The only thing sorrier than Obama’s effort at fiscal restraint is the reaction to it in Congress. Republicans derided Obama’s proposed cuts, but where were they when spending went out of control on their watch?

Democrats, meanwhile, built a hard-earned reputation for fiscal responsibility in the 1990s. Now they’re frittering it away. House Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt, D-S.C., essentially told Obama to forget his cuts, saying that “Congress is unlikely to agree with” all of them. Democratic lawmakers immediately vowed to oppose some of the proposed reductions. To name just a couple, Rep Maurice Hinchey of New York protested cuts in the presidential helicopter fleet, and Rep. Mike Ross of Arkansas sought to protect farm subsidies.

This sort of reflexive parochialism leaves us deeply concerned about whether either party, or Congress as an institution, is capable of addressing the nation’s dire fiscal circumstances, which will only worsen as Baby Boomers hit retirement age. Radical deficit reduction isn’t desirable at a time when the administration is spending massive amounts of money in an effort to stimulate the economy. But this is exactly the right time to hunt down serious savings from weak and wasteful spending programs ”” and to signal the financial markets that huge deficits won’t be tolerated once the economy recovers. Instead, Obama’s budget predicts deficits topping $500 billion for each of the next 10 years, adding almost $7 trillion to the national debt.Perhaps by forecasting godawful deficits now, the administration is positioning itself to claim credit for cutting them to slightly less awful levels down the road. If that’s the case, it’s cynical game playing. If that’s not the case, then it’s simply irresponsible.

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Mr President, the Holy See and the State of Israel have many shared values, above all a commitment to give religion its rightful place in the life of society. The just ordering of social relationships presupposes and requires a respect for the freedom and dignity of every human being, whom Christians, Muslims and Jews alike believe to be created by a loving God and destined for eternal life. When the religious dimension of the human person is denied or marginalised, the very foundation for a proper understanding of inalienable human rights is placed in jeopardy.

Tragically, the Jewish people have experienced the terrible consequences of ideologies that deny the fundamental dignity of every human person. It is right and fitting that, during my stay in Israel, I will have the opportunity to honour the memory of the six million Jewish victims of the Shoah, and to pray that humanity will never again witness a crime of such magnitude. Sadly, anti-Semitism continues to rear its ugly head in many parts of the world. This is totally unacceptable. Every effort must be made to combat anti-Semitism wherever it is found, and to promote respect and esteem for the members of every people, tribe, language and nation across the globe.

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Following from this first point, it is telling that Dator never addresses, and indeed is probably totally unaware of, decisive facts concerning the legal history of TEC’s governing instruments, including the fact that TEC’s constitution was drafted by sophisticated lawyers who are recognized to this day as the key authors of American jurisprudence on legal hierarchy; that the crucial issue in TEC’s organization was dispensing with the oath of supremacy that was the essential prerequisite to being part of the Church of England””in other words, hierarchy was intentionally removed from TEC’s founding constitution, not inadvertently omitted or implicitly included; and that the largest state church, Virginia, was still under state control when TEC’s polity was first agreed, which shows that Virginia wouldhave been legally prohibited from agreeing to the kind of polity Dator claims to identify.

Notwithstanding these points and considering this dissertation on its own terms, it may come as a surprise to those who have only seen Dator’s conclusions summarized that as he goes through the constitutional features of TEC he generally finds them to be indicative of a federal or confederal structure.
For example:

— Equal representation of all dioceses in the House of Deputies “trends strongly in the direction of a federal, if not confederal, structure” (p. 114); ï‚· Voting by orders in the House of Deputies “does appear federal or confederal” (p. 128);

— Method of selecting bishops “could, by itself, be considered federal or decentralized unitary” (pp. 147-48);

–Territorial integrity of diocesan boundaries “may seem to tend towards either confederalism or federalism,” with each diocese viewed as “sovereign” (p. 148);

–Method of admission of new dioceses “may be seen to be federal or confederal” (p. 224);

–TEC judicial provisions are “more in keeping with a confederal than with either a federal or unitary government, especially since the system is made constitutionally mandatory” (pp. 179-80);

–Adoption of the first constitution: “the evidence up to 1789 shows that the approval of the conventions in the dioceses was obtained in establishing a government,” which he had previously identified as a key criterion or “the very test” of a federal or confederal government (pp. 93, 46);

–Financial and budgetary provisions “causes many to feel that [TEC] is a loosely knitconfederation of independent dioceses”¦the government of the church takes on in practice the character of a confederacy” (p.171);

–When representation and voting in the House of Deputies are considered together “a strong confederal presumption is suggested. Coupled with the vote by orders provision, the suggestion may seem overwhelming” (p.232).

Read it all (pages 71-76).

Here is one:

I am grateful for Charles M. Blow’s summary of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life survey on religious affiliation (“Defecting to Faith,” column, May 2). But I was surprised when he claimed that “science, logic and reason are on the side of the nonreligious.”

As one raised by atheist parents with college and graduate study in physics, plus a doctorate in the philosophy of religion from Columbia, I believe I know a thing or two about these items.
First, if you follow John Dewey in his assertion that “whatever introduces genuine perspective is religious,” then there is no such animal as the nonreligious. Furthermore, historians of science now know that biblical religion was a major factor in the rise of the empirical side of modern science.

Finally, since following Dewey and many others, if everyone has a worldview, whether implicit or explicit, and none can be proved to anyone else who does not share it, then we all “walk by faith, and not by sight,” as Paul put it.

Owen C. Thomas
Berkeley, Calif., May 2, 2009

The writer is professor emeritus of theology at the Episcopal Divinity School, Cambridge, Mass.

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As Taliban militants push deeper into Pakistan’s settled areas, foreign operatives of Al Qaeda who had focused on plotting attacks against the West are seizing on the turmoil to sow chaos in Pakistan and strengthen the hand of the militant Islamist groups there, according to American and Pakistani intelligence officials.

One indication came April 19, when a truck parked inside a Qaeda compound in South Waziristan, in Pakistan’s tribal areas, erupted in a fireball when it was struck by a C.I.A. missile. American intelligence officials say that the truck had been loaded with high explosives, apparently to be used as a bomb, and that while its ultimate target remains unclear, the bomb would have been more devastating than the suicide bombing that killed more than 50 people at the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad in September.

Al Qaeda’s leaders ”” a predominantly Arab group of Egyptians, Saudis and Yemenis, as well as other nationalities like Uzbeks ”” for years have nurtured ties to Pakistani militant groups like the Taliban operating in the mountains of Pakistan. The foreign operatives have historically set their sights on targets loftier than those selected by the local militant groups, aiming for spectacular attacks against the West, but they may see new opportunity in the recent violence.

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An Anglican Communion-wide project that will examine how Anglicans worldwide read and interpret Scripture will soon be launched.

The 14th Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) meeting on May 9 approved The Bible in the Life of the Church project, which was created in response to a proposal from the Windsor Report. Published in 2004 by the Lambeth Commission on Communion, the Windsor Report offered prescriptions on how the Anglican Communion could settle its deep divisions over the thorny issue of human sexuality.

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It is not short but you need to be aware of it, especially if you are interested or involved in questions of this sort.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: There’s a little-known multifaith initiative also working for Middle East peace, with support from the U.S. government and visiting delegations of American Christians, Muslims and Jews. They say there can never be peace in the Holy Land without strong relationships between religious leaders. Kim Lawton is in Jerusalem.

KIM LAWTON: Just outside of Bethlehem, an American group is touring the Aida Palestinian refugee camp. These are not typical Holy Land pilgrims. It’s is a delegation of Christian, Muslim and Jewish leaders who are part of an American faith-based initiative to bolster peace in this land of conflict. Former U.S. Ambassador Tony Hall is heading the initiative, along with Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

Ambassador TONY HALL: I don’t think any of us are under any illusions that we’re going to solve the peace problem, but we also realize that you can’t have peace without religious leaders, and that’s why we come here and try to build these relationships.

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David Loveless’ wife pulled him aside before he left the house one morning and gave him a talking-to. It was one of those “uh-oh” conversations that happen between husbands and wives.

Moments later, the senior pastor of Discovery Church in Orlando was still thinking about what it means to have a partner who can straighten you out when things start to swerve off course. So, using his BlackBerry, he posted a “tweet” on social-networking site Twitter, recounting the lesson he just learned and asking his followers whether they had somebody like that in their lives.

The use of social media ”” Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and podcasts ”” is changing the way churches communicate with their congregations. The church bulletin is not going away, but it’s being augmented by the instant, interactive communication of the laptop, iPhone and BlackBerry.

“It’s a better way to reach people where they are at these days,” said Adrian Traurig, who handles worship and creative arts for Journey Christian Church in Apopka. “It keeps people connected. We post all our events and all the happenings here at Journey.”

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There are those on the right side of the aisle, however, who believe that …[Archbishop Rowan Williams] simply made a human error of judgement in allowing the delaying amendments to be voted on. The problem with this charitable view is that he himself stated that it was section 4 ”“ the very section with disciplinary implications ”“ that needed to be revised because it was causing dissension in the Communion. As if there had not been dissension heretofore leading up to this meeting!

Fine, I am willing to concede that Rowan Williams may have slipped up, or been snookered, in slowing down the approval of the Covenant. If, however, he himself recognizes this to be the case, then I would expect him to appoint a select review group that will uphold the Ridley Cambridge Draft and report out to the JSC an unaltered text or at least one where the key provisions of section 4 (including section 4.1.5) are still in place. I shall then expect him to face down Katherine Jefferts Schori and other objectors on the JSC and see the Covenant through to approval so that it may go out to the Provinces.

If the above paragraphs sound skeptical, it is because many of us conservatives see so little evidence that we can count on Rowan Williams for anything. For instance, even though he signed the unanimous Dar Communiqué and pleaded with Bishop John Howard to refrain from forcing clergy and congregation out of their church home in Jacksonville (I almost slipped and said St. Augustine (!) because one of my former students, a Jamaican, was forced from his parish in that city by the same Bishop Howard), did he speak up in favor of the fourth moratorium? Did he vote for it? I don’t know, but if he did, it didn’t make the headlines.

So what should orthodox folk do, now that the Covenant hope has been extinguished or at best put on hold? First of all, do what we are called to do: worship God and love your neighbor. Beyond that, I hope that the GAFCON and Global South bishops at the international level and the ACNA and Communion Partners in North America can find ways of working together for the up-building and mission of the Church. With or without the Covenant, we need each other. Each of our movements has its assets and deficits and we can share them as the Apostle commends to his churches (2 Corinthians 8:13-15).

Whither the Covenant? I believe that we should pursue dual tracks. Ok, the Ridley Cambridge Draft is not dead; it is on life support. It is my hope that Rowan Williams will repent of his mistake in Jamaica. I hope that “communion conservatives,” like the Anglican Communion Institute, will make a strong case for keeping the Draft exactly as is. I hope that Henry Orombi will attend the JSC meeting at the end of this year and insist on keeping the Covenant strong.

At the same time, I hope that the Global South movement ”“ those identified with the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans and those not so identified ”“ will resume its leadership on the Covenant. On the one hand, it can be patient and pressure Lambeth Palace not to change the text. On other hand, it can consider making the text stronger: by adding some elements from the Jerusalem Declaration and making the enforcement clauses even stronger. If the Covenant is not resuscitated by the end of the year, the Global South can ready a new Covenant ”“ a resurrection, as it were ”“ that will serve the mission of the Anglican Communion in the “Global Anglican Future.”

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More than a century ago, German-American Protestants raised a Gothic sanctuary of stone, stained glass and painstakingly carved woodwork on West Jefferson Street in the Russell neighborhood. On holidays, worshippers would overflow its 500 seats.

But by 2006, St. Peter’s Evangelical United Church of Christ was down to about 15 active members, most of them elderly and commuting from other neighborhoods.

Endowment funds left by deceased members, which had kept the church solvent, were running out. The church, with its rich history, had to decide if it was willing to accept a radically different future — or no future at all.

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View the voting here and his profile there (pages 3-8).

After a break and amid much confusion, the Chairman then announced that the entire resolution had passed even though there is no evidence it had even been voted on, the previous votes having been to amend the resolution, not pass it. If the position is that the individual clauses were enacted separately, is there any evidence that this was understood by the members prior to the vote?

These events unfolded live on Anglican TV to people watching around the world. It is beyond question that these procedures were improper, confusing and manipulative. The credibility of the ACC, already questioned by the Communion’s own advisory groups, has suffered lasting damage.

Two actions are required as a matter of urgency:

1. This issue must be re-visited immediately by the ACC and voted upon in a lawful and proper manner during this meeting. The alternative is moving forward with lasting questions as to the legitimacy of the entire process. Is this in doubt?
2. An explanation must be offered by those in charge of these proceedings, including the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Chairman of the ACC, as to how such manifestly improper procedures were permitted to unfold from the outset of Friday’s session and, indeed, of ACC-14 itself. It appears to us that things descended into chaos and no one stopped and sought to bring things to order.

If lawful and proper action on the covenant is not forthcoming from this meeting of the Council, the only appropriate response is for the Churches of the Communion to begin themselves the process of adopting the Ridley Cambridge Text.

The degree of mismanagement and poor leadership involved in this debacle simply staggers the imagination. Read it all.

Dear friends, let us return to the words of Jesus in today’s Gospel. I believe that they contain a special message for you, his faithful flock in these lands where he once dwelt. “The good shepherd”, he tells us, “lays down his life for his sheep.” At the beginning of this Mass, we asked the Father to “give us new strength from the courage of Christ our shepherd”, who remained steadfast in fidelity to the Father’s will (cf. Opening Prayer, Mass of the Fourth Sunday of Easter). May the courage of Christ our shepherd inspire and sustain you daily in your efforts to bear witness to the Christian faith and to maintain the Church’s presence in the changing social fabric of these ancient lands.

Fidelity to your Christian roots, fidelity to the Church’s mission in the Holy Land, demands of each of you a particular kind of courage: the courage of conviction, born of personal faith, not mere social convention or family tradition; the courage to engage in dialogue and to work side by side with other Christians in the service of the Gospel and solidarity with the poor, the displaced, and the victims of profound human tragedies; the courage to build new bridges to enable a fruitful encounter of people of different religions and cultures, and thus to enrich the fabric of society. It also means bearing witness to the love which inspires us to “lay down” our lives in the service of others, and thus to counter ways of thinking which justify “taking” innocent lives.

“I am the good shepherd; I know my own, and my own know me” (Jn 10:14). Rejoice that the Lord has made you members of his flock and knows each of you by name! Follow him with joy and let him guide you in all your ways. Jesus knows what challenges you face, what trials you endure, and the good that you do in his name. Trust in him, in his enduring love for all the members of his flock, and persevere in your witness to the triumph of his love.

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Parliament’s moral authority has slumped to its “lowest ebb in living memory”, former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey has said.

Lord Carey told the News of the World that recent leaked reports about MPs’ expenses had shaken trust in politics.

He said the revelations had exposed the “clawing greed” at the heart of Westminster’s “culture of abuse”.

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The Very Rev. William Noble McKeachie retired as the fifth dean of the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina and rector of its Cathedral Church on May 1, after serving in Charleston for 14 years.

McKeachie has accepted a part-time appointment as pastoral associate at St. Andrew’s Parish in Fort Worth, Texas, where he has maintained a long relationship.

He has been active in the religious and civic life of Charleston, serving as president of the Society for the Advancement of Christianity, as president of the Christian-Jewish Council and in a variety of other capacities.

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[Peet] Dickinson plays bluegrass guitar. It’s a way to evangelize through music, he says. For years he sang in church choirs. But don’t assume he’s all hipster and not a serious traditionalist. He’s both: well-grounded in Orthodox Anglicanism and well-attuned to the tastes of young people, he says.

Johnny Wallace, senior warden of the cathedral and chairman of the search committee, said the church began looking for a new leader last summer, considered applications from 10 candidates and settled on Dickinson after Bishop Mark Lawrence helped narrow down the field to four. The bishop interviewed each of the finalists.

Wallace said the congregation was “looking for someone to be at the cathedral for a long time.” Dickinson, who is married with a 5-year-old daughter, was just the sort of family man they were looking for, Wallace said, also citing the young priest’s Orthodox leanings, evangelism and varied tastes in music and worship styles. (The cathedral offers both a traditional and contemporary service at 10:30 a.m. Sundays.)

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So was this a conspiracy or was it a cock-up? Whichever it was it is a case study of how to win if you are a minority in a meeting. If matters are going against you, get a team to work, introduce endless amendments to the resolution you do not like to spin out the debate, introduce a competing proposal, have a chair who is known to be on your side who has a vote and allows discussion of the proposal out of order, a person to present the material as a formal amendment, the president of the meeting to point out to people what is being intended, and also to interpret to the meeting its own decisions in a way that would allow this intention to come to fruition, and a chair who proceeds swiftly to a vote on this amendment having allowed extensive debate on the first resolution that was thought would be cleared out of the way quickly.

And what is the de facto result? Those facing litigation in the courts over property cannot appeal to an Anglican Communion Covenant which would give them the moral high ground in their cases by showing their continuity with historic Anglicanism; and General Convention can proceed with numerous resolutions which overturn the effective teaching of the Anglican Church with no opportunity for people to argue that this would be against the Covenant that ACC has accepted.

On the one hand is the property and keeping TEC, a major funder of the Anglican Communion Office and its projects, onside; on the other is affirming and embracing the historic faith as Anglicans have received and understood it. The ACC is split down the middle on the matter. Yet again an instrument of Communion has proved unable to deal with the crisis in the Communion.

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Words

The world does not need words. It articulates itself
in sunlight, leaves, and shadows. The stones on the path
are no less real for lying uncatalogued and uncounted.
The fluent leaves speak only the dialect of pure being.
The kiss is still fully itself though no words were spoken.

And one word transforms it into something less or other””
illicit, chaste, perfunctory, conjugal, covert.
Even calling it a kiss betrays the fluster of hands
glancing the skin or gripping a shoulder, the slow
arching of neck or knee, the silent touching of tongues.

Yet the stones remain less real to those who cannot
name them, or read the mute syllables graven in silica.
To see a red stone is less than seeing it as jasper””
metamorphic quartz, cousin to the flint the Kiowa
carved as arrowheads. To name is to know and remember.

The sunlight needs no praise piercing the rainclouds,
painting the rocks and leaves with light, then dissolving
each lucent droplet back into the clouds that engendered it.
The daylight needs no praise, and so we praise it always””
greater than ourselves and all the airy words we summon.

–Dana Gioia (1950- )

The U.S. Treasury auction of long-term bonds on Thursday was “terrible”, in the words of one Wall Street economist, with the rate on the 30 year bond jumping from 4.1 to 4.3 percent. This is just the first sign that the debt-based Obama economic stimulus plan is about to become a major drag on the recovery, just as expected.

The economic news is not all bad. We are seeing signs the rate of contraction is abating quickly, promising a bottom to the recession sometime this summer as many forecasters have expected. But therein lies another piece of the interest rate puzzle, and the trouble ahead.

There are two critical consequences to the economy stabilizing. The first is that the massive liquidity injected into credit markets by the Federal Reserve and central banks around the world transforms from economic medicine to inflationary heroin. Central banks are going to face a difficult task of extracting the excess liquidity before inflation soars and without causing another recession. Doubt about the fight against soaring inflation means higher inflation premiums in interest rates.

The second dangerous consequence is that President Obama is on course to double the national debt in just four years….

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“We want the rest of the church to know that our bishop has our support,” said the Very Rev. Peter J.A. Cook, president of the Western Louisiana standing committee and rector of St. Michael and All Angels’ Church, Lake Charles. He added that the standing committee and the bishop have no plans to leave, but are committed to working for reform from within the church.

Fr. Cook said the statement also was intended to prepare the diocese for the possibility that it will need to approve the proposed Anglican Covenant on its own if General Convention fails to do so when it meets in Anaheim later this summer.

“If General Convention does not approve the Covenant or fails to consider it, I’d be most surprised if our diocese did not take up a resolution to approve it for ourselves with the encouragement of our bishop,” he said.

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Visiting a mosque on the second day of his closely watched first visit to the Holy Land, Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday denounced the “ideological manipulation of religion” and called for greater understanding between the Christian and Muslim faiths.

Speaking outside Al-Hussein bin-Talal mosque in Amman, Benedict said that because of “the burden of our common history so often marked by misunderstanding,” Christians and Muslims alike should “strive to be seen” as faithful worshipers of God.

In a speech that also touched on a central theme of his papacy and thought, the tension between faith and reason, Benedict said that “the ideological manipulation of religion, sometimes for political ends,” was often “the real catalyst for tension and division, and at times even violence in society.”

Relations between the Vatican and Muslims were strained in 2006 when, in a speech in Regensburg, Germany, Benedict quoted a Byzantine emperor who said Islam had brought things “evil and inhuman.”

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When [Bishop John David] Schofield broke off from the Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin around Christmas in 2007 because he opposed the denomination’s decision to appoint women as bishops and support of same-sex marriage, a handful of churches split with him.

They called themselves Anglican after the schism and claimed membership with a newly formed Fresno-based diocese led by Schofield. Church leaders deemed too liberal by Schofield within the separated diocese were slowly replaced with more conservative leaders.

St. Mark’s, though, was left in the lurch. It took more than a year for the congregation to find a priest. The instability drove away many members and took an emotional toll on those who stayed.

“A deep, dark depression settled over everyone at first,” said Carolyn Barth, 74, Marvin’s wife and a senior warden for the Anglican side of St. Mark’s. “It took a while for us to move on from that.”

In San Joaquin County, St. Ann’s in Stockton and St. Mary’s in Manteca sided with Schofield. About one-third of St. Mark’s congregation stuck with the national Episcopalian denomination, while the rest turned Anglican.

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Russia on Saturday sternly warned its foes not to dare attempt any aggression against the country, as it put on a Soviet-style show of military might in Red Square including nuclear capable missiles.

The display to mark the 64th anniversary of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in World War II came amid renewed tensions with Georgia after NATO’s decision to hold war games in the Caucasus country infuriated Moscow.

“We are sure that any aggression against our citizens will be given a worthy reply,” President Dmitry Medvedev said in a speech in Red Square side-by-side with powerful Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

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Elizabeth and I made it to a showing last evening. Crisp and clever–KSH

The Federal Reserve significantly scaled back the size of the capital hole facing some of the nation’s biggest banks shortly before concluding its stress tests, following two weeks of intense bargaining.

In addition, according to bank and government officials, the Fed used a different measurement of bank-capital levels than analysts and investors had been expecting, resulting in much smaller capital deficits.

The overall reaction to the stress tests, announced Thursday, has been generally positive. But the haggling between the government and the banks shows the sometimes-tense nature of the negotiations that occurred before the final results were made public.

I remain uncomfortable with it all. Read the whole article–KSH.

The formula for restoring national confidence ”” part good policy, part good politics, part good luck ”” can be hard to find. It eluded Herbert Hoover after the Crash of ’29, Lyndon B. Johnson after the Tet offensive, Jimmy Carter after the energy shock and George W. Bush after Iraq turned from quick victory to bloody insurgency.

But President Obama has to try to do just that in a time of crisis. As the government announced this week that the nation’s largest banks had steered away from the precipice and that job losses were beginning to slow, Mr. Obama has carefully begun trying to mine any national leader’s most precious commodity in a crisis: optimism.

His past references to “glimmers of hope” were modestly upgraded at the White House on Friday, with his declaration ”” which he stumbled over, taking some of the assertiveness out of the line ”” that “the gears of our economic engine do appear to be slowly turning once again.”

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The rats are out in spades this spring in North Allston, a gritty neighborhood wedged between the Charles River and the Massachusetts Turnpike, and residents are blaming Harvard.

Harvard had big plans to expand its campus into Allston with a science complex. But last winter, the university announced that the recession would force it to slow ”” perhaps even halt ”” the $1 billion project. Now Allston residents are living with a gaping hole and a bunch of vacant buildings instead of the prospect of a revitalized neighborhood.

They are not alone in feeling burned by a university. As endowments everywhere sink with the economy, town-gown relationships, often carefully nurtured during the boom years as colleges and universities sought to expand, are fraying.

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