Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor has signalled a change of direction for the Church in England and Wales with an outspoken attack on the ideology of multiculturalism.
The Cardinal said efforts to create a multicultural society had led to a “lessening of the kinds of unity that a country needs”.

He made his comments after Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, said that Britain needed to accommodate religious legal codes, such as Islamic Sharia law, in order to achieve community cohesion.

The Anglican leader told the BBC that the adoption of some aspects of the Sharia in Britain “seems unavoidable”. He faced a storm of protest after the remark and was forced to fight off calls for his resignation from several members of the General Synod.

The Cardinal intervened in the debate to say that migrants should embrace the idea of equality under the law rather than live by other legal codes.

“I don’t believe in a multicultural society,” he told the Sunday Telegraph. “When people come into this country they have to obey the laws of the land. There are going to be certain things which might clash in the overall culture of the country. That’s where one has to make a judgment.”

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LP: Here is a robust question. “Must we accommodate Islam or not, as Christians?”

RW: Must we accommodate Islam or not as Christians? Must I love my Muslim neighbour? Yes, without qualification or hesitation. Must I pretend to my Muslim neighbour that I don’t believe my own faith? No, without hesitation or qualification. Must I as a citizen in a plural society work for ways of living constructively, rather than tensely or suspiciously with my Muslim neighbour? Yes, without qualification or hesitation.

LP: This is, again, a question on a premise but it might be interesting to know whether you agree the premise. “Why are Muslims so scared to debate and question sharia law?”

AB: Well, I can’t speak for Muslims. There are quite a lot of them in the world and I’m not one of them. But I think that precisely because of the convergence of faith and custom in so many contexts, the way in which people construct and pin down their identities becomes very much allied to these issues about how disputes are resolved and what protocols are observed. And I think therefore there is an understandable sense, often confused and I would say misguided, that touching any bit of the cultural complex, undermines your whole identity. That has to do with the perceived political and social insecurity of many Muslim communities in our world. And I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, the paradox is that from the Western perspective we frequently see the Muslim world as powerful, aggressive, coherent and threatening. From the other side of the world, the Muslim world, or a great deal of it sees us as powerful, coherent and threatening in very much the same way. Now, when those are the perceptions, you don’t have a very fertile ground for critical, relaxed, long-term discussions of some legal and cultural issues, and I think that’s a question that can’t really be answered without looking at those larger, global, political questions.

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It would be wonderful if we knew more about teachers such as these and how to multiply their number. How do they come by their craft? What qualities and capacities do they possess? Can these abilities be measured? Can they be taught? Perhaps above all: How should excellent teaching be rewarded so that the best teachers””the most competent, caring and compelling””remain in a profession known for low pay, low status and soul-crushing bureaucracy?

Such questions have become critical to the future of public education in the U.S. Even as politicians push to hold schools and their faculty members accountable as never before for student learning, the nation faces a shortage of teaching talent. About 3.2 million people teach in U.S. public schools, but, according to projections by economist William Hussar at the National Center for Education Statistics, the nation will need to recruit an additional 2.8 million over the next eight years owing to baby-boomer retirement, growing student enrollment and staff turnover””which is especially rapid among new teachers. Finding and keeping high-quality teachers are key to America’s competitiveness as a nation. Recent test results show that U.S. 10th-graders ranked just 17th in science among peers from 30 nations, while in math they placed in the bottom five. Research suggests that a good teacher is the single most important factor in boosting achievement, more important than class size, the dollars spent per student or the quality of textbooks and materials.

Across the country, hundreds of school districts are experimenting with new ways to attract, reward and keep good teachers. Many of these efforts borrow ideas from business. They include signing bonuses for hard-to-fill jobs like teaching high school chemistry, housing allowances ($15,000 in New York City) and what might be called combat pay for teachers who commit to working in the most distressed schools. But the idea gaining the most momentum””and controversy””is merit pay, which attempts to measure the quality of teachers’ work and pay teachers accordingly.

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“Amazing Grace,” the big-budget film that traced the life of abolitionist William Wilberforce, won Most Inspiring Movie of 2007 and Best Movie for Mature Audiences at the 16th annual Movieguide Faith and Values Awards on Wednesday in Beverly Hills, Calif.

The film stars Ioan Gruffudd as Wilberforce, a member of Parliament who fought to end the slave trade in the 18th century British Empire.

The historical drama from Samuel Goldwyn Films beat out other nominees including “Bella,” “I Am Legend” and “Spider-Man 3” among others.

It was awarded the $50,000 Epiphany Prize, sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation, which provides $100,000 annually to films and television shows that reflect a “dramatic increase in either man’s love of God or man’s understanding of God,” according to the Web site for Epiphany Prizes.

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Samuels said the pastor seemed to be continuing his good work, recently announcing a new program that will enable single women to take a financial literacy course and receive help on buying a new car.

Others, like Mark Clark, 40, of Ashburton, disagreed. “I love Jamal Bryant. He is a wonderful person,” said Clark of the man he calls an old friend. “Unfortunately, I feel that he is a victim of [being] someone that got a whole lot too fast and too soon and truly did not know how to deal with the fame, power and prestige that came his way,” he said.

“Any pastor in that position needs to be removed from that position,” he added. “I don’t think it should be permanent, but I think it should be long enough so that his personal situations are resolved.”

There is no punishment for pastors who get divorced, Richardson said, though the conference might require a pastor to apologize to the congregation or not preach for a period of time.

“None of us are exempt from exposure to temptation but we would hope that we would find enough discipline in our own behavior to overcome and to move on and to encourage other people through our example,” Richardson said. “So that’s what I’m hoping for Dr. Bryant. In the meantime, my plan is to pray for him.”

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Since the election of an openly gay bishop in 2003 and a female presiding bishop in 2006, reports of dissension and division within the Episcopal Church and its parent body, the Anglican Communion, has been prevalent.

Such unrest isn’t unfamiliar to Episcopalians along the Gulf Coast.

Several years ago, parishioners of a handful of congregations in the Pensacola, Fla.-based Episcopal Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast — including what’s now Christ Church Cathedral in Mobile — left the Episcopal Church. In 2006, Daphne’s Church of the Apostles, started as an Episcopal mission congregation, dissolved its ties to the area diocese.

But on the cusp of the diocesan convention next week, Bishop Philip M. Duncan II indicated that the diocese’s days of division and departure may be done.

“I think that many of the people who wanted to leave have left,” Duncan said. “I’ve had people tell me that they may not agree with everything that the Episcopal Church is doing or the Anglican Communion is doing or that the diocese is doing or even that their own church is doing. But it really is about keeping the family together and not entering into a new schism. Because what some have said to me is that when churches divide, and this is probably true historically, they divide and then they keep dividing.”

And so we have another version of the current TEC leadership seeking to defend the status quo. News flash–Christianity is not about stagnation, it is about abundant life (John 10:10). The diocese of the Central Gulf Coast has declined .5% in membership from 2001-2006 according to the Episcopal Church’s own office of statistics. From 1996 to 2006 the baptized membership there went from 20,434 to 20,723. From 2003 to 2006 the Average Sunday Attendance in this diocese went from 7,646 to 7,099 (a decline of over 7%). I am confident that during this period the overall population in this diocese grew (Florida and Alabama as entire states certainly did from 2000-2007) so in economic terms this is a real decline.

I am sorry but these are portraits of stagnation and, yes, decline. Stagnant waters are calm, but that is not necessarily a good thing (Jesus certainly flunks by that criterion). The gospel is not about being “calm.”

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Bangladesh’s Grameen Bank has made its first loans in New York in an attempt to bring its pioneering microfinance techniques to the tens of millions of people in the world’s richest country who have no bank account.

The bank’s entry into the US, its first in a developed market, comes as mainstream banks’ credibility has been hit by the mortgage meltdown and many people are turning to fringe financial institutions offering loans at exorbitant interest rates.

Grameen has lent $50,000 in the past month to groups of immigrant women in Jackson Heights in New York’s borough of Queens. During the next five years, it plans to offer $176m in loans within New York city, and then expand to the rest of the US.

Ok, a quiz first. How big was the first loan Muhammad Yunus made in 1976? Once you have guessed go and read it all.

Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee’s unexpected resilience has influenced this election in myriad ways. But one of the most intriguing side effects of the Baptist minister’s tour in the spotlight has been the attention it has brought to an evolution occurring inside the white Christian evangelical movement.

Huckabee has pulled back the curtain on a long-churning generational struggle over the movement’s priorities and tone. For many, he is the first national political iteration of a new crop of leaders challenging the old guard’s script, which focuses almost exclusively on banning abortion and same-sex marriage and confronting those issues in the courts.

The former Arkansas governor, only belatedly supported by long-time leaders like James Dobson of Focus on the Family and Moral Majority cofounder Paul Weyrich who were alarmed by John McCain’s momentum, has shown that the movement is not a monolith. New-generation leaders, including author and pastor Rick Warren and environmentalist Richard Cizik of the National Association of Evangelicals, are now competing mightily for influence among a younger generation of born-again Christians.

“The evangelical community is in flux,” says John Green of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. “And it’s about priorities.” Most in the new wave remain strongly opposed to abortion and same-sex marriage but are advocating a broader moral agenda and a way to tackle life and gay issues outside the Supreme Court. That agenda includes a focus beyond the traditional issues to those ranging from global poverty and the environment to battling HIV-AIDS in Africa.

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Former Vice President Al Gore and a number of other senior Democrats plan to remain neutral for now in the presidential race in part to keep open the option to broker a peaceful resolution to what they fear could be a bitterly divided convention, party officials and aides said Friday.

Democratic Party officials said that in the past week Mr. Gore and other leading Democrats had held private talks as worry mounted that the close race between Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton could be decided by a group of 795 party insiders known as superdelegates.

The signs that party elders are weighing whether and how to intervene reflects the extraordinary nature of the contest now and the concern among some Democrats that they not risk an internal battle that could harm the party in the general election.

But they also provided an early glimpse at the complex set of tradeoffs facing party leaders, from their desire to make their own influence felt to their worries about offending the candidates and particular constituencies ”” not to mention the long, sometimes troubled relationship between Mr. Gore and the Clintons.

The issues party leaders are grappling with, they said, include how to avoid the perception of a back-room deal that thwarts the will of millions of voters who have cast ballots in primaries and caucuses. That perception could cripple the eventual Democratic nominee’s chances of winning the presidency in November, they said.

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THEY have supermarkets everywhere quaking in their boots as they scrutinise every aspect of their service.

But now the dreaded mystery shoppers can be seen walking down different aisles; those of local churches.

As part of a scheme being launched in churches across the Wakefield Anglican diocese mystery worshippers will be dropping in to gauge the standard of warmth, welcome and fellowship.

It will be modelled on the mystery shopper schemes used by researchers to assess the service offered by hotels, shops and other retailers.

The mystery worshippers will focus on how welcoming the churches are, with a checklist including how comfortable newcomers are made to feel they, whether coffee and biscuits are served and the level of friendliness before and after the service.

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At least five more Anglican churches — three in British Columbia and two in Ontario — are likely to separate from the national Church over the divisive issue of same-sex blessings by the end of the month. Another four will also vote on similar motions this month.

They will be following St. John’s, the country’s largest Anglican parish, which voted this week to leave the Anglican Church of Canada. The Vancouver parish chose to put itself under the authority of conservative Gregory Venables, the Archbishop of the Southern Cone, which encompasses parts of South America.

Rev. Andrew Hewlett, minister at St. Mary of the Incarnation near Victoria, which will vote tomorrow, received a letter from the bishop of his diocese, James Cowan, that said anyone “found to be acquiescing in or to be actively promoting such a separation” could face “immediate termination of employment without notice or severance.”

He said the vote will go ahead despite the threat because it is the will of his congregation that it happen. He expects the motion to leave the Canadian Church will pass.

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Supporters and opponents of same-sex marriage clashed before a Maryland Senate committee yesterday, with traditionalists invoking religious convictions and gay rights advocates describing their cause as a civil rights struggle.

The lengthy hearing, which drew dozens of speakers on both sides of the most divisive social issue the General Assembly will take up this year, was headlined by Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler (D), who became Maryland’s first elected statewide official to endorse legislation allowing same-sex marriage.

Gansler’s office had successfully defended the state against a lawsuit by gay couples who sought to overturn a law prohibiting same-sex marriage. But yesterday, the former prosecutor from Montgomery County called same-sex marriage a “moral imperative” and a “basic matter of fairness.”

“This bill is fundamentally about equality,” Gansler told the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee. “It would be wrong for me to have this job knowing there’s something so wrong in our society and just ignore it.” He said qualms about same-sex unions seem to be limited to older people: “For the younger generation, this is a non-issue.”

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On its website the Diocese reports considerable shrinkage: “In the history of our diocese, 124 parishes have been established, and 47 have been merged or closed.”

[Leslie] Bentley said, “There can be no good reason for the Diocese to take over the parish to protect [theologically] liberal members as there are six liberal parishes within a ten-minute drive of St John’s, which leads me to believe that the Diocese is only interested in protecting St John’s building and property. They either want the money or they just want us out.”

No diocesan money was used to start the parish; the Diocese only gave permission for it to be founded. The church was independently incorporated in the Diocese in 1932. This year the church exceeded its budget by $28,000. Bentley claimed that not only has Bishop Ingham “abandoned” St John’s for the past six years, but the Anglican Church of Canada has been “completely mute” as well. She said if Bishop Ingham locks them out “We’ll meet on the grass.”

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The credit crisis paining Wall Street is reaching out across the nation, afflicting municipalities, hospitals and cultural touchstones like the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In recent days another large but obscure corner of the financial world has come under acute stress. Alarmed by the running turmoil in the debt markets, investors have refused to buy certain securities that not long ago many regarded as equivalent to cash.

Even though the securities are long term, banks hold auctions periodically to set the interest rates. During the last three days, almost 1,000 of these auctions failed because there were not enough buyers. The banks that marketed the instruments, known as auction-rate securities, also declined to buy.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey now finds itself paying a rate of 20 percent on $100 million of its debt, almost quadruple its costs a week ago. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is now paying 15 percent on auction securities. It is unclear how long such high rates will persist, or when the market for these instruments will revive, if at all.

“What is going on here is a credit crunch,” said G. David MacEwen, chief investment officer for fixed income at American Century Investment, the big mutual fund company. “And the cost of the credit and the availability of credit even for good borrowers has clearly taken a big hit.”

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Members of an Anglican church in Abbotsford are expected to become the second local congregation in a week to split from Vancouver-area Bishop Michael Ingham over his support for same-sex blessings.

And two more Anglican churches — St. Matthias/ St. Luke and The Church of the Good Shepherd — in Vancouver are poised to fill out similar ballots later this month as orthodox followers openly challenge Ingham’s liberal vision for the church.

“We are prepared to act on our faith,” said Rev. Trevor Walters of St. Matthew’s Anglican parish in Abbotsford, whose members will cast their votes Sunday.

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The dispute over the secession of the Diocese of San Joaquin has led to the formation of three de facto ecclesiastical authorities for the California diocese: one loyal to Bishop John-David Schofield, one loyal to Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, and a third to the diocese’s Standing Committee.

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It is interesting to note that Bhutto always had the support of most Christians, despite our tribulations under her father, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. Christians hoped that she would truly be a moderate force for democracy, but even before her assassination, she betrayed those hopes.

Christians who supported PPP and other secular political parties comforted themselves that it was the first joint election after the abolishment of the separate electorate system, in which religious minority candidates competed ”” almost always unsuccessfully ”” against Muslim candidates. Political parties, we thought, should be given time for adjustment. We have been proven wrong.

This regrettable and discriminatory attitude is not new to me; I am not shocked, but disappointed. Christians have been considered second-class citizens since 1949, when the democratic dictatorship imposed Objective Resolution ”” nicknamed Pakistan’s Magna Carta ”” and declared that Pakistan would be modeled on Islamic ideology. Ever since then, the situation has gotten progressively worse, with almost all consequent rulers contributing to this situation.

Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto nationalized schools and colleges in 1972, taking the top schools out of the church’s control. When General Zia-ul-Haq’s regime decided to return the schools and colleges to their owners two administrations later, Christians were refused entry to Christian schools and colleges, while the privileged were admitted.

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We think it is important to let you know our reasons for not acceding to your request, and also to make them public since your letter is public. We have a number of concerns.

First, the Lambeth Conference is not a two hour seminar discussing a contentious issue. It is three weeks in which we bishops and our wives are called to share together our lives, our prayer, our bible study, our meals, our worship and the Lord’s Supper, to be a family together.

You will know that some of us have not been able to take communion with the Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church since February 2005, – a period of about three years. The reason is that TEC took an action to consecrate Gene Robinson as Bishop in 2003 contrary to the resolution of the Lambeth Conference, an action of which they have not repented. The consecrators of Gene Robinson have all been invited to Lambeth, contrary to the statement of the Windsor Report (para 134) that members of the Episcopal Church should “consider in all conscience whether they should withdraw themselves from representative functions in the Anglican Communion”.

You will know that some of those who objected to this consecration in the United States and have made arrangements for orthodox oversight from other provinces including ours have been charged with abandonment of communion. Their congregations have either forfeited or are being sued for their properties by the very bishops with whom you wish us to share Christian family fellowship for three weeks.

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If you haven’t made a 100 things I would like to do before I pass from this world to the next list, do make one and make sure seeing this musical one time is on there–KSH.

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THE Archbishop of York has appealed for funds for humanitarian relief in Kenya.

Dr Sentamu, addressing the General Synod on Wednesday after his visit to Kenya last week, said that there had been progress in talks between the two main parties, at odds since the disputed December election. But after more than 1000 people had been killed, and 300,000 forced from their homes by the fighting, humanitarian relief was a top priority.

As part of the response, Dr Sentamu told Synod that he and the Archbishop of Canterbury were setting up a special fund, together with the Church Mission Society.

“In the many camps, I saw people with broken limbs and other physical injuries, and many who had been terribly traumatised. One woman had lost her mind, because she saw her husband hacked to death in front of her children.”

he Church was seen by President Kibaki and the Opposition leader, Raila Odinga, as vital in humanitarian relief, peace-building, and reconciliation, he said.

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In one group photograph in the exhibit, young people on a ship that is taking them away from their families but also away from Hitler smile with delight. An equally telling photograph shows some settlers on the day after their arrival in Sosúa: Young men and women stand looking around with dumbfounded expressions on their faces; the women are wearing high heels and carrying handbags — hardly farm-appropriate gear. Their new predicament is aptly summed up in a quotation from refugee Walter Allison that appears between the pictures: “I could repair shoes, but I didn’t know how tomatoes grow.” Another refugee, Edith Gersten, humorously recounts a priceless Alice-in-Wonderland moment: “We stared at the cow. What happened next? Does one get hold of the tail and pump until somehow the milk comes out?”

But over time, the refugees adjusted to their new lives, building barracks and then homes. They celebrated Jewish and Dominican holidays with their neighbors, planted crops, made cheeses and (non-kosher) sausages, and learned Spanish. The Jews were delighted to find the Dominican community welcoming and completely free of anti-Semitism. The exhibit provides a glimpse, through video interviews, pictures and artifacts, into the refugees’ daily lives, from their attempts to re-create European café society to their struggles with tropical diseases. When the war ended, the majority of Sosúan settlers left for the U.S. or Israel, but others — many of the men having married Dominican women — stayed. The show concludes with a photograph of the current Sosúan Jewish community celebrating Hanukkah in 2007, using the same candelabra pictured in the barracks synagogue of the 1940s.

The exhibit holds important lessons in its comparatively small space. New York State Sen. Eric Schneiderman, along with the American Jewish Congress, originally approached the museum in 2004 with the idea to do an exhibit on Sosúa. Mr. Schneiderman represents a large Dominican population in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan, and he thought that this presentation would exemplify a positive experience shared by the Dominican and Jewish communities. Reflecting the inclusive nature of Sosúa itself, the exhibit is completely bilingual — for the first time in the Museum of Jewish Heritage’s history. Standing in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty, the museum raises implicit questions about the history of our own immigration policy simply by telling the story of one small nation that, for whatever reasons, stood up at a time when no one else did and opened its doors, saving lives that otherwise surely would have been lost.

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A popular video on YouTube shows Kellie Pickler, the platinum blonde from “American Idol,” appearing on the Fox game show “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?” during celebrity week. Selected from a third-grade geography curriculum, the $25,000 question asked: “Budapest is the capital of what European country?”

Pickler threw up both hands and looked at the large blackboard perplexed. “I thought Europe was a country,” she said. Playing it safe, she chose to copy the answer offered by one of the genuine fifth graders: Hungary. “Hungry?” she said, eyes widening in disbelief. “That’s a country? I’ve heard of Turkey. But Hungry? I’ve never heard of it.”

Such, uh, lack of global awareness is the kind of thing that drives Susan Jacoby, author of “The Age of American Unreason,” up a wall. Jacoby is one of a number of writers with new books that bemoan the state of American culture.

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Moments before they decided to align with an orthodox Anglican bishop in South America, members of Vancouver’s St. John’s Shaughnessy Church, one of the largest Anglican congregations in Canada, attended a Bible study session.

In the latest development in a controversy that has arisen within several different religions, the conservative Anglican congregation in Vancouver voted on Wednesday evening to request episcopal oversight by Archbishop Gregory Venables of the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone. If accepted, the Vancouver parish would, in effect, be cut off from the Anglican Church in Canada.

The rector, Rev. David Short, talked a lot about church unity that day, Lesley Bentley, a spokeswoman for St. John’s Shaughnessy, said yesterday in an interview.

Mr. Short spoke about the importance of church unity with Scripture and of a common understanding of Scripture, particularly around core values, Ms. Bentley recalled. “It was about the supremacy of the Bible and the uniqueness of Jesus Christ.”

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The meltdown in the US subprime real-estate market has led to a global loss of 7.7 trillion dollars in stock-market value since October, a report by Bank of America showed Thursday.

here is part one, follow the links to parts two to four.

In short, the letter’s signers have rejected Bishop Duncan’s rather unAnglican insistence upon uniformity and embraced instead a commitment to unity. Therefore, had I written the Post-Gazette article, it would have been entitled “Letter signals rapprochement between conservative and progressive Episcopalians.” Why? Because those who have taken this bold step should not to be understood as merely having been
cut off from fellow conservatives, but as having allied (dare we say “aligned”?) with those who may not share all their theological views, but who do share their commitment to remain within The Episcopal Church. And for this we give thanks.

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The largest Anglican congregation in the country has voted overwhelmingly to leave the Canadian Church and put itself under the authority of a parallel conservative Anglican movement — a move that may help accelerate a schism and open the way for a nasty legal battle over Church property.

St. John’s, which has more than 2,000 members in the affluent Vancouver neighbourhood of Shaughnessy, has been at odds with the Diocese of New Westminster, which lets its churches perform same-sex blessings, since 2002.

The congregation has withheld financial support from the diocese for the past six years as a protest, but now has taken the radical step of breaking off all together.

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Backstage at the Target Center in Minneapolis before a rally earlier this month, Barack Obama engaged in one of his pregame rituals: the presidential candidate joined a circle of young campaign supporters and staff, clasped hands with those on either side of him and prayed.

Hillary Clinton, his rival for the Democratic nomination, has talked on the campaign trail about the “prayer warriors” who support her, and her campaign has made sure that primary voters know that Clinton used to host church picnics at the governor’s mansion in Arkansas.

If the Democratic ticket in November is able to capture a greater share of religious voters than in previous elections, it will be because both Obama and Clinton have rejected their party’s traditional fight- or-flight reaction to religion. For decades, the men and women who ran the Democratic Party and its campaigns bought into the conservative spin that the faithful were pro-life, right-wing and most certainly not Democratic voters. Armed with this mind-set, political professionals gave themselves permission to ignore religion and the religious. And in 2004, John Kerry paid the price for that decision.

That year, the Bush-Cheney operation did more with religious outreach than any other campaign in history, deploying a massive parish- and congregation-level mobilization effort. In Florida alone, the gop employed a state chairwoman for Evangelical outreach who appointed a dozen regional coordinators around the state and designated outreach chairs in each of Florida’s 67 counties. Every county chair, in turn, recruited between 30 and 50 volunteers to contact and register their Evangelical neighbors.

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