Any moment now, the Iranian challenge will be added to the list of things too serious to be left to politicians.

“Iran, Cuba, Venezuela – these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union,” Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has said. Factually, he is correct. They are much smaller in area than the Soviet Union was. That did not stop the Republican candidate, John McCain, from accusing him of “reckless judgment.” And Obama says: The minuscule size of these rogue countries makes easier the decision to talk with their leaders directly, because if the U.S. sat down with the USSR even at the height of the Cold War, why not Iran? And McCain says: That is a bogus equation. And he is right as well.

A fateful strategic issue – certainly for the State of Israel – became a plaything this week for the American election circus. The Iranian threat is now the Iranian debate: to threaten or talk, to attack or wait. On the one hand, it’s a fascinating discussion that clarifies the difference between the viewpoints and approaches of the two presidential candidates. On the other hand, it’s a barren discussion that underscores how disconnected the election campaign is from the reality determined in Tehran and Washington.

Read it all.

There has been much debate in the U.S. presidential campaign about which of America’s enemies the next president should deign to talk to. The real story, the next president may discover, though, is how few countries are waiting around for America to call. It is hard to remember a time when more shifts in the global balance of power are happening at once – with so few in America’s favor.

Let’s start with the most profound one: More and more, I am convinced that the big foreign policy failure that will be pinned on this administration is not the failure to make Iraq work, as devastating as that has been. It will be one with much broader balance-of-power implications – the failure after 9/11 to put in place an effective energy policy.

It baffles me that President Bush would rather go to Saudi Arabia twice in four months and beg the Saudi king for an oil price break than ask the American people to drive 55 miles per hour, buy more fuel-efficient cars or accept a carbon tax or gasoline tax that might actually help free us from, what he called, our “addiction to oil.”

The failure of Bush to fully mobilize the most powerful innovation engine in the world – the U.S. economy – to produce a scalable alternative to oil has helped to fuel the rise of a collection of petro-authoritarian states – from Russia to Venezuela to Iran – that are reshaping global politics in their own image.

Read the whole article.

Dramatic increases in food and gas prices are leaving some religious hunger-relief groups praying for relief.

Problems were already apparent in 2006, but U.S. churches now report increased difficulty getting meals to people who need them. Food distributors see a perfect storm: a huge jump in requests from new clients, decreased donations, and a thinning food supply.

Hunger activists are experiencing severe challenges in at least two areas — a new farm bill that they say is “inadequate” to meet current needs, and a drop in food supplies for local food pantries and soup kitchens.

The nearly $300 billion farm bill that cleared Congress Thursday (May 15) was deemed only “half a loaf” by the Rev. David Beckmann, president of the ecumenical anti-hunger group Bread for the World.

Read it all.

I found watching the penalty kicks in the rain excruciating.

Kendall Harmon of Orkin Pest Control will present a program on pests.

—The Mississippi Star-Herald. It is not yours truly of course, but I can never get used to the fact that in a country of more than 300 million people there will be more than one person with the same first and last name. The John Smiths out there will no doubt extend no sympathy–KSH.

An interesting post here on: why am I single?

Prof. [Ian] Douglas said the unprecedented format for the once-every-10-year conference, which was first held in 1867, will be difficult for journalists to cover and for the public to follow because there is no “focal point of up-down decision-making.” He said the new format will not shy away from discussion of controversial issues, but it is not designed to offer statements implying that various issues have been resolved.

He suggested that rather than taking on these issues “head on,” they will be discussed face-to-face. “Is a process that creates winners and losers the best way to meet a problem head on?” he asked rhetorically. “It is incorrect to describe Lambeth as a closed shop. The design has allowed for and encouraged wide open hospitality.”

Bishop Jefferts Schori declined to elaborate on the statement issued by the House of Bishops after it was revealed earlier this year that an invitation to the conference would not be forthcoming for Bishop V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, but she did not think the lack of an invitation would hinder Bishop Robinson’s ability to have his voice be heard. Bishop Robinson will have an exhibit booth in what is called the “fringe” portion of the conference.

Read it all.

It may be the mother of all doom and gloom gas price predictions: $12 for a gallon of gas is “inevitable.”

Robert Hirsch, Management Information Services Senior Energy Advisor, gave a dire warning about the potential future of gas prices on CNBC’s May 20 “Squawk Box”. He told host Becky Quick there was no single thing that would solve the problem, due to the enormity of the problem.

As they say in the U.K. this is over the top, but it is illustrative of the level of concern out there at the moment. Read or watch it all.

Single women and lesbian couples won landmark parental rights last night as MPs voted to remove the requirement that fertility clinics consider a child’s need for a father.

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill will replace the rule with a “need for supportive parenting” after opponents were defeated in two votes by unexpectedly wide margins.

The Government had been prepared for defeat but won the free votes by majorities of 75 and 68. The decisions mean that the legislation will grant the most significant extension to homosexual family rights since gay adoption was sanctioned.

It will stop fertility clinics turning away lesbians and single women because their children will not have a father or male role model. While the current law does not block such therapy, it is sometimes used to justify refusals.

Read it all.

The 2008 Lambeth Conference is primarily an opportunity for bishops to get to know one another and to strengthen partnerships, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori told media gathered for a May 20 news briefing at the Episcopal Church Center in New York City.

Acknowledging that partnerships throughout the Communion have grown significantly in recent years, Jefferts Schori said her hopes for Lambeth and the Anglican Communion are “that we encounter each other as human beings working in vastly different contexts around the globe and that we build relationships.”

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has invited more than 800 bishops to attend the July 16-August 3 conference on the campus of the University of Kent in southeast England, and more than three quarters have accepted, planners have said.

Read it all and if you desire you can watch the press conference here.

Read it all.

Did you know the Common Cause Partnership has a prayer blog? Well, they do. And today they’ve begun posting a series of daily prayer entries for the GAFCON event in Jordan and Jerusalem next month. Here’s the link to today’s entry for Day 1 of this 40 Day prayer effort.

And here’s the background on the call to 40 days of prayer and fasting. Note the specific focus on reading and praying through the Psalms of Ascent:

The bishops have specified that the Daily Office, the Great Litany, and the Psalms of Ascent (120-134) be used during this season. The Psalms of Ascent were chosen because of the impact they had on the Global South meeting in Nairobi out of which GAFCON was birthed. Contributors to the Common Cause Partnership prayer blog will be posting these resources along with reflections, scriptures, collects and other aids to prayer as the 40 days unfold. Participants are invited to report specific needs, praises, and other feedback on the prayer blog.

In 2002, the court struck down parts of the Child Pornography Protection Act that banned images that appeared to be explicit depictions of children, even if they were actually pictures of adults or computer-generated images. Banning images in which there are no real children, the court held, violates the First Amendment.

After that ruling, Congress passed a new law with its own problems. One provision punished anyone who “promotes” material in a manner “intended to cause another to believe” it is child pornography. That, once again, sweeps in fake child pornography ”” which is just what the court in 2002 said must be avoided.

This time, the court upheld the law by a 7-to-2 vote. That creates a bizarre contradiction. Fake child pornography is protected, but marketing fake child pornography is not. As Justice David Souter noted in dissent, it makes no sense to criminalize proposing to sell items that are themselves constitutionally protected.

Read it all.

But the richness of these quotes highlight the great failure of the piece. Where are the equivalent quotes from the many religious adherents who oppose redefining marriage as a union between same-sex couples?

When 75 percent of the people taking a position in an article about the religious response to redefining marriage support the change, that’s just ridiculous. California has more Roman Catholics than any other state in the nation. I believe that almost one in three Californians is Catholic. California also has more Latter-day Saint temples than any other state in the union save Utah. The idea that the reporters would highlight three Jewish rabbis (all of whom somehow support redefining marriage as a union between same-sex couples), an Episcopal priest, and a Unitarian Universalist Church but only one Christian clergyman who holds the traditional view of marriage as a union of one man and one woman? It would be laughable if it weren’t so offensive and inaccurate.

Back when a Massachusetts court changed the legal definition of marriage to permit same-sex couples to marry, one media critic described the general coverage as “upbeat.” Acting like 75 percent of the clergy are embracing a legal redefinition of marriage to include same-sex unions would have to qualify as more of the same.

Read it all.

I was fairly sure we did not need another group with a national headquarters, a logo and regular conferences. I believed that conservatives within TEC needed to find some way between the poles of departure and mere acquiescence to the more provocative resolutions of General Convention.

I’ve now heard some encouraging notes for a conservative future within TEC. Two hours of audio, posted on the website of St. Andrew’s Church in Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina (PBinSC.notlong.com), suggest that the conservative future sounds assertive rather than aggressive and hopeful rather than despairing.

Those who follow the regular drama of bishops’ elections will remember that that Diocese of South Carolina’s 14th bishop, Mark Lawrence, was said not to have received adequate consents from standing committees after a diocesan convention elected him. The diocesan convention reconvened and elected Lawrence again, on acclamation. After standing committees heard renewed assurances that he had no intention of leading the Diocese of South Carolina out of the Episcopal Church, Lawrence received sufficient consents and was consecrated on January 26 — nearly a year later than the diocese originally had planned.

To expect that this difficult path to consecration would leave Bishop Lawrence haggard or tongue-tied was to misunderstand him. In late February, as part of the Presiding Bishop’s visit to the diocese, Bishop Lawrence devoted two hours of a clergy day to a frank discussion of tensions involving the diocese, General Convention and the Presiding Bishop herself.

Read it all.

A growing wave of companies in all sectors ”” technology, financial services, energy, retail, manufacturing ”” are embracing environmentally safe practices and saving hundreds of millions of dollars, according to corporate leaders and an environmental group’s report Tuesday.

SunPower (STI), Sierra Nevada Brewing, Patagonia, Ikea, Nike (NKE), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), UPS (UPS), Yahoo (YHOO) and others are using green practices in their work sites, in product development and packaging, in energy-saving data centers and other technology, according to a report by the non-profit Environmental Defense Fund.

The report was released here at a news conference featuring green-friendly CEOs and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

David Yarnold, the fund’s executive director, says green business practices “can create competitive advantage” and “strengthen the bottom line.”

Read it all.

A Sydney Anglican minister plans to be a Christian voice at a community forum on gambling today.

St Barnabas’, Fairfield assistant minister Steve Frederick has been invited to speak at today’s South West Sydney Problem Gambling Summit.

“This is a fantastic opportunity to offer a Christian voice on an issue of such importance for the south west of Sydney,” Mr Frederick says.

Mr Frederick was invited to speak at the summit after writing an email of encouragement to a member of Fairfield Council who came under fire from the rest of the council for an opinion piece he’d written in the local paper.

“In the article Councillor Thang Ngo expressed concern about the disproportionately high number of pokies in Fairfield and the staggeringly high proportion of disposable income that residents of the area spend on them,” Mr Frederick says.

Read it all.

Fears of a shortage within five years propelled long-term oil futures prices to almost $140 a barrel, further stoking inflationary pressures in the global economy.

The spot price of Nymex West Texas Intermediate hit a record $130.30 a barrel on Wednesday. On Tuesday investors had rushed to buy oil futures contracts as far forward as December 2016, pushing their prices as high as $139.50 a barrel, up more than $9.50 on the day.

Veteran traders said they had never seen such a jump and said investors were increasingly betting that oil production would soon peak because of geopolitical and geological constraints.

Neil McMahon, of Sanford Bernstein, said: “Peak oil views ”“ regardless of whether right or wrong ”“ are seeping into the market and supporting high prices.”

It feels as if recently every morning I get up and oil is at another record high. Yuck. Read it all.

With my whole heart I seek thee; let me not wander from thy commandments!

I have laid up thy word in my heart, that I might not sin against thee.

Psalm 119: 10,11

It has been 40 years since Britain’s Enoch Powell made his famous “rivers of blood” speech warning about the social effects of immigration upon his land. Despite some serious riots along the way, Powell’s warning never came to pass. But today the chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, Trevor Phillips, is warning of “the emergence of a kind of cold war in some parts of the country where very separate communities live side by side … with poor communications across racial lines.”

The multiculturalism in which Britain put its faith is under attack as having failed.

Britons are wondering if they have gone too far to accommodate minorities, and if society should be instilling Britishness instead? The focus, of course, is on British Muslims, and some Britons are asking, is this a community that British traditions can absorb?

Read it all.

…at the Islamic Society of Orange County, Imam Muzammil H. Siddiqi told his congregation during Friday prayers that the high court’s decision was a severe disappointment and goes against Islamic teaching.

The ruling “is a violation of God’s law,” Siddiqi, an authority on Islamic law, said in an interview. “I hope all people of faith — Jews, Christians and Muslims — speak up against this.” At Lake Avenue, a large and diverse church that is part of the Conservative Congregational Christian Conference, Waybright told worshipers that he did not want to be “self- righteous or condemn anyone.” Still, he said, “it’s my responsibility . . . to keep pointing you to God’s way.” The Bible, he noted, makes clear that marriage is between a man and a woman.

A mile or so away at All Saints Episcopal Church, the Rev. Susan Russell led a between-services forum on the religious, legal and political ramifications of the court’s decision.

“The justices have ruled in favor of the sanctity of marriage and against bigotry,” Russell declared, as the audience cheered. “This is good news for all Californians.”

But even though All Saints has been blessing same-sex unions for more than 15 years, the ruling unleashed a wave of uncertainty.

“At this point in the Episcopal Church, our prayer book still defines marriage between a man and a woman,” Russell said in an interview. “There’s some question about whether we can, within the canons of our church, extend the sacrament to same-gender couples.”

Read it all.

Despite Hillary Clinton’s landslide victory in Kentucky, Barack Obama has won a majority of pledged delegates in the race for the Democratic nomination.

Clinton won Kentucky by more than 30 points, but Obama’s share of the state’s 51 delegates was enough put him over the threshold, according to CNN estimates.

Obama is expected to pick up at least 14 delegates in Kentucky, and by CNN estimates, that will give him 1,627 of the 3,253 pledged delegates at stake in all of primaries and caucuses.

Read it all.

We believe in the God of Life, who creates and loves people, who acts in history and who promises never to leave us alone.

We believe in Jesus of Nazareth, who is our brother, who wants not to be idolized but to be followed.

We believe that we dwell in the presence of the Holy Spirit; without her we are nothing; filled with her we are able to become creative, lively, and free.

Read it all.

Bishop Michael Ingham has told his Diocesan Council that he feels he has no option but to protect the property and assets of the Diocese of New Westminster and the Anglican Church of Canada, and warned that the diocese may find itself in the civil courts to do so.

“If a congregation leaves, then it is the responsibility of the diocese to see that the parish continues, and is available for future generations of Christians,” he told the 45-member body that with the bishop governs the diocese between Diocesan Synods.

Read it all.

The link for the PDF is at the top of this page for those interested.

In the splendour of the Church of Santa Maria Sopa Minerva, Rome, the Very Revd David Richardson, former Dean of Melbourne, (Australia) was installed and blessed as the new Director of the Anglican Centre in Rome (ACR) on 7 May 2008. He also will serve as the Archbishop of Canterbury’s personal representative to the Holy See (The Vatican and the Pope). The use of this church, where the sacred remains of St Catherine of Siena rest, is the titular church of Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor of Westminster, and was offered to the Anglicans for this special service.

Read it all.

During three beautiful Virginia spring days in April over 30 individuals representing 26 organizations gathered to network around global mission. This event, sponsored by the Anglican Communion Network’s Anglican Global Mission Partners (AGMP) initiative, brought together churches, dioceses, jurisdictions (such as the Reformed Episcopal Church), seminaries, and other organizations. All those present are focused on helping the church to send missionaries, interns, and teams, grow in mission understanding, and reach out across the globe sharing the Gospel in word and deed. The Falls Church graciously hosted this Annual Meeting of the AGMP.

Read it all.

In their floor-length gowns, up-dos and tiaras, the 70 or so young women swept past two harpists and into a gilt-and-brocade dining room at the lavish Broadmoor Hotel, on the arms of their much older male companions.

The girls, ages early grade school to college, had come with their fathers, stepfathers and future fathers-in-law last Friday night to the ninth annual Father-Daughter Purity Ball. The first two hours of the gala passed like any somewhat awkward night out with parents, the men doing nearly all the talking and the girls struggling to cut their chicken.

But after dessert, the 63 men stood and read aloud a covenant “before God to cover my daughter as her authority and protection in the area of purity.”

The gesture signaled that the fathers would guard their daughters from what evangelicals consider a profoundly corrosive “hook-up culture.” The evening, which alternated between homemade Christian rituals and giddy dancing, was a joyous public affirmation of the girls’ sexual abstinence until they wed.

Read it all.