One of the most stunning outcomes from the Barna survey was the moral pattern among adults under 25. The younger generation was more than twice as likely as all other adults to engage in behaviors considered morally inappropriate by traditional standards. Their choices made even the Baby Boomers – never regarded as a paragon of traditional morality – look like moral pillars in comparison.

For instance, two-thirds of the under-25 segment (64%) had used profanity in public, compared to just one out of five Boomers (19%). The younger group – known as Mosaics – was nine times more likely than were Boomers to have engaged in sex outside of marriage (38% vs. 4%), six times more likely to have lied (37% vs. 6%), almost three times more likely to have gotten drunk (25% vs. 9%) and to have gossiped (26% vs. 10%), and twice as likely as Boomers to have observed pornography (33% vs. 16%) and to have engaged in acts of retaliation (12% vs. 5%).

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Addressing a national gathering of some religious leaders some time ago, George Gallup said, “We find there is very little difference in ethical behavior between churchgoers and those who are not active religiously…The levels of lying, cheating, and stealing are remarkable similar in both groups. Eight out of ten Americans consider themselves Christians, Gallup said, yet only about half of them could identify the person who gave the Sermon on the Mount, and fewer still could recall five of the Ten Commandments. Only two in ten said they would be willing to suffer for their faith.”

Based on their religious beliefs, voters are divided between Barack Obama and John McCain today in much the same way they were four years ago between John Kerry and George Bush, according to a new survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

According to the survey taken in July and August, Mr. Obama has the support of 24 percent of those who say they are white, born-again or evangelical Christians ”” the same percentage Mr. Kerry had four years ago. And Mr. McCain’s support, 68 percent, is about the same as Mr. Bush enjoyed in August 2004.

Mr. Obama, the Democratic candidate, has lost a few percentage points compared with Mr. Kerry among white mainline Protestants, Catholics, and the religiously unaffiliated. Only among black Protestants has he gained support over where Mr. Kerry stood in 2004.

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Economic trouble has spread far beyond the United States to major countries in Europe and Asia, threatening businesses around the world with the loss of the international sales and investment that have become increasingly vital to their sustenance.

Only a few months ago, some economists still offered hope that robust expansion could continue in much of the world even as the United States slowed. Foreign investment was expected to keep replenishing American banks still bleeding from their disastrous bets on real estate and to provide money for companies looking to expand. Foreign demand for American goods and services was supposed to continue compensating for waning demand in the United States.

Now, high energy prices, financial systems crippled by fear, and the decline of trading partners have combined to choke growth in many major economies. The International Monetary Fund expects global growth to slow significantly through the end of this year, dipping to 4.1 percent from 5 percent in 2007.

“The global economy is in a tough spot, caught between sharply slowing demand in many advanced economies and rising inflation everywhere,” the IMF said last month in its official World Economic Outlook.

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KIM LAWTON: Every weekend, more than 20,000 people come to services at the evangelical Saddleback Church in southern California. Last Sunday (August 17), pastor and best-selling author Rick Warren urged his massive flock to carefully consider who to vote for in November.

Reverend RICK WARREN (Pastor, Saddleback Church, during sermon): What we need in America more than visionaries, more than smart leaders, is we need leaders with character.

LAWTON: On the previous evening, both Barack Obama and John McCain were at Saddleback making their case to be the next president. As part of the discussion, Warren asked them to describe what their Christian faith means to them.

Senator BARACK OBAMA (Democratic Presidential Candidate at Saddleback Forum): It means I believe in – that Jesus Christ died for my sins and that I am redeemed through him. That is a source of strength and sustenance on a daily basis.

Senator JOHN MCCAIN (Republican Presidential Candidate, at Saddleback Forum): Means I’m saved and forgiven. And we’re talking about the world. Our faith encompasses not just the United States of America, but the world.

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Although [the community of] Merced [California] has one of the highest foreclosure rates in the country, this borrower isn’t in such dire straits. She’s not even behind on her mortgage. But her oldest daughter is turning 18, which means an end to $500 a month in child support. She just wants a better deal.

The mayor hangs up and shrugs: “It’s a surprise her daughter is turning 18? You’d think she could have planned ahead.”

But hardly anyone in Merced planned very far ahead.

Not the city, which enthusiastically approved the creation of dozens of new neighborhoods without pausing to wonder if it could absorb the growth.

Certainly not the developers. They built 4,397 new homes in those neighborhoods, some costing half a million dollars, without asking who in a city of only 80,000 could afford to buy them all.

Obviously not the speculators turned landlords, who thought that they could get San Francisco rents in a working-class agricultural city ranked by the American Lung Association as having some of the worst air in the nation.

And, sadly, not the local folk who moved up and took on more debt than they could afford. They believed ”” because who was telling them differently? ”” that the good times would be endless.

“Owning a home is the American dream,” says Jamie Schrole, a Merced real estate agent. “Everybody was just trying to live out their dream.”

The belief that this dream could be achieved with no risk, no worry and no money down was at the center of the American romance with real estate in the early years of this decade, and not just in Merced.

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The news of her appointment as the eighth bishop of Christchurch was heralded by a phone call at 4.30 one morning in February and was greeted with “excitement and delight, and a firm prayer to God that `we’re in this together You made this happen so don’t leave me now’.”

[Victoria] Matthews has just returned from the Lambeth Conference, the once-in-a-decade worldwide gathering of the Anglican Church which the Bishop of Nelson, Richard Ellena, described as the “most expensive exercise in futility” he had ever been to.

The 20-day conference was attended by 650 bishops and cost around $15 million to stage but seemed to do little to heal the schism over the appointment of gay clergy and the blessing of same-sex unions.

“I couldn’t disagree more,” Matthews said of Ellena’s comments. “It was a profound gathering. We went in with our differences… but as time went on people began to see they needed to set aside their differences and stay together for the sake of the Church. That’s not an exercise in futility.”

Matthews is part of the Anglican Communion that agreed at the conference not to go ahead with the blessing of same-sex unions but is open to further discussion on it.

“As I understand it the Anglican Church, in this province, recognises two ways of life. One is marriage, which is between a man and a woman. And the other is celibacy. But if you think I’m going to be the sexual police, you’re wrong. I’m not going to be out with my torch peering into people’s bedrooms to see what they’re up to.”

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If you believe the problem with America’s war on terror is that it has not been ambitious enough, or tough enough, or monumental enough, McCain is your man. If you think the United States needs to be feared more than it needs to be loved, McCain is your man. And if you think that the economic policies of the past eight years – specifically Bush’s low tax rates – are necessary for growth, McCain is the obvious choice.

In some ways he is the last hope for the Republicans that their conservative movement is rescuable. McCain reassures them that the Bush era was not a total miscalculation but merely a good idea poorly executed.

Obama represents something more radical: a return of the multilateral, international umbrella of traditional American diplomacy and alliance-building. He represents this even as America is at war with deeply destructive forces in the asymmetrical global battlefield and even as partners such as Russia and China seem uninterested in keeping the international system as a model of rational discourse. He is less likely to see a struggle between good and evil in the world than a dark but promising place where the American national interest and the elevation of human dignity in the developing world are compatible.

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Mr [David] Axelrod has won nothing but applause for his performance during the primaries. But now that the general-election campaign has, in effect, begun, some Democrats are worrying that his magic touch may be deserting him. Why is Mr Obama stuck in the polls? And why is he less popular than his party? Some Democrats worry that he is not prepared to hit John McCain hard enough. This seems unlikely. Mr Axelrod is a product of Chicago’s street-fighting school of politics. Ed Rollins, a veteran Republican strategist, puts him at the head of his list of “Guys I never want to see lobbing grenades at me again”.

The bigger problem lies with what has hitherto been the Obama campaign’s greatest strength””message control. Mr Axelrod firmly believes that the candidate is the message. The important thing is to tell a positive story about the candidate rather than to muddy the narrative with lots of talk about policy details.

This worked perfectly when Mr Obama was up against Mrs Clinton, a woman who agreed with him on most points of substance and whose own autobiography is messy, to put it mildly. But things are different with Mr McCain. As a Republican, Mr McCain is on the losing side of most policy issues, particularly when it comes to economic and domestic policy. But Mr Obama has still not figured out how to relate his grand rhetoric to the numerous specific policy positions that litter his website. Mr McCain also has one of the most compelling autobiographies in American politics””one that is more likely to appeal to the average American than the coming-of-age of a mixed-race child. For all his skills, Mr Axelrod may have chosen to fight on the one battlefield where the Republicans have a chance of winning.

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David Campbell switched on the overhead projector and wrote “Evolution” in the rectangle of light on the screen.

He scanned the faces of the sophomores in his Biology I class. Many of them, he knew from years of teaching high school in this Jacksonville suburb, had been raised to take the biblical creation story as fact. His gaze rested for a moment on Bryce Haas, a football player who attended the 6 a.m. prayer meetings of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes in the school gymnasium.

“If I do this wrong,” Mr. Campbell remembers thinking on that humid spring morning, “I’ll lose him.”

In February, the Florida Department of Education modified its standards to explicitly require, for the first time, the state’s public schools to teach evolution, calling it “the organizing principle of life science.” Spurred in part by legal rulings against school districts seeking to favor religious versions of natural history, over a dozen other states have also given more emphasis in recent years to what has long been the scientific consensus: that all of the diverse life forms on Earth descended from a common ancestor, through a process of mutation and natural selection, over billions of years.

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The church bell doesn’t ring anymore at St. Mary’s in the Highlands Church.

And there is no proper place for the rector of the Episcopal church to drape his vestments and store religious materials.

For 140 years, rain and wind have taken a toll on the church’s 125-foot-high tower.

The granite-block steeple and interior plaster have been extensively damaged. Leaks threaten not only the tower, but also the interior walls of the church and its organ console.

Parishioners responded in June by forming the St. Mary’s Steeple Committee, hoping to raise $450,000 for repairs. So far, $155,000 has been raised through community events, donations and grants. Topping this list is $100,000 from the Episcopal Diocese of New York, $25,000 from the New York Landmark Conservancy and $20,000 from state Sen. Vincent Leibell, R-Patterson from the 2008 state budget.

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Joe Biden has one crucial qualification to be the next vice-president of the United States, at least in the eyes of Barack Obama. He is not Hillary Clinton. Mr Obama has made the opposite decision to the one made by another young and relatively inexperienced Senator in 1960. John F.Kennedy distrusted and detested Lyndon Johnson, but he asked him to become his running- mate in the election because he thought that Johnson would help to deliver the Texas vote. He did, and Texas was one of the key states that took Kennedy into the White House.

Senator Biden is no Hillary Clinton; he presents no threat though little promise to Mr Obama. In the primary elections, Mrs Clinton gained 18 million votes. Among women she had a devoted following – and who still believe she should have been the candidate. If she had been on the ticket, she would have brought a lot of votes with her, as did Johnson. In rejecting her as his running-mate, Mr Obama has taken the risk that his margin of victory might be wiped out.

Mr Biden has himself twice run unsuccessfully for the presidency; in 1987 he had to withdraw before the primaries; in 2008 he failed to generate any interest in the Iowa caucuses or in New Hampshire. He has a strong record for winning votes as a senator in Delaware. There is no evidence he can win votes in a national election.

Read it all. Also, take the time to read David Brooks who has a different take.

THE future for many small rural churches was unveiled at the tiny town of Beeac yesterday: a direct internet link with a large city church and a shared morning worship service.

New 3G technology and a communal ambition enabled the Glen Waverley Uniting Church to transmit its 11am family service onto a large screen in Beeac in an experiment that has sparked the interest and hopes of many country churches.

“It’s very exciting,” Beeac parishioner Dawn Missen said. “We hope it will strengthen relations between country and city. We’ve already met some lovely people from Glen Waverley. Although we are small in number, we can be stimulated by a strong, vibrant city congregation.”

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It was the perfect end to a perfect Olympic Games for China as the Olympic flame was handed over to London in the grandeur of one of the world’s greatest stadiums this morning. As the memories of a sensational Games faded into memory, the Chinese nation was left to celebrate achieving its ultimate aim of heading the Olympic medals table for the first time in history.

Unless you are in the United States where, strangely, you will discover that Team USA remains the dominant force in world sport, yet again topping the medals table.

The race for the ultimate Olympic accolade is measured in medals, it just depends on which medals you decide to count. The International Olympic Committee issues its league table based on the number of golds won, which gives China the honours, but then admits that there is no official system in place to decide who is top dog. So the American public is reading tables counting the total number of medals, including silver and bronze, won at the Games. On that measure, the USA keeps the whip hand over the home nation.

You pays your money and takes your choice on this one, but the undeniable fact is that this has been China’s Games in every sense. A century ago at the 1908 Games in London – where Britain registered 145 medals, including 56 golds – China did not even field a team. In recent years, though, they have overtaken Russia and now loom in America’s sights. In Beijing, China contested almost every event and, even where they could not win medals, showed signs that they will be a formidable force in four years in London.

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When Labour cabinet members were asked about their religious allegiances last December, following Tony Blair’s official conversion to Roman Catholicism, it turned out that more than half of them are not believers. The least equivocal about their atheism were the health secretary, Alan Johnson, and foreign secretary David Miliband.

The fact that Miliband is an atheist is a matter of special interest given the likelihood that he may one day, and perhaps soon, occupy No 10. In our present uncomfortable climate of quarrels between pushy religionists and resisting secularists – or attack-dog secularists and defensive religionists: which side you are on determines how you see it – there are many reasons why it would be a great advantage to everyone to have an atheist prime minister.

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‘Overhyped.” That’s how the Rev. Rick Warren describes the notion that the evangelical vote is “up for grabs” in this election. But what about the significance of the evangelical left, I asked the pastor of Saddleback Church after his forum with the presidential candidates last weekend. “This big,” he says, holding his thumb and forefinger about an inch apart.

Sitting on a small stone patio outside the church’s “green room,” I question him further — has he heard that the Democratic Party is changing its abortion platform? “Window dressing,” he replies. “Too little, too late.” But Rev. Jim Wallis, the self-described progressive evangelical, has been saying that the change is a big victory. “Jim Wallis is a spokesman for the Democratic Party,” Mr. Warren responds dismissively. “His book reads like the party platform.”

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The race for the White House entered a new, decisive phase yesterday as Barack Obama introduced Senator Joe Biden of Delaware, a seasoned Washington veteran, as his running mate, describing him as ready to “step in and be president”.

In the same historic setting at the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Illinois, where he put on the mantle of President Abraham Lincoln to launch his campaign last year, Obama described Biden as a “statesman with sound judgment who doesn’t have to hide behind bluster to keep America strong”.

In a declaration of war, Republicans swiftly moved to kick Biden by pointing to his criticisms of Obama, their disagreements over the Iraq war and his reputation for verbosity.

From now on, the rival camps will be battling hammer and tongs and the campaign can only get nastier.

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Columbian Bank and Trust Co. of Topeka, Kansas, was closed by U.S. regulators, the nation’s ninth bank to collapse this year amid bad real-estate loans and writedowns stemming from a drop in home prices.

The bank, with $752 million in assets and $622 million in total deposits, was shuttered by the Kansas state bank commissioner’s office and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the FDIC said yesterday in a statement.

Citizens Bank and Trust will assume the failed bank’s insured deposits. Columbian Bank’s nine branches will open Aug. 25 as Citizens Bank and Trust offices, the FDIC said. Customers can access their accounts over the weekend by writing checks or using ATM or debit cards.

“There is no need for customers to change their banking relationship to retain their deposit insurance coverage,” the FDIC said.

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And the night shall be filled with music
And the cares, that infest the day,
Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away.

–Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

By selecting Sen. Joe Biden as his running mate, Barack Obama has picked a Senate colleague who has a long and friendly rivalry with Obama’s Republican opponent, Sen. John McCain.

From their perches on the leading foreign policy committees, Biden and McCain have shadowboxed across the globe, building reputations as experts in their respective parties on war and peace.

But their clash over the direction of the war in Iraq — and now the prospect of a high-stakes political campaign this fall — has strained that collegial relationship, leaving both men more than willing to do battle with the other.

“He has respect for McCain but he’ll be the first to angered by the sort of cheap shots they’re throwing at Obama now,” said Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), who predicted that Biden will relish the role of playing a lead attack dog on McCain.

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The Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin, based in Stockton, is planning a second go-round for priests and deacons to clarify whether they wish to remain in the U.S. Episcopal Church.

Bishop Jerry Lamb of the Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin says “roughly a third” of the 110 priests and deacons responded to letters mailed July 10 asking them to clarify their status with the denomination. The deadline was Aug. 5. Lamb says he planned this week to send a second letter because of the low response.

Read it all and there is much more here.

The Catholic bishop of Limburg, Franz Peter Tebartz van Elst, has removed a priest from office after reports that the latter had “blessed” or “consecrated” the partnership of a pair of homosexual men.

Fr. Peter Kollas, a dean of priests in the city of Wetzlar, participated in the “blessing” of the two men who had undertaken a civil “marriage” ceremony.

The event, Friday August 15, was also witnessed by a Protestant minister and about 150 guests, local news reports.

The bishop, appointed to the diocese of Limburg by Pope Benedict XVI in 2007, said that Catholics “have a duty to protest the legal recognition of homosexual partnerships.”
In a statement appearing on the diocese’s website, Bishop Tebartz-van Elst said he had removed Fr. Kollas as dean of priests to avoid further “damage” to the Church’s reputation.

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Working with his Rugby contemporary R. H. Tawney, the seminal Labour thinker, and William Beveridge, the architect of the welfare reforms which sought to banish the five giants of want, idleness, squalor, ignorance and disease, Temple’s book Christianity and Social Order, published in 1942, provided a challenging theological gloss to this vision: “. . . there is no hope of establishing a more Christian social order except through the labour and sacrifice of those in whom the Spirit of Christ is active, and that the first necessity for progress is more and better Christians taking full responsibility as citizens for the political, social and economic system under which they and their fellows live.”

After Temple’s death at the age of 63 after being Archbishop of Canterbury for only 30 months, Bishop Barry of Southwell asked angrily in The Spectator: “Is the Church so rich in prophets that it can afford to squander the gifts of God?” A contrasting view, expressed by Hensley Henson, was that he died just in time “for he had passed away while the streams of opinion in Church and State, of which he became the outstanding symbol and exponent, were at flood, and escaped the experience of their inevitable ebb”.

Although a much different world than that of 60 years ago, the weight of Temple’s greatness is still felt. Once described as “a man so broad, to some he seem’d to be Not one, but all Mankind in Effigy”, his wide informed vision checks our growing narrowness and self-obsession, his realism our Utopian perfectionism, his generosity of heart a worthy riposte to the mood of cynicism and anger epitomising the age and his statesmanship a powerful reminder of what it is to serve as the national church.

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Churches in England have lost about 50,000 women every year from their congregations since 1989, according to a Derby-based sociologist.

Dr Kristin Aune, from the University of Derby, said many young women were put off by the traditional values.

She said television programmes promoting female empowerment also discouraged women from going to church.

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Watch it all. Also, here is one Judy Collins version of the song.

Finally, one of my favorite discussions of this wonderful song may be found on NPR’s Performance Today from May 2002.

WHEN Pam Spaulding heard from two contributors to her blog, Pam’s House Blend, that they couldn’t afford to attend the Democratic National Convention, she knew that historic times called for creative measures.

Getting convention credentials for her blog, a news site for the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community, was the easy part. As air fare, lodging and incidentals began piling up, paying for the trip to Denver became the bigger obstacle.

For Ms. Spaulding, 45, who works full time as an IT manager at Duke University Press in Durham, N.C., blogging is her passion, an unpaid hobby she pursues at nights and on weekends. So she called on her 5,500 daily readers to help raise funds: “Send the Blend to Denver” reads the ChipIn widget on her blog’s home page that tracks donations from readers; so far they have pledged more than $5,000 to transport Ms. Spaulding and three other bloggers to the convention.

Beginning Monday, hundreds of bloggers will descend on Denver to see Barack Obama accept his party’s nomination. Next week, hundreds more will travel to St. Paul to witness John McCain’s acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention. But now these online partisans, many of whom are self-financed, must contend with all the logistical and financial hurdles just to get there ”” not to mention the party politics happening behind the scenes.

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Contractor Tom Barry stopped at the Cup of Joy Cafe in Wasco on his way to a job site on a rainy Thursday afternoon and bought a small latte.

Barry chatted with owner Chris Fisher for a few minutes, then stepped to a set of boxes mounted on a wall and stuffed his receipt into a box that benefits King’s Garden Orphanage in Haiti. The orphanage got a 21-cent donation, and Fisher got a warm glow in his heart that he says comes from tithing the gross sales of his cafe to an array of faith-based and secular charities.

“Tithing feels good,” said the Wasco entrepreneur, who tithes the personal income he gets from his newsletter publishing business to his church and doesn’t depend on the cafe’s profits to support himself.

“It really feels nice to do something for someone besides myself,” Fisher said. “I can’t tell you the peace it gives me to know what matters in life.”

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Got two words for you this week: Canadian porn.

I don’t think I need to write anything else. I’ll just let you think about that, and I can log off and head home early. Sometimes the universe hands you a lovely gift with a big bow on it, which makes a nice change from all the days the universe jumps out from behind something and stabs you in the head with a railroad spike.

OK, OK, I realize I can’t dangle a non sequitur like “Canadian porn” in front of you and then walk away from it. Send the kids out for ice cream and draw the curtains.

We all know that a lot of Canadian actors have come to New York or Hollywood to realize their dreams. I have no clue how many have come down here to the States to make it big in the porn biz, but if all goes according to plan, they won’t have to. They will soon have their own channel, specializing in skin flicks with no tan lines.

The Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission has granted Alberta-based Real Productions approval for a digital pornography channel. It’s to be called Northern Peaks.

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The task force established to implement recommendations of the Windsor Report is unlikely to complete its work in time to have any affect on plans by the dioceses of Fort Worth, Pittsburgh and Quincy to hold second and decisive votes to withdraw from The Episcopal Church this fall.

Despite the Windsor Continuation Group’s call for swift implementation of its proposed moratoria, Archbishop Clive Handford, retired primate of The Episcopal Church in Jerusalem and the Middle East and chairman of the Windsor Continuation Group, said he did not anticipate the group’s work having any sort of official status within the Communion until after the Anglican Consultative Council meeting in May 2009””six months after the last of the three dioceses, Fort Worth, has held its annual convention.

The six-member Windsor Continuation Group was established by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams in February 2008. He had proposed formation of the group in his Advent letter to the primates last year.

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