Almost one in 10 S.C. homeowners was behind on mortgage payments or in foreclosure at the end of September.

And the state’s high unemployment rate indicates more people will have trouble making payments next year.

In South Carolina, 9.4 percent of homeowners were at least 30 days past due or in the process of foreclosure in the third quarter,according to data released Friday by the Mortgage Bankers Association. That is up from 8.1 percent in the same period last year.

Of the 666,729 mortgages serviced in the state, 7.4 percent were delinquent and 2 percent were in foreclosure, the MBA reported.

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To portray his thinking demands getting behind Dr Williams’s seemingly careful obscurity and (in the words of an academic mentor, Donald MacKinnon) his “tendency to substitute revery for hard analysis”.

The private man has now also to uphold public policies with the making of which he might not have agreed. As Lord Harries, the former Bishop of Oxford, told him: “God has given you all the gifts and, as your punishment, he has made you Archbishop of Canterbury.”

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Here is one:

Re “Auto Executives Face a Hard Sell on Capitol Hill” (front page, Dec. 5):

I am one of those skeptics who believe that no amount of money will effect changes in businesses that keep their leadership in place. Promises aside, they’ve led their companies into the fix they’re in. A structured Chapter 11 is the way to go.

Also, I strongly suggest to the president-elect to institute a $1 tax on every gallon of gasoline on the day he takes office. With it, he can finance the desperately needed rebuilding of our infrastructure and create jobs. We Americans must have a powerful incentive to give up our wasteful, lazy ways ”” buying big cars, spending and driving unnecessarily.

Barack Obama must be honest with us; it’s not the economy of the country that is in peril, it’s the economy of the earth ”” and all its inhabitants.

Lawrence Holofcener

Read them all.

As bad as the headline numbers in Friday’s employment report were, they still made the job market look better than it really is.

The unemployment rate reached its highest point since 1993, and overall employment fell by more than a half million jobs. Yet that was just the beginning. Thanks to the vagaries of the way that the government’s best-known jobs statistics are calculated, they have overlooked many workers who have been deeply affected by the current recession.

The number of people out of the labor force ”” meaning that they were neither working nor looking for work and that the government did not consider them unemployed ”” jumped by 637,000 last month, the Labor Department said. The number of part-time workers who said they wanted full-time work ”” all counted as fully employed ”” rose by an additional 621,000.

Take these people into account, and the job market may be in its worst condition since the early 1980s. It is still deteriorating rapidly, too.

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The Rt. Rev. Charles Jenkins, Bishop of Louisiana, has announced plans to retire at the end of 2009. He informed the diocese’s standing committee of his decision Dec. 4, according to a letter published on the diocese’s website.

“This move is based on issues of health and a concern for the mission strategy of the diocese,” Bishop Jenkins said. “To that end, I now call for the election of the eleventh Bishop of Louisiana.”

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President-elect Barack Obama added sweep and meat to his economic agenda on Saturday, pledging the largest new investment in roads and bridges since President Dwight D. Eisenhower built the Interstate system in the late 1950s, and tying his key initiatives ”“ education, energy, health care ”“back to jobs in a package that has the makings of a smaller and modern version of FDR’s New Deal marriage of job creation with infrastructure upgrades.

The president-elect also said for the first time that he will “launch the most sweeping effort to modernize and upgrade school buildings that this country has ever seen.”

“We will repair broken schools, make them energy-efficient, and put new computers in our classrooms,” he said in the address.

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This week’s announcement that breakaway Episcopal churches around North America are forming their own province prompted sharply contrasting reactions among San Diego-area worshippers. Members of the independent churches in San Diego County said this is a momentous shift, and a recognition that the Episcopal church has strayed too far from the faith’s core principles.

But the Right Rev. James R. Mathes, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of San Diego, said there is no official recognition of the new province, or governing unit, and therefore no real change. “You can say you’re a province, but that doesn’t make it so,” Mathes said. “It doesn’t affect us.”

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The Rev. Dr. Frank Larisey, pastor of Orangeburg’s Episcopal Church of the Redeemer, said “Theologically, we are on the same page with them. But we have no intention at the present time of going anywhere. We have not changed. We have not gone anywhere. We are the heart of Christian orthodoxy.”

Instead, Larisey said he, along with the diocese, will continue to speak out against the “liberal” and “unbiblical” trends in the hope that changes can occur.

Four Episcopal dioceses, plus individual churches, announced this week that they would leave the U.S. church to form a rival, conservative North American province.

But Larisey said for the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina, “Our strategy at present is to remain within the Episcopal Church bearing witness to the truth of the Gospel and confronting the Episcopal Church on issues which we strongly disagree.”

He added in his estimation, most of the Episcopal Church has succumbed to “liberal revisionism.”

The split comes on the heels of long-standing theological controversy within the Episcopal Church. The controversy peaked in 2003 with the consecration of Gene Robinson as bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire. At the time of his election, Robinson was openly living with a same-sex partner.

“That is the straw that broke the camel’s back,” said the Very Rev. John F. Scott, pastor of the Episcopal Church of the Epiphany. He said the liberalization of the U.S. church began with the teachings of a bishop who “denied the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”

Scott, who attended some of the discussions in Illinois about the split last week, described the atmosphere as “reenactment of the Holy Spirit and Pentecost when the church was being rebirthed.”

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Conservative Anglicans in the United States and Canada said Friday that they intended to proceed immediately with plans to create their own branch of the Anglican Communion, separate from the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada, despite warnings from the archbishop of Canterbury that winning official recognition could take years.

“This is not being put on hold while we wait for a committee in England to tell us which form to fill out,” said the Rev. Peter Frank, a spokesman for Bishop Robert Duncan, who led a majority of churches in the Diocese of Pittsburgh out of the Episcopal Church this year and is to become the archbishop and primate of the new province.

Theological conservatives representing a collection of breakaway dioceses, parishes and church networks announced Wednesday in Wheaton, Ill., the creation of a new province called the Anglican Church in North America. Despite serious differences among them, they are united in their condemnation of what they call the Episcopal Church’s drift to the left, most significantly its decision five years ago to consecrate an openly gay bishop in New Hampshire.

Read it all. Please note: be very careful with this story and its coverage this week. The New York Times article incorrectly states “on Thursday, the archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, warned the conservatives to slow down.” He did no such thing. As in many recent situations, the Archbishop of Canterbury has said nothing (indeed his silence has been deafening on numerous recent North American developments including this one). I defy you to go to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s website and find anything he has said on this matter.

Ah, but there’s more. Where did the New York Times get the impression that the Archbishop of Canterbury had said anything? From the Episcopal News Service, most probably. And why?

On Friday, ENS ran a story which claimed that “A statement from Lambeth Palace” had been issued. What are we to make of this? Well, said statement is not on the Archbishop of Canterbury’s website nor (that I can find) on the Anglican Communion Service website. Hmm. Is it actually a statement from Lambeth Palace. Well, actually, er, no.

Why do I say this? First, because the Church Times blog, which certainly knows the Church of England situation in some depth, in response to the ENS story says (read this very carefully please): It would be good to hear directly from Lambeth Palace before reading too much into this. Got that? There is more. What is the real original source of this idea? Why, another ENS story (and why, one has to ask, are all these stories about the Church of England running on ENS but not English sources?). And if you read it carefully, what does this story say? Well, in spite of its misleading headline, actually it is a statement from “a spokesperson for Archbishop of Canterbury” Got that? It is a person at Lambeth Palace, and, wonder of wonders, we do not even know his or her name (I wonder why).

If you find all this a bit confusing, welcome to the world of English bureacracy, where what is said and who says it and how it is interpreted are all in play to send various signals, and where all these signals are sought to be played by many various parties involved. If I were preparing someone to understand this world, multiple episodes of “Yes Minister” would be required viewing–KSH.

CHRISTIANS in northern Nigeria have said that inaccurate reporting of riots in Jos at the weekend could fuel further Muslim violence against them. The worst sectarian violence in recent years claimed around 400 lives, a figure which the Bishop of Jos, the Rt Revd Ben Kwashi, said was likely to rise.

Confusion surrounds the events. First reports in the international media said that the attacks on businesses and homes, which began in the early hours of Friday morning, were the result of spontaneous post-election violence after electoral workers failed to post ballot results. The ruling People’s Democratic Party, perceived to be mainly Chris­tian, defeated the All Nigerian People’s Party.

Later reports of “Christian-Muslim clashes” appeared to suggest that Christians had killed 300 Muslims. The rioting was then said to have expanded along religious and ethnic lines. It became clear, how­ever, that the rioters had been well prepared and heavily armed, and that many were wearing fake military or police uniforms.

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Primates of the GAFCON Primates’ Council meeting in London have issued the following statement about the Province of the Anglican Church in North America.

We welcome the news of the North American Anglican Province in formation. We fully support this development with our prayer and blessing, since it demonstrates the determination of these faithful Christians to remain authentic Anglicans.

North American Anglicans have been tragically divided since 2003 when activities condemned by the clear teaching of Scripture and the vast majority of the Anglican Communion were publicly endorsed. This has left many Anglicans without a proper spiritual home. The steps taken to form the new Province are a necessary initiative. A new Province will draw together in unity many of those who wish to remain faithful to the teaching of God’s word, and also create the highest level of fellowship possible with the wider Anglican Communion.

Furthermore, it releases the energy of many Anglican Christians to be involved in mission, free from the difficulties of remaining in fellowship with those who have so clearly disregarded the word of God.

6th December, 2008 AD

“The new grouping is, in the eyes of many,” said [Ephram] Radner, “representative of diverse bodies whose theology and ecclesiology is, taken together, incoherent, and perhaps in some cases even incompatible.”

That bodes ill for the denomination’s future, [Ian] Douglas said. “Those who have been quick to separate themselves out in the past have that as part of their operational DNA,” he said.

Still, not everyone is writing off the new church.

“We cannot predict the future,” said David L. Holmes a professor of religious history at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va., “but my hunch would be that this new Anglican denomination will persist over the years.”

Read it ll.

“This vote demonstrates that when people have an opportunity to study the facts, they realize that the information disseminated by the ultra-conservative leadership of the diocese was misleading,” said the Very Rev. Robert Dedmon, the cathedral’s dean, on a website established by a group working to reorganize the diocese within the Episcopal Church. “Now this parish must get on with our Christian mission and ministry.”

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During a pre-service press conference, Bob Duncan, the former Episcopal bishop of Pittsburgh and now archbishop-designate for the new church, told news media that he expects the Episcopal Church (TEC) to continue its decline and that in time, the new province will come to replace it.

He said, “The Lord is displacing the Episcopal Church.”

This year, TEC leaders have seen the decades-long downward spiral continue in both attendance and finances. By some estimates, attendance and membership are declining by 1,000 people per week. Many dioceses are cutting budgets and staff, and drawing down endowment funds to maintain operations. The denomination has about two million members. It is spending millions of dollars on court actions to prevent individual churches and dioceses from pulling out.

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Turns out, misery may not love company ”” but happiness does, research suggests.

A new study by researchers at Harvard University and the University of California, San Diego documents how happiness spreads through social networks.

They found that when a person becomes happy, a friend living close by has a 25 percent higher chance of becoming happy themselves. A spouse experiences an 8 percent increased chance and for next-door neighbors, it’s 34 percent.

Read or listen to it all from NPR.

Read or watch it all.

With the economy deteriorating rapidly, the nation’s employers shed 533,000 jobs in November, the 11th consecutive monthly decline, the government reported Friday morning, and the unemployment rate rose to 6.7 percent.

The decline, the largest one-month loss since December 1974, was fresh evidence that the economic contraction accelerated in November, promising to make the current recession, already 12 months old, the longest since the Great Depression. The previous record was 16 months, in the severe recessions of the mid-1970s and early 1980s.

“We have recorded the largest decline in consumer confidence in our history,” said Richard T. Curtin, director of the Reuters/University of Michigan Survey of Consumers, which started its polling in the 1950s. “It is being driven down by a host of factors: falling home and stock prices, fewer work hours, smaller bonuses, less overtime and disappearing jobs.”

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The presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church declared Thursday that church members who joined a newly formed conservative denomination “are no longer Episcopalians,” even as she predicted that the exodus had largely run its course and would not trigger further large-scale defections.

In her first public comments since a coalition of 700 parishes announced the formation of a new North American church Wednesday, the Most. Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori also reiterated that church property must remain in Episcopal hands, a position disputed by breakaway leaders.

“They are no longer Episcopalians,” Jefferts Schori said of those who left. “They have made that very clear in their departures.

“Those who were formally bishops in the Episcopal Church are no longer understood to be bishops in the Episcopal Church,” she added in a meeting with Times reporters. “They are free to associate with whom they wish.”

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Episcopal Church experts and disaffected conservatives predicted yesterday that intense lobbying would soon begin over dissidents’ plans to leave the church and create a new Anglican community in the United States.

The two sides will try to convince Anglican leaders worldwide either of the value or the cost of a second branch of the U.S. church, one that would be based less on geography than on theology.

Bishop Martyn Minns, a Virginia-based leader of the breakaway movement, confidently predicted victory. “I think we’ve got a good basis of support for what we’re doing,” he said.

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“This is so quick and so sharp,” says Richard Yamarone, director of research at Argus Research. “We had some job loss the first seven or eight months of the year, but it was nothing like this.” He says declining stock values are leading firms to cut more than usual in December.

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The Rev. Hal T. Ley Hayek is the rector of Saint Anne’s Episcopal Church in Winston-Salem and the dean of the Winston-Salem convocation of the Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina. His church does not plan to join the new branch.

“Our hope in the Episcopal church is to live in the highest degree of communion that we possibly can,” Hayek said. “Our living in communion is a witness to the world and the reconciling mission of Jesus. That’s the mission of all Christians.”

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Long-standing divisions between liberals and conservatives had already fragmented the Episcopal Church by 2003 when it consecrated Gene Robinson of New Hampshire as the first bishop known to be in an openly gay relationship in more than four centuries of Anglican Church history.

That act further roiled the 2.1 million-member U.S. church and the 77 million-member worldwide Anglican Communion of which it is part. In recent months, four dioceses, out of a total of 110, have split from the Episcopal Church in California, Pennsylvania, Texas and Illinois. The church says that fewer than 100 of 7,100 congregations had left or voted to leave before the recent diocesan defections.

The dissidents who met on Wednesday want to become a province within the Anglican Communion — on equal footing with the Episcopal Church. Achieving that status would require approval from two-thirds of the primates — the heads of national churches — in the Anglican Communion and ultimate recognition from the Anglican Consultative Council, another church body.

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I caught this earlier this week and thought it was a really nifty story. I was unaware of this research–watch it all and see what you make of it.

Go to the second link down where it says “Super Downsize Me” and click on those words. This is an excellent report on the way companies are raising prices on many food items while hiding that fact from many (most?) consumers. Watch it all.

When Baby Boomers think back to the influence TV had on their childhoods, they probably recall an ugly, rabbit-eared set perched in the corner of the living room that picked up a handful of channels. If their parents heard anything objectionable on the “boob tube,” they’d turn the channel or hit the off button.

Things have changed, and not necessarily for the better. Today’s mass media penetrate deeply and quietly, inflicting real damage on young children, an increasing body of research shows. Moms and dads today are less likely to witness what their children are watching and hearing, and less able to monitor it.

More than 170 studies going back over 28 years have concluded that heavy media exposure ”” everything from TV to cellphones to computer games ”” increases the risk of adolescent obesity, smoking, sex, drug and alcohol use, attention problems and poor grades, according to a report released this week by Common Sense Media (CSM), a non-profit child advocacy group.

Read the whole thing.

A top Roman Catholic cleric in England has accused Disney of corrupting children, encouraging greed and turning its make-believe world into a latter-day pilgrimage site.

Christopher Jamison, the abbot of Worth Abbey, in southern England, charges Disney with “exploiting spirituality” and helping to generate a culture of materialism while pretending to provide movie, book and theme park stories with a moral message.

Jamison, the star of a British Broadcasting Corp. television series, The Monastery, and a candidate to succeed Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor as leader of the Catholic population of England and Wales, lodged the accusations in his new book, Finding Happiness.

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After five years of battles over gay rights, the Anglican communion fractured yesterday with a new conservative denomination claiming to represent the historic tenets of the faith.

The self-titled Anglican Church in North America, claiming a membership of 100,000, unveiled a constitution and canons with a prayer service last night in the Chicago suburb of Wheaton. Founders said the new church hopes to be welcomed one day as the 39th province in the worldwide communion.

“It’s been a day that, in effect, reverses decades of Anglican history,” Bishop Robert Duncan, a leader in the breakaway movement, told a news conference.

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Conservative leaders, including former Episcopal bishops, announced the creation of the Anglican Church in North America on Wednesday. It is expected to begin with about 700 congregations and 100,000 members in North America.

“It’s a no brainer. We are already in, as far as I understand,” said Father Michael Fry of All Saints Anglican Church in Peachtree City.

Fry was happy to see theological conservatives in the U.S. finally form a national organization.

“It’s the opinion of the conservatives that the Episcopal Church has left its roots,” he said.

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Tim Morgan: Christianity Today. Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori released a statement 1 hr ago about TEC being the only recognized Anglican province in North America. Is the goal of this new enterprise to replace TEC or form a parallel structure?

Bp. Duncan: The Lord has been replacing TEC for 50 years. 2007 figures show losses of more than 1000 people a week in Average Sunday attendance. We will focus on our mission together. We are growing and planting new organizations of authentic Christian presence in US and Canada. Issue of who is the province here is not ours to determine. TEC is province now recognized. Of 38 provinces, 22 have declared broken or impaired communion with TEC. That’s roughly 75% of Anglicans around the world that are out of communion with TEC. Our anticipation is that the primates will recognize this province. One is official reality the other emerging reality. It is not ours to determine. The Lord called us to this work He blesses what he blesses. Standing where we stand, we expect a different result than our recent experiences in Anglican Church of Canada and TEC.

It is very important that you take the time to read it all carefully.

The bishop who led a group of Pittsburgh parishes that split from the Episcopal Church will serve as interim head of the Anglican Church in North America, a new church being formed by conservative congregations.

Bishop Robert Duncan will lead the new church until an archbishop is appointed next summer, said Peter Frank, spokesman for the Pittsburgh churches that voted in October to leave the national church.

“(It’s) an important, concrete step toward the goal of a biblical, missionary and united Anglican Church in North America,” Duncan said.

Read the whole article.