Good to hear it isn’t true–it didnt make much sense to me when I first read it.

A local high school basketball team may miss out on a first-ever championship because the athletic association will not accommodate their religious beliefs.

The Herzl-Rocky Mountain Hebrew Academy’s boys team is just one win from the playoffs.

However, even if they keep winning, they may not be able to get to the championship because one of the tournament games is set for a Saturday afternoon.

The students’ religious observance of the Sabbath won’t allow them to travel to Sterling for that game.

“It’s disappointing. I’m a senior and we’re not going to have anything to show for it at the end of the year,” said Desi Rotenberg, one of the students.

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Shopping is the least of it. Everywhere I go, I meet people who would never have lived so long if they’d been born a few decades earlier. Indeed, I’m one of them; I’d likely be deaf without penicillin for childhood ear infections, and dead without the al­but­erol inhaler that was only approved in the U.S. in 1981. Western New York is not the mighty economic colossus that once let Buffalo boast more millionaires per capita than any other city in America, but it is still a better place to live in now than it was then. And it is getting better all the time.

That, too, is our future. Aging will make the economy grow more slowly than we would like, and probably more slowly than we are used to. Social Security and Medicare will almost certainly be financed by a combination of benefit cuts, increased taxes, and higher retirement ages””which means that all of us will work longer than we want to, and pay more in taxes than we have before.

The political battles over all of this will be bitter, and they will probably be, too often, won by the retirees, who vote in force (though not always as a bloc). Those same retirees may also vote against things that are actually in their interest””thus shutting out the immigrants who could help them stay at home, and out of the nursing home, longer; turning down school taxes that could create a more productive workforce to support them; fighting for zoning restrictions that make it harder for the low-income workers who provide their services to live within easy commuting distance.

But if we will be worse off than we could be in an ideal world, we will still be better off than we are now, workers and retirees alike. We’ll not only be at least somewhat richer; we’ll also have years and years more to enjoy our health and wealth. The past in Newark is lovely, but the future, while not without its blemishes, is likely to be better still.

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Saturday night in midtown Manhattan, and 25 college students are packed into the living room of a small apartment. The festivities are about to get underway, and in this demographic, in this town, that typically means mind-altering substances, which segue to deafening music, which ultimately leads to nudity.

That’s not happening here. There isn’t a bong in sight, or a drop of liquor. Just 7Up and Edy’s ice cream. And when the student in charge of this shindig says it’s time for the evening to begin, he doesn’t bust out a cooler of Smirnoff Ice. He asks everyone to bow their heads and pray.

“Dear Lord God, we thank You so much for this evening. God, I just say that we who believe in You, we trust You, Lord; we trust that You are working for good. I ask that You be glorified with the rest of us here. In Jesus’s name, I pray.”

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Do you work for a fractured organisation that is busy avoiding the difficult issues? Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, does which is why I have been looking at anglican websites this week. And guess what ”“ they are fractured and busy avoiding the issues too.

The Archbishop said last week that people may be able to seek justice in the UK under different legal systems, including Sharia. This caused quite a stink, and the news bulletins soon announced that he had published clarification on his website. I would guess it has never seen anything like the traffic.

The site, which is pleasantly designed if unremarkable, has a link under Latest News labelled “What did the Archbishop actually say?”. The explanation is subtle, as one might expect from Dr Williams. I wouldn’t criticise his office for that, but I would suggest that a bit more emphasis should be given to the issue. ”˜What did he say?’ is a clear line, but it is tucked away among other links and could easily be missed by (for example) a journalist in a hurry. At the least it suggests that Dr Williams does not want to draw attention to the issue.

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Click the link under the pictures and see how you do.

In our earlier releases, it was indicated that two parishes in the Diocese of Niagara voted in favour of leaving the Diocese and the Anglican Church of Canada to seek a more conservative leadership. These parishes are St. Hilda’s in Oakville under the pastoral leadership of The Rev. Paul Charbonneau and St.George’s, Lowville, under the pastoral leadership of The Rev. Charles Masters.

It is the Bishop’s responsibility to uphold the unity of the Church and ensure that the laws of the Churchand of the land are observed, in order to protect the people of the church and its heritage. To that end,as of Tuesday February 19th, Bishop Spence and Bishop Bird have appointed:

The Rev. Dr. Brian Ruttan as administrator of St. Hilda’s Church in Oakville and
The Rev. Susan Wells as administrator of St. George’s, Lowville.

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The Canadian church’s top governing body decided last June that blessing same-sex marriages does not violate basic church doctrine, prompting anger among conservative congregations.

Canada’s bishops have decided to continue a moratorium on same-sex marriages, however. Some local parishes and dioceses are blessing the unions anyway.

Meanwhile, the dissenting churches are being asked to hand over the keys to their buildings or face legal action to have them removed from the properties.

“If they don’t turn in the keys, we are planning to go and physically try to take possession of the parishes by showing up and asking them for the keys,” the Rev. Richard Jones, an official in the Diocese of Niagara, told the Toronto Star.

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As co-founder of the blog Evangelicals for Mitt, Nancy French spent the better part of the past two years trying to persuade fellow born-again Christians to back a Mormon for president. A Tennessee-based author whose main job is raising two kids while her Army reservist husband serves in Iraq, French knew she had her work cut out when she launched the blog in 2006. After all, it wasn’t so long ago that French herself considered the idea of voting for a Mormon more or less sacrilegious.

But after learning of what she calls Mitt Romney’s “heroic effort” to combat gay marriage as the governor of Massachusetts, where the state supreme court had legalized it in 2003, about his opposition to abortion rights and federally funded embryonic stem cell research ”” the product of an admittedly recent ideological conversion ”” and his stances on issues such as terrorism, French was won over.

“My heart changed,” she says.

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At first it seemed like a few random cases of lassitude among Mary Chapin Carpenter devotees in Berkeley, Cambridge and Chapel Hill. But then psychotherapists began to realize patients across the country were complaining of the same distress. They were experiencing the first hints of what’s bound to be a national phenomenon: Obama Comedown Syndrome.

The afflicted had already been through the phases of Obama-mania ”” fainting at rallies, weeping over their touch screens while watching Obama videos, spending hours making folk crafts featuring Michelle Obama’s face. These patients had experienced intense surges of hope-amine, the brain chemical that fuels euphoric sensations of historic change and personal salvation.

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A U.S. Navy cruiser blasted a disabled spy satellite with a pinpoint missile strike that achieved the main mission of exploding a tank of toxic fuel 130 miles above the Pacific Ocean, defense officials said.

Destroying the satellite’s onboard tank of about 1,000 pounds of hydrazine fuel was the primary goal, and a senior defense official close to the mission said Thursday that it appears the tank was destroyed, and the strike with a specially designed missile was a complete success.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates ordered the shootdown, which came late Wednesday as he began an eight-day, around-the-world trip on which he likely will face questions about the mission.

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The collapse of the auction-rate bond market, where state and local governments go to raise cash, demonstrates that regulators are no match for Wall Street.

Hundreds of auctions have failed this month, sending borrowing costs as high as 20 percent because dealers from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to Citigroup Inc., UBS AG and Merrill Lynch & Co. stopped using their own capital to support the sales. Regulators, who allowed the manipulation of bids and lack of information to persist even after two probes in the past 15 years, are now watching a $342 billion market evaporate at the expense of taxpayers.

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“I wanted to leave the Episcopal Church five or more years ago but believed then that having a Diocese to care for it would be harmful to them,” Bishop Kelshaw told The Church of England Newspaper.

“Frankly I have not taken Holy Communion in the House of Bishops in about thirteen of the fifteen years I was in there because I did not consider myself in fellowship due to the pronouncements they were making concerning themselves and the church,” he said.

Bishop Kelshaw stated that he will become “Bishop in Resident” at St. James, Newport Beach, California. St. James quit the diocese of Los Angeles in 2004 to join the Church of Uganda and is currently involved in litigation with the diocese. Being an “Episcopal” bishop while serving the Church of Uganda congregation in California “would create difficulties” in the litigation he noted.

“My ministry will be here in the US,” he said, and “hopefully [be] away from the present punitive, tyrannical, oversight” of the Episcopal Church.

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Since I work for the Anglican Church, sexual and social politics also dictates that I can be relied upon to reinforce religious fear and guilt to “constrain the sexuality and sexual freedom of women”. Sheehan does not offer any support for these deeply held beliefs, and perhaps I can’t dislodge them. I wish I had his faith. But for what it is worth, the biblical authors consistently and resolutely expect men to take responsibility for their own sexual thoughts and feelings.

In an argument throughout the Gospels, Jesus attacks his contemporaries for their divorces of convenience to remarry young things, and “everyone who looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew chapter 5, verse 28). The point is not to amplify male guilt. He wants men to direct their sexual energy toward their wives, as in the ancient proverb “Take pleasure in the wife of your youth ”¦ be lost in her love forever.”

Here is a profound point about our quest for true intimacy. Nothing replaces the time invested in a marriage, a time long enough to grow the intimacy we all crave.

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Harvard Divinity School has long prided itself on the diversity of its curriculum – it currently features classes in American Buddhism, Jewish Apocalypticism, and Classical Sufism – but it took until this semester for the venerable school to offer a course on one of the fastest-growing faiths in the world: Mormonism.

The decision by Harvard to add “Mormonism and the American Experience” reflects what appears to be an uptick of interest in Mormonism in higher education nationally.

Two non-Mormon universities, Claremont Graduate University in California and Utah State University, have established the first endowed chairs in Mormon studies, and the University of Wyoming is considering taking a similar step. The American Academy of Religion, which is the largest association of religion scholars worldwide, has established a new group for specialists in Mormon studies.

There are more presses publishing academic works about Mormonism, more academic conferences on the religion, and more non-Mormon scholars studying the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as Mormonism is formally known.

“The interest is growing in Mormon studies generally, and it’s becoming something that other religious studies scholars have to take account of and pay greater attention to,” said Melissa Proctor, a visiting lecturer teaching the new class at Harvard.

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From here:

Response to the Interim Pastoral Presence

The following are identical letters to Canon Cox and Canon Moore.

February 15, 2008

It is my understanding that you have been hired by the Presiding Bishop’s Office to be a part of an interim pastoral presence with oversight in the Diocese of San Joaquin. This fact indicates one of the two things: 1) You do not believe that the Diocese was capable of removing itself from TEC in December 2007, and therefore you are intruding into the internal affairs of a recognized TEC diocese; or, 2) You do believe this diocese left TEC in 2007 and you are entering into the internal affairs of a diocese of another province.

In either case, at present, The Episcopal Church has begun attacking both me and this diocese. Your coming here is unconscionable in that you are meddling in the affairs of San Joaquin with neither the courtesy of requesting my permission as bishop nor even troubling to inform me of your plans. Such actions are hardly those of men with honorable intentions.

Even though you have already taken it upon yourself to be in contact with clergy and parishes, under no circumstances are you welcome to hold meetings in this diocese or to ask permission of clergy or other leaders to do so.

If indeed your proposal is to seek reconciliation with the goal to reduce the “threat of law suits” you are approaching the wrong persons. Why do you not come directly to me with your concerns and offers, for such lawsuits ”“ presumably ”“ would be lodged against me?

Should you choose to deal directly with me concerning the above mentioned proposals I would be willing to set aside time to meet with you in my office in Fresno. Apart from this, I ask you to desist from entering this diocese.

I remain, In earnest,
+John-David Schofield

Cc: The Most Reverend Katherine Jefferts-Schori
The Most Reverend Gregory Venables

If you are a woman in her 40s or 50s, living in an arid marriage or partnership, and are not having an affair or contemplating one, you are behaving unnaturally.

More and more women are allowing themselves to behave like my friend “A”, who, as soon as her children finished high school last year, walked away from her battle-scarred marriage, moved into her own place, commenced no-fault divorce proceedings, and joined the RSVP online dating service.

I didn’t see her for months, and when I did she looked trim and buoyant. She had a new boyfriend. “I’m behaving like an 18-year-old,” she said. She did look as if she was getting a lot of exercise. She met the new man on RSVP. She also had war stories about RSVP. One of her friends, a 60-year-old architect, received about 100 responses from women on the site.

This, by the way, is not a clarion call to infidelity. The key qualifying word in the opening paragraph is “arid”. Rather, it is a consideration of the way society treats and portrays the sensuality of older women, and why so many allow themselves to disappear into a great compromise built on habit, stability, security and obligation rather than how they really feel.

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The Rt. Rev. Jack Leo Iker, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth, announced today that he plans to participate in the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON), to be held in Jerusalem, June 22”“29, 2008. Described as “a full week of planning and pilgrimage,” the event is being organized by the leading orthodox Primates of the Anglican Communion, and participation in the conference is by invitation only.

“I want to demonstrate my solidarity with the Bishops of the Global South,” Bishop Iker said, “and to stand with them as we seek a positive way forward for the mission of the Anglican Communion during this time of dissension. I expect it to be a time of spiritual renewal and refreshment.”The conference program will focus on worship, prayer, discussion, and Bible study, shaped by the context of the Holy Land.

Bishop Iker said that he “remains in consultation” with several other bishops regarding attendance at the upcoming Lambeth Conference of Bishops, which is to be held at the University of Kent in Canterbury from July 16 to August 3. He also will be seeking the advice of his own clergy about participating in this gathering of Anglican bishops from around the world that meets once every ten years. Bishop Iker was among those in attendance at the last Lambeth Conference, which was held in 1998.

Both GAFCON and Lambeth are international conferences that will occur during the time the Bishop will be away from the diocese on a three-month sabbatical, beginning in early May.

Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign intends to go after delegates whom Barack Obama has already won in the caucuses and primaries if she needs them to win the nomination.

This strategy was confirmed to me by a high-ranking Clinton official on Monday. And I am not talking about superdelegates, those 795 party big shots who are not pledged to anybody. I am talking about getting pledged delegates to switch sides.

What? Isn’t that impossible? A pledged delegate is pledged to a particular candidate and cannot switch, right?

Wrong.

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This is a terrific piece, and do watch it all but be forewarned the content involves quite upsetting material.

Nationally, most Churches that leave the ACC will align themselves with a just-created parallel governing structure called the Anglican Network in Canada (ANIC). Globally, they will position themselves under the leadership of more traditional Anglican leaders from other continents. But they remain members of the world-wide Anglican Communion and, in fact, are only strengthening that tie by leaving a national Church that is operating outside of Anglican authority.

There is clearly a deep doctrinal and theological split in the Anglican Church. Open debates always have a place, but something is seriously wrong when Church leaders have no qualms about defying Church doctrine (the central tenets and core beliefs of the faith), yet declare a schism and cry “disobedience” when the man-created lines of Church leadership are threatened.

The real story here isn’t that a schism is now occurring in one of Canada’s most prominent Churches. What should be of most concern to those who sit in the pews is that the leadership of the Anglican Church in Canada has abandoned its traditional roles of defending the faith and the authority of Scriptures. It has refused to act even as its own leaders repeatedly defied Church doctrine and authority. Perhaps that’s why membership in Canada’s Anglican Church has declined 30% over the past 40 years, while membership at conservative Churches like St. John’s is thriving.

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The question, [Archbishop Rowan Williams]…said, is “whether certain additional choices could and should be made available under the law of the United Kingdom for resolving disputes and regulating transactions.” The Anglican leader also added that before the introduction of any such possibility much careful work and discussion would be needed.

“I wanted simply to offer a bit more of a framework for thinking about this controversy,” the archbishop declared in concluding his remarks on the subject.

The Telegraph newspaper editorial of Feb. 12 was, nevertheless, not mollified. It declared concern that the head of a national institution would call into question a fundamental principle of justice: a single system of law equally applied to all. The editorial also questioned the weakening of British culture at a time when it is under threat from aggressive Islam.

The Guardian editorial of the same day also rapped the archbishop over the knuckles, saying that he should speak “more clearly and better in future.”

It wasn’t just the media that was critical of Archbishop Williams. On Feb. 10 the Sunday Telegraph published comments by Williams’ predecessor, Lord Carey, and Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor.

“I don’t believe in a multicultural society,” remarked the archbishop of Westminster. “When people come into this country they have to obey the laws of the land,” the Catholic leader insisted.

Lord Carey, archbishop of Canterbury from 1991 to 2002, expressed concern that separate systems could lead to the creation of Muslim ghettos. He also noted that many Muslims prefer, in fact, “to embrace the West and adapt their faith and customs to Britain.”

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If you’re looking for one measure of the impact of last year’s troop surge in Iraq, look at Gen. David Petraeus as he walks through a Baghdad neighborhood, with no body armor, and no helmet.

It’s been one year since the beginning of what’s known here as Operation Fardh Al Qadnoon. According to the U.S. military, violence is down 60 percent. One key to the success is reconciliation.

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Bishop Roger Ames is no longer a cleric in the Ohio Diocese of the Episcopal Church USA.

But he is a leader in the global Anglican Communion, which includes the Episcopal Church USA.

Then there’s the church that Ames pastors ”” St. Luke’s in Fairlawn. Its incorporation papers list its name as St. Luke’s Anglican Church and Ames as pastor. Diocesan records, however, show that it is St. Luke’s Episcopal Church and that the pastorate is vacant.

The status of both Ames and the church is an indication of the level of confusion in the denomination and of what might very well be the beginning of a new Anglican province in North America.

Both Ames and Bishop Martyn Minns, the missionary bishop for the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA), say an effort is under way to unify the theologically conservative parishes that have broken away from the Episcopal Church.

”We’re trying to hold onto the traditional teachings of the church and stop the fragmentation that is going on across the country by bringing people together,” Minns said. ”We definitely have some real divisions (in the Episcopal Church) and we are trying to develop tight connections with the international church and the churches in this country.”

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With his victory in Wisconsin’s Democratic presidential primary on Tuesday, Barack Obama withstood an aggressive assault by rival Hillary Rodham Clinton and gained new momentum for their high-stakes battle ahead in Texas and Ohio.

Obama’s win raised new doubts about the Clinton campaign’s strategy of casting the Illinois senator as a candidate whose soaring rhetoric masks a lack of preparation for the presidency.

And it showed that Obama is continuing to make inroads into Clinton’s coalition of women, the elderly, working-class white voters and other groups. And that, analysts say, spells potential danger for her in the March 4 primaries in Ohio and Texas.

“Her coalition just is not holding,” said Lawrence R. Jacobs, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for the Study of Politics and Governance. “This could be — I wouldn’t say her Waterloo, but maybe the battle before the Waterloo.”

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The city of Vallejo is on the brink of becoming the first California city ever to declare bankruptcy, City Council members said Tuesday.

Vallejo may run out of cash as early as March, council member Stephanie Gomes said.

“Not only that, but now we have 20 police and fire employees retiring because they are afraid of not getting their payouts,” Gomes said. “That means we have another few million dollars in payouts that we had not expected. So the situation is quite dire.”

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In the past week, seven Canadian parishes in five dioceses have split from the national church and have put themselves under the authority of Archbishop Gregory Venables, head of the Province of the Southern Cone, which encompasses parts of South America. This week, the Diocese of Niagara in Ontario said it will replace the clergy at its two churches that voted to separate and went on to say that breakaway parishes “are no longer considered officially Anglican.” Two ministers in British Columbia have also been suspended.

ArchbishopVenables, speaking from Buenos Aires, said he is not happy about the potential for a global division, or what is happening in Canada, but he believes the worldwide Anglican Church has been on this course for more than 100 years, and he is becoming less hopeful for a resolution.

“It ends up you have two versions of Christianity,” he said. “There are two positions that have moved apart over the last century: the Bible-based orthodox Christianity that goes back to the early years of the Church and a post-modern Christianity that believes everybody can find their own truth. And those two things cannot work together.”

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Obesity needs to be tackled in the same way as climate change, a top nutritional scientist has said.

The chairman of the International Obesity Taskforce wants world leaders to agree a global pact to ensure that everyone is fed healthy food.

Professor Philip James said the challenge of obesity was so great that action was needed now, even without clear evidence of the best options.

He also called for stricter rules on marketing and food labelling.

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I think we need to take a hard look in the mirror and see what we are doing with the Anglican Communion; I think it is time to remember that we are a “communion” and not simply a “federation” of churches and that, therefore, we do not need a “pact.” What we do need is to deepen the communion beyond the search for power, domination, and control.

Who will hear us? Who can hear the message we have to proclaim, which some want to envelop in the concept of “orthodoxy,” when it is in fact the message of God through Jesus Christ, whose love reconciles us with life, and life in abundance? Our words have been words of division. Yet, in Brazil we sing: “The Word was not made to divide anyone; the Word is the bridge over which love comes and goes. The Word was not made to dominate; the destination of the Word is dialogue.” Who will hear the archbishops/primates, bishops, and priests of the Church?

We are seriously preparing ourselves in Brazil to participate in the 2008 Lambeth Conference because we are certain that this is the space for unity, and we know that unity does not mean uniformity. All of us bishops in Brazil and our spouses are in prayer while we await to meet and be reunited with brothers and sisters who live challenges and in different contexts from our own, knowing that we are united in God’s mission. So we are preparing to share our lives, challenges, and experience of being a Church that lives in missionary expansion. In 1998, the Province of Brazil had seven dioceses. Today, in 2008, we have nine dioceses and one missionary district. Despite the difficulties of two schisms, one in 2002 and another in 2004, we can say “thus far the LORD has helped us” (1 Sam 7:12, NRSV). We therefore desire to devote ourselves fully at the Lambeth Conference to the Bible study groups, to prayer, and to the breaking of bread (Acts 2).

How will we bear witness? Who will hear us? We are not being honest with ourselves. Could it be that we want to propose the path of disunity for the future of the Anglican Communion?

I believe The Episcopal Church of the United States has been showing all of us an example of the path to unity and reconciliation, because they have met all the requests for visits that were made and answered all the questions that were posed. They have spent time, money, and energy to meet the primates’ requests, always with generosity and openness. I think we need to keep in mind that we are Anglican. We are seeing a disregard of our richness and our ethos, that is, autonomy of the Provinces.

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Shannon Neal can instantly tell you the best night of her life: Tuesday, Dec. 23, 2003, the Hinsdale Academy debutante ball. Her father, Steven Neal, a 54-year-old political columnist for The Chicago Sun-Times, was in his tux, white gloves and tie. “My dad walked me down and took a little bow,” she said, and then the two of them goofed it up on the dance floor as they laughed and laughed.

A few weeks later, Mr. Neal parked his car in his garage, turned on the motor and waited until carbon monoxide filled the enclosed space and took his breath, and his life, away.

Later, his wife, Susan, would recall that he had just finished a new book, his seventh, and that “it took a lot out of him.” His medication was also taking a toll, putting him in the hospital overnight with worries about his heart.

Still, those who knew him were blindsided. “If I had just 30 seconds with him now,” Ms. Neal said of her father, “I would want all these answers.”

Mr. Neal is part of an unusually large increase in suicides among middle-aged Americans in recent years. Just why thousands of men and women have crossed the line between enduring life’s burdens and surrendering to them is a painful question for their loved ones. But for officials, it is a surprising and baffling public health mystery.

A new five-year analysis of the nation’s death rates recently released by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the suicide rate among 45-to-54-year-olds increased nearly 20 percent from 1999 to 2004, the latest year studied, far outpacing changes in nearly every other age group. (All figures are adjusted for population.)

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