Barack Obama’s presidential candidacy is evidence that the United States has made significant strides in race relations, according to Doudou Diene, a U.N. official who reports on contemporary forms of racism. But Diene tells Scott Simon that the resegregation of American cities and the poor state of public education remain key areas of concern.

Listen to it all from NPR.

The lawyer for the Rt. Rev. Charles E. Bennison Jr., the inhibited bishop of the Diocese of Pennsylvania, has offered a preview of the defense’s case as the bishop prepares for his days in court.

Bishop Bennison goes on trial June 9 in Philadelphia before the Court for the Trial of a Bishop. Bishop Bennison faces two charges related to how he responded, in the mid-1970s, after learning that his younger brother, John, was involved in sexual relations with a female teenager. A presentment against Bishop Bennison charges him with “contemporaneous failure to respond appropriately” and “subsequent suppression of pertinent information.”

The teenager was 14 when the sexual relations began. At the time, Bishop Bennison was rector of St. Mark’s Church in Upland, Calif., and his brother, a married man attending Claremont School of Religion, was on staff.

Bishop Bennison has expressed remorse about how he responded. “My efforts to maintain confidentiality and prevent scandal were very misguided,” he wrote to his diocese in November 2006.

Nevertheless, says defense lawyer James A.A. Pabarue of Philadelphia, Bishop Bennison’s efforts were consistent with the church’s limited understanding at that time””and even into the early 1990s””of how to respond to sexual predation by clergy.

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Dear Friends,

Greetings to you of Grace and Joy! I write to let you know of my reflections as well as of new liturgical guidelines in light of the new opportunity for gay and lesbian persons to marry in the state of California. First of all, let me express my personal joy in the Supreme Court decision. While this victory is not yet complete, the Supreme Court’s decision is a deep breath of freedom that has been long awaited and fought for. Take in its refreshing spirit and all that this means for gays and lesbians not only here in California but for those around the world who do not experience a fraction of the freedom we enjoy in our country.

After reflecting with our Standing Committee, other California bishops, the chair of the Massachusetts task force on same-gender marriage and Bishop Tom Shaw, also of Massachusetts, here are the guidelines – for now. You may have a same-gender civil marriage and blessing in your church provided an Episcopal priest does not officiate at the marriage itself or sign the marriage license and the Book of Common Prayer is not used. For example, you may have a civil ceremony conducted by someone other than an Episcopal clergyperson, followed by a blessing of that union (which could surely include a Eucharist) by an Episcopal priest. Various liturgies have been used around the diocese for blessings; a practice which was approved by the 2004 El Camino Real diocesan convention. These guidelines are not a tremendous change from our previous guidelines, but rather an addition that helps us live into a new reality. As the national church proceeds toward full sacramental inclusion, so shall our diocese. As with all couples, your discernment and discretion is integral to the process of determining the suitability of blessing the marriage. My consent, per the instruction of the 2004 resolution, is still required.

Please know that I have decided upon the new guidelines in light of the current climate in our diocese and the national church as a whole, and looking ahead to the upcoming Lambeth Conference. They will be too liberal for some and not permissive enough for others. I welcome your feedback as we move through these historic times. Also, as a means of encouraging ongoing conversation and exploration, I am appointing a Task Force on Marriage and Family in our diocese. As I understand it, it has been a long time since El Camino Real has had any structured conversation about what distinguishes a Christian marriage and what it means to live with “Christian family values” in our tradition and in our very diverse world. While I rejoice at the election and consecration of Bishop Gene Robinson, it would seem that the deeper conversation about covenant relationships – no matter the gender – has been of less importance in a very political conversation about human sexuality focused on the specificity of gender. I would like to have a different conversation, one less focused on gender but which looks more carefully at the theology of Christian marriage and family life as we understand them in our tradition.

We are in the midst of a very long conversation prompted by our awareness of the complexities of human sexuality and our desire to live in relationships of integrity with God and with one another. May we continue prayerfully, loving each other. May we extend grace and understanding to one another in the various ways we are experiencing these times. Rejoice with those who rejoice, and grieve with those who grieve. Indeed, may we honor the covenant relationship we share together with Christ, “bearing each other in all things.”

My prayers and blessings to you for fruitfulness in our common ministry for Christ’s sake,

–(The Rt. Rev.) Mary Gray-Reeves is Bishop of El Camino Real

Placating Stalin was one reason the Allies had to invade Germany through France. All the military and political leaders remembered early 1918, when the newly-in-power Soviet government under Lenin had made a separate peace with Imperial Germany. Even though all the Allies had agreed early in WW II that no separate peace agreements would be made, the nag was always there.

Moreover, neither Roosevelt nor Churchill had any desire at all to see all Germany overrun from the east and fall under the hammer and sickle. The only way to prevent that was to place American and British soldiers on the ground inside Germany. Invasion through northern Europe was the only way to do that (Churchill’s claim that an invasion from the south, through Europe’s “soft underbelly,” proved fantastical in rolling up the Italian peninsula. Whatever Europe’s underbelly was, it wasn’t soft.)

The Allies could afford to succeed by a mere whisker on the Normandy beaches. Indeed, the planned American and British timetable for operations commencing June 7 proved wildly optimistic. But they did succeed, rather handily most places, as it turned out, and that was enough.

But any failure would have been only catastrophic. As in all major military operations, logistics was the central issue. The moon and tide conditions were acceptable on days in May, June and July; in fact, May 19 was seriously discussed as the invasion date for some time. But the Allies’ supreme commander, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, postponed the invasion to June 5 because doing so would yield him an additional 100 landing craft, mostly LSTs, used to land tracked and wheeled vehicles directly onto the beach.

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The Jewish comedian began with a routine about raising adolescents. “There was a reason Abraham was asked to sacrifice Isaac at 12 and not 13,” he said. “At 13, it wouldn’t have been a sacrifice.”

A half hour later, the Muslim comedian took the stage, raising his hands so the Jew could pat him down for weapons. He then urged the Muslims and Jews in the theater, adversaries on the world stage, to cheer their commonalities: “C’mon,” he exhorted, “let’s give it up for lunar calendaring.”

The evangelical Christian comedian also did a half-hour set, observing that though his children’s school teaches abstinence, it also gives out condoms. “That,” he said, “is like a department store saying ”˜No shoplifting, but just in case, here’s a trench coat.’ ”

It was only at the end of the program at Drew University here that all three comedians were on stage together. Operating under the wistful supposition that a troupe of jesters getting disparate people to laugh it up together is a first step toward something larger, the Jew, the Muslim and the Christian sought to ring in world peace in the only way they knew how: with a shamefully bad if highly enthusiastic Irish jig.

The dance was not pretty, but it had the audience convulsing.

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Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton formally threw her support behind Senator Barack Obama on Saturday, clearing the way for Mr. Obama to head into the general election with a plan to challenge Senator John McCain in typically Republicans states.

Mrs. Clinton, speaking here to an audience of advisers and supporters who had been invited to attend from across the country, used the final rally of her presidential campaign to end her barrier-breaking bid for the presidency and endorse Mr. Obama. She pledged that she would do what it takes to help Mr. Obama win the White House.

In her last rally as a presidential candidate, Mrs. Clinton expressed deep gratitude to the voters. who had cast ballots for her. She suspended her campaign, rather than officially ending it. That’s a technicality that will allow her to raise money to retire her debt and to control the delegates she won. It is not an indication that she has any intention of resuming it.

Mr. Obama stayed away because he understood this was her moment.

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For years, Kevin Jensen carried a pistol everywhere he went, tucked in a shoulder holster beneath his clothes.

In hot weather the holster was almost unbearable. Pressed against Jensen’s skin, the firearm was heavy and uncomfortable. Hiding the weapon made him feel like a criminal.

Then one evening he stumbled across a site that urged gun owners to do something revolutionary: Carry your gun openly for the world to see as you go about your business.

In most states there’s no law against that.

Jensen thought about it and decided to give it a try. A couple of days later, his gun was visible, hanging from a black holster strapped around his hip as he walked into a Costco. His heart raced as he ordered a Polish dog at the counter. No one called the police. No one stopped him.

Now Jensen carries his Glock 23 openly into his bank, restaurants and shopping centers. He wore the gun to a Ron Paul rally. He and his wife, Clachelle, drop off their 5-year-old daughter at elementary school with pistols hanging from their hip holsters, and have never received a complaint or a wary look.

Jensen said he tries not to flaunt his gun. “We don’t want to show up and say, ‘Hey, we’re here, we’re armed, get used to it,’ ” he said.

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Jim McKay, 86, a longtime television sports journalist, has died of natural causes in Maryland, according to a statement from the McKay family.

McKay is best known for hosting “ABC’s Wide World of Sports” and 12 Olympic Games.

McKay won numerous awards for journalism, including the George Polk Memorial Award and two Emmys — one for his sports coverage, the other for his news reporting — for his work at the 1972 Munich Olympics, which were tragically affected by the Black September terrorists’ attack on the Israeli athletes in the Olympic Village.

“There are no superlatives that can adequately honor Jim McKay. He meant so much to so many people. He was a founding father of sports television, one of the most respected commentators in the history of broadcasting and journalism,” ESPN and ABC Sports president George Bodenheimer said in a statement.

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The executive council of Milwaukee’s Episcopal Diocese has voted to put Camp Webb, its 135-acre lakefront property near Wautoma, on the market.

The site has hosted summer camps and other activities since 1960 for thousands of children and adults through church-run programs and other organizations.

But usage has declined over the years, and the diocese has been spending most of its annual Christian formation budgets to subsidize the camp, which has a $400,000 debt, Milwaukee Bishop Steven Miller said Friday.

Read the whole article.

They will now have to answer to Jesus.

An 8-foot statue of Jesus that was stolen from the cross at the Church of the Messiah on Detroit’s east side was found in an alley near the church.

The Rev. Barry Randolph said Patricia Bower, a woman who lives in the neighborhood, decided to take a shortcut home and found Jesus “in a bush, between two trees” Wednesday night.

Randolph and a church member went to pick up Jesus and found the green-hued, weather-beaten statue with only a hand missing.

“We are truly grateful,” Randolph said Thursday.

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Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said “economic egoism” has led to what may be the worst economic contraction since the depression of the 1930s, and placed some of the blame on the U.S.

The Russian leader said no single country, even the U.S., can reverse the global economic decline alone, and claimed a role for Russia in finding a solution.

“An underestimation of risks by the largest financial companies together with the aggressive financial policy of the world’s largest economy led not only to corporate losses; unfortunately, the majority of people on the planet became poorer,” Medvedev said in St. Petersburg.

Medvedev was speaking at the opening of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Russia’s largest trade and investment fair, held in his hometown for a 12th year. Officials expect the event to match the $12 billion worth of deals signed last year.

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The likelihood that the U.S. is in a recession appeared to increase Friday, following weeks of hopes that the country might be skirting one.

Unemployment rose sharply and payrolls shrank for the fifth consecutive month. The economy news came on a day that oil surged to record prices, the dollar weakened and the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged nearly 400 points. The deteriorating job numbers led markets to scale back the odds that the Federal Reserve will boost short-term interest rates this fall to ward off inflation.

The jobless rate posted its largest one-month gain in two decades, rising to 5.5% in May from 5.0% in April, the Labor Department reported Friday. Payrolls, measured by a separate survey, fell by 49,000 jobs last month, bringing the tally of job losses so far this year to 324,000.

The rise in unemployment has been accompanied by higher food and energy prices, pushing up the “misery index” — the sum of the unemployment and inflation rates — to around 9.4, the highest level since the recession of the early 1990s apart from a one-month blip in 2005.

Read it all from the front page of this morning’s Wall Street Journal.

“Capitalism without failure is like Christianity without hell.”

–Legendary investor Warren Buffett in the Chicago Tribune, May 5, 2008

And yet, though we’re never going back to the 19th-century, sin-centric character-building model, for breeding leaders, it has its uses. Over the past decades, we’ve seen president after president confident of his own talents but then undone by underappreciated flaws. It’s as if they get elected for their virtues and then get defined in office by the vices – Clinton’s narcissism, Bush’s intellectual insecurity – they’ve never really faced.

It would be nice to have a president who had gone to school on his own failings. It would be comforting to see a president who’d looked into the abyss, or suffered some sort of ordeal that put him on a first-name basis with his own gravest weaknesses, and who had found ways to combat them.

Obviously, it’s not fair to compare anybody to Lincoln, but he does illustrate the repertoire of skills we look for in a leader. The central illusion of modern politics is that if only people as virtuous as “us” had power, then things would be better. Candidates get elected by telling people what they want to hear, leading them by using the sugar of their own fantasies.

Somehow a leader conversant with his own failings wouldn’t be as affected by the moral self-approval that afflicts most political movements.

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When Sen. Barack Obama severed ties with his Chicago church, most political observers saw the move as a way for the candidate to insulate himself from the controversies stirred by its retiring pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. But Trinity United Church of Christ does not have that kind of insulation. According to sources within Trinity, Wright, 66, who began the process of retirement two years ago, is resisting fully relinquishing his duties as senior pastor, hanging on to power in the church he helped build.

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The Rev. Michael Ruk, priest-in-charge of St. Paul’s Church, Levittown, and All Saints’ Church, Fallsington, Pa., has voluntarily stepped down from his duties at those congregations until the [disciplinary] review board of the Diocese of Pennsylvania completes its investigation and reports their findings to the Rt. Rev. Allen L. Bartlett, assisting Bishop pro tempore, and the diocesan standing committee.

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It took weeks of political pounding before Barack Obama finally renounced his membership in Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ.

The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee spoke of the anguish of leaving his church family, where the Rev. Jeremiah Wright had given incendiary and racially charged sermons.

Peg and Bob Green of St. Petersburg are empathetic, even though they’re Republicans.

“We’re not Obama supporters, but in this instance, I feel for him and his family,” said Peg Green, who left First Presbyterian Church in St. Petersburg three years ago for St. Thomas Episcopal Church.

“I know it’s a decision that’s not as easy as some may think.”

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There is a technique used by good chefs to make a concentrated red wine sauce: simply take an entire bottle of red wine, and gently simmer it (with, say, some minced shallots, garlic and herbs) over low heat until the 25 ounces of wine have been reduced to about 3 ounces of rich, red sauce. It’s a marvelous sauce marchand de vin (without any butter or fat) to accompany grilled meat—but as any good chef will tell you, how the sauce turns out depends on the wine with which you started.

Episcopal Life, the national news organ of The Episcopal Church, is currently publishing a series of Sunday bulletin inserts that deals with the history of the Lambeth Conference—the decennial gathering of all the active Bishops in the Anglican Communion under the auspices of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Like a sauce marchand de vin, the series has been condensed from a longer series written by the Rev. Christopher L. Webber, the author of Welcome to the Episcopal Church, and Re-Inventing Marriage (as well as others described on his Web site). The parent series, entitled “Unity and Diversity in the Lambeth Conference,” was posted on the now-ended Episcopal Majority site; you can read it in four parts here, here, here and here.

By the time the longer series has been reduced to the bulletin version, what remains is chiefly the pro-American, pro-Episcopal Church bias of its author, but the theme of the longer series—“Unity and Diversity”—has been boiled down (by some anonymous editor at Episcopal Life, I must assume, for reasons shortly to appear) to a single note of “Change—It’s Healthy, Necessary, and Inevitable.” Please do not misinterpret me: there is nothing wrong with bias; we each have our own. The problem I am reacting to is the lack of balance in the resulting condensed product.

Read it all.

Check it out if you are interested.

Oil prices… [hit new record highs] Friday on an analyst prediction that prices could hit $150 by July 4 and also continued upward pressure from comments made by the president of the European Central Bank regarding an interest-rate hike.

Ole Slorer of Morgan Stanley said he expected a “short-term spike in oil prices,” on the back of rising demand in Asia, Dow Jones Newswires reported.

Read it all. Ugh.

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It seems to me that skepticism about religion doesn’t consort well with overtrustfulness of human motives and human honesty. I would counsel our contemporary atheists to study some of their more consistently skeptical ancestors: George Orwell, for instance, who exposed the fundamental and incorrigible dishonesty of most political speech in his great essay “Politics and the English Language.” Or, better yet, Edward Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” with its ruthless exposure of the ways that the Christian emperors of Rome manipulated religious language for the foulest of ends. Surely Gibbon would help even the most optimistic modern atheists break the habit of trustfulness.

Is religion powerful? I suppose it often is. After all, if people were not religious — or, to take a Gibbonesque view of the matter, if people did not want to be thought of as so — no one would use religious language to promote political or social or ethnic goals. That those seeking to acquire or keep power do use such language, and regularly, indicates that religion has influence. But the idea that without religion people would stop seeking power, stop manipulating, stop deceiving, is just wishful thinking of the silliest kind. Though it may seem ironic for a Christian to be saying this, it’s time to talk less about the power of religion and remember instead the dark forces in all human lives that religious language is too often used to hide.

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The world needs to invest $45 trillion in energy in coming decades, build some 1,400 nuclear power plants and vastly expand wind power in order to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, according to an energy study released Friday.

The report by the Paris-based International Energy Agency envisions a “energy revolution” that would greatly reduce the world’s dependence on fossil fuels while maintaining steady economic growth.

“Meeting this target of 50 percent cut in emissions represents a formidable challenge, and we would require immediate policy action and technological transition on an unprecedented scale,” IEA Executive Director Nobuo Tanaka said.

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Kwabena Sam-Brew, a 38-year-old immigrant from Ghana, doubted that Nana, his 5-year-old American-born daughter, would remember the rally that effectively crowned Senator Barack Obama as the Democratic nominee Tuesday night.

But Mr. Sam-Brew said he would describe it to her: “I will tell her, ”˜Tonight is the night that all Americans became one.’ ”

Mr. Sam-Brew, a bus driver living in Cottage Grove, Minn., said Mr. Obama’s achievement would change the nation’s image around the world, and change the mind-set of Americans, too.

“We as black people now have hope that we have never, ever had,” Mr. Sam-Brew said. “I have new goals for my little girl. She can’t give me any excuses because she’s black.”

In his remarks Tuesday, Mr. Obama did not mention becoming the first American of color with a real chance at being president of the United States, and, of course, most of the Democrats who had voted for him were white. But for that very reason, many African-Americans exulted Wednesday in a political triumph that they believed they would never live to see. Many expressed hope that their children would draw strength from the moment.

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A member of the General Synod who tabled a private member’s motion on the evangelisation of Muslims has protested against its “postponement” from the July group of sessions.

The member, Paul Eddy, a lay representative for Winchester, had received 124 signatures of support for his motion, but, owing to time constraints, a motion on church tourism with 134 signatures takes precedence, and will be the only private member’s motion debated.

Mr Eddy, a theological student who runs his own PR company and was initially UK press officer for Gafcon, had called on the House of Bishops in his motion to “report to the Synod on their understanding of the uniqueness of Christ in Britain’s multifaith society, and to offer examples and commendations of good practice in sharing the gospel of salvation through Christ alone with people of other faiths and none”.

He suggested in a press release he issued on Tuesday that the church Establishment had been worried about the effect the debate would have on the “position of the C of E, headed by the Archbishop, in the run-up to Lambeth”. Electronic voting, he said, would have shown how many bishops believed in “the uniqueness of Christ as the only means of salvation”.

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For 17 months, they tracked one another’s movements like prey.

But Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton came together here Thursday evening to pull off a secret rendezvous. They ditched their traveling entourages, eluded camera crews across town and startled many of their own advisers as they held their first private meeting since becoming archrivals for the Democratic presidential nomination.

It was a political scavenger hunt like this capital had seldom seen before ”” at least in the current frenzied climate ”” where the two rivals huddled at an undisclosed location. Only hours earlier, she sought to cool speculation that she was clamoring to be his running mate, but suddenly the city’s media was awash in rumor as word spread of their meeting.

The evening began in routine fashion, with Mr. Obama holding a large rally in northern Virginia. Then, he was scheduled to travel by motorcade to Dulles International Airport and fly to Chicago. The motorcade arrived, but Mr. Obama did not, stirring alarm among reporters who had been aboard the campaign plane for 45 minutes as it sat on the tarmac.

Shortly before takeoff, one part of the secret was divulged. Robert Gibbs, the campaign’s communications director, said Mr. Obama would not be flying to Chicago as previously scheduled. He gave no reason for this mysterious pronouncement and there was little time for questions, considering that the engines had started to whir.

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An Israeli deputy prime minister on Friday warned that Iran would face attack if it pursues what he said was its nuclear weapons programme.

“If Iran continues its nuclear weapons programme, we will attack it,” said Shaul Mofaz, who is also transportation minister.

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Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Canon Lorne Coyle has written an important letter to those he believes will be departing from The Episcopal Church and the Diocese of Central Florida on July 1, 2008.

I am concerned that several of his statements may not be entirely accurate.

He has said:

1. “Trinity is part of a dying denomination”¦The Episcopal Church is part of a culture which God cannot honor, the culture of salvation without a cross, of grace without sin, of Easter without Good Friday.”

I believe this may well be the theology of some within The Episcopal Church, but it certainly is not the official teaching of TEC. And, more importantly, it is not the teaching of the worldwide Anglican Communion, of which we are a constituent part.

Read it all.