In recent days, as European Union and UN officials have called urgently for a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip, the Bush administration has squarely blamed the rocket attacks of the Palestinian militant group Hamas for Israel’s assault, maintaining to the end its eight-year record of stalwart support for Israel.

President George W. Bush said in his weekly radio address over the weekend that the United States did not want a “one-way cease-fire” that allowed Hamas to keep up its rocket fire, and Vice President Dick Cheney echoed the point, declaring that only a “sustainable, durable” peace would be acceptable.

Many Middle East experts say that Israel timed its move against Hamas, which began with airstrikes on Dec. 27, 24 days before Bush leaves office, with the expectation of such backing in Washington. Israeli officials cannot be certain that Barack Obama, despite past statements of sympathy for Israel’s right of self-defense, will match the Bush administration’s unconditional endorsement when he becomes president Jan. 20.

.Read it all.

The African Children’s Choir goes to the neediest places ”” those hardest hit by disease, war or poverty. The children are brought to a training academy for about four months, Victor says, and then they join the choir. The children tour for 12 to 15 months, and when they go home, they go to a Music for Life center to get an education. Victor himself was chosen from an orphanage to join the choir: Music for Life paid for his schooling up to the university level, and when he graduated, he came back to the choir to volunteer.

Listen to it all from NPR.

President-elect Barack Obama and congressional Democrats are crafting a plan to offer about $300 billion in tax cuts to individuals and businesses, a move aimed at attracting Republican support for an economic-stimulus package and prodding companies to create jobs.

The size of the proposed tax cuts — which would account for about 40% of a stimulus package that could reach $775 billion over two years — is greater than many on both sides of the aisle in Congress had anticipated, and may make it easier to win over Republicans who have stressed that any initiative should rely relatively heavily on tax cuts rather than spending.

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But Father Rob Hartley who resigned Sunday as vicar of the church says the issue of homosexuality was not his main concern.

“I found it an error because it was contrary to scripture and I don’t think it was any deeper than that,” Hartley said.

He says his issues with the Episcopal Church started long before 2003.

“Early 80’s probably,” Hartley said.

That is when he said he started to see a shift in the theologies and teachings of the church.

“The Episcopal church really wants to make Christianity relevant they really want to make the truth of the gospel easier to ingest for the modern mind. I think the truth is the truth and changing it to make it digestible isn’t exactly what the apostles learned from Jesus,” Hartley said.

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Update: The parish website is here.

The theme of Lambeth was “Equipping Bishops for Leadership in Mission and Strengthening Anglican Identity”. Each day began with a celebration of the Eucharist followed by a study of the “I Am” sayings in the Gospel according to John. Much of our time was spent in “Indaba”. Indaba is an African word meaning a meeting for purposeful conversations among equals. In those circles we discussed a wide range of topics including evangelism, the authority of scripture, sexuality, a covenant for the Anglican Communion, ecumenism, and social justice.

The matter of blessing same-sex unions was very much a part of discussions in the conference. In the Reflections report produced by the conference it was noted that a strong majority of bishops present agreed that moratoria on same-sex blessings and cross-provincial interventions were necessary. In a letter following the conference, the Archbishop of Canterbury acknowledged that while the majority of bishops had spoken that way, “they were aware of the conscientious difficulties this posed for some and that there needs to be greater clarity about the exact expectations and what can be realistically implemented. How far the intensified sense of belonging together will help mutual restraint remains to be seen”.

At the fall meeting of the Canadian House of Bishops we had a full discussion of the call for moratoria and issued a statement in which we said, “a large majority of the House can affirm the following:

“A continued commitment to the greatest extent possible to the three moratoria ”“ on the blessing of same-sex unions, on the ordination to the episcopate of people in same-sex relationships and on cross-border interventions ”“ until General Synod 2010. Members of this House, while recognizing the difficulty that this commitment represents for dioceses that in conscience have made decisions on these matters, commit themselves to continue walking together and to hold each other in prayer”¦

“We ask for your continuing prayers as we steadfastly seek to discern the mind and heart of Christ for the wholesome care of all members of his Body, the Church. We share a deep hope that though we may never come to consensus over this matter of the blessing of same-sex unions, we will live with differences in a manner that is marked by grace and generosity of spirit, one toward another.”

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“About 2,000 babies are born every day in sub-Saharan Africa to HIV-positive mothers,” [Bill] Rankin said, “and we thought we could save a lot of the children by getting that medication out into the villages where the people are.”

Rankin and Wilson started the alliance with donations from friends but have since secured a $1 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and a $360,000 grant from the Elizabeth Taylor Aids Foundation.

Contacts with African religious groups that Rankin made during his career as a priest came in handy.

“We knew that the best pathway to get to the villages and reach the people was to go through the religious organizations,” Rankin said, “because in very poor countries the religious groups are the only stable infrastructure in place.”

Read it all.

Here is one:

SIR ”“ The bishops who accused New Labour of being “beguiled by money” hit the nail on the head (report, December 28). However, it is not just Government policies that shame Labour as the gap between rich and poor widens. Individual greed has also been allowed to flourish.

Nearly 30 former Labour ministers have taken second jobs in the private sector. For example, two former health ministers are consultants to companies that sell services to the NHS.

There has been a marked drop in confidence in the integrity of politicians: the growing exodus by ministers into the private sector since Labour came to power further contributes to our concern.

Alice Mahon
Halifax, West Yorkshire

Read them all.

In a phone conversation Wednesday, [the Rev. Gregory] Malia, a Long Island native who attended Wyoming Area High School and graduated from King’s College, said both the newspaper and bishop are off the mark.

“I think the whole thing has been blown way of proportion and misconstrued.” He said the Daily News reporter had talked to him for only a few minutes, and that he had yet to talk to [Bethlehem Bishop Paul] Marshall.

“It’s so twisted,” Malia said.

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I will take comments on this submitted by email only to at KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

More than 30 consumers and health care professionals gathered last week to tackle a daunting question: What is the biggest problem with the nation’s health care system?

Their answer was succinct: There is no system.

Fragmentation and inefficiency are endemic, the group said. One participant described a revolving door of medical clinics, hospitals and private physicians. And no one knows what the others are doing.

They also indicted the insurance industry for placing a barrier between consumers and providers that is based on making a profit.

Read it all.

MS. [Andrea] MITCHELL: In fact, this “belief in Democracy,” quote/unquote, is what led to supporting the election that led to Hamas having its victory. That has been a misplaced belief, many critics would say, in terms of Bush strategy; and in fact, that there hasn’t been intensive enough day by day, on the ground diplomacy. That’s what the Obama team was planning to bring to the table. It’s clear that Israel did this now, the timing of it now. They’ve been planning for a year. The–Hamas has been defending against it and planning its counteraction for at least a year. They did it now because they wanted to clean the slate before the new administration came in. Despite Obama’s, you know, statements about his support for Israel, he’s still an unknown entity to them, and they knew that they had unrelenting support from the Bush administration. That said, with the ground action now, most people do not believe it’s not going to be done by January 20th.

MR. [DAVID] GREGORY: Mm-hmm.

MS. MITCHELL: And it won’t be a clean slate, and it does complicate what Obama and Hillary Clinton have to do.

MR. [HISHAM] MELHEM: The problem with deterrence is that it is easier to be used against states. States can be easily deterred, because the states are responsible for people, for institutions. It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to turn–to deter nonstate actors, as we’ve seen with Hezbollah and as we’ve seen with Hamas. If those groups survive politically, to them they succeeded. And they will always go underground and, and, and fight, fight, fight, fight for another day.

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The images from the fighting in Gaza are harrowing but ultimately deceptive. They portray a mighty invading army, one equipped with F-16 jets that have bombed a civilian population defended by a few thousand fighters armed with primitive rockets. But widen the lens and the true nature of this conflict emerges. Hamas, like Hezbollah in Lebanon, is a proxy for the real enemy Israel is confronting: Iran. And Israel’s current operation against Hamas represents a unique chance to deal a strategic blow to Iranian expansionism.

Until now, the Iranian revolution has appeared unstoppable. The Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s ended with Iranian troops occupying Iraqi territory. Iranian influence then spread to Saudi Arabia’s heavily Shiite and oil-rich Eastern province, and to Lebanon through Hezbollah. Since the fall of their long-standing enemy, Saddam Hussein, Iranians have deeply infiltrated Iraq. Syria has been drawn into Iran’s sphere, and even the Sunni sheikdoms of the gulf now defer to Iran, dispatching foreign ministers to Tehran and defying international sanctions against it. Iran has co-opted Hamas, a Sunni organization closely linked to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, transforming the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into a jihad against the Jewish state. But Iran’s boldest achievement has been to thwart world pressure and approach the nuclear threshold. Once fortified with nuclear weapons, Iranian hegemony in the Middle East would be complete.

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The Episcopal Church in 2003, for instance, appointed an openly gay bishop, V. Gene Robinson, to lead a New Hampshire [diocese]. Hodges – who says he is not prejudice[d] against gays themselves but against attacks aimed at traditional marriage and the priesthood – doesn’t like the message the church is sending by that appointment.

“The Episcopal Church has taken a fork in the road to the left, while we continue on the one to the right,” he said. “We (Anglicans) believe the Bible contains the inspired word of God, whereas Episcopalians believe the scriptures are secondary to the Holy Spirit.” Because holy writ is treated secondary, he said, the church has taken positions on issues not in harmony with the Bible.

“Gays are welcome into our church. That’s between them and their God. But when you start to change the leadership of the church, that’s when a split is going to happen,” he said, referring to the number of diocese that have already split from the 2.2-million-member U.S. Episcopal Church.

But the gay topic is only one issue. He said the Episcopal Church has also lessened the value of Jesus Christ, portraying him more like a fallible man than the infallible Son of God.

“I couldn’t in good conscious be a member anymore,” Hodges said.

Read it all.

The scale and ferocity of the onslaught on Gaza have been shocking, and the television images of civilian suffering wrench the heart. But however deplorable, Israel’s resort to military means to silence the rockets of Hamas should have been no surprise. This war has been a long time in the making.

Since Israel evacuated its soldiers and settlers from the Gaza Strip three years ago, Palestinian groups in Gaza have fired thousands of rudimentary rockets and mortar bombs across the border, killing very few people but disrupting normal life in a swathe of southern Israel. They fired almost 300 between December 19th, when Hamas ignored Egypt’s entreaties and decided not to renew a six-month truce, and December 27th, when Israel started its bombing campaign….To that extent, Israel is right to say it was provoked.

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Here’s what comprises the typical American dream: Getting married, having 2.5 kids, and buying the house with the white picket fence, two-car garage, and well-manicured lawn. Here’s what it usually doesn’t include: hauling groceries up a fourth-floor walkup; dodging taxis, harried pedestrians and street vendors during the morning commute; and paying a premium for an apartment considered a walk-in closet anywhere else.

For many New Yorkers, however, those inconveniences are a part of daily life”“and are only amplified when they decide to start rearing little urbanites. Then their biggest issues run from minor logistics such as hauling a stroller up two flights of subway stairs, to major headaches like a preschool application process that rivals those of Ivy League schools. Despite these challenges, Christian parents in New York say that raising a family here provides as many opportunities as it does obstacles: They get to participate in the unique ways in which God works in an urban environment, a setting where community ministry plays a particularly important role.

“You do think, ‘Why not move to Long Island?’ It’s one hour from the city. [But] having grown up in the suburbs, we made an intentional decision to stay here,” says Maria Liu Wong, assistant director at City Seminary of New York, who lives in Manhattan’s Lower East Side with her husband Tony and son Joshua, 3. Diversity and the desire to get involved with their community convicted them to stay in the area. “Being at City Seminary, I’ve thought a lot about choosing ways to invest in your neighborhood,” Liu Wong says. “I want my child to have diverse friendships, and there’s a greater opportunity for my kid to do that [in the city].”

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Israeli tanks and infantry battalions swept up to the very edges of Gaza City today, battling die-hard Hamas fighters and sealing off the bomb-scarred capital city from the rest of the coastal territory.

With the civilian death toll rising by the hour and diplomatic efforts to halt the fighting making no headway, the head of the UN refugee agency called the situation a “catastrophe”.

But Israel made clear it was not about to heed calls for a swift ceasefire to “Operation Cast Lead”. It insisted that it had to smash Hamas and destroy its weapons stockpile in order to ensure a lasting peace not just for its citizens, who have endured years of Palestinian rocket fire, but for the people of Gaza themselves.

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Reporting from Oakland ”” Morris F. Collen, M.D., is a pioneer in harnessing the vast power of computers to improve healthcare. He is hip-deep in studying the ways that prescription drugs could interact and harm the elderly. He’s hard at work on his sixth book.

But he just might be most proud of his brand new driver’s license.

“Can I show you something you’ll never see again?” Collen asks, reaching for his well-used billfold. He pulls out the rectangle of pedestrian plastic. He points to the date of birth: 11-12-13. He points to the expiration date: 11-12-13. He grins.

“The one is in the 20th century,” he says, tickled still. “The other is in the 21st century. That represents 100 years. When I looked at that, I said, ‘My God, that’s probably the only one in the country.’ ”

What a great man and what a lovely description of his wife to whom he was married for 60 years. I would love to meet him. Read it all.

If nothing else makes this situation stand out it is that the Bank, having cut interest rates to their lowest level since 1951, appears set to reduce them this week to the lowest since 1694. This is terrible news for savers and far from unalloyed good news for borrowers, given that loans are so hard to get.

The urgent task of Alistair Darling, therefore, is to break this lending logjam. Left to themselves, banks will do nothing. The herd instinct that led them to lend too much during the good times now persuades them into what Lord Myners, a Treasury minister, describes as “reckless caution”. Bankers really do only lend you an umbrella when it is not raining.

Read the whole editorial.

[BOB] ABERNETHY: And John, what do you see of particular interest to the Vatican and to U.S. Catholics?

JOHN ALLEN (Vatican Correspondent, National Catholic Reporter): Well, I think in many ways, you know, the mega story of ’09 is going to be church-state relations under Obama ”” both the promise and the peril of that relationship. I think that the peril is maybe a little easier to get our hands around. It would focus on the traditional life issues. The new president has indicated he intends to sign an executive order liberalizing embryonic stem ”” federally funding for ””embryonic stem cell research right out of the gate as part of that first 100-days package. That certainly will produce some backlash in some religious circles. I think the deeper danger is if the Democratic-controlled Congress and the Obama people were to move forward with the Freedom of Choice Act, which is this piece of legislation that’s been around a long time, and you get different readings on how realistic it is, but in effect it would eliminate existing federal and state restrictions on abortion. The U.S. Catholic bishops have certainly made clear that if that were to gain momentum we would, in some ways, be back to a very serious cultural war in this country.

Watch or read it all.

A short sampling being circulated among congressional Republicans includes items from a list compiled by the U.S. Conference of Mayors and from local reporting around the nation. Philadelphia seeks $100 million to redevelop land for a casino. Spirit Mountain, Minn., seeks $6 million for snow-making equipment. A zoo in Rhode Island seeks $4.8 million for a polar bear exhibit and other improvements. Las Vegas, home to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, wants millions for a proposed organized crime museum and a pedestrian walkway to the Tropicana Hotel. Missouri plans to spend the entire $750 million it seeks for transportation on highways, but nothing on mass transit.

These wishes provide Congress with an unparalleled opportunity to pick and choose, a decision process that would lead to the Great Mother of all earmark bills. The Washington Post reports that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Senate Majority Leader Reid want to have the stimulus bill ready for Barack Obama’s signature on Jan. 20, when he is sworn in as the 44th president.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McCon-nell of Kentucky and House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio want to slow the process down, with good reason. It is not enough to demand that projects be ready to go in order to create employment ”” the only criterion being applied at present. They should also fulfill a clear sense of national priorities.

Read the whole thing.

President-elect Barack Obama said that Democrats and Republicans need to act with urgency to address the “great and growing” economic crisis, warning of double-digit unemployment if swift action isn’t taken.

“These are America’s problems, and we must come together as Americans to meet them with the urgency this moment demands,” he said today in his weekly radio address. “If we don’t act swiftly and boldly, we could see a much deeper economic downturn that could lead to double-digit unemployment.”

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The first time Jonathan Zittrain gave a speech on the future of computing, he greatly surprised his audience. The year was 1985, and Zittrain was a magazine columnist and the “system operator” of an online forum for users of Texas Instruments computers. As a leading figure in the community, Zittrain was invited to speak at a big convention in Chicago. The surprise was that Zittrain had recently turned fifteen. No one had ever met him in person: when he was appointed system operator, sight unseen, he was thirteen.

Now Zittrain is older and more worried, as is evident from the title of his provocative and engaging book. Zittrain tells us that whatever the Internet’s glorious adolescence, its middle age will be sharply shaped by the problem of computer security. “Today’s viruses and spyware,” he writes, “are not merely annoyances to be ignored.” Zittrain has a graph showing the number of security incidents over the last decade, and it resembles the Dow Jones average over the 1990s. He predicts a coming crisis, grave measures, and, as “security problems worsen and fear spreads,” broad acceptance of “some form of lockdown.”

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Both the Chinese and the Indians are convinced that their prosperity will only increase in the 21st century. In China it will be induced by the state; in India’s case, it may well happen despite the state. Indians expect to continue their relentless march toward a modern, democratic, market-based future. In this, terrorist attacks are a noisy, tragic, but ultimately futile sideshow.

However, Indians are painfully aware that they must reform their government bureaucracy, police and judiciary ”” institutions, paradoxically, they were so proud of a generation ago. When that happens, India may become formidable, a thought that undoubtedly worries China’s leaders.

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Israel moved its troops into Gaza starting a ground offensive eight days after launching an airstrike campaign in efforts to end rocket attacks from Hamas militants.

“We have just a short while ago launched the second stage,” a spokeswoman for Israel Defense Forces Maj. Avital Leibovich, said in an interview broadcast on CNN.

She said that troops are targeting areas responsible for the launching of rockets into Israel, as well as tunnels, bunkers, and training facilities ”” “everything that is affiliated with Hamas is a legitimate target,” Major Leibovich said.

“We have many, many targets, and therefore to my estimate it’s going to be a lengthy operation,” she added, with specifying how long the ground war could last.

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These convictions and commitments are reflected in patient and enduring witness rather than in strategies and tactics designed to bring about desired future states. They grow from trust that God will use faithful witness in his own time and in his own way to bring about his purposes””purposes that do not stem from our imaginings or our desires but from God’s justice and God’s mercy.

Just what are these convictions and commitments? Here we must summarize a host of conversations to which we have been party over the past several years. The convictions revealed are these.

1. The weakness and disarray of TEC (and indeed of the churches of the West) are best understood as the result of divine displeasure at pervasive misconstruals of Christian belief and practice coupled with a common life that blows neither “hot nor cold.”
2. It is a form of delusion and disobedience to place oneself and ones friends outside the judgment God intends for the health of his church. Rather, fidelity calls for acceptance of the judgment as both just and merciful. It calls also for faithful Christians to live through that judgment to the end. This way is none other than the way Christ himself walked, believing not in a future state of his devising and constructing but in God’s power, through his death, to give life to the dry bones of his people.
3. The pattern of Christ’s life suggests the necessity of a clear differentiation between a way faithful to his life and teaching and one that has simply assumed the form of the culture with which the leadership of TEC has identified.
4. The obedient form of differentiation suggested by the pattern of Christ is not separation but faithful persistence along a different path within the fellowship of the church that has nurtured one as a Christian but has, nonetheless, gone astray.

Read it all.

Update: Sarah Hey has a lengthy response to this here which concludes this way:

Let’s be clear. There are Episcopalians who are most interested in the “inside strategy.” The fact that the ACI and I assume the Communion Partners group eschews the “inside strategy” does not mean that those Episcopalians do not exist.

On the other hand, it is good to see the ACI and the Communion Partners continue to clarify their goals publicly. Their expressed goals do not make them “bad organizations.” Their goals merely express who they are and what they intend to do — and it’s important for clergy who are making decisions about participation in either organization to be aware of what those organizations mean to do. There are some good people in both organizations and, from the perspective of this layperson, the Communion Partners is currently the only place that an inside strategy clergyperson can gain some fellowship.

In the same way, we all know what the new Anglican entity — the ACNA — is clearly seeking. Those who leave for the ACNA have obviously abandoned any “inside strategy” as well.

At this point, those Episcopalians interested in the inside strategy need to connect with one another, and seek counsel where they can — but with crystal clarity that there is no organizational or institutional or national help for them. We are, as I have said for the past almost two years, on our own. Acknowledging that fact is the first step towards clarity and healing and seeking help where we can find it, with those who share our goals — and of course, fellowshiping with joy with all orthodox Anglican brothers and sisters, whether in the ACI, the Communion Partners, or the ACNA.

A timely reminder–read it all.

In the Wallace collection in London hangs one of Nicolas Poussin’s great paintings, A Dance to the Music of Time. As the winged and grey-bearded Father Time plays a lyre the allegorical figures of the Seasons of life, Poverty, Labour, Wealth and Pleasure, dance an eternal round to his music. It was a painting that provided an inspiration and title for Anthony Powell’s sequence of 12 novels. Nick Jenkins, the central character of the novels, reflects on Poussin’s painting: “The image of Time brought thoughts of mortality of human beings, facing outward like the Seasons, moving hand in hand in intricate measure, stepping slowly, methodically sometimes a trifle awkwardly, in evolutions that take recognisable shape: or breaking into seemingly meaningless gyrations, while partners disappear only to reappear again, once more giving pattern to the spectacle: unable to control the melody, unable, perhaps, to control the steps of the dance.”

Now, as we move from 2008 to 2009, there is a consciousness of the passing of time, of past, present and future, and perhaps a listening for what the music of time might be.

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As Ahmad al-Shugairi took the stage, dressed in a flowing white gown and headdress, he clutched a microphone and told his audience that he had no religious training or titles: “I am not a sheik.”

But over the next two hours, he worked the crowd as masterfully as any preacher, drawing rounds of uproarious laughter and, as he recalled the Prophet Muhammad’s death, silent tears. He spoke against sectarianism. He made pleas for women to be treated as equals. He talked about his own life ”” his seven wild years in California, his divorce, his children ”” and gently satirized Arab mores.

When he finished, the packed concert hall erupted in a wild standing ovation. Members of his entourage soon bundled him through the thick crowd of admirers to a back door, where they rushed through the darkness to a waiting car.

“Elvis has left the building,” Mr. Shugairi joked, in English, as he relaxed into his seat.

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Jennifer Barlett sees the cracks everyday. As a supervisor for MedAssist, a third-party recovery company that contracts with Trident Health System, her job is to try to fill the gaps.

She scours Medicaid, Medicare, charities and long-term payment plans to help uninsured people find ways to pay their medical bills.

In one family Barlett is counseling, the wife lost her job, and also the health insurance that covered her and her husband. The couple tried to go it alone, becoming self-employed, but when he fell gravely ill, they had to close the business.

“No health insurance. No money,” Barlett said. They’re waiting to hear from Medicaid and Social Security.

Read it all from the front page of the local paper.

Despite a multi-million pound Teenage Pregnancy Strategy the number of girls under 16 falling pregnant has remained almost static over the last four years.

In the worst areas one in every 66 underage girls becomes pregnant while still at school – giving England and Wales one of the highest teenage birth rates in Western Europe.

The figures were released by the Department for Children, Schools and Families. Of the 21 who become pregnant each day, nine will go on to have the baby while the other 12 have an abortion.

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Houses of worship are only beginning to come to terms with the economic angst pulsing across the Lower Hudson Valley and through the nation. Religious leaders are encountering frightened congregants who are worried about losing their jobs and their savings or seeing their standard of living slide like a runaway sleigh.

“We do have an increasing number of unemployed people in church, and those with jobs are very stressed, fearful that they’ll lose their jobs,” said the Rev. Susan Harriss, pastor of Christ’s (Episcopal) Church in Rye, a well-to-do parish where the recession is on everyone’s minds. “We’re trying to help people be calm and use their faith to cope. Being connected with a religious community at times like this is very helpful, and I hope that even people who have doubts about institutional religion will step inside a church or a synagogue.”

Harriss said that church leaders are staying in regular touch with people under stress. At the same time, the church – like other houses of worship – is trying to maintain its commitment to helping the hungry, the homeless and others with greater needs.

“An unexpected side effect of a time like this is that it can draw people together,” she said.

Read it all.