As Pope Benedict XVI makes final preparations to embark on 8 May on a week-long pilgrimage to the Holy Land to pray for peace in the Middle East, his planned visit to the region has already become the latest trigger for new Israeli-Palestinian tensions.

Various reports in the last few days said Israeli authorities and Palestinian Christians were embroiled in disputes over security issues surrounding at least two papal events.

The first has concerned the location of the platform the Pope is to stand on when he visits the Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem on 13 May. According to an Associated Press report last week, Israel was demanding that Palestinian organisers stop building the platform and an amphitheatre because they were too close to the large cement wall that is part of Israel’s West Bank separation barrier. Israeli authorities said the Palestinians had not acquired the necessary permits to build the structures. They said their proximity to the wall posed a security threat.

Read it all.

More than a hundred rabbis of various denominations will sign a message welcoming Benedict XVI to the Holy Land and encouraging dialogue between Jews and Christians.

The presidents of the International Foundation for Interreligious and Intercultural Education, Adalberta and Armando Bernardini, told ZENIT that the message is due to be published on the Web site of an Israeli newspaper, “Ha’Arezt.”

The initiative is being promoted by one of the foundation’s members, Rabbi Jack Bemporard, also director of the New Jersey based Center for Interreligious Understanding.

From May 8 to 15 the Pope will visit the Holy Land, Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian territories, in a visit described by the government of Israel as a “bridge for peace.”

Read it all.

When the Rev. James Merritt wants to talk about the environment, he does what any good Baptist preacher would do. He picks up the Bible.

“The first assignment that God gave to Adam was to take care of the Garden,” said Merritt, who was president of the Nashville-based Southern Baptist Convention from 2000-02. “As far as I know, that job has never been revoked.”

While most Christian ministers agree that human beings are to care for creation, they disagree on the details. That’s especially true about the topic of global warming.

Read it all.

Travellers quarantined in a Hong Kong hotel for a week after a Mexican guest tested positive for the H1N1 flu expressed dismay on Saturday at the tough steps, while an infectious disease expert said the authorities had over-reacted.

Police wearing surgical masks sealed off the Metropark hotel on Friday night after test results on the 25-year-old Mexican man were confirmed, ordering approximately 200 guests and 100 staff to stay in the hotel for the next seven days.

The measures taken by the authorities in Hong Kong underscore the concern here about the new flu and the confirmed case, Asia’s first. Hong Kong was badly hit by the SARS virus in 2003 and has had many episodes of H5N1 bird flu for more than a decade.

Read it all.

Thousands of children will be making their first Communions in Catholic churches across the region this weekend, their first opportunity to partake in what Catholics believe is the body and blood of Christ.

But the ceremonies may not go off exactly as planned for some, as churches consider suspending the communal cup for sacramental wine, along with other precautions to stem the spread of the swine flu.

Concerns about a possible swine flu pandemic spread through Wisconsin houses of worship this week, where leaders were taking steps to educate their congregations and minimize any potential spread.

Read it all.

Madeline Gianforte sees no conflict between the vows she took as a Catholic Sister of St. Agnes and her role as a master of reiki, a Japanese healing practice.

But her church does.

Co-founder of the natural healing center CORE/El Centro on Milwaukee’s south side, Gianforte employs reiki to help clients work through pain, both physical and emotional.

“It’s a very spiritual, very prayerful experience for people,” said Gianforte, one of a number of Catholic practitioners in southeastern Wisconsin. “It’s about finding balance between the body, mind and spirit.”

Read it all.

What other religious leaders are saying about the teachings of the Rev. Kevin G. Thew Forrester, the bishop-elect of Northern Michigan: “I don’t really see what there is left to say – the unique incarnation, saving death, bodily resurrection and universal lordship of Jesus are basic to Christian faith and to question that means you are disqualified from being an upholder of that faith in any official capacity in the church. That such a man should be considered even a possibility for a bishop is quite simply extraordinary.” – The right Rev. N.T. Wright, lord bishop of Durham, England “I think [Thew Forrester is] solidly a Christian believer, a disciple of Jesus Christ and will be a faithful bishop. … I don’t think he’s outside the tent of acceptable theological thinking and understanding.” – The right Rev. Tom Ely, bishop of Vermont “This gentleman, apparently, doesn’t believe the creeds. … The doctrine of redemption through the incarnation and atoning work and resurrection and heavenly reign at present and future return of the second person of the Godhead: That is Christianity. Take that away and you have destroyed the Christian religion. Period. That’s what Christianity is about.” – Regent College Professor of Theology J.I. Packer

Read it all.

A year ago, when a doctor finally diagnosed the brain disease that had been making it harder for her to walk without falling, Rona Zelniker told her son and daughter that she was going to end her life while she still could, before complete disability set in.

Her children were grateful for the way she prepared them, and for the time they had together at the end. “I must have cried 150 times in the last year,” said Keith Zelniker, 32, her son. He scheduled off the week she was planning to die, writing on his work calendar, “bereavement time.”

Zelniker felt anxiety about how she would end her life. She didn’t want to swallow pills, only to wake up even worse off, with brain damage. A gun was out of the question.

Read it all.

At a trendy pub in this cosmopolitan IT capital, Hemangini Gupta, 28, and some of her girlfriends were recently relaxing with cocktails after work. A group of Hindu men later followed them outside, verbally accosting them for drinking in a public bar and for wearing jeans.

“These guys went psycho,” Gupta said. “This isn’t Afghanistan. But here in Bangalore, as a young woman on the streets, if you are driving a car or in a pub or dressed a certain way, you just feel this rising anger.”

The incident was mild compared with some of the violent assaults on women that have taken place here. The attacks are part of what many see as rising Hindu extremism in much of the country over the past few years, especially in places such as Bangalore, precisely because it is a bastion of India’s fast-changing culture. Bangalore is home to an explosion of software companies, a lively heavy-metal rock music scene and burgeoning gay rights and environmental movements.

Read it all.

This is not the first time that Mr. [Brian] McLaren has singled out Anglican churches as perhaps best suited for worldwide evangelism in the 21st century. During his plenary address to bishops and spouses at the Lambeth Conference in July, he said the Anglican Communion, with its worldwide network of episcopally led, locally governed churches, is the prime candidate to bring culturally divergent people into a closer relationship with a church community.

But if that opportunity is to be grasped, he said this week, bold and critical action is needed by a cohort of creative and courageous bishops. These bishops must create “a zone of innovation and empowerment, a zone in which creative young and emerging leaders can be supported to plant new faith communities relevant to the needs of young adults.” Such a move, Mr. McLaren said, could do for the 21st century Episcopal Church what the Church of England failed to do for the followers of John Wesley in the 19th century.

Read it all.

“What would you say to someone who is hesitant to invest in Sudan’s schools or health clinics given the likelihood that violence will return to Sudan?” My colleague was addressing Archbishop Daniel Deng Bul of the Episcopal Church of Sudan during a Lambeth roundtable on the church’s needs in his country. Archbishop Deng replied, “It is only by building schools and health clinics and supporting sustainable agriculture that we will have a chance that peace will come at last in Sudan.”

My colleague expressed what many of us were thinking. We worry about investing in infrastructure that may be destroyed by the violence of militias; we wanted reassurances. Yet Deng’s response was compelling. He pointed to the significance of visible institutions that form and support Christian leadership and care, thus bearing witness to God’s healing, redemptive love. He knows his people need them.

I found my heart breaking as I talked with Sudanese leaders who told stories of recurrent violence and of battalions mobilizing in violation of the fragile peace agreement. Would elections be held as planned? What would make the most sense in the face of so much violence?

Read it all.

Watch it all.

Watch it all.

On a day when state health officials cautiously declared the swine flu an epidemic in South Carolina, county schools superintendent Bennie Bennett was trying to convince a Bishopville baseball team it was safe to play in Newberry.

But after nonstop media coverage following a group of private school students’ trip to Cancun, Mexico, two weeks ago, fears of the disease had grown so much that janitors wearing surgical masks spent the afternoon wiping down third-grade classrooms in Newberry with nonacidic disinfectant bathroom cleaner ”” even though no students there were infected.

Newberry County’s 6,000 public school students are at home today. A cancer research fundraiser that had amassed $120,000 in early pledges is canceled.

Read it all.

Officials from the World Health Organization today cautioned the public against jumping to any conclusions about the virulence of the swineflu virus, and President Obama said that since the disease is caused by a new strain of the influenza virus, officials are concerned that it could cause more serious disease as it spreads.

Some observers have questioned whether reports have been too alarmist about the new virus, which, outside of Mexico, has resulted in relatively mild symptoms. But Gregory Hartl, spokesman for the WHO, told reporters in a conference call that the devastating Spanish Influenza started out very mild in the spring of 1918, “only to reappear in the autumn of 1918 with a vengeance.” That epidemic killed at least 50 million people around the globe.

He went on: “It would be remiss of us not to take this extremely seriously. If, at the end of the day, it remains a mild pandemic, or if we could somehow avert the worst of the disease, or stop the worst of the disease, that would be fantastic.”

Read it all.

First, the document is consonant with my understanding of our Church’s polity which I first encountered in Powell Mills Dawley’s The Episcopal Church and its Work (the last volume in the first Church Teaching Series, see p. 115-16) while as a layperson, new to the Protestant Episcopal Church in the early 1970s, being trained to be a lay reader. Further reading in our history during seminary and while teaching courses on The Episcopal Ethos at San Joaquin School for Ministry and in Adult classes in the parish has only confirmed what Dr. Dawley wrote almost fifty years ago.

Secondly, this statement of the bishops is also in keeping with the resolution that the Standing Committee and I brought before our recent Diocesan Convention and which was subsequently passed, “Resolution 1: Proposed Anglican Covenant”. It is, among other things, seeking to defend the authority of dioceses to sign onto the Anglican Covenant should other bodies in TEC choose not to.

Thirdly, it is in all of our interests not to have our polity and heritage redefined by civil courts in litigation with departing dioceses without a more thorough vetting of our Church’s history and polity, as well as the larger Communion’s ecclesial reflections.

Read it all.

Check it out.

All of this is salutary and worth the attention of the Church in general. Nevertheless, we think there is a larger problem facing the church when it comes to thinking and reflecting upon issues of such magnitude as war and peace. That is, we Christians, as a group are not well formed or prepared to speak, to listen and to argue about such matters in ways that reflect the true riches of the Christian tradition. Rather than issue one more statement, it seems to us that the most urgent questions facing the General Convention, and indeed all Christians, are not whether or not just war thinking needs to be updated because of the changing shape of war. Instead, we would urge the bishops to take the lead in offering churches a pedagogy for Christian citizenship.

A first step would be confessing how poorly we have managed this task when we take it up at all. We have too often not considered our duties as Christian citizens to our fellow-citizens in the kingdom of God and in the United States. We have not truly taken up the responsibilities that come with the vast worldly power that the United States has enjoyed, and continues to enjoy, for our fellow Christians around the world and for humanity as a whole, our neighbors in Christ. We have not acted in our capacity as citizens to take due care for how our nation reflects God’s will to care for the least and the lost, both at home and abroad. We have failed in our fundamental responsibilities to care for creation. For all these things, we are truly sorry and we humbly repent.As ever, our repentance must take the form of a renewed and more serious intent to do better. We can do this by thinking in new and deeper ways about the relationship between our roles as citizens of this worldly kingdom and our more fundamental vocation as citizens of the kingdom of heaven. It is for this we need a new pedagogy for Christian citizenship.

Read it all.

What Mozart had, we now believe, was the same thing Tiger Woods had ”” the ability to focus for long periods of time and a father intent on improving his skills. Mozart played a lot of piano at a very young age, so he got his 10,000 hours of practice in early and then he built from there.

The latest research suggests a more prosaic, democratic, even puritanical view of the world. The key factor separating geniuses from the merely accomplished is not a divine spark. It’s not I.Q., a generally bad predictor of success, even in realms like chess. Instead, it’s deliberate practice. Top performers spend more hours (many more hours) rigorously practicing their craft.

Read it all.

In 1998, the year Hugo Chavez was elected president, there were 22,000 Jews in Venezuela. Today the Jewish population is estimated at between 10,000 and 15,000.

Those numbers tell a story, and it’s not a happy one. The Jews of Venezuela are fleeing to Miami, Madrid and elsewhere because of the anti-Semitism they face at home. In an interview this week in Washington, D.C., the country’s chief rabbi sounds a warning bell: “There’s anxiety in the Jewish community because of what has happened,” says Rabbi Pynchas Bremer, “and of course because of what may happen.”

Mr. Chavez’s vitriol about Jews is well documented and of long standing. In recent years he has referred to Venezuelan Jews as “descendants of the same ones who crucified Christ” and “a minority [that] has taken ownership of all the gold of the planet.” According to Shmuel Herzfeld, a Washington, D.C., rabbi who visited Venezuela in March: “Chavez is isolating the Jews and turning Venezuelans against the Jewish community. . . . The government is transforming a society that has been welcoming and accepting of Jews” in the past. Rabbi Bremer, who has lived in Venezuela for more than 40 years, says that he had never personally encountered anti-Semitism or heard of anti-Semitic incidents until recently.

Read it all.

In other words, without the impact of slowing imports, annualized GDP contraction would have been about 12%.

As is so often the case, the picture is terribly instructive….

Read it all.

Young evangelical leaders on Tuesday announced a national initiative to enlist Christians online and in schools and churches to make a moral case for nuclear disarmament.

“I know when most people think of the elimination of nuclear weapons, they think of tie-dyed activists,” said Tyler Wigg Stevenson, a 31-year-old Baptist pastor.

Stevenson, who outlined his Two Futures Project during a religious conference in Austin, said many under-40 evangelicals see nuclear disarmament as consistent with their values agenda.

Read it all.

Compared with previous generations, the youngest of today’s adult Catholics are less likely to have celebrated the sacraments that provide the foundation of the faith.

A growing minority of self-identified Catholic adults haven’t made their first reconciliation, received their First Communion or been confirmed, according to research from the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University.

The sacraments are at the heart of what it means to be Catholic, said Mark Gray, a CARA researcher. If fewer parents are anchoring their children in Catholicism through the sacraments, the result could be a smaller church.

Read it all.

He is Dr Eliud Wabukala, who is 58, has been Bishop of Bungoma since in 1996, and chairs the National Council of Churches of Kenya. Bungoma has a diocesan link with Peterborough. The Bishop of Peterborough, the Rt Revd Ian Cundy, described Dr Wabukala on Tuesday as “a reconciler both polit­ically in the country and within the House of Bishops”. He succeeds Arch­bishop Benjamin Nzimbi.

Thousands of Christians are re­ported to have thronged the streets of Bungoma to welcome the Archbishop-elect on his return home from the election. The election process at All Saints’ Cathedral in Nairobi last Friday was described by the local press as “peaceful, joyous and orderly”.

Read it all.

Justice David Souter is planning to retire after nearly two decades on the Supreme Court, but his departure is unlikely to change its conservative-liberal split.

President Barack Obama’s first pick for the high court is likely to be a liberal-leaning nominee, much like Souter.

The White House has been told that Souter will retire in June, when the court finishes its work for the summer, a source familiar with his plans said Thursday night. The retirement is likely to take effect only once a successor is confirmed.

The source spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak for Souter.

Read it all.

Still, the tea parties are not based on the cold wonkery of budget data. They are based on an “ethical populism.” The protesters are homeowners who didn’t walk away from their mortgages, small business owners who don’t want corporate welfare and bankers who kept their heads during the frenzy and don’t need bailouts. They were the people who were doing the important things right — and who are now watching elected politicians reward those who did the important things wrong.

Voices in the media, academia, and the government will dismiss this ethical populism as a fringe movement — maybe even dangerous extremism. In truth, free markets, limited government, and entrepreneurship are still a majoritarian taste. In March 2009, the Pew Research Center asked people if we are better off “in a free market economy even though there may be severe ups and downs from time to time.” Fully 70% agreed, versus 20% who disagreed.

Read it all.

For years, field trips have linked core subjects to destinations outside the classroom. Now they are being met with increased scrutiny nationwide as public schools deal with budget shortfalls.

The Maize School District in a suburb of Wichita, suspended field trips in February for the remainder of the year, says Karen McDermott, a school spokeswoman.

The action was in response to a midyear cut by the state Legislature, and though it will save $30,000, it means students learning about the universe won’t see it unfold at the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center.

Read it all.

We stand by the Prayer-book and by the church as that book gives it to us.–We teach the faith of the creeds. We set forth the church as catholic, as the creeds teach us.

We celebrate the holy sacrament with a reverent and proper ritual, well recognized as lawful and which is actually the use in numbers of our churches here. We sympathize with all that is true in the great catholic revival of to-day. I…speak after no consultation with the men in the field and with no other authority than that of being their fellow worker. I do not think they would disavow this, if this be “ritualism.”

To me the services at St. John’s seem cold and stiff. We walk in the fetters of Western ideas and formulas unsuited to an Asiatic nation. To their minds our services must seem cold. To their minds used to the outward expression of religious sentiments an ornate ritual which we could not use would seem inexpressive, and the scanty symbolism which we actually offer must be greatly inadequate. [Other missions far outstripping ours in results have no ritual whatever, showing conclusively that it is the gospel that is wanted and not ritual.]

It is time that the church should cease speaking of high and low and all that, and set itself to the task of converting China.

—F.R. Graves in a Letter to the Southern Churchman, September 15, 1883; emphasis mine

High school students, beware! College admissions and financial aid officers in California and elsewhere may be peeking over your digital shoulder at the personal information you post on your Facebook or MySpace page.

And they might decide to toss out your application after reading what you wrote about that cool party last week or how you want to conduct your romantic life at college.

According to a new report by the National Assn. for College Admission Counseling, about a quarter of U.S. colleges reported doing some research about applicants on social networking sites or through Internet search engines….

Read it all.

Newberry public schools will close Friday in the wake of an outbreak of swine flu at a private school nearby.

Officials in the school system, which includes Newberry High School and Mid-Carolina High School, decided to suspend classes as South Carolina health officials got confirmation today from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of least 13 cases of swine flu in the state. The number of suspected cases is expected to grow.

The cases afflicted students and parents connected with the private Newberry Academy. Many of the students returned from Mexico earlier this month.

Read it all.