THE New York Times once epitomised all that was great about American newspapers; now it symbolises its industry’s deep malaise. The Grey Lady’s circulation is tumbling, down another 3.9% in the latest data from America’s Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC). Its advertising revenues are down, too (12.5% lower in March than a year earlier), as is the share price of its owner, the New York Times Company, up from its January low but still over 20% below what it was last July. On Tuesday April 29th Standard & Poor’s cut the firm’s debt rating to one notch above junk.

At the company’s annual meeting a week earlier, its embattled publisher, Arthur “Pinch” Sulzberger, attempted to quash rumours that his family is preparing to jettison the firm it has owned since 1896. Carnage is expected soon as dozens of what were once the safest jobs in journalism are axed, since too few of the staff have accepted a generous offer of voluntary redundancy.

Pick almost any American newspaper company and you can tell a similar story.

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Two United Methodist women from Chicago exchanged vows Friday in a park near the Fort Worth Convention Center where this week delegates at an international conference affirmed the church’s stance that the practice of homosexuality is not biblical.

With a procession of about 200 supporters, Julie Bruno and Susan Laurie walked from the convention center to General Worth Square, singing This Little Light of Mine. Their ceremony was performed by a lay person from New York, although some clergy were in the crowd and applauded. Audience members also spoke a blessing of the union.

The event symbolized some of the deepest divisions that remain unresolved at the end of the 10-day General Conference of the United Methodist Church. Nearly 1,000 delegates representing more than 11 million people gathered to address denomination concerns and social issues.

Bishop Ben Chamness of the 28-county Central Texas Conference said there was “a great spirit of holy conferencing … by people with different views.”

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Read it carefully and read it all.

“The emphasis is totally on this one ethical dimension of our faith. … That’s important…”

Note carefully the quote above from yours truly in the article cited, in which I agree about the importance of stewardship of the environment with the Presiding Bishop. But the analysis of the Anglican Scotist cites me as saying something I did not say. This typifies the pattern of talking by one another which continues apace in far too many instances in the current TEC.

I continute to insist that there needs to be far more self-criticism in the current environment, and when criticism of those who differ with us is attempted, it needs to reflect the arguments which it is seeking to refute accurately and fairly–KSH.

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ii. In this regard, we reiterate the resolution of Anglican Consultative Council, Hong Kong, August 2002 in response to Archbishop George Carey’s urging that dioceses “that are considering matters of faith and doctrine that could affect the unity of the Communion to consult widely in their provinces, and beyond before final decisions are made or action is taken.”

iii. We affirm the importance of showing concern and regard to the rest of the Communion.

2. We, however, out rightly condemn and reject the unacceptable action of some of the members of the Communion in the blessing and formal acceptance of same-sex marriages and relationships, the appointment, election and ordination to ecclesiastical offices of those persons who openly admit and declare that they are homosexuals and lesbians (cf Romans 1:26-27). That such practices of some of the members of our Communion do exist and that they are to be treated pastorally, we deny not. However, that they be given official recognition and acceptance by the Church of God as a standard form of life is quite another stand which we cannot and dare not accept.

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The Episcopal Church, a Protestant denomination, has faced internal strife in recent years over the ordination of an openly gay bishop in New Hampshire and the debate over blessings of same sex couples.

Some congregations around the country have broken off because of the debate, but none in Maine, Lane said.

“Many in the church have agreed to disagree,” Lane said. “It’s sort of there in the background, but my own sense is that most Episcopalians are proud to be part of a church where everyone is welcome.”

More pressing in Maine, he said, will be encouraging congregations to be more actively involved in ministering to their communities, from providing food and other essentials to the needy to reaching out to college communities.

“This is really a key issue for the future of the church,” Lane said.

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Over the past year, Jefferts Schori and Iker have exchanged letters about Fort Worth’s vote to leave last November and the Episcopal head has continued to emphasize the possibility of reconciliation between Iker, the diocese and the wider Episcopal Church, according to the Rev. Dr. Charles K. Robertson, the Episcopal presiding bishop’s canon.

Iker said otherwise in his letter this week.

“There are no efforts at reconciliation proceeding within this province, which is one reason why faithful people continue to leave TEC (The Episcopal Church) in droves,” he said.

Venables is scheduled to meet with clergy from the Diocese of Fort Worth on Friday and attend a diocesan convocation Saturday. He will be a guest preacher at two local churches Sunday.

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“I want to be known as a good bishop, not a gay bishop,” said Bishop Gene Robinson. But so far, at least to most of the world, that hasn’t happened. He’s known as the homosexual man whose controversial election as the bishop of New Hampshire threatens to split the Episcopal Church into two denominations.

“A wide variety of the media typecasts me as a one-issue person, but if I were just a one-issue person, why would the people of New Hampshire want me [as their leader]?” he said in an interview. “I hope to open people’s eyes to a much broader vision of me.”

To that end, he has written a book, “In the Eye of the Storm” (Church Publishing, $25), which, as coincidence would have it, is hitting bookstores the same time as another book about a gay Episcopal bishop. In “The Bishop’s Daughter” (W.W. Norton, $25.95), poet and author Honor Moore writes about her relationship with her late father, Bishop Paul Moore Jr., who spent 17 years as the bishop of New York without the public knowing that he was bisexual.

Both books paint portraits of men who worried that the titillating aspects of their private lives would have a negative impact on their lifelong work on a vast range of social and theological issues.

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When the Rev. David Cannon, the priest-in-charge of Bishop Seabury Church in Groton, showed up to start his job two weeks ago, he walked around the outside of the building, trying every door. All locked.

He could hear people moving around inside, so he knocked. No answer.

Eventually, Cannon found his way to the office building, adjacent to the church, where he called out for the Rev. Ronald Gauss, who still heads the parish in defiance of Episcopal officials. The two men have known each other for many years ”” were on friendly terms, even ”” and Gauss knew why Cannon was there, but that didn’t make this any easier.

Cannon was there to take over Gauss’ church ”” and Gauss was having none of it.

“I wanted access to the church. I wanted the books, the keys, the right to celebrate communion there,” Cannon said. “I asked not once, not twice, but three times. I was refused all three times.”

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The Rev. Canon Stephen Taylor Lane believes that he will begin the “grand adventure” of a lifetime today when he becomes the spiritual leader of the state’s 17,000 Episcopalians.

Members of Lane’s new flock will gather at St. Luke’s Cathedral today to participate in his consecration as the ninth bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Maine.

The Most Rev. Katharine Jefforts Schori, the presiding bishop and primate of the Episcopal Church, will lead the event. The Rt. Rev. Chilton Knudsen, bishop of the Maine diocese, will participate in the service that is expected to be similar to the one held in the same church a decade ago when she became the diocese’s first woman bishop.

Technically, Lane, 58, will be the bishop coadjutor until his installation in September when Knudsen, 61, will retire. He and his wife, Gretchen, a high school science teacher, live in Portland and have three grown children, who are scheduled to attend today’s consecration.

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Alicia Shay has had a steady stream of visitors to the Flagstaff, Ariz., home that she and Ryan moved into a year ago. Her former Stanford teammates have come to train with her, including Lauren Fleshman, the 2006 U.S. 5,000 champion. Ryan Hall, the Olympic trials marathon champion, and his wife, Sara, stayed with Shay in January. Her parents and two sisters have been regular visitors.

“I was amazed being there seeing first-hand how she deals with Ryan’s death day to day,” says Sara Hall, who was a bridesmaid in the Shays’ wedding. “She told me before that God was meeting her every need each day. To actually be there and see that was incredible. Her faith is very real.”

So is the pain that can surface suddenly. “All day I have thoughts and memories of Ryan and us moving into my mind,” says Shay, who hosted an Easter brunch for 35 that included many runners. “When I’m not with people I can let down with, I’m constantly overriding and repressing those thoughts, memories and emotions. That’s when a small thing can set me off and it all comes crashing down.

“A lot of times at night, it really gets hard. You lay there and there’s nothing to distract you. Sometimes If I can say it out loud, I can move on. Or I cry and five minutes later, I can handle the rest of the day.”

Elizabeth caught this one in yesterday’s USA Today–read it all.

Erik Youngdahl and Michelle Garcia share a dorm room at Connecticut’s Wesleyan University. But they say there’s no funny business going on. Really. They mean it.

They have set up their beds side-by-side like Lucy and Ricky in “I Love Lucy,” and avert their eyes when one of them is changing clothes.

“People are shocked to hear that it’s happening and even that it’s possible,” said Youngdahl, a 20-year-old sophomore. But “once you actually live in it, it doesn’t actually turn into a big deal.”

In the prim 1950s, college dorms were off-limits to members of the opposite sex. Then came the 1970s, when male and female students started crossing paths in coed dormitories. Now, to the astonishment of some Baby Boomer parents, a growing number of colleges are going even further: coed rooms.

At least two dozen schools, including Brown University, the University of Pennsylvania, Oberlin College, Clark University and the California Institute of Technology, allow some or all students to share a room with anyone they choose ”” including someone of the opposite sex. This spring, as students sign up for next year’s room, more schools are following suit, including Stanford University.

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More Charleston area troops are making their way home from extended overseas deployments in the war.

Twenty-six members of the South Carolina National Guard’s 218th Brigade Combat Team who served in Afghanistan arrived Thursday in North Charleston.

A contracted airline’s bankruptcy last month prevented hundreds of soldiers from getting home on time.

One of them was Capt. Trae Redmond III, who was among the group that arrived about 5 p.m. Thursday at the National Guard Armory on Cross County Road. He left in January 2007 and his son, Grady, was born the next month.

“We got through it,” Redmond’s wife, Jennifer, said Friday evening as her husband bathed their son at their North Charleston home.

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I watched it live streaming on Italian TV but couldn’t ever find any audio accessible in the U.S. It will be interesting to see if they can successfully defend the title with only about one week to go in the season.

State water officials reported Thursday that the Sierra Nevada snowpack, the source of a huge portion of California’s water supply, was only 67 percent of normal, due in part to historically low rainfall in March and April.

With many reservoirs at well-below-average levels from the previous winter and a federal ruling limiting water pumped from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, the new data added a dimension to a crisis already complicated by crumbling infrastructure, surging population and environmental concerns.

“We’re in a dry spell if not a drought,” said California Secretary for Resources Mike Chrisman. “We’re in the second year, and if we’re looking at a third year, we’re talking about a serious problem.”

Chrisman stopped short of saying the state would issue mandatory water rationing, which appears possible only if the governor declares a state of emergency. Rather, the burden will fall on local water agencies. Many, such as San Francisco and Marin County, have asked residents and businesses over the past year to cut water usage voluntarily by 10 to 20 percent.

Others have taken more drastic steps.

In Southern California, the water district serving about 330,000 people in Orange County enacted water rationing last year, due in part to a ruling by U.S. Judge Oliver Wanger reducing water pumped from the delta by about a third to protect an endangered fish.

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An audio resource for those interested.

Bishop V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire has not been banned from pulpits in the Church of England according to a spokesman for the Archbishop of Canterbury, who denied press speculation that the Archbishop Rowan Williams was attempting to silence Bishop Robinson.

A press officer confirmed on May 2 that Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams had not issued Bishop Robinson a license to officiate in the Province of Canterbury. However, Church of England canon law does not grant the archbishop the authority to ban preachers, the spokesman noted.

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At another college, professor Kent Gramm’s divorce from his wife of 30 years might be a private matter known only to friends and close colleagues.

But at Wheaton College, the end of the popular English professor’s marriage has cost him his job””and sparked a debate about whether a divorce should disqualify a faculty member from teaching there.

Though the college has sometimes hired or retained staff employees whose marriages have ended, officials say those employees must talk with a staff member to determine whether the divorce meets Biblical standards. Gramm told administrators about his divorce but declined to discuss the details.

“I think it’s wrong to have to discuss your personal life with your employer,” he said, “and I also don’t want to be in a position of accusing my spouse, so I declined to appeal or discuss the matter in any way with my employer.”

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For example [a numbers of years ago]…, American stores were never open 24-7 and few women were doctors, lawyers or ministers. The birth-control pill had not been invented and American society was generally intolerant of casual sex or births outside of marriage. Nudity and profanity were forbidden in movies — even married couples were portrayed in twin beds. Americans were generally respectful of authority and tended to trust what they were told by people who should have known.

Catholics thought of themselves at the time as a minority in a generally Protestant country. Although they paid taxes to support public schools, they were likely to send their children to parochial schools to develop a better sense of Catholic teaching and practice, especially since the public sense of “religion” was largely a watered-down version of liberal Protestantism.

All of which changed, sometimes dramatically, sometimes incrementally, in the next 50 years. Pope Benedict now faces an American Catholic Church different from the traditional minority church of Francis Cardinal Spellman and Elizabeth Ann Seton. Roman Catholics have become, in every sense of the term, American insiders. There is no reason for them to feel insecure about their social or political status, and they generally do not.

The downside of full inclusion in American society is that there is no American problem that is not a Catholic problem: drugs, crime, teenage pregnancy, divorce, loss of members, or the alienation of youth from the church. In short, whatever troubles their non-Catholic neighbors troubles them.

Moreover, there has been a steady attrition of native-born Catholics, whose places in the local parish have been taken by Hispanic immigrants. The Pew Foundation discovered that one in 10 Americans now considers himself or herself an ex-Catholic.

Some of the losses may be due to Catholic failures…

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Listen to it all and see what you make of the question of whether there are two Americas.

10 years ago the Thames Valley Police pioneered “Restorative Justice”, with the aim of giving every victim an opportunity to meet the perpetrator of the crime against them. Celebrating 10 years of development we had the opportunity to meet a man, lets call him Pete, who had spent most of his adult life in prison. We also met Dave, who told us that coming back one night he found an intruder in his house, whom he fought and finally got arrested. This intruder, Pete, and Dave were brought together-not very easily. Pete said that at the time he would far rather have gone straight to the Old Bailey and prison, for at least he knew where he was there, rather than face his victim. At the meeting Pete began by saying “When we last met”. This casual reference, as though they had met in a pub, so infuriated Dave, that it unleashed a torrent of emotion about how he had felt about having his house broken into, and how every time he had gone through his door since, he had wondered if there would be an intruder. In response to this Pete said, that for the first time in his life, he had felt a victim’s pain. He had done hundreds of crimes, mainly for drugs, and never given his victims a thought, but now, experiencing the pain of one of them, as he put it “Blew him”.

It cannot have been easy after that, but he got himself off heroin, went to college, and for the first time in his life did a job.

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Religious freedom does not include the right to exemption from prosecution for violating the state’s duly passed and constitutionally adjudicated laws. Let’s be clear: The First Amendment’s religious freedom and free speech guarantees protect a person’s right to advocate polygamy and “spiritual” marriage with girls as young as 13, but the First Amendment does not allow you to act upon such beliefs when they contravene state or federal law. Adults having sex with underage girls is statutory rape and is illegal.

Like most Americans, I agree that the safety of children must always take priority in government’s actions. That does not give government officials a blank check to use children’s “welfare” as a subterfuge to justify governmental intrusion or to disrupt any practice it finds vaguely weird.

There is no more treasured language in America’s collective heart than these 16 words: “Congress shall make no Law respecting an Establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” As invaluable to our heritage as these words are, they were never intended to exempt people from obeying generally applicable laws, which meet a compelling government interest, such as the ones prohibiting adult males from having sex with underage girls in or out of “spiritual” marriages.

To misconstrue the First Amendment’s religious freedoms to grant such exemption would be to desecrate those time-honored words and the sacred freedoms they guarantee.

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Soaring gas prices have turned the steady migration by Americans to smaller cars into a stampede.

In what industry analysts are calling a first, about one in five vehicles sold in the United States was a compact or subcompact car during April, based on monthly sales data released Thursday. Almost a decade ago, when sport utility vehicles were at their peak of popularity, only one in every eight vehicles sold was a small car.

The switch to smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles has been building in recent years, but has accelerated recently with the advent of $3.50-a-gallon gas. At the same time, sales of pickup trucks and large sport utility vehicles have dropped sharply.

In another first, fuel-sipping four-cylinder engines surpassed six-cylinder models in popularity in April.

“It’s easily the most dramatic segment shift I have witnessed in the market in my 31 years here,” said George Pipas, chief sales analyst for the Ford Motor Company.

Read it all–I say thank goodness.

However, although acknowledging that commendable effort, we believe that our Communion does not need new instruments of consensus beyond those that historically have been our benchmarks in terms of identity.

We have diligently studied the second draft of the Covenant, known as the St Andrew’s Draft, and despite some new insights shown from the first reactions to the proposal coming from various parts of the Communion, according to our view, the proposition is still problematic.

Sections 05 and 06 in the new proposal focus on elements that we believe are unnecessary and inapplicable to our Communion. In the manner in which they are presented, they constitute a serious setback in the understanding of what is Communion, prioritising the juridical dimension more and less so the ecclesiological and affective dimensions that have been the historical mark of our mutual interdependence.

The Covenant continues to be a mistaken proposal for the resolution of conflicts through the creation of curial instances absolutely alien to our ethos.

We are fully convinced that the time in which we live is marked by symptoms that value highly the building up of networks and other manifestations of communion in a spontaneous way in the various aspects of human life. Insisting on a formal and juridical Covenant, with the logic of discipline and exercise of power, means to move in the opposite direction, thus returning to the days of Modernity, with its Confessions, Covenants, Diets and other rational instruments of theological consensus.

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The common thread here is anti-intellectual, populist demagoguery. Economists believe the gas tax suspension won’t help consumers. Under current market conditions, the after-tax price of gasoline won’t fall. (And the precedent this would set would be a disaster for the future of weaning Americans off of cheap, carbon-intensive fuel.) So the fact that economists or Tom Friedman may live in cities is obviously not relevant at all. I can imagine Clinton and McCain promising to solve the health care crisis by promising free government-issued leeches, and when doctors insist the leeches won’t help, they reply that it’s easy for rich doctors with their lavish medical plans to say we don’t need a solution.

Generally, betting on the intelligence of the American public is a bad move. But, like Noam, I think this is a great fight for Obama right now. Here’s how pointing out his refusal to pander on the gas tax helps Obama….

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More than 30 clergy received licences to serve in the Anglican Network in Canada (ANiC) from the Presiding Bishop of the Southern Cone, the Most Revd Greg Venables, on Saturday at a ceremony in South Delta Baptist Church, Vancouver.

The 29 priests and four deacons have left the Anglican Church of Canada and put themselves under the archiepiscopal authority of the Southern Cone because of the disagreement with the Canadian Church over homosexuality.

British-born Bishop Venables, who is 58, also commissioned two Canadian bishops: the retired Bishop of Brandon, the Rt Revd Malcolm Harding, and the former Bishop of Eastern Newfoundland & Labrador, the Rt Revd Donald Harvey, who will be the Moderator of ANiC.

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In interviews at churches in cities and towns including Charlotte, Greensboro, Lumberton and Goldsboro, ministers expressed the view that Obama and Wright had been attacked by a superficial and biased news media. Many said they were teaching Wright’s sermons in Bible study classes. They are delivering lectures on the roots of Wright’s style of ministry and preaching against what they see as attempts to make Wright a divisive figure.

“People get fired up when they see people trying to scapegoat a presidential candidate because of a pastor,” said the Reverend Dr. William Barber II, the pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church in Goldsboro and the president of the state branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. “And No. 2, the fact that you’re beating up on someone that’s very profound and very prophetic.”

But many parishioners are not nearly as sympathetic to Wright, saying they are disappointed with him for taking a personal dispute public with little concern for the harm it would do to the Obama campaign. (This sentiment is particularly strong among younger voters.) Others call Wright arrogant and untrustworthy, and still others say he is fighting old fights.

“He needs to take the political and keep it separate from the spiritual,” said Rita Harrison, 48, an Obama supporter who was cutting hair at Allison’s Salon in Whiteville. “Why would you risk this man’s campaign because of some personal comments? Because that’s what it is, it’s personal.”

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[The Rev. Graylan] Hagler says given the government’s past actions ”“ for example, withholding penicillin from blacks afflicted with syphilis in Tuskegee, Ala. ”“ many African Americans do believe the U.S. government developed the HIV virus to kill people of color, as Rev. Wright has asserted.

Hagler says he supports Obama. But he says if Wright’s statements harm Obama’s bid to become the first African American with a shot at the presidency, “chips fall where they may. As every preacher will tell you, the thing they’re accountable to is God Almighty.”

But Bishop Harry Jackson of Hope Christian Church in Beltsville, Md., has another take on Obama’s pastor.

“Jeremiah Wright is not mainstream,” Jackson says.

Jackson leads a Pentecostal church, which focuses on self-improvement and helping people join the middle class. And while the church cares for the poor, it has little theologically in common with the Rev. Wright’s focus on injustice and oppression.

“He doesn’t represent the majority,” Jackson says. “My guess is maybe 25 percent of black pastors may hold that view. So you’ve got a gifted communicator with what I would call a flawed world view.”

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