[color=red]UPDATE[/color]: We’ve now uploaded an Excel spreadsheet with all of this data, so you armchair statisticians can do further analysis yourselves. You will find every year’s ASA data for each diocese, calculations as to relative change in ASA and in diocesan size ranking, several tables providing summary data, and 3 graphs. (The worksheet has 3 pages).

View or download the Excel spreadsheet here: {filedir_4}ECUSA_1992-2007_attend.xls

***
T19 reader Karen B. has reviewed the 15-year trend in attendance (Average Sunday Attendance or ASA) data for the Episcopal church and circulated her findings via e-mail. The results are striking:

For TEC domestic dioceses
Total ASA change: 1992 – 1997 = 2,005 (0.2% increase)
Total ASA change: 1997 – 2002 = 5,195 (0.6% increase)
Total ASA change: 2002 – 2007 = -118,818 (-14% DECREASE)

Put it this way. Look at the 10 year increase between 1992 – 2002 of 7,200 attendees. It would take 16.5 such 10 year periods (i.e. 165 years!) to make up the ASA decrease since 2002. WOW.

Data is based on ASA data for TEC domestic dioceses only.

A few more interesting tidbits re: the 15 year ASA trend data:
44 dioceses grew from 1992-1997
42 dioceses grew from 1997-2002
1 diocese grew from 2002-2007 (South Carolina at 1.8%)

For the 15 year period as a whole (1992-2007), 9 dioceses grew:
South Carolina (33%)
Tennessee (23%)
Western North Carolina (10%)
North Carolina (10%)
Texas (8.5%)
Atlanta (7%)
East Carolina (6.5%)
Alaska (4%)
Utah (1%)

The worst 10 dioceses over the 15 years (each of these 10 dioceses has had an attendance decrease of 30-40%):
Navaho Missions, Western New York, Northern Michigan, Northwest Texas, Central New York, Eastern Michigan, Western Kansas, Rochester, Quincy, Western Massachusetts

See also the Stand Firm discussion thread on this data (the comments offer some comparison data regarding attendance trends in other mainline denominations).

Note: All data was originally downloaded from the TEC website. (two PDF files: 1992 – 2002, and 1997-2007). The 1992-2002 PDF file (Dr. Kirk Hadaway’s cleaned and corrected data) no longer seems to be online. I originally downloaded it from this link.

[We elves have uploaded the PDF file Karen sent us. You can now find the 1992-2002 ASA data here.]

The 1997 – 2007 ASA data is available from TEC here.

Ok, define the following terms:

elbedritsch

flea in one’s ear

honeyfuggle

mulligrubs

monkey’s wedding

devil’s strip

Read or listen to it all to find the answers.

When Jennifer Garcia scheduled the birth of her daughter at South Miami Hospital, nurses asked her an unusual question: “After your baby is born, are you willing to donate the umbilical cord to save someone’s life?”

She said yes: “What’s the point of throwing it in the trash if it can help other people?”

When Natalia Garcia, seven pounds six ounces, arrived at 3:56 p.m. on a recent Wednesday, the blood from the cord and placenta ”” about a quarter cup ”” was collected by those nurses, working in the hospital’s new public Cord Blood Donation Center.

They flew it to a lab at Duke University in North Carolina, and the stem cells were spun off and stored at minus 320 degrees Fahrenheit. The cells became part of a rapidly growing national bank of cord blood stem cells waiting to treat patients with leukemia, lymphoma, multiple myeloma, aplastic anemia, sickle cell and other diseases.

Read it all from the front page of the local paper.

For a time on Friday, it seemed that Mousavi might be able to call for an uprising in Tehran. But the moment passed when Ahmadinejad’s security forces on motorcycles intervened. And that leaves the West with its worst-case scenario: a democratically elected anti-liberal.

Western democracies assume that publics will elect liberals who will protect their rights. In reality, it’s a more complicated world. Hitler is the classic example of someone who came to power constitutionally, and then proceeded to gut the constitution. Similarly, Ahmadinejad’s victory is a triumph of both democracy and repression.

The question now is what will happen next. Internally, we can expect Ahmadinejad to consolidate his position under the cover of anti-corruption. He wants to clean up the ayatollahs, many of whom are his enemies. He will need the support of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. This election has made Ahmadinejad a powerful president, perhaps the most powerful in Iran since the revolution. Ahmadinejad does not want to challenge Khamenei, and we suspect that Khamenei will not want to challenge Ahmadinejad. A forced marriage is emerging, one which may place many other religious leaders in a difficult position.

Read it all.

What is the crux of your argument about the import­ance of eyewitnesses in the Gospel stories?

Richard Bauckham: The central idea is to put the eyewitnesses back into our thinking about how the Gospels originated. My argument is that they are not just people who started a long process of tradition that eventually took form in the written Gospels. They must have been people who had known Jesus and stayed around, who were well known in the Early Church ”” people you would go to if you wanted to learn about Jesus’s teach­ings or Jesus’s life.

If you think about the eyewitnesses in this way, it helps you to think differently about the process of oral tradition, and it becomes a great deal more likely the Gospel-writers would have been in a direct, or very close relationship, with the eyewit­nesses.

–Richard Bauckham speaking about his Michael Ramsey award winning book in this week’s Church Times (it is subscription only so I cannot link until next week)

Ryan finds the minister’s sermons “pretty interesting.” The coffees afterward are “pretty average,” he said. “We sit around and talk to a few people, talk to the priest a little bit.” When asked if he knows why his dad stopped going to church, Ryan said, “He probably just one day was watching a Mets game, said ”˜I don’t want to go to church’ and just stopped going.”

Among the many reasons Ryan wanted to go: he’s a big reader, enjoys fantasy literature and has seen theories suggesting the world may end in 2013 due to the configuration of magnetic forces. In that case, he said, it would be nice to be on good terms with God.

“I’ve come to look forward to Sunday morning,” Mr. Sweeney said. “The newspaper, the chores ”” all the other plans and good intentions can wait. It is a nice way to spend a couple of hours with my son and get him out of his room and off the computer. I reflect on the week.”

Read it all.

But others decried the largely Internet-driven campaign to challenge Thew Forrester’s fitness, warning that future bishop-elects will face the kind of scrutiny previously reserved for Supreme Court nominees.

Retired Bishop of Eastern Oregon Rustin Kimsey, in an April interview, said today’s Episcopal Church is more alarmed by theological innovation than it was decades ago.

“At least some bishops are feeling that their primary call is to protect the faith from error. I think that’s always a dangerous place to be,” Kimsey said.

Read it all.

See how many you recognize.

The White House is caught in a battle within its own party over how to finance a comprehensive overhaul of America’s health-care system, as key Democrats advocate a tax plan that could require President Obama to break his campaign pledge not to raise taxes on the middle class.

Sensitive to voter anxiety about a soaring federal deficit, Obama and congressional leaders have vowed to pay for a sweeping expansion of the health-care system — expected to cost more than $1 trillion over the next decade — without additional borrowing.

Much of the money is likely to come from reining in spending on federal health programs for the elderly and the poor. Obama has proposed trimming more than $600 billion from Medicare and Medicaid by 2019 — including more than $300 billion in cuts unveiled in his Saturday radio and Internet address — which could fulfill the promise to curb the growth of federal health spending.

The rest of the cash will probably come from new taxes.

Read it all.

In his address, Benedict XVI called for a rethinking of predominant economic models.

“The financial crisis that has struck the industrialized nations, the emergent nations and those that are developing, shows in a clear way how the economic and financial paradigms that have been dominant in recent years must be rethought,” he said.

The Pope lauded his listeners’ consideration of the “interdependency between institutions, society and the market.”

Drawing from the 1991 encyclical by his predecessor, after which the Centesimus Annus foundation is named, the Holy Father noted how “the market economy, understood as ‘an economic system which recognizes the fundamental and positive role of business, the market, private property and the resulting responsibility for the means of production, as well as free human creativity in the economic sector’ can only be recognized as a way of economic and civil progress if it is oriented to the common good.”

Read it all.

The Rev. Rob Holman reminded Anglican parishioners to practice love and forgiveness Sunday morning as they reeled from the state Fourth District Court of Appeals’ decision last week to uphold a lower court’s ruling that the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles is the legal owner of the St. Luke’s of the Mountains Church property on Foothill Boulevard.

Reacting to comments made by the Right Rev. J. Jon Bruno, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, to the News-Press regarding the court decision and the church’s future, Holman told parishioners Bruno had been misleading and dishonest.

“God’s timing is kind of interesting to begin 40 Days of Love with the court’s appeal,” Holman said. “This week taught me it’s hard to be loving.”

Read it all.

Iran’s supreme leader today ordered an investigation into allegations of election fraud, marking a stunning turnaround by the country’s most powerful figure and offering hope to opposition forces who have waged street clashes to protest the reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

State television quoted Ayatollah Ali Khamenei directing a high-level clerical panel, the Guardian Council, to look into charges by pro-reform candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, who has said he is the rightful winner of Friday’s presidential election.

Read it all.

Binyamin Netanyahu’s speech on the future of the Middle East peace process may have been the first time the Israeli Prime Minister publicly acknowledged a Palestinian state, but its lack of specific details prompted a bewildering array of responses, locally and internationally.

The United States and the European Union found themselves agreeing with the Yesha council, which represents Jewish settlements in the West Bank, in welcoming the Prime Minister’s address at a Tel Aviv university, while Hamas joined with the Israeli far-right in condemning it.

Most Israeli commentators poured scorn on the talk ”“ short on detail, and placing strict limits on any future Palestinian sovereignty ”“ but agreed its main audience had been President Obama, who has bluntly told the right-wing Israeli Government to accept a two-state solution and stop settlement building.

Read it all.

The Anglo-Catholic Diocese of Quincy based in Peoria has announced plans to elect its next bishop.

The diocese has been led by the diocesan standing committee since the retirement of Bishop Keith Ackerman last fall.

“We’ve begun the process of assessing the needs and vision of our diocese and forming a search committee,” said the Rev. John Spencer, president of the standing committee. “We’ll begin receiving nominations on July 1 and will move forward with interviews through the late summer. We plan to elect at our annual synod in October.”

Read it all.

This is worth watching just to hear the elk call alone–KSH.

Virtually every religion ”” including the most conservative sects ”” preaches positive concepts, such as “love thy neighbor” and “to forgive is divine.” Religions often encourage us to seek positive emotions such as joy, peace and hope. But we must always be aware of the eternal battle between those parts of the brain that are prone to push others away, and the parts that are inclined to build cooperative alliances with our fellow human beings in times of need.

In this sense, whether we embrace spiritual or secular values, the ultimate goal is the same. For as Albert Einstein stated when he described the similarities between spiritual and scientific epiphanies, it is the overwhelming awe and beauty of the universe and the deep sense of connectedness to the world that we all seek, if not crave. At their best, both science and religion can evoke inspirational meaning in our lives, and when this occurs, God and science are great.

But we always have to watch out for the times when God, religion, or science can turn a blind eye toward others. We have a brain that is filled with both loving and hateful ideas. We can turn to religion and spirituality as a way to foster the good in us, except, of course, when we don’t.

Read the whole thing.

[Dan] Buettner and his colleagues now are taking what they’ve learned from these bucolic locations to the cozy Midwestern town of Albert Lea, Minn. The aim of non-profit organization AARP, sponsor of the project with Buettner’s guidance, was to help the residents there “live longer, better,” as the Vitality Project’s tagline espouses.

The project’s strategies are simple: eat more fruits and vegetables, walk instead of drive, stay productive and social well into old age, and seek inner fulfillment ”” things we all know will improve our quality of life, but we don’t always do, he says.

“Optimizing where you spend most of your day, minimizing the opportunity to eat unhealthy food, and helping people find meaning and purpose is tied to healthier, longer living,” he says.

Read it all.

Seven years after their last championship, five years after a series of humbling losses in Detroit, and 362 days after a futile Finals effort against Boston, the Lakers were back, in a big way.

A victory parade will proceed through Los Angeles on Wednesday, the celebration becoming official after the Lakers thumped the Orlando Magic on Sunday, 99-86, to win the NBA Finals, four games to one.

Read it all.

The American Medical Association has long battled Democrats who oppose protecting doctors from malpractice lawsuits. But during a private meeting at the White House last month, association officials said, they found one Democrat willing to entertain the idea: President Obama.

In closed-door talks, Mr. Obama has been making the case that reducing malpractice lawsuits ”” a goal of many doctors and Republicans ”” can help drive down health care costs, and should be considered as part of any health care overhaul, according to lawmakers of both parties, as well as A.M.A. officials.

It is a position that could hurt Mr. Obama with the left wing of his party and with trial lawyers who are major donors to Democratic campaigns. But one Democrat close to the president said Mr. Obama, who wants health legislation to have broad support, views addressing medical liability issues as a “credibility builder” ”” in effect, a bargaining chip that might keep doctors and, more important, Republicans, at the negotiating table.

Read it all.

Read it all.

The jokes among Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s detractors are legion. In one, he looks in the mirror and says, “Male lice to the right, female lice to the left.” In the West, one American tabloid rarely misses a chance to refer to him as “Evil Madman” and in the days before his re-election here he was taunted as a “monkey” and as a “midget.”

But the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who was announced winner of a second four-year term this week is no cartoon character.

Whether his 63 percent victory is truly the will of the people or the result of fraud, it demonstrated that Mr. Ahmadinejad is the shrewd and ruthless front man for a clerical, military and political elite that is more unified and emboldened than at any time since the 1979 revolution.

Read it all.

But when it comes to the young the situation is reversed. American children have it easier than most other children in the world, including the supposedly lazy Europeans. They have one of the shortest school years anywhere, a mere 180 days compared with an average of 195 for OECD countries and more than 200 for East Asian countries. German children spend 20 more days in school than American ones, and South Koreans over a month more. Over 12 years, a 15-day deficit means American children lose out on 180 days of school, equivalent to an entire year.

American children also have one of the shortest school days, six-and-a-half hours, adding up to 32 hours a week. By contrast, the school week is 37 hours in Luxembourg, 44 in Belgium, 53 in Denmark and 60 in Sweden. On top of that, American children do only about an hour’s-worth of homework a day, a figure that stuns the Japanese and Chinese….

Read it all.

Churches are being encouraged to promote a Christian interpretation of Father’s Day…[next Sunday].

A new page on the Church of England website is dedicated to the day. It includes new material as well as a sample Service of the Word for local adaptation, which is already available in Common Worship: New Patterns for Worship.

A suggested prayer for use on Father’s Day cards begins: “I thank God for all the love and support you offer me, and I ask for God’s blessing on you this Father’s day. . .”

In a podcast, the Bishop of Worcester, the Rt Revd John Inge, says that becoming a father taught him about the love of God.

Read it all.

Not since the second world war have so many governments borrowed so much so quickly or, collectively, been so heavily in hock. And today’s debt surge, unlike the wartime one, will not be temporary. Even after the recession ends few rich countries will be running budgets tight enough to stop their debt from rising further. Worse, today’s borrowing binge is taking place just before a slow-motion budget-bust caused by the pension and health-care costs of a greying population. By 2050 a third of the rich world’s population will be over 60. The demographic bill is likely to be ten times bigger than the fiscal cost of the financial crisis.

Will they default, inflate or manage their way out?

This alarming trajectory puts policymakers in an increasingly tricky bind. In the short term government borrowing is an essential antidote to the slump. Without bank bail-outs the financial crash would have been even more of a catastrophe. Without stimulus the global recession would be deeper and longer””and it is a prolonged downturn that does the greatest damage to public finances. But in the long run today’s fiscal laxity is unsustainable. Governments’ thirst for funds will eventually crowd out private investment and reduce economic growth. More alarming, the scale of the coming indebtedness might ultimately induce governments to default or to cut the real cost of their debt through high inflation.

Read it all.

They don’t buy Styrofoam. They recycle religiously. Even their Vacation Bible School has become environmentally friendly. First Christian Church in West Ashley is going green.

“It’s a very gradual process, but everybody is being committed, and they know what we are doing,” said Youth Director Robin Smith.

The women’s group, the Disciples Women, has purchased washable and reusable linens and prefers using china and crystal over plastic for small church functions. Even the congregation’s youths are getting involved. The church has revamped its VBS curriculum to focus on environmental stewardship.

Read it all.

South Korea’s president ordered his top security officials Sunday to deal “resolutely and squarely” with new North Korean warnings of a nuclear war on the eve of his U.S. visit. In Washington, Vice President Joe Biden said “God only knows” what North Korea wants from the latest showdown.

President Lee Myung-bak travels to Washington on Monday for talks with President Barack Obama that are expected to focus on the North’s rogue nuclear and missile programs.

The trip comes after North Korea’s Foreign Ministry threatened war with any country that stops its ships on the high seas under new sanctions approved by the U.N. Security Council in response to its May 25 nuclear test.

Read it all.

Binyamin Netanyahu tonight endorsed the creation of a Palestinian state after weeks of pressure from Washington, but defied President Obama’s demand for a halt to all settlements.

In a high-profile speech that the Palestinian administration of Mahmoud Abbas said “hobbles all efforts to save the peace process”, the Israeli Prime Minister said that the Palestinians must recognise Israel as a “Jewish state” and that any future Palestinian state had to be demilitarised.

“If we have the guarantees on demilitarisation and if the Palestinians recognise Israel as the state of the Jewish people, then we arrive at a solution based on a demilitarised Palestinian state alongside Israel,” Mr Netanyahu said.

Read the whole article.

A group of experts are highlighting papal teaching that people in persistent comas should be nourished regardless of the cost, as an ordinary duty of persons to one another.

This was affirmed in an article published this month in the journal of the National Catholic Bioethics Center, Ethics and Medics, signed by a group of 15 scholars.

Some of the contributing scholars are: Robert George, jurisprudence professor at Princeton University; William May, retired moral theology professor at the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family; Christian Brugger, moral theology professor at St. John Vianney Theological Seminary; and Father Thomas Berg, executive director of Westchester Institute for Ethics and the Human Person.

Read it all.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad brought tens of thousands of supporters into the heart of Tehran tonight in a bid to take back the capital after a weekend of vicious running battles between state security forces and large crowds of Iranians who insist that Mr Ahmadinejad stole last Friday’s presidential election.

Chanting ’Allah o’Akbar” (God is great) and “Ahmadi we love you”, the army of zealous hardliners poured into the central square in a massive show of strength designed to intimidate the furious supporters of Mr Ahmadinejad’s relatively moderate opponent, Mir Hossein Mousavi.

Read the whole article.