A vote this weekend will determine where Wichita Falls’ Episcopalians sit in church Sunday.

Disagreements that have been festering for years in the Episcopal Church will be addressed today and Saturday at the annual convention of the Diocese of Fort Worth at St. Vincent’s Cathedral in Bedford, Texas.

The published agenda includes a vote on a constitutional amendment that would remove the Fort Worth diocese ”” including its church property in the diocese ”” from the Episcopal Church and tuck it under the South American-based Anglican Province of the Southern Cone, a realignment under the branch of the church that is headquartered in Argentina.

Who will own the actual buildings in Wichita Falls ”” All Saints Episcopal at 2606 Southwest Parkway, Church of the Good Shepherd at 1007 Burnett, and St. Stephen’s Episocopal Church at 5023 Lindale Drive near Rider High School ”” is in question and may require a court to decide, officials say.

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Finally, the outlines of a coherent debate on the federal bailout. This comes as welcome relief from a campaign season that gave us the House Republicans’ know-nothing rejectionism, John McCain’s mindless railing against “greed and corruption,” and Barack Obama’s detached enunciation of vacuous bailout “principles” that allowed him to be all things to all people.

Now clarity is emerging. The fault line is the auto industry bailout. The Democrats are pushing hard for it. The White House is resisting.

Underlying the policy differences is a philosophical divide. The Bush administration sees the $700 billion rescue as an emergency measure to save the financial sector on the grounds that finance is a utility. No government would let the electric companies go under and leave the country without power. By the same token, government must save the financial sector lest credit dry up and strangle the rest of the economy.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is willing to stretch the meaning of “bank” by extending protection to such entities as American Express. But fundamentally, he sees government as saving institutions that deal in money, not other stuff.

Democrats have a larger canvas, with government intervening in other sectors of the economy to prevent the cascade effect of mass unemployment leading to more mortgage defaults and business failures (as consumer spending plummets), in turn dragging down more businesses and financial institutions, producing more unemployment, etc. — the death spiral of the 1930s.

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Happy-Go-Lucky starring Sally Hawkins. Elizabeth and I saw it last night. Terriific. Ideal for adult small groups to go see and discuss, or for you to go to with friends and discuss. Thought-provoking, moving, funny and touching. Put it on your list–KSH.

THE ARCHBISHOP of Jerusalem and the Middle East has welcomed Dr Rowan Williams’ decision to hold the 2009 Primates’ Meeting in Alexandria, Egypt, telling The Church of England Newspaper the witness of Egypt’s embattled Christians in the face of persecution can serve to strengthen the Anglican Communion.

While the agenda and locale remain to be settled, the Bishop of Egypt, Dr Mouneer Anis, said he was proud to be able to host the conference. However, suggestions by the Archbishop of Canterbury that he would use the Indaba process to manage the Primates’ Meeting has prompted private scorn from the primates contacted by CEN, and public criticism from evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics unhappy with the ”˜manipulation’ and management of the Indaba process at Lambeth.

“I want [the primates] to see, to feel the history of the Church as they walk through Alexandria,” Dr Anis said on Nov 11. For in Alexandria one “steps in the blood of the saints shed in obedience to the faith, a faith that has been watered by the blood of the martyrs.”

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For most of October, more than 200 Catholic bishops, along with sundry theologians and experts, met at the Vatican to figure out how to get Catholics to read the Bible — a project easily dismissed by Protestants and some Catholics as too ambitious and about 500 years too late. After all, wasn’t it Rome’s fears about letting mere lay people consult Holy Writ that stoked the Reformation? And Catholics don’t want to read the Bible anyway, right? They’re all about the Mass and the sacraments.

The first supposition has some merit, though the truth is a good deal more complex, and the Reformers — pace, Martin Luther — a good deal less enlightened on that score than is generally assumed. And, yes, Catholics continue to be sacramentally centered Christians who find the “summit and source” of their spiritual nourishment in the Eucharist.

But a funny thing happened on the way to modernity: The Catholic Church opened itself to the Word in a way it hadn’t done before. In the process, it fostered a balanced culture of biblical exegesis and devotion (at least among most scholars and clerics) that many in sola scriptura Protestantism might envy. Especially in light of trends in mainline denominations that foster a radical deconstruction of biblical texts on the one hand, or, on the other hand, a blinkered literalism that appeals to many conservative pew-sitters.

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One year ago, economists were worried about inflation. Now, they are worried about deflation ”” prices for everything from corn to soybeans to gold are falling. While it might seem like lower prices could be a good thing, unchecked deflation can bring economic activity to a standstill. Economists say the risks of deflation should not be ignored.

Listen to it all from NPR.

The Rt. Rev. Charles E. Bennison, Jr., Bishop of Pennsylvania, has expressed remorse for the emotional trauma inflicted on a teenage girl who was sexually abused by his brother at a California parish where Bishop Bennison served as the rector in the 1970s. But he maintains the charges against him “are not fair and are not true.”

A nine-member church court ruled unanimously in October that Bishop Bennison should be deposed from ministry in The Episcopal Church for failure to report his brother and to protect the girl.

“This was a terrible, monstrous sin,” Bishop Bennison told The Living Church. “I have always expressed remorse for my direct responsibility in this tragedy, especially hiring my brother as the youth director, inadequately supervising him and not thoroughly investigating the situation when it was first brought to my attention in 1976.”

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Delegates to the Diocese of Fort Worth’s annual synod will decide this Saturday whether to quit the Episcopal Church, a move which would make it the fourth American diocese to secede and affiliate with the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone.

The stronghold of the Anglo-Catholic movement in the Episcopal Church, Fort Worth has long been at odds with the Episcopal Church over innovations of doctrine and discipline championed by its liberal hierarchy. One of only three dioceses that did not ordain or license women clergy, Fort Worth now remains alone within the American church in rejecting women’s orders, after Quincy quit this past week and San Joaquin left in 2007.

Fort Worth bishop the Rt Rev Jack L Iker said he was “confident” the second reading of the secession bill would pass this week’s synod on Nov 15. The “only question is by how much” he told ReligiousIntelligence.com.

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Since the stock market began to fall, friends have been coming to Barbara Goldsmith to talk about their depression, loss of appetite, insomnia and cravings for hot fudge sundaes.

“People are grieving,” said Ms. Goldsmith, a semiretired psychotherapist who counsels fellow residents of the Gleneagles Country Club, a gated community here. “There was a death. Their money died.”

In communities like Gleneagles and in the homes of retirees across the country, these are days of fear and uncertainty. In theory, retired people are not supposed to invest much in the stock market; in reality, many millions of them do. With the economy in free fall and stocks down about 40 percent this year, legions of middle- and upper-middle-class people are suddenly worried about having enough to carry them through.

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Early prospects for a revival of consumer spending do not look encouraging. The Pew Research Center reports a sharp increase in the number of people planning to rein in their spending. And more people say Americans should learn to live with less.

It is hard to overestimate the impact of the decline in consumer spending, which has represented 70 percent of America’s gross domestic product. Undoubtedly, there will be a recovery. But America may no longer be the wonder of the world as the greatest shop-until-you-drop nation.

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THE Revd Teresa Davies, a former Team Vicar in the Daventry Team Min­istry, in the diocese of Peter­borough, was this week prohibited from ordained ministry for 12 years by a tribunal under the Clergy Discipline Measure.

The tribunal upheld complaints that Mrs Davies and her husband had an open sexual relationship, and that she had taken services while under the influence of alcohol. Mrs Davies was found to have acted in a manner unbecoming or inappropriate to the office and work of a clerk in holy orders.

The tribunal, which met in September in London, heard that Mrs Davies had told clergy colleagues at a Christmas lunch in December 2006 that she and her husband Mick took holidays in an area in the south of France noted for the casual exchange of sexual partners.

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Gov. Mark Sanford and I agree that the current problems that our state faces are severe. We also agree that the problems are preventable in the future if we take action now. The states are different than the federal government in dealing with downturns in the economy since they cannot print extra money and most cannot run deficits. Where we disagree is how to accomplish what needs to be done. The governor and some in the House want to impose statutory limitations on spending the money that comes in. I, and others in the Senate, want to impose spending limitations in our state constitution. This is not just a stylistic difference. I believe that it is the difference between success and failure.

The problem that we face is that in good times as much money is spent as comes in. State programs are started and expanded, growing the size and appetite of government. Then, when an inevitable downturn in the economy comes, those programs have to be cut in size. It becomes a perpetual rollercoaster of spending and cutting. It is also an approach that cannot be solved by vetoes. What we need is a systemic fix of the budgeting process.

This is but one illustration of the state government struggles nationwide–read it all.

In the week since, California has seen an outpouring of demonstrations ranging from quiet vigils to noisy street protests against Proposition 8, including rallies outside churches and the Mormon temple in Westwood as well as boycotts of some businesses that contributed to the Yes on 8 campaign.

Many of those activities have been organized not by political professionals and established leaders in the gay community, but by young activists working independently on Facebook and MySpace.

The grass-roots activism is a tribute to political organizing in the digital age, in which it is possible to mobilize thousands of people with a few clicks of a mouse. It has generated national attention — and set up a series of Saturday demonstrations that organizers hope will attract tens of thousands of people to city halls throughout California.

But the demonstrations also have raised questions about whether the in-your-face approach will alienate voters, who may be asked one day to approve gay marriage. Twice in the last eight years, voters have rejected it.

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Treasury Notice 2008-83 went virtually unnoticed as the government rushed to cope with the emerging financial crisis in September. And that seems to have been the point. With no public discussion, the Treasury Department gave banks a huge chunk of money ”” as much as $140 billion, by one estimate ”” by changing a tax law that had been in place, and the subject of relentless lobbying, for 22 years.

Even by today’s deficit-be-damned standards, that’s a lot of your money. It’s the size of the economic stimulus plan President Bush proposed last winter. It would repair and modernize all of America’s bridges. And it’s on top of the $700 billion financial rescue plan approved by Congress.

Tax regulations are hideously complicated, but the gist of Notice 2008-83 is that it lets healthy banks buy weak ones and take big write-offs for the weak banks’ losses. At least three banks have already taken advantage of the change. So taxpayers are funding their growth, and unlike other aspects of the bailout, they will get no return.

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A priest at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in downtown Greenville has told parishioners that those who voted for Barack Obama placed themselves under divine judgment because of his stance on abortion and should not receive Holy Communion until they’ve done penance.

The Rev. Jay Scott Newman told The Greenville News on Wednesday that church teaching doesn’t allow him to refuse Holy Communion to anyone based on political choices, but that he’ll continue to deliver the church’s strong teaching on the “intrinsic and grave evil of abortion” as a hidden form of murder.

Both Democratic president-elect Obama and Joe Biden, the vice president-elect, support legal abortions. Obama has called it a “divisive issue” with a “moral dimension,” and has pledged to make women’s rights under Roe v. Wade a “priority” as president. He opposes a constitutional amendment overturning the Supreme Court decision.

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Three major American cities buffeted by the global financial crisis are requesting at least $50 billion in federal funds to help pay for infrastructure improvements, pensions and short-term borrowing.

Philadelphia, Phoenix and Atlanta are asking U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to release funds from the $700 billion financial bailout authorized by Congress last month.

Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter will hand-deliver the request to Paulson on Friday, spokesman Luke Butler said. Five or six other cities, including Chicago, may also sign on, Butler added.

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A coalition of more than 200 religious groups urged U.S. President-elect Barack Obama on Wednesday to sign an order, once he takes office, banning torture by any federal government entity.

“This is an opportunity where one official could … with one stroke of a pen, really change history here,” said Linda Gustitus, president of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture.

The group, which has been pressing the issue since 2006, also wants the U.S. Congress to establish a special committee to investigate the use of what the Bush administration has called “enhanced interrogation techniques” used on terrorism suspects detained after the attacks of September 11, 2001.

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Michelle Rhee, the hard-charging chancellor of the Washington public schools, thinks teacher tenure may be great for adults, those who go into teaching to get summer vacations and great health insurance, for instance. But it hurts children, she says, by making incompetent instructors harder to fire.

So Ms. Rhee has proposed spectacular raises of as much as $40,000, financed by private foundations, for teachers willing to give up tenure.

Policy makers and educators nationwide are watching to see what happens to Ms. Rhee’s bold proposal. The 4,000-member Washington Teachers’ Union has divided over whether to embrace it, with many union members calling tenure a crucial protection against arbitrary firing.

“If Michelle Rhee were to get what she is demanding,” said Allan R. Odden, a professor at the University of Wisconsin who studies teacher compensation, “it would raise eyebrows everywhere, because that would be a gargantuan change.”

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Lovely stuff-watch it all.

Ads proclaiming, “Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness’ sake,” will appear on Washington, D.C., buses starting next week and running through December, sponsored by The American Humanist Association.

In lifting lyrics from “Santa Claus is Coming to Town,” the Washington-based group is wading into what has become a perennial debate over commercialism, religion in the public square and the meaning of Christmas.

“We are trying to reach our audience, and sometimes in order to reach an audience, everybody has to hear you,” Fred Edwords, spokesman for the humanist group, said Tuesday. “Our reason for doing it during the holidays is there are an awful lot of agnostics, atheists and other types of non-theists who feel a little alone during the holidays because of its association with traditional religion.”

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An Episcopal church in the New York suburbs is hoping that the removal of two dozen pews from the sanctuary will make the church feel less empty and more inviting.

St. Bartholomew’s Church in White Plains, an 80-year-old congregation that like many mainline Protestant churches has experienced shrinking membership, hatched the plan as part of an effort to create a more intimate space for worship that could appeal to visitors.

“When people visited before, it seemed like a museum,” said the Rev. Gawain de Leeuw, rector of St. Bart’s for five years. “The church seemed empty. Each person could have had their own pew. Changing our sanctuary space immediately changed the way people feel in the church. It’s an important start.”

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Greg Griffith: So not just from a conceptual standpoint, but really from an official standpoint, the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth is not a creation of General Convention.

Bishop Iker: Not at all. If it’s a “creation” of anything, it’s a creation of the Diocese of Dallas, which decided for missionary and church growth purposes that they would divide the diocese in two. Two-thirds of the geographical area remained the diocese of Dallas. They wanted to create a new diocese which at the time didn’t have a name; it was referred to as the “western diocese,” so the first convention had to, among other things, choose our name – it wasn’t given to us by someone else. There were several proposals, and the vote was that we call ourselves the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth.

Greg Griffith: Provided the resolutions at your convention pass, you’ll be joining Bishop Schofield and San Joaquin, Bishop Duncan and Pittsburgh, as well as the diocese of Quincy, which voted yesterday, in a realignment with the Southern Cone under Archbishop Venables. I think we have to be candid and say that’s probably it for the near term – that’s probably all the dioceses that will be aligning with the Cone for the time being.

Bishop Iker: I think so. It’s interesting, though, that historically to form a new province it’s been customary to have 4 dioceses.

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The Detroit City Council wants a $10 billion federal bail out for the city, to pay for public works projects to create jobs, such as a mass transit system, and to deal with high foreclosure rates.

The council passed the resolution today 7-1, with Councilwoman Sheila Cockrel as the only opposition. It urges Mayor Kenneth Cockrel and Council President Monica Conyers to push for the funds by meeting with Gov. Jennifer Granholm, congressional officials, President George W. Bush’s administration and President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team.

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The United States may be on course to lose its ‘AAA’ rating due to the large amount of debt it has accumulated, according to Martin Hennecke, senior manager of private clients at Tyche.

“The U.S. might really have to look at a default on the bankruptcy reorganization of the present financial system” and the bankruptcy of the government is not out of the realm of possibility, Hennecke said.

“In the United States there is already a funding crisis, and they will have to sell a lot more bonds next year to fund the bailout packages that have already been signed off,” Hennecke told CNBC.

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“The first attitude [for Christians],” he said, “is the certainty that Jesus has risen, is with the Father, and because of that, is with us forever. [”¦] Because of this, we are secure and free of fear. This was an essential effect of Christian preaching. Fear of spirits and gods was spread throughout the entire ancient world. And today as well, missionaries find — together with so many good elements in natural religions — the fear of spirits and the ill-fated powers that threaten us. Christ is alive; he has overcome death and has overcome all these powers. With this certainty, with this freedom, with this joy, we live. This is the first element of our living directed to the future.”

The second attitude for faith-filled Christians is the certainty that Christ “is with me,” the Pontiff continued.

“And that in Christ the future world has already begun — this also gives the certainty of hope,” he said. “The future is not a darkness in which no one gets one’s bearings. It is not like that. Without Christ, also for the world today, the future is dark; there is fear of the future — a lot of fear of the future. The Christian knows that the light of Christ is stronger and because of this, lives in a hope that is not vague, in a hope that gives certainty and courage to face the future.”

But this certainty, Benedict XVI affirmed in noting the third attitude, in no way justifies an escape from responsibilities in the present life.

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I am as terrified as anyone of the domino effect on industry and workers if GM were to collapse. But if we are going to use taxpayer money to rescue Detroit, then it should be done along the lines proposed in The Wall Street Journal on Monday by Paul Ingrassia, a former Detroit bureau chief for that paper.

“In return for any direct government aid,” he wrote, “the board and the management [of GM] should go. Shareholders should lose their paltry remaining equity. And a government-appointed receiver – someone hard-nosed and nonpolitical – should have broad power to revamp GM with a viable business plan and return it to a private operation as soon as possible. That will mean tearing up existing contracts with unions, dealers and suppliers, closing some operations and selling others and downsizing the company. … Giving GM a blank check – which the company and the United Auto Workers union badly want, and which Washington will be tempted to grant – would be an enormous mistake.”

I would add other conditions: Any car company that gets taxpayer money must demonstrate a plan for transforming every vehicle in its fleet to a hybrid-electric engine with flex-fuel capability, so its entire fleet can also run on next generation cellulosic ethanol.

Lastly, somebody ought to call Steve Jobs, who doesn’t need to be bribed to do innovation, and ask him if he’d like to do national service and run a car company for a year. I’d bet it wouldn’t take him much longer than that to come up with the GM iCar.

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Archeologists in central Syria have unearthed a 1,200-year-old church believed to be the largest ever discovered in this Mideast country, an antiquities official said Thursday.

Walid al-Assaad, the head of the Palmyra Antiquities and Museums Department said the church, dating back to the 8th century B.C., was discovered recently by a joint Syrian-Polish archaeological team.

The discovery took place at an excavation site in the ancient town of Palmyra, some 153 miles (245 kilometers) northeast of the capital Damascus, the official said but did not provide a more specific timing.

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Dutch law gives the doctor the final decision to allow euthanasia. Doctors risk legal action, and every euthanasia case is reviewed to ensure the doctor in charge had kept to the legislated requirements.

Riet was shocked and distressed when her wish was refused. Her doctors’ consensus was they were not yet convinced she was making a consistent and rational decision.

Rob de Graaf was her specialist at Valkenhof hospital, where three doctors have performed seven voluntary euthanasias over the past five years.

De Graaf, who says he has had nightmares after performing euthanasias, volunteers to assist those eligible for euthanasia to relieve suffering. “Every doctor knows this is a cry for help,” he says. “The loss of human dignity is the major reason to ask for euthanasia.”

In Riet’s case, de Graaf said, doctors were unsure about her mental competency. Could she make a rational, consistent decision to end her life, or was the tumour affecting her mental state? She had to convince the doctors to help her end her life before the tumour took over and she lost her capacity to choose.

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What agenda did emerge? When the Archbishop of Canterbury was asked this question at the closing press conference, he immediately referred to the statement of the Windsor Continuation Group that came at the beginning of the conference.
This called for a complete cessation of
(a) the celebration of blessings for same-sex unions,
(b) consecrations of those living in openly gay relationships and
(c) all cross-border interventions and inter-provincial claims of jurisdiction

The group writes that “cessation of activity. .. applies to practices that may have already been authorised as well as proposed for authorisation in the future. “ The agenda also included the Pastoral Forum, for which bishops from overseas jurisdictions in the United States had not asked.

Had this agenda been discussed with the Primates, or endorsed by the conference? The closing presidential address had enumerated these and received a standing ovation, but not from the Presiding Bishop of TEC who stood with arms folded.
Some bishops probably saw from afar this attempt to produce an agenda out of what were only styled as reflections. The Moderators from the Churches of North and South India, Pakistan and Bangladesh issued their own statement as the conference ended. As other bishops had claimed to represent over half the church going Anglicans, they claimed to “represent nearly a quarter of the human race practicing and living all the major faiths of the world”. In other words, they knew what they were talking about in inter-faith matters. They applauded the walk of witness on world poverty but concluded that this “will mean an equitable sharing of resources within the Communion”. They were saddened and disturbed by the ”˜fractured nature of the Anglican Communion’ which “seems primarily to have been caused by the issue of human sexuality”¦”¦We acknowledge the biblical norms on human sexuality and urge that within the Anglican Communion this may be upheld for the effective witness of the Gospel.” They ask that “our differences, self-justifications and arrogant attitudes may be crucified and that we all experience the power of the resurrection for the transformation of our life together in the Communion.” Primates from the Global South, the Council of Anglican Province of Africa Bishops and the Bishops of Egypt also made public statements as the conference ended. Did this flurry of ”˜minority reports’ represent a frustration at not having any opportunity to express a common mind and a protest against the Conference leadership?

Missing most glaringly from the Reflections are the presence of sin and disobedience in the leadership of the communion, clear disobedience to revealed truth in Scripture and a total avoidance of the issues of power in any relationships local or global. Mere repetition of being gracious and not rushing to judgment is the ploy that unethical power uses to mask its strategies of continuing hegemony.

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