Category : Marriage & Family

(PD) The Christian Baker’s Unanswered Legal Argument: Why the Strongest Objections Fail

…[this] week, the Supreme Court will hear one of the most important free speech cases in years, a case of special concern to libertarians and conservatives, small business-owners, artisans, and religious believers. Masterpiece Cakeshop v.Colorado Civil Rights Commission involves Jack Phillips, a baker who claims a First Amendment right not to be compelled to design and create custom wedding cakes for same-sex weddings. Many legal commentators think the case is either a very close call or a certain defeat for Phillips.

In fact, Phillips’s case is very strong. It is based on freedom-of-speech doctrines favored by conservatives and liberals alike. One argument for Phillips in particular survives the best objections leveled in briefs filed by the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, by the ACLU (on behalf of the couple who sought the cake), and by several constitutional law scholars.

That argument rests on the widely acknowledged principle that freedom of speech has to include the freedom not to speak. You aren’t free to express your convictions authentically if the state can make you affirm its own orthodoxies. Thus, for more than seventy years, in cases widely seen as more American than apple pie, the Supreme Court has said government can’t force you to say, do, or make something that carries a message you reject. Applying that principle, it has held that the government can’t force Jehovah’s Witnesses to salute the flag. It can’t force newspapers to carry columns by politicians criticized in their pages. It can’t force drivers to carry license plates with a state-imposed (though utterly banal) slogan (“Live Free or Die”). It can’t force companies to include third-party messages in their billing envelopes. Political majorities are entitled to enact their beliefs into law, but not to force dissenting minorities to affirm those or anyone else’s beliefs in word or deed. That would involve “compelled speech,” which is generally unconstitutional.

Read it all.

Posted in --Civil Unions & Partnerships, Anthropology, Ethics / Moral Theology, Law & Legal Issues, Marriage & Family, Religion & Culture, Sexuality, Theology, Theology: Scripture

(SN) Will Parents may one day be morally obligated to edit their baby’s genes?

Soon, designer babies like those described in the film may even become morally mandatory, some ethicists say.

Gattaca’s narrator tells us that such genetic manipulation of in vitro fertilized embryos has become “the natural way of giving birth” in the near future portrayed in the film. It has also created an underclass of people whose parents didn’t buy those genetic advantages for their children.

Until recently, that sort of fiddling with human DNA was only science fiction and allegory, a warning against a new kind of eugenics that could pit the genetic haves and have-nots against each other. At a symposium sponsored by the Hastings Center on October 26 before the World Conference of Science Journalists in San Francisco, ethicists and journalists explored the flip side of that discussion: whether parents have a moral obligation to make “better” babies through genetic engineering. Technology that can precisely change a baby’s genes is quickly becoming reality. This year, scientists reported using CRISPR/Cas9 in viable human embryos to fix mutations that cause heart and blood disorders. CRISPR/Cas9 acts as a molecular scissors that relatively easily and precisely manipulates DNA. Scientists have honed and developed the tool in the roughly five years it has been around, creating myriad “CRISPR” mice, fish, pigs, cows, plants and other creatures. Its use in human embryos has been hotly debated. Should we or shouldn’t we?

Read it all.

Posted in Anthropology, Children, Ethics / Moral Theology, Health & Medicine, Marriage & Family, Science & Technology, Theology

(The Age) Some Australian Anglican bishops break ranks to support Dean Smith’s same-sex marriage bill

A group of Anglican bishops has split with some of the church’s top leaders to declare support for the current version of the same-sex marriage bill before Parliament, publicly calling on lower house MPs to resist the conservative push to insert stronger religious protections.

The House of Representatives will begin debating the bill drafted by Liberal senator Dean Smith on Monday and is expected to pass it by the end of the week. If it passes unchanged it will then be signed into law, and same-sex weddings will occur within weeks.

However Coalition conservatives are set on amending the bill, which passed the Senate 43 votes to 12 last week, without change. If they manage to get enough support for their changes around freedom of religion and conscience the bill will have to return to the Senate.

As Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull confirmed he would support some of those changes in a bid to guard against any “unintended consequences”, seven Anglican bishops wrote to all lower house MPs to show not all religious leaders believe amendments are necessary.

Read it all.

Posted in Anthropology, Australia, Ethics / Moral Theology, Marriage & Family, Pastoral Theology, Religion & Culture, Same-sex blessings, Sexuality, Sexuality Debate (in Anglican Communion), Theology

My Favorite Story of the Week–How A Fire Department Saved A 7-Year-Old’s Birthday

Posted in Children, Health & Medicine, Marriage & Family, Police/Fire

“The love that brings new life into the world” – Rabbi Sacks on the institution of marriage

The fifth development shaped the entire structure of Jewish experience. In ancient Israel an originally secular form of agreement, called a covenant, was taken and transformed into a new way of thinking about the relationship between God and humanity, in the case of Noah, and between God and a people in the case of Abraham and later the Israelites at Mount Sinai. A covenant is like a marriage. It is a mutual pledge of loyalty and trust between two or more people, each respecting the dignity and integrity of the other, to work together to achieve together what neither can achieve alone. And there is one thing even God cannot achieve alone, which is to live within the human heart. That needs us.

So the Hebrew word emunah, wrongly translated as faith, really means faithfulness, fidelity, loyalty, steadfastness, not walking away even when the going gets tough, trusting the other and honouring the other’s trust in us. What covenant did, and we see this in almost all the prophets, was to understand the relationship between us and God in terms of the relationship between bride and groom, wife and husband. Love thus became not only the basis of morality but also of theology. In Judaism faith is a marriage. Rarely was this more beautifully stated than by Hosea when he said in the name of God:

I will betroth you to me forever;

I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, love and compassion.

I will betroth you in faithfulness, and you will know the Lord.

Jewish men say those words every weekday morning as we wind the strap of our tefillin around our finger like a wedding ring. Each morning we renew our marriage with God.

 

Read it all.

Posted in Judaism, Marriage & Family, Theology: Scripture

The Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans in New Zealand finalises its response to Motion 29 Working Group Interim Report

You can download a printable version of this response here, however you can read the highlights below.
FCANZ has submitted its formal response to the Motion 29 Working Group Interim Report. The final document builds on the previously published draft response and was informed by feedback, discussions, and ongoing prayer. We remain thankful for the Group’s willingness to receive further submissions, and hear from the members of the Anglican Church in these islands.
Whilst we are thankful for the contribution of the Working Group, we continue to be concerned that the desire of General Synod / Te Hinota Whanui is to change church practice prior to settling the ongoing debate over theological position. To be clear, FCANZ is not advocating for a change to the church’s position, however it considers to be flawed any process that advances a practical change before finalising debate about a founding principle.

Read it all as well as the full report.

Posted in Anthropology, Aotearoa, New Zealand & Polynesia, Ethics / Moral Theology, Marriage & Family, Pastoral Theology, Sexuality Debate (in Anglican Communion), Theology, Theology: Scripture

(GR) Royal wedding quiz: Must a ‘Protestant’ be baptized in order to become an Anglican?

The faith angle of the Markle story is certainly an interesting subject. What does the word “Protestant” mean in this context, as opposed to the word “Anglican”?

That’s a question worthy of discussion, but there are other layers to the puzzle. Some might hint at royal opinions about the match?

For example: If Markle is already a Protestant Christian, why is she being baptized? I have never heard of anyone being re-baptized in order to be confirmed as an Anglican. Protestant converts to Anglicanism, under ordinary circumstances, are simply confirmed. Catholics are “received” into the church, since they were already part of an ancient Communion (there’s that via media, part Catholic-part Protestant factor, again).

Was she part of some Christian movement that did not do a normal, small-o orthodox baptism rite? It’s easy to assume that she had some form of Christian identity, since the American actress is a spokesperson for the Christian charity World Vision.

Read it all.

Posted in Church of England (CoE), England / UK, Marriage & Family, Media, Politics in General, Religion & Culture

(NYT) Royal Engagement Seen as Symbol of Change, With Asterisks

But for Ms. [Afua] Hirsch and other chroniclers of racial inequality in Britain, it is problematic to frame Ms. Markle’s engagement as too seminal a moment. The symbolism of Ms. Markle’s entry into a family that once shunned commoners, Catholics and divorced people — let alone nonwhites — does little to diminish structural racism across Britain, several commentators said.

“Markle is not Britain’s Obama moment and shouldn’t be covered as such,” tweeted Reni Eddo-Lodge, the author of “Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race,” a new book about institutional racism in Britain.

On Tuesday, it was announced that Ms. Markle would — in addition to joining the Anglican Church — apply for British citizenship after marrying Prince Harry on an unspecified date in May in St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle, the site of many royal weddings.

In response, a columnist for The Independent highlighted how Ms. Markle would find it far easier to gain citizenship through her husband, compared with the process other nonwhite immigrants face. Such immigrants are disproportionately more likely to fail the admission criteria than their white counterparts.

Read it all.

Posted in Anthropology, England / UK, Ethics / Moral Theology, History, Marriage & Family, Politics in General, Religion & Culture

(NBC) Meet the man who gives all children a chance to ride a bike

Minnesota’s Jack Carlson is making sure kids with physical challenges can still experience the freedom of riding a bike. Boyd Huppert of KARE in Minneapolis reports….

Posted in Charities/Non-Profit Organizations, Children, Marriage & Family, Stewardship, Travel

The Archbishop of Canterbury welcomes Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s engagement

“Marriage is a special and joyous commitment, one that Jesus celebrated together with friends at the wedding in Cana. I am so happy that Prince Harry and Ms Markle have chosen to make their vows before God.

“I wish them many years of love, happiness and fulfilment and ask that God blesses them throughout their married life together.”

Read it all.

Posted in --Justin Welby, America/U.S.A., Archbishop of Canterbury, Church of England (CoE), England / UK, Marriage & Family, Politics in General

(Wa Po) Jean Twenge–Teenage depression and suicide are way up — and so is smartphone use

Around 2012, something started going wrong in the lives of teens.

In just the five years between 2010 and 2015, the number of U.S. teens who felt useless and joyless — classic symptoms of depression — surged 33 percent in large national surveys. Teen suicide attempts increased 23 percent. Even more troubling, the number of 13-to-18-year-olds who committed suicide jumped 31 percent.

In a new paper published in Clinical Psychological Science, my colleagues and I found that the increases in depression, suicide attempts and suicide appeared among teens from every background: more privileged and less privileged, across all races and ethnicities, and in every region of the country. All told, our analysis found that the generation of teens I call “iGen” — those born after 1995 — is much more likely to experience mental-health issues than their millennial predecessors.

What happened so that so many more teens, in such a short time, would feel depressed, attempt suicide and commit suicide? After scouring several large surveys for clues, I found that all of the possibilities traced back to a major change in teens’ lives: the sudden ascendance of the smartphone.

Read it all.

Posted in Anthropology, Children, Ethics / Moral Theology, Health & Medicine, Marriage & Family, Pastoral Theology, Psychology, Science & Technology, Suicide, Teens / Youth, Theology

(SAN) Christ Church, Harris, In Scotland Accepts Oversight From Bishop Andy Lines

The people of Christ Church, Harris, announced today that they can no longer remain under the oversight of the bishop of Argyll and the Isles, the Right Reverend Kevin Pearson. This follows his decision to support the change to the canons of the Scottish Episcopal Church (SEC) which introduced the innovation of same-sex marriage.

At a meeting with Bishop Pearson, they explained their decision and asked if the Scottish Episcopal Church would keep the church they have built and the money they have given. The bishop insisted that the SEC would retain all assets. In response the congregation made it clear that they would walk away rather than submit to a decision which departs from scripture, tradition and the teaching of Jesus Christ,

The people of Christ Church will maintain a faithful Anglican witness on Harris under the oversight of the Right Reverend Andy Lines, who was consecrated as a missionary bishop for Europe in June and who will act under the authority of the GAFCON primates.

Read it all.

Posted in Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), Anthropology, Ethics / Moral Theology, Marriage & Family, Pastoral Theology, Same-sex blessings, Scottish Episcopal Church, Sexuality Debate (in Anglican Communion), Theology, Theology: Scripture

(NR) David French with a must-not-miss column for Thanksgiving 2017–Ten Years Ago Today: remembering a providential Thanksgiving

I don’t just remember where I was ten years ago today. I can feel it. I can close my eyes and be there again, instantly. It was my first day in Iraq. The first real day of my deployment. It was also Thanksgiving. The location was Balad Air Base, north of Baghdad. My unit, Second Squadron, Third Armored Cavalry Regiment, had just flown in via a series of C-130 flights, and now the first group of us was waiting, in the very early morning hours, for the helicopter flight that would take us to our new temporary home, Forward Operating Base Caldwell. Our base was in the eastern part of Diyala Province, just a few miles from the Iranian border….

Read it all.

Posted in Children, History, Iraq War, Marriage & Family, Military / Armed Forces

(NYT Op-ed) David Brooks–Our Elites Still Don’t Get It: Our problems aren’t in the branches, but at the roots.

Freedom without covenant becomes selfishness. And that’s what we see at the top of society, in our politics and the financial crisis. Freedom without connection becomes alienation. And that’s what we see at the bottom of society — frayed communities, broken families, opiate addiction. Freedom without a unifying national narrative becomes distrust, polarization and permanent political war.

People can endure a lot if they have a secure base, but if you take away covenantal attachments they become fragile. Moreover, if you rob people of their good covenantal attachments, they will grab bad ones. First, they will identify themselves according to race. They will become the racial essentialists you see on left and right: The only people who can really know me are in my race. Life is a zero-sum contest between my race and your race, so get out.

Then they resort to tribalism. This is what Donald Trump provides. As Mark S. Weiner writes on the Niskanen Center’s blog, Trump is constantly making friend/enemy distinctions, exploiting liberalism’s thin conception of community and creating toxic communities based on in-group/out-group rivalry.

Trump offers people cultural solutions to their alienation problem. As history clearly demonstrates, people will prefer fascism to isolation, authoritarianism to moral anarchy.

If we are going to have a decent society we’re going to have to save liberalism from itself. We’re going to have to restore and re-enchant the covenantal relationships that are the foundation for the whole deal. The crucial battleground is cultural and prepolitical.

Read it all.

Posted in * Culture-Watch, America/U.S.A., Education, Ethics / Moral Theology, Marriage & Family, Politics in General, Religion & Culture

(RCR) Cardinal Donald Wuerl–Silencing the Voices of Faith

Cultural and societal changes have gone through a quantum leap in the past 15 to 20 years. As an example, look at the secular tsunami that washes away cultural landmarks such as marriage, family, common good, and objective right and wrong. To sense just how far we have stumbled, one need only consider what passes for “breaking news” nowadays: a lack of fundamental respect for the dignity of life; a seemingly relentless campaign to redefine constitutional religious liberty to mean nothing more than freedom to worship in the sanctuary of your choice; the codification of politically correct redefinitions of marriage, family, abortion, and religious freedom into law; and criticism of those who fail to support these re-definitions as purveyors of “hate speech.”

Even Catholic institutions are not immune. Just recently, on the campus of Georgetown University, a Catholic student group faced something that would have been unthinkable a couple of decades ago: being designated a hate group for professing the Catholic faith and its definition of marriage.

“Love Saxa,” a group that advocates for marriage between a man and a woman, came under fire from campus LGBTQ groups, according to The Hoya, a Georgetown student publication. A member of the student government argued that Love Saxa’s definition of marriage and relationships violated university standards by fostering hatred or intolerance.

Fortunately, the university administration upheld the student-run advisory board’s judgment that the public expression of the Catholic faith that marriage is between a man and a woman is neither hate speech nor discrimination. But what remains troubling is that we have come so close to allowing a few determined social engineers to silence the rest of us.

Read it all (emphasis mine).

Posted in America/U.S.A., Education, Ethics / Moral Theology, Marriage & Family, Religion & Culture, Roman Catholic, Young Adults

(FB) Matthew Continetti–The Great American Earthquake: Can the foundations of our society hold?

I have thought a lot about Kristol’s essay in recent weeks, as one American institution after another has found itself beleaguered, besieged, crippled, and delegitimized. We may be richer and healthier and safer in the aggregate than our predecessors. But the parade of ugliness we face bears more than a passing resemblance to theirs.

Riots and the suppression of freedoms on campus, drug addiction, deadly clashes between white nationalists and left-wing radicals, increasing numbers of hate crimes, mass shootings, bitter arguments over the national anthem resulting in declining ratings and support for the National Football League, a cascading stream of allegations of sexual impropriety against figures in entertainment and in politics, the slow-motion disintegration of our major parties—it’s as if America itself has been thrown into the midst of a demolition derby, with every one of our prominent figures and major institutions targeted for destruction by Monster Truck.

Beginning with the sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic Church, and carrying on through our ambiguous interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, the financial crisis, the rollercoaster ride of the Obama and Trump presidencies, the comeuppance of the elite media and political class in the 2016 election, and the racial and sexual and class-based chaos of today, the temporal and spiritual authorities to whom we once looked for guidance have been subverted, disestablished, exposed. And all the while the erosion continues of the civic-bourgeois culture to which Kristol referred….The slightest glance at political, entertainment, and business headlines demonstrates that the bourgeois virtues of restraint, frugality, reticence, self-control, self-discipline, and fidelity are not only absent in our public life. They are denigrated. Nor is this a mere political phenomenon. The liberation of the sovereign self transcends race and creed, religion and party. It has bloated our waistlines along with our national deficits, tossed families into a spin cycle of disorientation and breakdown, and endangered and addled children.

Read it all; also cited by yours truly in the morning sermon (my emphasis).

Posted in * Culture-Watch, America/U.S.A., Education, Ethics / Moral Theology, History, Marriage & Family, Media, Politics in General, Religion & Culture, Sports

(NYT Op-ed) Arthur Brooks–Let’s Restart the Adoption Movement

Motivated by good intentions or not, these changes have left thousands of orphans unadopted. This is too high a price to pay for bureaucratic screw-tightening.

Meanwhile, while it may or may not materially affect the foreign-adoption statistics, adoption has been vilified by the political fringes in the United States. Alt-right social media light up with attacks on transracial adoption. And some on the far left attack “the propaganda put out by the mega-billion-dollar adoption industry that there are thousands of orphans ‘languishing’ in orphanages waiting to be rescued or saved.” Big Adoption, corporate villain.

Today, my daughter is a freshman in high school. She spends too much time on Instagram but is killing it in her classes. And what about our giving experiment? In truth, I don’t know or care what my daughter has done for my income or health. But my happiness? It spikes every time she looks at me and I remember the magic day we met.

That’s something more dads, moms and especially kids deserve in this unhappy world.

Read it all.

Posted in Anthropology, Children, Ethics / Moral Theology, Globalization, Marriage & Family, Pastoral Theology, Theology

A Great ABC Nightline story of hope here–One family’s story of hardships, triumphs with son who has rare craniofacial disorder

It was a frigid February night in New York City when Magda Newman was in labor with her first child. With her husband Russel Newman by her side, she labored for nearly 17 hours before giving birth to their son.

But when she finally delivered, the couple’s moment of expected happiness quickly turned to anguish.

“I don’t remember fainting, but I certainly remember screaming… ‘Oh my god, oh my god, what happened? What’s happened? What’s happening?” Russel said.

“I saw just shock on people’s faces, big eyes, and I [asked], ‘What’s going on here? Who—what happened?’” Magda said. “And I see them put him [her son] in a little back room. There’s 20 people running in there, doing something. I don’t hear [the] baby crying.”

Read it all (or watch the video report which I would highly recommend).

Posted in Anthropology, Children, Ethics / Moral Theology, Health & Medicine, Marriage & Family, Pastoral Theology, Theology

(The Tablet) Outcome of Australia’s same-sex marriage plebiscite will not end fight

Fr Frank Brennan, CEO of Catholic Social Services, wrote on the Jesuit-operated Eureka Street website on 9 November that wrote that with the return rate of the survey “a very credible 78.5 per cent” (compared with Ireland, where 60.5 per cent of eligible voters turned out to vote for same-sex marriage), the Australian vote in favour of Parliament legislating for same-sex marriage was likely to be even higher than the 62 per cent of Irish voters who in 2015 supported a change to the Irish Constitution recognising same-sex marriage.

“After Wednesday’s announcement, let’s hope we hear from some of our Catholic bishops repeating the sentiments of Archbishop Dermot Martin after the 2015 Irish vote: ‘The Church needs a reality check right across the board, to look at the things we are doing well and look at the areas where we need to say, ‘Have we drifted away completely from young people?’

“Wednesday will be a day of celebration for those wanting a ‘Yes’ vote,” Fr Brennan wrote. “It should also be a day when we Australians recommit ourselves to respect for all citizens, especially those whose beliefs differ significantly from our own. Our politicians led us into this divisive campaign. Now they need to lead us out of it with considered and timely legislation and a commitment to better protection of human rights for all.”

Read it all.

Posted in --Civil Unions & Partnerships, Anglican Church of Australia, Australia / NZ, Ethics / Moral Theology, Marriage & Family, Politics in General, Religion & Culture, Roman Catholic, Sexuality

(ABC Aus.) Same-sex marriage Yes vote threatens to cause rift in Australian Anglican Church

While the Federal Parliament continues to debate Senator Dean Smith’s bill, which is expected to legalise same-sex marriage, the Anglican Church still deems it illegal to marry a same sex couple.

The Liberal Senator’s bill was introduced to the Senate after a majority of 61.6 per cent of Australians responded Yes to the national survey on same-sex marriage.

Bishop Gary Nelson’s diocese runs from Geraldton to the Kimberley, the majority of which falls into the electorate of Durack — where 59 per cent voted Yes to change the definition of marriage.

“As has occurred in America, for example where you’ve got two Anglican churches — one who disagrees with same-sex marriage and one who agrees.

“I think that would be a more likely scenario than it getting passed.”

Read it all.

Posted in --Civil Unions & Partnerships, Anglican Church of Australia, Anthropology, Ethics / Moral Theology, Law & Legal Issues, Marriage & Family, Religion & Culture, Sexuality, Theology

The Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, Dr Glenn Davies, speaks on the outcome of the postal survey on same-sex marriage in Australia

Watch and listen to it all.

Posted in --Civil Unions & Partnerships, Anglican Church of Australia, Anthropology, Australia / NZ, Ethics / Moral Theology, Marriage & Family, Pastoral Theology, Religion & Culture, Theology

(NYT) Australia Votes for Same-Sex Marriage, Clearing Path to Legalization

A solid majority of Australians voted in favor of same-sex marriage in a historic survey that, while not binding, paves the way for Parliament to legally recognize the unions of gay and lesbian couples.

Of 12.7 million Australians who took part in the government survey, 61.6 percent voted yes and 38.4 percent voted no, officials announced on Wednesday morning. Participation was high, with 79.5 percent of voting-age Australians sending back their postal ballots.

“The Australian people have spoken, and they have voted overwhelmingly ‘yes’ for marriage equality,” said Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who called the survey in a move described by advocates as a delay tactic devised to appease his party’s far-right faction. “They voted ‘yes’ for fairness, they voted ‘yes’ for commitment, they voted ‘yes’ for love.”

Read it all.

Posted in --Civil Unions & Partnerships, Anthropology, Australia / NZ, Ethics / Moral Theology, Law & Legal Issues, Marriage & Family, Pastoral Theology, Politics in General, Religion & Culture, Sexuality, Theology

An NBC story for Veterans Day 2017–‘A Soldier’s Child’ Foundation Helps Children Cope With Military Losses

The foundation was started nearly 10 years ago by Daryl Mackin, a retired Navy cook, after his 8-year-old neighbor’s father was killed in battle.

Watch it all.

Posted in America/U.S.A., Children, Death / Burial / Funerals, History, Marriage & Family, Military / Armed Forces

Lorna Ashworth, a leading Evangelical, resigns from C of E General Synod over ‘heretical teaching’

Mrs Lorna Ashworth, an evangelical member of General Synod and a member of the Archbishops’ Council, resigned yesterday, saying that she was “no longer willing to sit around the table, pretending that we, as a governing body of the Church of England, are having legitimate conversations about mission.”

As she said in July, in what will now be her final speech at General Synod,

“as a corporate body we have become unable to articulate the saving message of Jesus Christ which fully encompasses the reality of sin, repentance and forgiveness – without this message we do not teach a true gospel and people do not get saved.”

In her resignation letter she blamed, “an ongoing and rapid erosion of faithfulness” and “an agenda of revisionism which “is masked in the language of so-called ‘good disagreement,’” for her decision. She is not alone in her concerns, and she said that many were calling on the bishops of the Church of England to offer clear and courageous biblical leadership.

Lorna Ashworth has been a member of General Synod for 12 years and was elected by the Synod as a lay representative on the Archbishops Council[1] two years ago.

Read it all.

Posted in Church of England (CoE), Marriage & Family, Soteriology

(WS) A Must-not-Miss from Mary Eberstadt–The Primal Scream of Identity Politics


The founding document of identity politics, in other words, reflects reality as many African American women would have found it in the 1970s—one in which they were the canaries in the coal mine of the sexual revolution. It’s a world in which men are ever less trusted, relations between the sexes are chronically estranged, and marriage is thin on the ground. African American women were—and still are—disproportionately affected by aspects of the sexual revolution like abortion, out-of-wedlock births, and fatherless homes. Isn’t it suggestive that the earliest collective articulation of identity politics came from the community that was first to suffer from the accelerated fraying of family ties, a harbinger of what came next for all?

Identity politics cannot be understood apart from the preceding and concomitant social fact of family implosion. The year before the Combahee document’s publication—1976—was a watershed of a sort. The out-of-wedlock birth rate for black Americans tipped over the 50-percent mark (the 1965 Moynihan Report worried over a rate half as high). This rate has kept climbing and exceeded 70 percent in 2016. At the same time, other measures indicating the splintering of the nuclear and extended family expanded too. By 2012, Millennial women—who were then under the age of 30—exhibited for the first time the out-of-wedlock birth rate of black women in 1976: i.e., more than 50 percent. Millennials, of course, are the demographic backbone of identity politics.

And the out-of-wedlock birth rate is just one measure of the unprecedented disruption of the family over the last half-century-plus. Consider, just in passing, the impact of abortion. In 2008, the Guttmacher Institute reported that 61 percent of women terminating pregnancies were already mothers of at least one child. Many children—and many grown children—have been deprived of potential siblings via pregnancy termination.

Abortion, like single motherhood, is only one engine of a phenomenon that has come to characterize more and more American lives during the past half-century: what might be called the “family, interrupted.”

Read it all.

Posted in * Culture-Watch, America/U.S.A., Anthropology, Education, Ethics / Moral Theology, Health & Medicine, Marriage & Family, Pastoral Theology, Politics in General, Psychology, Theology

A NY Times profile of the Sutherland Springs, Texas, Gunman

Before a gunman entered a rural Texas church with a ballistic vest and a military-style rifle, killing at least 26 people on Sunday, he was convicted of assaulting his wife and breaking his infant stepson’s skull.

In 2012, while stationed at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico, Devin P. Kelley, 26, was charged with “assault on his spouse and assault on their child,” according to the Air Force.

“He assaulted his stepson severely enough that he fractured his skull, and he also assaulted his wife,” said Don Christensen, a retired colonel who was the chief prosecutor for the Air Force. “He pled to intentionally doing it.”

He was sentenced in November of that year to 12 months’ confinement and reduction to the lowest possible rank. After his confinement, he was discharged from the military with a bad conduct discharge. It is unclear whether his conviction would have barred him from purchasing a gun.

The case marked a long downward slide that included divorce and being charged with animal cruelty.

Read it all.

Posted in Animals, Anthropology, Children, Ethics / Moral Theology, Health & Medicine, Liturgy, Music, Worship, Marriage & Family, Psychology, Religion & Culture, Violence

Brave new World Dept. (I)–“This Is What It’s Like to Fall in Love With Your Brother”

Read it all and note this may be be suitable for some blog readers (and note at the end of the article in which publication it originally appeared–Good Housekeeping (!)).

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

Posted in Ethics / Moral Theology, Marriage & Family, Sexuality

(AI) A Religious Test? TEC Member of Senate grills a nominee for the Federal Judiciary who is a member of Falls Church (Anglican)

An…[Episcopal Church] member of the US Senate grilled a nominee for the Federal Judiciary over his membership in an ACNA congregation, asking if his beliefs would prejudice his work as a judge.

In written questions submitted to Trevor McFadden, (pictured) Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., asked the nominee his views on gay marriage, abortion and homosexuality, citing Mr. McFadden’s membership on the vestry of Falls Church parish as an area of concern.

The Senator wrote:

You are an elected member (until 2020) of the Falls Church Anglican, which broke away from the Episcopal Church largely due to the denomination’s consecration of an openly gay bishop. The Falls Church Anglican considers “marriage to be a life-long union of husband and wife” intended for “the procreation and nurture of godly children” and entailing “God-given” “roles of father and mother.” In 2015, the associate pastor of the Falls Church Anglican agreed that “if the U.S. Supreme Court decision includes a redefinition of marriage, this will constitute an intrusion of the state on God’s institution of marriage ‘from the beginning’.” Do you understand the majority of the Supreme Court in Obergefell v. Hodges to have held that the right to marry is a fundamental right under the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment and that same-sex couples may not be deprived of that right?”

Mr. McFadden responded: “yes”.

Read it all.

Posted in Ethics / Moral Theology, Law & Legal Issues, Marriage & Family, Politics in General, Religion & Culture, Senate

A S Haley on a recent Roman Catholic Dean’s sermon on Marriage–Is It Man over God, or God over Man?

This is an outstanding homily on last Sunday’s Gospel reading recounting Jesus’ skill in handling the Pharisees and the Herodians who tried to entrap him on the payment of taxes to the government (Mt 22:15-22). The Very Rev. John Lankeit, dean of the Cathedral of Ss. Simon and Jude in Phoenix, Arizona, shows Christians how to use Jesus’ logic to refute the trick assumption behind the question: “Do you believe in…[same-sex] marriage?”

Read it all and listen to the whole homily.

Posted in Anthropology, Ethics / Moral Theology, Marriage & Family, Ministry of the Ordained, Parish Ministry, Pastoral Theology, Preaching / Homiletics, Roman Catholic, Theology, Theology: Scripture

A Must Not Miss Science Times Article–To Mend a Birth Defect, Surgeons Operate on the Patient Within the Patient

The patient, still inside his mother’s womb, came into focus on flat screens in a darkened operating room. Fingers, toes, the soles of his feet — all exquisite, all perfectly formed.

But not so his lower back. Smooth skin gave way to an opening that should not have been there, a bare oval exposing a white rim of bone and the nerves of the spinal cord.

“All right, it’s the real deal,” said Dr. Michael A. Belfort, the chairman of obstetrics and gynecology at Baylor College of Medicine and obstetrician and gynecologist-in-chief of Texas Children’s Hospital.

Read it all.

Posted in Anthropology, Children, Ethics / Moral Theology, Health & Medicine, Life Ethics, Marriage & Family, Pastoral Theology, Science & Technology, Theology