National church leaders today ordered the head of Alaska’s Russian Orthodox diocese to take a leave of absence while they investigate serious complaints against his leadership.

Bishop Nikolai Soraich must leave the Alaska diocese immediately, the Holy Synod of the Orthodox Church in America announced Friday afternoon.

“Should you not leave the diocese, your failure to comply with the Holy Synod’s directive will be considered willful disobedience,” wrote Metropolitan Herman, the church’s top official in the United States, in a letter dated Friday and posted on the OCA’s Web site.

According to the OCA, the mandatory leave order came only after Bishop Nikolai refused in writing to voluntarily go on leave or to permit “an examination by committee which is neither specified by canon nor permitted to my conscience as an Orthodox bishop.”

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Read it all (page 1).

I will consider posting comments on this article submitted first by email to Kendall’s E-mail: KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

“These issues that we’re facing are an issue of every church in the world, and we are the only ones that are facing it,” he said. “We’re getting a right hammering in the media about it”¦ but if we do face it that can be a great gift to the rest of the world.”

While same sex issues are causing friction across the Communion, Kearon said, he believes they are just the “presenting issue” ”“ symptomatic of a wider division.

The Anglican Church, which has its roots in the Church of England, essentially spread with the British Empire, he said, “on a really rather haphazard basis.” After the American Revolutionary War, the Episcopal Church in the United States “began to distance itself” from the Church of England, as it no longer fell under the sovereignty of the crown, and that rift, between the North American church and the church in the British colonies, has continued to widen. When the British Empire began to crumble in the 1950s and 60s, many colonial churches wanted to become national churches, and also loosened their links with the Church of England.

“That does lead today to very different understandings of the church,” Kearon said. “As churches became autonomous, there became a need for different kinds of governance.”

The instruments of unity ”“ the Lambeth Conference, the Anglican Consultative Council, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Primates Meeting ”“ essentially provide this.

“I think as the Communion has grown and become more diverse, those structures have become strained,” Kearon said. “I think there’s a need to look at the instruments of unity.”

One attempt to address these divisions is the proposed Anglican Covenant, first suggested by the 2003 Windsor Report, a commission set up to study significant challenges in the Anglican Communion. This will be discussed at the Lambeth Conference, and will be taken up again in 2009 by the Anglican Consultative Council, Kearon said.

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The scariest thing about Miami’s condo meltdown is that there’s no telling how far down the bottom is.

Jack McCabe runs McCabe Research, a company that closely tracks the South Florida condo market. Using a baseball analogy, he says the market is in the “bottom of the third inning, not the top of the ninth.”

—From an NPR story yesterday on the Miami condo market

“U.S. consumer borrowing rose in January as Americans spent twice as much on their credit cards as they did a month earlier.”

—Bloomberg News

Around about the year 381, a nun called Egeria made the difficult journey from the Atlantic coast of Spain or France to the Middle East. She wrote of her pilgrimage in a vivid book of travels, describing how she was welcomed to the great Syrian Christian centre of Edessa by the bishop who marvelled how her faith had brought her “right from the other end of the earth”. The high point of her journey was the places made holy by the life of Christ, and particularly the holy places of Jerusalem and Bethlehem. She carefully noted how Christians worshipped there and especially the pattern of services for Holy Week and Easter. From that ancient description is derived the pattern of the great traditional services of Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter that are still at the centre of Christian celebration of the passion, death and resurrection of the Lord.

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Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori welcomed the House and introduced new bishops: Mary Gray-Reeves of El Camino Real; Dan Edwards of Nevada; Kee Sloan, suffragan bishop of Alabama; Mark Lawrence of South Carolina; Jeff Lee of Chicago; and Steve Lane, bishop-elect of Maine (whose consents have been received). Prince Singh has been elected bishop of Rochester but his consent process has not been completed.

Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori shared her hopes for the upcoming Lambeth Conference: “that we go with a sacrificial attitude open to one another, expecting divine encounters,” that “we are willing to embrace the pain of difference as a sign of hope” and that “we avoid pre-judgments.”

“I hope we build bridges for greater mission engagement,” she said.

Ed Little of Northern Indiana, chair of the HOB Planning Committee, noted, “Our agenda during this meeting will weave in and out of discussions about the Lambeth Conference.”

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IF ANY more evidence is needed that America’s economy is perilously close to recession, it was delivered this week. On Friday March 7th the Bureau of Labour Statistics announced that the economy lost 63,000 non-farm jobs in February, following a smaller decline in employment in January. Even with all the bearish talk recently, these results were unexpectedly bad; forecasters had projected a small increase, not the largest drop in five years. The unemployment rate edged down from 4.9% to 4.8%, but only because there were fewer unemployed people actively searching for work.

On the same day the Federal Reserve announced that it would make additional loans of up to $100 billion available to prevent renewed strains in money markets from hurting the economy. The question for many is now turning from whether a recession is on the way to how long and how deep it will be.

The worst jobs news is still in the house-building sector, which is reeling from the effects of plummeting home prices. Since an industry high point in 2006 some 209,000 trade jobs (such as plumbers and electricians) and 137,000 construction jobs have melted away. The Mortgage Bankers Association reported on Thursday that foreclosures are up by 71% from a year ago.

Mortgage-delinquency rates hit the highest point since 1985. And rates of delinquency among prime borrowers also increased as the crisis shifts further beyond sub-prime borrowing to affect safer loans. Many Americans are seeing their home value sink below the size of their mortgages, giving them an incentive to ditch their property and stack up higher losses for banks. That would push prices down even further and rattle already teetering financial markets.

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Ostensibly, the Los Angeles Religious Education Congress is a four-day training session for catechism teachers. But over the years, the event — which this year attracted nearly 40,000 conventioneers — has become one of the largest such gatherings of Catholics in the country.

It serves as a theological training center, a spiritual retreat and a makeshift bazaar for Catholic-oriented products. All at the same time.

“It’s become a smorgasbord” for anyone with an interest in the Catholic Church, said Tod Tamberg, spokesman for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. “People go to congress for different reasons . . . and that’s reflected in the wide variety of religious, spiritual and even philosophical offerings.”

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Mr. HUFF: You know, that’s a big fallacy that these guys don’t want to work. The largest percentage of the guys out here will work in a hot second if you’ve got a job for them. We just did a convention a week ago. I took 14 “homies” to the Sands Hotel and the people who hired them were coming up to me going, “My God Cody, these guys work harder than anybody we’ve seen out here.”

SEVERSON: Meanwhile, the city says it plans to introduce a new feeding ordinance the courts will uphold.

Ms. ROWLAND: Las Vegas is a complex city. We are completely dependent on tourism, and we are dependent on an image that we sell to the tourists who come here. And clearly when your economy is based on the functioning of gambling of casinos and of the tourist industry, a visible face of poverty is not something that’s good for business.

Mayor GOODMAN: We’re in a balancing act here. This isn’t just a one way street to take care of the homeless. The homeless are part of the community. But, I’ve got residents who live in our community whose quality of life has been destroyed in part.

SEVERSON: It’s a balancing act between the needs of the homeless, the conscience of those who want to feed them, and the wishes of others who just don’t want them around.

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Sen. Hillary Clinton’s primary victories in Texas, Ohio and Rhode Island have revived her near-dead campaign and brought her into a statistical dead heat with Sen. Barack Obama among registered Democrats and Democratic leaners, according to a new national NEWSWEEK Poll. The survey found that Clinton has erased the once-commanding lead that Obama held in most national polls following his 11 straight victories in February’s primaries and caucuses. Obama is the favored nominee among 45 percent of Democrats, compared with 44 percent for Clinton, according to the poll, which was based on telephone interviews with 1,215 registered voters March 5-6.

The poll also found that Democratic voters are ready to rally around the candidate they trust most to improve the economy, amid fears of a recession. But neither candidate has been able to lock up that issue, or many others, and the vast majority (69 percent) of Democratic voters now support the idea of a “dream ticket”–leaving aside the crucial question of who runs on top.

What’s striking is that the fundamentals remain largely the same. Obama gets overwhelming support from blacks (80 percent to 10 percent), those under 40 (60 percent to 35 percent) and voters who have graduated from college (50 percent to 41 percent); Hillary wins the majority of whites (53 percent to 35 percent), voters over 60 (51 percent to 33 percent) and those who have a high-school education or less (48 percent to 38 percent). Along gender lines, Obama wins male voters by a 10-point margin (50 percent to 40 percent), while Clinton retains her lead with female voters (46 percent to 40 percent).

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Update: Over at Intrade, the Obama contracts are at 72.5 and the Clinton contracts at 26.1.

Another update: Jonathan Chait has some thoughts on the current situation here which include this:

Clinton’s path to the nomination, then, involves the following steps: kneecap an eloquent, inspiring, reform-minded young leader who happens to be the first serious African American presidential candidate (meanwhile cementing her own reputation for Nixonian ruthlessness) and then win a contested convention by persuading party elites to override the results at the polls. The plan may also involve trying to seat the Michigan and Florida delegations, after having explicitly agreed that the results would not count toward delegate totals. Oh, and her campaign has periodically hinted that some of Obama’s elected delegates might break off and support her. I don’t think she’d be in a position to defeat Hitler’s dog in November, let alone a popular war hero.

Some Clinton supporters, like my friend (and historian) David Greenberg, have been assuring us that lengthy primary fights go on all the time and that the winner doesn’t necessarily suffer a mortal wound in the process. But Clinton’s kamikaze mission is likely to be unusually damaging. Not only is the opportunity cost–to wrap up the nomination, and spend John McCain into the ground for four months–uniquely high, but the venue could not be less convenient. Pennsylvania is a swing state that Democrats will almost certainly need to win in November, and Clinton will spend seven weeks and millions of dollars there making the case that Obama is unfit to set foot in the White House. You couldn’t create a more damaging scenario if you tried.

Still another update: There is an interesting set of responses to Jonathan Chait there.

Millions of British airline passengers face mandatory fingerprinting before being allowed to board flights when Heathrow’s Terminal 5 opens later this month.

For the first time at any airport, the biometric checks will apply to all domestic passengers leaving the terminal, which will handle all British Airways flights to and from Heathrow.

The controversial security measure is also set to be introduced at Gatwick, Manchester and Heathrow’s Terminal 1, and many airline industry insiders believe fingerprinting could become universal at all UK airports within a few years.

All four million domestic passengers who will pass through Terminal 5 annually after it opens on March 27 will have four fingerprints taken, as well as being photographed, when they check in.

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Those of you who know me well know that I have been struggling with this wrenching decision for the past six months since that HOB meeting. In November, Dr. Kendall Harmon visited with us at our last CLC conference. He told us that any hope of Communion discipline of TEC was dead, and he challenged us that we no longer have the luxury of not deciding about how we will practice our faith as orthodox Anglicans. We have only two choices before us; stay in a differentiated way that sets us apart from the liberal diocese, or leave. I have many friends and parish family members who feel called to stay and be the faithful remnant in TEC. I know they are making this decision faithfully and sacrificially, and I pray that God gives them strength to persevere. But I have reached a crossroad of conscience that takes me in a different direction. I can no longer be part of a church that presents a distorted hollow Christian witness to a culture crying out for salvation found only by laying down sin at the foot of the Cross. The passing of time will have to tell us which was the better path, but for now I trust the leading of the Holy Spirit, knowing that whatever decision we make, in faith, about leaving or staying will be used for good.

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There’s nothing to be gained in calls for Dr Williams to resign. He’s not the Home Secretary, and he serves under different rules from those that govern politicians. In any case, it would do no good unless he were replaced by someone better. That can only happen if the people of England decide to take back possession of their national church, and the church, revived, begins to find a new leadership less interested in faction and modernisation, and more interested in the reconversion of England to Christianity.

Hopeless? Probably, but not definitely. If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars. My generation, that of the post-war baby bulge, are the ones almost wholly absent from Britain’s churches. You’ll find quite a few people in their late 60s and 70s, and in some places a lot of people under 35 in Anglican churches on any Sunday. But those born between 1945 and 1955 generally aren’t there (except in the form of clergy and Bishops – Dr Williams was born in 1950). It may just be that the children of the Me Generation are pretty sick of the organised selfishness they see around them, and in the mood for some reasonable Christianity, perhaps with some poetry thrown in. I live in hope.

But, as I’ve warned before, if the Christian church doesn’t take advantage of the approaching religious revival, which I think cannot be long delayed, someone else will. And that someone will argue much more powerfully for Sharia law than Rowan Williams ever did. And I can’t see the Muslims, if they become a great force in Britain, paying much attention to the maintenance of a separate Christian law. They are serious and determined people, who believe staunchly in their religion and hope for its ultimate triumph. So, no, I don’t think the Church of England should be allowed to die. We need it more than we ever have.

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Our son Nathaniel put me on to this.

The Hume Bank had $18.7 million in assets.

The failed bank list is here.

Check it out from the Bishop of California.

Faith and technology have met at St. James Episcopal Church in Monkton, where two Scouts, a sculptor and parish leaders combined their talents to transform an outdoor stroll into a spiritual experience.

Eagle Scout Zach Wright, of Sparks, built and installed 14 wooden shrines along a path behind the church. During Lent, they hold sculptures by Alex Hallmark, of Blowing Rock, N.C., depicting the Stations of the Cross.

Debra Donnelly-Barton, director of the Center for Spiritual Development at St. James, wrote and recorded meditations on each station and transferred them to iPods, devices most frequently used to download music from the Internet. And Eagle Scout candidate Chris DiFatta, of Baldwin, made benches and informational signs.

St. James parishioners and visitors are invited to meet the creative team and walk the loop Saturday, March 8, at 9 a.m.

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In case you missed anything.

SPENCER MICHELS: Yahoo has bought carbon credits by supporting a wind farm in India and a hydroelectric dam in Brazil.

CHRISTINA PAGE: It’s equivalent to taking 35,000 cars off the road or turning off the Vegas strip for two months.

SPENCER MICHELS: The demand for offsets has led to a growing, unregulated industry of for-profits and nonprofits selling carbon credits. Live Neutral, a nonprofit, sells carbon offsets to clients like Transgroup, a company that works with air, truck and rail companies, big CO-2 emitters.

Live Neutral finds projects to offset those emissions, according to founder Jason Smith.

JASON SMITH, Founder, Live Neutral: We can actually start reducing emissions on an industrial scale today if we can built the fiscal support to make those projects possible. You still have a carbon footprint, but it’s something you can do today to take responsibility for that footprint.

SPENCER MICHELS: Transgroup says that it’s good business and good public relations to buy carbon credits for its customers.

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As a young chaplain candidate in the U.S. Navy in the late 1980s, the Rev. Daniel L. Mode became captivated by the story of a Roman Catholic priest who was killed at age 38 while ministering to U.S. Marines in 1967. Over the next several years, Father Mode immersed himself in the life of the Rev. Vincent R. Capodanno, a Maryknoll missionary from Staten Island, N.Y., who spent 16 months traveling from battlefield to battlefield in Vietnam. What began as Father Mode’s master’s thesis at Mount Saint Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, Md., turned into a book called “The Grunt Padre,” published in 2000.

Working with an organization called Catholics in the Military, Father Mode used the research in his book to initiate a “cause for canonization” application to Rome. In 2006, Father Capodanno was declared a “Servant of God,” the first step in the journey to sainthood. The Vatican named Father Mode as “postulator,” or promoter of the cause, and a tribunal was established to interview witnesses to Father Capodanno’s life. One authenticated miracle will qualify the Vietnam War chaplain for beatification; a second for sainthood.

Father Mode, who is 42, does not advocate for his hero’s holiness from behind a desk in a diocesan headquarters somewhere. Rather, he is following Father Capodanno’s example, serving as a Navy chaplain in a war zone. He has been on active duty for three years now, including 20 months in Afghanistan.

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U.S. employers cut payrolls for a second straight month during February, slashing 63,000 jobs for the biggest monthly job decline in nearly five years as the labor market weakened steadily, a government report on Friday showed.

The Labor Department said last month’s cut in jobs followed an upwardly revised loss of 22,000 jobs in January instead of 17,000 reported a month ago. In addition, it said that only 41,000 jobs were created in December, half the 82,000 originally reported.

The back-to-back January and February job losses were the first consecutive monthly declines since May and June of 2003.

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The Bishop of Central Florida, the Rt Revd John Howe, said that the group aimed to “provide a visible link for those concerned in the Anglican Communion”. It would exist to “provide fellowship, support and a forum for mutual concerns between bishops”, and “a partnership to work towards the Anglican Covenant”.

Relationships would be “governed by mutual respect and proceed by invitation and co-operation”. Bishop Howe wrote: “Our purpose in meeting with Bishop Schori [on 21 February] was to apprise her of this plan, seek her counsel, and assure her that we remain committed to working within the Constitution and Canons of the Episcopal Church, and that the Primates involved in this discussion are NOT involved in ”˜border-crossing’, nor would we be. We will visit no congregation without the diocesan bishop’s invitation and permission.”

Critics fear that the group would give the appearance of speaking for the Episcopal Church as a whole in the Communion, and sense an attempt to drive forward a Covenant about which, even as redrafted, many have principled objections or deep reservations.

Dr Jefferts Schori has not yet given her approval of the extended scheme, though she has offered a “nihil obstat” ”” no objection. Lambeth Palace would not respond to reports that Dr Williams, who met the bishops’ group on 31 January, had backed the scheme. “We’re not commenting at all,” said a spokeswoman this week.

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I found this very moving.

Good for them–check it out.

For the first time in years, people are buying a little less gasoline in America. Analysts say it may be a sign that high prices and a slowing economy are beginning to change people’s driving habits.

Since the beginning of this year, gasoline consumption has fallen about half a percent, according to the Department of Energy.

The last time gas use fell ”” other than after Hurricane Katrina ”” was more than a decade ago. That it’s falling again now suggests that high prices are finally influencing behavior. Since November, prices have averaged $3 a gallon or more. That’s the longest they’ve ever stayed that high.

Doug MacIntyre, who has studied gas consumption at the Department of Energy since the 1980s, says he thinks people may be responding by cutting down on trips or using public transit more.

Read it all from NPR.

“Enter with thanksgiving.” That’s what is written on the doors of St. John’s Church in Tulare

But some like Diane Friend said they won’t be entering anymore. “It was a choice about are you going to follow Jesus Christ or are you going to follow a leadership that decides to rewrite the word of God,” said Friend.

Friend and her husband have been members of St. John’s Church for fourteen years. They have three children, and Friend said her children are main reasons why she decided her family had to leave. “For us, what became a priority was our family, the values we try to each our children and how we’re going to serve God as a Christian,” said Friend.

But that doesn’t mean it’s easy for her. “In a small church everyone is family, you almost feel like you’re divorcing yourself from a part of your family,” said Friend.

She is one of twenty people at St. John’s that voted for their church to leave the national Episcopal one. They lost, so she and her family left.

“We’re without a church but not without a faith,” said Friend.

According to the Episcopal church’s website, St. John’s is one of five churches out of the 47 in the San Joaquin diocese that decided to stay with the national Episcopal church.

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When Bashir Jamaleldine arrived in Germany, he was a British subject. He had fled from the unrest in Sierra Leone, which eventually escalated into a protracted civil war. His life has taught him that war only generates more war, but never peace….

The events of Sep. 11, 2001 happened far away from his home, and yet they were very close to his life. Zuhaira, who grew up in the New York borough of Brooklyn, was working as a flight attendant on the day of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.

At the time, Jamaleldine didn’t feel the sense of outrage and personal assault that he would later experience. Like the rest of the world, Jamaleldine was horrified by the terrorist attacks and felt shock as he watched the images of the collapsing Twin Towers. But he managed to keep 9/11 separate from his own life — a life of selling cars, waiting tables and helping to support a family.

But then terror struck again in April 2002, in Djerba, Tunisia. And in October of the same year, bombs ripped apart tourists on the Indonesian island of Bali. Attacks in Casablanca, Riyadh and Istanbul followed in 2003. And then, says Jamaleldine, came March 11, 2004, when 10 bombs blew up commuter trains in Madrid. In elections three days later, on March 14, the Spanish government was voted out of office, as if voters had allowed terror to control their decisions. That, at least, was the way Jamaleldine perceived it. “After all,” he says, “it was Spain, not Togo or some other small country.” That was the day his life took a new, dramatic turn.

He seems calm and extremely convincing when he tells his story. It’s obvious that he means it when he says: “We can’t let these people ruin our lives.” More than just believing it, Jamaleldine made it his mission, a mission he never doubted then and still believes in today.

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