[Paul] Zahl however does concede that “the presence of Christ’s absence is found within the works of love” (Zahl, 2000: 37). He describes this as:

“an unseen presence within the historic absence that is in fact more tangible and more universal than of the symbolic or objective substitutes we have criticized as being insufficient, unworthy, and autonomous in relation to God’s will. There is only one ”˜form’ of the unseen presence of his absence that persists in every age and time. The form of his absent presence is the form of love” (Zahl, 2000: 37).

It seems that this ”˜form of his absent presence’ as love is not seen as objectifying human activity since its source is God rather than the actions of people. Love, as Zahl portrays it, comes from God as grace which forms the human person to resemble Christ’s love. For Zahl this is a work of grace and not works. He says that: “the works of love derive from prior grace. The works of love since A.D. 29 are pressed and stamped with the image of Christ’s life from 4 B.C. to A.D 29.” (Zahl, 2000: 39). It is these works of love that Zahl sees as the presence of Christ in the world.

Zahl’s work is useful that it helps to establish that there is both a Protestant and a Catholic face of Anglicanism. It is less useful though in the way Zahl seeks to analyse these faces. His dependence on party position and overly simplistic treatments of persons and the philosophical underpinnings of their work limits the usefulness of his contribution. Zahl’s work however, does serve to illustrate a trend among some Anglican Evangelicals, that is, to dismiss any notion of realism, through the sacramental principle or sacramental mediation of grace, and to type-cast and exclude any moderate realist notions in connection with the Eucharist as by definition immoderate in nature.

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The failure leading to the sale of the cathedral lies with the lack of a serious commitment to evangelism. There is no growth strategy into which the cathedral would fit. Such a strategy has little to do with the current inflammatory issues of homosexuality or church polity. Rather the inability of the people in the pews to speak convincingly about three key questions resulted in a great silence about the mission of The Episcopal Church.

The first question about which people should speak with friends and neighbors is simple: Why Jesus? Why do people need and benefit from a personal relationship with the risen Lord? Can we share with them how that leads to “the peace of God which surpasses all understanding” (Phil. 4:7)? Can we demonstrate both in word and deed how that relationship has changed our lives?

The second question also is simple: Why the Church? Why do Christians need to assemble together? Why is it not possible to be a faithful Christian alone? Can we speak convincingly about how our participating in congregational life strengthens and expands our faith? It is in the assembly of disciples that we learn to love one another as Christ has loved us, that we learn to forgive one another 70 times seven, that we learn to pray and worship as our Lord taught us to do, and that we learn to serve one another and persons in need like good Samaritans.

Third: Why this church? Why The Episcopal Church and this particular congregation? The diversity of the congregations, the search for meaning in relationship to crucial questions of life and culture, the significant exposure to scripture in the lectionary, community and world service in Christ’s name, the awesome nature of good worship with joyful hymns of praise ”“ these are but a few of the reasons why this church.

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When Cesar Chavez Academy opened its doors seven years ago, enrollment was 240. Today the number stands at 1,100.

Other things have changed as well. These students – most of whom are Latino kids from low-income neighborhoods – are now some of the highest achievers in the entire state.

Lawrence Hernandez, founder of the school, says 3,000 students are on the waiting list to attend.

That there’s a single kid on that waiting list is a travesty.

The U.S. Department of Education will honor Cesar Chavez Academy for its success in closing the achievement gap among Latino students.

The school was one of six charter schools nationwide to be recognized. It was one of only two picked to be featured in a documentary about successful schools to air nationwide Sept. 18 on PBS.

In Colorado, Cesar Chavez already has a sterling reputation. High marks come from nearly every corner of the educational establishment. Incredibly, this success comes, according to Hernandez, by operating with 40 percent less money per student (after paying for their own building and other expenses) than the typical public school does.

With all this success, one wonders why Cesar Chavez Academy, and similar schools, are constantly struggling to overcome barriers laid in their way by local and state governments.

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US consumers are defaulting on credit-card payments at a significantly higher rate than last year, raising the prospect of problems in the stricken US subprime mortgage market spreading to other types of consumer debt.

Credit-card companies were forced to write off 4.58 per cent of payments as uncollectable in the first half of 2007, almost 30 per cent higher year-on-year. Late payments also rose, and the quarterly payment rate ”“ a measure of cardholders’ willingness and ability to repay their debt ”“ fell for the first time in more than four years.

Analysts at Moody’s, the rating agency, said the trend could be related to the slowdown in the US property market and a fall in the number of borrowers rolling their mortgage debt into new and cheaper home loans.

“The combination of higher interest rates and a softer real estate market diminished the attractiveness of mortgage refinancings in which many borrowers reduced their more expensive credit-card debt by drawing on the equity in their home,” Moody’s said.

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This is a frightening prospect, but the trend of disappearing fathers has been taking shape and gaining momentum for several decades now. When the bearing of children is divorced from the institution of marriage, disaster is immediately on the horizon. The only question is when the disastrous consequences will appear.

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The House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee has issued advice that the British Government, through Tony Blair in his new role, ought to be talking to Hamas. It is quite a risk. After all, Hamas has been responsible for encouraging suicide-bomb attacks against Israel. None the less: “We recommend that he engage with Hamas in order to facilitate reconciliation amongst Palestinians.”

This is the right thing to do, for it is just this sort of risky talk, often clandestine, that led to peace in Northern Ireland. No peace will ever come without a willingness to sit around a table and talk.

This is why the refusal of a number of Anglican bishops to accept the Archbishop of Canterbury’s invitation to the Lambeth Conference looks so childish and lacking in moral imagination (Press, 27 July). From Sydney to Nigeria to Winchester, there have been bishops toying with the idea that they might refuse to sit down and talk to other bishops. This is an out-and-out scandal, and has nothing whatsoever to do with homosexuality.

It is a scandal because church leaders might talk the talk about peace, but some just don’t walk the walk when it involves themselves.

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Ten guys plop themselves into chairs and sofas arranged in a circle at Eastside Faith Center in Eugene. One of them pulls out a guitar and strums the chords of a hymn. Others close their eyes, nod their heads and quietly sing along.

Common bonds bring these men together each week. They are the bonds of faith and fellowship and pornography.

Participants in this “For Men Only” accountability group vary in age, temperament and work status. But most will tell you, privately, that they share the same problem with pornography: They want to stop using it but can’t, and need the help of God and others to quit.

“You have made the way to take our shame away,” says the guitar player in an opening prayer. “Lord, I’m living for you, to be worthy of you, regardless of my situation today.”

No religious or other demographic group is immune from pornography’s reach – not in a country where an estimated 40 million adults say they regularly visit porn Web sites on the Internet. In one survey cited by Internet Filter Review, an oft-quoted resource on cyberporn, 47 percent of polled Christians describe porn as a major problem in the home.

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Ramesh Krishnan and his son Chandrashekar, with real estate agent T.R. Viswanathan, at the Krishnan house in Aurora. In keeping with Krishnan’s beliefs, the house is situated far from neighboring homes so as not to obstruct the energy flow.

For more people, buying a home is becoming an act of faith.

Not because of the turmoil in the mortgage market. But rather the increasing diversity of the population and the effort to meet their spiritual needs.

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For much of Israel’s existence, the kibbutz embodied its highest ideals: collective labor, love of the land and a no-frills egalitarianism.

But starting in the 1980s, when socialism was on a global downward spiral and the country was mired in hyperinflation, Israel’s 250 or so kibbutzim seemed doomed. Their debt mounted and their group dining halls grew empty as the young moved away.

Now, in a surprising third act, the kibbutzim are again thriving. Only in 2007 they are less about pure socialism than a kind of suburbanized version of it.

On most kibbutzim, food and laundry services are now privatized; on many, houses may be transferred to individual members, and newcomers can buy in. While the major assets of the kibbutzim are still collectively owned, the communities are now largely run by professional managers rather than by popular vote. And, most important, not everyone is paid the same.

Once again, people are lining up to get in.

“What we love here is the simplicity,” said Boaz Varol, 38, who rides his bike along wooded pathways to work at the swimming pool, once for communal use, that he rents and runs as a private business at Kibbutz Yasur, in the rolling hills of the Western Galilee, northeast of Haifa. “Everyone does what they want, we have our independence, but without the kind of competition you find outside.”

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In response to this letter, Elizabeth Longrigg of Oxford writes:

Sir, If S. M. Bowden’s letter (August 17) is accurate, how is it that the Anglo-Saxon cleric Aelfric, Abbot of Eynsham, Oxfordshire, from 1005, and writing in the late 10th and early 11th centuries, speaks in the preface to his translation of Genesis about priests complaining that they are forbidden to marry?

“They often speak of Peter, [asking] why they are not permitted to have a wife as Peter the apostle had, and they do not want to hear or to know that . . .” and, when Peter was chosen to follow Christ, “then he immediately gave up his wife, and all the twelve apostles, those who had wives, gave up both wife and possessions and followed Christ in the new law and the purity which he himself then established.”

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BROOMFIELD, COLORADO ”“ August 27, 2007”“ The Church of the Holy Comforter today announced the resignation of its leader, The Reverend Dr. Charles Reeder and his departure from The Episcopal Church effective October 1, 2007. Holy Comforter also announces that Vestry, the Children’s Minister, Youth Minister and Treasurer will resign and follow Father Reeder’s move within the greater worldwide Anglican Communion Network (ACN).

“We are saddened by the current state of The Episcopal Church in the US which we believe has strayed from the orthodox, scriptural beliefs of the worldwide Anglican Communion,” said Reeder. “Many church members have demonstrated their dissatisfaction with the Episcopal Church’s actions and words through the withholding of contributions. This has led us to examine the best possible future for Holy Comforter and our desire to remain part of the worldwide Anglican Communion.”

Near term, Reeder, Vestry, the core ministry team and members of Holy Comforter continue in a period of prayer and fasting as they look for guidance around the future of the congregation. Reeder has not yet determined his future place within the Anglican Communion.

About The Church of the Holy Comforter
Located in Broomfield, Colorado, Holy Comforter is a traditional, biblically-based community which provides spiritual leadership and outreach locally and globally. The church, founded in 1958, believes the Scripture is the foundation and authority for The Episcopal Church USA and the greater Anglican Communion of which it is a member. For more information, visit www.holycomforterchurch.net

Pastor Roger W. Rapp of the St. Paul Lutheran Church agrees that it is important to listen to differing opinions. And local congregations always have been open to all people, regardless of lifestyle choices.

“We in the Lutheran church are really trying hard to be respectful of differing opinions, and in the respect of differing opinions, we grow and journey together,” Rapp said.

“We live together in a very opinionated church. If we stay together, we are more likely to avoid a split and learn from those who differ from us.”

Rapp added that there are many Evangelical Lutheran Church of America churches that say all are welcome.

“(They) state openly that all are welcome, regardless of race, gender or sexual orientation,” he said. “As far as local congregations, we’ve always been open to all people. People are people.”

But although local Lutheran congregations appear open to the same-gender relationship issue, at least one other local congregation disagrees.

The Rev. Hume W. “Skip” Reeves of The Church of St. Peter, Apostle and Confessor says the debate will split the Lutheran church apart.

Reeves was a former member of St. Mark’s Episcopal here before splitting to form The Church of St. Peter last year, separating from the Episcopal Church.

The split was in large part due to the same issue: allowing same-gender relationships within church leadership.

“I was hoping that they would kind of learn a lesson from the Episcopal Church,” Reeves said. “The church has conformed itself to the culture instead of trying to reform the culture into the vision of God’s culture.

“It looks like they’re moving in the same direction that the Episcopalian church did. They’ll pay a huge price for that.”

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Jesus’ famous parable of the Good Samaritan is being writ large in the alluvial soil of southern Louisiana. You remember the ancient story: A man was mugged and left for dead by the roadside. The first person to arrive was a priest. He passed by the other side, probably on his way to the temple. Next came a Levite or lay leader, and he did the same. Only an outcast foreigner bothered to stop, tend the man’s wounds and take him to a nearby inn.

This time, it’s New Orleans that lies bleeding in the ditch while most of the nation goes about its business: dropping the kids off in Missoula, catching a train to work in Manhattan, running errands in Little Rock. Now, almost two years after Hurricane Katrina, the question remains: Will we stop to lend a hand?

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I couldn’t believe my ears. This was by far the most devastating story I’d heard from any soldier here, and yet there she was, telling it to me in an completely calm and amiable voice. I had absolutely no idea how to respond. What do you say when a soldier tells you, without missing a beat, let alone breaking down sobbing as one might expect, that in addition to losing her two best friends and being in the middle of an ugly divorce, she has also been wounded by an Iranian bomb, found out she was pregnant with twins, found out they were dead, and then learned that, by the way, she also had cancer and had better leave her unit and start treatment right away? Nothing I could possibly say would come even close to acknowledging what she’d gone through and, beyond that, the stunning courage she was displaying in dealing with it.

While I stared at her, trying to figure out how to reply, Alison continued: “I definitely want to stay in the Army, but I think after this they probably won’t let me. Andt blows that I have to leave my unit early, though. They still have three months to go. But I’ve been here for a year — I guess I’ve done my duty.”

I’ve met some pretty impressive soldiers over here, from Gen. Petraeus to Lt. Col. Peterson, but none of them hold a candle to this one. I hope that if I remember one thing from this summer, it’s that this is what service and sacrifice are all about: heroes like Spec. Alison K.

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The credit card industry has made a profitable art of corralling consumers into ruinous interest rates and hidden penalties that keep even people who pay their bills permanently mired in debt. The companies are especially eager to target freshly minted college students, who are naïve in money matters and especially vulnerable to credit card offers that are too good to be true.

Colleges, which often allow solicitation on campus, need to do more to protect their students from taking on credit card debt that can severely damage their economic prospects once they graduate from school and join the world of work.

College students need to be told right off the bat about the dangers associated with the cards that the companies are going to throw at them once school starts. The students need to know, for example, that the penalties associated with delinquent debts will accrue to them ”” and not to their parents, as many students seem to think. They should also be told that delinquent debts can cause their interest rates to soar not just on their credit cards, but on car loans and mortgages as well.

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“We can’t win at home. We can’t win on the road. I just can’t figure where else to play.”

–Orlando Magic Senior Vice President Pat Williams, from the June 2007 Reader’s Digest, page 196

The retirement of thousands of baby boomer teachers coupled with the departure of younger teachers frustrated by the stress of working in low-performing schools is fueling a crisis in teacher turnover that is costing school districts substantial amounts of money as they scramble to fill their ranks for the fall term.

Superintendents and recruiters across the nation say the challenge of putting a qualified teacher in every classroom is heightened in subjects like math and science and is a particular struggle in high-poverty schools, where the turnover is highest. Thousands of classes in such schools have opened with substitute teachers in recent years.

Here in Guilford County, N.C., turnover had become so severe in some high-poverty schools that principals were hiring new teachers for nearly every class, every term. To staff its neediest schools before classes start on Aug. 28, recruiters have been advertising nationwide, organizing teacher fairs and offering one of the nation’s largest recruitment bonuses, $10,000 to instructors who sign up to teach Algebra I.

“We had schools where we didn’t have a single certified math teacher,” said Terry Grier, the schools superintendent. “We needed an incentive, because we couldn’t convince teachers to go to these schools without one.”

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From a spiritual perspective, however, [Wilbur] Ellsworth was suffering. Over the past 20 years, a growing number of evangelical churches have joined what is called the “church growth movement,” which favors a more contemporary, market-driven style of worship–with rock ‘n’ roll “praise songs” supplanting traditional hymns and dramatic sketches replacing preachy sermons–in the hope of attracting new members and turning churches into megachurches. First Baptist of Wheaton was not immune to this trend: Ellsworth increasingly found himself fighting with congregants about the way worship was being done. “They wanted to replace our organ with a drum set and do similar things that boiled down not to doctrine, but to personal preference,” he explains. “I said, That’s not going to happen as long as I’m here.'” It didn’t. In 2000, after 13 years as the pastor of First Baptist, Ellsworth was forced out.

For Ellsworth, his departure from First Baptist triggered both a professional and a spiritual crisis. But, before he could deal with the former, he felt he had to address the latter. He devoted himself to reading theology and church history. At first, he seemed headed in the direction of the Calvinist-influenced Reformed Baptist Church or the Anglican Church, which are where evangelicals in search of a more classical Christian style of worship often end up. But, as Ellsworth continued in his own personal search, his readings and discussions began taking him further and further past the Reformation and ever deeper into church history. And, gradually, much to his surprise, he found himself growing increasingly interested in a church he once knew virtually nothing about: the Orthodox Church. “I really thought he’d go to Canterbury,” says Alan Jacobs, a Wheaton College English professor and Anglican who is friendly with Ellsworth. “But he took a sudden right turn and wound up in Constantinople.”

Ellsworth began reading more and more about Orthodox Christianity–eventually spending close to $10,000 on Orthodox books. By 2005, he was regularly visiting an Antiochian Orthodox Church in Chicago (the Antiochian Orthodox Church is Middle Eastern in background and the seat of its patriarchate is in Damascus). By late 2006, Ellsworth realized that he wanted to be Orthodox himself. On the first Sunday of the following February, an Orthodox priest in Chicago anointed him with holy oil and he was chrismated–or formally received–into the Orthodox Church. A month later, at the age of 62, he was ordained as an Orthodox priest himself.

Ellsworth’s story is hardly unique. Most of the approximately 150 members of the Orthodox parish he now leads are former evangelicals themselves. Even Ellsworth’s transition from evangelical minister to Orthodox priest is not uncommon. Of the more than 250 parishes of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America, some 60 percent are led by convert priests, most of whom are from evangelical backgrounds.

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Over time, we’ve gotten used to John McKissick being known as the winningest football coach in the country. Every year we see him out on the practice field, starting yet another high school football season in Summerville.

This, by the way, is his 56th.

Think about that for a moment. Truman was president when McKissick started coaching the Green Wave in 1952. He shook Winston Churchhill’s hand. Studebakers were still big sellers.

With that kind of longevity, nobody is even close to his on-going record of 543 victories. He also has 10 state championships to his credit.

If you live around here, you’ve probably heard all this before. His story has been told and retold here in the Palmetto State. But if there’s a way legends can become commonplace, it’s the way McKissick has always been a low-key kind of guy around the Lowcountry.

Unassuming, pleasant and a pleasure to deal with, the 80-year-old coach simply goes about his business of coaching kids and trying to win football games. He’s been coaching so long that many of his former players are now in their 70s. Most turned out OK. And most give some of the credit to their high school football coach, John McKissick.

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The moment we put the creature before God, it stops being a means of grace and becomes instead an idol. We can do this with virtually any creature, but three of the most popular idols are money, sex and power. (The golden calf symbolized all three, showing you that not much has changed in 5,000 years.)

The danger of the modern nation-state (a danger incarnated again and again in the 20th century) is that the tempting offer to deliver these three goods will become a substitute for heaven.

We saw this in Nazi Germany, which elevated patriotism to the idolatry of the race. We saw it in various communist nations, which elevated the state to the place of God with the promise of bread and land. And we see it in the post-Christian West today. Again and again, the promise is the same: “a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth” (Catechism, No. 675).

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Susan Brooks has found the house of her dreams. The perfect place to watch her 14-year-old daughter grow and fly the nest.

As a single mother of three, two of whom already are grown, Brooks, 47, has worked at Summerville Medical Center for 17 years and works a second job part-time in the evenings at a nearby Wal-Mart.

She has a contract on a home in the Archdale area of North Charleston and has 20 percent to put down on a mortgage. Her Bacons Bridge Road mobile home is paid in full and a buyer wants to move in Sept. 10.

Her credit could be better, she said, but she’s almost debt-free and has labored to improve her score.

But no one’s giving her credit for the hard work.

“I have the money, but no one will finance me,” Brooks said. “I really want this house.”

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A retired Presbyterian minister with roots on the North Side was found guilty of violating church law in officiating at two lesbian weddings.

Jane Spahr of San Rafael, Calif., is an openly gay ordained pastor in the Presbyterian Church (USA). She was ruled to be at odds with the church’s constitution when she married the couples in 2004 and 2005.

A judicial commission with the Synod of the Pacific, a multistate governing body, ruled 6-2 that while Ms. Spahr “acted with conscience and conviction,” she was guilty of misconduct. It reversed a local Presbytery decision in March 2006 that said Ms. Spahr was within her rights as an ordained minister when she married the couples. The decision came with the recommendation that Ms. Spahr be rebuked.

Ms. Spahr said the decision made her sad, calling it second-class treatment for people who are different and “perpetuates myths and stereotypes that give license to violence.”

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Alwyn Rice Jones’s time as Archbishop of Wales involved big changes in the Church. Having once failed to get the ordination of women as priests through the governing body, he brought it back in 1996 when it was approved and, unlike in England, no clergy left the Church in Wales. He also steered through the legislation for the remarriage of divorcees in church.

A theological liberal, Jones was a committed ecumenist. While a priest at Porthmadog he developed close relations with the Roman Catholic Church and was secretary of the Gwynedd Ecumenical Forum. From 1985 to 1987 he was the chairman of the Commission of Covenanting Churches in Wales. He steered a Bill through the governing body for the creation of local ecumenical projects and became chairman of the religious advisory committee for the Welsh-language TV channel.

He was committed to social justice and was not afraid of political issues. He condemned the bombing of Kos-ovo and was a strong supporter of devolution and the creation of the National Assembly of Wales. A year after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, he wrote to his clergy saying that he thought too much was being made of her status. He left it to the discretion of his clergy as to whether prayers should be said on the anniversary of her death.

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Britain is in the grip of a prescription drug-taking epidemic, with unprecedented numbers of medicines being handed out by GPs, costing billions of pounds and stretching already tight NHS resources to breaking point.

Prescription drug use has increased by 27 per cent in the past the five years and the NHS drug bill topped £10bn in 2006. GPs prescribed 918 million medicines last year compared with 721 million five years ago, according to figures obtained by The Independent on Sunday.

Health experts put rocketing prescription numbers down to medical advances, but also point to poor prescribing by GPs, growing public demand for a “pill for every ill” and aggressive marketing tactics by the pharmaceutical industry, which prompted one MP to warn that the UK is heading towards what he called “pharmageddon”.

Paul Flynn, the Labour MP, warned that a failure to change attitudes would be disastrous. He said: “We are heading towards pharmageddon. The medicalising of society is convincing people they need a pill for everything. Drug companies recruit patients, particularly good-looking and articulate ones, to help promote new drugs in the media. Life and death decisions should not be taken by tabloids.”

Read it all but before you do guess how many prescriptions a day doctors in England now make–the answer comes when you click.

At a time when the Mormon Church is drawing heightened public visibility because of Mitt Romney’s presidential bid, the church is grappling more openly with one of its darkest chapters.

The “Utah War” has largely faded from American memory as the Mormon Church ”“ and the public’s acceptance of it ”“ evolved. But one incident from that time stubbornly lingers and is now the subject of a fictionalized film that opens in theaters Friday.

On Sept. 11, 1857, Mormons aided by native American allies massacred about 120 unarmed men, women, and children bound for California by wagon train. The slaughter took place amid war hysteria: The US Army was marching toward Utah to confront Mormon leaders.

After covering up the Mountain Meadows massacre for years, the church is supporting an exhaustive Mormon research effort to leave no stone unturned. The findings, unflattering in spots, are being broadcast worldwide in the latest edition of the church’s magazine.

“It’s clear that at very important levels the church is opening itself in ways that it had not felt comfortable with [before],” says Sarah Barringer Gordon, a law professor and religion expert at University of Pennsylvania. “People [in Utah] really understand ”“ perhaps as they hadn’t until the last five, six years or so ”“ that there’s a need and a possibility for real investigation and acceptance of a painful past.”

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You used to have to wait for a loved one to die before you found out how much you were going to inherit ”” if you were going to inherit at all.

No more. Now, if you’re among the lucky minority of Americans who have received an inheritance or expect one, you’re increasingly likely to get at least some of it while your relatives are still alive.

“Giving while living” is becoming popular as more Americans decide to spread their money around while they’re still here to see its impact. They’re giving to children, grandchildren and others. They’re paying for college educations and providing down payments for houses. They’re setting up trusts and paying for vacations.

To keep families working together and to support favorite causes, more Americans are setting up private foundations and hiring their children to run them or serve on the boards. The number of independent foundations has jumped 77% in the past 10 years to 63,059, according to the Foundation Center in New York. Nine out of 10 of them are family foundations.

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THE country’s housing affordability crisis has become so dire that even God has been forced to sell off his weekenders.

Five churches in the country town of Young will go under the hammer due to rising costs of living and the falling attendance of parishioners.

The Anglican churches, which have a combined 428 years in the Lord’s service, will be auctioned next Saturday and are expected to sell for between $20,000 to $100,000 each.

Anglican Diocese of Canberra assistant Bishop Allan Ewing told The Daily Telegraph they simply couldn’t afford to keep the churches operating.

“We’re having to deal with reality. They became a real financial burden and while we made the decision relatively recently we’ve been talking about it for a long time,” Bishop Ewing said.

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Last week, I participated in a three day meeting here that included six of the most senior Iraqi Sunni and Shia religious leaders. At the meeting, held at a Marriott hotel in a Cairo suburb, they formally agreed to “end terrorist violence, and to disband militia activity in order to build a civilized country and work within the framework of law.”

This gathering was a truly historic event, given the authority of the participants — including Sheikh Ahmed al Kubaisi, acknowledged by all Iraqis as the senior Sunni religious authority (the weekly audience for his Friday sermons, broadcast from Dubai, number 20 million), and Ayatollah Sayyid Ammar Abu Ragheef, chief of staff for Grand Ayatollah Ali al Sistani, the acknowledged leader of the Shia community in Iraq and beyond. One has only to consider the power of these specific religious leaders, and the instruments at their disposal for getting results, to grasp the gathering’s enormous potential importance.

Going well beyond traditional rhetoric in their closing statement late last week, they stated their intention to work for the early issuance of a joint Sunni-Shia fatwa to the Iraqi people. A fatwa such as this will carry the force of law for all followers. Think about that. After more than four years of brutal warfare and untold suffering, the leading religious authorities in Iraq have joined hands and said “Enough,” and have committed to use their authority to bring peace to their country.

How does this relate to the Iraqi government and coalition forces? Can these clerics achieve anything concrete? If so how soon? And will it be enforceable?

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William Shakespeare left no diary.

He inspired no tell-all biographer during his day. He wrote 36 plays (more or less) during a seething period of political convulsion and religious intrigue, but we know neither his politics nor his religion. Was he easy-going Anglican, closet Catholic, flashy atheist, space alien? Will won’t tell. This radiant anti-celebrity Englishman eludes us still.

Nashvillian Chris Hassel has puzzled over Shakespeare’s poker-faced religion his entire teaching career. Short of outing Shakespeare as heretic, choirboy or druid, Hassel has produced a 455-page dictionary of every religious reference in Shakespeare he can find, more than 1,000 words scrutinized.

“I’ve never been able to pin him down,” says Hassel, who taught Shakespeare 35 years at Vanderbilt until retirement in 2003.

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The brand-new doors at Christ Church Midland closed recently on Father Jon Stasney’s term as rector, but have opened on a new face.

Incoming rector Tom Finnie, formerly of the Pittsburgh area, will be on hand at the church today to welcome community members during the church’s first public open house.

Finnie, who arrived in West Texas in July, said he already feels welcome.

“Since you brought Pittsburgh weather down to welcome me, (adjusting) hasn’t been a problem,” he said, describing his hometown weather as “wet and 80s and high humidity.”

“I haven’t experienced West Texas yet,” he said joking.

Finnie replaces Stasney, who served the congregation for 19 years and also helmed it through the split from the National Episcopal Church.

“He has been an outstanding leader who has led us through very difficult times,” said Bob Bledsoe, 76, a member of Christ Church.

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