The Southern Baptist Convention, which is launching a new national campaign to bring unbelievers to Jesus, is up against a major obstacle: motivating its own members to evangelize.
But it may be the only effective way to reach people, according to a survey of 15,173 people by LifeWay Research, a Christian research firm.
During the worst economic downturn in a generation, some people in the United States are beginning to catch glimpses of an unfamiliar sight: causes for hope.
The banking system is still fraught, the U.S. economy is contracting sharply, and 600,000 jobs are vanishing every month. But other economic barometers have stabilized a bit and stock markets have surged about 20 percent during the past two weeks, kindling hopes among investors that the long-suffering economy might finally be searching for a bottom.
Two new reports from the housing market and manufacturing sector underscored those fragile wisps of optimism Wednesday.
The Obama administration will detail on Thursday a wide-ranging plan to overhaul financial regulation by subjecting hedge funds and traders of exotic financial instruments, now among the biggest and most freewheeling players on Wall Street, to potentially strict new government supervision, officials said.
The Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, will outline the broad revamping of the regulatory system, which goes further than expected, in a hearing on Thursday. He is expected to say that the new rules are necessary to prevent a repeat of the excesses that nearly wrecked the global financial system and plunged the economy into a recession.
The plan, which would require congressional approval, would give the government vast new powers over “systemically important” banks and other financial institutions that are so big that their collapse would jeopardize the economy as a whole.
North Korea is loading a Taepodong rocket on its east coast launch pad in anticipation of the launch of a communications satellite early next month, U.S. officials say. U.S. counterproliferation and intelligence officials have confirmed Japanese news reports of the expected launch between April 4 and 8.
North Korea announced its intention to launch the satellite in February. Regional powers worry the claim is a cover for the launch of a long-range missile capable of reaching Alaska. National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair said earlier this month that all indications suggest North Korea will in fact launch a satellite.
(Via email):
San Jose is now home to the new St. James Anglican Church. All are invited to celebrate the establishment of this community of faith. Sunday services will include a traditional mass at 9 am, and a contemporary service at 10:45 am.
St. James will be meeting at the Camden Community Center at 3369 Union Ave, San Jose, CA 95124. St. James has joined the newly-formed Anglican Church of North America, which unites 700 orthodox Anglican congregations, representing roughly 100,000 people in the United States and Canada.
The initial launch team for St. James has been drawn from the former leadership of St. Edward’s Episcopal Church. Fr. Ed McNeill, who led St. Edward’s for 10 years, is St. James Anglican Church’s first pastor. Six of the twelve members of St. Edward’s Vestry have left to help found St. James.
The decision of Fr. McNeill and other church leaders to found St. James Anglican Church marks the end of years of debate within St. Edward’s about supporting the efforts of The Episcopal Church USA. While members of the Episcopal Church have always welcomed a diversity of opinion, recent theological innovations by the national leadership have made it impossible for many orthodox Christians to remain.
The Episcopal Church has increasingly adopted policies that are unacceptable to orthodox Christians, departing from the primacy of Scripture. Church leaders have taken positions that undermine traditional teaching on the Divinity of Christ, Jesus’ resurrection and His role in salvation, Biblical standards on sexuality, and many of the tenets expressed in the Nicene Creed. These changes aligned the church with today’s social trends, and led the church away from its historic mission. The result has been declining attendance, declining ordinations and the departure of many clergy members, strained relationship with the global Anglican Communion, and nationwide lawsuits.
Fr. McNeill said, “We are very happy that the time of divisiveness has passed, and that healing can begin. We will miss our friends who have chosen to remain in the Episcopal Church and are committed to praying for them. We look forward to serving in the Bay Area as Anglican Christians.”
A website has been established at www.newanglicanchurch.com, to provide a means for community-building among Anglicans in the Bay Area. Those who have left the Episcopal Church, or who have been searching for Orthodox churches in the Bay Area, will have access to news and information, as well as an opportunity to communicate with others.
Only 9% of U.S. hospitals have electronic health records, according to a new survey that reveals the gap between the present state of American health care and a high-tech future envisioned by policy makers.
“We are at a very early stage in adoption, a very low stage compared to other countries,” said David Blumenthal, a Harvard professor and an author of the survey. Last week, the Obama administration named Dr. Blumenthal National Coordinator for Health Information Technology.
The survey, sent to hospitals in March 2008 and published online Wednesday by the New England Journal of Medicine, found that most institutions have some basic electronic systems, such as those for reporting patients’ lab results.
Patrick Yu, the area bishop for York-Scarborough, discusses the Toronto bishops’ proposal for same-sex blessings in an email exchange with Sue Careless.
TAP: At General Synod in 2007 you voted against a local option (by diocese) for same-sex blessings (SSBs). Today you are supporting a local option for SSBs in parishes in the Diocese of Toronto. What has changed?
Patrick Yu: I have struggled with the issue since the 70’s. Looking back, it has been a mixture of resistance and support. I did resist a hasty, non-reflective revisionism but I also resisted a narrow and non-reflective conservatism as well. Recently I find myself resisting schism, particularly wholesale condemnations of the kind Jesus warns against which often violate the ninth commandment! [Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.] Perhaps less known is my support for a public place for gays and lesbians which is distinct from marriage. I also work hard to secure a place for those people, priests and parishes who, in conscience, cannot pronounce same-sex relationships blessed as marriages. If you look at my voting record at GS2007, and more importantly, my activity in the House of Bishops around that time, you will see this combination, which often feels like tension. That has not changed. What has changed is a growing conviction that God is calling the Diocese of Toronto to a renewed sense of mission, particularly in the area of owning and sharing our faith in Jesus with others, and growing churches. I see our effort as a way to break the logjam around sex which threatens to paralyse us in our mission, particularly in public discussions like Synod.
One of the resolutions up for consideration at General Convention in July is endorsement of the Earth Charter together with the development of “action steps for diocese, churches and individuals to implement its principles locally, nationally and internationally.”
The Earth Charter is a declaration of fundamental principles for building a just, sustainable and peaceful global society in the 21st century. Following the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, it was drafted over a multi-year period by an international drafting committee that engaged literally thousands of ordinary people and hundreds of local and international organizations. It was formally launched in June 2000 and has since received formal endorsements by thousands of groups worldwide.
Read it all and follow the link to the full text of the charter.
Renewing the face of the earth, then, is an enterprise not of imposing some private human vision on a passive nature but of living in such a way as to bring more clearly to light the interconnectedness of all things and their dependence on what we cannot finally master or understand. This certainly involves a creative engagement with nature, seeking to work with those natural powers whose working gives us joy, as St Augustine says, in order to enhance human liberty and well-being. But that creative work will always be done in consciousness of costs, seen and unseen, and will not be dominated by fantasies about unconditional domination. It is a vision that, in the Christian context, is founded on the idea of humanity as having a ‘priestly’ relationship with the natural order: the human agent is created with the capacity to make sense of the environment and to move it into a closer relation with its creator by drawing out of it its capacity to become a sign of love and generosity. This entails so using the things of the earth that they promote justice between human beings ”“ making sense so as to make peace, equity and so on, using the skills of negotiating the environment in order to alleviate suffering and spread resources. Used in this way, the raw material of the environment is seen as serving human need ”“ but only by being used in awareness of its own integrity and its own constraints. It remains itself, but in its use for the sake of healing or justice becomes ‘sacramental’ of the infinite gift from which it originates. The ‘face’ of the earth becomes an aspect of the face of God. And a good many theologians have started from here in explaining what the actual sacraments of the Church mean ”“ especially the Eucharist ”“ as the firstfruits of a world of material things that has been given meaning in the context of communicating divine generosity.
All this echoes what St Paul touches on in Romans 8: creation is in some sense frustrated so long as humanity is ‘unredeemed’. The world is less than it might be so long as human beings are less than they might be, since the capacity of human beings to shape the material environment into a sign of justice and generosity is blocked by human selfishness.
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said a make-shift tent city for the homeless that sprang up in the capital city of Sacramento will be shut down and its residents allowed to stay at the state fairgrounds.
Schwarzenegger said he ordered the state facility known as Cal-Expo to be used for three months to serve the 125 tent city residents, some of them displaced by the economic recession. The encampment may be shut down within a month, said Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson. The move comes after the Sacramento City Council last night agreed to spend $880,000 to expand homeless programs.
Two British Columbia parishes have quit the Anglican Church of Canada and have affiliated with the Anglican Network in Canada (ANiC). The votes by St Matthias in Victoria and St Mary’s Nanoose Bay increase the breakaway group’s ranks to 28 parishes served by three former Anglican Church of Canada bishops and 73 priests and deacons.
By a vote of 170 in favor and 10 opposed, St Matthias withdrew from the diocese on March 8 and joined the traditionalist breakaway group led by Bishop Don Harvey, the former Bishop of Eastern Newfoundland and Labrador. The congregation has left its property to the diocese and a remnant group and on March 15 began worshipping at a local community center.
Judge Schwartz actually gets what is wrong with the whole process of creating a trust on individual parish property through a top-down imposition of the Dennis Canon! (But don’t get your hopes entirely up. As we shall later see, he comes to the Church’s rescue—-or rather, in a classic punting of responsibility to those judges higher up on the pay scale, he reads the Supreme Court as having done the rescuing for him.) Can you be proud of a Church that treats all of its contributors in such a cavalier manner? The Church (at the national level, at least) regards you not as someone whom it must inform, or treat with any courtesy or respect, but as just another source of funds for as long as you are ignorant enough to allow it to control local property matters without your knowledge. For it knows that, should you find out about its ultimate control, you might stop giving money to a church over which you really have no say. And why on earth would you ever give any money for its further expansion?
There is much recent material on this: A press release from the TEC affiliated parish, a press release from the Episcopal Diocese of Colorado, the text of the court ruling itself, and a statement from the Anglican parish is there.
Also, an ENS article is here, a Colorado Springs Gazette article is there and a Denver Post article is here.
Mars Hills draws 11,000 worshipers each week””surely a sign of vitality. But what about the next generation? Churches that reach out to only one or two generations may find out that the next generation wants nothing to do with their way of being culturally savvy. What happens when Bell and Mars Hill are 40- and 50-somethings? Will the church gracefully transform itself into the next generation’s new painting, with a new cultural frame of reference? Of course, such worries can be found in any church.
Meanwhile, Christian convictions are vibrant and healthy at Mars Hill. The church shows evidence of passionate commitment, compelling artistry and intellectual curiosity””all of which are evident in Bell’s sermons too. No wonder young adults are paying attention.
I like the guy and I think the videos, used properly, are a useful tool for parishes. I salute Rob Bell for getting out there and trying to bring Jesus meaningfully into people’s lives. Read it all–KSH.
The median price for an existing, single-family detached home in California sank to $247,590 in February from $418,260 a year earlier, the Los Angeles-based group said in a statement. The U.S. median price fell 16 percent during the same period, the second-biggest drop on record, according to the National Association of Realtors.
The Diocese of Toronto plans to bless same-sex relationships without taking any formal vote on the theologically contentious issue.
“(A vote) would cause more division than it would cause resolution,” the diocesan bishop, Colin Johnson, told the media.
Johnson will set up a commission of clergy and laity to engage in a consultation process but most observers see it as a “done deal” without any vote. The consultation likely will only fine tune the details.
A federal judge has struck down a long-standing government policy that made it tougher for religious workers from other countries to remain in the United States.
Chief U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik wrote in an order issued Tuesday that the policy was at odds with the intent of Congress.
Under the Department of Homeland Security’s policy, religious workers who came to the U.S. on a typical five-year temporary visa were not allowed to file for permanent residency – their green card – until a separate visa petition by their employer had been approved.
U.K. gilts slumped after demand at an auction of bonds fell short of the amount offered, the first time the Treasury failed to attract enough bids at a sale of nominal debt in 14 years.
Investors bid for 1.63 billion pounds ($2.4 billion) of the 40-year securities, less than the 1.75 billion pounds of 4.25 percent notes slated for sale, the U.K. Debt Management Office said today in a statement from London.
“Basically it’s the first failed auction,” said John Wraith, head of sterling interest-rate strategy at RBC Capital Markets in London. “They didn’t receive enough to cover it all so the market has obviously sold off extremely heavily.”
For the past few years, Carl Anglesea gave about $400 each year to charity. But he lost his job as a software developer in August, and since then Anglesea, 54, of Chuluota, Fla., hasn’t given a dime. What he has done, though, is triple his hours as a volunteer AARP tax counselor helping people fill out tax forms. “I’d like to give cash, but I can’t,” he says. “So I’m committing to more hours as a substitute.”
This is a trade that works well for Anglesea and many like him. After all, time is money, and community-minded individuals may be happy to give whichever of the two they are better able to spare. But the time-money swap, which is washing over the charity world like a tidal wave during this recession, poses stiff challenges for nonprofits. They can’t pay the rent with volunteer hours. One in two nonprofits says its funding has fallen, according to “The Quiet Crisis,” a new report by Civic Enterprises, a social-issues think tank. When the economy was this rotten in the early 1970s, charitable giving fell more than 9%, adjusted for inflation. Experts believe something like that will occur in this recession too.
The projected budget shortfalls come at a time when nonprofits’ services are most in demand. Last year the United Way saw a 68% increase nationally in the number of calls for basic needs, according to “The Quiet Crisis.” The state of Arizona reported a doubling in the number of people who sought social services last year, and 70% of the nonprofits in Michigan reported an increased demand for services.
On persevering:
“How do we keep this up? How do I keep this up, day after day? Because we know how it’s going to end, don’t we? Our struggle is going to end with the full inclusion of gay and lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people, in the life and ministry and leadership of the church. I have no doubt whatsoever. The fight that’s going on now is not about if it’s going to happen. It’s only about when. I think even the conservatives would tell you that. They’re just trying to forestall the day it is fulfilled. Not if, but when. We know how it’s going to end. And whether we live to see it or not is irrelevant. The question is, are we going to play our part?”
Read it all and follow the audio link at the bottom if you desire to hear it all. i am going to try to leave comments open on this. Please keep your comments to the arguments made. Thank you–KSH.
The Rt. Rev. Greg Rickel, Episcopal bishop for Western Washington, has said no.
“Each diocesan bishop will vote on consent and each Standing Committee will also be asked for consent,” Rickel said in an e-mail. “Our Standing Committee has not voted on this yet.
“I did vote at the recent House of Bishops and I voted not to consent. I intend to share some of my reasoning in a letter and I promise to send that to you as well so you can see it.”
Forrester would become bishop of the Diocese of Northern Michigan, one of the smallest in the church. Statistics released by the national Episcopal Church show that its membership has declined by 31.7 percent in the past 10 years.
Also known by his Buddhist name, “Genpo,” or “Way of Universal Wisdom,” Forrester was only candidate on the ballot when diocesan convention delegates voted last month.
Among some conservative Christians, a movement is giving new meaning to the biblical mandate to “be fruitful and multiply.”
The movement, called Quiverfull, is based on Psalm 127, which says, “Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are sons born in one’s youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them.”
Those in the Quiverfull movement shun birth control, believing that God will give them the right number of children. It turns out, that’s a lot of kids.
As the Covenant Design Group readies its handiwork for deliberation by the Anglican Consultative Council, the group’s chairman acknowledges that selling a unity document to a divided communion will be neither automatic nor easy.
Retired West Indies’ Archbishop Drexel Wellington Gomez identified current Episcopal Church attitudes as a danger to ratification of the proposed Covenant.
Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori already has said General Convention this summer should decline to take up for consideration the design group’s yet-to-be perfected recommendations for measures aimed at respecting local autonomy while providing accountability for divisive actions.
“The Episcopal Church has its own agenda,” Archbishop Gomez said in Dallas March 22, “and that agenda does not have much accommodation with the rest of the Communion.”
When Lord Runcie, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, passed away in 2000, The Guardian described him as “the primate who discarded the Anglican image as the Tory Party at prayer”.
But has that image really disappeared? The two key indicators are the party’s representatives in Parliament, and their supporters.
As far as MPs are concerned, one of the last surveys on religious belief was back in the early 90s, when there was a clear divide between the mainly Anglican Tories and Catholic Labour MPs. It is most probably the case that the proportion of both of these has fallen over the past 20 years, although it is impossible to know the extent to which this is genuine or simply a function of how unfashionable it has become in some quarters of politics to admit to ‘doing God’.
In Maj. Thomas Jarrett’s stress management class surrounded by concrete blast walls, American troops are urged not to accept post-traumatic stress disorder as an inevitable consequence of war.
Instead, Jarrett tells them to strive for “post-traumatic growth.”
During a 90-minute presentation entitled “Warrior Resilience and Thriving,” Jarrett, a former corporate coach, offers this and other unconventional tips on how troops can stay mentally healthy once they return home. He quotes Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, Paradise Lost author John Milton and German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, among others.
But asked twice whether he would accept a budget that did not include provisions for additional tax cuts for the middle class, or that did not launch a cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Mr. Obama demurred. Instead, he called for “a serious energy policy that frees ourselves from dependence on foreign oil and makes clean energy the profitable kind of energy” — implicitly suggesting that cap-and-trade, though he supports it, might have to wait. As for the middle-class tax cut that Mr. Obama would pay for with revenue from a cap-and-trade program, the president said, “we already had that” in the stimulus package. “We know that that’s going to be in place for at least the next two years. We had identified a specific way to pay for it. If Congress has better ideas in terms of how to pay for it, then we’re happy to listen.”
President Obama’s proposal to limit the tax deductibility of charitable contributions would effectively transfer more than $7 billion a year from the nation’s charitable institutions to the federal government. But the high-income taxpayers affected by the rule change are likely to cut their charitable giving by as much as the increase in their tax bills, which would, ironically, leave their remaining income and personal consumption unchanged.
In effect, the change would be a tax on the charities, reducing their receipts by a dollar for every dollar of extra revenue the government collects. It is hard to imagine a rationale for taxing schools, hospitals, medical research budgets and arts organizations in this way. I suspect that the administration officials who drafted this proposal did not understand that it would have this perverse effect.
President Obama sought to reassure Americans last night that his administration has made progress in reviving the economy and said his $3.6 trillion budget is “inseparable from this recovery.”
After sprinting through his first months in office, Obama is now facing heightened criticism from Republicans, who have called his blueprint irresponsible, and from skeptical Democrats who have already set about trimming back his top budget priorities.
Obama came into office amid lofty expectations and the worst economic crisis in generations, and he succeeded in pushing through a $787 billion stimulus and launching expensive plans to revive the banking system.
Last night, against a backdrop of a broad national anxiety that the economy may still be failing, he attempted to recalibrate the high hopes to more closely fit the challenges he said lie ahead.
The good news from our historical study of eight centuries of international financial crises is that, so far, they have all ended. And we confidently predict this one will end, too. We are just not quite so sure it will be nearly as soon as the chirpy forecasts coming from policymakers around the globe. The U.S. administration, for example, is now predicting that growth will renew in the latter part of this year and continue at a brisk pace of 4 percent for several years thereafter. Is this a fact-based forecast or wishful thinking?
A careful look at the international evidence on severe banking crises suggests a far more cautious assessment. The recessions that follow in the wake of big financial crises tend to last far longer than normal downturns, and to cause considerably more damage. If the United States follows the norm of recent crises, as it has until now, output may take four years to return to its pre-crisis level. Unemployment will continue to rise for three more years, reaching 11”“12 percent in 2011.