This great gathering is significant in several respects:

i) It is a clear demonstration of the fact that the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) held in Jerusalem from 22-29th June 2008 was divinely mandated;
ii) That the organization, execution, decisions and declarations which came out of it were inspired by the Holy Spirit and they reflect the mind of God for our dear Anglican Church in this generation;
iii) It shows that the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (FCA) is divinely chosen and called to be the channel of continuing this work of reviving, reforming and transforming the Anglican Church in the UK and Ireland in particular, and in God’s wide world in general. This is with a view to repositioning it to restore “what the locust had eaten” in this great land, for the salvation of mankind, and all of God’s creation.
iv) Furthermore I see the significance of this gathering against the background of Acts chapter two ”“ the great gathering from all over the world, and the descent of the Holy Spirit, to inaugurate God’s New Testament Church, empower men and women to evangelize and do the work of mission. Thus I see this gathering as a people assembled, as the Jerusalem gathering before it, by the finger of God, to receive fresh power and a saving message for the broken, hurting, confused and confusing world all around us.
v) Moreover it is gratifying to note that this crowd has assembled in the city of London ”“ not Lagos, Nairobi or Kampala. It thus answers to the derogatory remarks of some who say that the faith, commitment and zeal of African Anglicans is borne out of uneducated minds and flawed missionary enterprise in Africa. I am happy that men and women like you who have received sound ediucstion in the British tradition and the gospel ”˜from the feet of Gamaliel’, can assemble under the umbrella of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans. Indeed wise men and wise women still seek Jesus.

Read it all.

Even asking that question says Archbishop Jensen, shows how badly things have gone wrong.

He is speaking live now and you can watch it here on Anglican TV.

This one made me weep like a little boy–wonderful stuff.

–Watch it all–KSH.

President Obama arrived in Moscow Monday for a summit with Russian leaders aimed at reaching an agreement to cut stockpiles of nuclear warheads, but also expected to touch upon the war in Afghanistan, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, terrorism and the jousting for influence in other post-Soviet countries.

The summit comes less than a year after the conflict in Georgia caused the worst tensions between the United States and Russia since the end of the cold war. Since taking office in January, Mr. Obama has called for a “reset” in relations, and the summit will offer the most telling evidence so far about how difficult it will be for him to achieve this goal.

Russia’s president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, said over the weekend that he was “moderately optimistic” about the possibility of success at the summit, noting that under President George W. Bush, relations between the two countries had significantly worsened.

Read it all.

Take the time to read it all, noting carefully the warning about the affadavit. My response to this was real sadness, and prayers for the parish and the mess the leadership is now ensconced in.

Also, Terry Mattingly has some pertinent questions to ask about this story here and a diocese of North Carolina statement is there.

I will take comments on this submitted by email only to at KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

Caught this one on the morning run. Take the time to watch it all. Those of you with connections to youth ministry, this video is the kind of thing all youth groups needs to be challenged to watch and discuss.

PAUL SOLMAN: Here are the new numbers from the Labor Department’s monthly survey of 60,000 households. The official number is what the government reports as U-3, 14.7 million unemployed as of June. That’s 9.5 percent.

U-4 adds discouraged workers who’ve stopped looking. That would make unemployment 10 percent.

U-5, marginally attached workers who say they’d take a job, but haven’t looked in a month. The number would then be up to 10.8 percent.

The most inclusive number, U-6, adds part-timers looking for full-time work, bringing the total to 16.5 percent.

Read, or better watch, it all.

The extreme volatility that has gripped oil markets for the last 18 months has shown no signs of slowing down, with oil prices more than doubling since the beginning of the year despite an exceptionally weak economy.

The instability of oil and gas prices is puzzling government officials and policy analysts, who fear it could jeopardize a global recovery. It is also hobbling businesses and consumers, who are already facing the effects of a stinging recession, as they try in vain to guess where prices will be a year from now ”” or even next month.

A wild run on the oil markets has occurred in the last 12 months. Last summer, prices surged to a record high above $145 a barrel, driving up gasoline prices to well over $4 a gallon. As the global economy faltered, oil tumbled to $33 a barrel in December. But oil has risen 55 percent since the beginning of the year, to $70 a barrel, pushing gas prices up again to $2.60 a gallon, according to AAA, the automobile club.

Read it all.

Read it all.

Now, I’m well aware that having 47 million people who can’t afford medical care is a genuine social problem — although many of those millions are illegal immigrants, people between jobs and young folks who choose to go insurance-bare. I’m also aware that I can’t necessarily have everything I want, whether it’s a dozen pairs of Prada boots or a pacemaker at age 99. I know that Medicare is on the greased rails to a train wreck, and not just because of spiraling costs but because doctors are fleeing the system because they’re sick of below-cost reimbursements and crushing paperwork. There are ways to solve some of these problems: healthcare tax breaks, malpractice reform that would lower the cost of practicing medicine, efforts to make it easier to get cheap, high-deductible catastrophic coverage, steps to encourage fee-for-service arrangements of the kind that most people have with their dentists.

In short, as someone who’s not getting any younger, I’d like to be the one who makes the “difficult decision” as to whether I can afford — and thus really want — that hip replacement in my extreme old age. Sorry, President Obama, but I don’t want “society”– that is, government mucky-mucks — determining that I’ve got to go sit on an ice floe just because I’m old and kind of ugly, no matter how many fancy degrees in medicine or bioethics they might have.

Read it all.

The Rev. Tom Foster of Modesto was a delegate to the historic inaugural provincial assembly of the Anglican Church in North America held June 22-25 in Bedford, Texas. He called the meeting “a gangbuster operation” and said the spirit of the gathering “was absolute joy.”

The 29th province in the worldwide Anglican Communion was established to oversee U.S. churches and dioceses that have left the Episcopal Church, as well as those in Canada that similarly have split over doctrinal issues, primarily the interpretation of Scripture. ACNA will oversee 700 parishes four U.S. dioceses and about 100,000 people, organizers said.

The new province, which still must garner approval from two-thirds of Anglican leaders around the world, is not recognized by the Episcopal Church. The Rev. Robert Duncan, bishop of another U.S. breakaway diocese, was installed as ACNA’s archbishop during the assembly, which included the adoption of a constitution and canons, or laws. That would put him on equal footing with Katharine Jefferts Schori, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, and the other 27 primates, or leaders, around the world.

Read it all.

Russia’s population is shrinking alarmingly, its death rate double that in most developed countries. Conflicts in its north Caucasus republics have flared again. Its armed forces are woefully ill-equipped and poorly trained. Mr Putin has kept control by unleashing a virulent brand of anti-Western “patriotism”””the latest textbooks are as tough on America as they are soft on Stalin””and thuggishly silencing the opposition. Last year in a pretence of democracy Mr Putin installed Dmitry Medvedev (Mr Obama’s supposed host) as president while he himself became prime minister.

In the long term Mr Putin’s refusal to modernise his country will weaken Russia. Yet the place Mr Obama has to deal with now is still a potent force. The largest country on earth, Russia stretches from Europe to China. It is the world’s biggest producer of oil and gas. It has a seat on the UN Security Council and of course that nuclear arsenal. Above all it has the capacity to do both great harm and some good….

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Reverend BILL GAVENTA (Boggs Center on Developmental Disabilities): In every faith community there is a scriptural basis for welcome and hospitality. But you’ve also got congregations who live in cultures where people with disabilities have been hidden and ostracized and devalued in lots of ways, and too often faith communities sanctify prejudices in the community rather than challenge them. It shouldn’t be easier to get into a bar than a church….

Read it all.

Even though they acknowledged His wisdom and were in awe of the wonders He worked, they failed to recognise anything more.

Their preconceptions were too deeply ingrained. They thought they knew Him because they knew His trade and because they knew His family, but the man they thought they knew, they scarcely knew at all. Familiarity had not only bred contempt; it had made them blind.

We can learn from their mistake. Who am I taking for granted and misjudging? Which of my preconceptions have hardened into prejudice? Where is the goodness I am too lazy to notice?

Read it all.

The most important things we have to deal with are the same things we had to deal with before Mr. Sanford traipsed off to Argentina. And we must not allow Mr. Sanford’s troubles to distract us from those tasks.

It is entirely unclear at this point whether the governor will be able to play any sort of positive role in strengthening our economy. But that’s nothing new. Legislators have complained all year (some much longer) that he has done nothing to create or keep jobs in our state, and that the incessant efforts by his allies to badmouth our schools, combined with his own extremist approach to federal stimulus funding, have actually driven off economic development. And whatever hope there had been that the governor and the Legislature might work together on this or any other front in the coming year evaporated with Mr. Sanford’s petulant stance on the stimulus funds.

Read it all.

Here is an excerpt from one:

I would suggest that the writer step back for a moment, and realize that his facile and generalized volleys do little to promote advancement in mission and ministry, which is precisely what the proposed covenant attempts to do. His lack of connection with the story of Anglicanism through the years (yes, as haphazard and untidy as it has been), and his inability to see that mutual submission to one another just might bear a more godly discernment about mission and ministry than that which is myopically grounded in the so-called “freedom” of the Episcopal Church, does no service to anyone in the church.

There are some of us who are sincerely trying to see how we can move forward in what is “our” church too – the Episcopal Church. We are distressed by the blatant politicization which falls at the feet of such idols as “rights” and “social action and advocacy.” We are dismayed that those who do not fall in step with the “progressive” and “revisionist” agenda are marginalized more and more as time goes on. We sit in utter wonder that those who have left the Episcopal Church are demonized, and yet we who have stayed are discounted, disparaged, and counted as ignorant among the all-knowing elite.

The proposed Anglican covenant seeks a way to get beyond this toxic culture of mistrust and misuse of power. If honored, it will call for deeper reflection and humility from all sides. It is not about “enforcing unity”; it is about seeking the mind of God in all its evangelical and catholic fullness.

Read them all.

No: Bishop Michael has his eyes on the General Synod, which is meeting in York next weekend. And, with fiendish cunning (his enemies would say) he has pulled the ultimate weapon out of his arsenal: the clear verdict of the Bible that homosexual acts are wrong, presented in the context of 2,000 unbroken years of Christian teaching.

Read it all.

The omnipotent reputation many assign to leaders in Beijing is being challenged. Take this week’s internet fiasco. China postponed the deadline for personal-computer makers to include state-backed anti-pornography software on new PCs after US officials and business groups urged it to scrap the rule.

China is normally a model of implementation. The speed with which it builds state-of-the-art airports, high-speed rail lines and Olympic stadiums is impressive by any scale. Its censorship efforts were exactly the opposite: sloppy and ill-considered.

Economic-stimulus efforts appear to be benefiting from greater competence. That may be a boon for 1.3 billion Chinese trying to get a share of the nation’s growth. The benefits for those outside China are much more limited.

Read it all.

But put your eye to the other end of the telescope, step 40 paces back from the kinetic situation, and ask what it’s for. It’s to support the building of a secure, freestanding state in Afghanistan. This is not happening. The elections this summer cannot but return President Karzai, an arch survivor focused only on survival, in whom the world has already lost confidence and can have little reason for future hope. Mr Karzai’s paralysing chess game of alliances, stand-offs, jobs and favours does not represent a regrettable failure to do anything with the power he has won. It is the way he won it and the only way he can keep it.

Meanwhile, brute force can almost always hold its ground, and an American surge should bring a little more security. But for what? The ground may be cleared by guns, but there is no viable politics here waiting to occupy it. And until what? Until the Americans try to leave.

Read it all.

They are still playing in the fifth set–amazing. I turned on the BBC on the way home and caught live coverage and almost drove off the road.

Former NFL quarterback Steve McNair and a woman were found shot to death Saturday inside a residence in Nashville, police said.

Nashville police spokesman Don Aaron confirmed that authorities were called to a condominium and found McNair and a woman shot to death inside. Aaron said police don’t yet know the circumstances of the shootings.

“I don’t have any answers for you now as to what’s happened, who’s responsible,” Aaron said.

Every day is precious and you never know what will transpire. Read it all.

Terry Teachout went and found them–wow.

Commentator John McDonough recalls the last great reunion of Civil War veterans from the North and South. It took place July 3-5, 1938, on the 75th anniversary of Gettysburg ”” at Gettysburg, Pa. At the time, the whole country was almost painfully aware that the last living links to a decisive event were about to slip away.

Listen to it all from NPR.

Many ways to say good night.

Fireworks at a pier on the Fourth of July
spell it with red wheels and yellow spokes.
They fizz in the air, touch the water and quit.
Rockets make a trajectory of gold-and-blue
and then go out.

Railroad trains at night spell with a smokestack mushrooming a white pillar.

Steamboats turn a curve in the Mississippi crying a baritone that crosses lowland cottonfields to razorback hill.

It is easy to spell good night.
Many ways to spell good night.

–Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)

A nice photo.

Some basic information is here–I got a lot of questions about this this week

The fundamental question we must ask ourselves at the beginning of the century is this: What is the purpose of marriage? Is it ”” given the game-changing realities of birth control, female equality and the fact that motherhood outside of marriage is no longer stigmatized ”” simply an institution that has the capacity to increase the pleasure of the adults who enter into it? If so, we might as well hold the wake now: there probably aren’t many people whose idea of 24-hour-a-day good times consists of being yoked to the same romantic partner, through bouts of stomach flu and depression, financial setbacks and emotional upsets, until after many a long decade, one or the other eventually dies in harness.

Or is marriage an institution that still hews to its old intention and function ”” to raise the next generation, to protect and teach it, to instill in it the habits of conduct and character that will ensure the generation’s own safe passage into adulthood? Think of it this way: the current generation of children, the one watching commitments between adults snap like dry twigs and observing parents who simply can’t be bothered to marry each other and who hence drift in and out of their children’s lives ”” that’s the generation who will be taking care of us when we are old.

Who is left to ensure that these kids grow up into estimable people once the Mark Sanfords and other marital frauds and casual sadists have jumped ship? The good among us, the ones who are willing to sacrifice the thrill of a love letter for the betterment of their children. “His career is not a concern of mine,” says Jenny Sanford. “He’ll be worrying about that, and I’ll be worrying about my family and the character of my children.” What we teach about the true meaning of marriage will determine a great deal about our fate.

Read it all.

While only delegates to the annual convention can nominate officially, any church member with a suggestion is welcome to approach the clergy and lay leaders of their church, diocese leaders say.

“The most important thing is to call on folks around the diocese and around the country to pray that we listen to God’s will and not our own,” Canon Mark Stevenson said. “This is supposed to be a prayerful process.”

Stevenson serves on the 11-person Episcopate Committee charged with guiding the nomination process.

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Early in the 20th century, some Orthodox leaders were willing to accept the “validity of Anglican orders,” meaning they believed that Anglican clergy were truly priests and bishops in the ancient, traditional meanings of those words.

“It fell apart. It fell apart on the Anglican side, with the affirmation more of a Protestant identity than a Catholic identity,” said Jonah, at the inaugural assembly of the Anglican Church in North America, held in Bedford, Texas.

“We need to pick up where they left off. The question has been: Does that Anglican church, which came so close to being declared by the other Orthodox churches a fellow Orthodox church, does that still exist?”

A voice in the crowd shouted, “It does!”

“Here, it does,” agreed Jonah, stressing the word “here.”

Read it all.