If John McCain is looking for a way to shore up his support among evangelical voters, he might start talking about adoption. In 1993, the McCains adopted a daughter from Mother Teresa’s orphanage in Bangladesh, and the senator has co-sponsored legislation to aid adoption, including measures that would provide tax credits for expenses and would remove barriers to interracial and interethnic adoption. But his efforts are rarely mentioned on the campaign trail at a time when adoption is a hot topic in the evangelical community.

Earlier this month, Rick Warren, the best-selling author and pastor of the Saddleback megachurch in Lake Forest, Calif., asked both presidential candidates if they would consider some kind of emergency plan to help the 148 million orphans around the world, something along the lines of President Bush’s AIDS efforts. Both said yes, but a number of Christians and their organizations are not waiting for the next administration to act.

Russell Moore, the dean of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., is the author of a forthcoming book called “Adopted for Life: The Priority of Adoption for Christian Families and Churches.” A few years ago, Mr. Moore and his wife adopted two boys from Russia, and he notes that his church has posted a large map showing which countries member families have adopted children from. “In any given church,” he notes, “you rarely see only one family who has adopted. . . . It becomes part of the culture of the congregation.”

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Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain has chosen Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, NBC News has learned.

She would be the first woman ever to serve on a Republican presidential ticket. The pro-life Palin would also be the first Alaskan ever to appear on a national ticket.

Palin, 44, was elected Alaska’s first woman governor in 2006. The state’s voters had grown weary of career politician Gov. Frank Murkowski, whom she defeated in the GOP primary.

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The challenge to listen to couples and respond proactively is revealed in an exclusive article in this week’s Church Times (dated 29th August), written by the Church of England’s marriage advisor, Sue Burridge.

“The Church is in a unique position. In its marriage preparation, it offers something couples cannot get in a hotel or stately home, and tries to demonstrate its care about not just the big day, but all the days afterwards,” underlines Sue in her article, which also discloses that 44 per cent of the general population agree the Church should support marriages before the wedding day (as well as after the day too). This is just one finding from new detailed research involving 411 engaged couples and 176 clergy in the Dioceses of Bradford and Oxford, as well as ordinands from two Cambridge theological colleges, and 1,800 brides-to-be at the National Wedding Shows.

The findings indicate that marriage preparation has had to change to meet the modern needs of couples who have perhaps spent several years together before the big day.

“When the researchers asked newly-weds about their church’s preparatory sessions,” Sue Burridge continues in the article, “they discovered a clear mismatch between what couples wanted and what was on offer. Many had already lived through the life lessons that the Church was eager to teach them, especially if, like most, they had lived together before marriage.”

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We maintain that three new facts of the Anglican Communion must be faced. We are past the time when they can be reversed.

First, some Anglicans have sanctified sinful practices and will continue to do so whatever others may think. Second, churches and even dioceses affected by this disobedience have rightly withdrawn fellowship while wishing to remain authentic Anglicans. So-called ”˜border-crossing’ is another way of describing the provision of recognition and care for those who have been faithful to the teachings of Holy Scripture. Third, there is widespread impaired and broken sacramental communion amongst Anglicans with far-reaching global implications. The hope that we may somehow return to the state of affairs before 2003 is an illusion.

Any sound strategy must accommodate itself to these facts.

GAFCON remains a gospel movement. It is far from saying that its membership are the only true Anglicans or the only gospel people in the Anglican Communion. We thank God that this is not the case. But the movement recognises the acute spiritual dangers of a compromised theology and aims to be a resource and inspiration for those who wish to defend and promote the biblical gospel.

The Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans will function as a means of sharing in this great task. We invite individuals, churches, dioceses, provinces and parachurch organisations who assent to the Jerusalem Declaration to signify their desire to become members of the Fellowship via the GAFCON web-site or written communication with the Secretariat. The Fellowship will develop networks, commissions and publications intended to defend and promote the biblical gospel in ways which support one another.

At the same time, the Council and its Advisory Board will seek to deal with the problems of those who have confessed the biblical faith in the face of hostility and found the need on grounds of conscience and in matters of great significance to break the normal bonds of fellowship in the name of the gospel. For the sake of the Anglican Communion this is an effort to bring order out of the chaos of the present time and to make sure as far as possible that some of the most faithful Anglican Christians are not lost to the Communion. It is expected that priority will be given to the possible formation of a province in North America for the Common Cause Partnership.

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A headline crossing….I am impressed it has remained under raps for so long–KSH.

Think of a coup d’etat and images of a far-flung banana republic likely come to mind. So it might come as a surprise that it happened here in the United States ”” just once, in 1898.

A mob of white supremacists armed with rifles and pistols marched on City Hall in Wilmington, N.C., on Nov. 10 and overthrew the elected local government, forcing both black and white officials to resign and running many out of town. The coup was the culmination of a race riot in which whites torched the offices of a black newspaper and killed a number of black residents. No one is sure how many African-Americans died that day, but some estimates say as many as 90 were killed.

“Some of the elderly African-Americans told my stepfather that the Cape Fear River was running red with blood,” Bertha Todd, a teacher, recalls in producer Alan Lipke’s documentary series, “Between Civil War and Civil Rights.”

Especially chilling was the fact that the insurgency had been carefully planned ”” a conspiracy by powerful white Democrats.

Read or better yet listen to it all. I happened to catch this via NPR’s story of the day podcast and thought it particularly important today given what happened last night. It is good to be reminded of how far we have come (even though there is much work still to do)–KSH.

We applaud and praise Governor O’Malley’s moral courage to place a moratorium on state-sponsored executions in Maryland. We hope and pray that this commission will conclude that the death penalty should be abolished in this great state.

For decades, The Episcopal Church has voiced strong public opposition to capital punishment. Our essential question today is whether, without exception, the death penalty should be imposed on someone convicted of murdering another human being. Our unequivocal answer is “no.” The Christian faith is rooted in both testaments of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. In the Bible, we find that every human being is given life by God, and only God the righteous Judge has the right to deny life. Of course, we understand that the state must seek justice and prosecute wrongdoing, but we cannot condone a decision by the state to pronounce a sentence of death for wrongdoing—no matter how violent and brutal the crime of the perpetrator may have been. Because of our belief in a just and moral God, there is simply no moral justification for the state to execute a child of God in the name of justice.

The Episcopal Church has carefully studied the application of the death penalty in many states. Invariably, in each case, we have concluded that the death penalty is immoral, unjust and ineffective. It is immoral, first of all, because as Christians we are commanded to adhere to the ethics of Jesus who continually forbade violence as a means to solve problems that are caused by evil. Second, the death penalty is unjust because of the hugely disproportionate number of poor and black defendants who receive the death sentence. It is a sad truth that in our society, it is the wealthy are able to “buy” their way out of being executed by the state. As one prominent Episcopalian lawyer in Maryland told me recently, “true justice comes with a price tag—justice paid is justice won.” And third, the death penalty is ineffective in that it has never been shown to have deterred anyone from committing a violent crime, nor has it lowered the murder rate in any state that regularly executes its most violent criminals.

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Division over homosexuality and women bishops does exist “across the spectrum” within the Anglican Church, Archbishop Thabo Makgoba has said – but that is an indication of a church that is facing its challenges.

The archbishop, who returned from the Lambeth Conference in Canterbury, England, this month, said final decisions had not yet been made on contentious issues such as women clergy and the ordination of gay bishops, but they had been thoroughly discussed.

He acknowledged that there were divisions on these matters within all their dioceses across the world. However, it could not be seen as a split between liberals and conservatives as this was an “artificial divide”.

“The reality across the spectrum, not just in South Africa, is that some parts of the communion are wrestling with issues such as ordaining women bishops, which we have done for 12 years already.

“I don’t see this as a problem, but an indication of a church that is alive, and prepared to face the contextual realities and their challenges,” he said.

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In a statement Anglican Bishop Duleep de Chickera said that people in Vanni, an area in the Tamil Tiger-controlled north, are concerned about the situation of constant tension and are afraid that dangers might increase should there be an escalation in violence between the army and rebels fighting for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). In the same statement he expressed his “solidarity and closeness” to a civilian population under severe distress by a “war that seems to have no end.”

“Unarmed and trapped in this war zone, large numbers of civilians, including children, are caught in an intense cross-fire,” he said. “Thousands are already displaced and can flee only to places of temporary safety,” he added.

The “situation faced by these civilians is even more desperate since they cannot act independently. They are under conflicting pressure from both sides for support [. . .] and fear reprisals if they do not. Their dilemma adds to their suffering. Their voice is silenced with the sound of guns, manipulation and propaganda.”

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Who can say for certain where the tears came from? There were the days picking cotton as a girl, her legs scratched and bleeding from the plants’ sharp spurs. There were the restaurants that wouldn’t take her order, the credit union that wouldn’t accept her application and, later, the swimming hole where her kids weren’t allowed to swim with the white children.

The barriers of segregation came down so gradually that Bertha Means never experienced an epiphany — one defining moment to celebrate freedom’s progress. But the African American great-grandmother and civil rights pioneer finally had that moment Thursday night a long way from her Texas home.

The 88-year-old delegate to the Democratic National Convention said she felt in her bones what Michelle Obama called “the current of history [meeting] this new tide of hope.” She found herself crying, uncharacteristically, first when she listened to the candidate’s wife’s speech Monday night. When Hillary Rodham Clinton moved to make Barack Obama the unanimous choice of the convention during the delegate roll call, tears again streamed down her face.

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Rand Refinery Ltd., the world’s largest gold refinery, ran out of South African Krugerrands after an “unusually large” order from a buyer in Switzerland.

The order was for 5,000 ounces and it will take until Sept. 3 for inventories to be replenished, said Johan Botha, a spokesman for Rand Refinery in Germiston, east of Johannesburg. He declined to identify the buyer…..

“A lot of people are worried about the dollar, they’re worried about inflation and now we have geopolitical risk with what’s happening in Russia,” said Mark O’Byrne, managing director of brokerage Gold and Silver Investments Ltd. in Dublin. O’Byrne said his company’s sales are up fourfold this year, heading for a record since its founding in 2003.

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The Diocese of New Westminster (DNW) initiated action against St. Matthew’s Abbotsford and St. Matthias”‘St. Luke Vancouver on August 26th and is seeking to take over governance of the parishes. We are deeply disappointed by this action as it fails to recognize:

* repeated attempts by the Anglican Network in Canada (ANiC) parishes to seek dialogue before litigation;
* repeated statements from the Primate of Canada that any such action will damage the public witness of the church;
* repeated calls from the Anglican Communion to refrain from such hostile action.

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Much of today’s building is relatively “modern,” about 600 years old, but its history began in 597 A.D. when St. Augustine at the behest of Pope Gregory the Great arrived with 40 monks, built a church and nurtured Christianity on the soil of Britain.

Canterbury became a significant stop on the pilgrim route to Rome, and in 1170 an event occurred that transformed it into a shrine. Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Becket was murdered by four knights acting, they thought, on the desires of King Henry II. Four years later, Henry himself, wearing sackcloth, was at the altar being beaten by monks as penance for the deed.

When the current archbishop (the 104th) led retreat and worship, he wasn’t far from the spot where one of his predecessors embodied a clash between spiritual and temporal power.

The conflicts roiling today’s Anglican Communion were present at the conference, but the most valuable contribution Canterbury and the cathedral brought was a sense of perspective. The disagreements are just as real and just as serious as they were 500 or 1000 years ago, but the church as the body of Christ survives and the physical places of Canterbury transmit an awareness that we who are alive today continue to tell the great story of humanity’s encounter with the divine. For Anglicans, for Episcopalians, it’s not a bad heritage to share.

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America, now is not the time for small plans.

Now is the time to finally meet our moral obligation to provide every child a world-class education, because it will take nothing less to compete in the global economy. Michelle and I are only here tonight because we were given a chance at an education. And I will not settle for an America where some kids don’t have that chance. I’ll invest in early childhood education. I’ll recruit an army of new teachers, and pay them higher salaries and give them more support. And in exchange, I’ll ask for higher standards and more accountability. And we will keep our promise to every young American – if you commit to serving your community or your country, we will make sure you can afford a college education.

Now is the time to finally keep the promise of affordable, accessible health care for every single American. If you have health care, my plan will lower your premiums. If you don’t, you’ll be able to get the same kind of coverage that members of Congress give themselves. And as someone who watched my mother argue with insurance companies while she lay in bed dying of cancer, I will make certain those companies stop discriminating against those who are sick and need care the most.

Now is the time to help families with paid sick days and better family leave, because nobody in America should have to choose between keeping their jobs and caring for a sick child or ailing parent.

Now is the time to change our bankruptcy laws, so that your pensions are protected ahead of CEO bonuses; and the time to protect Social Security for future generations.

And now is the time to keep the promise of equal pay for an equal day’s work, because I want my daughters to have exactly the same opportunities as your sons.

Now, many of these plans will cost money, which is why I’ve laid out how I’ll pay for every dime – by closing corporate loopholes and tax havens that don’t help America grow. But I will also go through the federal budget, line by line, eliminating programs that no longer work and making the ones we do need work better and cost less – because we cannot meet twenty-first century challenges with a twentieth century bureaucracy.

And Democrats, we must also admit that fulfilling America’s promise will require more than just money. It will require a renewed sense of responsibility from each of us to recover what John F. Kennedy called our “intellectual and moral strength.” Yes, government must lead on energy independence, but each of us must do our part to make our homes and businesses more efficient. Yes, we must provide more ladders to success for young men who fall into lives of crime and despair. But we must also admit that programs alone can’t replace parents; that government can’t turn off the television and make a child do her homework; that fathers must take more responsibility for providing the love and guidance their children need.

Individual responsibility and mutual responsibility – that’s the essence of America’s promise.

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Martin Luther King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech, delivered 45 years ago today, established the Baptist preacher as a modern-day prophet, according to scholars contacted by EthicsDaily.com.

Delivered Aug. 28, 1963, from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, the speech is widely regarded as one of the most important addresses in American history. Scholars in 1999 voted it the best political speech of the 20th century.

“Dr. King’s 1963 words yet ring powerful and prophetic 40 years after his voice was tragically silenced in 1968,” said Wendell Griffen, a Baptist minister and former judge on the Arkansas Court of Appeals. “The power of the words lies in their hopeful urgency.”

Bill Tillman, T.B. Maston Professor of Christian Ethics at Hardin-Simmons University’s Logsdon School of Theology, said King met at least a couple of criteria for recognition as a prophet.

“One of the criteria, not being accepted in his own land, marks the response of many Christians, and sad to say many Baptist Christians, to King,” Tillman said.

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We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. They have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.

As we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, “When will you be satisfied?” We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied, as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating “For Whites Only”. We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.

I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

—The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., forty five years ago today, in a speech that should be read and reread, listened to and relistened to–KSH

Accepting his party’s presidential nomination, Barack Obama tonight will call for a new politics to solve the problems created by what he calls the failure of the Republican administration of George W. Bush.

In excerpts of his speech to be delivered at Denver’s NFL stadium, Obama will tell an expected 75,000 supporters that he is running for president because this election is a chance to keep alive the promise of the American dream, a hope tarnished by a weak economy, a war in Iraq and a foreign policy that spurns friends and allies.

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Recognizing the division and brokenness which currently exists, the Archbishop of Canterbury stated in his August 2008 Pastoral Letter reflecting on Lambeth, “The Conference was not a time for making new laws or for binding decisions”¦The Conference Design Group believed strongly that the chief need of our Communion at the moment was the rebuilding of relationships ”“ the rebuilding of trust in one another ”“ and of confidence in our Anglican identity. And it was with this in mind that they planned for a very different sort of Conference, determined to allow every bishop’s voice to be heard”¦”

Unfortunately while ample opportunity was in fact given for bishops to speak during the daily Bible studies, Indaba Groups, self-select sessions, and plenary sessions, the western design of much of the Conference made speaking uncomfortable for many non-westerners and — as earlier attested to by Archbishop Orombi, the fact that one speaks does not necessarily mean they have been heard. The Anglican Communion has been encouraged for over ten years now to participate in a “listening process” as a means of working through the issues that divide us. While I am a firm believer in the importance of listening, even to those that we disagree with, unfortunately when dealing as we currently are with what I have come to believe are theologically irreconcilable differences in the views passionately held by each side of the debate on issues of the authority of Holy Scripture and human sexuality, I seriously question the chance of reconciliation by those on either end of the theological spectrum, barring a Damascus Road experience by one side or the other. No doubt, each side believes it is the other side that Jesus needs to zap.

This belief was confirmed at Lambeth while listening to some of the debates regarding homosexuality. During one of the sessions, an African bishop made an impassioned call upon the West to restrain from blessing same-sex unions and ordaining individuals engaged in homosexual lifestyles, stating that the Moslem extremists in his country are looking for any reason to attack and kill Anglican Christians. He said the revisionist actions of the West are giving them all the reason they need, resulting in the death and imprisonment of many of his people. Equally passionate, but from the opposite perspective, two Episcopal bishops spoke about justice for their gay and lesbian clergy and people, proclaiming their strong unceasing support for gay rights and that they would not stop the blessing of same sex unions in their diocese.

Unfortunately in many cases, the very ones calling for others to listen are unwilling to listen themselves. For some, the listening process will not be complete or successful until the other side is worn down and finally agrees with their position. Given the current debate on issues of human sexuality, when virtually every argument both for and against homosexual behavior, sex outside of marriage, and abortion have already been made numerous times over, the question ultimately must be asked ”“ When is enough, enough? The longer the debate goes on, the more divided we seem to become and the more distracted we are from proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ. A major distinction between GAFCON and Lambeth concerning this issue is that for GAFCON, the debate seems to be over, for Lambeth, no end is in sight.

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The cynic is also correct about human nature and human capacity. The extraordinary euphoria which has surrounded the new Federal Government will not last. The euphoria is a foolish utopianism. Even now, however, hard decisions are being taken which will offend people; mistakes are being made; inadequacies of administration and leadership will become apparent. We will have the unedifying spectacle of those who spoke up most hopefully being the greatest critics of a government which is merely human after all. The greatest foolishness of modern political philosophies of left or right is belief in the innate goodness of human beings and the possibility of the kingdom of God on earth.

And yet a cynical society is a diseased society. We cannot live like that. We must have our hopes. Cynicism corrupts all it touches and is particularly bad for young people.

That is why the gospel has such power to help us live well here and now. It assumes human sinfulness. It agrees that we cannot build the kingdom of God on earth by the political process or social engineering. It is clear-eyed about our weaknesses. But at the same time it shows us a Lord who is above all time and yet was born in time. It shows us a Lord whose promises may be absolutely relied upon. It shows us a Lord who will never forsake us, even to the point of death and then through it. It shows us a Lord who transcends our lives here and promises fulfilment in the age to come. It shows us a Lord who is our good and true hope.

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Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has “created confusion” with regard to the Church’s stance against abortion, says the bishop of Fargo.

Bishop Samuel Aquila said this in a the latest in a series of episcopal statements that have responded to comments made by Pelosi during an interview Sunday on NBC-TV’s “Meet the Press.”

Pelosi, when asked to comment on when life begins, said that as a Catholic, she had studied the issue for “a long time” and that “the doctors of the Church have not been able to make that definition.”

Cardinal Justin Rigali, chairman of the U. Committee on Pro-Life Activities, and Bishop William Lori, chairman of the Committee on Doctrine, said in a statement Monday that her answer “misrepresented the history and nature of the authentic teaching of the Catholic Church against abortion.”

The prelates noted that since the first century the Church has “affirmed the moral evil of every abortion.”

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It’s a year of anniversaries for the Episcopal Church of the Nativity in Crafton.

On Sept. 13, the congregation will celebrate the 100th anniversary of its church; the 25th anniversary of the Rev. Scott T. Quinn, rector; and the 10th anniversary of organist Dianne Peebles.

The celebration already is under way.

It began with the donation of a desk that belonged to Charles C. Craft, the founder of Crafton and the proprietor of the original and present locations of the Church of the Nativity.

The desk, donated by Glenn Walters Jr., great-grandson of Mr. Craft, is being added to the collection of antique furniture that belonged to the Craft family. It is on display in Craft Hall of the church and serves as a connection to the church’s past.

“It’s the center of our celebration,” said Jim Perrin, a parishioner of the church and weekday organist.

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