Father David Pittman – the rector of St. Peter’s – speaks carefully when asked if his parish performs gay unions. No, because gay marriage is illegal in North Carolina.

But, “that doesn’t mean that we don’t have services from time to time to celebrate with a couple – who happen to be the same gender – their relationship.”

But, he says, that’s not what St. Peter’s is about.

“Our business here is worshipping God the best way we can and serving those around us, especially those who are in need,” says Pittman.

Over at All-Saints Anglican, Father [Filmore] Strunk is surrounded by parishioners and casseroles for an after-meeting potluck. He may be a lot more conservative, but his focus is quite similar to Father Pittman’s.

“I haven’t preached a sermon on gay marriage in two years, I guess?” says Strunk. “Most of my sermons are about ordinary folks trying to make sense of their lives and follow God’s will.”

Read it all.

President-elect Barack Obama’s team is considering a plan to boost the recession-hit U.S. economy that could be far larger than previous estimates and might reach $1 trillion over two years, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday.

Obama aides, who were considering a half-trillion dollar package two weeks ago, now consider $600 billion over two years “a very low-end estimate,” the newspaper said, citing an unidentified person familiar with the matter.

The final size of the stimulus was expected to be significantly higher, possibly between $700 billion and $1 trillion over that period, it said, given the deteriorating state of the U.S. economy.

Read it all.

A vastly downsized Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh launched its reorganization Saturday, calling a senior bishop from North Carolina to serve as its interim leader.

The Right Rev. Robert Hodges Johnson, a retired bishop who previously served as interim bishop to a Virginia diocese in upheaval, will serve as assisting bishop to the Diocese of Pittsburgh through July 2009, as it reorganizes, the Rev. James B. Simons announced yesterday. Simons, president of the Standing Committee of the Pittsburgh diocese, made the announcement during his state of diocese speech at a special convention yesterday at which representatives from 28 parishes met to reorganize, ordain a new priest and elect new leadership.

Read it all.

Motown left years ago. The city’s former mayor is behind bars. Unemployment hovers around 14 percent. An emergency loan measure for its automakers died in Washington late Thursday after failing to generate enough support from Republican senators. Oh, and its professional football team is 0-13 for the season.

How much more, one wonders, can Detroit take?

“To me, it’s like piling on,” Gail Taylor, one of the city’s legions of unemployed men, said Friday of the Senate’s decision on the loan measure. “We’ve been through enough around here.”

Read it all.

An unpublished 513-page federal history of the American-led reconstruction of Iraq depicts an effort crippled before the invasion by Pentagon planners who were hostile to the idea of rebuilding a foreign country, and then molded into a $100 billion failure by bureaucratic turf wars, spiraling violence and ignorance of the basic elements of Iraqi society and infrastructure.

The history, the first official account of its kind, is circulating in draft form here and in Washington among a tight circle of technical reviewers, policy experts and senior officials. It also concludes that when the reconstruction began to lag ”” particularly in the critical area of rebuilding the Iraqi police and army ”” the Pentagon simply put out inflated measures of progress to cover up the failures.

In one passage, for example, former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is quoted as saying that in the months after the 2003 invasion, the Defense Department “kept inventing numbers of Iraqi security forces ”” the number would jump 20,000 a week! ”˜We now have 80,000, we now have 100,000, we now have 120,000.’ ”

Read it all.

“Look at the language (which I have quoted above). Canon III.12.7 says by its own terms that it cannot be used in the case of any person who ‘is subject to the provisions of Canon IV.8.’ The canons in Title IV all deal with punishment for violations of the Canons. The canons in Title III, however, have to do with the ordinary life and ministry of the clergy, not with punishment.

“By first invoking Title IV against the Texas bishop, she charged him with a presentable offense. Then, however, she resorted to Title III so she could get rid of him a little sooner. That was ‘a big no-no’, as you Americans are wont to say, because by using Title III she exonerated him of the charges she had made under Title IV—without actually announcing that she had done so, and without apologizing for invoking Title IV in the first place.

Read it all (and make sure to note the interaction in the comments between A.S. Haley and Thomas Woodward).

The White House weighed its options Saturday for preventing a collapse of the troubled auto industry, once the backbone of the U.S. economy. So far, the only thing certain is that the Bush administration wants to avoid the possibility of a disorderly bankruptcy of any of the Big Three.

General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC have said they could run out of cash within weeks without government help.

“Administration officials are continuing to gather financial information from the automakers, assessing the data, their cash position going forward,” White House deputy press secretary Tony Fratto said Saturday. “We’ll take a look at that information, make some judgments and review our options.”

Read it all.

Harvard kicked off a small but ambitious experiment this week that it hopes will become a new “third stage” of university education. For the student-fellows in the program, most in their 50s and early 60s, the goal is a second-act career in a new stage of life.

The 14 fellows have résumés brimming with achievement ”” including a former astronaut, a former senior official at the United States Agency for International Development, a physician-entrepreneur from Texas, a former public utility official from California, a former health minister from Venezuela and a former computer executive from Switzerland.

They gathered at Harvard on Thursday to begin the yearlong program intended to help them learn how to be successful social entrepreneurs or leaders of nonprofit organizations focused on social problems like poverty, health, education and the environment. Their interests include sickle cell anemia, women’s education in Africa, health care quality and water conservation.

The opportunity, the fellows say, is to pick up new knowledge, skills and professional relationships in a new realm. To Charles F. Bolden Jr., one of the fellows, it has the potential to be as life-changing as his selection to join America’s space program nearly three decades ago. “The Harvard program feels sort of like that,” said Mr. Bolden, 62, a retired major general in the United States Marine Corps and a veteran of four space shuttle missions.

Read it all.

The Vatican issued its most authoritative and sweeping document on bioethical issues in more than 20 years on Friday, taking into account recent developments in biomedical technology and reinforcing the church’s opposition to in vitro fertilization, human cloning, genetic testing on embryos before implantation and embryonic stem cell research.

The Vatican says these techniques violate the principles that every human life ”” even an embryo ”” is sacred, and that babies should be conceived only through intercourse by a married couple.

The 32-page instruction, titled “Dignitas Personae,” or “The Dignity of the Person,” was issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican’s doctrinal office, and carries the approval and the authority of Pope Benedict XVI.

Under discussion for six years, it is a moral response to bioethical questions raised in the 21 years since the congregation last issued instructions.

Read it all.

Read it carefully and read it all (23 page pdf).

The Democratic convention in August offered another example of the ways religious belief confounds political loyalty oaths. At a “faith caucus” organized by the Obama campaign, the speakers included the Rev. Charles Blake, presiding bishop of the Church of God in Christ, a black Pentecostal denomination.

Within the same sermon, Mr. Blake denounced the Democrats for supporting abortion rights, calling for outright resistance, and then turned his wrath against Republicans for being “silent if not indifferent” to social injustice. And both parts of the preaching were avidly received by the audience.

Had commentators been paying attention, Mr. Blake’s exhortation could have practically served as a prelude to the way many of his followers in California, where the Church of God in Christ is especially strong, split their tickets on Election Day between Mr. Obama and “Yes” on Proposition 8. But if the standard view of the black church is that it is always liberal, based on its civil rights activism and Democratic voting habits, then this wellspring of social conservatism seemed to be some kind of shock.

Read it all.

The paradigm has shifted. Dating is dated. Hooking up is here to stay.

(For those over 30 years old: hooking up is a casual sexual encounter with no expectation of future emotional commitment. Think of it as a one-night stand with someone you know.)

According to a report released this spring by Child Trends, a Washington research group, there are now more high school seniors saying that they never date than seniors who say that they date frequently. Apparently, it’s all about the hookup.

When I first heard about hooking up years ago, I figured that it was a fad that would soon fizzle. I was wrong. It seems to be becoming the norm.

Read it all.

For years, investors, rivals and regulators all wondered how Bernard L. Madoff worked his magic.

But on Friday, less than 24 hours after this prominent Wall Street figure was arrested on charges connected with what authorities portrayed as the biggest Ponzi scheme in financial history, hard questions began to be raised about whether Mr. Madoff acted alone and why his suspected con game was not uncovered sooner.

As investors from Palm Beach to New York to London counted their losses on Friday in what Mr. Madoff himself described as a $50 billion fraud, federal authorities took control of what remained of his firm and began to pore over its books.

But some investors said they had questioned Mr. Madoff’s supposed investment prowess years ago, pointing to his unnaturally steady returns, his vague investment strategy and the obscure accounting firm that audited his books.

Read it all from the front page of today’s New York Times. Please note that the title above is the one given in the print edition; the web version is slightly different. The Times is chuck full of stories on Mr. Madoff today–two on the front page alone–and I encourage you to go to the website and read them all if you have the time and interest–KSH.

The sudden crush of worshipers packing the small evangelical Shelter Rock Church in Manhasset, N.Y. ”” a Long Island hamlet of yacht clubs and hedge fund managers ”” forced the pastor to set up an overflow room with closed-circuit TV and 100 folding chairs, which have been filled for six Sundays straight.

In Seattle, the Mars Hill Church, one of the fastest-growing evangelical churches in the country, grew to 7,000 members this fall, up 1,000 in a year. At the Life Christian Church in West Orange, N.J., prayer requests have doubled ”” almost all of them aimed at getting or keeping jobs.

Like evangelical churches around the country, the three churches have enjoyed steady growth over the last decade. But since September, pastors nationwide say they have seen such a burst of new interest that they find themselves contending with powerful conflicting emotions ”” deep empathy and quiet excitement ”” as they re-encounter an old piece of religious lore:

Bad times are good for evangelical churches.

“It’s a wonderful time, a great evangelistic opportunity for us,” said the Rev. A. R. Bernard, founder and senior pastor of the Christian Cultural Center in Brooklyn, New York’s largest evangelical congregation, where regulars are arriving earlier to get a seat. “When people are shaken to the core, it can open doors.”

Read it all.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: In Washington, speculation is running high about where Obama and his family will attend church after they move into the White House. Earlier this year, Obama cut ties with his longtime Chicago congregation, Trinity United Church of Christ, because of its controversial former pastor Jeremiah Wright. Kim Lawton takes a look at some of the Washington churches Obama may want to consider.

KIM LAWTON: If the Obamas want to go with an establishment mainline congregation, they may want to consider National Presbyterian Church. It’s regularly attended by cabinet officials, members of Congress, and Supreme Court justices. Congregational archives claim that most presidents since James Madison have visited the church at least one time. National Pres, as it’s called, has about 2,500 members, and note to Obama daughters Sasha and Malia: there’s an active children’s program with about 400 kids.

National Pres has a special Chapel of the Presidents, dedicated to Dwight D. Eisenhower. Ike was the last president to make this his church home. He was actually baptized here while he was president.

Read it all.

The pastor and parishioners at Church of the Good Shepherd will go to worship Sunday not knowing whether the congregation can stay in its Conklin Avenue building.

A state Supreme Court judge decided Friday to reserve a decision in the legal dispute between the local church and a regional diocese over who owns the property in the wake of Good Shepherd’s withdrawal from the Episcopal denomination.

For now, the congregation will focus on Christmas, according to the Rev. Matthew Kennedy.

“If this is our last Christmas, at least we’ll celebrate it together,” Kennedy said he will tell parishioners at worship Sunday. “Every year, every day, we walk according to God’s grace.”

Read it all.

U.S. Anglicans are now split, and a West Michigan pastor says he’s excited about joining dissidents in the province that formed last week.

“Is it a divisive move? It might be, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing,” said the Rev. Andrew Gross, pastor of Holy Trinity Anglican Church in South Haven. “When our core proclamation is at stake, division is not necessarily bad.”

Holy Trinity is now part of the new Anglican Church in North America, a breakaway from the Episcopal Church that is the worldwide Anglican Communion’s American branch.

Gross said the division is not so much over the much-talked-about issues of sexuality — although fault lines formed with the ordination of openly gay Bishop Gene Robinson in 2004 — but over belief in who Jesus was.

Read it all.

Leaders of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh that remained in the Episcopal Church after most of the diocese seceded have named as their interim spiritual leader retired Bishop Robert Hodges Johnson, formerly of the Diocese of Western North Carolina.

Bishop Johnson, not to be confused with a different Bishop Robert Johnson who also served in North Carolina, will provide part-time pastoral and sacramental duties while a committee of local clergy and laity continues to run the diocese. His contract ends July 31. Bishop Johnson did similar work in the Diocese of Southern Virginia in 2006.

Read it all.

St. John’s Anglican Church in Park City, Utah’s only congregation to break away from the Episcopal Church after its election of the first openly gay bishop, will join the new rival denomination announced last week.

The new group, to be called the Anglican Church of North America, estimates it will have 100,000 members, compared with the 2.3 million-member Episcopal Church. According to news reports, the proposed province would unite nine groups that have left the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada over the years, including four Episcopal dioceses and umbrella groups for dozens of individual parishes in the U.S. and Canada.

“It will create a larger network of churches and a stronger presence in the U.S., Canada and Mexico,” said the Rev. Doug Folsom, St. John’s pastor. “Being united, we are not just off by ourselves.”

Read it all.

Last month, the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth, Texas, became the fourth American Episcopal diocese to formally break away from the Episcopal Church, the U.S. branch of Anglicanism, in a long-simmering feud over Biblical authority that included the 2003 consecration of the church’s first openly gay bishop, Gene Robinson, of New Hampshire.

Although discussions are ongoing, Bishop Mark Joseph Lawrence, of the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina in Charleston, said the state diocese does not plan to join the newly formed Anglican Church in North America.

“I anticipate the Diocese of South Carolina holding to the faith that is revealed in Holy Scripture, defending that and moving forward with the mission of the church here and throughout the world,” Lawrence said. “This is not just a national church issue. It is an issue for the worldwide Anglican Communion, of which the Episcopal Church is a part. I think (the split) was primarily because many of the leaders of the Episcopal Church have been tone deaf to the needs of the conservative parishioners and clergy. I know many of the players involved, and I understand their distress and concerns.”

Read it all.

First the Big Three CEOs told Congress they needed $25 billion in federal loans. Then they told Congress they needed $34 billion. Then two of those CEOs ”” from General Motors and Chrysler, not Ford ”” told Congress they needed an upfront $14 billion compromise package before year’s end. No wonder those guys are in so much balance-sheet trouble: They don’t even know how much money they need.

If they did, maybe they could have convinced the Senate to pass that $14 billion compromise approved by the House Wednesday night. Instead, the Senate effectively killed it on Thursday.

It’s a shame our auto industry is in such dire shape and that the rest of our nation’s economy will feel painful ripple effects from its meltdown, with or without a bailout. But while the Bush administration said Friday that it will provide that $14 billion from the $700 billion financial-sector bailout or “other sources,” it’s difficult to see how Detroit can rally without a comprehensive overhaul. It’s also difficult to generate confidence in the Big Three bosses and in those Treasury officials who pushed through that other bailout in October by charting a “rescue” course that soon took major detours.

Read it all.

Sing praises to the LORD, O you his saints, and give thanks to his holy name. For his anger is but for a moment, and his favor is for a lifetime. Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning.

–Psalm 30: 4,5

At last the bullets had stopped, and François Kambere Siviri made a dash for the door. After hiding all night from firefights between rebels and a government-allied militia over this small but strategic town, he was desperate to get to the latrine a few feet away.

“Pow, pow, pow,” said his widowed mother, Ludia Kavira Nzuva, recounting how the rebels killed her 25-year-old son just outside her front door. As they abandoned his bloodied corpse, she said, one turned to her and declared, “Voilà, here is your gift.”

In little more than 24 hours, at least 150 people would be dead, most of them young men, summarily executed by the rebels last month as they tightened their grip over parts of eastern Congo, according to witnesses and human-rights investigators.

Read it all from the front page of yesterday’s paper.

Cardinal Avery Dulles, a scion of diplomats and Presbyterians who converted to Roman Catholicism, rose to pre-eminence in Catholic theology and became the only American theologian ever appointed to the College of Cardinals, died today died Friday morning at Fordham University in the Bronx. He was 90. His death, at the Jesuit infirmary at the university, was confirmed by the New York Province of the Society of Jesus in Manhattan.

Cardinal Dulles, a professor of religion at Fordham University for the last 20 years, was a prolific author and lecturer and an elder statesman of Catholic theology in America. He was also the son of John Foster Dulles, the secretary of state under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and the nephew of Allen Dulles, who guided European espionage during World War II and later directed the Central Intelligence Agency.

A conservative theologian in an era of liturgical reforms and rising secularism, Cardinal Dulles wrote 27 books and 800 articles, mostly on theology; advised the Vatican and America’s bishops, and staunchly defended the pope and his church against demands for change on abortion, artificial birth control, priestly celibacy, the ordination of women and other issues.

Read it all.

South Carolina must stop marketing and making license plates that feature the image of a cross and the words “I Believe” while a lawsuit challenging the plates’ constitutionality goes forward, a federal judge ruled Thursday.

U.S. District Judge Cameron Currie issued the temporary injunction after an hour-long court hearing in which opponents argued that the plates, which depict a stained-glass window with a cross on the left hand side and the words “I Believe” across the top, violate the separation of church and state.

Washington, D.C.-based Americans United for Separation of Church and State had sued state officials on behalf of two Christian pastors, a humanist pastor and a rabbi in South Carolina, along with the Hindu American Foundation, after a bill creating the license plates sailed through South Carolina’s Legislature.

Read it all.

From here:

Forward in Faith is appalled by TEC Primate Jefferts Schori’s continued attack upon Bishop Jack L Iker, a bishop of the Province of the Southern Cone. The actions of Jefferts Schori are an embarrassment to Christians and all of Anglicanism. Her actions clearly demonstrate her disregard for other provinces of the Anglican Communion and the canons of her own denomination. Clearly her statements misrepresent the facts. Bishop Iker has not renounced his orders, nor has he abandoned the Communion.

FiF is appreciative of Bishop Jack Iker’s leadership and willingness to stand for biblical truth and the faith and order of the undivided Church. Forward in Faith applauds Bishop Iker’s leadership in the Diocese of Fort Worth, in our worldwide Forward in Faith organization and in the further establishment of the Anglican Church of North America. We offer prayers of thanksgiving for Bishop Iker’s faithfulness and ask our Lord Jesus to continue to bless his ministry as a bishop for the further spread of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

–(The Rt. Rev.) John Fulham is Chairman, Forward in Faith International

Some have wondered about the status of this church, and about its intention to seek recognition as a province of the Anglican Communion. A basic principal of catholic Christianity is that it is not self-authenticating; its credentials cannot be established by the mere assertion of them. Christian faith looks to authorities, as well: the Scriptures, principally, but also Creeds and Councils that articulate them reasonably and traditionally, and all of which communicate the Gospel and act as a standard by which faith is recognized and acknowledged. Anglicanism itself represents a distinctive witness within the Christian faith, with its own markers and measures. A particular church (any particular church) always looks beyond itself in some way in the key points of its existence, and others will evaluate it accordingly.

However we view this new church in terms of these things, we must recognize that membership in the Anglican Communion is not something claimed unilaterally or seized by force. Sharp elbows may be useful in any number of contexts, but are hardly edifying or effective in this one. A request to be admitted as a province must be approved by the Primates’ Meeting and then acted upon by the Anglican Consultative Council, two of the Instruments of Communion that have developed within Anglicanism to help bring coherence to its life. The constituent bodies of the Anglican Church in North America are not known for a willingness to pay much heed to any of the Instruments of Communion. It is even doubtful that they are much interested in any authentication that looks to the existing structures of the world-wide Communion. Their witness is predicated on a self-proclaimed unwillingness to wait for these structures to work.

Read it all.

It began on the radio this summer. New York Assemblyman Dov Hikind ran a segment on his Saturday night talk show titled “We Are Only as Sick as Our Secrets: Sexual Abuse, Healing the Shame,” featuring graphic accounts of sexual abuse of children in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn.

There had been a few high-profile cases before, but this “was when the floodgates opened,” explained Mr. Hikind, an Orthodox Jew himself. Following the show, additional victims and their family members came forward to share with Mr. Hikind their own stories. “Cases of sexual abuse are not worse among the Orthodox,” clarifies Mr. Hikind. “But when there’s a problem and you don’t deal with it, it gets worse.” Over the past few months he has collected hundreds of testimonies spanning several decades, naming at least 50 alleged pedophiles across the tri-state Orthodox Jewish community, including well-respected rabbis and teachers.

But now these testimonies have become a source of contention.

Read it all. This is a VERY difficult topic that one would rather not even think about, but it must be faced. Given its sensitive nature, please use extra caution in the comments and keep them on topic–KSH.

The government’s spending surge to ease the financial crisis and a worsening recession is increasing the federal share of the nation’s economic activity close to $1 out of every $4, the highest level since World War II, an analysis of current and projected payments shows….

Economists warn that the fast pace of government spending could spell trouble in the future: slower economic growth, higher interest rates, and the likelihood that tax increases or spending cuts will be needed to tame a budget deficit headed toward a record $1 trillion. The government reported Wednesday that the deficit for the first two months of the 2009 fiscal year was more than $400 billion.

“That’s the opposite of what we’re trying to do to the economy,” says Maya MacGuineas, president of the non-partisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. The government should boost spending, but “we have to do it really carefully,” she says.

Read it all.

The Rev Stephen Coulter told parishioners not to sing the carol after he visited the West Bank.

He told them the words ‘How still we see thee lie’ were too far removed from life in Bethlehem.

He said where shepherds once used to watch over flocks by night now security guards watched over the people living there.

As a result the carol has been banned from all festive services in his Dorset parish of Blandford Forum.

Read it all.