With all due respect to baseball, America’s real national pastime is, and has long been, arguing about the place of religion in politics. In the USA, religious faith has always played a role in shaping policy and inspiring citizens, and those same citizens have always wondered, and sometimes worried, about this influence.

From the outset, we have believed that church and state are and should be distinct and also have known that faith and public policy are not and cannot be entirely separate. Finding and maintaining the right balance ”” avoiding both a reduction of religion to politics and an elevation of politics to religion ”” has been and remains a challenge.

One of the most important political stories of the past 25 years ”” one in which this challenge has been at center stage ”” is the emergence, energy and electoral success of the so-called Religious Right. This development unsettled what had become the comfortable consensus among many modern sociologists and suggested that their predictions of religion’s decline, like reports of Mark Twain’s death, were greatly exaggerated.

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An Episcopal priest at odds with church leaders over many of their views, including on homosexuality, is breaking from the ranks by retiring Sept. 30 to start a new congregation, Christ Church Anglican.

The Rev. Gilbert Wilkes, rector of Christ and the Epiphany Episcopal Church in East Haven, said Saturday his new congregation will meet for the first time Oct. 14 with services at 8:30 a.m. and 10 a.m. at a middle school in East Haven. His church will be part of the Convocation of Anglicans in North America – or CANA – founded to offer disaffected Episcopalians a theologically friendly church structure.

“I hate to see him leave the Episcopal Church – he’s been an exemplary priest and pastor,” said Diocesan Bishop Andrew E. Smith. “We’ve always had a great relationship.”

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Behind the walls of federal prisons nationwide, chaplains have been quietly carrying out a systematic purge of religious books and materials that were once available to prisoners in chapel libraries.

The chaplains were directed by the Bureau of Prisons to clear the shelves of any books, tapes, CDs and videos that are not on a list of approved resources. In some prisons, the chaplains have recently dismantled libraries that had thousands of texts collected over decades, bought by the prisons, or donated by churches and religious groups.

Some inmates are outraged. Two of them, a Christian and an Orthodox Jew, in a federal prison camp in upstate New York, filed a class-action lawsuit last month claiming the bureau’s actions violate their rights to the free exercise of religion as guaranteed by the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

Traci Billingsley, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Prisons, said the agency was acting in response to a 2004 report by the Office of the Inspector General in the Justice Department. The report recommended steps that prisons should take, in light of the Sept. 11 attacks, to avoid becoming recruiting grounds for militant Islamic and other religious groups. The bureau, an agency of the Justice Department, defended its effort, which it calls the Standardized Chapel Library Project, as a way of barring access to materials that could, in its words, “discriminate, disparage, advocate violence or radicalize.”

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The Diocese of Alabama plans to elect its suffragan bishop on Sept. 30 at 3:30 p.m. at Cathedral Church of the Advent. Whoever is elected will be consecrated and take office Jan. 12.

“From that point on, that person would be doing bishop work,” Burnette said. That includes voting in the House of Bishops, which takes stands on issues and helps set policy for the church. At its next meeting Sept. 19-25 in New Orleans, the House of Bishops is expected to respond to the Anglican primates, or archbishops, who asked for an apology.

“It’s all about what we deal with on a local level,” said the Rev. Robert Childers, rector of Grace Episcopal Church in Anniston and one of the candidates for suffragan bishop. “How do we deal with each other, how does our faith in Christ inform how we live together? And do we want to live together? I think we need to stay engaged with each other, that’s the key, stay in conversation, stay in fellowship, break bread together. The danger in our society is to walk away so quickly.”

The other candidates for suffragan bishop are the Rev. Alicia Schuster-Weltner, canon for congregational development for the Diocese of Atlanta; the Rev. Kee Sloan, rector of St. Thomas Church in Huntsville; the Rev. Pat Wingo, rector of St. Thomas Church in Birmingham; and the Rev. William Andrew Waldo, who is from Montgomery and is now rector of Trinity Church in Excelsior, Minn.

“It’s the first time we’re all together,” Burnette said. “The focus is discernment of what God is calling the diocese to do, rather than vying for power.”

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For generations of rural religious polygamists like those Warren S. Jeffs once led, this was the big town and the citadel of sin all in one.

St. George, founded on the southern route to California in wagon train days, was the place to buy groceries or spend an occasional night out. But it was also the local fortress of mainstream Mormonism, which is vehement in its opposition to polygamy.

The polygamists, in turn, looked down on Mormons as apostates who lost their way more than 100 years ago by denouncing polygamy, and thus the teachings of the church’s founder, Joseph Smith, in a political compromise to achieve statehood for Utah.

Now Mr. Jeffs is being tried on felony charges that he was an accomplice to rape in arranging polygamous marriages between under-age girls and older men, and the jury is being drawn from a pool of St. George residents.

The trial is expected to throw a sharp light on polygamy and on the culture of Mr. Jeffs’s group in particular, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which is estimated to number about 10,000 people throughout the West. Jury selection began Friday, and Mr. Jeffs, 51, could face life in prison if convicted.

The old and bitter history of intra-Mormon relations hangs over everything here. But many people said the divisions were not what they once had been. Even as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as the Mormon Church is known, has cracked down on polygamy in recent years, an intermingling of cultures has begun to bubble up here, opening hearts and minds in greater understanding, if not quite tolerance.

Economics, not religion, is driving the change.

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The Rev. Scott Hayashi, a diocesan representative, read a letter from Bishop William Persell, who thanked the congregation for carrying out its decision “with grace and integrity.”

“We will continue to hold you in our prayers,” the letter said.

Afterward, Hayashi and Koch hugged.

Resurrection is a young, multi-racial congregation where hugs flow as easily as peals of laughter. Dress is casual, worship is informal. Often, members rest a hand on a neighbor’s shoulder when in prayer.

“We’re a close family,” said Catherine Clark, 66, of Batavia. “Anyone can come here — black, white, gay, straight — and be loved.”

Lynne Bowman, 59, a lifelong Episcopalian from Barrington, called the move bittersweet.

“We have tried to allow the love of God to be part of everything,” she said. “But it’s still painful.”

The new worship space was a quarter mile walk from the church. As the worshippers processed, a guitarist strummed, while others yelled Nigerian warrior cries.

Longtime members said leaving the Episcopal Church was tough but that the walk of faith is never easy.

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THE Anglican Province of Central Africa broke up yesterday following the withdrawal of Harare Diocese and expressions of intent to pull out by other dioceses that accused the province of failing to censure some bishops dabbling in homosexuality.

The Diocese of Manicaland also expressed its intention to quit the province along with one other Zimbabwean diocese.

Its bishop said he needed to report to his diocese first before going public, making it three out of Zimbabwe’s five dioceses.

According to the Standing Orders of the Province of Central Africa, once one diocese withdraws, the province becomes null and void and will have to be reconstituted under a new name and structure.

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A huge experiment is under way in Britain, one not all the locals like, though it seems to be doing many of them good. It is the transformation of the country into one of the most open, globalised nations in the world.

Latest figures show that last year a record 574,000 people moved to Britain – nearly 1 per cent of the population. Australia, by contrast, took 130,000 migrants last year – 0.65 per cent of its population. And Britain is a much smaller island.

Britain’s figure does not count the 600,000 workers from Eastern Europe who have arrived since 2004, turning the lingua franca of farms, building sites and cafes into Polish. Catholicism may soon be Britain’s most popular form of worship again, after nearly 500 years in the sin bin.

But British immigration is countered by emigration. Last year a “staggering” 385,000 people left the country for good, according to Brits Abroad, a report by the Institute of Public Policy Research.

One in 10 Britons now lives abroad, a diaspora twice as large, proportionally, as the Australian one….

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People like Fred Thompson. So far as I can tell, that is currently the prime rationale for his candidacy for president of the United States. He doesn’t need to launch a media blitz to achieve this level of public fondness. His avuncular, crumpled tower of a personage is well known from many episodes of Law & Order.

In this year’s race, only one other Republican candidate has even minimal charm ”“ the obscure Mike Hucka-bee of Arkansas, who is obviously (and rather successfully) running for vice-president. Rudy Giuliani is many things, but likable isn’t one of them. Mitt Romney has failed to win over many conservatives despite an impeccable family life and a platform largely dictated by the far-right activist base. The slickness and eagerness to please seem to glide past any political traction. John McCain is too prickly to be cuddled. But good old Fred has the shtick down.

Last Wednesday he lolloped onto The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, skipping the Fox News Republican debate in New Hampshire, and announced for president. It was an unconventional entrance, disdained by even conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh for its celebrity-driven aura. But it worked well enough.

The way Thompson drawls backwards into an answer, the manner in which he almost fails to finish his sentences because of boredom or his easy-going way, the gentle, inclusive humour, the effortless stage presence of an actor/lawyer: all these came across beguilingly. I’ll admit it: I like him. He’s been charming when we’ve met; and once you get over craning your neck upwards to see his lofty face, you find yourself wanting him to do well.

Of course, you’re not too sure what exactly he would do….

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There is a strange triangle of forces between God, Richard Dawkins and his opponents. It is an unsymmetrical triangle, in that, although his opponents seem to hate Professor Dawkins and Professor Dawkins certainly hates God, God does not hate Professor Dawkins. That seems to stir the professor to ever greater efforts.

On Earth, Alister McGrath’s book The Dawkins Delusion has been riding high since February in the Amazon internet ranking, though not nearly as high as Professor Dawkins’s The God Delusion. Now a small but cheerful volume called Darwin’s Angel (Profile Books, £9.99) has been published, demolishing The God Delusion. It is by John Cornwell, who runs the Science and Human Dimension Project at Jesus College, Cambridge….

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The UK’s first mainstream TV commercial for Christianity will be broadcast on Channel Four next week.

It will be shown on Wednesday night, September 12, at 10.10pm during ‘Brothers and Sisters’, a drama starring Calista Flockhart.

The advertisement will be seen by millions of people across the nation during the next fortnight. As well as being shown on Channel Four, it is also appearing 58 times on the E4 and E4+1 digital channels and on 2,200 cinema screens nationwide for a week, starting today (Friday, September 7).

The commercial will also appear on screens in hundreds of bars nationwide and hundreds of buses in London and Birmingham.

The 60 second advertisement is for the popular Alpha course now running in 7,000 UK churches of all denominations across the UK.

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From the Canberra Times:

”Even at home, by pressing this debate will it enable the voice of the gospel to be heard more widely in Australian society, to be respected more intensely, to be understood more thoroughly I think not.” Bishop [George] Browning said he did not mean the matter was not important, or that people did not have the right to strongly-held views. ”But will this debate open wider the gates that lead to everlasting life. I am afraid not.” He was speaking at the Synod Eucharist service in St Saviour’s Cathedral during the annual meeting of the synod of his diocese. He said those about whom Jesus had been extremely critical had taken a passage or passages of scripture and turned them into an idol. ”They had made their interpretation of the law of the Sabbath the litmus test by which virtue and righteousness was to be judged, indeed that by which all human behaviour, however virtuous or evil, was to be judged.” There were parallels today, with religious people taking a passage or passages of scripture and turning them into a litmus test for all. ”In our beloved Anglican Communion, a litmus test has been set and whether any of us like it or not, we are apparently to be judged by it.” In coming months, there would be an increasing commentary in the press about those bishops who were or were not going to next year’s Lambeth Conference. Those who would stay away if others attended, and those who would attend if others stayed away.

”All legitimate bishops in the Communion should attend the Lambeth Conference,” Bishop Browning said. ”We need to be challenged by one another and to try to understand each other.”

Unfortunately, foreclosures on such a large scale also do serious harm to completely innocent people who played no part in the transaction between borrower and lender, according to Dan Immergluck, an associate professor of city and regional planning at Georgia Tech.

Together with co-author Geoff Smith, Immergluck has conducted research on the social impact of foreclosures, based on a database of more than 9,600 property transactions in Chicago. That research found that as foreclosures increase, violent crime jumps significantly. An annual increase of 2.8 foreclosures per 100 homes “corresponds to an increase in neighborhood violent crime of approximately 6.7 percent,” their study found.

“It’s probably something related to the stigma of boarded-up buildings ”” the ‘broken windows’ theory of crime and the psychological impact of all that on the community,” Immergluck says.

Another study by Immergluck and Smith, using that same database, documented the impact of foreclosures on property values, a phenomenon already visible in many metro Atlanta communities. According to what they call a conservative estimate, a single foreclosure devalues every home within an eighth of a mile by an average of almost 1 percent. In Chicago in the late ’90s, a foreclosure would lower the value of surrounding homes by an average total of $159,000.

Multiply that number by the thousands of foreclosures occuring in Georgia, and you have a real problem. Among other things, as property values fall, tax revenue falls with it, forcing government to raise millage rates to stay even.

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Policy on embryo research continues to zig-zag. Having first said it would outlaw the creation of animal-human hybrids for medical experimentation, the Government then decided to allow it. That position was endorsed last week by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA).

I hope that the Government will change tack yet again. I am deeply uncomfortable with the use of human embryos for research. The HFEA recognised the revulsion many feel at such use of human cells, but insisted that the benefits outweighed such feelings. The recent go-ahead for the creation of ‘cybrid’ embryos – created by the use of a human cell or its nucleus to fertilise an animal egg from which the nucleus has been removed – brings more dilemmas.

If the embryos are human enough to be of use in research, are they not human enough for it to be wrong to experiment on them – whatever the possible benefits?

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Today, as in the days of Moses, we have two choices always set before us: “I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life, that you and your descendants may live, loving the LORD your God, obeying his voice, and cleaving to him” (Deuteronomy 30:19ff). The choice, life or death ”” heaven or hell, is ours to make, in every living moment, and to our dying breath.

God never says, “Love me or I’ll kill you.” “Love me or you’ll burn in hell.” Rather, he describes the consequence of not choosing life: “You will surely die.” This already is true in our daily lives: Just look around.

Sadly, many choose such hell, and for two apparent reasons. First, the way to paradise, to heaven, to communion with God, is narrow, and few are they who find it. True life is work. It means crucifixion, forgiveness and endurance. It is definitely not the path of least resistance!

Second, since the devil is so clever, we are often quite well-convinced that hell is actually paradise.

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At the end of this month the House of Bishops will hold its annual fall meeting in New Orleans. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, and several members of the Primates’ Joint Standing Committee will be with us at the unanimous request of our Bishops. It is still theoretically possible there will be some surprises, but nearly every observer of the events of the past several years is convinced that a watershed moment is at hand.

In their meeting in Dar es Salaam in February the Primates asked the American House of Bishops to clarify the decisions of last year’s General Convention, which, in turn were The Episcopal Church’s response to the recommendations of the 2004 Windsor Report and subsequent requests from the Primates themselves. More specifically, they asked our Bishops to give “unequivocal assurances” that we will not consent to the election of another noncelibate homosexual Bishop, and we will not authorize or permit any (more) “same-sex blessings.” And they set a deadline of September 30 for our response.

Nearly thirty of our Bishops ”“ myself among them ”“ have given the assurances requested, but a larger number than that have said they will never agree to these requests, and more than a third of the Bishops have yet to declare themselves. (Note: The Episcopal Church has never officially authorized the blessings, but some Bishops have done so in their own Dioceses.)

Everyone hopes that clarity and understanding will be improved on all sides when the Archbishop meets with us, but I know of no one who expects that at the end of the meeting the unequivocal assurances will have been given by the House as a whole.

Archbishop Williams will need to consult with the other Primates to consider and evaluate whatever responses we will have given them. The Archbishop has recently said he is “hopeful, but not optimistic” that the Anglican Communion will be able to stay together after that point.

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Update: Another letter from Bishop Howe is here.

A suburban Chicago church sought leadership from Rwanda amid theological disputes with the Episcopal Church. This week, it found itself in conflict with its leaders over Rwandan politics.

All Souls Anglican Church had invited Paul Rusesabagina, whose life was featured in the 2004 movie Hotel Rwanda, to speak during Sunday morning services. The Wheaton, Illinois, church, a member of the Rwandan-led Anglican Mission in America, invited him as part of a fundraiser to build a school in Gashirabwoba, Rwanda.

On Thursday, however, Emmanuel Kolini, the Anglican archbishop of Rwanda, asked All Soul’s pastor J. Martin Johnson to rescind the invitation.

Rusesabagina has been at odds with the president of Rwanda. The archbishop feared that the event could create a strain in the relationship between the Anglican Church of Rwanda and the government.

“Truly I am horrified that we could have such a negative impact without meaning to,” Johnson told Christianity Today. “I had no idea this was a controversial issue.”

Read it all (hat tip: Ted Olsen).

“This visit by Mrs. Anderson was arranged without any prior consultation with me or any of the other elected leaders of this diocese. I consider it a breach of protocol and a violation of the basic polity of The Episcopal Church. It is a clear effort on her part to recognize and empower a small group of people who dissent from the stated theological positions of this diocese and who claim that they alone are the true ”˜loyal Episcopalians”˜ here in Fort Worth.

“This visit by Mrs. Anderson further exacerbates an already tense, adversarial relationship that has developed between national leaders and diocesan officials. Unfortunately, she has sought to further divide the people of this diocese rather than to promote reconciliation. I regret that Mrs. Anderson has chosen to fan the flames of division and to advocate a rather one-sided view of the controversies that have overtaken The Episcopal Church in recent decades. Rather than working with me and other diocesan officials, she has chosen to go around us in a blatant attempt to work with the revisionist opposition known as the Via
Media.

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Oscar Wilde argued that “scepticism is the beginning of faith”. Scepticism about faith appears to be more common in modern Britain; indeed, outright cynicism has become fashionable in some quarters. Nowhere is that more true than in the relationship between religion and education. Religious schools are often admired for their ethos while simultaneously condemned for their exclusivity. Yet how their ethos could be created and maintained without an emphasis on what makes these schools distinctive and different is difficult to envisage. Ministers are faced with a similar conundrum. On the one hand, the academic results achieved by faith schools in poor neighbourhoods are often impressive. Yet on the other hand, politicians and public alike are uneasy about religious segregation and fear that it will undermine the quest for social cohesion. It is an unenviable dilemma for public policy.

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Stacey and a handful of other professors upend the students’ regimented thinking, causing doubts that must be reconciled with their faith. “ ”˜The more you know, the more you question,’ one especially astute sophomore told me.” Rosin adds: “If everything your home-school textbook taught you wasn’t true, then everything the esteemed Dr. Farris said wasn’t necessarily true, and what your parents said might not be true either. The hierarchy was starting to unravel.” So, too, was Farris’s faculty, as Rosin reports at the end of her book.

The coverage of religious fundamentalists by mainstream journalists ”” and many have visited Patrick Henry since its opening ”” tends to take on the trappings of an anthropological exercise: outsiders arriving to study the rituals and mating habits of a strange native tribe. There is an “us and them” quality that is difficult to transcend. The question must be asked of any writer undertaking this enterprise: Are you trying to horrify your like-minded readers or enlighten them? Rosin clearly intended to enlighten. Her empathy for the students and families she interviews is apparent. But there are suggestions that this is a cultural divide she can’t quite cross (a reference to the “eerily independent and well-behaved” small children at a student event, descriptions of “goofy love songs to Jesus”) and a politics she spurns (George Bush’s “fixed” view of God’s will leads to arrogance; Barack Obama offers a “humbler” version of Christianity).

In the end, Rosin hints at much drama to be mined at Patrick Henry. But in her journalistic telling, the stories of Farris and his students ”” and their determination to become leaders inside a culture that their belief systems reject ”” come up short.

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There are at least half a dozen reasons that a lot of political prognosticators, including many inside his own party, will tell you that Rudolph Giuliani will never be the Republican nominee for president, no matter what the polls say. They are, in no particular order:

1. As New York’s mayor, he was pro-choice, pro-gun control and pro-gay rights.

2. He has demonstrated an odd propensity over the years for publicly dressing up in women’s clothing, proof of which is now readily available online, including a disturbing clip of Donald Trump nuzzling the mayor’s bosom.

3. He once endorsed Mario Cuomo for governor.

4. Once, while mayor, he holed up for months at the apartment of a gay couple who were close friends of his. Try explaining that one at Bob Jones University.

5. He has divorced two times; the last time, he broke the news to his family on national television. His two children don’t seem inclined to vote for him, let alone nominate him for Father of the Year.

6. Presidential politics is said to be largely about warmth and likability, and these aren’t words that leap to mind with Giuliani. His former political ally, Ed Koch, once felt moved to write a book titled “Giuliani: Nasty Man.” It sold well.

And yet here we are, just past Labor Day, when presidential campaigns become tangible affairs, and Rudy Giuliani isn’t showing any signs of fading. In fact, he continues to lead the rest of the Republican field in just about every national poll…

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Late in life ”” he was in his 80s, in fact ”” Sigmund Freud got religion. No, Freud didn’t begin showing up at temple every Saturday, wrapping himself in a prayer shawl and reading from the Torah. To the end of his life, he maintained his stance as an uncompromising atheist, the stance he is best known for down to the present. In “The Future of an Illusion,” he described belief in God as a collective neurosis: he called it “longing for a father.” But in his last completed book, “Moses and Monotheism,” something new emerges. There Freud, without abandoning his atheism, begins to see the Jewish faith that he was born into as a source of cultural progress in the past and of personal inspiration in the present. Close to his own death, Freud starts to recognize the poetry and promise in religion.

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Joe Waltuch, the new head of the Nevada Mortgage Lending Division, defended the subprime mortgage industry and downplayed the foreclosure crisis in his first interview.

Although he acknowledged a problem, he said, “You’re missing the positive side of all this.”

Subprime loans – high interest loans given to people with spotty credit histories – represent just 15 percent of the market, he said. Only 1.5 percent of all mortgages, he said, will end up in foreclosure: “Everybody seems to think we need to protect the 1,500 at the expense of the 98,500 good loans.”

“We put a lot of people in homes who wouldn’t otherwise be in homes,” he said.

The comments were counterintuitive, considering recent grim data: Foreclosures nationwide hit a record high in the second quarter, and Nevada is one of four states – along with Florida, California and Arizona – driving the national numbers, according to a survey released last week by the Mortgage Bankers Association

How ridiculous can you get. Read it all.

THE instructor held up an unfurled green condom as she lectured a dozen brides-to-be on details of family planning. But birth control was only one aspect of the class, provided by the government and mandatory for all couples before marriage. The other was about sex, and the message from the state was that women should enjoy themselves as much as men and that men needed to be patient, because women need more time to become aroused.

This is not the picture of Iran that filters out across the world, amid images of women draped in the forbidding black chador, or of clerics in turbans. But it is just as much a part of the complex social and political mix of Iranian society ”” and of the state’s continuing struggle, now three decades old, to shape the identity of its people.

In Iran, pleasure-loving Persian culture and traditions blend and conflict with the teachings of Shiite Islam, as well as more than a dozen other ethnic and tribal heritages. Sex education here is not new, but the message has been updated recently to help young people enjoy each other and, the Islamic state hopes, strengthen their marriages in a time when everyday life in Iran is stressful enough. The emphasis on sexual pleasure, not just health, was recognition that something was not right in the Islamic Republic.

Such flexibility is one way the government shapes, or is shaped by, society’s attitudes and behavior. These days, however, its use is an exception. The current government has become far better known for employing the opposite strategy: insisting that society and individuals bend to its demands and to its chosen definition of what it is to be a citizen of Iran.

In fact, both tools remain part of a larger goal: securing the Islamic Republic by remolding people’s own definitions of themselves. In that way, the strategy resembles the failed effort in the Soviet Union to build a national identity ”” the New Soviet Man ”” that was based on its own criteria. The Communists used youth camps and raw terror; anyone challenging that identity, which in their case was atheistic, was seen as challenging the state.

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