 2ndSession of the 11th Synod of the Diocese, holding at St. Peters Church Amawbia, said that rather than fight corruption, the government was habouring actors in the field.

He said, “It does seem the fight against corruption for which this administration was voted into power has slowed down, if not jettisoned. People had expected prompt prosecution and incarceration of offenders, to deter others, but what we witnessed was a situation where some key officials of this administration were involved in unwholesome acts, capable of tarnishing the image of government.

“The latter did not respond effectively or looked the other way, thereby eroding the confidence of the people in the fight against corruption. A government that is serious in fighting corruption should not engage in lopsided appointments, reducing some sections of the country to second class citizens or entrenching ethnic chauvinism in its policies.”

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amily unity is among the biggest factors for American evangelicals advocating for immigration reform; it comes up in almost every statement, prayer, and open letter rallying believers around the cause.

Despite the pleas from top evangelical leaders—including some of President Donald Trump’s advisers—to protect the family unit, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced this week that all adults caught by Border Patrol would be prosecuted as criminals while their children would be separated and treated as if they entered the US as unaccompanied minors.

“I have put in place a ‘zero tolerance’ policy for illegal entry on our Southwest border. If you cross this border unlawfully, then we will prosecute you. It’s that simple,” he said on Monday in San Diego, where a caravan of migrants, many of them mothers and children, had arrived a week before.

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From CTmagazine: RT Rondell_Trevino: Honored to contribute to this .CTmagazine article critiquing new policy that separates Immigrant children from asylum seeking parents from Central America.

When policies focus on separating families, then this shoul… https://t.co/lViWRA8Hkz

— Carol Flohr Giles (@giles_carol) May 11, 2018

Canada’s largest province has issued its first non-binary birth certificate, marking the culmination of a successful human rights claim against Ontario.

Joshua Ferguson had waited nearly a year after petitioning the provincial government for a new birth certificate in order change the document from male to non-binary, as Ferguson identifies as neither male nor female. Instead, the film-maker uses the pronoun “they”.

“It’s a victory for me. It’s a victory for the trans community,” Ferguson told reporters on Monday.

Born in Ontario but now residing in Vancouver, Ferguson had travelled to Toronto to apply for the new birth certificate, which they said would better reflect their identity. Ferguson’s successful application follows a push by the transgender activist Gemma Hickey, whose non-binary birth certificate in Newfoundland and Labrador last year marked a first for Canada.

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The wonderful thing about this litigation is how it brings different faith communities together in their desire to protect their cherished tax benefit. Not yet available is the brief from the following amici – Christian Legal Society, Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations, National Association of Evangelicals, Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, Council of Churches of New York City,  and Queens Federation of Churches.   Last time around there was a brief that included The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Commission (Southern Baptists, the second largest denomination in the United States probably have the most skin in this game) and   The International Society for Krishna Consciousness and The Islamic Center of Boca Raton.

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Mohler quoted a 2016 official report from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in which the chairman, Martin R. Castro, wrote, “The phrases ‘religious liberty’ and ‘religious freedom’ will stand for nothing except hypocrisy so long as they remain code words for discrimination, intolerance, racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, Christian supremacy or any form of intolerance.”

The commission’s report, Mohler pointed out, placed both religious liberty and religious freedom in scare quotes as if they are “linguistic constructions without any objective reality.”

“We are now witnessing a great and inevitable collision between religious liberty and newly declared and invented sexual liberties,” he said, listing various incidents illustrating how the collision is now taking place.

Mohler encouraged Christian leaders to hold on to the truths expressed in the Declaration of Independence and to defend these truths “that should be, but often are not, recognized as self-evident.”

And to the generation of young people who are committed to the Gospel of Jesus Christ but assume that the defense of religious liberty is political, Mohler said they also need to be committed to the free propagation and voicing of the Gospel, without which sinners will not hear the Gospel.

“We’re in a fight that’s worth fighting,” Mohler said. “And we understand that as we contend for the freedom of religion, and the freedom of speech, and the freedom of press, again, we’re doing this not just for ourselves and for our children, not just for our churches, but for the world.

“Let’s pray that God will give us wisdom to hold these truths in perilous times,” Mohler concluded.

Unquestionably, the Referendum on the Eighth Amendment raises a number of complex questions: should abortion be dealt with in the Constitution or by way of government legislation; should the fact that hundreds of Irish women already leave the state every year to procure abortions influence our response; does the fact that many terminations are already taking place in Ireland (using unregulated pills) mean abortion should be made legal; and how should Ireland’s record of failure in the care of women and children – for example in the mother and baby homes – affect the way we vote?

Often, in the past, the protection of vulnerable women and children in Ireland left a lot to be desired, but legislating now to allow the lives of the most defenceless among us to be terminated is not the answer.

Past wrongs would be better addressed by providing better pastoral care in future for women, their partners and their families; by improving support services; and by investing more in medical and mental health services. We must be compassionate in responding to those for whom pregnancy is unwelcome or traumatic, and must seek to offer a positive alternative to abortion.

The Archbishops of the Church of Ireland have stated that “unrestricted access to abortion in the first twelve weeks of pregnancy, or indeed at any stage, is not an ethical position we can accept.” Nevertheless, our tradition is concerned to ensure provision for terminations in – hopefully – rare circumstances and in a safe medical setting.

People differ on where the line should be drawn….

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As we move from a year which for many was tinged with sadness, we should carry one thought into 2018: "It is better to light a candle, than to curse the darkness," says Rt Rev Ken Good, Bishop of Derry and Raphoe https://t.co/eU15icZmgG pic.twitter.com/SMQawYudfy

— Newswireni.com (@NewswireDerry) December 28, 2017

The conventional thinking is that most people who donate to places of worship are not primarily motivated by tax benefits.

For many, giving is a core value based on religious teachings and a sense of gratitude.

This could be the year when those assumptions are put to a test.

The new federal tax law has cut taxes for working American families, but it also could have the unintended consequence of reducing the financial incentive for many people to donate to religious and charitable organizations.

The Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy estimates roughly 30 million households earning between $50,000 and $100,000 will be less likely to itemize deductions on their taxes due to the new law. With less incentive to donate, researchers predict the amount those households give will decline.

“Tax incentives do affect how much people give,” said Una Osili, associate dean for research. “If it is more expensive to give, they give less.”

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Religious institutions of all sorts wait to see what #TaxReform does to their place in people's budgets https://t.co/8KD43p8X48 @PittsburghPG pic.twitter.com/LoVWhlXTWn

— Teresa Lindeman (@pg_tlindeman) May 3, 2018

Patrick J. Conroy’s forced resignation as chaplain of the House of Representatives — attributed to House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) — has opened up a new round of partisan and religious divisions in Congress. But if there’s any upside, it’s this: We now see clearly why it’s time to do away with taxpayer-funded, government-supported congressional chaplains.

The controversy surrounding Conroy’s departure illustrates how chaplains in Congress inevitably sully religion with politics. Some believe that Ryan fired Conroy because Ryan perceived him to have delivered a prayer that was critical of the Republican tax bill. (Ryan has denied this.) Others believe that Conroy was secretly aligned with the Democrats and find proof in House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s disagreement with Ryan’s decision to fire Conroy….

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On a Saturday night in April, the rhetoric of our historical era reached a culminating, symbolic moment.

In Washington — at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner — comedian Michelle Wolf mocked the physical appearance of a Trump administration official, joked about feticide and compared the president’s daughter to “an empty box of tampons.”

In Washington, Mich., President Trump gave an 80-minute speech in a stream-of-semiconsciousness style that mixed narcissism, nativism, ignorance, mendacity and malice. He attacked the FBI, intelligence agencies, the Justice Department and his presidential predecessors. “Any Hispanics in the room? ” he asked at one point, producing some boos. Of the press: “These people, they hate your guts. ” Of his political opponents: “A vote for a Democrat in November, is a vote for open borders and crime. It’s very simple. ”

In both Washingtons, political discourse was dominated by the values and practices of reality television and social media: nasty, shallow, personal, vile, vindictive, graceless, classless, bullying, ugly, crass and simplistic. This is not merely change; it is digression. It is the triumph of the boors. It is a discourse unworthy of a great country, and a sign that greatness of purpose and character is slipping way.

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The clergyman said that the responsibility of security lies squarely on the shoulders of the government as that was, according to him, part of the social contract it entered into with the people.

Apparently referring to the call by some prominent Nigerians for the people to defend themselves, the Prelate said that a situation where everybody would have to carry arms to defend themselves would spell doom for the country.

The Primate made the call at the Cathedral of All Saints, Abakaliki, in an interview with newsmen shortly after commissioning about 135 metres of road that leads to the Cathedral, which was constructed by the Ebonyi State Government.

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Summers: This leads me to my next question. In Awaiting the King, you talk about solidarity, particularly in relationship to the political. You write, “Solidarity points to liturgy. And insofar as solidarity is at once the ground and goal of the political, the political requires us to consider the liturgical.” For folks who might be unfamiliar with your use of terminology here, could you define the term “solidarity,” and then your use of “the political” and “the liturgical”?

Smith: Let me do that in reverse order. What I call liturgies are not just churchy, institutional religious things. I’m broadening the term. Liturgies are love-shaping practices; they are communal social rhythms, routines, and rituals that we immerse ourselves in, that we give ourselves over to, that aren’t just something that we do, but they’re doing something to us. They’re forging in us an orientation to the good life. They’re inscribing in us a conception of what we think flourishing is. And because there are competing versions, so there are rival liturgies.

As for the political, let’s say the most generous conception of political here isn’t just governmental. It’s not only the institutions and practices and systems of government, though it includes that. It’s harkening back instead to something like Aristotle’s notion of the polis, so that our political life here now is broader than government. It’s our civic life that we share in common that comprises a polis, that makes us a people, that gives us some sort of shared sense of responsibility for one another, to one another.

In terms of the idea of solidarity, I think at risk right now in our cultural moment is the loss of any concept or lived reality of solidarity. And by that, I mean a sense of shared life together and a co-responsibility for and to one another.

What’s been most disheartening about our political discourse over the past generation is how it has devolved to a kind of atomism and autonomism, and that has left us as these individual authentic selves who are all trying to forge our own sense of the good.

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The chaplain of the House said on Thursday that he was blindsided when Speaker Paul D. Ryan asked him to resign two weeks ago, a request that he complied with but was never given a reason for.

The sudden resignation of the chaplain, the Rev. Patrick J. Conroy, shocked members of both parties. He had served in the role since he was nominated in 2011 by Speaker John A. Boehner, a fellow Catholic. In an interview, Father Conroy was categorical: His departure was not voluntary.

“I was asked to resign, that is clear,” Father Conroy said. As for why, he added, “that is unclear.”

“I certainly wasn’t given anything in writing,” he said. “Catholic members on both sides are furious.”

Father Conroy said he received the news from Mr. Ryan’s chief of staff. “The speaker would like your resignation,” Father Conroy recalled being told. He complied.

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Paul Ryan asked the House of Representatives’ chaplain to resign without an explanation via @NYTimes https://t.co/QCb4Yfzmtx

— CAPfaith (@CAPfaith) April 27, 2018

Lincoln spoke to both sides without shying away from making distinctions or abandoning his own commitments. He blamed the South for pushing the nation to war, especially over slavery: “It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces.” But in that critique, Lincoln urged humility. “Let us judge not, that we be not judged,” he asserted, echoing the Gospel of Matthew. Balancing his criticism, he argued that the horrible bloodshed of the war was a judgment on the North too.

Given these truths, Lincoln closed by calling his hearers to steady service: “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in.” The most important of these tasks was “to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan.” In this invitation, Lincoln was calling to mind the Good Samaritan of Luke 10, who, finding an injured man, “bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine.” Similarly, Lincoln echoed the book of James, which teaches the duty of visiting “the fatherless and widows in their affliction.” Lincoln concluded this humanitarian vision could cross borders and ethnic divisions, providing an example to the world.

In the present moment, a desire to “bind up” must be a precondition for resetting some of the fractures the nation is experiencing today. Americans should look to Lincoln’s words as an enduring call to reconciliation.

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Not quite three years later, Alito’s concerns have already come to pass.

In a Star guest commentary earlier this month, Lori Ross, CEO of FosterAdopt Connect, claimed that a bill currently proposed in Kansas would enshrine “taxpayer-funded discrimination,” calling it “negligent” and “harmful.” By referencing the truly tragic story of a young boy’s suicide, she implied that the bill could lead to the deaths of children in the state foster care system. Or take Republican state Sen. Barbara Bollier’s statement on the Senate floor during a debate on the bill, where she called Catholic teachings on marriage “sick discrimination.” What sort of legislation would draw such vehement denunciation?

The proposed legislation is the Adoption Protection Act. All it does is ensure that faith-based adoption providers will be allowed to continue to operate in accordance with their sincerely held religious beliefs. In other words, the proposed legislation merely preserves the status quo and makes it clear that faith-based providers will not be penalized for serving in accordance with their beliefs.

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We know, because Philip Larkin gave us his guesstimate, that the sexual revolution began in 1963. Less clear is when it will peak. But looking around it is hard to resist the thought that the moment has already passed, that a poet will one day put the climax of the permissive society somewhere around the turn of the millennium, when parents were relaxed baby-boomers and the young were yet to espouse the strict gender politics now found on university campuses.

Statistics show a large minority of chaste young people. Britain’s pornography laws have been tightened. Less measurably, there is a tauter atmosphere around sex than I remember from the ribald 1990s, or even the noughties: more dancing around sensitivities, more pressure to get your terms right.

It is normal for society to take the edge off a revolution after riding it for so long. And anyone who wants a louche life can still have one, subject to their own attractiveness. The real story is where the pressure for moderation comes from. By logic, it should be the church and political conservatives. Instead, the rampant right in western democracies is indifferent to sex, sometimes creditably, sometimes to its shame. Donald Trump was not elected for his primness towards women.

No, the guardians of the New Prurience tend to be young and avowedly progressive — people who might own Brand’s book, people whose mid-20th century equivalents lobbied for free love. With two generations of evidence to go by, they see inequity in the fruits of the revolution.

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Hostility to immigration in Britain was a significant force driving the vote to leave the European Union, yet prominent Brexiteers are often sensitive to the charge that any part of their movement is inward-looking, xenophobic or racist. Many of them have recently rushed to condemn the treatment of the Windrush generation. Even the Daily Mail, a newspaper that regularly publishes scare stories about immigrants, splashed it on the front page as “Fiasco that shames Britain.”

Yet this is not an accidental fiasco but the intended outcome of Britain’s draconian and Byzantine immigration policy. Moreover, rather than being an upset, the treatment of the Windrush generation is all too consistent with Britain’s historical attitude toward those former colonies and dominions that supposedly make up its “family.”

The Commonwealth comprises 53 nations, most of which were once British-ruled, and 2.4 billion people, 94 percent of whom live in Africa and Asia. It is supposedly based on a common language, institutions and values — though, given its size and diversity, the commonality of those values is debatable. Its head is the Queen. In 2002, Boris Johnson, now the foreign minister but then a journalist, wrote: “It is said that the Queen has come to love the Commonwealth, partly because it supplies her with regular cheering crowds of flag-waving piccaninnies.” The line is still often quoted for its offensive language; it is less commonly observed that Mr. Johnson was taking a swipe at the monarch for indulging the Commonwealth partly as a vanity project.

Is the Commonwealth more than that?

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Before more than 1,000 people, including four former presidents, at St. Martin’s Episcopal Church, speakers lauded Mrs. Bush as a loving but steel-tough “enforcer” who steered a powerful family through trying times. She was the second woman in U.S. history to be the wife of one president and the mother of another.

“She called her style a benevolent dictatorship, but honestly, it wasn’t always benevolent,” her son Jeb Bush recalled. “There were no safe spaces or microaggressions allowed with Barbara Pierce Bush.”

Many also made note of her quick, sometimes biting, wit—a central characteristic that helped her resonate with everyday people across the political spectrum.

“She was the first lady of the greatest generation,” historian Jon Meacham said at the funeral, comparing her to Abigail Adams, the wife of America’s second president, John Adams, and mother of its sixth president, John Quincy Adams. Mr. Meacham wrote a book about President George H.W. Bush, to whom Mrs. Bush was married for 73 years.

Mrs. Bush died Tuesday at her home at age 92 with her husband at her side. Two days earlier, a family spokesman said in a statement that she was in failing health and had declined continued medical treatment to focus on “comfort care.”

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Barbara Bush had spent an hour talking about legacy and family — about the Christmas dance where she met the man who’d become her husband, about being “the enforcer” of a family that included two former U.S. presidents.

Then, in a flash, she was talking about death.

It was 2013 and Bush was 88 at the time of the interview, part of a C-Span series focusing on first ladies. She wore a pink blazer and her trademark faux pearls — and spoke with a mixture of grace and bluntness that her family and the American people had come to instantly recognize over the past four decades.

“I’m a huge believer in a loving God,” she said. “And I have no fear of death, which is a huge comfort because we’re getting darned close.

“And I don’t have a fear of death for my precious George or for myself because I know that there is a great God.”

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‘I have no fear of death’: #BarbaraBush on faith and finality https://t.co/Qz7LIPkzd5 #religion #usa

— Kendall Harmon (@KendallHarmon6) April 19, 2018

“God does not need the evangelical movement; the evangelical movement desperately needs God,” Moore said.

Moore explained that there is conflation between the evangelical church and politics in modern America.

“So often in 2018 America, evangelicalism is associated more with Iowa caucuses than the good news of Jesus Christ,” Moore said.

He defined evangelicalism as “the link of renewal and revival movements which unite historic, conventional orthodoxy with the necessity of personal conversion and evangelism.”

Additionally, Moore said he believes that any true evangelical movement must be focused upon the Cross.

“An emphasis on the Cross is one of the hardest thing to maintain in any Christian group, and that includes American evangelicalism,” Moore said.

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As evangelicalism has grown without any formal hierarchy, it has formed tribes often driven by celebrity pastors, authors and artists. Evangelical leaders of institutions have been having conversations about how to address an evangelical identity crisis, said Rich Mouw, former president of Fuller Seminary, but most of these gatherings are small.

“There’s a real pastoral problem right now that in any given congregation that it’s a topic you can’t talk about,” Mouw said. “I don’t think it’s fear. I think it’s genuine pastoral perplexity about how we deal with this.”

Other invited leaders at this week’s gathering include Mark Labberton of Fuller Seminary, Ed Stetzer of Wheaton College, Jo Anne Lyon of the Wesleyan Church, Harold Smith of Christianity Today and Gabriel Salguero of the National Latino Evangelical Coalition.

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I will take comments on this submitted by email only to KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

Nathan Frodsham, a 45-year-old married Mormon father of three, is hoping the measure passes so he can get off opioids and back to using the vaporized form of marijuana that he used when he lived in Seattle after his doctor recommended trying for his painful osteoarthritis in his neck.

Frodsham wasn’t discouraged by the Mormon church statement, which he notes doesn’t go as far in opposition as when the church explicitly asked members to vote against full marijuana legalization in Arizona and Nevada. He said marijuana is a natural plant and that the religion’s health code doesn’t single out cannabis as being prohibited.

“I think there’s some room for interpretation on this,” said Frodsham.

The 4,500-member Utah Medical Association isn’t against the idea of legalized medical marijuana but has numerous concerns with an initiative it thinks is too broad and doesn’t include necessary regulatory measures, said Michelle McOmber, the group’s CEO.

“We want to be very careful about what we bring into our state,” McOmber said. “This is an addictive drug.”

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“Nana, how is suicide okay for some people, but not for people like me?”

Eva Andrade’s teenage grandson, who had previously been hospitalized for suicidal ideation, had asked his grandmother that question recently: Hawaii became the seventh state to legalize physician-assisted suicide April 5, a year after a previous legislative attempt.

Proponents claimed the law would give people with terminal illnesses (and a diagnosis of less than six months to live) the personal autonomy to make that decision. The teenager did not see why the circumstances made a big difference for one group having the legal right to end life on their own terms, while others did not.

“This is a 15-year-old child making this connection on his own, just based on the conversations he was hearing,” Andrade said.

Andrade, spokeswoman for the Hawaii Catholic Conference, told the Register that the “Our Care, Our Choices Act,” which goes into effect Jan. 1, 2019, threatens negative social repercussions and will have a “very detrimental effect on our community.”

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A public university president in Oregon gives new meaning to the idea of a pensioner.

Joseph Robertson, an eye surgeon who retired as head of the Oregon Health & Science University last fall, receives the state’s largest government pension.

It is $76,111.

Per month.

That is considerably more than the average Oregon family earns in a year.

Oregon — like many other states and cities, including New Jersey, Kentucky and Connecticut — is caught in a fiscal squeeze of its own making. I

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'That is considerably more than the average #Oregon family earns in a year.Oregon-like many other states and cities, including NJ, Kentucky+ Conntct-is caught in a fiscal squeeze of its own making' 2/2 https://t.co/Dbs9fcRFk2 #economy #pensioncrisis #localgovt #stategovt #ethics

— Kendall Harmon (@KendallHarmon6) April 15, 2018

The Ibadan Anglican Diocese, on Friday urged the leadership of President Muhammadu Buari to stop what it called the blame game.

The Church stated that the absence of justice was the main reason many Nigerians were resorting to self-help.

It made these assertions in a communique issued and signed by the Most Reverend Joseph Akinfenwa at the end of its second session of the 22nd Synod of the Diocese, held at St David Anglican Church Ijokodo in Ibadan.

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