The Rt. Rev. Keith L. Ackerman, who resigned last month as Bishop of Quincy, will serve as an assisting bishop in the neighboring Diocese of Springfield. The Rt. Rev. Peter H. Beckwith, Bishop of Springfield, said the Presiding Bishop’s office had been notified that the new position would become effective Dec. 1.

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Archbishop Gomez said there was “a very high approval rating” for the ministry of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lambeth Conference, but he noted that the bishops raised questions “about the place of the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC), and there were a lot of questions about the role of the primates’ meeting in Anglican polity.”

The Covenant Design Group will meet in March 2009 to develop a new draft and prepare a report to the ACC for its May 1 to 12, 2009 meeting in Jamaica.

Archbishop Gomez said he anticipates it would take three to five years for the provinces to sign up once a final draft was ratified by the ACC. “There is a strong feeling in some parts of the communion that the covenant, setting out our mutual responsibilities as a family of churches, needs to be in place as quickly as possible ”” although there are other voices which still believe we have a way to go before we arrive at a mature text,” he said.

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Traditionalist Anglicans are to formally announce that they are setting up a new church in the US and Canada.

The move will make the long-discussed split in the Anglican Church in North America a reality.

It means in each country there will be two competing churches, both claiming allegiance to the Anglican Communion.

The American Church’s liberal stance on homosexuality has led some traditionalists, including some whole dioceses, to leave the Church.

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Bishops from four dioceses emerged from the house of bishops meeting in October struggling with how to proceed with plans to introduce same-sex blessings in their dioceses.

While the majority of bishops agreed to a moratorium on same-sex blessings, the bishops from the dioceses of Ottawa, Montreal, Niagara and Huron, and from the Anglican Parishes of the Central Interior faced pressure at home to offer same-sex blessings.

Given the strong support for a moratorium and the fact that two significant meetings will be held early in 2009 ”” Anglican primates meet in February and the Anglican Consultative Council meets in May ”” few decisions are expected to be made before the spring.

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The above is the topic for the Mere Anglicanism 2009 Conference. It takes place from January 15 – 17, 2009 in Charleston, South Carolina. Among the speakers: The Rt Rev’d Michael Nazir-ali, Archbishop Valentino Mokiwa; Dr. Stephen Noll, The Rt Rev’d Robert Duncan, The Rt Rev’d Mark Lawrence, The Rt Rev’d Jack Iker, Archbishop Benjamin Kwashi, Dr. William Abraham, and Dr. Albert Mohler.

There is much more information available here.

Enlisted soldiers and Marines divorced their spouses at a higher rate in fiscal 2008 than at any other time in at least 16 years, according to Pentagon data released Tuesday.

About 4% of married enlisted troops in the Army and Marines, or 8,842 GIs and 2,842 Marines, obtained divorces during fiscal 2008, the numbers show. The data reflect a steady upward trend in divorce among the Army enlisted since 2003 and enlisted Marines since 2005.

The rate of married enlisted soldiers getting divorced went from 3.7% in 2007 to 3.9%. For married enlisted Marines, the rate went from 3.6% to 4%, records show.

From 2007 to 2008, there was a 5.4% increase in divorces for soldiers, and an 11% increase for Marines, records show.

Makes the heart sad. Read it all.

After a decade of robust gains, America’s health has leveled off and may be poised to take a plunge, an analysis warns.

The 2008 America’s Health Rankings, out today, offer a comprehensive look at nearly two decades of progress in access to medical care, immunizations, prenatal care, infant mortality, heart disease deaths, smoking cessation, deaths by infectious disease, violent crime and occupational fatalities.

The analysis of 22 measures indicates that the nation’s health improved by 18% from 1990 to 2000. For the past four years, however, progress has stalled. What worries health experts most is that ballooning waistlines, addiction to tobacco and mounting rates of chronic diseases threaten the gains.

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Still, every nurse has a story about obnoxious doctors. A few say they have ducked scalpels thrown across the operating room by angry surgeons. More frequently, though, they are belittled, insulted or yelled at ”” often in front of patients and other staff members ”” and made to feel like the bottom of the food chain. A third of the nurses in Dr. Rosenstein’s study were aware of a nurse who had left a hospital because of a disruptive physician.

“The job is tough enough without having to prepare yourself psychologically for a call that you know could very well become abusive,” said Diana J. Mason, editor in chief of The American Journal of Nursing.

Laura Sweet, deputy chief of enforcement at the Medical Board of California, described the case of a resident at a University of California hospital who noticed a problem with a fetal monitoring strip on a woman in labor, but didn’t call anyone.

“He was afraid to contact the attending physician, who was notorious for yelling and ridiculing the residents,” Ms. Sweet said. The baby died.

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Check it out–I especially commend the article “Preparing your Church for the future” on page 7.

At the moment, D.C. and Detroit are brooding on a Morton’s Fork: Watch the American automakers auger in and take hundreds of thousands of jobs with them, or bail out these failed and incorrigible companies whose management so richly deserves whatever hell (flying coach?) awaits them.

Tops on the critics’ list of grievances is Detroit’s failure to anticipate the inevitable. Why didn’t these companies sufficiently invest in next-generation technology — fuel-efficient small cars, high-mileage hybrids, plug-ins and all-electric vehicles — that could help wean the U.S. off foreign oil and take the automobile out of the climate-change equation? As the auto executives again bring their begging bowl to Congress, a consensus is forming: No bailout unless Detroit builds greener cars.

From my perch, as someone who drives all of the Big Three’s North American product offerings, I think a lot of the anger is reflexive and misplaced.

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Although the body is primarily seen as an orthodox alternative to the current national churches in North America, [Martyn] Minns stressed there is still diversity.

“I think what we’re saying is that there’s a theological heart to what we’re doing but there’s a variety there,” he explained. “There’s a common set of theological assumptions that unite us but we’re not all jumping out of the same box.”

Within The Episcopal Church, however, the diversity was too broad.

“Some pushed the envelope too far and so as a reaction some said we can’t go that far; we need to come out and at least have some definition to what we believe,” the CANA bishop said.

Minns labeled the new body as “orthodox, Anglican, mission-minded, biblically-centered.”

“I would it’s basically a fairly traditional Anglicanism with a passion for mission,” he briefly explained.

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When Peter Nicholson’s mother suffered a series of strokes last winter, he did something women have done for generations: he quit his job and moved into her West Hollywood home to care for her full time.

Since then, he has lost 45 pounds and developed anemia, in part because of the stress, and he is running out of money. But the hardest adjustment, Mr. Nicholson said, has been the emotional toll.

“The single toughest moment was when she said to me, ”˜And now who are you?’ ” he said. “My whole world just dropped. That was the pinnacle of despair.”

Read it all from this past Saturday’s New York Times.

Although many evangelicals were not quite ready for a Mormon presidential candidate this election season, others were quick to join Mormons’ efforts to pass California’s ballot proposition banning same-sex marriage.

Evangelicals were the largest group of Americans who expressed reservations about voting for a Mormon candidate in surveys conducted last year. But leaders of the successful Proposition 8 campaign said that evangelicals, Mormons, and Roman Catholics cooperated more extensively than ever before to rally California to ban gay marriage.

“I think this is the ironic part, because everybody seems very content to work together on these issues of common values,” said Mark DeMoss, an evangelical publicist and early supporter of Mitt Romney. “But the moment a Mormon man presented himself as a candidate for President, people said, ‘That’s a line we as evangelicals can’t cross.’ ”

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The sticking points for the Century, and the mainline more broadly, came when these core principles seemed to be in conflict. Ethical differences that were allowed, even welcomed, during discussions sometimes got swept under the rug when the time came to make public pronouncements. Continuing the cycle, public pronouncements that better represented the views of some religious bodies than of others could impede ecumenical endeavors. Most vexing, what common ground could committed ecumenists find with Christians whose ethics or conception of the church’s public role caused them to eschew World Council of Churches-style ecumenism?

One of the few watercooler stories that still circulates about Morrison highlights these difficulties. In the early 1960s, editorializing on developments in the WCC, Martin Marty and another young Century editor urged Protestant leaders to take Orthodox concerns about that institution more seriously. Morrison, whose old age and blindness generally kept him away from the office, stormed in to register his complaint about the editorial. The young bucks threw his own definition of the church at him, arguing that, if the church exists wherever the character of Christ is formed, then the Orthodox are part of the church, and pains should be taken to keep them at the ecumenical table. Morrison fumed, “But if we wait for the Orthodox, I won’t live to see Christian unity!”

Morrison’s magazine has not lived to see Christian unity or a truly Christian century. Its antagonism (lessening all the time) toward some branches of American Christianity might even have impeded these goals, but it presses on. It has recently returned to its roots as a publication for ministers, adding columns on preaching the lectionary and increasing coverage of pastoral matters. The imperialism associated with pretended universality has abated. The Century serves churches, rather than an imagined single church, as the voice of a creative minority. It is mainline, not broadly mainstream. And yet, like the Protestant mainline, it has far too rich a heritage simply to fade away. As it moves into a new century, it still merits our respect.

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I can clearly remember sitting on the front porch with my brother and watching down the street for my uncle’s car. We knew he was coming sometime that day and with him would be our cousins. We were not a patient duo. We had many plans of forts to build in the basement and, if it was winter, snowball fights to be staged. These plans burned in our minds and every minute that passed meant one less minute to play.

To keep the boredom at bay we would play tricks on each other. If I caught my brother not looking down the street I would excitedly say, “There they — aren’t!” He would do the same to me when I tired of gazing down the empty street.

Every now and then we would hear a car coming. We would crane our necks to see who it was but be deflated when we realized it was not our uncle. After the momentary disappointment faded we would go back to watching and waiting.

I think the Gospel writer had this kind of watchfulness in mind when he exhorted the faithful to stay on the lookout for the coming of the Lord.

— Jeff Hedglen

“To say we are going to have two provinces, two sets of churches in the same geographic region because of theological or political differences … could have ramifications not just for us but for the rest of the Communion,” says [the Rev.] Canon [Charles] Robertson.

The debate over homosexuality and biblical authority has long spurred talk of schism. Many provinces have “impaired” or “broken” ties with the Episcopal Church over such issues. But last summer, traditionalists held a Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) in Jerusalem and declared that, rather than split from the Communion, they were forming an orthodox fellowship within it. They urged formation of the new province in North America.

“Paradoxically, it may seem as though this step is a division, but it is really to help us not to divide by giving us more flexibility,” says Archbishop Jensen, secretary for GAFCON’s leadership council. He spoke by phone as a “close observer,” not officially for the council.

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