The Muslim new year has come in with a bang. On the eve of the high holiday of Eid al-Adha, explosions abound. Outside Beirut a car bomb kills four. A double-blast in Quetta, Pakistan, destroys eight lives. Twin suicide bombings in Iraq’s Diyala Province murder 26, including six women and children. Two bombers in Algiers, one a grandfather, claim over 35 victims.

This year-end killing spree – whose victims were nearly all Muslim – has again revealed a profound failure to stop violent extremism across the Muslim world. The international community, increasingly numb to a steady tide of slaughter in Muslim lands, has little to say. Muslim leaders offer a ritual disclaimer that the radicals don’t represent Islam – a “religion of peace” – and then retreat into silence.

We have failed to offer a robust response to the brutal wave of human sacrifice. This failure has allowed extremists to garner headlines and define the agenda without meeting an equally passionate response from the moderate center. It is long past time to mount a vigorous campaign against the cult of death and reaffirm a culture of life.

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To prevent teen pregnancy, should students be taught only the merits of abstaining from sex? Or should they also learn about contraception, just in case? Believers on both sides are facing off again, after a government announcement in early December that teen birthrates rose 3 percent last year following a 14-year decline. Some public-health experts blame increasingly popular sex-ed programs that preach abstinence only and keep kids in the dark about other pregnancy-prevention methods: A study published recently in the American Journal of Public Health attributed most of the 14-year birthrate drop to wider contraceptive use. “Abstinence-only programs are ideology driven,” says Marilyn Keefe, director of reproductive health and rights at the nonprofit National Partnership for Women and Families, “and not a good use of our public-health dollars.”

Abstinence advocates, meanwhile, are crying foul, saying the uptick in pregnancies is a sign that a stronger pitch for delaying sex is needed. “Any kind of assertion of blame is a disingenuous attempt to turn these statistics into a political agenda,” insists Valerie Huber, executive director of the National Abstinence Education Association. Even with more schools teaching the benefits of abstinence, she says, most still emphasize contraceptive techniques over waiting. Huber believes the purist approach is bound to lead to less sex among teens.

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The much-anticipated Advent Letter has arrived! It is hard to overemphasize the importance of the Archbishop’s letter to the Primates and to the rest of the Anglican Communion.

There is much to commend in this letter (The Rev. Canon Kendall Harmon’s analysis is very helpful). It reaffirms the Bible as our primary authority, reaffirms the traditional view of Christian sexual ethics (1998 Lambeth 1.10), and it acknowledges the hurt caused the Anglican Communion when one province acts without regard for the entire Communion.

However, what is not said in this letter may be its most important feature. History might say that this was one of the greatest missed opportunities of all time.

Archbishop Williams could have simply said, “With the advice of the Primates and for the sake of healing our Communion, I rescind the previous invitations to the July 2008 Lambeth Conference, and I hereby invite every bishop in the Anglican Communion who will agree (in writing) to the processes outlined in the Windsor Report and the Dar es Salaam Primates Communiqué, including their personal pledge to uphold 1998 Lambeth resolution 1.10 as the agreed upon standard of conduct for Anglicans worldwide.”

Instead, the Archbishop let stand the previous invitations to Lambeth which includes the attendance of bishops who supported and voted for Gene Robinson’s consecration against the advice of the Primates, and even allows for the possibility that Bishop Robinson himself will attend Lambeth 2008 with visitor status. The invitation list includes bishops who currently allow and sanction same-gender blessings, who ordain noncelibate gays and lesbians to holy orders, and who have said they will not stop these practices no matter what the rest of the Communion says. And the invitations specifically excludes all bishops ordained by Rwanda (AMiA), Nigeria (CANA), Uganda, etc. for U.S. oversight, no matter how loyal they are to the teaching of Anglicanism.

In his genteel English (Welsh) style, Rowan Williams does say that “acceptance of the invitation must be taken as implying willingness to work with those aspects of the Conference’s agenda that relate to implementing the recommendations of Windsor,” but such a wishy-washy reminder will clearly not deter revisionist bishops from attending. We have indeed become a church without boundaries. In case there’s any question about this, Williams goes on to say, “I have repeatedly said that an invitation to Lambeth does not constitute a certificate of orthodoxy but simply a challenge to pray seriously together and to seek a resolution that will be as widely owned as may be.” The “let’s vote on what Anglicans believe this week” – the lowest common denominator approach – empties our Anglican heritage of any content.

In another miscalculation, Archbishop Williams has chosen to not convene a Primates meeting before Lambeth. Instead, he will “convene a small group of primates and others…to work on answering questions arising from the inconc> lusive evaluation of the primates to New Orleans.” The Archbishop told the Primates at Dar es Salaam that he would consult them on invitations to Lambeth, which he did not do. He could have upheld the Windsor Report by inviting those who uphold the traditional values endorsed in the Windsor Report, but he did not. He could have revised the invitation list in the Advent Letter to support Windsor, but he chose not to do so. And the end result is the Windsor Report is rendered virtually meaningless, and the Windsor process has been exposed as a ploy to buy time. There could be very detrimental results from this Letter, including the disintegration of one of the Instruments of Unity (Lambeth Conference) and the diminution of the authority of another Instrument, the Primates Meeting. It looks to me like the man behind the curtain has been exposed.

The telling part will be how the Primates respond to the Advent Letter in the weeks to come.

In the meantime, Christ Church continues to maintain its strong gospel ministry and strong relationships with the healthy parts of the Communion, while working with Bishop Lillibridge for the realignment. Bishop Lillibridge has valiantly fought for the Windsor Report, and it is the Windsor bishops who are most hurt by these developments. I agree with Bishop Iker, the Episcopal Church is not going to turn back from its present course. That means that our future will be very interesting and challenging – and hopeful. I continue to think that it has never been more exciting to be a Bible-believing Anglican in America, and that God has prepared us for such a time as this!

–The Rev. Chuck Collins is rector of Christ Church, San Antonio, Texas

Check it out (hat tip GetReligion).

And in the last few months, there’s been a rising tide of concern about what our society is doing to its children in all kinds of ways, and I’m really glad to see this level of attention given to the problem. But it does mean that we ought to be asking, with any and every aspect of social policy and law, ”˜What exactly is the impact of this on children?’ Because if we have a situation where children are deprived of the opportunity of living in a secure home, or where they live in prison-like conditions, as in some detention centres, there’s something wrong.

So, one way of marking Christmas just might be to ask around a bit about homelessness in your area and specially about homeless children and young people. The Christmas story is about a child born away from a proper home, whose family end up as refugees. And that child was literally the most precious thing in the world. But every child is precious, we all know that. Se we can start thinking how we can raise other people’s awareness and do something to help, perhaps by supporting Shelter or the Runaway Helpline or Childline.

So I hope everyone will have a wonderfully happy Christmas ”“ but let it stir us up to make a few others happy too.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, dismissed the Christmas story of the Three Wise Men yesterday as nothing but “legend”.

There was scant evidence for the Magi, and none at all that there were three of them, or that they were kings, he said. All the evidence that existed was in Matthew’s Gospel. The Archbishop said: “Matthew’s Gospel doesn’t tell us there were three of them, doesn’t tell us they were kings, doesn’t tell us where they came from. It says they are astrologers, wise men, priests from somewhere outside the Roman Empire, that’s all we’re really told.” Anything else was legend. “It works quite well as legend,” the Archbishop said.

Further, there was no evidence that there were any oxen or asses in the stable. The chances of any snow falling around the stable in Bethlehem were “very unlikely”. And as for the star rising and then standing still: the Archbishop pointed out that stars just don’t behave like that.

Although he believed in it himself, he advised that new Christians need not fear that they had to leap over the “hurdle” of belief in the Virgin Birth before they could be “signed up”. For good measure, he added, Jesus was probably not born in December at all. “Christmas was when it was because it fitted well with the winter festival.”

Read it all; also a piece from the Telegraph is there.

Update: An excerpt of interview with Simon Mayo on Radio 5 live is there.

Q & A topics include:

– The Archbishop of Canterbury’s letter to Bishop Howe of Central Florida
– How Rowan Williams could get the majority of people to Lambeth
– What is the worst form of leadership
– What Wesley and Whitefield have to do with “differentiation” and “structural relief”
– Myths about the Episcopal church

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The number of executions in the United States has declined to a 13-year low, according to a study by a research group that has been critical of the way the death penalty is applied.

The 42 executions recorded in 2007 are the fewest since 1994, when there were 31, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, which compiled the report and released it Tuesday. In 1999, there were 98 executions, the highest number since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976.

The group attributes the decline to numerous factors, including public sentiment over innocence and fairness, but most notably the decision by the Supreme Court on Sept. 25 to hear a challenge to the constitutionality of lethal injection, causing a de facto moratorium on executions.

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Walter H. G. Lewin, 71, a physics professor, has long had a cult following at M.I.T. And he has now emerged as an international Internet guru, thanks to the global classroom the institute created to spread knowledge through cyberspace.

Professor Lewin’s videotaped physics lectures, free online on the OpenCourseWare of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have won him devotees across the country and beyond who stuff his e-mail in-box with praise.

“Through your inspiring video lectures i have managed to see just how BEAUTIFUL Physics is, both astounding and simple,” a 17-year-old from India e-mailed recently.

Steve Boigon, 62, a florist from San Diego, wrote, “I walk with a new spring in my step and I look at life through physics-colored eyes.”

Professor Lewin delivers his lectures with the panache of Julia Child bringing French cooking to amateurs and the zany theatricality of YouTube’s greatest hits. He is part of a new generation of academic stars who hold forth in cyberspace on their college Web sites and even, without charge, on iTunes U, which went up in May on Apple’s iTunes Store.

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What did they go out to the wilderness to see: a man in camel’s hair? What did they go out to the wilderness to hear: a voice crying: Prepare the way of the Lord? What did they go out to the wilderness to taste: locusts dipped in wild honey? What did they go out the wilderness to smell: sweet dusty earth? What did they go out to the wilderness to feel: the sun, the wind, and the dry desert air? Why do any of us go to the wilderness? What do we hope to find? I suppose we go to the wilderness to find ourselves, and hopefully, to find and be found by God.

And often when we get there, we are, in the words of Alfred Delp, “shaken and brought to the reality of ourselves.” No wonder, the scriptures take us to the wilderness in Advent, and then again in Lent. God wants to shake and awaken us to the reality of ourselves, and then fill us with hope and expectation for an uncertain but emerging future.

This morning, we hear from two great spiritual guides of the wilderness: Isaiah and John the Baptist. Isaiah, the prophet of the eighth century BCE, spoke of “a shoot from the stump of Jesse” upon which the Spirit of God would rest. He wrote of that branch growing out of a chopped down tree, a remnant people full of hope and promise for the future who would wear the girdle of righteousness and the belt of faithfulness. Some eight hundred years later, the gospels recall another prophet, a righteous and faithful man who lived in the wilderness and wore such a girdle and belt. He spoke of an axe lying at the very root of the tree, cutting it down and throwing its bad fruit into the fire.

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LEADERS of central Victoria’s Anglican churches have echoed calls from their Melbourne diocese to support the decriminalisation of abortion.

An all-woman taskforce from the state capital’s diocese has made a submission to the Victorian Law Reform Commission, which is reviewing abortion laws.

In it, the taskforce has said abortion remains a serious moral issue, but it should not remain a matter for criminal law.

“In our view, public acceptance of the reality of abortion, including acceptance of the practice among women of diverse religious communities, indicates that a change in the law is timely.”

Anglican Dean of Bendigo, the Very Reverend Peta Sherlock, told The Advertiser yesterday it was important to make a distinction between decriminalisation and legalisation.

“To want an abortion is not a crime for somebody who is in need – I think it’s a no-brainer,” she said.

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ALTHOUGH it is the most exhausting month of the year, I find December strangely reassuring. You know what you are going to get; Christmas trees, carols, angels, shopping fatigue, overspend on your credit card and now it seems, stories that “Christmas is cancelled”.
The Nativity play falls foul of the latest over-zealous health and safety law and some well-meaning council re-titles the season “Winterville”.

Or there is the change to the substance of the celebration to one that includes all faiths and none; with readings from the Bhagavad-Gita alongside “The God Delusion”.

But, now some left-wing think tank has suggested we down-grade Christmas for fear of offending religious minorities. Well, as a Muslim, I am only offended that a secular think tank should presume to know what offends me. So it was time to speak out.

But the equally predictable reaction to these stories, of denial or hysteria, obscures what is an interesting question: why should we keep Christmas? In a multicultural and religiously pluralistic society, why should we all “down tools” to celebrate, or at least recognise, a mono-confessional festival? Also obscured is the negative and rarely asked question: why shouldn’t we keep Christmas?

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A number of B.C. churches are urging Finance Minister Carole Taylor to include a carbon tax in the next budget, saying such a measure would help save God’s creation — the planet Earth.

“Climate change is a moral issue because the way we care for creation ties into how we respond to God’s creativeness,” Rev. Kenneth Gray, chair of the environment committee of the Anglican Diocese of B.C., said Wednesday.

“We support a transitional and progressive tax strategy, which forces heavy polluters and heavy consumers of fossil fuels to change their way of operating.”

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The ad, which is airing in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, shows Huckabee in front of a Christmas tree as he says, “Are you about worn out by all the television commercials you’ve been seeing, mostly about politics? Well, I don’t blame you. At this time of year sometimes it’s nice to pull aside from all of that and just remember that what really matters is the celebration of the birth of Christ and being with our family and friends.”

Huckabee is courting evangelical voters and other religious conservatives in his bid to win the Iowa caucuses Jan. 3. In Texas for a fundraiser, he said the ad was a harmless holiday greeting even though it excludes other religions.

“If we are so politically correct in this country that a person can’t say enough of the nonsense with the political attack ads could we pause for a few days and say Merry Christmas to each other then we’re really, really in trouble as a country,” Huckabee said.

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The 2008 Lambeth Conference will craft an Anglican Covenant that will set the boundaries of Anglican Church order and discipline, the Archbishop of Canterbury has stated in his Advent letter to the Primates.

But these parameters will not include gay bishops or blessings, Dr. Rowan Williams wrote on Dec 14 in a 4500 word theological tome/political manifesto outlining the ordering of Anglicanism.

The Advent letter will satisfy neither wing of the Communion, as liberals will be outraged at his rejection of the “prophetic” gay agenda, while conservatives will take umbrage that while he acknowledges the problems created by the gay agenda, Dr. Williams will not take action to correct it, preaching continued dialogue and conversation.

Dr. Williams told the primates there was “no consensus” on the merits of the American Church’s response to the Windsor Report and the Primates’ communiqués. The call for clarification had not been met, and had resulted in further questions about the Episcopal Church’s understanding of the nature of the episcopate and its views of its place within the wider catholic church.

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Mike Huckabee has surged into a virtual tie with front-runner Rudy Giuliani in the national 2008 Republican presidential race two weeks before the first contest, according to a Reuters/Zogby poll released on Wednesday.

Huckabee, a former governor of Arkansas whose campaign has caught fire in recent weeks, wiped out an 18-point deficit in one month to pull within one point of Giuliani, 23 percent to 22 percent.

Among Democrats, Hillary Clinton’s national advantage over second-place rival Barack Obama shrunk slightly to eight percentage points as the races for the White House tightened in both parties. Clinton had an 11-point edge last month.

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Muslim leaders join the U.K. Commission for Equality and Human Rights in urging Britons to enjoy Christmas, and not worry about offending non-Christians. The urging comes amid reports of schools cancelling nativity plays in order not to offend Muslims and students of other religions.

Listen to it all from NPR.

About what situations is the Archbishop here concerned? The context of the proposal ”“ ”˜unanswered questions’ with respect to NOLA ”“ indicates that the main issue is TEC’s (and perhaps other churches’) relationship with the Communion: how far does her claim as ”˜Anglican’ go when in fact her teaching and practice have clearly departed from the Communion’s? However, the mention of Windsor’s recommendations and extra-jurisdictionally ordained bishops, also indicates that the Archbishop is aware that various responses to TEC’s clear departure from Communion teaching and practice has also obscured the character of Anglican identity more broadly and of common authority. These issues must also be addressed, rather than allowed to further dissipate a common mind. The Archbishop recognises ”˜much unclarity’ over ”˜who speaks for the Communion?’ and says this needs resolution ”˜urgently’: ”˜the people of the Communion need to be sure that they are not placed in unsustainable and damaging positions by any vagueness as to what the Communion as a whole believes and endorses, and so the issue of who represents the Communion cannot be evaded”¦Not everyone carrying the name of Anglican can claim to speak authentically for the identity we share as a global fellowship’.

This last concern, which is surely a weighty one, faces into the current dissolution of the Communion’s ”˜common voice’ through a host of unilateral decisions that clearly affect teaching and discipline both. Not only are churches like TEC and certain bishops and dioceses in Canada knowingly moving ahead with innovations that run counter to everything that Anglicans have together articulated and decided, but in doing so they are wittingly undercutting the very notion of common identity, character, authority, mission, and concern. Those responding to these actions have, in their turn, if with a certain reactionary rationale, ended up moving forward in ways that do not represent common decision-making within the Communion and that may, in fact, further the dismantling of Anglican identity. To pursue such destructive innovations unilaterally, and still call oneself ”˜Anglican’ has put into question the very notion of Anglicanism itself as a divinely called church within the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church into which we are called to grow with other Christians.

The group that the Archbishop proposes offer recommendations about this challenge, as it affects several churches and the Communion as a whole (including how Lambeth Conference may operate) cannot be some judicial tribunal. Nor, however, can it be a repeat of the Panel of Reference that, despite careful work, has been unable to direct any major conflicts it has examined towards fruitful resolution. It appears that the Archbishops himself, given his own role as the articulator of the Communion’s mind, and gatherer of her chief pastors, has accepted his role as moral leader for the Communion especially in this time of crisis. He will, again, seek to bring concrete recommendations before the council of Anglicanism’s bishops for the sake of the Communion’s common ordering. This is yet another indication that the Archbishop has decided that the Lambeth Conference must be a truly conciliar decision-making body for the Communion.

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POPE BENEDICT XVI has offered a couple of recent previews of what’s likely to be his core message to the United Nations next April, the projected highlight of his first visit to the United States. Last Tuesday, the pontiff released the text of his annual statement for the Vatican’s World Day of Peace, raising typical papal concerns like poverty and disarmament, but also a defense of the family based on heterosexual marriage and, in the section reflecting Benedict’s budding environmentalism, a reminder of human supremacy over the animal kingdom.

Ten days earlier in Rome, Pope Benedict offered a more targeted message in a meeting with Catholic nongovernmental groups that work with the United Nations, delivering a stern warning against the “bitter fruits” of “relativistic logic” and a “refusal to admit the truth about man and his dignity.” Given the titanic battles the Vatican has waged against certain United Nations agencies over abortion and birth control, his comments were quickly spun by the Italian press as a major papal “attack” ahead of next year’s General Assembly address.

But if the pope’s words have fed expectations of a “High Noon”-style showdown, they are likely to be dashed. Benedict had no intention of making an anti-United Nations jeremiad. Like every pope since the birth of the United Nations in 1945, Benedict supports robust global governance, in a fashion that has long bewildered neoconservative critics of the United Nations in the United States and elsewhere. If there was anything remarkable in what he said, it’s only that the Vatican’s public-relations crew still hasn’t found a way to keep the pope from making cosmetic missteps that distract attention from his message.

While the Vatican may have its differences with United Nations agencies over sex, it also sees the organization as the lone realistic possibility for putting a human face on international politics and economics ”” what Pope John Paul II called a “globalization of solidarity.”

Moreover, Benedict undeniably has a point about relativism.

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Ugh.

Very interesting.

Read the whole piece.

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In a year when Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize and green became the new red, white and blue; when the combat in Iraq showed signs of cooling but Baghdad’s politicians showed no signs of statesmanship; when China, the rising superpower, juggled its pride in hosting next summer’s Olympic Games with its embarrassment at shipping toxic toys around the world; and when J.K. Rowling set millions of minds and hearts on fire with the final volume of her 17-year saga””one nation that had fallen off our mental map, led by one steely and determined man, emerged as a critical linchpin of the 21st century.

Russia lives in history””and history lives in Russia. Throughout much of the 20th century, the Soviet Union cast an ominous shadow over the world. It was the U.S.’s dark twin. But after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Russia receded from the American consciousness as we became mired in our own polarized politics. And it lost its place in the great game of geopolitics, its significance dwarfed not just by the U.S. but also by the rising giants of China and India. That view was always naive. Russia is central to our world””and the new world that is being born. It is the largest country on earth; it shares a 2,600-mile (4,200 km) border with China; it has a significant and restive Islamic population; it has the world’s largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction and a lethal nuclear arsenal; it is the world’s second largest oil producer after Saudi Arabia; and it is an indispensable player in whatever happens in the Middle East. For all these reasons, if Russia fails, all bets are off for the 21st century. And if Russia succeeds as a nation-state in the family of nations, it will owe much of that success to one man, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.

No one would label Putin a child of destiny. The only surviving son of a Leningrad factory worker, he was born after what the Russians call the Great Patriotic War, in which they lost more than 26 million people. The only evidence that fate played a part in Putin’s story comes from his grandfather’s job: he cooked for Joseph Stalin, the dictator who inflicted ungodly terrors on his nation.

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A truism of crisis management is that most seemingly out-of-the-blue disasters could have been prevented if someone had paid attention.

An article in The Times on Tuesday by Edmund L. Andrews leaves no doubt that the twin crises of the subprime lending mess ”” mass foreclosures at one end of the economic scale and a credit squeeze afflicting the financial system ”” are rooted in the willful failure of federal regulators to heed numerous warnings.

The Federal Reserve is especially blameworthy. Starting as early as 2000, former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan brushed aside warnings from another Fed governor, Edward M. Gramlich, about subprime lenders who were luring borrowers into risky loans. Mr. Greenspan’s insistence, to this day, that the Fed did not have the power to rein in such lending is nonsense.

In 1994, Congress passed a law requiring the Fed to regulate all mortgage lending. The language is crystal clear: the Fed “by regulation or order, shall prohibit acts or practices in connection with A) mortgage loans that the board finds to be unfair, deceptive, or designed to evade the provisions of this section; and B) refinancing of mortgage loans that the board finds to be associated with abusive lending practices, or that are otherwise not in the interest of the borrower.”

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On Monday, six middle-school students in Salem, Mass., went on a $2,500 “shopping spree” for safe toys ”“ no lead paint, no toxic magnets. The toys were destined for Toys for Tots, courtesy of SourceOne Inc., an energy-management firm in Boston.

This past Thursday, Cincinnati Toys for Tots received 8,000 plush toys (no hard plastic and no intoxicating residues) from Ty’s Toy Box, an online retailer in northern Kentucky.

In Chicago, Children’s Memorial Hospital is getting 50 CDs and 50 comic books from Denise Dorman, a publicist and mother of a 3-year-old, who worries about spreading lead paint.

This has not been the merriest of holidays for local toy drives. High-profile toy recalls and continuing concerns about the safety of products imported from China have caused donors to pull back on contributions and charities to begin screening donations. But in some places, holiday givers are coming up with creative alternatives ”“ from 24-hour Internet money drives to “make-it-yourself” toys ”“ to help children in need.

“Our aisles are bursting this this year with customers who want to help kids make toys of their own,” says Lori Gatley, of Michaels Craft Store in Pasadena Calif. She says parents are stocking up on paper, glue, and cardboard components rather than worry about safety with some manufactured toy they’ve purchased. “Most of the projects are made of materials like foam which are safe,” she says.

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Christian leaders have branded a television commercial depicting the baby Jesus tossing gifts back at the three wise men as tacky and offensive.

The ad for electronic goods retailers Betta Electrical recreates the Christian nativity scene, showing three wise men offering gifts to baby Jesus as he lies in the manger.

The commercial, which has angered Anglican and Catholic leaders, shows Jesus throwing gifts out of the manger as the words “Give a better gift” flash on the TV screen.

Christian leaders criticised the ad, calling it a tacky and offensive exploitation of religious imagery which perverts the true meaning of Christmas.

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This is just wonderful.