Black liberation theology was a radical movement born of a competitive time.

By the mid-1960s, the horns of Jericho seemed about to sound for the traditional black church in the United States. Martin Luther King Jr. was yielding to Malcolm X. Young black preachers embraced the Nation of Islam and black intellectuals sought warmth in the secular and Marxist-tinged fire of the black power movement.

As a young, black and decidedly liberal theologian, James H. Cone saw his faith imperiled.

“Christianity was seen as the white man’s religion,” he said. “I wanted to say: ”˜No! The Christian Gospel is not the white man’s religion. It is a religion of liberation, a religion that says God created all people to be free.’ But I realized that for black people to be free, they must first love their blackness.”

Dr. Cone, a founding father of black liberation theology, allowed himself a chuckle. “You might say we took our Christianity from Martin and our emphasis on blackness from Malcolm,” he said.

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Sen. Barack Obama, the other Democratic presidential contender, has rejected the tax interruption as a “quick fix” with limited benefits and numerous drawbacks.

The White House and congressional leaders in both parties also sound rightly dubious. Other well-informed votes against the gas-tax holiday: Friday’s Los Angeles Times quoted Joseph Doyle, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor, as saying economists are “as close to unanimous as you can get” in regarding it as a “horrible idea.”

Yes, higher gas prices are tough on our personal and collective budgets. Then again, higher gas prices strengthen motivation for fuel conservation, alternative-energy development and mass transit.

Our long-term energy problems require long-term solutions, not short-term gas-tax “holidays” that merely delay the inevitable adjustments we must make now that the era of cheap oil is over.

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Squeezed by surging gasoline and grocery prices, the Dentons and other middle-class families are looking to cut corners any way they can to keep their household budgets afloat. It’s become a daily struggle for those who exist in that gray zone between safety nets and Easy Street.

People are trading name brands for generic offerings, eating out less, pooling errands to avoid car trips, clipping more coupons ”” whatever they can do to save a few bucks here and there.

“We’re in some very uncertain times right now,” said Frank Hefner, an economics professor at the College of Charleston. “I don’t think we are going back to the ’30s where people didn’t spend money, but people are thinking more about how they spend their money.”

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“Not every one is called to marriage.” Canon Llewellyn Armstrong, an Anglican (or Episcopal) priest for almost 50 years, was explaining why he has advised some couples against getting married because they are not marriage material.

“There are various reasons why people get married,” said the Rector of Calvary/St Cyprian’s Church in Brooklyn, who insists on counselling lovers before he agrees to perform the wedding ceremony.

“They would come and try to give the impression that they are so much in love and I can see through [them], that it’s not the case,” he added.

“We have situations in which other people tell couples they should be married [like] you are getting old and therefore should look for someone with whom you should settle down.

“Couples often get married for immigration purposes. And yes, I have suggested to people that they should not go ahead with the marriage ceremony because I didn’t see the marriage working.”

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Since June, there has been a rash of overdoses at Army hospitals, including some, like [Sgt. Robert] Nichols’, that have resulted in deaths. The medications prescribed for soldiers are so potent that they can be dangerous when taken with other drugs or alcohol. Overdoses have become another problem for the Army to grapple with in the wake of criticism of the care at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and other military hospitals.

Eleven medications were found in Nichols’ body, including painkillers to treat his physical wounds from an explosion in Iraq and drugs to ease the nightmares, insomnia and memory loss caused by his post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury.

Susan Nichols said that several times before he died, Robert Nichols asked his doctors to reduce the medications “because he felt like he was a zombie and he could only function for a small portion of the day.”

Brig. Gen. James Gilman, commander at Brooke, said Nichols’ death is still under investigation, so he could not discuss details. But he said the Army has made changes to try to prevent a repeat of that kind of death.

“We obviously went back and looked at medications and whether there are additional steps to take to make it safer,” Gilman said. “It would be unthinkable not to reassess everything that you’re doing when an event like this happens.”

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It is for many in the Obama camp an unthinkable thought. But politics is sometimes the art of adjusting today to what seemed inconceivable yesterday. I’m talking about the possibility ”” and the powerful logic ”” of a unity Obama-Clinton ticket for the Democrats.

I never thought I’d even consider it; but times change; politics shifts, and in the roiling flux of this American campaign, a bold unifying gesture could make the Democratic ticket ”” and an Obama presidency ”” unstoppable almost overnight. It’s still highly unlikely, but so was JF Kennedy running with Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan running with the first George Bush.

The rationale for a fusion ticket is the same as for any grand political compromise. Very few people in Washington believe that Barack Obama can now be denied the Democratic nomination. Even after the past month, as Hillary Clinton has hung in there, as the scandal about Jeremiah Wright (Obama’s firebrand cleric) scandal has battered the post-racial Obama brand, and as white Reagan Democrats have proven resistant to a new young black freshman senator, Obama has actually increased his number of delegates. Clinton simply cannot overcome the edge he built up in February and March, however cruel his April turned out to be. And the superdelegates ”” who will ultimately decide — have also been slowly trending his way.

The decision last week by the former Clintonite Democratic Party chairman, Joe Andrew, to switch from Clinton to Obama confirmed the super-delegate trend.

And the raw truth is: Clinton’s victories in Ohio and Pennsylvania and persistence in states such as North Carolina and Indiana, which vote this Tuesday, have kept Obama from closing the deal definitively. Worse: the demographics seem to be hardening into a difficult dynamic for him.

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Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said his company increased its offer to $33 per share, from the $31 per share cash-and-stock bid that it initially made on January 31. But Yahoo was looking for $37 a share, Ballmer said.

“Despite our best efforts, including raising our bid by roughly $5 billion, Yahoo has not moved toward accepting our offer,” Ballmer said in a statement.

“After careful consideration, we believe the economics demanded by Yahoo do not make sense for us, and it is in the best interests of Microsoft stockholders, employees and other stakeholders to withdraw our proposal,” said Ballmer.

Yahoo was not immediately available for comment.

Laura Martin, a senior analyst at Soleil Securities, said Yahoo was demanding too high a price and she expected its shares to fall $8 on Monday when trading resumes on the Nasdaq. The shares closed up nearly 7 percent at $28.67 on Friday on hopes of an agreement between Microsoft and Yahoo.

“The Yahoo guys want too much money for their company. We think $33 a share is fair in the context of the weakening economic environment and adverse advertising trends,” Martin said, who has a “hold” rating on Yahoo shares.

I continue to be embarrassed by the leadership at Yahoo. Read it all.

Some years ago I read a book, written by an Israeli, about the relationships between Jews, Muslims and Christians in the Holy Land. It contained a fascinating remark made by a nun, Sister Maria Teresa: “I watch the [Jewish] families who visit here on weekends; how the parents behave toward their children, speaking to them with patience and encouraging them to ask intelligent questions. It’s an example for the whole world. The strength of this people is the love of parents for their children.” I see a very similar devotion to children among the Sikhs I’ve been privileged to know.

Sister Maria’s remark touches on another feature of Judaism: the idea that Jewish parents must teach their children to ask questions. We do not believe that faith is blind or unquestioning. Nor do we believe that education is a process in which adults speak and children listen, adults command and children obey. That is the sign of an authoritarian culture, not a free society.

In the Hebrew Bible, people ask questions of God, and the greater the person, the deeper the question.

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Then the LORD said, “I have seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters; I know their sufferings,

and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Per’izzites, the Hivites, and the Jeb’usites.

And now, behold, the cry of the people of Israel has come to me, and I have seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them.

Come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring forth my people, the sons of Israel, out of Egypt.”

–Exodus 3:8-10

Shortly before Toby Goldfisher Kaplowitz married two years ago, she went to a kallah teacher ”” a woman who prepares Orthodox Jewish brides to be intimate with their husbands.

The teacher spent most of her time going over how to observe the laws prohibiting physical contact between husband and wife during the woman’s menstrual period and for a week afterward. She described sex as “”˜so horrible, so painful, but said, ”˜I’ll give you some tips to deal with it,’ “ Ms. Goldfisher Kaplowitz recalled.

“I was really shocked,” she said. “I knew it was probably true for some women, but I didn’t want to be one of them.”

Today she teaches brides herself in Brookline, Mass., taking a very different approach.

Ms. Goldfisher Kaplowitz is part of a movement among more liberal Orthodox Jews toward open discussion of sexuality and sexual health.

“Sexuality needed addressing,” said Jennie Rosenfeld, director of Tzelem, a project housed at the Center for the Jewish Future, at Yeshiva University, that focuses on the topic. “Having grown up in the Orthodox community, it was too often a subject not spoken about, especially by people of authority, like teachers and rabbis, people who should be addressing it.”

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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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“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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