Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of “interposition” and “nullification” — one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; “and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.”

—Martin Luther King Jr., August 28, 1963

It is that fundamental belief — it is that fundamental belief — I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sisters’ keeper — that makes this country work.

It’s what allows us to pursue our individual dreams, yet still come together as a single American family: “E pluribus unum,” out of many, one.

Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes.

Well, I say to them tonight, there’s not a liberal America and a conservative America; there’s the United States of America.

There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America.

—Barack Obama in the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic Convnetion

We do not know how the proposal for a new province will be received nor are we entirely clear what its proponents are proposing; that is probably unavoidable given the hardships all around. We understand that many see the situation as demanding this option. For our part, we accept the promise of those associated with this movement that they will honor our own commitments. Communion Partners will pray for the Common Cause proponents and will assume that promise of cooperation entails a charitable acceptance that another way forward is to be honored and that we can move forward on parallel tracks and not ”˜recruit’ from each others’ daily purpose, honoring the jurisdictional integrities of respective bishops. God will be in charge of the next season, as He has always been.

When the Primates meet in February we anticipate that our separate ways of moving forward will be acknowledged and honored. We pledge our prayers for all involved and ask God’s blessing on all of us in a very difficult time. With gratitude for his grace and mercy, again this 2009 Epiphany we remain, yours in Christ, on behalf of Communion Partners,

Read it all.

So the scramble is on. The big splash water park ”” complete with a gym and “quality meeting space” ”” might sound like a waste of $22 million, but it would provide a nice stimulus for the people of Gastonia, N.C. The travel industry wants a $10 million loan to promote the U.S. as a destination, a tougher job these days. To the American Apparel & Footwear Association, this crisis only highlights the need to eliminate import tariffs on shoes. “Building self-esteem is critical,” explains Matt Rubel, CEO of the parent company of Payless, “and not having a new pair of shoes ”” you know, having a pair that’s tattered and doesn’t fit ”” that does not create good self-esteem.”

Let’s face it: fiscal stimulus is a frustratingly inexact science. Nobody knows precisely what it will do in the short term, and in the long term, it isn’t that different from any other government spending, except that the point of the spending can be the spending itself. As always, there will be winners and losers; it’s impossible to stimulate everyone equally. In two years, if the recession is over, skeptics will claim it would have ended regardless of the stimulus. If it lingers, proponents will credit the stimulus for preventing a drearier outcome. As with the first round of the financial bailout, its most important short-term effect will probably be psychological, calming markets by sending a message of government engagement.

It will be an expensive message, and we’ll be paying for it for a long time. Obama can’t control how markets or employers react, but he can use the opportunity to start keeping promises and start moving the country away from dirty energy, crumbling infrastructure and economic inequality. If he trades those goals for size and speed, he’ll blow a unique chance to chart a new direction. He doesn’t need to beg Congress to spend; that’s like begging Cookie Monster to eat. He needs to take a stand: No money without reform. That won’t just rebuild consumer confidence; it will rebuild citizen confidence too. As the shoe guy said, at a time like this, self-esteem is critical.

Read it carefully and read it all.

This blend of pragmatism and realism reminds me in the American context of Eisenhower more than any other recent president. Obama has the unerring instincts of a conciliator and a moderate Tory. But he has the rhetorical skills of a Kennedy or a Churchill. That’s a potent combination.

It may be, of course, that the relief at the end of the Bush era is colouring our hopes. It may also be that events conspire to derail the man, or that the habits of the past two decades in Washington will return with a vengeance and do to Obama what was done to Clinton, another centrist Democrat who came to office on a tide of goodwill. But I don’t think that, given the immense crises we all face, it is unreasonable to hope for more.

There is something about Obama’s willingness to give others credit, to approach so many issues with such dispassionate pragmatism, and to shift by symbols and speeches the mood and tenor of an entire country that gives one a modest form of optimism. Even now, as the outlook seems so dark, and as the inheritance seems so insuperable, three words linger in the mind.

Yes, he can.

Read it all.

BBC presenter Jeremy Vine believes that Christ is who he says he is, but doesn’t think he could say so on his show.

The Radio 2 host, who also fronts TV shows Panorama and Points of View, says society is becoming increasingly intolerant of Christian views.

He told Reform Magazine that it has become “almost socially unacceptable to say you believe in God”.

“You can’t express views that were common currency 30 or 40 years ago,” he said.

Read it all.

Watch it all.

I won’t pretend that meeting any one of these challenges will be easy. It will take more than a month or a year, and it will likely take many. Along the way there will be setbacks and false starts and days that test our fundamental resolve as a nation. But despite all of this – despite the enormity of the task that lies ahead – I stand here today as hopeful as ever that the United States of America will endure – that the dream of our founders will live on in our time.

What gives me that hope is what I see when I look out across this mall. For in these monuments are chiseled those unlikely stories that affirm our unyielding faith – a faith that anything is possible in America. Rising before us stands a memorial to a man who led a small band of farmers and shopkeepers in revolution against the army of an Empire, all for the sake of an idea. On the ground below is a tribute to a generation that withstood war and depression – men and women like my grandparents who toiled on bomber assembly lines and marched across Europe to free the world from tyranny’s grasp. Directly in front of us is a pool that still reflects the dream of a King, and the glory of a people who marched and bled so that their children might be judged by their character’s content. And behind me, watching over the union he saved, sits the man who in so many ways made this day possible.

And yet, as I stand here tonight, what gives me the greatest hope of all is not the stone and marble that surrounds us today, but what fills the spaces in between. It is you – Americans of every race and region and station who came here because you believe in what this country can be and because you want to help us get there. It is the same thing that gave me hope from the day we began this campaign for the presidency nearly two years ago; a belief that if we could just recognize ourselves in one another and bring everyone together – Democrats, Republicans, and Independents; Latino, Asian, and Native American; black and white, gay and straight, disabled and not – then not only would we restore hope and opportunity in places that yearned for both, but maybe, just maybe, we might perfect our union in the process.This is what I believed, but you made this belief real. You proved once more that people who love this country can change it. And as I prepare to assume the presidency, yours are the voices I will take with me every day I walk into that Oval Office – the voices of men and women who have different stories but hold common hopes; who ask only for what was promised us as Americans – that we might make of our lives what we will and see our children climb higher than we did.

Read it all.

Cardinal Cushing was Roman Catholic Archbishop of Boston; I happened to catch this today on C-Span–KSH.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, Amen.

In this year of our Lord 1961, we ask Thee, oh Almighty God, to enlighten us:

That we may know, as men, our personal responsibilities;

That we may know, as Americans, our political, social and humanitarian responsibilities;

That we may know, as citizens of the world, our global responsibilities to ourselves and our fellow men;

That we may know, as children of God, our responsibilities to the Father of Mankind;

Enlighten us, oh Lord, that we may know how to combine all of these responsibilities into a continuing principle of responsibility;

Enlighten us that we may know how to put this principle of responsibility into daily practice, both in ideal and action–in these troubled but hopeful times.
In this year of our Lord 1961, we beseech Thee, oh Almighty God, to strengthen our resolve;

To enlarge our vision of the common good;

To implement with personal sacrifice the objectives of our national purpose;

To revere in every man that divine spark which makes him our brother –that human spark which can make him our friend — and that personal spark which makes him himself;

To learn to ask ourselves sincerely in every community effort, not what we can get out of it, but what we can put into it.

To defend my right to be myself; to defend my neighbor’s right to be himself, and to defend America’s duty to respect the rights of all men.

Strengthen our resolve, oh Lord, to transform this recognition of others into a principle of cooperation.

Inspire us to practice this principle of cooperation both in ideal and action in these most dangerous, but soul-stretching times.

On this twentieth day of January — 1,961 years after the birth of Christ — on occasion of the inauguration of John Fitzgerald Kennedy as President of the United States of America — do Thou, oh Almighty God, give him, his Cabinet, the Congress and courts of the United States — and all of us — the grace:

To perform with full personal responsibility our duties as free men;

To perform in full cooperation our duties as American citizens;

To perform with complete vigilance our duty to prevent the spread of totalitarian terror everywhere.

To perform with religious fervor our duty to teach, implement and create true freedom as a way of life at home and abroad — for true freedom underlies human dignity and is a holy state of life.

Give us the grace then, O Lord, to realize that we are made to be holy according to Thy image and likeness; for to be good is to be God-like;

Give us the vision, O Loving Creator of men, to realize that in Thy plan we have a self-sacrificing part to play in completing an unfinished universe; for to sacrifice is to conquer;

Give us the strength to further Thy creation by our responsible and dedicated work — for to labor is to pray;

Give us the charity to further Thy creation by our brotherly cooperation — for to care is to love.

Finally, O Lord of Men and Nations, through confidence in Thee let men take hope in what is being done in this capital of our nation, in this hour, in the month of January, in the year of 1961; let hearts everywhere be lifted and let anxieties be dispelled as new hands, in the vigor of youth, grasp the wheel of the ship of state.

Put Thy hands on his hands, put Thy spirit in his heart, put Thy justice and peace, the work of justice, in all his programs and let this land — and all lands — move forward under thy guidance and through his leadership to new frontiers in peace, progress and prosperity. Amen.

The crux of the problem seems to be that some have believed the continual pronouncements from TEC that parishes and dioceses cannot leave TEC, only people can. From this premise follows all the conflict in the EDFW. It is important to check the premise of any argument in order to arrive at a correct result. If the premise is wrong, the result will be wrong. Each time TEC is challenged to defend their position concerning who can leave TEC, they are silent. Their only response is that the Constitutions and Canons of TEC do not allow a diocese to leave TEC. In fact, there is nothing in the Constitutions and Canons of TEC that even address a diocese leaving TEC, let alone prohibiting such action. The rule of law is that any act that is not prohibited in the governing document is, therefore, allowed.

If the founders of PECUSA had intended to prohibit dioceses from leaving PECUSA, they could have placed such a prohibition in the Constitution and Canons of PECUSA, but they did not. In the intervening 200 years, if the Bishops and clergy and lay delegates to General Convention had desired to place such a prohibition in the Constitution and Canons of PECUSA, ECUSA, or TEC, they could have amended those documents. The have not. It not as if this has never been an issue. During the Civil War, the dioceses of the Confederate States left PECUS, and after the war, they returned to PECUSA. No question was raised about whether they could leave PECUSA. The president has clearly been established that a diocese can leave TEC. There is no issue now, except in the mind of the Presiding Bishop of her supporters, about diocese leaving TEC. So far, no court has been asked to settle this question, so that remains to be resolved, but the law appears to be on the side of the diocese in this conflict.

Read it all.

My purpose in this essay is to briefly sketch the policies and practices of diocese of Colorado since the advent of bishop O’Neill, culminating in this policy change that came into effect on January 10, 2009, with the ordination of an individual living in a non-chaste same-sex partnership.

In 2003, the Episcopal Diocese of Colorado elected Robert O’Neill as its bishop. During his campaign, he was very clear about his commitments to the gay cause. In Massachusetts, besides spearheading the new diocesan camp, he led his parish into accepting his associate rector’s new lesbian “partnership.” Since there is no provision in the Episcopal Church for these things, her ceremony happened in another denomination.

A lot has happened between his election and now. O’Neill convened a task force in 2004 to examine the issues. “How will we choose to live together given our differences? What is our common ground? What are the limits? What is the highest degree of communion possible?” The end result was a recommendation from the Task Force for restraint, which has been followed till this new turn of events.

In Colorado, there already were partnered homosexuals and lesbians in orders. Also, provision had been made for some sort of thanksgiving in a liturgical context, but it wasn’t supposed to look like a wedding: no vows, no rings, no invitations, etc”¦ According to O’Neill, great license had been taken with his predecessor’s pastoral permissiveness. The modest thanksgivings looked like weddings.

So, upon his election, O’Neill suspended the pastoral provisions for liturgical recognition of homosexual relationships. He also suspended the ordination process of at least one partnered lesbian. He did not let partnered clergy into the diocese, even though certain parishes wanted it. There were three basic reasons: 1) O’Neill hoped to find some way to keep the diocese together. 2) The Anglican Communion’s value to us was of utmost importance. 3) The Episcopal Church had not yet authorized same sex blessings through its General Convention, being the proper, ordered place, where such changes happened. We in Colorado were called, on the left and the right, to restraint for the sake of unity.

That was then, this is now. What changed?

Read it all.

Why save banks if they will not lend?

That has become a significant political issue on both sides of the Atlantic as governments confront the reality that preventing the financial system from collapsing is not the same as repairing it.

In Britain, that led the government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown to announce a new round of bailouts, with a twist. “In return to access to any government support, there will have to be an increase in lending, and that will be legally binding,” Mr. Brown told a news conference today.

In the United States, aides to President-elect Barack Obama sounded a similar theme. “The focus isn’t going to be on the needs of banks,” Mr. Obama’s chief economic adviser, Lawrence H. Summers, said. “It’s going to be on the needs of the economy for credit.”

Read it all.

Follow the links here to the transcript and the video.

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

[MELISSA] BLOCK: Have you been finding inspiration in the words of other invocations that were delivered?

Bishop ROBINSON: Actually, I’ve mostly found caution in the words of others. I’ve actually read back over the inaugural prayers of the last 30 or 40 years and frankly, I’ve been shocked at how aggressively Christian they are. And my intention is not to invoke the name of Jesus, but to make this a prayer for Christians and non-Christians alike.

Although I hold the Scripture to be the word of God, you know, those Scriptures are holy to me and to Jews and Christians. But to many other faith traditions – they have their own sacred texts. And so, rather than insert that and really exclude them from the prayer by doing so, I want this to be a prayer to the God of our many understandings, and a prayer that all people of faith can join me in.

BLOCK: The God of our many understandings.

Bishop ROBINSON: Yes. You know, I was in treatment for alcoholism three years ago and am grateful to be sober today. And one of the things that I’ve learned in 12-step programs is this phrase, the God of my understanding. It allows people to pray to a God of really, many understandings, and let’s face it, each one of us has a different understanding of God. No one of us can fully understand God or else God wouldn’t be God.

BLOCK: I’m not sure that that God of many understandings has ever been invoked in an inauguration before.

Bishop ROBINSON: Well, I’ve done a lot of things for the first time in my life, and I will be proud to do this one.

—From NPR’s All Things Considered on January 13, 2009 (the audio link for which was earlier posted on the blog here)

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

The Church of England is to consider banning clergy from joining the British National party amid fears the far-right party is promoting its image as Christian.

Next month’s General Synod, the church’s national assembly, will debate a motion calling on Anglican bishops to formulate a similar policy to that of the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) on the BNP.

The Acpo policy states that no member of the police service may be a member of an organisation whose constitution, aims, objectives or pronouncements contradict the “general duty” to promote race equality. This specifically includes the BNP, the policy states.

Read it all.

The Anglican Church let down the people of Rwanda by preaching a false gospel whose pious words were not backed up by right actions, Prime Minister Bernard Makuza said at the consecration service of the new bishop of Butare.

While he lauded its economic and social development work on behalf of the country, the central task of the church, he argued, was to preach a Gospel that led to the transformation of the inner man. “Churches and religions should embark on teachings that help Rwandans to change their mindset, behaviour and way of doing things. Church teachings must be followed by action” Makuza said on Jan 10.

Read it all.

Utah’s Episcopal Bishop — the first woman to serve in that position west of the Potomac River — announced Sunday she would retire in 2010.

Congregations were told that Rt. Rev. Carolyn Tanner Irish would step down during her 14th year of service.

“It will be a retirement well-earned,” said Rev. Mary June Nestler, who has worked with Irish over the past 2½ years. “Few people work harder. She is unfailingly kind and compassionate, and it has been a great pleasure for me to be a part of her team.”

In 1996, Irish became one of the first woman bishops in the Episcopal Church, and the first female bishop west of the Potomac River. Nestler called Irish’s appointment an “incredibly important” accomplishment.

Read it all.

Update: A 10 year graph of some diocese of Utah figures may be found here.

(ACNS) The Anglican – Methodist International Commission for Unity in Mission held its first meeting in the Centro Anglicano de la Diócesis de México in Mexico City, as guests of the Anglican Consultative Council. The Commission was co-chaired by the Right Revd Harold Miller, the Bishop of Down and Dromore (Church of Ireland), for the Anglican Communion, and the Revd Professor Robert Gribben (Uniting Church in Australia), Chairman of the Standing Committee on Ecumenics and Dialogue, on behalf of the World Methodist Council.

The Commission has been given a mandate by its sponsoring bodies as set out in the London Document, the Report of the Anglican – Methodist International Consultation, which took place in London, UK, in November 2007. Building on our common confession of the apostolic faith and our participation in God’s mission, the purpose of the Commission is to advance the full visible communion of Anglicans and Methodists at every level as a contribution to the full visible unity of the Church of Christ. It has been asked to monitor and resource relations between Anglicans and Methodists, and to propose ways to achieve this goal.

Read it all.

Four Episcopalians and three Jews lead the list of religious figures selected to give sermons, prayers, Scripture readings and blessings at the National Prayer Service at the Washington National Cathedral.

The invitation-only service Wednesday morning, to be attended by the new president and vice president plus members of Congress, the Supreme Court and hundreds of foreign diplomats, will be built around themes of “tolerance, unity and understanding,” according to a press statement released Friday.

Several groups, including Buddhists, Seventh-day Adventists, the Salvation Army and Mormons, were left out entirely.

Read it all.

I was worried when it was 16-14 in the fourth quarter. Troy Polamalu played an unbelievable game.

European leaders gathered in Jerusalem on Sunday evening as Israel sought help in converting a fragile pause in the fighting in Gaza into a blueprint for a more durable calm.

Earlier Sunday, Hamas, the Islamist group that controls Gaza, and other militant groups announced an immediate, week-long cease-fire in the confrontation with Israel. The announcement came about 12 hours after a unilateral Israeli cease-fire went into effect, raising hopes that the 22-day war that killed about 1,300 Palestinians and 13 Israelis had come to an end.

Hamas and its associates gave Israeli troops a week to leave Gaza. Hamas leaders had previously said the group would continue fighting so long as Israeli forces remained in the territory.

Referring to the one-week deadline, Mark Regev, a spokesman for Israel’s prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said that Israel does not “take dictates from Hamas.” But he insisted that Israel, which launched an air offensive against Hamas on Dec. 27 and sent ground forces in a week later, has no desire to stay in Gaza for long.

One week is not long enough but it is a start; let us hope it moves in the direction of a lasting Cease-Fire. Read it all.

They beat the Eagles and are going to the Super Bowl.

Many commentators have suggestions for Barack Obama on what should be his first meeting at the White House. Here is mine: Mr. Obama and his economic team should convene the 300 leading bank presidents in the East Room and the president should say to each one of them something like this:

“Ladies and gentlemen, this crisis started with you, the bankers, engaging in reckless practices, and it will only end when we clean up your mess and start afresh. The banking system is the heart of our economy. It pumps blood to our industrial muscles, and right now it’s not pumping. We all know that in the past six months you’ve gone from one extreme to another. You’ve gone from lending money to anyone who could fog up a knife to now treating all potential borrowers, no matter how healthy, as bankrupt until proven innocent. And, therefore, you’re either not lending to them or lending under such onerous terms that the economy can’t get any liftoff. No amount of stimulus will work without a healthy banking system.

“So here’s what we’re going to do: we’re going to unclog the arteries. My banking experts have analyzed each of your balance sheets. You will tell us if we’re right. Those of you who are insolvent, we will nationalize and shut down. We will auction off your viable assets and will hold the toxic ones in a government reconstruction fund and sell them later when the market rebounds. Those of you who are weak will be merged. And those of you who are strong will receive added capital for your balance sheets, after you write down all your remaining toxic waste. I am not going to continue rewarding the losers and dimwits amongst you with handouts.”

Without this sort of come-to-Jesus strategy, we’re going to continue to just limp along. We’ll never quite confront the real problem because we don’t want to take the upfront pain. Therefore, the market will never clear ”” meaning start-ups in need of capital will be choked in their cribs and profit-making firms won’t be able to grow as they should.

Read it all. As far as I am concerned, Mr. Friedman hits this one out of the park. This crisis is about massive overleveraging at every level of the economy, especially in the banking system. It has to be fixed, and those who want to fix it need to get ahead of the problem (they are still behind)–KSH.

At the Palm Beach Ritz-Carlton last November, John C. Hope III, the chairman of Whitney National Bank in New Orleans, stood before a ballroom full of Wall Street analysts and explained how his bank intended to use its $300 million in federal bailout money.

“Make more loans?” Mr. Hope said. “We’re not going to change our business model or our credit policies to accommodate the needs of the public sector as they see it to have us make more loans.”

As the incoming Obama administration decides how to fix the economy, the troubles of the banking system have become particularly vexing.

Congress approved the $700 billion rescue plan with the idea that banks would help struggling borrowers and increase lending to stimulate the economy, and many lawmakers want to know how the first half of that money has been spent before approving the second half. But many banks that have received bailout money so far are reluctant to lend, worrying that if new loans go bad, they will be in worse shape if the economy deteriorates.

Read it all.

The Wall Street Journal printed an interesting piece Tuesday titled “Freedom is Still the Winning Formula,” which summed up the findings of this year’s index of economic freedom. It turns out that there’s an amazing correlation between economic freedom and national income, as the freest enjoy per capita income over 10 times higher than those countries that are viewed as repressed.

Hong Kong took the top spot for the 15th year in a row, and its successes in growing an economy ”” though it isn’t blessed with natural resources ”” should serve as an example for those of us who would like to grow jobs and economic opportunity in our state.

This is particularly the case given the trying economic times, as they could well be the tipping point in facilitating change that I believe has been long overdue in South Carolina. All of this is a long preamble to saying that the five goals I laid out in the State of the State Wednesday night are ultimately about making our economy more competitive ”” and recognizing that if there was ever a year to make change, this is the year. Rather than waiting on a bailout from Washington to stimulate our economy, we propose following the Hong Kong example of both low and flat taxes.

Read it all.

It is a familiar drill in nearly all of the nation’s Roman Catholic school systems: a new alarm every few years over falling enrollment; church leaders huddling over what to do; parents rallying to save their schools. And then the bad news.

When the Diocese of Brooklyn last week proposed closing 14 more elementary schools, it was not the deepest but only the latest of a thousand cuts suffered, one tearful closing announcement at a time, as enrollment in the nation’s Catholic schools has steadily dropped by more than half from its peak of five million 40 years ago.

But recently, after years of what frustrated parents describe as inertia in the church hierarchy, a sense of urgency seems to be gripping many Catholics who suddenly see in the shrinking enrollment a once unimaginable prospect: a country without Catholic schools.

From the ranks of national church leaders to the faithful in the pews, there are dozens of local efforts to forge a new future for parochial education by rescuing the remaining schools or, if need be, reinventing them. The efforts are all being driven, in one way or another, by a question in a University of Notre Dame task force report in 2006: “Will it be said of our generation that we presided over the demise” of Catholic schools?

Read it all.

[Rick] Warren, who had largely avoided politics, became a key figure in the 2008 presidential campaign when he invited Sens. Obama and John McCain to a televised forum on faith and world view.

Obama’s campaign thought Warren would stress international and social justice issues. It didn’t turn out that way.

Warren’s question ”” “At what point does a baby have human rights?” ”” prompted Obama’s nadir moment, in which he said those decisions are “above my pay grade.” As Obama stumbled through one the worst performances of his campaign, Warren peppered him with other litmus test questions: Have you ever voted to limit abortion? Would you support a constitutional marriage amendment? Do you favor stem cell research?

“I hear from good sources it sort of surprised the Obama campaign,” says Michael Cromartie, who directs evangelical studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. “They did not seem to recognize that Rick Warren was a man who had broadened the evangelical agenda, but he hadn’t let go of the former agenda that many evangelicals care about.”

Read or listen to it all.

President-elect Barack Obama and his family attended services this morning at one of the oldest historically black churches in Washington, thrilling a congregation that sang, clapped and prayed through a 90-minute celebration of spirit and Scripture.

It was supposed to be a surprise visit at Nineteenth Street Baptist Church, but it seemed anything but. Hundreds of parishioners began lining up early this morning, hoping to get a spot in the pews for what their pastor had earlier said would be a very “special” day.

The pastor, Derrick Harkins, focused his sermon on how God prepares people for challenging situations. He told Obama: “Let me step aside with you, Mr. President elect . . . perhaps, perhaps, just perhaps, you are where you are for such a time.”

Read it all.

They are an unlikely pair, chatting up people on porch stoops in the poorer neighborhoods of New Orleans: Bishop Charles Jenkins, 57, the son of white, rural north Louisiana and pastor to 18,000 south Louisiana Episcopalians, and Jerome Smith, 69, black and rumpled, son of Treme, a former Freedom Rider from the civil rights movement.

Before Hurricane Katrina, in the days when Jenkins says he was focused more on the well-being of his predominantly white church than his predominantly black city, they might never have crossed paths.

But since Katrina, they have forged a relationship in which Jenkins, now deep into a profound personal and spiritual transformation, said he has come to love and rely on Smith.

Smith, a sometimes fiery activist in whom Jenkins sees a gentle soul, has become one of the bishop’s principal guides into New Orleans’ poor African-American culture, a landscape Jenkins said he previously glimpsed but did not understand.

“He’s my mentor, you know,” Jenkins said recently. “It is a good day whenever Jerome Smith comes by.”

Read it all.

The two understandings of discipline and the roles of Canterbury and the Primates collided at the Primates’ Meeting in Dar es Salaam in February 2007. The early rounds of the conflict went to Rowan Williams, who had invited Presiding Bishop Katherine Schori despite a recommendation in the Dromantine Communiqué that Episcopal Church officials refrain from attending Communion events until Lambeth 2008. He then set the agenda of the meeting with only four hours devoted to the Episcopal Church’s reaction, and he endorsed a Joint Standing Committee report which claimed that the Episcopal Church had satisfied the conditions of the Windsor Report and the Dromantine Communiqué.

At this point, the Global South Primates interrupted the set agenda and pushed back.[46] The final Communiqué was surprisingly strong, in which the Primates “unanimously” [made their recommendations]….

For a few brief weeks, it appeared that a final separation was imminent. Then Canterbury struck back:

1. by issuing invitations to Lambeth 2008 to all Episcopal bishops except Gene Robinson (May 2007);

2. by accepting an invitation to the House of Bishops meeting in New Orleans (September 2007) and commissioning a report from the Joint Standing Committee that was not part of the Dar “process”;[50]

3. by denying by word and deed that September 30 was a real deadline; and

4. by giving the Episcopal Church a weak pass in his Advent 2007 letter, which was all that was necessary to get it over the hurdles posed by the Dar Communiqué.

Most significantly, in the year intervening between Dar and Lambeth 2008, Archbishop Williams refused to call a follow-up Primates’ Meeting, despite the clear expectation in the Communiqué that he would reconvene the Primates to judge the Episcopal Church’s response and despite an urgent appeal from the Global South Steering Committee that he do so. Apparently the Archbishop had concluded from the Dar es Salaam Meeting that the Primates’ authority had been enhanced too much and that they needed to be relegated to the B-league as an honorary council of advice.[51] The hope of Communion-wide discipline of those who had broken fundamental Christian doctrine had evaporated in a cloud of verbiage and dithering.

Read it carefully and read it all.