(Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ):

As we approach the nativity of Christ, we need to remember the admonition of the angels to the shepherds: “Be not afraid.”

The Episcopal Church, a member of the Anglican Communion, for more than the past 30 years has been working on gradual, full incorporation of gay and lesbian people. We have worked to be people of gracious restraint for all these years and have now come to a place in our lives that is normal evolutionary change which compels us to move from tolerance to full inclusion.

As with racial and cultural divides, we can look to the great words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who calls us not to fall prey to the insidious drug of gradualism. Indeed, as he said in his speech titled “I Have a Dream”: “This is no time … to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism …. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.”

We must move forward and respect the dignity of all human beings which is called for in our Baptismal Covenant and canons.

The Diocese of Los Angeles has acted in good faith and is moving forward in supporting the full inclusion and full humanity of all people in the Church. Thus, we celebrate the elections of Diane Jardine Bruce and Mary Douglas Glasspool as our next Bishops Suffragan called to share in the work of a strong episcopal team serving this Diocese and all of God’s people.

–(The Rt. Rev.) J. Jon Bruno is Bishop of Los Angeles

The UN climate summit reached a weak outline of a global agreement last night in Copenhagen, falling far short of what Britain and many poor countries were seeking and leaving months of tough negotiations to come.

After eight draft texts and all-day talks between 115 world leaders, it was left to Barack Obama and Wen Jiabao, the Chinese premier, to broker a political agreement. The so-called Copenhagen accord “recognises” the scientific case for keeping temperature rises to no more than 2C but did not contain commitments to emissions reductions to achieve that goal.

American officials spun the deal as a “meaningful agreement”, but even Obama said: “This progress is not enough.”

Read it all.

Take a careful look and there are lots of documents here.

Though the four are not in all the same businesses, they were caught in one of the same traps: They sold mortgage guarantees ”” in some cases to each other. Now when homeowners default, as they are doing in record numbers, these companies are covering the losses. Essentially, taxpayer money to these companies is being used partly to protect banks and other investors who own the mortgages.

Like the big banks, these four companies would no doubt prefer to be free of government assistance, which comes with pay and other restrictions on their executives. But they appear at risk of getting onto a debt merry-go-round, where they have to draw new money from the government just to keep up with their existing government debts.

Fannie Mae recently warned, for example, that it could not pay the dividends it owes the Treasury, so “future dividend payments will be effectively funded with equity drawn from the Treasury.”

All the companies have recently drawn new government money or are in talks to do so…

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On Dec. 8, some of America’s brightest contemporary intellectuals gathered at the New School to discuss the tenuous relationship between “Evangelicalism and the Contemporary Intellectual.” Sponsored by Brooklyn-based literary magazine n+1, the panel featured The New Yorker’s Malcolm Gladwell and James Wood and The Nation’s former associate literary editor Christine Smallwood. While these thinkers all grew up in close proximity to evangelicalism, there was one conspicuous absence from the conversation: an intellectual who still professes the Christian faith. The discussion was predictably thoughtful, though evangelical belief was treated as something necessarily dispensed with on the way to becoming a public scholar.

This feeling of intellectual distance from grass-roots Christianity is not new. It’s been almost 30 years since Charles Malik, a former president of the United Nations General Assembly and a devout Christian, gave a speech at Wheaton College called “The Two Tasks.” To the audience assembled for the dedication of Wheaton’s Billy Graham Center, he said: “The greatest danger besetting American evangelical Christianity is the danger of anti-intellectualism.” This idea was picked up by historian Mark A. Noll 14 years later in his 1994 book “The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind.” The “scandal” of the title, he said, was “that there is not much of an evangelical mind,” despite what he sees as a biblical mandate to better understand creation. Mr. Noll asserts that this lack is reinforced by the historical experience of evangelicals in America, whose churches and ministries have gained more adherents at the cost of fostering anti-intellectualism and bad theology.

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More than half of U.S. residents who wanted to travel during the holidays have significantly cut back their plans or canceled trips altogether because of the fragile economy, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll shows.

Americans are suffering from high unemployment, income reductions and financial insecurity that continue to undermine the travel business, even as the economy shows tepid signs of recovery, according to economists and poll respondents.

“I crunched the numbers, checked numerous airlines and it just wasn’t a possibility,” said Lisa Emmett-Gagliano, 48, of Mesa, Ariz. Emmett-Gagliano, a single mother on disability, wanted to take her two daughters to Chicago to visit family they hadn’t seen for nine years.

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The following resolution was passed by the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion meeting in London on 15-18 December, and approved for public distribution.

Resolved that, in the light of:

1. The recent episcopal nomination in the Diocese of Los Angeles of a partnered lesbian candidate
2. The decisions in a number of US and Canadian dioceses to proceed with formal ceremonies of same-sex blessings
3. Continuing cross-jurisdictional activity within the Communion

The Standing Committee strongly reaffirm Resolution 14.09 of ACC 14 supporting the three moratoria proposed by the Windsor Report and the associated request for gracious restraint in respect of actions that endanger the unity of the Anglican Communion by going against the declared view of the Instruments of Communion.

We were all so saddened last Sunday afternoon, as we began to hear the news that our friend and dear brother Mark had been taken from us.

All around us, in the church and in the world, we sense the buzz and excitement of this particular time of year. And we wish that we could blend right in with all the holiday revelers, and we wish that Mark could join in with us”¦

But in our deeper moments of reflection, we understand that the whole point of Jesus coming among us was to share the sufferings that are common to all humanity, and ultimately, to conquer this ugly thing called “Death” by his own death and resurrection.

Read it all.

Since the start of Advent the ZRP and Kunonga loyalists have disrupted services and locked out congregations across the diocese loyal to Dr Gandiya and the Church of the Province of Central Africa (CPCA).

Dr Kunonga’s fresh campaign for control of the church in Harare is a “real test to the fragile government of National Unity,” the Rev Paul Gwese reported, “as it was at the intervention of the co-ministers of Home Affairs” that Anglicans were able to “use their churches without been disrupted by rogue police officers aligned to Kunonga.”

In an email sent to supporters dated Nov 29, Dr Gandiya recounted how the ZRP and Kunonga clergy broke up a service he was leading at St Clare’s Mission in Murewa.

Read it all.

On behalf of the staff and former Sr. Warden’s we wish to thank you for your faithful commitment to engage the discernment process this fall. While the question before our congregation was a serious and sobering one, the depth and richness of the materials and sermons combined with your participation in LifeGroups has worked to deepen our corporate understanding of the Lord’s direction in our life and the call upon this parish, so, thank you.

Last night we gathered to count the response forms and by a 93% ”“ 6% margin the congregation has overwhelmingly recommended that St. Andrew’s affiliate with the Anglican Church in North America and separate from The Episcopal Church.

Read it all..

When Senate Democratic leaders agreed this week to remove a public insurance plan from their massive healthcare bill, they did more than quash a liberal dream of expanding the government safety net. They effectively pinned their hopes of guaranteeing coverage to all Americans on a far more conventional prescription: government regulation.

The change sprang from a compromise made to placate conservative Democrats wary of a new government program. But shorn of a “public option,” the Senate healthcare bill has reverted to a long-established practice of leveraging government power to police the private sector, rather than compete with it.

Despite the resistance among Republicans and conservatives to more government regulation, even the insurance industry has agreed to broad new oversight of their business in exchange for the prospect of gaining millions of new customers.

Read the whole article.

Good morning. It’s an honor to for me to join this distinguished group of leaders from nations around the world. We come together here in Copenhagen because climate change poses a grave and growing danger to our people. You would not be here unless you ”“ like me ”“ were convinced that this danger is real. This is not fiction, this is science. Unchecked, climate change will pose unacceptable risks to our security, our economies, and our planet. That much we know.

So the question before us is no longer the nature of the challenge ”“ the question is our capacity to meet it. For while the reality of climate change is not in doubt, our ability to take collective action hangs in the balance.

I believe that we can act boldly, and decisively, in the face of this common threat. And that is why I have come here today.

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Susan Hong stops Pastor Tim Keller as he dashes up the steps of a Baptist church on a hectic corner of Broadway and West 79th Street.

She heard him preach at 10:30 a.m. on the Upper East Side. Now she has brought friends to hear him at the West Side 5 p.m. service. He briefly greets her, then slips into the service just before his sermon.

In 45 minutes, before the final hymn, Keller’s gone ”” off to deliver the same sermon, “The Gospel Changes Everything,” on the East Side.

Then, again, Keller, founder and senior pastor of Manhattan’s Redeemer Presbyterian Church, will dash back to West 79th Street for his fourth service of the day at three leased locations.

Read the whole article from the front page of yesterday’s paper.

Belief in God in the UK continues to lag a long way behind the United States, a new study suggests. In the US, 61 per cent of those surveyed said that they had “no doubt” that God existed; in the UK, the percentage was just 17. In the US, just four per cent said that they were not religious at all: they don’t believe in God, attend religious services, or even identify with a reli­gion; in the UK the percentage was 31.

The figures come in a paper by David Voas and Rodney Ling, to be published in British Social Attitudes: The 26th report, to be released on 27 January. The US figures are based on the American General Social Survey 2008; the UK ones come from the 2008 British Social Attitudes survey, which interviewed 4486 people.

The authors suggest a significant decline in religious practice in the UK. “Over the last quarter of a century, the number of people des­cribing them­selves as Christian has dropped from 66 per cent to 50 per cent.”

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About one-third of the countries in the world have high restrictions on religion, exposing almost 70 percent of the globe’s population to limitations on their faith, new research shows.

The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life based its analysis, released Wednesday (Dec. 16), on 16 sources of information, including reports from the U.S. State Department and human rights groups as well as national constitutions.

Overall, one-third of the countries were found to have high or very high restrictions on religion as a result of government rules or hostile acts by individuals and groups. Religious minorities often feel the brunt of hostilities because they are perceived as a threat to the culture, politics or economy of a country’s majority population, the 72-page report said.

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Predator drones used by the CIA against Islamic militants have been hacked into by insurgents using nothing more sophisticated than a $25.95 (£16) off-the-shelf software, it was revealed last night.

Although the insurgents were not able to control the $20 million aircraft, typically armed with Hellfire missiles and flown over the battlefields of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, they could watch live video feeds beamed back to US control stations through their electronic “eyeballs”.

The hackers’ success raises the disturbing possibility of the Predators being taken over and used to attack US or British forces, or perhaps even domestic targets. Although Predator aircraft are usually flown by remote control from thousands of miles away, some are kept for testing at US Airforce bases such as Creech, near Las Vegas.

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Round-the-clock drinking and cut-price alcohol are to blame for an ‘appalling’ rise in cancers, experts warned today.

Cases of cancer of the mouth have gone up by half in the past decade, with a 43 per cent rise in liver tumours. There have also been big rises in breast and colorectal cancer.

Many experts are blaming alcohol consumption, which has doubled in the UK since the 1950s and has been fuelled by Labour’s decision to relax licensing laws.

Read the whole thing.

A moderate Democrat whose vote could be crucial said Thursday an attempted Senate compromise on abortion is unsatisfactory, raising doubts about whether the chamber can pass President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul by Christmas.

“As it is, without modifications, the language concerning abortion is not sufficient,” Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson, a key holdout on the health care bill, said in a statement after first making his concerns known to Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

Nelson said there were positive improvements dealing with teen pregnancy and adoption, and that he was open to further negotiations. But in a radio interview earlier in the day with KLIN in Lincoln, Nebraska, Nelson also said that abortion wasn’t his only concern and he didn’t see how the Christmas deadline was achievable.

Read it alll.

When Newton, Mass. artist Paula Rendino needed fresh inspiration last year (2008), she sought her muse in an unlikely place: seminary.

Art school would have been “too boring,” Rendino explained. She yearned to bring fresh depth to her work by pondering spiritual themes. Now she does exactly that alongside dozens of ministers-in-training at Andover Newton Theological School.

“In seminary, you’re looking at philosophy, ethics or poetry and taking the time to really think about something,” Rendino said. “That’s so important because we live in a time where everything is fast, people write in short sentences. (They) don’t take the time to think about things.”

As theological schools cope with intense financial stress, they’re getting a much-needed boost from unconventional students such as Rendino….

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Major procedural reforms will be needed as well. One essential step is the implementation of “pay-as-you-go” rules, which require that all increases in spending or tax cuts be financed by savings elsewhere in the budget. The statutory creation of a “fiscal future commission”””modeled on the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission, a federal body whose recommendations are subject to an up-or-down vote in Congress””could represent a major breakthrough. It might even be time to reconsider passing a balanced-budget amendment to the US Constitution, a provision that exists in nearly all US states and is now being pursued in a somewhat analogous form by the European Union. Whatever the specific policy approach, the underlying objective should be to create a system that will achieve a balanced budget over the course of the economic cycle.

A responsible fiscal policy would permit the Federal Reserve to run a relatively easy monetary policy, which would hold down interest rates and prevent overvaluation of the dollar. If the Obama administration is looking for a historical model, it should aim to replicate the Clinton-Greenspan policy of the late 1990s (a mix of budget surpluses and low interest rates) rather than the Reagan-Volcker policy of the early 1980s (a mix of large deficits and high interest rates).

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The Rev. Timothy Paul Jones kept hearing one thing when — four weeks before Christmas — he brought a wreath and some purple and pink candles into his Southern Baptist church near Tulsa, Okla.

And all the people said: “Advent? Don’t Catholics do that?”This prickly response wasn’t all that unusual, in light of the history of Christmas in America, said Jones, who now teaches leadership and church ministry at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.

“In the dominant American, Protestant traditions of this country, we’ve never had a Christian calendar that told us anything about Advent and the 12 days of Christmas,” explained Jones, author of “Church History Made Easy.”

“We went from the Puritans, and they hardly celebrated Christmas at all, to this privatized, individualized approach to the season that you see all around us. … If you mention the church calendar many people think you’ve gone Papist or something. They really don’t care what Christians did through the centuries.”

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Watch it all.

Read the whole thing.

The list of finalists to be Wyoming’s new Episcopal bishop has shrunk to four after one of the nominees withdrew his name last weekend.

The Episcopal Diocese of Wyoming didn’t give a reason why the Very Rev. Robert “Bob” Neske, dean of St. Mark’s Episcopal Pro-Cathedral in Hastings, Neb., took his name off the shortlist to succeed Bishop Bruce Caldwell, who is retiring next year.

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Here in the United States, an office of the Pentagon held an unusual contest earlier this month. Researchers wanted to see how thousands of people around the world could compete and collaborate to solve a problem that was too big for any one individual. The task was to find balloons scattered around the U.S. Competitors posted information and misinformation on Twitter and other social networking sites. Dr. Peter Lee is with DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which sponsored the contest.

Dr. LEE: On December 5, we, in 10 public but undisclosed locations in the continental U.S., hoisted big red eight-foot wide weather balloons, about 50 to 100 feet in the air. And we challenged the world to find them. And the first person to report the locations – latitude and longitude of all 10 – would win a $40,000 prize.

[ARI] SHAPIRO: What was the point of this?

(Soundbite of laughter)

Dr. LEE: There were several reasons we did this. I think the most fundamental is we wanted to create the conditions that would allow researchers to understand something more about how information flows on the Internet and on social networks. But we also wanted to create an adversarial situation.

Caught this one yesterday via podcast on the morning run–fascinating. Read or listen to it all.

A law is just only if it protects human life, Pope Benedict XVI said.

The only laws that can be considered just “are those laws that safeguard the sacredness of human life and reject the acceptance of abortion, euthanasia and unrestrained genetic experiments (and) those laws that respect the dignity of marriage between one man and one woman,” the pope said Dec. 16 during his weekly general audience at the Vatican.

Pope Benedict dedicated his audience talk to the writings of the 12th-century British philosopher and theologian, John of Salisbury. A close associate of St. Thomas Becket, John went into exile with him when, as the pope said, King Henry II tried “to affirm his authority over the internal life of the church, limiting its freedom.”

Read it all.

Greetings all! I am wondering if we could experiment with some lists this week.

I am hoping that some of you would care to share the list of books to be considered by your reading groups for 2010.

My reading group met last Friday for our annual feast and book choosing. We also finally discussed Jane Eyre, and “that Potato book”, as one of the members referred to The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.

In choosing our books, we each bring along our copies of books we are interested in, or copies of reviews. We also have lists of book prize winners. We like to do some Australian novels, some young adult fiction, and a classic.

Take a look at her list and then please give us some of yours.

Elderly couples are buying each other suicide kits as Christmas presents, says controversial euthanasia campaigner Dr Philip Nitschke.

Speaking at Tweed Heads yesterday on a new “peaceful pill” suicide method being developed overseas, Dr Nitschke’s comments sent right-to-life campaigners and church groups into a frenzy.

Asked whether it was in the spirit of the season to be publicising ways of ending life just a week before Christmas, Dr Nitschke said he was always going to attract criticism.

“Our main opposition is from religious groups who would still be getting outraged at Easter, or any other time of year for that matter,” he said.

Read the whole article.

US Special Envoy Lt Gen Scott Gration has also vowed to make saving the CPA a top priority of the Obama administration. However, the “inter-ethnic violence currently witnessed across much of Southern Sudan, the ongoing violence against civilians in Darfur, and the violent attacks on civilians being perpetrated by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in the south-west of the country,” was destabilizing the region, the church warned.

The escalation of violence “will make registration and voting in the elections and referendum very difficult,” the church warned. “The conclusion that is drawn is that this violence is intended to negatively affect the elections and referendum,” it concluded.

Read the whole thing.

Needless to say — once spelled out like that, the goals that Bishop Lawrence lays out are ambitious. He wants to both protect and educate more thoroughly his own diocese, mobilize his laity, differentiate the diocese strikingly from TEC’s heretical actions, and reach out to others throughout TEC and the Anglican Communion, building strategic clusters of individuals, parishes, dioceses, and provinces.

To do that, as nearly as I can see, he will need to accrue some significant funding and allies, as well as producing 1) some excellent communication tools [for more Internet, video, and email communication, along with ads and direct mail pieces with excellent mailing lists], 2) event planning throughout the country, and 3) discipleship tools for laity. All of those things help to circumvent the “information gatekeepers” whether they be rectors in his own diocese, bishops in other dioceses, or ENS and 815.

But do his proposals offer any glimmers of hope to folks trapped in dioceses ruled by heterodox bishops and clergy?

I believe they do, for people both in excellent parishes [but not dioceses] and people in not so great dioceses or parishes.

Read it all.