What unites the church is a common faith in Christ and a common share in the Spirit. Apart from this essential, Christians may have nothing at all in common. We differ from one another in temperament, personality, education, colour, culture, citizenship, language and in a host of other ways. Thank God we do. The church is a wonderfully inclusive fellowship, in which ‘there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female’ (Gal. 3:28). In other words, in Christ we have equality.

–John R.W. Stott, Christ the Controversialist (London: Tyndale Press, 1970), p. 183.

“Our Anglican tradition is blessed by the ability to share common prayer and sacraments while holding different interpretations of scripture and different opinions and practices. Our diversity reflects God’s creation and allows us to proclaim the Gospel in many forms to people in many settings.

“We are especially dismayed that this attempt to undermine the Church’s governance involves leaders who have held positions on the Communion-wide body that produced the proposed Anglican Covenant. The various drafts of the Covenant have each created impediments to the full inclusion of all baptized Christians in the Communion and thereby undermine God’s gift of unity. Regrettably, we must now question the full intent of these documents.

“We pray that our brothers and sisters in the Anglican Communion Institute will return to embrace our common tradition and polity and recognize the reconciling power of the Spirit to make all things new.”

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In the brief reading we had Jesus asked a question: ”˜what is the kingdom of God like?’ He gives two suggestions by way of an answer. He said ”˜It is like a tiny seed that a man sowed and in time it became a huge tree’. Then he said again: ”˜The Kingdom of heaven is like a woman who takes flour and yeast and from the leavening of the two an invisible, chemical change creates something wholly new’. In both parables Jesus is saying something like this: ”˜from the tiniest of events the most staggering mysteries can appear’.

Of course, human beings quite rightly do not like mysteries. We want to get to the bottom of things and we ask questions of mysteries.

This year our country is celebrating the achievements of one of the greatest scientists of all time; Charles Darwin. Born two hundred years ago he was from childhood a person with a profound sense of curiosity. He was an inveterate collector. His father wanted him to follow him into the medical profession- but he knew he wasn’t cut out for that. He went to university thinking that he ought to be ordained ”“ but, deep down, he knew that wasn’t his destiny.
Almost by accident he heard about the voyage of a ship, the Beagle, which needed a naturalist. He got the job and the five years he spent on the ship was to change him and change the world. Above all, he got people thinking and arguing about God. And Darwin himself was shaken by what he discovered. In 1859, 150 years ago, his magnum opus, On the Origin of Species, was published. He showed that the earth was in constant flux and that every species was interdependent; human beings too were part of creation and linked to other creatures. There is an astonishing diagram in one of his notebooks sketching the tree of life with the two words above the diagram ”˜I think’. He argued in his book that a process he called natural selection was at work in all life with survival dependent upon adaptability to change . Called ”˜the survival of the fittest’ Darwin challenged religious and philosophical thinking of his day.

I can only give you my personal take on this. If you believe that the opening chapters of Genesis are literally true, then Darwin’s colossal achievement will contradict you. If you believe, as I do, that the opening chapters of Genesis are allegories, pictures stories that belong to ancient peoples’ attempts to understand creation, then there is no difficulty for Christians seeing Darwin’s discoveries as enlarging their understanding of the universe.

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Bob and Joanne Portteus numbered among the first dozen people to launch Barefoot Church on Main Street, Hempsey and Banister said. Just a few years later, the congregation now includes 1,200 members on any given weekend.

The church’s theory is that so many people strong can make a difference.

In documenting the plight of one of their own for this weekend’s services, Banister said, “This may be something that goes bigger. We want to send a message of hope.”

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Firefighters responded twice to a weekend yard fire that South Carolina officials believe rekindled four days later, igniting a massive wildfire that has destroyed 70 homes and continued to char 31 square miles near Myrtle Beach on Friday.

Officials said homes were still being threatened by the flames but late-day winds had yet to cause it to spread farther. No injuries have been reported but damage estimates rose to $16 million for the three-day blaze and were expected to increase.

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The swine flu virus that is responsible for an outbreak in Mexico and has been detected in the southwestern United States has the potential to cause a pandemic, a top international health official said today.

“It has pandemic potential,” Margaret Chan, the director-general of the World Health Organization, told reporters during a telephone briefing. “It is infecting people.”

Chan held the briefing after cutting short a trip to the United States so she could rush back to the WHO’s headquarters in Geneva to convene an emergency meeting of the organization’s experts to decide what steps should be taken to contain the virus.

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I am sure Fr. [Mark] Harris is well aware that the articulation of TEC’s polity in the Bishops’ Statement is hardly novel, but has long been the standard understanding of our governance. See, for example, the widely-used series on “The Church’s Teaching” by Dr. Powel Dawley of GTS, the work by Dr. Daniel Stevick of EDS on Canon Law and the article by Dr. Robert Prichard of VTS, one of TEC’s leading historians, in the current issue of “Anglican and Episcopal History,” who reviews this history and my paper and concludes that my work is “cogent and based on good historical argument.”

Finally and most importantly, none of this should deflect attention from the Bishops’ Statement itself. It is what it is says it is: a statement by fifteen bishops of this Church, including a candidate for Presiding Bishop in 1985 (Bishop Frey), a candidate for Presiding Bishop in 1997 and one of the three Senior Bishops of the Church who exercise canonical responsibilities under Title IV (Bishop Wimberly) and the immediate past president of the Presiding Bishop’s Council of Advice (Bishop MacPherson). I urge Fr. Harris and others to focus on this Statement by fifteen distinguished Bishops rather than discuss obviously confidential emails that should never have been made public in the first place.

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[Thew] Forrester’s writings and sermons are sufficiently distressing to call into question his fitness, not only to be a bishop, but to even be a priest. Add to that the fact that Forrester adds stuff to the liturgy like a reading from the Qur’an in place of the appointed lesson from the apostle Paul, while also taking away from the liturgy the renunciations, and also so thoroughly revising the theological grounding of the act of adherence that it bears little resemblance to anything specifically Christian.

Given what we know from his sermons and liturgical experimentation/revision, I think there is little basis for believing that Mr. Forrester, if consecrated as a bishop, will heed the call “to guard the faith, unity, and discipline of the Church” (The Book of Common Prayer, p. 517). It’s much more reasonable to expect that he would continue doing what he’s already been doing: departing from the core tenets of the Christian faith and revising the liturgical practices of the Episcopal Church accordingly.

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A leader of a prominent evangelical grouping in the Anglican war over gays has been appointed bishop to one of the oldest historic Episcopal seats in the country.

Although Sherborne, founded in 705, is no longer a see in its own right but an area in the Salisbury diocese covering Dorset, the appointment Dr Graham Kings as its bishop is one of the strongest signs yet that the Archbishop of Canterbury is winning the battle for Anglican unity.

Dr Kings is founder of the increasingly influential group Fulcrum, which publishes the writings of conservative evangelical Bishop of Durham, Dr Tom Wright.

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The case has been settled by the progressive U.S. leadership and, apparently, that settles it for the News. There is no attempt to use language that describes the two clashing camps and their claims. There is no attempt to note the previous legal precedents ”” backing centuries of church tradition ”” that actually support the diocese.

What language could the newspaper have used if it wanted to be accurate, yet fair to the beliefs and traditions on both sides? That would have taken another paragraph or so, me thinks. But if you want to know how NOT to frame this local, regional, national and global issue ”” look no further. You have your template.

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Sal Mauriello, a barber, was coming home early from work that day. He heard a woman scream and saw her point up to the window. Mauriello took off his coat and used it as a net to catch [Marvin] Goldstein in his arms.

Holy cow. Read or listen to it all.

Is it or isn’t it a Michelangelo? That is the question being pondered by art experts after the Italian state spent 3.3 million euros, or $4.2 million, last year to buy a small wooden crucifix attributed to that Renaissance genius.

Works by Michelangelo don’t come up for sale often, but the occasional drawing has nabbed as much as $20 million at auction. By comparison, the linden wood crucifix, which was sold by the Turin antiques dealer Giancarlo Gallino, is a bargain.

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“The Gingerbread House,” a new play by Mark Schultz at the Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, hits an iceberg just a few minutes into the first scene, in which a young married couple chill on the living room couch in front of the television.

Toys and general kiddie detritus surround them in disarray, suggesting a wearying day of parenthood. Brian (Jason Butler Harner) stirs from his exhausted slouch. “Honey,” he says, “I think we should sell the kids.”

Stacey (Sarah Paulson) responds with a blank stare and a light laugh. “Maybe we can get a new fridge,” she says dryly.

But Brian isn’t kidding. He’s sick of the children. “We can start our lives again,” he says in a coaxing tone. “We can have it back. All of it.”

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Stranded by the nationwide slump in housing and jobs, fewer Americans are moving, the Census Bureau said Wednesday.

The bureau found that the number of people who changed residences declined to 35.2 million from March 2007 to March 2008, the lowest number since 1962, when the nation had 120 million fewer people.

Experts said the lack of mobility was of concern on two fronts. It suggests that Americans were unable or unwilling to follow any job opportunities that may have existed around the country, as they have in the past. And the lack of movement itself, they said, could have an impact on the economy, reducing the economic activity generated by moves.

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Check it out and please send in any corrections or additions which can be substantiated–KSH.

Along with agriculture, herding and trade, the ghazu was a recognized part of the seventh-century Arabian economy, and those who indulged in it were often celebrated as Robin Hoods of a sort. But the bounty raid was also a national pastime””a sport for turning boys into men. As is the case with piracy today, these earlier raids almost always ended without bloodshed, since any death was sure to bring on a cycle of vendetta killings every tribesman was eager to avoid””a cycle that Somali pirates recently promised to set into motion in response to the killing of pirates by American and French special forces.

All this might be of purely antiquarian concern except for the fact that Muslims today regard Muhammad not only as God’s final prophet but also as the human being par excellence. The Hadith, an Islamic scripture second in authority only to the Quran, records thousands of instances of Muhammad’s beliefs and actions, so Muslims can follow his example on matters as detailed as the cut of his beard. If Christians ask, “What Would Jesus Do?” Muslims ask, “What Would Muhammad Do?”

There are of course ways to read the Islamic sources as antithetical to piracy, but Muhammad himself both organized and participated in the seventh-century overland equivalent of the high-seas buccaneering that now bedevils world trade.

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In a 2006 speech here, then-Sen. Barack Obama said Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount was so “radical” the Defense Department wouldn’t survive its application. Earlier this month (April), the new president suggested the economy couldn’t get along without it.

In the middle of a nuts-and-bolts speech at Georgetown University on economic policy, Obama overtly cited the sermon’s parable of two men, one of whom builds his house on rock, the other on sand.

“We cannot rebuild this economy on the same pile of sand,” the president said. “We must build our house upon a rock.”

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Some people can’t buy health insurance because they have a pre-existing medical condition. But for most of the nation’s 47 million uninsured, cost is the big obstacle ”” especially if they don’t work for a company that pays part of the premium.

And even if they could find an affordable health plan, many are not used to building that cost into their monthly budget. Potential sticker shock is emerging as a key issue in the nation’s debate over whether everybody should be covered.

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A legislative hearing to extend same-sex marriage to Maine took on the atmosphere of a religious revival yesterday as ministers made impassioned speeches for and against the bill before thousands of cheering spectators packed into a civic arena.

Gay couples also took turns pleading for recognition of their partnerships, while opponents warned that state sanctioning of same-sex marriages would fracture a basic building block of society.

The Judiciary Committee hearing drew so much interest that traffic became snarled early in the day. Gay marriage supporters hoping to build on momentum in the region arrived wearing red, and they gave a standing ovation to the bill’s sponsor, Senator Dennis Damon, as he opened the hearing. Police said it drew 3,500 to 4,000 people.

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In 1971, flush with the nation’s success in putting a man on the Moon, President Richard M. Nixon announced a new goal. Cancer would be cured by 1976, the bicentennial.

When 1976 came and went, the date for a cure, or at least substantial progress, kept being put off. It was going to happen by 2000, then by 2015.

Now, President Barack Obama, discussing his plans for health care, has vowed to find “a cure” for cancer in our time and said that, as part of the economic stimulus package, he would increase federal money for cancer research by a third for the next two years.

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[Thew] Forrester, who is 51 and has been an Episcopal priest since 1994, insists Zen Buddhism is compatible with his faith. “It’s not a matter of holding two faiths. There’s one faith and it’s Christianity,” he told a local Michigan newspaper. “The gift is that that faith is deepened by my meditative practice and I’m eternally grateful to Zen Buddhism for teaching me that practice and receiving me as an Episcopal priest.” Forrester insists that his faith allows him to be “open to receive the truth and the beauty and goodness, and the wisdom from the other religious traditions of the world, and to be in dialogue with them.”

The diocese to which Forrester has been elected bishop has only 27 churches, has lost 30 percent of its membership, and now has fewer than 2000 souls, fewer than 700 of whom actively attend church. But consent to his election by the Episcopal Church will elevate him in the global Anglican communion, whose more than 800 bishops preside over nearly 80 million communicants. An Anglican bishop in Nigeria or Sudan may preside over many tens of thousands of members and arduously commute, sometimes by bicycle, across many hundreds of miles of dirt roads. Small, liberal, and affluent dioceses in the U.S. can afford to be more esoteric in their selection of bishops, who have fewer responsibilities.

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The Obama administration reacted with increasing alarm yesterday to ongoing Taliban advances in Pakistan, warning the Pakistani government that failure to take action against the extremists could endanger its partnership with the United States as well as American strategy in neighboring Afghanistan.

“The news over the past several days is very disturbing,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said, adding that the administration “is extremely concerned” and that the issue was taking “a lot” of President Obama’s time.

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Speaking at a forum sponsored by The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, [Tony] Blair pointed out the shortcomings of peaceful negotiation.

“President Obama’s reaching out to the Muslim world at the start of a new American administration is welcome, smart, and can play a big part in defeating the threat we face,” he said. “But it will expose, too, the delusion of believing that there is any alternative to waging this struggle to its conclusion.”

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Swat used to offer some of the finest skiing in Asia. The season is now over, and is unlikely to return. The Taleban have taken over. They have shut hundreds of schools and, by some accounts, torn many of them down. They have banned the public playing of music and put up posters in barber’s shops warning men not to shave. On Wednesday, Taleban fighters pressed home their advantage by flooding the town of Buner, south of Swat, wrecking aid agencies’ offices and occupying those of the local government. Yesterday the Pakistani Frontier Constabulary responded by sending some 300 troops to the region, but they are outnumbered by up to 8,000 armed Islamist radicals. Buner is 65 miles from Islamabad.

As the Taleban took Buner, Hillary Clinton told a congressional committee in Washington that Pakistan faces “an existential threat”. She is right. Sharia is now the law across much of the country’s mountainous north west. Its enforcers control most of the region’s hearts and minds – and territory. In doing so they pass devastating judgment on the fecklessness of President Zardari and his bewildered young Government, which last week explicitly surrendered jurisdiction over Swat in a deal with its new overlords.

The last time that England was in a position comparable to Pakistan’s was in 1644…

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Fed up with the budget crises and partisan battles that have paralyzed California for years, some influential voices believe it’s time to tear open the state constitution and start anew.

Once dismissed as a hokey gimmick, support for a proposed constitutional convention has been building in the nation’s most populous state. Even Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, has indicated he would back an effort to retool the document to make state government function more smoothly.

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The relationship between the Archbishops’ Council and Church of England dioceses and parishes is coming under increasing strain, as the financial crisis affects the amount of money the Council has to support the central structures of the Church.

A strategic review, which was published last week, warns that a below-inflation rise in the amount of money the Council has to sustain a range of national church respons­ibilities could mean that essential support services could be cut.

“That would involve a funda­mental change in the way that the Council works, and would require a big change in the expectations of Synod, the bishops, the dioceses, and the Church generally as to the service that the Council could provide,” says the review.

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Marcus Lawrence Loane was born in Waratah, Tasmania, on October 14 1911. He left the island to go to the King’s School, Parramatta in New South Wales, then took a degree at Sydney University. There he became caught up in the local form of Anglicanism and entered Moore Theological College, Sydney, where he obtained a First in the Licentiate in Theology.

On his ordination in 1935 he was appointed tutor and chaplain of Moore Theological College, serving also as curate of the parish of Gladesville. Three years later he became vice-principal ”“ a post he held until his appointment as principal in 1953, though he was away between 1942 and 1944 serving as a chaplain in the Australian Army. He became a canon of Sydney Cathedral in 1949.

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Another significant section compares the language of the constitution and canons of the General Convention of The Episcopal Church with similar bylaws from other denominations to conclude that the founders of The Episcopal Church intentionally created a church in which dioceses “are not subject to hierarchical control by central bodies whether they be the Presiding Bishop, the General Convention, the Executive Council, or the courts of The Episcopal Church.”

Despite its claim that The Episcopal Church is a “voluntary association of equal dioceses” and that the constitutionally defined powers of the office of the Presiding Bishop greatly limit the ability of the incumbent to intervene in the internal affairs of a diocese, the document is silent on whether a diocese may legally withdraw from The Episcopal Church.

In addition to the 11 diocesan bishops, the document was also endorsed by the Rt. Rev. Paul E. Lambert, Bishop Suffragan of Dallas, three retired bishops, and the three contributing theologians of the Anglican Communion Institute.

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Before there were iPods, or even CDs, and around the time cassettes let break dancers move the party to a cardboard dance floor on the sidewalk, there were boomboxes. It’s been 20 years since the devices disappeared from the streets. It’s high time to press rewind on this aspect of America’s musical history.

Back in the day, you could take your music with you and play it loud, even if people didn’t want to hear it. Fifty decibels of power-packed bass blasted out on street corners from New York City to Topeka. Starting in the mid-’70s, boomboxes were available everywhere, and they weren’t too expensive. Young inner-city kids lugged them around, and kids in the suburbs kept them in their cars.

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Women’s groups cheered the government’s decision to allow 17-year-olds to buy the “morning-after” emergency contraceptive without a doctor’s prescription, but conservatives denounced it as a blow to parental supervision of teens.

The Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday it would accept, not appeal, a federal judge’s order that lifts Bush administration restrictions limiting over-the-counter sales of “Plan B” to women 18 and older. U.S. District Judge Edward Korman ruled last month in a lawsuit filed in New York that President George W. Bush’s appointees let politics, not science, drive their decision to restrict over-the-counter access.

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