The wildfires that have burned approximately 40,000 acres and hundreds of homes in Southern California have also destroyed a historic Episcopal monastery set on a hill in Santa Barbara.

Nancy Bullock, guesthouse director for the Mount Calvary Monastery and Guesthouse, said because the 20,000-square-foot Spanish-style home was situated on a hill, residents could see the fire coming before it reached the monastery last Friday morning.

“We did not wait for a call from the fire department,” she said. “We evacuated before that.”

The 22 guests of the monastery were told to leave before the seven resident monks packed up the essentials. Bullock said the only painting saved was a portrait of the Virgin of Guadalupe that hung in the monastery’s chapel.

Read it all and you can see some pictures of what the facility used to look like here.

The annual convention of the Diocese of New York approved a resolution petitioning General Convention to grant continued use of either the lectionary found in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer or the Revised Common Lectionary indefinitely. Convention met Nov. 15-16 at a hotel and convention center in Mahwah, N.J.

Convention approved several other resolutions, including one calling on “the governor and the legislature of the State of New York to ensure civil marriage equality in this state by enacting the necessary legislation to permit same-sex couples to marry.”

None of the approved resolutions produced extended debate, but approval of the $13.3 million budget as presented was approved only after the Rt. Rev. Mark Sisk, Bishop of New York, spoke in favor of it. The budget, which represented an increase of more than $880,000 over the previous year, was prepared last summer, before the severe financial downturn affected Wall Street. Some convention delegates were prepared to go through the budget line-by-line on the convention floor, but Bishop Sisk urged against a floor fight. Instead, he promised that the trustees would carefully monitor expenses in light of the new financial situation facing most parishes. Bishop Sisk also promised that the diocese would not take excessively punitive measures against congregations which are unable to meet their assessment due to financial hardship.

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A new book documents American Jewish history in an unusual way ”” through vinyl album covers.

Authors Roger Bennett and Josh Kun wrote And You Shall Know Us By The Trail Of Our Vinyl, which details Jewish vinyl album covers they have collected over the years. Jewish, in these terms, includes everything from the prolific cantor Sol Zim to the Temptations’ Fiddler on the Roof medley.

The kindred spirits found each other in 2003 as they searched for their own Jewish identities and dug through stacks of albums. They pooled their collections ”” word got around ”” and soon their garages were overflowing with vinyl.

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If the hallowed grounds of the Old Churchyard cemetery at the Parish Church of St. Helena (Episcopal) could talk, they would tell the long, storied history of not only the church but of Beaufort itself.

In the 1987 publication, “Old Churchyard: St. Helena’s Episcopal Church,” Lawrence Rowland, associate professor of history at the University of South Carolina Beaufort, called the cemetery “one of the most historic graveyards in America.”

Bob Barrett, the church’s archivist and member, and chair of the Old Churchyard Committee, couldn’t agree more. The cemetery was founded in 1724 — 12 years after the church’s founding and 13 after Beaufort was founded.

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“We do not agree with the innovations of the national church,” said the Rev. John Phelps, who conducts the services at St. Peters, St. Luke’s and Holy Spirit in Graham.

He said there are no changes in the services, the prayer books, the beliefs or the dedication to that which the church believes.
“It was a step taken to preserve the church,” he said.

“By voting to change our diocesan Constitution and Canons, we have withdrawn from the General Convention, dissociating ourselves from the moral, theological and disciplinary innovations of The Episcopal Church,” a letter distributed to parishioners throughout the diocese read Sunday. “We have realigned with another Province of the Anglican Communion. This is a change in affiliation, not a change in worship or doctrine. Our bishop, clergy and congregations have been received into the fellowship of the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone. We are deeply grateful to Archbishop Gregory Venables for this provision, which he has made on a temporary and emergency basis, in response to the crisis in The Episcopal Church. We now look forward to the formation of an Anglican Province in North America.”

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The world’s financial crisis appears to have energized Islamic militants and their supporters.

Groups that monitor terrorist Internet traffic have seen a flurry of messages on al-Qaida-linked Web sites that gloat over the West’s economic difficulties, and urge militants to take advantage.

On one Web site monitored by the U.S.-based SITE Intelligence Group, a user says, “now is a golden opportunity. If America is hit now, it will never survive, unless God permits it.”

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On Japan, the 120-page report said the country will face a “major reorientation” of its domestic and foreign policies yet maintain its status as an “upper middle rank power.”

It forecast Tokyo’s foreign policies “will be influenced most by the policies of China and the United States,” with a broad spectrum of options possible.

If China continues its current economic growth pattern, Japan will attach importance to maintaining healthy political ties and increase market access, possibly through forging a bilateral free-trade agreement, the NIC report said.

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Citigroup Inc. will probably get rescued by the U.S. government after a crisis in confidence erased half its stock-market value in three days, investors and analysts said.

Citigroup has more than $2 trillion of assets, dwarfing companies such as American International Group Inc. that got U.S. support this year. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke may favor a rescue to avoid the chaotic aftermath of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.’s bankruptcy in September.

“There is no question that Citi is in the category of ”˜too big to fail,’” said Michael Holland, chairman and founder of Holland & Co. in New York, which oversees $4 billion. “There is a commitment from this administration and the next to do what it takes to save Citi.”

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It is interesting that Obama chose Geithner over Larry Summers and other names like Paul Volcker. Geithner is a young guy at 47 years old. And to the country at large and most of the Washington political establishment, he’s a new face.

Yes indeed, change is coming.

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(The essay subtitle is: On Doing What it Takes to Get What You Want–KSH).

The changes now well underway simply described are these. At present, TEC’s Constitution renders the General Convention and the Office of the Presiding Bishop as instruments of its various Dioceses. The change sought by the Office of the Presiding Bishop and many within the House of Bishops would alter this arrangement by rendering each Diocese a creature of the General Convention. Along with this change comes another. The Office of the Presiding Bishop at present serves to execute the policies of the General Convention but does not stand in a hierarchical relation to TEC’s various Dioceses. The change now in progress would place the Office of Presiding Bishops in a hierarchical relation to these Dioceses, and in so doing give the holder of that office executive powers within the several Dioceses not accorded by the Constitution.

In times such as these actions of this sort are by no means unusual. Times of stress almost always lead those in power to stretch the law in order to achieve their purposes. Churches are no more immune to this temptation than are civil governments. Within TEC, one can see this dynamic clearly at work in two recent incidents, each of which reveals a strategy on the part of the Office of the Presiding Bishop to circumvent the requirements either of TEC’s Constitution or its Canons. I have in mind the replacement of the Standing Committee of the Diocese of San Joaquin and the deposition of Robert Duncan, Bishop of Pittsburgh.

These claims are both bold and controversial. Of this fact, I am fully aware.

Because the issues involved are so serious, I will do the best I can to make both my claims and the major objections to them as clear as possible. To my mind the objections are unconvincing. However, a grave flaw in TEC’s polity is the lack of a supreme court. As a result, the House of Bishops and the Office of the Presiding Bishop are each left in these matters to be judge in their own case. The implication of this unhappy situation is that if one excludes (as I believe one should) civil litigation as a means of establishing order in the church, the only credible arbiter left in this dispute is the court of last resort, namely, the people of the church, the court of public opinion.

Read it carefully and please read it all.

At first glance, the continuing clash between the Third Church of Christ, Scientist, and Washington’s Historic Preservation Review Board looks like dozens of others that have roiled American cities. A declining congregation considers demolishing its expensive-to-maintain church, only to be opposed by local preservationists, who argue that the building should be made a landmark.

The actions taken are the familiar ones. The congregation, which bitterly opposed landmark designation in December 2007, filed a federal lawsuit this August arguing that the designation violated its First Amendment rights by restraining its ability to practice religion freely. The District of Columbia responded by asking the court to dismiss the complaint on technical grounds, but urging the court to wait until the mayor’s agent — the chairman of the office of planning, which oversees the review board — makes a decision. The mayor’s agent has scheduled a hearing for Tuesday. If her decision goes against the District — which seems unlikely — all will be settled. Otherwise, both parties will return to federal court.
But this case is more outrageous than the norm, given the structure in question. Most such controversies swirl around church properties of a certain age, as when, in 1981, St. Bartholomew’s Church on Park Avenue in New York sought, in vain, to demolish its lovely community house in order to build a modernist tower alongside its renowned Byzantine church, constructed in 1916.

The Third Church’s building, by contrast, is relatively new — indeed, too new to be designated historic under federal law.

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Like girls sifting through dresses at Macy’s, the teens milled through aisles of sparkling pastel- and florescent-hued homecoming gowns, stepping into dressing rooms to try them on and then modeling them before their mothers.

But it wasn’t Macy’s. The girls were at a South Florida flea market where the charity Becca’s Closet gives used and new gowns to high school students unable to afford one. One mom said her hours as a nurse’s aide had been cut. Another whose mortgage payment had increased said she felt humiliated to ask for help.

“I heard money was really tight, especially in our household,” said Desiree Banton, a 16-year-old who attends a technical school and was trying on peach, lime green and bright blue gowns. “And my birthday is around the same week, so I knew it was gonna be really difficult to get everything done for homecoming.”

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One problem is that this is an especially bad time to have a Presidential transition. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson has more or less announced that he’s done making major policy calls, save for an emergency. He understandably — if a little too loudly amid a panic — wants to leave the field to the new Administration. Yet President-elect Barack Obama has seemed in no hurry to assemble an economic team, or perhaps he simply hasn’t been able to settle on one. With nerves as taut as they are, picking an HHS Secretary…before a Treasury chief is a rookie mistake.

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The British economy should balance a free market approach to private enterprise with state control of the production of goods and services, the Bishop of Liverpool told the BCSC conference.

The “market is not God” Bishop James Jones told the 2,800 delegates attending the commercial property association meeting at the Liverpool Arena on Nov 11. “A balance between laissez-faire capitalism and the rule of the state is needed,” he said.

Bishop Jones’ questioning of the assumptions of the free market system follows statements made by bishops from across the Anglican Communion in the wake of the global financial collapse while the Archbishops of York and Canterbury have voiced strong critiques of the international financial system.

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Breakaway conservative Episcopal churches are planning to form a new Anglican church in North America.

Leaders of the Common Cause Partnership, a group representing more than 100,000 church members, say they will unveil a new church constitution December 3 at Wheaton Evangelical Free Church in Wheaton, Illinois.

Bishop Robert Duncan, who was ousted by the Episcopal church last month, has been elected to lead the new group.

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Fits the situation at hand perfectly, does it not? By the actions of his diocese, Bishop Wantland has been “removed from the jurisdiction of this Church to the jurisdiction of a Church [the Province of the Southern Cone] in the Anglican Communion.” This Rule lets him ask to remain affiliated with the House of Bishops as an honorary member, with seat and voice but no vote. (There will be be taken up for second reading at GC2009 next June a proposed Constitutional amendment [Res. A020 at GC2006] to confine the right to vote in the House just “to all bishops with jurisdiction, Bishops Coadjutor, Bishops Suffragan, Assistant Bishops and every bishop holding an office created by General Convention.” This amendment, when passed, will deprive all “resigned” [i.e., retired] Bishops of their present right to vote.)

Thus it will be most interesting to see how the Presiding Bishop treats his request. I do not mean to ask what will happen if Bishop Wantland gives the required notice that he plans to attend the next meeting of the House, because the Rule states that no action on the request is required unless and until he actually shows up for the meeting in question. (Should he do so, the Rule provides only that the Presiding Officer of the House at the meeting “nominate” him for honorary membership; it is unclear whether a vote on the nomination would be taken.) No, what I see taking place is something more important: by sending the letter and announcing his desire to assume the status of an honorary member, Bishop Wantland has cut the procedural legs out from any move to depose him as a bishop for “abandonment of communion”.

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Three of the country’s major airlines are finally being forced – after a six-year-legal battle – to make additional seats available at no charge to disabled or obese passengers who need the extra room.

The Supreme Court of Canada cleared the way for the move Thursday, rejecting an application by Air Canada, Air Canada Jazz and WestJet for permission to appeal the new policy imposed by the Canadian Transportation Agency.

The court, in keeping with tradition, gave no reason for refusing to review the case. But the effect was to uphold an agency finding that the air carriers were discriminating against the disabled.

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A deep moral and spiritual crisis in Zimbabwe explains why the nation has become so corrupt, the Bishop of Harare, Dr Sebastian Bakare, told the Human Rights Conference in Lulea, Sweden, last week.

The social, economic, and po­litical challenges were just the tip of the iceberg, Dr Bakare said in a keynote address on the place of the Church. He lamented Zimbabwe’s reputation as “a nation that denies basic democratic principles and human rights”, and said that the majority of people were denied a meaningful life, lacking “every-thing except the air they breathe”. Those benefiting from political patronage had access to all that made life easier.

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As Americans await the arrival of a new administration in Washington, investors are worrying whether the financial system is again in the danger zone.

With the stock market plunging and the credit market entering a new freeze, cries are being heard for a new government intervention to prop up major financial institutions before President-elect Barack Obama takes office.

“We can’t get from here to Feb. 1 if the current ”˜who’s in charge?’ situation continues,” said Robert Barbera, the chief economist of ITG, an investment firm, arguing that Congress should adopt a stimulus package, including temporary tax cuts, as rapidly as possible. Instead, he said, Washington seems paralyzed.

Read it all from the front page of this morning’s New York Times.

Good news for worried parents: All those hours their teenagers spend socializing on the Internet are not a bad thing, according to a new study by the MacArthur Foundation.

“It may look as though kids are wasting a lot of time hanging out with new media, whether it’s on MySpace or sending instant messages,” said Mizuko Ito, lead researcher on the study, “Living and Learning With New Media.” “But their participation is giving them the technological skills and literacy they need to succeed in the contemporary world. They’re learning how to get along with others, how to manage a public identity, how to create a home page.”

The study, conducted from 2005 to last summer, describes new-media usage but does not measure its effects.

“It certainly rings true that new media are inextricably woven into young people’s lives,” said Vicki Rideout, vice president of the Kaiser Family Foundation and director of its program for the study of media and health. “Ethnographic studies like this are good at describing how young people fit social media into their lives. What they can’t do is document effects. This highlights the need for larger, nationally representative studies.”

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Researchers believe boosting the amount of a naturally forming enzyme in the body could prevent cells dying and so lead to extended, healthier, lifespans..

The protein telomerase helps maintain the protective caps at the ends of chromosomes which act like the ends of shoelaces and stop them unravelling.

As we age, and our cells divide, these caps become frayed and shorter and eventually are so damaged that the cell dies. Scientists believe boosting our natural levels of telomerase could rejuvenate them.

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Many things that Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson has said about the credit crunch and financial markets have come back to haunt him.

Now we may be facing a U.S. rescue of Citigroup Inc. — just one week after Paulson assured the American people that the banking system “has been stabilized.”

Citigroup’s shares dived $1.69, or 26.4%, to $4.71 today, leading another meltdown in financial shares, as investors bailed on fears that the sinking economy could torpedo the financial giant.

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Wall Street was last night anticipating that at least one of America’s Big Three carmakers will file for bankruptcy protection within weeks after bail-out plans for the country’s near-bust car industry were left in tatters.

General Motors shares sank to their lowest level since 1938 at one point yesterday amid a showdown between the outgoing Republican Administration under President Bush and the incoming Democrat Administration led by Barack Obama, the US President-elect who takes office on January 20.

While both sides of Capitol Hill bickered over the terms and conditions of a possible $25 billion (£16.8 billion) emergency loan, Wall Street traders became convinced that Washington will fail to devise, vote on, and force through rescue funds in time to save General Motors, Chrysler, and Ford.

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[Martyn] Minns, a former Episcopalian elevated to bishop by the Church of Nigeria and leader of the Convocation of Anglicans in North America, said the new province could count on 100,000 people as its average weekly attendance. The Episcopal Church says its average weekly attendance is about 727,000.

Becoming a province would require approval from two-thirds of the primates and recognition from the Anglican Consultative Council, another church body.

“More than half of the Anglican world will support us,” Minns said in an interview, referring to the primates. “My guess is that we have provincial recognition from at least a majority.”

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U.S. economic and political clout will decline over the next two decades and the world will be more dangerous, with food and water scarce and advanced weapons plentiful, U.S. spy agencies projected on Thursday.

The National Intelligence Council analysis “Global Trends 2025” also said the current financial crisis on Wall Street is just the first phase of a global economic reordering.

The U.S. dollar’s role as the world’s major currency would weaken to become a “first among equals,” the report said.

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Update: Much more here including a link to the full report.

Ziff Davis Media announced Wednesday that it was ending print publication of its 27-year-old flagship, PC Magazine, and would take the title online only.

It is the latest of several magazine publishers to drop a print edition, as advertising plummets and the cost of printing a paper version rises.

“The viability for us to continue to publish in print just isn’t there anymore,” Jason Young, chief executive of Ziff Davis, said in an interview.

While most magazines make their money mainly from print advertising, PC Magazine derives most of its profit from its Web site. More than 80 percent of the profit and about 70 percent of the revenue come from the digital business, Mr. Young said, and all of the writers and editors have been counted as part of the digital budget for two years.

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The Pope’s top aides may have already informed Benedict about a campaign promise Obama made on July 17, 2007, to Planned Parenthood, stating that his first act as President would be to sign the Freedom of Choice Act, which would undo legislation that put restrictions on access to abortions. Some Catholics have warned that such a decree, which would essentially codify Roe v. Wade into federal law, could force doctors in Catholic hospitals to perform abortions against their conscience. “There’s more fear here than wrath,” a senior Vatican official told TIME with regard to the Catholic hierarchy’s attitude toward Obama. However, if Obama signs the Freedom of Choice Act in his first months in office, “it would be the equivalent of a war,” says the same official. “It would be like saying, ‘We’ve heard the Catholic Church and we have no interest in their concerns.’ ” U.S. Catholic bishops at a meeting in Baltimore last week vowed to take on Obama for his support of abortion rights; they are also skeptical about his assurances to try to reduce the number of abortions while supporting the right to choose.

Even before the election, Democrats were warned not to risk becoming the “party of death,” according to former St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke. It was Burke who famously pledged in 2004 to deny communion to the pro-choice Catholic presidential candidate John Kerry. The archbishop has since been promoted to Rome as head of the Holy See’s equivalent of a Supreme Court. Meanwhile, in response to a question last week on Obama’s pledge to reverse Washington’s policy on stem-cell research, Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan, who heads the Vatican office for health, made it clear that the church will not shy away from the debate. “What builds up man is good, what destroys him is bad,” he told reporters, arguing that one human being should never become a material resource for the betterment of another.

Nevertheless, 54% of U.S. Catholic voters supported Obama, who is Protestant. That may give him the cover to move ahead with his pledges.

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Two nondenominational churches ”“ New Beginning Christian Church and The Sanctuary of Wilmington. Each values tithing. Each congregation claps and sings in worship. And each congregation enthusiastically responds to the preaching.

But the main difference in these churches is the people sitting in the pews.

Most of the members of New Beginning Christian Church are black. Most of the members of The Sanctuary are white.

Another in the long line of should-have-been-already-posted. An uncomfortable but important topic.

The Church of England’s General Synod has held its third virtual question time. The text of all 28 Questions and Answers is available if you follow the link to the pdf provided here. Well worth the time–KSH.