This is a critical time – A Statement from the Global South Steering Committee
London, July 16-18, 2007

1. We are grateful for the prayers and witness of the millions of Anglicans around the world who live out their Christian faith in complex and sometimes hostile situations. Their lives and witness offer hope to a world that is in desperate need and we have been greatly encouraged by their testimony. Their commitment to the ”˜faith once and for all delivered to the saints’ deepens our determination to stay true to the biblical revelation and our historic tradition.

2. We reaffirm our dedication to the vision of the church that has a passion to reach all those who have not yet come to a saving knowledge of Christ and one that is truly good news for the poor and freedom for those who are oppressed. We are saddened that the actions of a small part of our Communion family have caused such division, confusion and pain and we are grieved that our witness to the oneness of Christ and his Church has been sorely compromised.

3. We in the Global South remain committed to the underlying principles and recommendations of the Windsor Report and the various Communiqués that we have issued, especially the statement that was produced during the most recent Primates’ meeting in Dar es Salaam. It was the result of enormous effort and heart-felt prayer and we remain convinced that it offers the best way forward for our beloved Communion. In particular, we are hopeful that the development and endorsement of an Anglican Covenant will help us move past this debilitating season into a new focus of growth and missionary zeal.

4. We were distressed by the initial response of the House of Bishops of The Episcopal Church USA issued on March 20th, 2007, reaffirmed by the Executive Council on June 14th, 2007, in which they rejected the underlying principles and requests of the Dar es Salaam Communiqué. We urge them, once again, to reconsider their position because it is their rejection of the clear teaching of the Church and their continuing intransigence that have divided the Church and has brought our beloved Communion to the breaking point. Without heartfelt repentance and genuine change there can be no restoration of the communion that we all earnestly desire and which is our Lord’s clear intent.

5. We have also been pained to hear of the continuing and growing resort to civil litigation by The Episcopal Church against congregations and individuals which wish to remain Anglican but are unable to do so within TEC. This is in defiance of the urgent plea agreed to by all of the Primates in the Dar es Salaam Communiqué. This approach to use power and coercion to resolve our current dispute is both enormously costly and doomed to failure and again, we urge the immediate suspension of all such activities and a return to biblical practices of prayer, reconciliation and mediation.

6. Because of the categorical rejection of the unanimously agreed Pastoral Scheme and the urgent needs of the growing number of congregations now linked to various Provinces in the Global South, we have had no choice but to provide additional episcopal oversight from the concerned Provinces. We believe that failure to do so would have resulted in many individuals and congregations lost to the Anglican Communion. The rejection of the proposed Pastoral Scheme has also had a profound impact on those dioceses that had requested alternative primatial oversight. We are aware that they are exploring various ways in which they can maintain their Anglican identity apart from The Episcopal Church. We are encouraged by this and also that they are working together within the Common Cause Partnership to avoid unnecessary fragmentation. We recognize that this is a temporary measure and look forward to the time when it is either no longer necessary or they are all part of a new ecclesiastical structure in the USA.

7. We are aware of the anticipated visit by the Joint Standing Committee of the Primates and the ACC to the September meeting of the House of Bishops of The Episcopal Church USA. Sadly we are convinced that this decision, made jointly by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Chair of the ACC, undermines the integrity of the Dar es Salaam Communiqué. We believe that the Primates Meeting, which initiated the request to the TEC House of Bishops, must make any determination as to the adequacy of their response. We strongly urge the scheduling of a Primates’ Meeting for this purpose at the earliest possible moment.

8. We have also noted the decisions of the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada and are dismayed by their unilateral declaration that ”˜same-sex blessing is not core doctrine’. While we were grateful for the temporary restraint shown in not proceeding with any further authorization, we have observed that a number of the bishops are continuing to defy the recommendations of the Windsor process. We are exploring the possibility of additional pastoral provisions for those who want to remain faithful to Communion teaching and have been affected by the continuing actions of their own bishops.

9. We are concerned for the future of our Communion as a truly global fellowship and our witness before the world as a respected ecclesial family within the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. In regards to the proposed Lambeth Conference in 2008, we are concerned that the publicly stated expectations for participation have changed its character and function. It is now difficult to see it either as an instrument of unity or communion. At a time when the world needs a vision of reconciliation and unity, our failure to restore the ”˜torn fabric’ of our Communion threatens to show the world a contrary example.

10. We remain committed to the convictions expressed in the CAPA report “The Road to Lambeth” and urge immediate reconsideration of the current Lambeth plans. It is impossible for us to see how, without discipline in the Communion and without the reconciliation that we urge, we can participate in the proposed conference; to be present but unable to participate in sacramental fellowship would all the more painfully demonstrate our brokenness. The polarization surrounding the Lambeth meeting has been exacerbated because we are also unable to take part in an event from which a number of our own bishops have been arbitrarily excluded while those whose actions have precipitated our current crisis are included.

11. We have received requests from around the Communion to call a gathering of Anglican Communion leaders. We expect to call a Fourth Global South Encounter to bring together faithful Anglican leaders across the Communion to renew our focus on the apostolic faith and our common mission.

12. This is a critical time for the Anglican Communion and one that will shape our future for many years to come. We are praying for all those in leadership that the decisions made and the actions taken will bring glory to God and encouragement to all God’s people. We are hopeful for the future because our confidence is not in ourselves but in Jesus the Christ who gave his life that we might have life. (see John 10:10)

When considering President Bush’s new plan for peace between Israel and the Palestinians, it would be wise to bear in mind that because political initiatives in the Middle East are cursed with such a high failure rate analysts sometimes use the odds as a substitute for craft.

After Anwar Sadat’s spectacular trip to Jerusalem in November 1977, the press, mistaking cynicism for wisdom, was skeptical. After all, in the first 25 years of its existence, Israel had had to fight Egypt four times. But the past was no guide to the future, for in the last 30 years the peace of Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat has been unbroken.

Yet, at the time, few people were able to see the way ahead even as it was clearly illuminated by the facts. Educated opinion was attentive to the vicissitudes of negotiation rather than to the structural imperatives that would eventually prevail.

Read the whole piece.

HE STRIDES into an Iowa primary school where more than a hundred people have skipped their lunch to hear him, wearing jeans and flashing a smile that could sell toothpaste. He begins, as always, by mentioning his wife, who was diagnosed with incurable cancer in March. “She’s doing great.” But within seconds, John Edwards dives into the details of his health-care scheme. Then on to questions. The subjects range from high medical costs to the influence of Iran. “Here’s what I think,” he answers, before launching into a detailed plan to fix the problem.

Mr Edwards is a man of big plans. No other presidential candidate, of either party, can match the sheer quantity, let alone the ambition, of his policy ideas. He has grand, progressive, goals””to end the war in Iraq (obviously), provide universal health care, address global warming, eliminate poverty in America within 30 years””and detailed blueprints of how to do it all.

All this is a big change from 2004, when he first ran, unsuccessfully, for the Democratic nomination and then (equally unsuccessfully) as John Kerry’s vice-presidential running-mate. Those campaigns were built around his youthful charm, made-for-politics biography (the son of a mill-worker in North Carolina; the first member of his family to go to college) and a rousing stump speech about “two Americas”, one for the rich and one for the rest.

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In the beginning, as they say, religion in America was a decidedly nonpartisan affair. Presidents of all political stripes sprinkled their speeches with references to the Almighty. Religious Americans led political movements to battle communism and poverty, to promote temperance and civil rights. If anything, the contours of the religious landscape favored Democrats: their voters were evangelical Southerners and ethnic Catholics, while Republicans appealed to Northeasterners who were more private about their faith.

The relationship between religion and politics changed abruptly in the turbulent decade that spanned the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s. The twin disappointments of Vietnam and Watergate led to widespread disillusionment with traditional institutions, and the cynicism tainted religious authority as well.

It’s hard to believe now, but it was the Democratic Party that first responded to these disillusionments in a way that appealed to religious voters. When Jimmy Carter said, “I’ll never lie to you,” that promise””in the wake of Richard Nixon’s resignation””was potent. Carter recognized that voters now wanted to know more about a candidate than simply his position on energy policy or taxes; they cared about the moral fiber of their President as well. And they increasingly saw religious faith as a proxy, an efficient way to get a sense of a candidate’s character.

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A President has to be a preacher of sorts, instructing, consoling, summoning citizens to sacrifice for some common good. But candidates are competitors, which means they seldom manage to talk about faith in a way that doesn’t disturb people, doesn’t divide them, doesn’t nail campaign posters on the gates of heaven. Republicans have been charged with exploiting religious voters, Democrats with ignoring them: Hillary Clinton’s voice gets tight as she recalls the mocking response she received when she first spoke in spiritual terms about the longing that people felt to invest in causes larger than self-interest. “I talked about my faith years ago and was pilloried for it,” she says, and it is hard to tell if she is more impatient with the conservatives who presumed they held the patent on piety or with the liberals whose worship of diversity all but excluded the devout.

But maybe, she suggests, candidates have learned something from the holy wars of recent years. “Maybe we’re getting back to where people can be who they are,” she says. “If faith is an element of who you legitimately, authentically are, great. But don’t make it up, don’t use it, don’t beat people over the head with it.”

In this campaign season, if Clinton and Barack Obama and John Edwards are any measure, there will be nothing unusual in Democrats’ talking about the God who guides them and the beliefs that sustain them. Clinton has hired Burns Strider, a Congressional staffer (and evangelical Baptist from Mississippi) who is assembling a faith steering group from major denominations and sends out a weekly wrap-up, Faith, Family and Values. Edwards has been organizing conference calls with progressive religious leaders and is about to embark on a 12-city poverty tour. In the past month alone, Obama’s campaign has run six faith forums in New Hampshire, where local clergy and laypeople discuss religious engagement in politics. “We talk about ways people of faith have gone wrong in the past, what they have done right and where they see it going in the future,” says his faith-outreach adviser, Joshua DuBois. Speeches on everything from the budget to immigration to stem-cell research are carefully marinated in Scripture. “Science is a gift of God to all of us,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi during a debate on increased embryo-research funding, “and science has taken us to a place that is biblical in its power to cure.”

The Democrats are so fired up, you could call them the new Moral Majority. This time, however, the emphasis is as much on the majority as on the morality as they try to frame a message in terms of broadly shared values that don’t alarm members of minority religions or secular voters….

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FORGET the cowboy. The true all-American hero is the confidence man: breezy, self-invented, ambitious, protean. So too with Canada. Ignore the scarlet-jacketed Mountie who is strong of jaw and pure of heart. Up here, the voyageur ”” a jaunty, indomitable, unpretentious, rough-hewn New World figure ”” is closer to the mythical Canadian heart.

But just as the Puritan stands in thin-lipped contrast to the American confidence man, so does the Upper Canadian Anglophile oppose the woodsman. (Never mind that the back-breaking reality for the French-Canadian fur trappers was far removed from this romanticized image. We are dealing with iconography here.)

Which brings us to Conrad Black, Canada’s fallen press baron. Although from Quebec, and therefore technically a Lower Canadian, Mr. Black has a character that is Anglo and Upper all the way through. Though newly convicted on three counts of fraud and one of obstruction, Mr. Black could just as easily be considered as guilty of one crime: hubris. He thought he could bully American prosecutors in the same way he bullied his shareholders.

Standing up to Americans is normally the sort of thing that would endear a Canadian to his countrymen. But not in this case. Instead, there is a quiet feeling of glee among Canadians over Mr. Black’s comeuppance. Not because Mr. Black is rich and powerful or in need of ego deflation. And not because he was revealed to be a swindler on a grand scale. The schadenfreude up here is because Conrad Black ”” for reasons that were purely Upper Anglo ”” publicly renounced his Canadian citizenship.

Was Mr. Black’s repudiation of Canada an act of protest against government policies abroad or at home? The seal hunt, say, or the export of cold fronts, prescription medicines and Celine Dion? No, Conrad Black renounced his citizenship in 2001 so that he could dress up as a British lord and play out the ultimate Upper Canadian dream.

Mr. Black was forced to choose between his Canadian-ness and his love for the aristocracy because his entry into the British House of Lords was blocked, you see. Blocked by a French-Canadian voyageur, as it were.

Read it all from Tuesday’s New York Times.

Motorists driving east on the Santan Freeway may be dismayed if not shocked to see a new billboard near Kyrene Road advertising HowSexyAmI.com – especially since the Gila River Indian Communitypromised any signs on their land would not promote sexually oriented businesses.

The billboard, which is on the Gila River Reservation just south of Chandler, includes a photo of the bottoms of two pair of feet under a sheet, leaving no doubt about what the ad is referring to.

But it turns out the billboard actually is promoting a six-week series of sex-ed talks at Cornerstone Christian Church in Chandler. The church paid for the space and also has spots on the My Space and You Tube Web sites.

“We are not promoting promiscuity,” said Michelle Rauscher, a Chandler resident and director of women’s ministry at the church.

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From the Bolton News:

A JUDGE from Bolton is playing a key role in modernising the Church of England’s rules.

As a member of the General Synod, the body which sets the church’s laws, Geoffrey Tattersall QC, aged 59, from Lostock, recently chaired a group that proposed a relaxing of the rules on where people can marry.

Its recommendation has been adopted by the Synod and when the legislation is introduced, it will mean couples are no longer tied to churches where one of them is resident or on the parish electoral role.

They will now be able to tie the knot in any church where they have a “qualifying connection.”

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From Newsweek:

By now, Washington has grown accustomed to its sex scandals. In the capital, obsessed with Iraq and the coming presidential election, the news that Louisiana Republican Sen. David Vitter’s phone number had turned up in possession of a D.C. escort service created a relatively modest stir. The press dutifully pointed out Vitter’s hypocrisy; a devout Catholic who has been an outspoken moralist, he was a vocal crusader for President Clinton’s impeachment during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, accusing Clinton of draining “any sense of values left in our political culture.” Vitter swiftly copped to the transgression via an e-mail to the AP. After rumors of other dalliances began cropping up in the New Orleans papers (he denied them), Vitter grimly took to the microphone, his embattled wife by his side, and, in an all-too-familiar D.C. ritual, apologies for letting his wife, friends and supporters down, then told the world he was pressing on with the people’s business.

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Nearly 80 years ago, leaders at Grace Church joined and, in writing, invoked “the name of God.”

With a few pen strokes, Grace’s rector, wardens and vestry ”” its board ”” signed away their grand, young church, placing it under the “spiritual jurisdiction and authority” of Bishop Irving P. Johnson, then the highest Episcopal authority in Colorado.

The leaders relinquished “all claim to any right of disposing” the building at 601 N. Tejon St. in Colorado Springs without Johnson’s consent or that of his successors, according to the “instrument of donation,” signed on Nov. 15, 1929.

The one-page form could be a Holy Grail for a diocese eager to return to the building now being used by hundreds of entrenched Episcopal secessionists and their embattled patriarch, the Rev. Don Armstrong.

Martin Nussbaum, an attorney for the diocese, says the form, which surfaced as part of the legal battle for the building, bodes well for hundreds of exiled Episcopal loyalists hoping to return to the gray building described when it opened in 1926 as perhaps the most beautiful church west of the Mississippi River.

Alan Crippen, a spokesman for the secessionists, downplayed the document’s significance, saying only that it “looks ceremonial, but not legal.”

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Trinity Episcopal Church could be called a house divided: Its defrocked pastor led a heavily attended prayer and song service at the church Wednesday night, while Episcopal Bishop Andrew Smith tried to muster parishioners to meet with a new pastor at a church in Plainville.

Smith promoted his meeting in a letter to parishioners last week as a way to discuss the dispute between Trinity and the Episcopal Diocese and “begin to identify new leadership for the parish so that we can move forward in our life in Christ within the doctrine, discipline and worship of The Episcopal Church.”

But the message didn’t draw much of Trinity’s membership, which earlier this year joined Pastor Donald Helmandollar in a defection from the Episcopal Church, related to its 2003 installation of a gay bishop.

The bishop’s session at the Church of Our Savior in Plainville drew a dozen people at most, and Smith refused to allow a reporter to attend, declaring it a closed meeting.

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During their day-long meeting at St. Paul’s Church, Sparks, the Diocesan Standing Committee received a report from the Bishop Search Committee in which 5 priests were commended for nomination to our October 12 Diocesan Convention in Las Vegas. At the same time, Standing Committee declared the Petition Process open until August 1 for additional nominations. Procedures for nomination by Petition provide for a process in lieu of nomination from the floor of Convention because of the lack of time for required background checks for floor nominations.

The 5 Nominees from the Bishop Search Committee are presented below for consideration by all the members of the Diocese of Nevada….

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Will the advent of Gordon Brown seriously change the Government’s approach towards radical Islamism? Since the abortive attacks on a London night club and Glasgow airport, much energy has been expended on two issues: whether we can or can’t call terrorists Muslims and the number of days that the police can detain jihadi suspects.

But another, even more important, battle is being waged behind the scenes. Who should be the Government’s chosen Muslim partners in the struggle against radicalisation? Mr Brown is already facing a big push from an Islamist-friendly faction in the Cabinet, led by Jack Straw and John Denham, to bring the once pre-eminent Muslim Council of Britain back in from the cold.

The MCB was cast into outer darkness in October by Ruth Kelly, the first Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government. The breaking point for the Blair Government had been the MCB’s denunciation of British foreign policy in the aftermath of the airlines plot of last August. Mass casualties had been narrowly averted ”“ but the best that the MCB could do was blame the West. Far from challenging extremism ideologically, it was appeasing it.

The MCB lost government money, but it always had plenty of funding from other sources. What really hurt the MCB was the loss of influence, as Government sought to engage with a wider range of groups such as the Sufi Muslim Council. How to get back inside the tent has therefore been a serious goal for the MCB in the intervening period; it had been counting the days till Mr Blair’s departure.

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Canon Schueddig: Our leadership has not been afraid to adapt new technologies even before they became popular within parish life. It’s meant we have not always realized full acceptance at the start, but we have offered leadership in helping The Episcopal Church move from its history in print and oral communication to what is current without losing substance.

As an independent church agency, we have the luxury of staying focused on the gospel. I think it is what has kept us alive for over 60 years. Today, for example, our work in the digital arena with the Digital Faith Community is far ahead of where 99 percent of congregations and dioceses are, and they don’t seem to “get it” yet. Bishops and communicators are still rather patronizing to the “techies” among us and don’t give them a serious place at the table when communications strategies are developed. We are blessed at the Episcopal Media Center that our head of technology is also a fine theologian.

TLC: Realizing the pace of change has accelerated, and that it may be difficult to look out even five years, how might information technology continue to change church life?

Canon Schueddig: Research used in developing the Digital Faith Community revealed that mainline denominations don’t show up on the list of the top 30 most visited religious websites (searched with Google, Yahoo, etc.) We are in the midst of a digital revolution that can be used to serve evangelism and mission, but we must harness this energy together…

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In him, the great messianic words are fulfilled in a disconcerting and unexpected way: “You are my Son; today I have begotten you” (Ps 2:7). At certain key moments, the disciples came to the astonishing realization: This is God himself. They were unable to put all this together into a perfect response. Instead they rightly drew upon the Old Testament’s words of promise: Christ, the Anointed One, Son of God, Lord. These are the key words on which their confession focused, while still tentatively searching for a way forward. It could arrive at its complete form only when Thomas, touching the wounds of the Risen Lord, cried out, in amazement: “My Lord and my God” (Jn 20:28). In the end, however, these words send us upon a never-ending journey. They are so vast that we can never grasp them completely, and they always surpass us. Throughout her entire history, the pilgrim Church has been exploring them ever more
deeply. Only by touching Jesus’ wounds and encountering his Resurrection are we able to grasp them, and then they become our mission.

–Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth

People from Western cultures such as the United States are particularly challenged in their ability to understand someone else’s point of view because they are part of a culture that encourages individualism, new research at the University of Chicago shows.

In contrast, Chinese, who live in a society that encourages a collectivist attitude among its members, are much more adept at determining another person’s perspective, according to a new study.

One of the consequences of Americans’ and other Westerners’ problems of seeing things from another person’s point of view is faltering communication, said Boaz Keysar, Professor in Psychology at the University of Chicago.

“Many actions and words have multiple meanings. In order to sort out what a person really means, we need to gain some perspective on what he or she might be thinking and, Americans for example, who don’t have that skill very well developed, probably tend to make more errors in understanding what another person means,” Keysar said.

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More than 7,000 people from the United States and Canada are expected to gather for the 2007 Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) General Assembly from Saturday through Wednesday at the Fort Worth Convention Center.

The theme is Share the Feast, based on the account of Jesus’ miraculous feeding of 5,000 people in the Gospel of Matthew .

Sharon Watkins, the denomination’s general minister and president, said she will share good news with clergy and lay representatives in her State of the Church address: that the denomination of more than 700,000 members is ahead of schedule on its goal of starting 1,000 new congregations by 2020.

The assembly will also consider nonbinding resolutions about contemporary issues such as the war in Iraq, tobacco use and healthcare.

In the early 1980s, the Indianapolis-based denomination had about 1 million members. But a plummet in membership prompted an effort to start new congregations in 2001. Already, 503 new churches have been established, many of them serving minorities and ethnically diverse congregations, she said.

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Lee Hamilton could be forgiven for feeling a measure of smug satisfaction. Eight months after he saw his Iraq Study Group report ”“ a bipartisan prescription to end the Iraq war ”“ rejected by the White House and both parties on Capitol Hill, its recommendations are now being embraced across Washington.

But Mr Hamilton, the Democratic co-chairman of the commission, is a deeply worried man. Just as the group’s plan for a phased withdrawal of US troops receives the political consensus and respect its authors sought eight months and nearly 20,000 deaths ago, it faces failure again: this time victim of a gridlocked Congress and a President still powerful enough to run the war without constraint.

“Time is running out,” he said of the chance for a deal between Republicans and Democrats that could force Mr Bush’s hand. Speaking to The Times, Mr Hamilton added: “It’s very, very tough to turn a president around if he’s stubborn enough. The Iraq Study Group is the only bipartisan report that charts a responsible exit. But the President can hold it off through most of his term.”

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Bishop M. Thomas Shaw of Massachusetts has announced that the Rev. William Murdoch, who has served as the rector of All Saints’ Episcopal Church in West Newbury since 1993, is leaving the Episcopal Church to serve as bishop suffragan of All Saints Cathedral, Diocese of Nairobi, in the Anglican Province of Kenya. Murdoch was elected on June 29 and is to be consecrated on Aug. 30 in Nairobi.

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Cartoonist Doug Marlette got used to hearing people mix comments about his humor with references to Almighty God.

After all, one of the main characters in his syndicated comic strip “Kudzu” was the Rev. Will B. Dunn, a deep-fried Southern preacher who always remained optimistic, even as he battled with the insanity of modern life (especially trendy Bible translations).

Meanwhile, Marlette’s political cartoons often inspired readers to barrage editors with the kind of God talk that cannot be printed in family newspapers.

There was, for example, his caricature of Pope John Paul II wearing a “No Women Priests” button. The caption said, “Upon this Rock I will build my church” and Marlette drew an arrow pointing at the pope’s head.

Another infamous cartoon showed an Arab terrorist driving a truck containing a nuclear bomb. The caption: “What Would Mohammed Drive?” A cartoon on my office wall — a gift from Marlette as I left the Charlotte Observer — shows PTL televangelist Jim Bakker kneeling before a dollar sign that towers over a stone altar framed with candles. Bakker proclaims, with his boyish grin, “Gimme that old time religion!” The cartoonist knew he was playing with holy fire. You can’t draw Jesus climbing Calvary on Good Friday — carrying an electric chair — and not expect people to react.

Marlette insisted that his goal was to remind his fellow believers to practice what they preach.

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From Reuters:

A terminal leukemia patient must have daily blood transfusions or die. A family begs doctors to do everything possible to keep their elderly mother alive. Parents cannot accept their newborn baby will not survive.

End-of-life issues top the list of ethical dilemmas hospitals face as medical progress enables doctors to extend an endangered life to the hard-to-determine point where they may actually only be dragging out death.

Private dramas like these play out in hospitals every day, rarely hitting the headlines as did the family feud over ending life support for Terri Schiavo in the United States in 2005 or a British couple’s fight to save their severely handicapped baby Charlotte Wyatt in 2003 when doctors wanted to give up on her.

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From the Chicago Tribune:

Elizabeth Edwards said Tuesday that her husband’s health-care plan would provide insurance coverage of abortion.

Speaking on behalf of Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards before the family planning and abortion-rights group Planned Parenthood Action Fund, Edwards lauded her husband’s health-care proposal as “a true universal health-care plan” that would cover “all reproductive health services, including pregnancy termination,” referring to abortion.

Edwards was joined by Democratic candidates Sens. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.) at the group’s political organizing conference in addressing issues at the core of the political clash between cultural liberals and conservatives, including abortion rights, access to contraception and sex education.

The recent 5-4 Supreme Court decision upholding a federal ban on a late-term abortion procedure that opponents call “partial-birth abortion” has increased anxieties among reproductive-rights advocates over the future of constitutional protections for abortion rights. All three of the Democratic campaigns used the forum to signal their determination to appoint Supreme Court nominees who would uphold the 1973 Roe vs. Wade abortion ruling.

Obama, who earlier gained the endorsement of Washington, D.C., Mayor Adrian Fenty, offered the group a vision of equal opportunity for women, tying a call for improved access to contraceptives for low-income women with a call for an “updated social contract” that includes paid maternity leave and expanded school hours.

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NEED TO VERIFY THIS. It is posted on a quite odd blog and was just circulated by Virtue. It could be some old article by Duin.
Daring Leaps of Faith
By Julia Duin
Courtesy The Washington Times

Having just come out of church, they were at an indoor cafe, conversing about former Muslims they knew who were now Christians. Some married into the faith. Some of the converts no longer believed in the Koran. Others said they had had visions or dreams of Jesus Christ. And others felt the Christian message of God becoming a man was more compelling than their faith. These converts face all kinds of dangers for having left Islam: ostracism from family members and friends, kidnappings and even death threats.

“Most of the people who come here start to question the Koran,” one of the Egyptians said. “They can read sources not available in our countries, especially sources in Arabic.” The government of Saudi Arabia, for example, blocks thousands of Web sites through its Internet Services Unit in Riyadh, including anything criticizing Islam. A Harvard University study conducted in May showed that out of 2,038 sites banned by the Saudis, 250 were religious.

In the West, seekers who’ve never heard a serious debate on Islam can click on Exmuslim.com, Islamreview.com and Arabicbible.com. Then there’s Paltalk.com, a chat site featuring discussions in various languages on a wide range of topics. Some former Muslims enter these chat rooms with the intent to convert Arabic speakers to Christianity, including “Sam Ash,” a New Jersey hairdresser.

“I ask them to prove to me that Islam is the way to God,” he said. “Jesus said He is the way, the truth and the life. If you can show I have eternal life through Muhammad, I’ll become a Muslim this moment.”

There is no lack of people who wish to challenge him, which is why he will not divulge his real name.

“I’ve been hacked” into, he said, “and you should see the viruses people send me.”

Most of these converts keep their new affiliation secret, as Islam considers those who leave the faith to be apostates. According to Islamic law as practiced in countries such as Iran, Sudan, Pakistan and in northern regions of Nigeria, the penalty for changing one’s religion is execution.

The U.S. State Department has documented numerous instances of religious persecution overseas against Muslim converts to Christianity. What is not so well known are the threats against such converts in the United States.

The full article is here.

The U.S. command announced on Wednesday the arrest of an al-Qaida leader it said served as the link between the organization’s command in Iraq and Osama bin Laden’s inner circle, enabling it to wield considerable influence over the Iraqi group.
The announcement was made as the White House steps up efforts to link the war in Iraq to the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, with a growing number of Americans opposing the Iraq conflict. Some independent analysts question the extent of al-Qaida’s role in Iraq.

Khaled Abdul-Fattah Dawoud Mahmoud al-Mashhadani was the highest- ranking Iraqi in the al-Qaida in Iraq leadership when he was captured July 4 in Mosul, U.S. military spokesman Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner said.

Bergner told reporters that al-Mashhadani carried messages from bin Laden, and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahri, to the Egyptian-born head of al-Qaida in Iraq, Abu Ayyub al-Masri.

“There is a clear connection between al-Qaida in Iraq and al-Qaida senior leadership outside Iraq,” Bergner said.

He said al-Mashhadani had told interrogators that al-Qaida’s global leadership provides “directions, they continue to provide a focus for operations” and “they continue to flow foreign fighters into Iraq, foreign terrorists.”

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THE Diocese of Egbu, Anglican Communion, has warned its members to distance themselves from secret societies and cults or risk being slammed with commensurate disciplinary measures lined up by the diocese for its erring members.

The Bishop, Professor Emmanuel Iheagwam, read the riot act while presenting his presidential address during the 10th Annual Men’s Conference at Saint John’s Anglican Church, Naze.

While recalling the Biblical injunction that “no one can serve two masters” at the same time, the Anglican cleric lamented that there are a lot of people who profess to be Christians but at the same time belong to secret societies and cults.” Are there not people who profess to be Christians and at the same time belong to secret societies or cults? Are there not people who profess to be Christians and yet go to the shrines of lesser deities to swear or take oaths of allegiance to individuals or political parties?”, Iheagwam asked.

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When Jami Waite graduated from high school this year in this northeastern Texas town, her parents sat damp-eyed in the metal bleachers of Bobcat Stadium, proud in every way possible. Their youngest daughter was leaving childhood an honor graduate, a band member, a true friend, a head cheerleader ”” and a steadfast virgin.

“People can be abstinent, and it’s not weird,” she declared. With her face on billboards and on TV, Ms. Waite has been an emblem of sexual abstinence for Virginity Rules, which has risen from a single operation in nearby Longview to become an eight-county abstinence franchise.

For the first time, however, Virginity Rules and 700 kindred abstinence education programs are fighting serious threats to their future. Eleven state health departments rejected abstinence education this year, while legislatures in Colorado, Iowa and Washington passed laws that could kill, or at least wound, its presence in public schools.

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In the following ten sections I argue for a remaking of Anglicanism around a renewal of our understanding of the relationship between covenant, mission and Scripture. In part A. Some Ecumenical and Missional Reflections on the Windsor Report (sections 1-3) I explore how we can learn what this looks like in another tradition (the Baptist one) and then reflect on what implications this has for the Anglican Communion in relation to the Windsor process. I argue that this will require a remaking of Anglicanism around a new understanding of covenant, mission and scripture that will address the unresolved question of authority in Anglicanism.

In part B. A Covenant for Communion in Mission (sections 4-7) I suggest that this remaking can itself be rooted in a pattern of covenant found in Scripture which is shown to be missional. Specifically this is the pattern of the Sinai Covenant. I then explore how such an understanding must then rest on theology of a Covenantal, Missional and Scriptural God. This highlights the connection between the process of developing an Anglican Covenant and the need to provide a theological framework that will entail an adequate form of Anglican Theological Education to inform and explore its significance in mission practice.

In part C. Covenant as Generative Centre for Mission (sections 8-10) I consider an approach to Covenant, which sees it as a resource for generating missional capital. This is modelled on the an interpretation of the-Great-Commission-as-Covenant. I then briefly outline how mission capital has been developed and expended in the planting and nurturing of Anglican Churches worldwide. And how it is essential that any Anglican Covenant in remaking Anglicanism resonate, sustain and shape the Communion in a way that does not deny the mission origins of the Church in the British Isles and then more widely in the Anglican Communion.

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