Kerala’s communist Chief Minister, V.S. Achuthanandan, accused an Islamist opposition party of conspiring to turn Kerala into a Muslim-dominated state.

“Youngsters are being given money and are being lured to convert to Islam,” he told reporters at a news conference. Opposition parties accused the government of playing the “Hindu card” ahead of local elections.

Muslims and Christian minorities in India generally enjoy good relations and see each other as fellow victims of alleged persecution by right-wing Hindu groups. Kerala’s population of 31.8 million is 56 percent Hindu, 24 percent Muslim and 19 percent Christian.

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Fifteen young American religious scholars and 14 teaching assistants from Al Azhar University – one of the oldest and most influential Islamic institutions in the world – spent two weeks together this month at Georgetown University in an attempt to bridge the divide between the Muslim world and the United States.

The potpourri of young religious scholars studied the legal foundations of American democracy and religious diversity in the U.S. and met with political figures, including White House advisor Valerie Jarrett and Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), the first Muslim American elected to Congress.

“I met people that I love, and I consider them as my brother, my sister, my mother,” said Ibrahim Elbaz, 30, from Mansoura, Egypt.

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Christians should seek to draw those of other religious traditions to faith in Christ, a new Church of England report says.

The report, Sharing the Gospel of Salvation (GS Misc 956, £9, from Church House Bookshop), states that there is nothing new or abnormal about the Church of England’s witnessing to other faiths, and offers examples of how this can be done sensitively in a multifaith society.

The report was commissioned by the Bishops after they were asked by the Synod to set out their understanding of the uniqueness of Christ in a multifaith society, and to offer examples of good practice in sharing the gospel. This followed the debate in February 2009 of a private member’s motion from Paul Eddy about evangelism among people of other faiths.

The report, drafted by a small group led by the Bishop of Willes­den, the Rt Revd Pete Broadbent, the Bishop of Southwell & Nottingham, the Rt Revd Paul Butler, and the Bishop of Birmingham’s adviser on interfaith relations, the Revd Dr Toby Howarth, was commended by the House of Bishops’ meeting in May.

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International Christian Concern (ICC) has learned that a Pakistani Christian was imprisoned on June 19 and faces the death penalty after a Muslim man accused him of blasphemy in Faisalabad, Pakistan.

Sajid Hameed Bajwa accused Rehmat Masih of blaspheming the prophet Muhammad. According to article 295 C of Pakistan’s penal code, blaspheming Muhammad is punishable by death.

Rehmat’s son, Boota Masih, told ICC that the family is fearful of attacks by Muslim mobs. Female members of the family and their children have already left their homes and moved to other areas because of safety concerns.

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(ENS) The Rev. Thomas Ferguson has been named as ecumenical and interreligious relations officer for the Episcopal Church, according to a June 23 announcement from the Office of Public Affairs.

Ferguson will develop strategies and actions supporting Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori’s ministry as chief ecumenical officer of the Episcopal Church, the release said. “Working with colleagues, Ferguson will seek to foster ecumenical and interreligious dialogue and cooperation with other Christian communions and world religions.”

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(Anglican Journal) A prominent Canadian senator and retired general has challenged world religious leaders to offer a vision of what the world can be, saying political leaders are simply reacting and “swimming in the complexity and ambiguity of our time.”

The world hasn’t seen statesmanship in this era of “new world disorder,” said Lt. Gen. Romeo Dallaire, widely known as the commander of the United Nations peacekeeping force in 1993 that tried to stop the genocide in Rwanda. “What world leaders are doing is leadership by crisis management”¦We are not shaping the future but reacting to it.”

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(ACNS) The theme of the Commission’s meeting was ‘Creation’ and papers were presented by Venerable Dr Michael Ipgrave on behalf of the Anglican delegation and by Rabbi David Rosen on behalf of the Jewish delegation. Vibrant discussions took place in a warm, frank and constructive atmosphere on the many issues raised by the papers. These discussions enriched and consolidated the deepening friendships between members of the Commission.

Archdeacon Michael Ipgrave in his paper described the way in which Anglican views of nature developed out of the interaction of theology and natural science in the early seventeenth century. From then onwards, Anglicans have sought to relate the insights of science to the teaching of the scriptures, through motifs such as the liber mundi (‘book of the world’), the idea that the cosmos is a series of signs which can be interpreted and read like a book. Creation as a gift of God is entrusted into the care of human beings; Anglicans have variously described this as a language spoken by God, a sacrament conveying his presence, and a responsibility laid on each in their particular context or ‘station’. In the current ecological crisis, the faithful exercise of our stewardship of creation raises sharp challenges to all our communities – water politics and animal welfare were two particularly pressing examples. Anglicans could have confidence that their continuing theological tradition, rooted in scripture, had resources to help address these challenges.

Rabbi David Rosen explored Biblical and Talmudic insights into the moral dimensions of creation, based on the dual aspects of God, who is the one both of justice and of mercy. Drawing particularly on the account of creation in Genesis he noted the importance of affirming firstly the divine ownership of creation, and then the nature of humanity as the summit of creation. This leads in turn to human responsibility to care for and preserve creation. Rabbi Rosen emphasised the concept of Bal Tashchit, the prohibition against wanton destruction (based on Deuteronomy 20.19-20) which was expanded by the sages to include waste and over indulgence. He concluded by drawing attention to the key role of the Sabbath in ensuring the valuing and sustaining of creation.

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In a world where differences between religious groups are often stressed, too few of us realise how many similarities there are between Christian beliefs and Paganism. Though many of us are aware of the pagan roots of some Christian tradi­tions, such as the Yule log and holly, there are deeper rooted similarities than these Christmas trimmings. History has too many examples of conflicts over real or imagined reli­gious differences; so a greater under­standing of each other’s religion might bring a heightened sympathy between us.

The Neo-Pagan religions have many names, including Paganism, Asatru, Wicca, Witchcraft, and Druid­ism. While Paganism stresses a bond with nature and an acknow­ledgement of the natural cycle of life in the world, there is no one tenet of faith that all followers acknowledge as central to their religion.

The word “pagan” has a long and confused history. In the first centuries Anno Domini (also known as the Common Era), a Pagan was someone who did not believe in the Abrahamic religions. The Latin word “paganus” means countryman, and it is easy to see the link between this and the Pagan religion, which is often de-scribed as being that of country-folk.

Paganism celebrates the cycle of the year, and there is no central reli­gious text; so it would have been accessible to peasants who could not read. Its emphasis on the changes that ordinary people could see around them in the trees and earth would have made sense to them.

Read the whole reflection.

According to the General Social Survey, 15 percent of U.S. households were mixed-faith in 1988. That number rose to 25 percent by 2006, and the increase shows no signs of slowing. The American Religious Identification Survey of 2001 reported that 27 percent of Jews, 23 percent of Catholics, 39 percent of Buddhists, 18 percent of Baptists, 21 percent of Muslims and 12 percent of Mormons were then married to a spouse with a different religious identification. If you want to see what the future holds, note this: Less than a quarter of the 18- to 23-year-old respondents in the National Study of Youth and Religion think it’s important to marry someone of the same faith.

In some ways, more interfaith marriage is good for civic life. Such unions bring extended families from diverse backgrounds into close contact. There is nothing like marriage between different groups to make society more integrated and more tolerant. As recent research by Harvard professor Robert Putnam has shown, the more Americans get to know people of other faiths, the more they seem to like them.

But the effects on the marriages themselves can be tragic — it is an open secret among academics that tsk-tsking grandmothers may be right. According to calculations based on the American Religious Identification Survey of 2001, people who had been in mixed-religion marriages were three times more likely to be divorced or separated than those who were in same-religion marriages.

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Following a colloquy on the effect of intermarriage, an increasing phenomenon, on the question of who is Jewish, [Jonathan] Kligler cited “commitment” as an important facet of “community.” In Judaism, he said, an individual is expected to have a relationship with each element of the “great triad” of God, Torah, and Israel (with the latter referring to the people rather than the country). Meanwhile, the Jewish Congregation recently demonstrated its identity as a community by gathering at the home of a member whose father had died.

The first purpose of a religious community, said Maclary, who has served as pastor of Christ’s Lutheran Church since 1998, is to “keep the faith” – to seek an interaction with God and an understanding of the divine. In an apparent allusion to the so-called Religious Right, the Lutheran minister expressed concern over the recent prominence of an intolerant segment of the Christian community. “The word Christian has been taken hostage, derailed by a group of people with a political agenda,” she said. “My denomination and others have been drowned out by a minority and are struggling to reclaim our identity.”

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When I was a boy in Tibet, I felt that my own Buddhist religion must be the best ”” and that other faiths were somehow inferior. Now I see how naïve I was, and how dangerous the extremes of religious intolerance can be today.

Though intolerance may be as old as religion itself, we still see vigorous signs of its virulence. In Europe, there are intense debates about newcomers wearing veils or wanting to erect minarets and episodes of violence against Muslim immigrants. Radical atheists issue blanket condemnations of those who hold to religious beliefs. In the Middle East, the flames of war are fanned by hatred of those who adhere to a different faith.

Such tensions are likely to increase as the world becomes more interconnected and cultures, peoples and religions become ever more entwined. The pressure this creates tests more than our tolerance ”” it demands that we promote peaceful coexistence and understanding across boundaries.

Granted, every religion has a sense of exclusivity as part of its core identity. Even so, I believe there is genuine potential for mutual understanding. While preserving faith toward one’s own tradition, one can respect, admire and appreciate other traditions.

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Lately, when the Rev. Canon Sally Bingham, president and founder of Interfaith Power and Light, preaches a sermon about the United States’ dependence on fossil fuels and the possible shift toward renewable energy sources she turns to Luke chapter 5 and the metaphor that Jesus used when talking to the frustrated fishermen on the Sea of Galilee.

“When it’s not working, put your nets on the other side of the boat,” Bingham, also an Episcopal priest, said in a telephone interview from Washington, D.C., where Interfaith Power & Light, a national organization with 35 state affiliates aimed at mobilizing a religious response to global warming, is having its annual meeting.

“After a hundred years’ of fossil fuels, it’s time to look to alternatives. Put the nets on the other side of the boat. Wind, sun, geothermal ”¦ just like oil, gas and coal, they are God-given resources. What Jesus was saying was, when something isn’t working, try something else.”

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How does a religion teacher get an invitation to appear, in June, on Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report? By writing a book saying that Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, and others have preached about the shared, benign beliefs unifying all great religions ”” and then dismissing that message as garbage.

Stephen Prothero’s God Is Not One, which hits bookstores today, argues that the globe’s eight major religions hold different and irreconcilable assumptions. They may all push the Golden Rule, as progressives like to point out, but no religion really considers ethics its sole goal. Doctrine, ritual, and myth are crucial, too, and on these, writes the College of Arts & Sciences professor, there is no meeting of the religious minds. For example, Christians who think they’re doing non-Christians a favor by saying they too can be “saved” ignore the fact that Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and Confucians either don’t believe in sin or don’t focus on salvation from it. (Hinduism, Daoism, and the African religion Yoruba round out the eight.)

The notion of “pretend pluralism,” as Prothero derides it, may be nobly intentioned, but it is “dangerous, disrespectful, and untrue.”

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The challenge for religious leaders is to work for change in a non-partisan way, navigating the no-man’s land between the extreme right and the far left ”” and between Republicans and Democrats. It’s a minefield, because when clergy work to secure funding for free dental clinics and affordable housing, they run into conservatives who want lower taxes and smaller government. Yet when clergy takes action to move parishioners through the current immigration system, they face criticism from progressives who insist on amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants. Because congregations are intimately involved with the poor, interfaith action will always be focused on issues of social justice ”” or if those two words offend, let’s go with the less-controversial “uplifting the needy.” But clergy and laypeople know how difficult ”” and even dangerous this work can be. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his life for this cause.

And Jesus? He was nailed to the cross because he was considered to be a political ”” not theological ”” threat to the power of Rome. That’s a Holy Week message that all faiths can embrace.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury has condemned evangelist “bulies” who attempt to convert people of other faiths to Christianity.

Dr Rowan Williams said it was right to be suspicious of proselytism that involves “bullying, insensitive approaches” to other faiths.

In a speech at Guildford cathedral, Dr Williams criticised those who believed they had all the answers amd treated non-Christians as if their traditions of reflection and imagination were of no interest to anyone. “God save us form that kind of approach,” he said.

But he added: “God save us also from the nervousness about our own conviction that doesn’t allow us to say we speak about Jesus because we believe he matters, we believe he matters, because we believe that in him human beings find their peace, their destinies converge, and their dignities are fully honoured.”

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The Archbishop of Canterbury has condemned evangelist “bulies” who attempt to convert people of other faiths to Christianity.

Dr Rowan Williams said it was right to be suspicious of proselytism that involves “bullying, insensitive approaches” to other faiths.

In a speech at Guildford cathedral, Dr Williams criticised those who believed they had all the answers amd treated non-Christians as if their traditions of reflection and imagination were of no interest to anyone. “God save us form that kind of approach,” he said.

But he added: “God save us also from the nervousness about our own conviction that doesn’t allow us to say we speak about Jesus because we believe he matters, we believe he matters, because we believe that in him human beings find their peace, their destinies converge, and their dignities are fully honoured.”

Read it all.

When it comes to religion, people of faith are passionate about their beliefs, and at times, that passion can lead to conflicts with others of different religions.

However, sometimes with understanding can come peace.

With that idea in mind, the Solo Flight Singles Group of New Covenant United Methodist Church decided to host an event that would promote peace and understanding between faiths.

The group gathered together representatives from five different faiths ”” Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Jewish and Christian ”” for an interfaith panel discussion at the church Tuesday evening.

“I think it’s important that we try to understand everyone,” said Bev Diaz, coordinator of the event. “We’re all coming to realize the world is getting smaller. We’re coming into contact with more faiths, and to have more peace, we need to understand and tolerate each other.”

Read it all.

When it comes to religion, people of faith are passionate about their beliefs, and at times, that passion can lead to conflicts with others of different religions.

However, sometimes with understanding can come peace.

With that idea in mind, the Solo Flight Singles Group of New Covenant United Methodist Church decided to host an event that would promote peace and understanding between faiths.

The group gathered together representatives from five different faiths ”” Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Jewish and Christian ”” for an interfaith panel discussion at the church Tuesday evening.

“I think it’s important that we try to understand everyone,” said Bev Diaz, coordinator of the event. “We’re all coming to realize the world is getting smaller. We’re coming into contact with more faiths, and to have more peace, we need to understand and tolerate each other.”

Read it all.

So, ‘uniqueness’ and ‘finality’: we believe as Christians that because of Jesus Christ a new phase in human history ”“ not just the history of the Middle East or of Europe ”“ has opened. There is now a community representing on earth the new creation, a restored humanity. There is now on earth a community which proclaims God’s will for universal reconciliation and God’s presence in and among us leading us towards full humanity. That is something which happens as a result of the life and death and resurrection of Jesus. Uniqueness, yes, in the sense that this ‘turning of a historical epoch’, this induction of a new historical moment, can only happen because of the one event and the narratives around it. And finality? Christians have claimed and will still claim that when you have realized God calls you simply as human being, into that relationship of intimacy which is enjoyed by Jesus and which in Jesus reflects the eternal intimacy of the different moments and persons in the being of God, then you understand something about God which cannot be replaced or supplemented. The finality lies in the recognition that now there is something you cannot forget about God and humanity, and that you cannot correct as if it were simply an interesting theory about God and humanity.

We claim that there is a basic dignity and a basic destiny for all human beings, and we claim that in relationship with Jesus the Word made flesh becomes fully real. Expressed in those terms it is I believe possible to answer some of the moral, political and philosophical questions. And as I’ve indicated, to say any less than that leaves us with what I believe to be equally serious moral, political and philosophical questions. If we realize that not saying what we have said about Jesus involves us in saying there might be different destinies and different levels of dignity for different sorts of human beings, then, in short, to affirm the uniqueness and the finality of Jesus Christ is actually to affirm something about the universal reconcilability of human beings: the possibility of a universal fellowship.

Does this then create problems for dialogue and learning? Does it make us intolerant? Does it commit us to saying, ‘…and everybody else is going to hell’? First, in true dialogue with people of different faiths or convictions we expect to learn something: we expect to be different as a result of the encounter. We don’t as a rule expect to change our minds. We come with conviction and gratitude and confidence, but it’s the confidence that I believe allows us to embark on these encounters hoping that we may learn. That is not to change our conviction, but to learn. And I think it works a bit like this. When we sit alongside the Jew, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, we expect to see in their humanity something that challenges and enlarges ours. We expect to receive something from their humanity as a gift to ours. It’s a famous and much-quoted statement in the Qur’an that God did not elect to make everybody the same. God has made us to learn in dialogue. And to say that I have learned from a Buddhist or a Muslim about God or humanity is not to compromise where I began. Because the infinite truth that is in the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit is not a matter which can be exhausted by one set of formulae or one set of practices. I may emerge from my dialogue as confident as I have ever been about the Trinitarian nature of God and the finality of Jesus, and yet say that I’ve learned something I never dreamed of, and that my discipleship is enriched in gratitude and respect.

Read it all.

So, ‘uniqueness’ and ‘finality’: we believe as Christians that because of Jesus Christ a new phase in human history ”“ not just the history of the Middle East or of Europe ”“ has opened. There is now a community representing on earth the new creation, a restored humanity. There is now on earth a community which proclaims God’s will for universal reconciliation and God’s presence in and among us leading us towards full humanity. That is something which happens as a result of the life and death and resurrection of Jesus. Uniqueness, yes, in the sense that this ‘turning of a historical epoch’, this induction of a new historical moment, can only happen because of the one event and the narratives around it. And finality? Christians have claimed and will still claim that when you have realized God calls you simply as human being, into that relationship of intimacy which is enjoyed by Jesus and which in Jesus reflects the eternal intimacy of the different moments and persons in the being of God, then you understand something about God which cannot be replaced or supplemented. The finality lies in the recognition that now there is something you cannot forget about God and humanity, and that you cannot correct as if it were simply an interesting theory about God and humanity.

We claim that there is a basic dignity and a basic destiny for all human beings, and we claim that in relationship with Jesus the Word made flesh becomes fully real. Expressed in those terms it is I believe possible to answer some of the moral, political and philosophical questions. And as I’ve indicated, to say any less than that leaves us with what I believe to be equally serious moral, political and philosophical questions. If we realize that not saying what we have said about Jesus involves us in saying there might be different destinies and different levels of dignity for different sorts of human beings, then, in short, to affirm the uniqueness and the finality of Jesus Christ is actually to affirm something about the universal reconcilability of human beings: the possibility of a universal fellowship.

Does this then create problems for dialogue and learning? Does it make us intolerant? Does it commit us to saying, ‘…and everybody else is going to hell’? First, in true dialogue with people of different faiths or convictions we expect to learn something: we expect to be different as a result of the encounter. We don’t as a rule expect to change our minds. We come with conviction and gratitude and confidence, but it’s the confidence that I believe allows us to embark on these encounters hoping that we may learn. That is not to change our conviction, but to learn. And I think it works a bit like this. When we sit alongside the Jew, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, we expect to see in their humanity something that challenges and enlarges ours. We expect to receive something from their humanity as a gift to ours. It’s a famous and much-quoted statement in the Qur’an that God did not elect to make everybody the same. God has made us to learn in dialogue. And to say that I have learned from a Buddhist or a Muslim about God or humanity is not to compromise where I began. Because the infinite truth that is in the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit is not a matter which can be exhausted by one set of formulae or one set of practices. I may emerge from my dialogue as confident as I have ever been about the Trinitarian nature of God and the finality of Jesus, and yet say that I’ve learned something I never dreamed of, and that my discipleship is enriched in gratitude and respect.

Read it all.

On Feb. 3, Ergun Caner, president of the Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary, in Lynchburg, Va., focused attention on a Southern Baptist controversy when he called Jerry Rankin, the president of the denomination’s International Mission Board, a liar. Dr. Caner has since apologized for his language, but he still maintains that the “Camel Method,” a strategy Dr. Rankin endorses for preaching Christianity to Muslims, is deceitful.

Instead of talking about the Jesus of the New Testament, missionaries using the Camel Method point Muslims to the Koran, where in the third chapter, or sura, an infant named Isa ”” Arabic for Jesus ”” is born. Missionaries have found that by starting with the Koran’s Jesus story, they can make inroads with Muslims who reject the Bible out of hand. But according to Dr. Caner, whose attack on Dr. Rankin came in a weekly Southern Baptist podcast, the idea that the Koran can contain the seeds of Christian faith is “an absolute, fundamental deception.”

David Garrison, a missionary who edited a book on the Camel Method by Kevin Greeson, the method’s developer, defends the use of the Koran as a path to Jesus. “You aren’t criticizing Muhammad or any other prophets,” Dr. Garrison said, “just raising Jesus up.”

Read it all.

On Feb. 3, Ergun Caner, president of the Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary, in Lynchburg, Va., focused attention on a Southern Baptist controversy when he called Jerry Rankin, the president of the denomination’s International Mission Board, a liar. Dr. Caner has since apologized for his language, but he still maintains that the “Camel Method,” a strategy Dr. Rankin endorses for preaching Christianity to Muslims, is deceitful.

Instead of talking about the Jesus of the New Testament, missionaries using the Camel Method point Muslims to the Koran, where in the third chapter, or sura, an infant named Isa ”” Arabic for Jesus ”” is born. Missionaries have found that by starting with the Koran’s Jesus story, they can make inroads with Muslims who reject the Bible out of hand. But according to Dr. Caner, whose attack on Dr. Rankin came in a weekly Southern Baptist podcast, the idea that the Koran can contain the seeds of Christian faith is “an absolute, fundamental deception.”

David Garrison, a missionary who edited a book on the Camel Method by Kevin Greeson, the method’s developer, defends the use of the Koran as a path to Jesus. “You aren’t criticizing Muhammad or any other prophets,” Dr. Garrison said, “just raising Jesus up.”

Read it all.

As the attention of the public and Congress has been drawn away to other global hotspots, the Interfaith Sudan Working Group hopes U.S. lawmakers will assist Sudan in grappling with an upcoming election, a recent cease-fire agreement with a Darfur rebel group and a referendum on independence for southern Sudan.

“Political milestones such as the upcoming election, cease-fire agreements and referendum carry great promise and great peril,” said Ruth Messinger, president of the American Jewish World Service. “That’s why we need the U.S. government’s focused attention now. If the agreements and peace process fall apart, they can’t just be put back together, again.”

Read it all.

Washington National Cathedral is currently hosting a summit of Christian and Muslim faith leaders, which seeks to promote understanding and reconciliation between the two traditions, and is due to culminate in a public dialogue on 3 March.

The summit began on 1 March, and organizers told Ecumenical News International it is the first of four interfaith dialogues on reconciliation planned with representatives of the Shi’a and Sunni Muslim traditions along with members of the Roman Catholic and (Anglican) Episcopal churches.

The author and associate editor of The Washington Post newspaper, David Ignatius, is moderating the summit at the Cathedral Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul as it is officially known.

On its Web site, Washington Cathedral says, “As the global community continues to divide along the lines of faith and culture, Washington National Cathedral feels increasingly called to play an important role in relations between Christians and Muslims around the world, and is uniquely positioned as a convening authority to facilitate such a dialogue.”

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Another display of eagerness to engage in fantasy was the sycophantic Loving God and Neighbor Together. In this statement, Yale theologians-and-friends naively responded to A Common Word Between Us and You, a letter from international Muslim leaders inviting Christians to embrace Islam. The Yale response’s ”˜bold’ insertion of Christianity into the conversation references Jesus’ admonition to the Pharisee to remove the log from his own eye before attempting to deal with the splinter in his neighbor’s eye (Matthew 7:5). But they cite Christ’s words in order to apologize for such Christian “logs” as the Crusades and the War on Terrorism.

This was a strategic blunder according to theologian and author the Rev. Dr. Mark Durie, since “it sends the signal to Muslims that whatever the problems with Islam, and whatever the sins of Muslims, they are but a ”˜speck’ compared to the collective crimes of Christians.” It was also a moral failure, because it betrays Christians in the Islamic world who are being slaughtered.

Durie explains that the Yale response, “adopts a self-humbling, grateful tone.” This is disturbing, he says, because it fits right in with the classic Islamic understanding that Christians are dhimmis who should be grateful “for the generosity of having their lives spared” and humble, because their condition as dhimmis is contemptible. “It is regrettable that the Yale theologians have shown themselves so ready to adopt a tone of grateful self-humiliation,” Durie reproves, since A Common Word “did not offer awareness of, or any apology for, Muslims’ crimes, past and present, against non-Muslims.”

Such a scenario is sure to be played out next week when the Washington National Cathedral of the Episcopal Church hosts a “Christian-Muslim Summit,” March 1-3, 2010.

Read it all.

The Australian branch of Forward in Faith — the main association of Anglo-Catholic priests — has become the first group within the Anglican Church to vote to accept the Pope’s ordinariate offer (their 15 February statement is here). FiF Australia, which has 200 members and 16 parishes, will join the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC) — which is not in communion with Canterbury, and has already voted to accept the ordinariate proposal — in a working party set up by the Australian Catholic bishops to negotiate terms.

This means that Australia will become, in effect, the test centre for the new ordinariates envisaged by Pope Benedict’s Anglicanorum coetibus.

It will be watched closely by the much larger and more significant FiF in the UK, which has postponed its vote on the ordinariates pending the outcome of the Church of England’s review of its episcopal oversight for priests and their parishes opposed to women bishops.

It was confirmed this week that no group has yet applied to the Catholic bishops of England and Wales for an ordinariate.

Read it all.

The Presbyterian Church USA’s statement of faith says God through Jesus Christ delivers followers “from death to life eternal.”

But one in three members of the nation’s largest Presbyterian denomination seem to believe there’s some wiggle room for non-Christians to get into heaven, according to a recent poll.

The Presbyterian Panel’s “Religious and Demographic Profile of Presbyterians” found that 36 percent of members disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement: “Only followers of Jesus Christ can be saved.” Another 39 percent, or about two-fifths, agreed or strongly agreed with the statement.

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At his meeting-house on an industrial estate in Kano, northern Nigeria’s largest city, Sheikh Ibrahim Khalil laments his country’s sporadic uprisings in the name of Islam.”I don’t know why this change has come,” says the 57-year-old Muslim preacher. “Twenty years ago we never used to have this. Everyone got along.”

Outside his vine-covered house, silence prevails on the Sharada estate. Most of the factories that once helped Kano honour its state slogan, “Centre of Commerce”, are shells. The economic slump worries the Americans, especially since it has strengthened the hand of the more militant of northern Nigeria’s Muslim leaders, who are rattling the mild-mannered sheikh.

The role of Islam in Nigeria is in the spotlight, especially in America, since Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to blow up an aircraft landing at Detroit on Christmas Day. The young Nigerian’s failed attack has since been claimed by al-Qaeda, fuelling long-held fears that the jihadist group, already present in north Africa, could win recruits among Africa’s most populous country with some 150m people.

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The Anglican Archbishop of Jos has called for Muslims to hand back the bodies of any Christians shot in last week’s riots that he says could have been taken to the mosque in error.

The Most Rev Ben Kwashi said that Christians had been made the scapegoats for sectarian violence between Christians and Muslims that left nearly 500 people dead in the central Nigerian city. Those who took part in killings that nearly wiped out a village on the outskirts of Jos have yet to be found.

The Archbishop spoke to The Times as another Anglican bishop in Nigeria, the Right Rev Peter Imasuen of Benin City in southern Edo state, was ambushed and kidnapped shortly after arriving home from Sunday eucharist.

Read the whole thing.

The Anglican bishop of the Diocese of Benin, Church of Nigeria, was abducted at gunpoint from his home Jan. 24 after returning from a service of Holy Eucharist at St. Matthew’s Cathedral in the nation’s southern state of Edo, according to news reports.

Read it all and please keep him in your prayers.