The Anglican Diocese of San Joaquin will appeal a California Superior Court ruling that The Episcopal Church is hierarchical and that the Rt. Rev. John-David Schofield had no standing to break the diocese’s ties with the larger church.

Judge Adolfo M. Corona of the Superior Court of California, County of Fresno, issued an order for summary adjudication on July 21. The lawsuit was filed by the Rt. Rev. Jerry A. Lamb, acting bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin, and The Episcopal Church against Bishop Schofield, several bodies formed by the departing diocese, and the investment firm of Merrill Lynch.

“Defendants’ right to amend their constitution and canons is not unrestricted and unlimited,” Judge Corona wrote. “The constitution of the diocese has always permitted amendments. ”¦ However, from the inception of the diocese as a missionary district, it acceded to the constitution of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America and recognized the authority of the General Convention of the same.”

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Amateurs do the things they want to do in the ways they want to do them. They don’t worry too much about breaking rules and aren’t paralyzed by a fear of imperfection or even failure. Active citizenship is all about tapping into one’s amateur spirit. “But hold on,” you say. “I will never understand credit-default swaps or know how to determine the correct leverage ratio for banks.” Me neither, and I don’t want to depend on an amateur physician telling me how to manage my health. But we can trust our reality-based hunches about fishy-looking procedures and unsustainable projects and demand that the supposed experts explain their supposed expertise in ways we do understand The American character is two-sided to an extreme and paradoxical degree. On the one hand, we are sober and practical and commonsensical, but on the other hand, we are wild and crazy speculators. The full-blown amateur spirit derives from this same paradox. Even as we indulge our native chutzpah ”” Live the dream! To hell with the naysayers! ”” as a practical matter, it also requires a profound humility, since the amateur must throw himself into situations where he’s uncertain and even ignorant, and therefore obliged to figure out new ways of seeing problems and fresh ways of solving them. At this particular American inflection point, after the crash and before the rebuild, frankly admitting that we aren’t absolutely certain how to proceed is liberating, and crucial. I like paradoxes, which is why, even though I’m not particularly religious, Zen Buddhism has always appealed to me. Take the paradoxical state that Buddhists seek to achieve, what they call sho-shin, or “beginner’s mind.” The 20th century Japanese Zen master Shunryu Suzuki, who spent the last dozen years of his life in America, famously wrote that “in the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few.” Which sounds to me very much like the core of Boorstin’s amateur spirit. “The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance,” Boorstin wrote, “but the illusion of knowledge.”

This isn’t just airy-fairy philosophy: it’s real, and it works. A decade after Steve Jobs co-founded Apple, he was purged by his own board, but after the sense of betrayal passed, and he went on to build Pixar and oversee Apple’s glorious renewal, he realized his personal reset had been a blessing in disguise. “The heaviness of being successful,” Jobs has said of his firing, “was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.” I happen to know what Jobs means: my sacking as editor of New York magazine 13 years ago freed me to reinvent myself as a novelist and public-radio host. Getting fired was traumatic. Finding my way since has been thrilling and immensely gratifying. May America and Americans have such good luck figuring out how to climb out of the holes we find ourselves in now.

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Americans have a long, sordid history with borrowed money. In Collateral Damaged: The Marketing of Consumer Debt to America, Charles Geisst, a professor of finance at Manhattan College, takes us through the centuries to explain how we wound up at our most recent””and spectacular””credit bubble. TIME’s Barbara Kiviat spoke with him.

You write that one of the major myths about American society is that we used to be prudent with our money and only recently did we go astray. What’s the real history?
Americans are speculative people. During and after the Civil War, for instance, there was a lot of stock market and commodities speculation””people trying to make a quick buck. But it was only when financial institutions picked up on that and provided the methods whereby you could buy now and pay later””that very simple concept””that things started to change structurally. Now Americans are more highly leveraged than they were in the past.

Which makes our most recent downturn worse?
Yes, absolutely. We’re out of proportion with our amount of personal debt. A good number of people are in debt to the point where they may not ever be able to pay their way out.

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The bitter divisions over an overhaul of the health care system have exploded at town-hall-style meetings over the last few days as members of Congress have been shouted down, hanged in effigy and taunted by crowds. In several cities, noisy demonstrations have led to fistfights, arrests and hospitalizations.

Democrats have said the protesters are being organized by conservative lobbying groups like FreedomWorks. Republicans respond that the protests are an organic response to the Obama administration’s health care restructuring proposals.

There is no dispute, however, that most of the shouting and mocking is from opponents of those plans. Many of those opponents have been encouraged to attend by conservative commentators and Web sites.

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However, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s proposed “two-tier” or “two-track” Anglican Communion is problematic in all sorts of ways, as he acknowledges himself, and we would urge him and others to think very carefully about the risks entailed.

* To be Anglican has always meant being Catholic. As Anglicans, we have always valued and defended our place within the “One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.” How could a secondary tier or track, which is walking away from the Church Catholic on matters of faith and practice as the Archbishop highlights, be considered authentically Anglican?

* To be Anglican has always meant being Scriptural. As Anglicans, we have always valued and defended the inspiration and authority of the Holy Scriptures. How could a secondary tier or track, which rejects the clear authority of Scripture on matters of faith and practice, be considered authentically Anglican?

* To be Anglican has always meant being Evangelical. As Anglicans, we have always valued and defended “the faith once delivered to the saints”. How could a secondary tier or track, which replaces the eternal gospel with secular culture, be considered authentically Anglican?

In this whole debate, there has always been a clear choice to be made. Do we remain faithful to the teaching of the Holy Scripture as received by the Church Catholic and so remain authentically Anglican? Or do we reject the teaching of the Holy Scripture and lose our right to be called Anglican, and more importantly Christian (1 Corinthians 6: 9-11)?

Sadly, The Episcopal Church in the United States has made its decision to break the moratoria, by continuing to bless same-sex unions and continuing to ordain practicing homosexuals, thus causing much pain and hurt for faithful Anglicans throughout North America and the rest of the world.

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Wow.

Have you noticed that the subject of euthanasia/assisted suicide is picking up momentum ”” that it is, so to speak, taking on a life of its own? I mean in particular that we seem to be approaching one of those interesting tipping points in public debate where the tone of those supporting a once-shocking idea is shifting from defensive to offensive.

Take for a representative example one of the “letters of the day” in the [National] Post’s July 22 edition, from Alexander McKay of Calgary. Mr. McKay argues for assisted suicide with the conviction of one endorsing, rather than flouting, received wisdom. The notion that the individual not only has the right to control his time of departure from this Earth, but has the right to society’s complicity in a death deliberately chosen, is embedded in the calm and confident air with which Mr. McKay projects his reasons for wishing, when his “wonderful life” dwindles down to a putative final season of debility and suffering, to “consider my options.”

Mr. McKay does not wish to see his life “cruelly extended” (assumption: suffering and pain are unnatural add-ons to life, not as much a part of life as youth and vigour). He says, “life is for the living” (assumption: the terminally ill no longer hold the moral status of “living”). And, of course, “Canada’s medical system is for those who need it” (assumption: medical “need” is an entirely fungible notion).

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Ethel Khurshid Gil gingerly held out the charred Bible she pulled from the rubble of her home, using a swatch of cellophane to keep the scorched pages from scattering in the hot wind. “Look how they’ve destroyed our Bibles!” the 47-year-old Christian Pakistani cried out.

Not far away, charred wood and broken dishes crunched underfoot as Umair Akhlas stepped through his house to point out the blackened bedroom where he and his relatives hid from the mob that firebombed the building, shouting “Burn them alive!”

Akhlas and several relatives escaped. But six, including two children, couldn’t breach the flames and died in that room.

“They were screaming Christians are dogs, that we’re American agents,” Akhlas said. “They look for any reason to do something against Christians.”

Pakistan has had its hands full waging war against a Taliban insurgency. Now another troubling crisis simmers. Last week, riots broke out in Gojra, a city of 150,000 in the eastern province of Punjab, after accusations surfaced that Christians at a wedding ceremony had desecrated a copy of the holy Koran.

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[The Rev. Terri] Pilarski, who has been pastor at St. Francis-in-the-Valley Episcopal Church for about 18 months, said her Green Valley congregation has weathered changes before and is ahead of the denomination on many social justice issues.

“I’m sure there are a few people who are upset,” she said, “but nobody’s banging on my door.”

Pilarski said the congregation, which ranges from 225 to 500 members depending on time of year, has a long history of life experience that has shaped them.

“While they can fall all along the spectrum of people who embrace the more progressive perspective and others who embrace the more traditional perspective, they are, nonetheless, people with a lot of experience,” she said. “They have family, children and grandchildren who may be gays and lesbians and they really have a compassionate response.”

Pilarski said the Bible does not condemn homosexuality, but she said society as a whole still ostracizes gay men and women.

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Some secularists seem to like one-way streets. Their distaste for Christianity leads them to seek to drive it not only from the public square but even from any provision of education, health care, and welfare services. Ironically, intolerance of Christianity and Christian culture is proclaimed most often in the name of tolerance: Christianity must not be tolerated because of the need for greater tolerance.

At present, the most preferred means for addressing perceived intolerance seems to be antidiscrimination legislation. Across the Anglosphere and in many Western nations, the idea of antidiscrimination has shown enormous power to shape public opinion. It is being used to redefine marriage and to make a range of relationships acceptable as the foundation for new forms of the family. Antidiscrimination legislation, in tandem with new reproductive technologies, has made it possible for children to have three, four, or five parents, relegating the idea of a child being brought up by his natural mother and father to nothing more than a majority adult preference. The rights of children to be created in love and to be known and reared by their biological parents receives scant consideration when the legislative agenda is directed to satisfying adult needs and ambitions.

Until relatively recently, antidiscrimination laws usually included exemptions for churches and other religious groups so that they could practice and manifest their beliefs in freedom. That word exemptions is actually a misnomer, suggesting as it does some sort of concession from the state to eccentric minorities. These provisions are better described as protections of religious freedom””and such protections are increasingly being refused or defined in the narrowest possible terms in new antidiscrimination measures, with existing protections eroded or construed away by the courts.

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The top Roman Catholic bishop in the United States said Wednesday the global economic crisis was caused in part by people abandoning personal ethics, and he’s calling for increased morality in business.

Cardinal Francis George, archbishop of Chicago and president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, said the pursuit of fast profits undermined the financial markets’ ability to regulate themselves.

“An economy that substitutes efficiency for morality will end up both inefficient and immoral,” George said in a speech Tuesday, the first night of the three-day annual convention of the Knights of Columbus, one of the world’s largest Catholic fraternal service organizations.

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As a school of thought based on love, Sufism has influenced Catholic and Jewish mysticism and the transcendentalism of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. In the U.S., Sufi teachings have attracted a wide swath of followers. In the music video for Madonna’s 1994 song “Bedtime Story,” whirling dervishes dance to Madonna’s Sufi-inspired verse, “Let’s get unconscious.” To Stephen Schwartz, a convert to Sufism and the author of “The Other Islam: Sufism and the Road to Global Harmony,” the faith’s emphasis on achieving internal peace can fill the “great spiritual hunger in this country and in the West in general.”

“In Sufism, the focus is on fixing the self rather than fixing others. That concept is inherently pacific, not political,” says Hedieh Mirahmadi, a Sufi practitioner. Ms. Mirahmadi is the general counsel of Sheikh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani, the popular deputy master of the orthodox Naqshbandi order. In Sufism, many paths lead to God. Other orders include the aloof Nimatullahi, whose meeting house was described above, the progressive Bekstashi and the militant Qadiri.

The problem arises when the spiritual path to God is blocked with violence. Do Sufis, inherently peaceful, take up arms in the name of the very complicated and controversial notion of jihad, or holy war? Ms. Mirahmadi says no, emphatically. She and her Sufi master, Mr. Kabbani, condemn the behavior of the Naqshbandi Army in Iraq.

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The Episcopal Church Center has begun staff layoffs and program changes necessitated by the General Convention’s “austerity” triennial budget, according to a statement released Wednesday by the Office of Public Affairs.

The $141 million, three-year budget adopted by General Convention was a $12 million reduction compared to the budget approved for the 2007-2009 triennium, and $20 million less than the amount approved by Executive Council in January. As part of the cuts, 40 staff positions are being eliminated or will have hours reduced, affecting some 35 current employees in such areas as evangelism, diocesan services, women’s ministry, anti-racism training, lay and ordained ministry, and worship and spirituality.

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THE Archbishop of Canterbury’s notion of a two-track Anglican Communion is flawed, say 13 organ­isations working towards an “in­clusive” Church of England.

The group expresses “grave con­cerns” about the implications of Dr Williams’s reflections in Covenant, Communion and the Anglican Future, a response to the actions of the General Convention of the Episcopal Church in the US (News, 31 July).

It finds the Archbishop’s reference to same-sex unions as “chosen life-style” to be inconsistent with his previous statements on committed and faithful same-sex relationships, and “at odds with our reading of the message of the gospel. . . While we applaud his assertion that we are called ”˜to become the Church God wants us to be, for the better proclamation of the liberating gospel of Jesus Christ’, we find no indication of how that can be achieved for those who are not heterosexual,” the joint statement says.

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The name itself tells half the story ”” Harry Patch the humble private soldier who fought, came home and returned to a life of honourable obscurity. But Harry Patch, the last survivor of the First World War battlefields, was an extra-ordinary man. And that half of his character was only revealed when he was an old, old man.

For most of his life he had chosen not to talk about the blood and mud of France and Flanders. Then, as his years drew to a close, he began to bear witness to the sacrifice of his fallen comrades and he became the embodiment of the most famous line of First World War poetry: “At the going down of the sun … we will remember them”. The memories were proud, clear and untainted with anger. He mourned the death of the Germans, against whom he fought, as well as the loss of the men with whom he had stood shoulder to shoulder. The schoolchildren, who were his favourite audience, were not urged to rejoice in victory or glory in triumph. Harry Patch preached the gospel of reconciliation.

Yesterday, the order of service at his funeral in Wells Cathedral left no doubt about the message and meaning of his final days. The congregation sang, “Where Have All The Flowers Gone?” ”” a threnody for young men who died in battle when Harry Patch had grown old. And still the world had not learnt the lesson.

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“I think there is a very clear recognition of where power lies….The numbers of true believers are probably not as great as we imagine, but the place where truth is created, in a televisual sense, is in the sphere of the popular media.”

—Linda Kintz, a professor of English at the University of Oregon in Eugene

General Synod of the Scottish Episcopal Church (SEC) met June 11 ”“ 13, 2009. Elaine Cameron, IAWN Provincial Link for SEC and Marion Chatterley, SEC representative with the Anglican Consultative Council Non-Governmental Organization delegation at the United Nations Commission on the Status Women, March 2009, presented the work of the International Anglican Women’s Network to Synod, at the invitation of the Most Revd Idris Jones.

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As for our Catholic bishops, there is now more sympathy for the Anglo-Catholic dilemma. The appointment of Archbishop Vincent Nichols to Westminster is significant; for, although he has never been a “traditionalist”, nor has he ever been at the heart of the dialogue between liberal Catholics and liberal Anglicans that has wasted so much time since the ordination of women priests made reunion impossible. As a young Westminster bishop, he unobtrusively cleared the path to Rome of at least one Anglican priest; there is no reason to think that he will not do the same again.

But the crucial change is that the present Pope, unlike his predecessor, is an admirer of the conservative Anglo-Catholic tradition – and open to the idea that doctrinally orthodox Anglicans should convert together, bringing with them spiritual gifts. He is aware that the practical obstacles to such a move (or series of moves) are immense. But he will not be dissuaded by a Catholic ecumenical lobby that, even now, pays court to liberal Anglicans.

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(Please note that the headline above is from the WSJ print edition–KSH).

Credit Suisse Group’s novel plan to pay bankers with a brew of its own toxic bonds and corporate loans has gotten off to an unexpectedly strong start, which could put further political pressure on other Wall Street firms to change how they pay their employees.

Late Wednesday, the bank told 2,000 of its top bankers that a $5 billion fund of soured mortgages and bonds — which it granted as a big portion of 2008 pay — had returned 17% since January, according to people familiar with the matter.

The returns registered well below the 75% increase in Credit Suisse shares over the same period, and the 30% uptick in the benchmark Merrill Lynch high-yield bond index. But the fund still outperformed major stock indices, as well as initial expectations of bankers inside and outside the Swiss bank. Many were originally skeptical of the plan, with one decrying what he called the “eat your own cooking” plan as unfair to employees who didn’t contribute to the bank’s 2008 net loss.

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Digging out of debt keeps getting harder for the unemployed as more companies use detailed credit checks to screen job prospects.

Out of work since December, Juan Ochoa was delighted when a staffing firm recently responded to his posting on Hotjobs.com with an opening for a data entry clerk. Before he could do much more, though, the firm checked his credit history.

The interest vanished. There were too many collections claims against him, the firm said.

“I never knew that nowadays they were going to start pulling credit checks on you even before you go for an interview,” said Mr. Ochoa, 46, who lost his job in December tracking inventory at a mining company in Santa Fe Springs, Calif. “Why would they need to pull a credit report? They’d need something like that if you were applying at a bank.”

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Moving–watch it all.

A month ago the Government warned us that by the end of August 100,000 people would be getting swine flu every day. Yesterday it produced figures showing that the disease has apparently peaked, with only 30,000 new cases last week. How did they get it so wrong?

The trouble with warning people about the dangers of swine flu is that you’re damned if you do, and damned if you don’t. Striking the right balance is impossibly difficult. There are always plenty of commentators ready to scent a scare, but following their insouciant advice is not an option. “Calm down, everybody, it’s only a couple of days feeling a bit peaky” was never the first sentence likely to spring to Sir Liam Donaldson’s lips.

That said, it’s worth asking if the message has been right, and if it has been based on sound evidence. It’s also worth asking why the Scottish Government has done so much better in providing timely and complete data than the Health Protection Agency in England.

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Fannie Mae plans to tap $11 billion in new government aid after posting another massive quarterly loss as the taxpayer bill from the housing market bust keeps growing.

The mounting price tag for the rescue of Fannie and its goverment-sponsored sibling, Freddie Mac, is surpassed only by insurer American International Group Inc., which has received $182.5 billion in financial support from the government so far.

Fannie Mae’s new request for $10.7 billion from the Treasury Department will bring the total for Fannie and Freddie to nearly $96 billion. Freddie is expected to report its quarterly results on Friday.

Ugh. One wonders when the red ink will ever end. Read it all.

(Please note that the post of Mark Harris to which this responds may be found here).

So what if your main point is, as we believe, wrong? What if the move forward (C056 and D025) has been undertaken regardless of the threat to Communion and its unity, out of a sense of justice and rights? What if proponents of the new sexual ethic truly want to be a church on its own and fully reject the logic of a Covenant or Windsor? Interdependence in a Communion, as is intimated by 3.2.5, is precisely what is being rejected in favor of autonomy and a federal association. The nominations in LA and MN make that abundantly clear. So again, we hold that your main point is wrong and that TEC is moving clearly and resolutely in the opposite direction of the approved covenant text.

It is because of this that ACI speaks of provisional rejection. What we do not understand is why supposedly liberal Christians wish to hold hostage to their way of thinking those who prefer interdependence in Communion. On logical terms, why must all be bound to go the way of autonomy and a national denomination? Why do you not see that some truly wish to belong to a catholic church and an Anglican Communion via a covenant, instead of being lumped with those whose understanding and hopes are very different? Moreover, most of us believe that in so doing we are upholding the constitution of this church. No one is contesting that your way of being an Episcopalian is winning out in General Convention voting. What we do not understand is why you don’t declare that this entails an autonomous church, and a way of being Anglican the proposed covenant does not embrace, and then let those who wish to embrace this do so? Surely that is congruent with a liberal position and mindset.

What remains terribly confused for those wishing to embrace a covenant of interdependence is your insistence on saying nothing has changed, that there has been no rejection, that we are studying the covenant, etc., but insisting at the same time that the American Episcopal way is a way of autonomy and independent action. If this be so, why not declare it and concede that those who wish to be Episcopalians in Communion ought to do so?

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“B033, D025, C056 & the Anaheim Letter: Contradictory or Complementary?” Beloved, with this report I urge us-again-to read carefully the two resolutions which are-appropriately-drawing so much attention from various sources in and beyond The Episcopal Church. My reference is to D025, entitled “Anglican Communion: Commitment and Witness to Anglican Communion”, and C056, entitled “Liturgies for Blessings”. Media accounts (both secular and ecclesiastical) of these two resolutions are generally too brief in their coverage to convey accurately and completely the thought, prayer and dialogue which contributed to their final form-or the actual content of the final wording in the resolutions. (For example, the title of C056, which implies that liturgies are authorized in the resolution, simply states the subject of the resolution, the provisions of which do not authorize such blessings-again, read carefully!).

The Presiding Bishop communicated directly to the Archbishop of Canterbury and to all of the other Primates of the Anglican Communion immediately following the passage of these resolutions-while our General Convention was still in session. The Archbishop of Canterbury, who was present during part of our convention, has written about these resolutions in a document dated 27 July 2009. I refer you to these documents, together with the two resolutions in question, for reading, re-reading, and careful study. They may be found on-line by following the links in this report. Copies of Resolutions B033, D025, and C056 also appear below, immediately following this report. (For those desiring paper copies, please speak to your priest or request them from our Communications Officer, Dr. Peggy Hill: 803-771-7800, ext. 18.)

I voted “yes” on both D025 and C056. Yet, I also signed, with a significant number of other bishops, the so-called “Anaheim letter” which Archbishop Williams describes as expressing the “intention to remain with the consensus of the Communion”. I consider the two resolutions and the Anaheim letter “as a package”, so to speak; their provisions are not in conflict-rather, in complement they create a larger view: where we are, and where we want to be.

The two resolutions describe the present thinking of many in The Episcopal Church. With regard to D025, my decision was significantly shaped by the fact that the General Convention deliberately chose to reject through several actions any effort to repeal, rescind, or amend B033. (B033 was the resolution, of which I was the sponsor and one of the co-authors, through which the General Convention 2006 responded to the call by the Windsor Commission for a moratorium on the ordination of bishops in committed same-gender relationships). From this context, I view D025 as a factual expression of where we in The Episcopal Church presently find ourselves; it is descriptive in nature-thus my vote “yes” on the matter.

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Rich Nathan is just about to wrap up his evening sermon when a loud and piercing shriek erupts from the back of his congregation. A woman in the crowd of 3,000 worshippers is shaking uncontrollably and wailing. “Jesus!” she cries. “Jesus I feel you!” Nearer the front of the stage, a small and equally exuberant group of faithful is receiving the Holy Spirit in other ways. Some rock from side to side, others simply mutter in hushed tones or raise their hands skywards.

It could be a scene from the American Mid-West ”“ Pastor Nathan is, after all, a prominent Jewish-born convert to Christianity who leads a church in Ohio. But today’s energetic act of mass worship is taking place in the rolling countryside of Somerset, just to the south of the picturesque town of Shepton Mallet.

As the leaders of Britain’s more mainstream denominations scratch their heads and debate how to revitalise their congregations, evangelical Christianity in Britain is going from strength to strength. The number of evangelical churches in Britain has risen from 2047 to 2,719 since 1998 and their followers now make up 34 per cent of Anglicans, figures show.

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The shooting occurred just after 8 p.m. Tuesday, when the gunman walked into LA Fitness Center in Collier with a duffel bag, turned out the lights in a room where a dance class was going on, then opened fire on the women in the room. Three were dead and at least nine wounded before he turned the gun on himself.

The log kept by Sodini shows he planned the shooting for months, and backed out several times. Sodini, a systems analyst at K and L Gates since 1999, entered the club with loaded guns on Jan. 6 but didn’t go through with it. “It is 8:45PM: I chickened out!” he wrote. “I brought the loaded guns, everything. Hell!”

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At Harvard, Carrie Grimes majored in anthropology and archaeology and ventured to places like Honduras, where she studied Mayan settlement patterns by mapping where artifacts were found. But she was drawn to what she calls “all the computer and math stuff” that was part of the job.

“People think of field archaeology as Indiana Jones, but much of what you really do is data analysis,” she said.

Now Ms. Grimes does a different kind of digging. She works at Google, where she uses statistical analysis of mounds of data to come up with ways to improve its search engine.

Ms. Grimes is an Internet-age statistician, one of many who are changing the image of the profession as a place for dronish number nerds. They are finding themselves increasingly in demand ”” and even cool.

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