The third meeting of the Chief Rabbis of Israel and the Archbishop of Canterbury was held on 9th September 2008/9th Elul 5768, fulfilling the provisions of the Joint Declaration signed by them on 5th September 2006/12th Elul 5766.

The Most Revd Dr Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar and Chief Rabbi Yonah Metzger of Israel met in Lambeth Palace. The Chief Rabbis were supported by Mr Oded Wiener, Director General of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, whilst the Archbishop was supported by the Rt Revd Michael Jackson, Bishop of Clogher and Co-Chair of the Anglican Jewish Commission, and the Rt Revd Suheil Dawani, Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem.
“We feel keenly the absence of Rabbi David Rosen who was not able to be present because of a family bereavement and express our condolences and prayers for him, his wife and their family. We also wish to acknowledge, with gratitude, the work of Canon Guy Wilkinson who has supported our meetings and those of our Anglican Jewish Commission since their inception.

“We are encouraged by the further steps we have taken, under God, to build up the trust and mutual understanding that have characterised our encounter. We have heard from members of our Anglican Jewish Commission of the special relationship that has developed in their meetings and received with gratitude the report of their work on the holiness of person, place and time. The Commission’s meeting in Canterbury this year during the Lambeth Conference gave it a special character. We were delighted to hear of the warm appreciation shown by the bishops of the Anglican Communion and their spouses for the address on the theme of “Covenant” by Sir Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth ”“ an historic address as the first by a Chief Rabbi to the decennial Lambeth Conference.

Read the whole statement.

Rabbis and bishops joined in affirming their common beliefs regarding marriage in a joint statement titled “Created in the Divine Image.” The statement was signed by Rabbi Fabian Schonfeld of Young Israel Synagogue in Kew Gardens Hills, New York, and Bishop William Murphy of Rockville Centre, with other Catholic and Jewish leaders

The bishops and rabbis affirm “our shared commitment to the ordinance of God, the Almighty One, who created man and woman in the divine image so that they might share as male and female, as helpmates and equals, in the procreation of children and the building up of society.”

In June, California became the second U.S. state, after Massachusetts, to allow same-sex marriages. The governor of New York earlier this year instructed authorities in his state to recognize same-sex marriages contracted in states or countries where the unions are legal.

The Catholic-Jewish statement contests the claim that refusing to recognize same-sex unions as marriage is discrimination against homosexuals.

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One weekday morning in 1981, when he was new to Baltimore, Arnold Graf descended into the basement of the Enon Baptist Church. The steps took him into the midst of 60 skeptics. They were the black ministers whom Mr. Graf, a white Jew, was trying to persuade to join him in community organizing.

Even among a loquacious crowd of preachers, conversation stilled at Mr. Graf’s arrival. “I don’t know if we should be talking about this stuff with an outsider here,” one minister said, as Mr. Graf recently recalled the meeting.

Then the Rev. Vernon N. Dobson, one of Baltimore’s legendary civil rights leaders, replied. Alone among the dozens of ministers, he was already a member of Mr. Graf’s group, Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development. Alone among them, Mr. Dobson had already gotten to know Mr. Graf during the organizer’s brief months in the city.

“He’s with me,” Mr. Dobson said. “And who’s blacker than me here? The man is my brother.”

Read the whole article.

On Aug 17 fighting broke out in the small town of Nguruka in the diocese of Western Tanganyika near Lake Victoria after Muslim evangelists accused an Anglican evangelist of blaspheming Islam.

According to press accounts, the fighting erupted after Muslims took offence to the preaching of an Anglican evangelist. The Citizen newspaper in Dar es Salaam denounced the violence saying it deserved the “condemnation of all people who aspire for religious harmony in Tanzania.”

“If the Muslims were offended by the preaching of the Anglican evangelist, as the reports say, the proper procedure was to report their grievances to the police, who, in our view, would have dealt with the issue in accordance with the law,” The Citizen argued, adding that freedom of religion should not be construed to mean carte blanche to attack other faiths.

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Catholics at worship should neither sing nor pronounce the name of God as “Yahweh,” the Vatican has said, citing the authority of both Jewish and Christian practice.

The instruction came in a June 29 letter to Catholic bishops conferences around the world from the Vatican’s top liturgical body, the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments, by an explicit “directive” of Pope Benedict XVI.

“In recent years the practice has crept in of pronouncing the God of Israel’s proper name,” the letter noted, referring to the four-consonant Hebrew “Tetragrammaton,” YHWH.

That name is commonly pronounced as “Yahweh,” though other versions include “Jaweh” and “Yehovah.” But such pronunciation violates long-standing Jewish tradition, the Vatican reminded bishops.

Read it all.

Friends, I stand before you as a Jew, which means not just as an individual, but as a representative of my people. And as I prepared this lecture, within my soul were the tears of my ancestors. We may have forgotten this, but for a thousand years, between the First Crusade and the Holocaust, the word ‘Christian’ struck fear into Jewish hearts. Think only of the words the Jewish encounter with Christianity added to the vocabulary of human pain: blood libel, book burnings, disputations, forced conversions, inquisition, auto da fe, expulsion, ghetto and pogrom.

I could not stand here today in total openness, and not mention that book of Jewish tears.

And I have asked myself, what would our ancestors want of us today?

And the answer to that lies in the scene that brings the book of Genesis to a climax and a closure. You remember: after the death of Jacob, the brothers fear that Joseph will take revenge. After all, they had sold him into slavery in Egypt.

Instead, Joseph forgives — but he does more than forgive. Listen carefully to his words:

You intended to harm me,
but God intended it for good,
to do what is now being done,
to save many lives.

Joseph does more than forgive. He says, out of bad has come good. Because of what you did to me, I have been able to save many lives. Which lives? Not just those of his brothers, but the lives of the Egyptians, the lives of strangers. I have been able to feed the hungry. I have been able to honour the covenant of fate — and by honouring the covenant of fate between him and strangers, Joseph is able to mend the broken covenant of faith between him and his brothers.

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Pope Benedict called for all religions to unite against terrorism and resolve conflicts peacefully on Friday and heard an Islamic leader urge Christians to overcome “misconceptions and prejudices” about Muslims.

“In a world threatened by sinister and indiscriminate forms of violence, the unified voice of religious people urges nations and communities to resolve conflict through peaceful means and with full regard for human dignity,” Benedict told an meeting with Muslims, Jews and members of other non-Christian faiths.

The pope, in Australia for the Church’s World Youth Day, also said the Catholic Church was open to learn from other religions, a comment seen in the context of moves to improve relations with other religions, particularly Islam.

“The Church eagerly seeks opportunities to listen to the spiritual experience of other religions,” he said.

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A member of the General Synod who tabled a private member’s motion on the evangelisation of Muslims has protested against its “postponement” from the July group of sessions.

The member, Paul Eddy, a lay representative for Winchester, had received 124 signatures of support for his motion, but, owing to time constraints, a motion on church tourism with 134 signatures takes precedence, and will be the only private member’s motion debated.

Mr Eddy, a theological student who runs his own PR company and was initially UK press officer for Gafcon, had called on the House of Bishops in his motion to “report to the Synod on their understanding of the uniqueness of Christ in Britain’s multifaith society, and to offer examples and commendations of good practice in sharing the gospel of salvation through Christ alone with people of other faiths and none”.

He suggested in a press release he issued on Tuesday that the church Establishment had been worried about the effect the debate would have on the “position of the C of E, headed by the Archbishop, in the run-up to Lambeth”. Electronic voting, he said, would have shown how many bishops believed in “the uniqueness of Christ as the only means of salvation”.

Read it all.

The Church of England has been accused of censorship for shelving a controversial debate about Islam.

A meeting of the Church’s “parliament” was due to discuss whether clergy should be doing more to convert British Muslims to Christianity.

The sensitive issue was highlighted last week by a senior bishop who accused Church leaders of failing to reach out to other faiths, and warned that radical Islam is filling a gap in society caused by the decline of traditional Christian values.

But now the Church has put off the debate on recruiting Muslims until next February at the earliest and will discuss the promotion of churches as tourist attractions instead.

Read it all.

The Church of England faces yet another theological challenge as it prepares for the meeting of its General Synod in July. This time the issue is the Gospel itself and the specific question concerns the evangelization of Muslims. In the end, the outcome of this debate may, more than anything else, determine the future viability of the Church of England.

Paul Eddy, a lay theology student from Winchester who aspires to the priesthood, has entered a Private Member’s Motion and has secured the signatures necessary to force the General Synod to deal with his motion.

The text of his motion sets the issue clearly:

‘That this Synod request the House of Bishops to report to the Synod on their understanding of the uniqueness of Christ in Britain’s multi-faith society, and offer examples and commendations of good practice in sharing the gospel of salvation through Christ alone with people of other faiths and of none.’

Mr. Eddy’s motion has been roundly denounced by many in the church and the Daily Mail [London] reports that liberal bishops attempted to dissuade members from signing the motion. Nevertheless, the motion is now set and the General Synod will effectively vote on whether the Church of England should seek to evangelize Muslims.

Read it all.

Read it all.

The World Evangelical Alliance has responded to a Muslim overture for interfaith dialogue by saying its members want to “live in peace with Muslims” but disagree with their view of God.

Last fall, more than 100 Islamic clerics and scholars issued their open document, “A Common Word Between Us and You,” to call on Christians to join them in a belief “that we shall worship none but God, and that we will ascribe no partner to him.”

The evangelical alliance, in a four-page response released March 29, said the document’s use of Quranic statements about God having no partner reveal a key difference between Christianity and Islam.

“Even though we are convinced that you misunderstand our doctrine of God being Three in One, when you speak about a `partner’ of God, we are convinced of the truth of Trinity and, therefore, we cannot accept your invitation,” wrote the Rev. Geoff Tunnicliffe, the alliance’s international director.

Read the whoe thing.

As Prime Minister, Tony Blair spoke little about his faith, believing that religion in Britain is a private matter that does not sit comfortably with public life. But he made no secret of his Christianity and acknowledged, in office and afterwards, the enormous help and sustenance he received from his religious beliefs. His decision to set up a Faith Foundation to encourage interfaith dialogue and rescue religion from extremism is therefore particularly welcome: not only does it draw on his deep personal convictions and long political experience, but also it comes at a time when faith plays an ever more central part in politics and policy. Rarely have faith issues intruded as forcefully into Britain’s largely secular society, or religious extremism been as critical to fanning and prolonging conflicts around the world.

In outlining his hopes for this new forum to The Times, Mr Blair has focused on two key challenges: the reconciliation of faith with modernity; and the interfaith dialogue between the world’s main religions. Already, this dialogue is gathering pace: not only are academic and church bodies playing an ever more visible role in current debates on multiculturalism, extremism, identity and Britishness, but also in the wider world there have been potentially momentous initiatives to end historic schisms and enmities – the Vatican’s overtures to Eastern Orthodoxy, the Pope’s readiness to reassess Martin Luther and the call by 138 Muslim leaders for an institutional dialogue with Christianity. What could Mr Blair’s initiative add to the work of the Three Faiths Forum, St Ethelburga’s Centre for Reconciliation and Peace and the Cambridge Interfaith programme, to name but three?

The answer is much needed political weight and experience. Religious leaders speak from the heart; they are not often versed in the pitfalls of politics or public relations.

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As local religious leaders made plans to gather for a forum today, one area interfaith organization is hoping to gain new life by merging with another.

The Kentuckiana Interfaith Community, a once-active group that had languished in recent years, announced late last year it was ceasing operations in its current form.

It now has agreed to become a subgroup in another group with a similar name and mission ”” the Center for Interfaith Relations.

The Kentuckiana Interfaith Community historically was led by the delegates of bishops and other denominational leaders, while the Center for Interfaith Relations is mainly led by lay people.

Read it all.

For more than a decade, interfaith efforts have been on the rise in the United States, fueled by the growth of newer religious minority groups and by post-Sept. 11 interest in Islam. But participants and experts say a new credo is changing the movement: Go deeper.

Meeting for months in small dialogue groups. Running a joint anti-gun violence program. Taking educational trips together.

This growing wave represents a significant change in the movement called “interfaith,” a transformation driven by the belief that efforts have been too feel-good, not concrete or effective enough. It favors intimate group projects and community service over largely anonymous and safe group settings, such as lectures and joint worship services that happen once a year.

That philosophy made the small back room of the D.C. club Busboys and Poets feel even smaller one night last month, when a few dozen people listened to an imam interview a rabbi and then broke into groups for discussion. The assigned questions: What traditions of your own do you hold most dear? What could you learn from other groups you don’t agree with?

People made soft, general comments. But by the time the whole group rejoined for a Q&A, they were more frank.

“How do you deal with a fanatic, a person who wants to kick you out of your home?” a Christian man originally from Palestine asked in a sharp tone, from the front corner of the room.

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From here:

Hindu-Episcopal service: An article in Sunday’s California section about a joint religious service involving Hindus and Episcopalians said that all those attending the service at St. John’s Cathedral in Los Angeles were invited to Holy Communion. Although attendees walked toward the Communion table, only Christians were encouraged to partake of Communion. Out of respect for Hindu beliefs, the Hindus were invited to take a flower. Also, the article described Hindus consuming bread during Communion, but some of those worshipers were Christians wearing traditional Indian dress.

Hindu nun Pravrajika Saradeshaprana, dressed in a saffron robe, blew into a conch shell three times, calling to worship Hindu and Episcopal religious leaders who joined Saturday to celebrate an Indian Rite Mass at St. John’s Cathedral near downtown.

The rare joint service included chants from the Temple Bhajan Band of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness and a moving rendition of “Bless the Lord, O My Soul” sung by the St. John’s choir.

“This was a once-in-a-lifetime experience in worship service,” said Bob Bland, a member of St. Patrick’s Episcopal Church of Thousand Oaks, who was among the 260 attendees. “There was something so holy — so much symbolism and so many opportunities for meditation.”

During the service, the Rt. Rev. J. Jon Bruno, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, issued a statement of apology to the Hindu religious community for centuries-old acts of religious discrimination by Christians, including attempts to convert them.

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Dr Michael Nazir-Ali is the Bishop of Rochester, and thus a leading figure in the Church of England, one of the Lords Spiritual; but, as his name suggests, he is from a largely Muslim family background. Dr Nazir-Ali was received into the Anglican Church of Pakistan at the age of 20 and became the Bishop of Raiwind in West Punjab at the age of 35, making him the youngest bishop in the Anglican Communion.

As Dr Nazir-Ali told me on an earlier occasion: “This was a time ”“ the late 1980s ”“ when there was a great movement towards political Islamicisation in Pakistan. As Christians we had to say that there were certain penal laws, partly concerning the role of women in society, which we could not support.”

The threats to Dr Nazir-Ali that resulted from this ideological conflict eventually became so unpleasant ”“ especially as they were also directed at his children ”“ that the young bishop left Pakistan, and settled in Britain.

What astounded Dr Nazir-Ali, when he regained his bearings, was that the dominant form of Islam in the UK that he recalled from his time here in the 1970s (when he was tutorial supervisor in theology at Cambridge University) ”“ pietistic, Sufi-orientated ”“ had, in little more than a decade, been completely supplanted by something much more militant and political: in fact, exactly the same form of the religion that had forced him out of Pakistan.

Dr Nazir-Ali claims that this had happened “because the British mosques had recruited people from fundamentalist backgrounds” ”“ people like Hannah’s father, as it happens.

Like Hannah, Dr Nazir-Ali cannot be described as anti-Islamic. As he pointed out to me, he has “a large number of Muslim friends and relatives with whom I get on very well and for which I am deeply thankful”. His complaint is against what he terms “the chauvinist manifestations of Islam, a kind of ideology which affirms the will to power”. He adds that he had been to Bosnia during the period in which Muslims were slaughtered in their thousands: “So I have seen such chauvinism in its Christian form.”

Read the whole article.

Westminster Abbey will hold its first ever Jewish-Christian service next weekend with a joint celebration of the festivals of Advent and Hanukkah.

Rabbi Mark Solomon of the liberal St John’s Wood Synagogue and the Abbey’s Canon Robert Reiss will do readings that will be interspersed with songs and carols from both faiths, and the lighting of candles.

The service, organised with the help of the Council of Christians, takes place next Sunday evening and is open to all members of the public.

Canon Reiss said: “Hanukkah and Advent occur at the same time of the year and both involve the lighting of candles. Westminster Abbey is very happy to respond to a suggestion from the Council for Christians and Jews that this joint event should take place, which will give an opportunity of representatives from both faiths to learn and understand of one another’s practices and, it is hoped, to share in the celebration of the light that flows from God.”

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The outcome was uncertain when a group of mostly strangers sat down together for dinner Thursday night at a home in this Dallas suburb. Among the gathering were three Jews, two Mormons, three Muslims, two Bahais, two secular humanists and a Catholic-Baptist.

But over pasta and lentil soup, the guests discussed love, death, forgiveness, compassion and evil, and found plenty of common ground.

“How many times,” said one guest, Nelson Komaiko, a 59-year-old self-described “very Reform” Jew, “do we get in a situation where people from all these different religions can really talk?” Not with superficial workplace chatter, he said, but in a discussion about the big questions of life. “Usually when people of different faiths have a ”˜dialogue,’ it’s with guns blazing.”

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ADAM and Abigail met over a leaky kettle in a cubbyhole off the same staircase at their Cambridge college. Soon they appeared regularly in each other’s rooms, his on the first floor, hers on the fourth. And halfway through their first term they had become an item. Three years on they went their separate ways with their different degrees. But within a year Abigail had got her own flat, and Adam moved in. Seven years on they are desperate to get married but cannot sort out how.

They are of different faiths – Adam is an Anglican, Abigail is Jewish. And they are facing a chasm that too many religious institutions – Muslim, Christian and Jewish – have yet to bridge. It is the one area in which many of us are limping way behind the multicultural society and its norms by which most of our nominal adherents now live.

If the ozone layer and our physical climate have changed in the past decade or two, then the culture within which all our religious institutions operate has changed far more dramatically. It is as if the Equator has moved to the North Pole, and in nothing more so than marriage and its great rival, relationships.

After centuries and millennia of marrying only members of our own faiths, most of us have yet to offer services and ceremonies to the vast numbers of those who are now forging unions across the barriers.

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It’s hard not to notice when the Pope shows up. And you can sometimes say the same when he doesn’t. Last fall, Pope Benedict XVI was a notable no-show at a September ceremony to mark 20 years since John Paul II had hosted a groundbreaking gathering of world religious leaders in Assisi, Italy. Some viewed the Pope’s absence as a slap to those working for inter-faith dialogue, both inside and outside the Catholic Church,. On Sunday, however, Benedict will be center stage at the most lavish, and well-attended inter-religious ceremony of his papacy, organized by the same Sant’Egidio community that helped launch Assisi. What has changed? Why is Benedict marking 21 years since “the spirit of Assisi” was uncorked, after skipping out on the 20th anniversary?

Read it all.

I was thrilled last year to hear my family’s friend, the author Katherine Paterson, interviewed on NPR. I was quite *interested* — but I wouldn’t say thrilled — to hear the contribution of another person I know, on NPR the other day. Another “Silver Bay person”, in fact.

This was Kendall Harmon; I guess these days, that’s the Reverend, Dr., Kendall Harmon. When I knew him, he was a kid at Silver Bay, NY, a couple years older than me. Just another of the “big kids”, into sports and stuff. His family’s very well known and respected in Silver Bay; his mom was a prominent, I guess you’d say, liberal social activist; she just recently died, and is much-missed. Kendall was, and is, very smart and eloquent; but his own personal direction and focus seems to be a little… different…I guess he is becoming one of the mainstays of the Christian Conservative movement; or so I hear. It seems his particular focus is the anti-gay crusade, bringing the Bible back into the Bedroom, that sort of thing. Funny how our paths have diverged…

So it’s not surprising that I’d find my views differ with Kendall’s, on most things. What is surprising is that I found myself *agreeing* with him, in his contribution to this story.

So this NPR story concerned a minister in Seattle, a woman of last name Redding, who is controversial because she is both Muslim and Christian. She started out Christian, but had a faith-moment where she also accepted the tenets of Islam, but you wouldn’t call it a “conversion” because she (in her own mind) still holds to Christianity as well. For her, it is not contradictory to accept both. But her church has suspended her from ministry, because *they* find it contradictory; well, the leadership so finds it: her congregation supports her. So it makes for a good story, and I’m interested that I didn’t know about it already as a local story, before hearing it on NPR.

Kendall’s point — which seems to be one of his running themes, bringing the church back to a stricter interpretation of scripture –was that regardless of what feels OK to this person personally, the scripture of Christianity is quite clear (he says — I don’t know if it is or it isn’t but I think it might be) that you can have no other messiahs or prophets than Jesus.

Read it all. Now, I bumped into this the other day and had a debate with myself about posting it since I really do not like to talk much about me on the blog.

So, why the post? A number of reasons. First, because it illustrates the complexity of the current debate in terms of where people are coming from. Who would guess that my Mom was like that? People don’t fit into pigeonholes, they are complex, and when the media stories try to portray things in terms of American politics or a two category scheme–this versus that–they miss key dimensions of the struggle and the people involved.

Second, this is a good example of what one of my friends calls the everyone-who-has-a-keyboard-is-a-Pope phenomenon on the Internet. You get partial information–sometimes very partial, but then the conclusions drawn do not necessarily follow. Nevertheless the person at the keyboard can and does make them. We have more information in the information age, but, alas, not more wisdom.

The conclusions drawn here are false, but they are typical. I know this author, he is very gifted and bright, and comes from a wonderful family. But how can he say: “So it’s not surprising that I’d find my views differ with Kendall’s, on most things.” Most things? Good heavens! How many things does he know we differ about? We have not even talked about it at all. One difference does not lead to a host of other differences. I have in my email bag from the last year a note from a communications director in one of the Episcopal Church’s dioceses which essentially says: “I differ with you on just about every aspect of the Episcopal Church but I thought you would like to know…”.–and then she sent me some information. The name and the diocese are not important. But how could she know we differ on all those things? I would lay odds that it isn’t true, but it is another example of the kinds of false assumptions and judgments made, all based on one issue and one stand. And this happens by reasserters in their evaluation of reappraisers AND vice versa.

Finally, this is a good illustration of the way in which caricatures get constructed. I am not actually about “bringing the church back to a stricter interpretation of scripture.” I am trying to enable the church of which I am a part to read the Scriptures with the church–both spread through history and throughout the world. Unfortunately I am in a church which is in the process of so losing the center of the Christian faith that to raise these questions means one is caricatured (falsely) this way. Actually, I am regularly accused of being a “liberal” in many settings (and was in fact criticized as one on the floor of one of our own diocesan Conventions at one time, for putting forward a resolution against a state sponsored lottery in South Carolina). That in any case is a longer story for another time.

I would like to see more provisional judgments, less caricatures, and less of a tendency to turn one or two observations or articles into a detailed evaluation of someone else’s perspective. Both the issues and the people involved get short shrift as that is done–KSH.

But the point of this first contribution, as it affects civil society, is this: the presence of the Church, not as a clamorous interest group but as a community confident of its rootedness in something beyond the merely political, expresses a vision of human dignity and mutual human obligation which, because of its indifference to popular success or official legitimation, poses to every other community a special sort of challenge. ”˜Civil society’ is the recognized shorthand description for all those varieties of human association that rest on willing co-operation for the sake of social goods that belong to the whole group, not just to any individual or faction, and which are not created or wholly controlled by state authority. As such, their very existence presupposes persons who are able to take responsibility for themselves and to trust one another in this enterprise. The presence of the Christian community puts to civil society the question of where we look for the foundation of such confidence about responsibility and trustworthiness: does this set of assumptions about humanity rest on a fragile human agreement, on the decision of human beings to behave as if they were responsible, or on something deeper and less contingent, something to which any and every human society is finally answerable? Is the social creativity which civil society takes for granted part of a human ”˜birthright’?

The second major contribution made by the presence of the Church is what we might in shorthand call universalism ”“ not in the technical theological sense, but simply meaning the conviction that every human agent is involved in either creating or frustrating a common good that relates to the whole human race. In plainer terms, we cannot as Christians settle down with the conclusion that what is lastingly and truly good for any one individual or group is completely different from what is lastingly and truly good for any other. Justice is not local in an exclusive sense or limited by circumstances; there are no classes or subgroups of humanity who are entitled to less of God’s love; and so there are no classes entitled to lower levels of human respect or compassion or service. And since an important aspect of civil society is the assumption that human welfare is not achieved by utilitarian generalities imposed from above but requires active and particularized labour, the fact of the Christian community’ presence once again puts the question of how human society holds together the need for action appropriate to specific and local conditions with the lively awareness of what is due to all people everywhere. This is not only about a vision of universal human justice as we normally think of it, but also applies to how we act justly towards those who are not yet born ”“ how we create a just understanding of our relation to the environment.

In short, the significance of the Church for civil society is in keeping alive a concern both to honour and to justify the absolute and non-negotiable character of the human vision of responsibility and justice that is at work in all human association for the common good. It is about connecting the life of civil society with its deepest roots, acknowledged or not. The conviction of being answerable to God for how we serve and respect God’s human and non-human creation at the very least serves to ensure that the human search for shared welfare and responsible liberty will not be reduced to a matter of human consensus alone. And if the Church ”“ or any other community of faith ”“ asks of society the respect that will allow it to be itself, it does so not because it is anxious about its survival (which is in God’s hands), but because it asks the freedom to remind the society or societies in which it lives of their own vulnerability and their need to stay close to some fundamental questions about the nature of the humanity they seek to nourish. Such a request from Church to society will be heard and responded to, of course, only if the Church genuinely looks as though it were speaking for more than a self-protecting set of ”˜religious’ concerns; if it appears as concerned for something more than self-defence. To return to what was said earlier, it needs to establish its credentials as ”˜non-violent’ ”“ that is, as not contending against other kinds of human group for a share in ordinary political power. To put it in severely condensed form, the Church is most credible when least preoccupied with its security and most engaged with the human health of its environment; and to say ”˜credible’ here is not to say ”˜popular’, since engagement with this human health may run sharply against a prevailing consensus. Recent debates on euthanasia offer a case in point; and even here, it is surprisingly often claimed that the churches are concerned here only to sustain their control of human lives ”“ which sadly illustrates what all too many in our society have come to expect of the Church.

Read it all.

A Louisiana Democratic Party ad accusing Republican candidate for governor Bobby Jindal of calling Protestants “scandalous, depraved, selfish and heretical” has prompted a firestorm of criticism and calls Tuesday from the GOP to take the ad off the air.

Political watchers questioned whether the ad went too far and whether it accurately reflects Jindal’s writings on Catholicism. Republicans and the head of a national Catholic organization called the ad a smear campaign.

Democrats say the 30-second TV spot ”” running in heavily Protestant central and north Louisiana ”” simply explains Jindal’s beliefs with his own words, using portions of Jindal’s religious writings through the 1990s, before he was an elected official.

A lawyer for the Jindal campaign sent a letter to nine television stations airing the ad, requesting that they stop showing it and calling it defamatory.

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Sorting out ways to live Jewishly in a big city – and sharing their experience with other young adults – has just brought Rebecca Karp, 25, and Becky Coren, 23, together with Vassar in a Center City townhouse they will share for at least a year.

Coren, a second-year law student at Rutgers/Camden, calls theirs a “holistic, grassroots pursuit of religion.”

Their experiment is so relaxed and so new (three weeks) that the three haven’t yet affixed a mezuzah to the doorway, although that might happen Sunday at their open house “kickoff” barbecue.

Read it all.

They sat facing each other, 14 evangelical preachers on one side, 12 U.S-based Arab diplomats on the other. Nabil Fahmy, the Egyptian ambassador to the U.S., listened as introductions began, and he found himself amazed.

“Robertson, Falwell, Youssef. … I had heard these names before,” Fahmy later recounted, “and I have to admit I was surprised they were here.”

The initiative launched at that July 2 meeting came as a surprise to many. The evangelical community is known for its support of Israel, and many of its most outspoken leaders, such as Pat Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell, have made incendiary comments about the Muslim world. But in recent months, an unusual rapprochement has begun between these two powerful communities, and the sons of some of those same pastors are participating.

Both sides have a lot to gain from a thaw. At a time when the evangelical leadership is seeking new outlets for influence, both domestically and abroad, it provides the possibility of an entree into the Arab world. For the representatives of the Arab-Muslim world, it offers the potential for improving relations with a previously hostile community as well as with Americans in general.

Whether this dialogue will lead to any concrete changes in an increasingly tense environment remains to be seen.

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Muslims and evangelical Christians are talking ”” at least behind closed doors at the Egyptian Embassy ”” according to several guests at a top-secret lunch last week.

The July 2 gathering lasted two hours and featured ambassadors from nine Arab states plus their umbrella group, and several prominent evangelical leaders or their sons.

“They were assessing the next generation,” said Richard Cizik, vice president for governmental affairs of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) and one of the participants. “The meeting was reflective of the generational changes that are happening, and everyone knew it.”

The meeting, which was orchestrated by Pentecostal evangelist Benny Hinn, focused on two issues, though the two groups had differing priorities. Whereas the Americans wanted to discuss the lack of religious freedom in Muslim countries, the ambassadors wanted to know whether Christians could become more “balanced” in their support of Israel.

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That’s the headline to an article in the Observer which picks up on one of the more interesting angles to the story re: Pope Benedict’s decision on the Latin Mass:

Pope’s move on Latin mass ‘a blow to Jews’

Sunday July 8, 2007
The Observer

Jewish leaders and community groups criticised Pope Benedict XVI strongly yesterday after the head of the Roman Catholic Church formally removed restrictions on celebrating an old form of the Latin mass which includes prayers calling for the Jews to ‘be delivered from their darkness’ and converted to Catholicism.

In a highly controversial concession to traditionalist Catholics, Pope Benedict said that he had decided to allow parish priests to celebrate the Latin Tridentine mass if a ‘stable group of faithful’ request it – though he stressed that he was in no way undoing the reforms of the Sixties Second Vatican Council which allowed the mass to be said in vernacular languages for the first time.

‘What earlier generations held as sacred remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful,’ Benedict wrote.

However, the older rite’s prayers calling on God to ‘lift the veil from the eyes’ of the Jews and to end ‘the blindness of that people so that they may acknowledge the light of your truth, which is Christ’ – used just once a year during the Good Friday service – have sparked outrage.

Yesterday the Anti-Defamation League, the American-based Jewish advocacy group, called the papal decision a ‘body blow to Catholic-Jewish relations’.

‘We are extremely disappointed and deeply offended that nearly 40 years after the Vatican rightly removed insulting anti-Jewish language from the Good Friday mass, it would now permit Catholics to utter such hurtful and insulting words by praying for Jews to be converted,’ said Abraham Foxman, the group’s national director, in Rome. ‘It is the wrong decision at the wrong time. It appears the Vatican has chosen to satisfy a right-wing faction in the church that rejects change and reconciliation.’

The rest of the article is here.