Go here and click on what is now the second link down (entitled “Camel comes to Church”).

On this Sunday that follows the birth of the Lord, we celebrate with joy the Holy Family of Nazareth. The context is more than adequate, since Christmas is the feast of the family, par excellence. So many traditions and social customs demonstrate this, especially that of gathering together, in family, for the festive meals and the congratulations and the interchange of gifts. And, how can we not see that in these circumstances, the discontent and the sorrow caused by family strife is amplified?

Jesus wanted to be born and grow up in a human family; he wanted the Virgin Mary to be his mom and Joseph to fulfill the role of father. They raised and educated him with immense love. Jesus’ family truly merits the title of “holy,” since it is entirely focused on the desire of fulfilling the will of God, incarnated in the adorable presence of Jesus. In one sense it is a family like all others, and as such, it is a model of conjugal love, collaboration, sacrifice, confidence in divine providence, a spirit of work and solidarity. Certainly, it presents all these values that the family protects and promotes, contributing in a basic sense to form the fabric of every society.

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In a brief interview with a reporter for The Living Church shortly after the decision was announced on Jan. 5, Bishop Bruno said he was “overjoyed” at the verdict and considered all issues at dispute to be decided in their favor. Bishop Bruno said his next step will be to initiate dialogue individually with the clergy and lay leadership of the three churches in the hope that it will lead to reconciliation and perhaps the eventual voluntary return of those congregations to The Episcopal Church.

“I want to see if they are willing to talk; to see if they want to return to The Episcopal Church,” Bishop Bruno said. He added that the offer of dialogue carried no preconditions.

“Attorneys handle legal issues,” he said. “This is now a pastoral issue.”

Read the whole article.

When the Rev. Jose Poch learned a high court ruling Monday could spell eviction of his 78-year-old parish from St. David’s Church, he was prepared to pack his bags and Bibles.

The California Supreme Court unanimously decided that a breakaway parish like his could not hang onto church property.

“We have to find a place,” said Poch, rector of the North Hollywood church. “We must worship the Lord in any way we can.”

The court ruled that St. David’s and two other Southern California parishes that split from the U.S. Episcopal Church over its ordination of [noncelibate] gay ministers cannot retain ownership of church buildings and property.

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NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. ”“ January 5, 2009 ”“ The California Supreme Court today ruled in Episcopal Church Cases that church property disputes must be resolved by “neutral principles of law,” not by civil courts merely deferring to the decrees of church “hierarchies.” This ruling has wide and favorable impact for churches throughout California that seek to change their denominational affiliation.

While adopting this “non-religious” method of resolving property disputes between churches, the Court seemed to defer to the Episcopal Church’s alleged “trust canon,” which purports to create a trust interest in church property owned by local congregations. The Court made its ruling despite the fact that St. James Anglican Church, Newport Beach, purchased and maintained its property with its own funds and has held clear record title to its property for over fifty years.

In recent years, religious denominations as diverse as the Eastern Orthodox, Baptist and Pentecostal “Assemblies of God” have attempted to confiscate the property of congregations that wish to change their spiritual affiliation. Today’s ruling falls far short of the endorsement of such tactics that the Episcopal Church ”“ and other denominational hierarchies that submitted briefs in support of it ”“ had sought. Many local churches in California will be able to exercise their religious freedom to change their affiliation without having to forfeit their property as a result.

Nor is the saga over for St. James Anglican Church. “While we are surprised that the Court seemed to give some credence to the Episcopal Church’s purported rule confiscating local church property, the battle is far from over,” lead attorney Eric C. Sohlgren said. “The matter will now return to the Orange County Superior Court for further proceedings, and we look forward to presenting evidence and additional legal arguments that St. James Church should prevail under neutral principles of law.”

The leadership of the Newport Beach congregation is also evaluating a possible appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court and is meeting to discuss other possible steps. Today’s ruling also affects All Saints Church in Long Beach and St. David’s Church in North Hollywood, whose cases were put on hold pending the outcome of the St. James case. Together with St. James Church, these congregations never agreed to relinquish their property to the Episcopal Church upon changing their affiliation, and have consistently maintained that they have the right to use and possess the property which they have owned and maintained for decades.

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The California Supreme Court ruled that the 2.4-million-member national church, and not a local parish in that state, owns a church building and the land on which it sits, property which members of the congregation said belonged to them when they left the church.

St. James parish in Newport Beach split from the church in 2004, a year after the national church 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.

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An attorney for the U.S. Episcopal Church said that the California Supreme Court ruling will be influential in other similar property disputes across the country.

“This was a thorough and conclusive ruling,” said Episcopal Church lawyer John Shiner.

Bishop Jon Bruno, head of the 85,000-person Los Angeles Diocese, said he was “overjoyed” with the ruling and hoped it would prompt reconciliation talks with the three churches.

“I’m a Christian and I believe there is always the possibility of reconciliation,” Bruno said. “It has been devastating for both sides.”

A lawyer for one of the breakaway churches, St. James, said it will continue to fight for control of the property despite the ruling.

“St. James holds the deed free and clear,” attorney Eric Sohlgren said. “The Episcopal Church hasn’t contributed a dime to St. James in 50 years.”

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Gas supplies from Russia to Europe plummeted overnight with four countries reporting a complete halt as the dispute between Moscow and Ukraine over payment rates dramatically worsened.

Kiev said that Gazprom, the Russian state gas company, had cut the flow by 60 per cent following Vladimir Putin’s threat yesterday to punish Ukraine for allegedly stealing fuel it is supposed to allow to transit through its pipelines en route to Europe.

The Bulgarian Government called a crisis meeting at 7am this morning and appealed to all consumers to limit their usage as the gas stopped flowing at around 3.30am on the coldest night of the year, as it did to Greece, Turkey and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

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For your thoughts and prayers. You could also help them by emailing important events of which you are aware which they may not be in the future-KSH.

From here:

I have just been informed that the Vicar of St. John’s Mission Church in Clearwater has announced that he and most of the communicants of St. John’s have left The Episcopal Church. This comes as a complete surprise to me. Although Fr. Hartley has shared his frustrations with me, he never indicated to me that he was on the verge of taking such a step, and I am extraordinarily disappointed not only in their decision, but that he went public with this announcement without informing me first. It is also a shock to me that he would lead this congregation away from the Church without providing me with the time and opportunity to be in conversation with them as part of their decision-making process–after all, as Bishop I am–or was–their chief priest and pastor. I not only ordained Fr. Hartley to the priesthood, but I am the one who appointed him Vicar of St. John’s, providing him with an Altar and a pulpit.

Any division in the Church weakens the Church’s mission. And when people leave they not only deprive those with different views of their voice, but they also deprive themselves of prayerful viewpoints which they need to consider. The Episcopal Church–indeed, traditional Anglicanism–respects highly the individual intellect and conscience, and I respect the decisions of Fr. Hartley and others at St. John’s as a decision of conscience. Nevertheless, it breaks my heart.

Seeking to amplify mainline Protestant influence on Middle East affairs during the Obama administration, more than half of the nation’s Lutheran bishops will launch an unprecedented tour of the war-torn Holy Land on Tuesday.

The pilgrimage, planned for more than two years, comes amid calls for a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas after a week of airstrikes and a ground assault in the Gaza Strip this past weekend. Lutheran leaders said they hope their trip shows their commitment to brokering a peaceful resolution in the hallowed land.

“We who are global religious leaders right now have to continue to win the day from extremists,” said Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson, leader of the 4.7 million-member, Chicago-based Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, or ELCA, the nation’s largest Lutheran denomination and fourth largest Protestant church. “We will try to do that by meeting with Jewish and Muslim, Israeli and Palestinian leaders to hear and to listen and to commit to being partners in the struggle for a lasting peace, which we continue to believe is a two-state solution.”

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Federal prosecutors in Manhattan today asked a court to place alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme operator Bernard Madoff in jail while they continue developing their case against him. Meanwhile, in Washington a Congressional panel was asking what the SEC could have done to prevent the scandal.

A federal judge, perhaps predictably, questioned the validity of the government’s request to put Madoff in custody considering that Madoff’s current bail terms — home confinement in his posh Manhattan penthouse — had earlier been agreed upon by the government.

A federal prosecutor argued that cufflinks, watches, and other personal property purportedly worth $1 million had been shipped by Madoff and his wife to relatives and friends during the holiday season, and that this constituted a violation of the terms of bail because the “dissipation of assets” could potentially harm investors seeking to recoup any of their losses from investing with Madoff.

It is utterly ridiculous that he is not already in jail for a whole host of reasons, not the least of which is his own safety. Read it all.

Barack Obama began work in earnest yesterday, twisting arms and stroking egos in Congress to garner support for a planned $775 billion (£525 billion) recovery plan for an economy he described as “very sick”.

On his first full day back in Washington since the election, the President-elect dispatched his daughters to their new school before heading to Capitol Hill to prepare for one of the most difficult inheritances ever faced by an incoming president.

At every turn yesterday, he underlined the gravity of the crisis and the need for national unity. After speaking with his economic team, he declared: “The situation is getting worse. We have to act and act now to break the momentum of this recession.”

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In sum, the California Supreme Court has abdicated its responsibility to decide cases with regard just to the legal principles established by prior cases. In combination with a number of other State courts who have done so, it takes Justice Blackmun’s dictum about how a church could change its constitution and elevates that dictum into a rule of law that overrides even the Statute of Frauds.

The Court then compounds this major misstep, as courts are wont to do, with a dictum of its own: it brushes aside any further inquiry into the validity of the Dennis Canon, saying that “this is one of those questions regarding ‘religious doctrine or polity’ . . . on which we must defer to the greater church’s resolution” (op. at 29). To which I say: what “resolution”? When, or where, has General Convention ever “resolved” the issue of whether it properly passed the Dennis Canon? General Convention has said absolutely nothing about the Dennis Canon ever since 1979—and the Canon itself was not even referred to by the Church’s own news service for over twenty years after that. This, unfortunately, is all too typical of the way judges dispose of matters that might, if looked into, disturb the major result on which they have decided.

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Scripture’s task is to tell people, at the risk of their displeasure, the mystery of God and the secrets of their own hearts””to speak out and make a clean breast. There are many ways to say and write these truths: in oracles, in poems, in novels, in sermons, in satire, in journalism, in drama. Honestly written and courageously presented words reveal reality and expose our selfish attempts to violate beauty, manipulate goodness and dominate people, all the while defying God. Most of us most of the time, whether consciously or not, live this way. Honest writing shows us how badly we are living and how good life is. Enlightenment is not without pain. But the pain, accepted and endured is not a maiming but a purging. “Every significant utterance is a wound” but ”˜faithful are the wounds of a friend.’”

–Eugene Peterson, Run With Horses (Downer’s Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1983), p.128

In a ruling written by Justice Ming W. Chin, the state high court said the property of St. James Episcopal Church in Newport Beach is owned by the national church, not the congregation. The congregation split away after the national church ordained a gay man, V. Gene Robinson, as bishop of New Hampshire, in 2003.

“When it disaffiliated from the general church, the local church did not have the right to take the church property with it,” Chin wrote for the court.

The bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles applauded the ruling even as he held out an olive branch to St. James and other parishes sued by his office.

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The 38 page pdf is here.

How weird a year was it?

Here’s how weird:

Ӣ O.J. actually got convicted of something.

”¢ Gasoline hit $4 a gallon — and those were the good times.

Ӣ On several occasions, Saturday Night Live was funny.

Ӣ There were a few days there in October when you could not completely rule out the possibility that the next Treasury Secretary would be Joe the Plumber.

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“We are identifying teen dating abuse and violence more than ever,” said Dr. Elizabeth Miller, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the School of Medicine at the University of California, Davis, who began doing research on abuse in teenage dating relationships nearly a decade ago.

Dr. Miller cited a survey last year of children ages 11 to 14 by Liz Claiborne Inc., a clothing retailer that finances teenage dating research, in which a quarter of the 1,000 respondents said they had been called names, harassed or ridiculed by their romantic partner by phone call or text message, often between midnight and 5 a.m., when their parents are sleeping.

Such behavior often falls under the radar of parents, teachers and counselors because adolescents are too embarrassed to admit they are being mistreated.

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You may never have heard of E. A. Adeboye, but the pastor of The Redeemed Christian Church of God is one of the most successful preachers in the world. He boasts that his church has outposts in 110 countries. He has 14,000 branches””claiming 5 million members””in his home country of Nigeria alone. There are 360 RCCG churches in Britain, and about the same number in U.S. cities like Chicago, Dallas, and Tallahassee, Fla. Adeboye says he has sent missionaries to China and such Islamic countries as Pakistan and Malaysia. His aspirations are outsize. He wants to save souls, and he wants to do so by planting churches the way Starbucks used to build coffee shops: everywhere.

“In the developing world we say we want churches to be within five minutes’ walk of every person,” he tells NEWSWEEK. “In the developed world, we say five minutes of driving.” Such a goal may seem outlandish, but Adeboye is a Pentecostal preacher: he believes in miracles. And Pentecostalism is the biggest, fastest-growing Christian movement since the Reformation.

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After years of bitter wrangling over the issue, a report was published last week that advocated creating a new class of clergy to cater for traditionalists who refuse to accept women’s ordination.

However, 41 per cent of respondents said they would not back such a solution, and a further eight per cent said they were undecided.

Figures on both sides of the debate argued that providing “complementary” or “flying” bishops for opponents of female bishops was unacceptable.

While traditionalists said that this did not represent a satisfactory safeguard, supporters of women bishops claimed it is too great a concession.

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In the straw poll of members of the General Synod, the Church’s parliament, an overwhelming majority of those questioned said that the bishops were right to speak out.

The survey also uncovered serious concerns over the state of British society and Labour’s lack of support for the family.

This newspaper questioned 71 members of the 467-strong Synod, one in seven of the total. Of those questioned, 86 per cent said the bishops had been “right to criticise the Government at this particular time”.

Nearly half, 48 per cent, said it was time for a change of government, while 45 per cent agreed with David Cameron’s claim that Britain is a “broken” society.

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We need to open a second conversation concerning the role or usefulness of religion. We note from the press that shortly bill boards will appear from London to Washington saying ”˜There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life’. Another humanist group in America are mounting a similar campaign which states: ”˜Why believe in a god? Just be good, for goodness sake’. The inference is that all religions are bad for human flourishing; they are diseased and atrophied vestiges of human life. They make us miserable and do little good. For Dawkins, Roman Catholicism is a virulent virus that should be eradicated as doing great harm to young people, and even Anglicanism, from which he emerged, is but a milder form of the same disease. Hitchens, as we have seen, has a more aggressive approach to religion which ranges from the very crude to the most opinionated. I have to say that the polemical language of such people remind me of the Chinese saying: ”˜Do not use a hatchet to remove a fly from your friend’s forehead!’

So a reasonable and careful conversation is needed for us to overcome the infantile and trivial way matters of ethical behavior are being discussed these days. To those who believe that religion is regressive, the question has to be put: ”˜then why is religion so active socially in the world and in society and why is it that its contribution to social capital is so highly regarded?’ Roy Hattersley, former Deputy Prime Minister wrote in a Guardian article a few years ago that his view is that ”˜most believers are better human beings than atheists’. Reluctantly he acknowledges that unbelievers are less likely to care for the poor and spend time with outcasts of society. He writes: ”˜Good works, John Wesley insisted, are no guarantee of a place in heaven. But they are most likely to be performed by people who believe that heaven exists’.

This candid admission is remarkable and should not detract from the fact that a large number of humanists, agnostics and atheists are also good people who seek to create a better world. My argument is not polemical ”“ it is to say that those who wish to eradicate the world of faiths have to perceive them as they are, and to recognize the tremendous contribution they make to our world.

But does religion make a personal difference to people? Prof Keith Ward in his book ”˜Is Religion Dangerous?’ emphatically says that it does. He cites a survey carried out in the States by the Pew Foundation that shows that ”˜spiritually committed’ people are twice as likely to be ”˜very happy’ than the ”˜least religiously committed people.’

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Rob has struggled with his ministry within The Episcopal Church for some years now. From my own perspective, in observing his struggle and the instigating factors of that struggle, the decisions — and not merely the most obvious one — of the General Conventions of 2003 and 2006 indicated a departure from the Christian view of the primacy of Holy Scripture and the person of Christ for the majority of the leadership at the highest national levels of The Episcopal Church. This was deeply troubling to Rob.

Beyond his struggle with his ministry in The Episcopal Church, there was his belief that the diocese of Upper South Carolina had not stood sufficiently or publicly against the new direction of the national leadership of The Episcopal Church. The lack of a diocese with a clear and strong identity to counter the stances of The Episcopal Church at the national level was also deeply troubling to Rob.

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Here’s a system Willie Sutton would have loved. Under the federal government’s banking regime, those being regulated ”” the banks and savings and loans ”” get to pick who regulates them.

That’s a sweet deal, made even sweeter by this: The two major regulatory agencies get almost all their income from assessments on the very institutions they oversee, so they have an incentive to keep the bankers happy. The largest banks and S&Ls ”” including some that engaged in the riskiest behavior ”” are big catches for the agency that can hook them.

That’s not exactly a prescription for strict enforcement.

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The Rev. Ed Dobson has spent most of his life following Jesus. But only now does he realize how hard it is to live like him.

The retired megachurch pastor and one-time architect of the religious right has spent the last year trying to eat, pray, talk and even vote as Jesus would. His revelation: Being Jesus is tough.

“I’ve concluded that I am a follower, but I’m not a very good one,” Dobson said. “If you get serious about the Bible, it will really mess you up.”

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Americans enter the New Year in a strange new role: financial lunatics. We’ve been viewed by the wider world with mistrust and suspicion on other matters, but on the subject of money even our harshest critics had been inclined to believe that we knew what we were doing. They watched our investment bankers and emulated them: For a long time now half the planet’s college graduates seemed to want nothing more out of life than a job on Wall Street.

This is one reason the collapse of our financial system has inspired not merely a national but a global crisis of confidence.

Good God, the world seems to be saying, if they don’t know what they are doing with money, who does?” Incredibly, intelligent people the world over remain willing to lend us money and even listen to our advice; they appear not to have realized the full extent of our madness. We have at least a brief chance to cure ourselves. But first we need to ask: of what?

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