Faith-based organizations are warning finance ministers from the world’s 20 richest economies they will not meet the majority of their own goals to help the world’s poorest nations.

The Jubilee USA Network, an alliance of 75 faith-based and human rights organizations, issued a report Wednesday (Sept. 16) outlining progress on the 13 goals the so-called “G-20” set for itself last April.

According to the report, the G-20 is “on track to meet five of these goals, is failing to meet four and is unlikely to meet four without major attention.”

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As the D.C. government prepares to legalize same-sex marriage, some supporters fret that the issue could divide the city along racial lines. It probably won’t happen, because gay rights activists in the District have built a potent, biracial political bloc that seems set to drive the bill to passage easily in coming months. The real threat to same-sex marriage here will be conservatives in Congress trying to meddle in what should be a matter for the District to decide on its own.

Nevertheless, it’s an intriguing fact, acknowledged by both sides, that blacks in the District overall oppose same-sex marriage while whites support it. Why is that so? And should African Americans, who battled so long for civil rights for themselves, be natural allies of gay people seeking such rights today? The answers cast light on the intersection of racial , gender and class politics in the city.

The issue is sure to attract lots of attention in our region and beyond. The District is poised to become the first jurisdiction south of the Mason-Dixon line to allow same-sex marriage. Approval would accelerate efforts to legalize it in Maryland as well.

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For many, hospice care is synonymous with death, and death is not an event to be confronted or embraced but, rather, feared and avoided.

In the Jewish and black communities, cultural attitudes often cause people to reject the idea of death until the bitter end, according to Sandy Slavin, program director for Lutheran Hospice, the Charleston area’s nonprofit hospice organization. This tendency, along with other factors, keeps many members of the Jewish and black communities away from end-of-life medical care and counseling that might benefit them, Slavin said.

Her views were confirmed by religious leaders who attested to the fear and avoidance, citing a variety of religious, cultural and historical reasons.

In an effort to reach these underserved populations, Lutheran Hospice recently launched a campaign to cater to the particular concerns of the two groups and to ensure that patients enjoy regular access to the people and practices of their religious traditions despite the sequestered nature of hospice care, Slavin said.

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Tired of the government bailing out banks? Get ready for this: officials may soon ask banks to bail out the government.

Senior regulators say they are seriously considering a plan to have the nation’s healthy banks lend billions of dollars to rescue the insurance fund that protects bank depositors. That would enable the fund, which is rapidly running out of money because of a wave of bank failures, to continue to rescue the sickest banks.

The plan, strongly supported by bankers and their lobbyists, would be a major reversal of fortune.

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More troops and resources are needed in Afghanistan to avoid failure, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, writes in a confidential report being reviewed by the Obama administration.

Officials had been describing parts of the 66-page assessment in recent days, but the full document ”” leaked to The Washington Post ”” is a grimmer-than-expected cataloguing of the challenges facing the United States and NATO in Afghanistan as the Taliban grows more sophisticated and dangerous.

Here’s a look at what the report says, the early reaction to its findings, and what it means for the U.S. effort in Afghanistan:

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During the George W. Bush years, stem cell advocates fought an uphill battle to expand funding opportunities and engage the National Institutes of Health in this potentially lifesaving research. The political climate improved drastically with the election of President Barack Obama, who lifted the Bush-era restrictions by executive order and freed the NIH do its job in providing comprehensive guidelines for human embryonic stem cell research.

In the long run, these actions will add much-needed funding for this basic research. But there is still heavy lifting to be done on the advocacy front.

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All that could be seen of Maryan Shalaby was her face, wrapped in a yellow headscarf and peeking above the lectern, as the 11-year-old from O’Hara led 250 Jews, Christians and Muslims in a prayer for peace inside St. Paul Catholic Cathedral in Oakland.

She asked God to grant “peace to you all, to the G-20 summit and to the universe.”

The prayer service, among numerous other G-20-related religious events, was organized by Christian Associates of Southwestern Pennsylvania and the Religious Leadership Forum of Southwest Pennsylvania. Another interfaith service, with groups as diverse as Buddhists and Zoroastrians, was held simultaneously on Mount Washington.

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On a five-day visit to Rome, a Russian Orthodox official in charge of interchurch relations had a meeting with the Pope, and this is being seen as a sign of improved relations between the two churches under Benedict XVI and the new Russian Patriarch Kirill I.

An official Web site of the Moscow Patriarchate has reported that Russian Orthodox Archbishop Hilarion of Volokolamsk met Pope Benedict at Castel Gandolfo, the pontifical summer residence.

Hilarion is chairperson of the external church relations section of the Moscow Patriarchate. He is reported as having told Benedict that the Orthodox and Roman Catholic positions on issues such as family values and euthanasia were identical, and distinct from the views of many Protestant churches.

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Here is one:

Re.: “Canterbury reflects on General Convention” (Episcopal Life Online), [this is] truly another indication of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s attempts to put the brakes on where he clearly has no jurisdiction. Why can’t he finally accept that the Episcopal Church has made its choices and respect those choices if it is too impolitic for him to say they are being prophetic?

Br. John Forbis, OHC
Grahamstown, South Africa

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Please note: There is an important error in this article, which is that a statement of A.S. Haley, a lawyer, cited on this blog, is attributed to me–KSH.

A Pawleys Island congregation, embroiled in litigation ever since it left the Episcopal Church in 2004, has won a major court battle over land and assets that could have wide implications for others looking to break away.

The S.C. Supreme Court unanimously ruled Friday that All Saints Church at Pawleys Island belonged to the independent corporation All Saints Parish, Waccamaw Inc. and not to the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina, which had staked a claim to the property.

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Take a look at how your diocese voted. If you know of corrections please let me know.

Again, take a look at how your diocese and its deputies and bishop(s) voted. If you know of corrections please let me know.

There are good men and women who have partisan allegiances, but those perspectives do not prevent them from being able to reach beyond political blinders.

One case in point is Jody Powell, who died last week.

He was a partisan but not of the loud, boisterous type. He was a Democrat. He worked hard for Jimmy Carter and continued doing so long after his time in the White House ended. He held certain beliefs and never forgot those who shaped his life. President Carter was one of those who clearly molded a young man from Vienna, Ga. In a different time, Jody would have been an extraordinary professor of American history. He was, but you did not receive college credit for his lessons.

Jody’s life took a different path that led him to the Statehouse in Georgia and the White House in Washington. But he never forgot how he got there or from where he came.

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The spiritual head of the Anglican Church expressed concern Sunday about Iranian exiles living in a camp in Iraq, saying they faced “human rights violations” that needed to be addressed urgently.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams said both the United States and the Iraqi government had a duty to protect the residents of Camp Ashraf, home to the People’s Mujahideen Organization of Iran (PMOI) dissident group.

“The continuing situation in Camp Ashraf, together with the fact that the 36 people taken from the camp in July have not been released, constitutes a humanitarian and human rights issue of real magnitude and urgency,” Williams said in a statement.

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Dorothy Carson figures her diet of frequent fried chicken and virtually no fresh produce finally caught up with her in July, when she was hospitalized for a stroke-like condition.

After two months in recovery from blurred vision, Carson returned to church at First African Methodist Episcopal Church a few weeks ago. That very same day, she said, the church launched a new open-air fresh produce market to bring healthful foods and better diets to the residents of South Los Angeles.

So there she was this weekend, scooping up fresh cucumbers, avocados, green beans, grapes and other produce she said she never would have dreamed of eating before. Carson said she now consumes about six daily servings of fresh fruits and vegetables. Her weight and cholesterol levels are down.

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“As a result of the extraordinary legal expenses associated with the property litigation involving Grace Church in Colorado Springs our reserves have been substantially reduced. Such litigation totalled $2,900,000. The combination of withdrawals for litigation expenditures and the stock market decline have caused the Diocesan unrestricted reserves to decline from $4,900,000 at January 1, 2006 to $750,000 currently. This decline has also lead to a significant decrease in the investment income to be received from these reserves in 2010

Check it out (8 page pdf).

Check it out (58 page pdf).

The initial meeting between Bishop Mary Gray-Reeves of the Diocese of El Camino Real and Bishop Michael Perham of Gloucester, England, at the 2008 Lambeth Conference was an auspicious one. When a protester jumped up and called Bishop Gray-Reeves “a whore of the church,” Bishop Perham stepped in to help his new American acquaintance around the protesters and on to safety.

This frightening encounter brought together two parts of what has become a trio of bishops ”” the third is Bishop Gerard Mpango of the Western Tanganyika Diocese in Tanzania ”” who have linked up as companion dioceses. The combination of American, British and African dioceses is intentional. The three locations encompass three regions of discontent in the Anglican Communion. By meeting, talking and working together, the three bishops hope to show that people of different cultures, and these three cultures in particular, can maintain civil relations and look for answers to divisive issues.

“We want to hold together when the Communion is threatened,” Bishop Perham said.

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“Do we appreciate the priesthood and love our priests?” the bishop asked in a posting on the Web site of his dioceses.

To answer this question, the bishop composed — “with a bit of humor” — the following test titled “Priestly Appreciation.” The test is complete with instructions to evaluate your answers and your level of appreciation for the priesthood.

Check it out.

A Muslim mob torched a church and the homes of a number of Christians in the Punjab last week, following claims that local Christians had committed blasphemy by desecrating the Koran.

The Sept 11 attack in the village of Sambrial, approximately 20 miles west of the city of Sialkot near Pakistan’s border with Kashmir, marks the fourth time in two months that Muslim mobs have attacked Christian neighbourhoods over alleged insults to the Koran, reports Aftab Mughal of Minorities Concern of Pakistan.

Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani have condemned the attack and have asked Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif to investigate the incident. Press reports from Pakistan report that President Zardari has called for calm, and promised the government would rebuild the church.

Reed it all.

From here:

2) Several of you have begun to hear whispers of the financial challenge that the diocesan ministries will be facing in the year ahead. The impact of our nation’s economy has impacted all of us and will contribute to a significant tightening of all of our budgets.

The unique challenge facing our diocesan ministries are twofold:

First, 30% of the diocesan budget is funded by investment income. We have been able to develop new and innovative ministries during the times of growth in our investment portfolio. These, as we all know, are difficult times for such income resources. Our income will be greatly reduced.

Secondly, the diocese took out a sizeable loan to buy properties on the gulf coast for the rebuilding of the congregations following Hurricane Katrina. When the original beach front properties are sold the loan will be repaid. Until such sale we are liable for a substantial interest payment. Until now, we have been able to pay the interest from contributions for post-Katrina recovery. Those funds are now depleted.

I have made the decision, and will ask the Executive Committee to concur, that to be “one church” means that we are willing to bear one another’s burdens. To ask any of these three churches to assume their share of the indirect payment would be to crush them as they seek to recover and rebuild. Thus, I am prepared to make the necessary sacrifices within our common life and ministries to give these congregations relief from the unsustainable debt burden until their properties are sold.

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Several hundred people have been marching through Pittsburgh’s predominantly black Hill District demanding jobs in a protest ahead of the Group of 20 economic summit meeting in the city this week.

Marchers held signs demanding “Jobs not jail” and calling for “economic justice.” The “Bail Out The People Movement” organizers are also calling for an end to foreclosures and evictions….

One reverend said churches in America need to speak up for the unemployed.

Friar Luis Barrios, of the Episcopal Church in New York, said, “If the church keeps silent in front of this reality, it is not fair.”

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The history and constitution of the Episcopal Church commits it to historic Faith and Order as set forth in the classical Prayer Book ”“ which is to say, the teaching of Scripture, as received in the tradition of the Church, and held in common by the churches of the worldwide Anglican Communion. Over the last thirty five years or so, however, the General Convention has established a dangerous habit of ignoring its fundamental commitments of Truth and Unity, and thereby compromised both its witness and worship. In the face of these broken commitments to Truth and Unity, we cannot remain silent. We must bear witness.

The Commitment to Truth. Christian life begins in hearing the Word of God, and receiving it for what it is, the life-giving word of truth. This word is not something we just naturally know, or that the world teaches us: it is revealed to us in Jesus Christ, and communicated to us by his Spirit, through the witness of the Apostles, recorded in the New Testament. Such faith in the Word of God is not opposed to reason: indeed, faith seeks to understand what it believes, to grasp its meaning and implications, and therefore reason is indispensable to faith. Nor is such faith opposed to the Church’s tradition: for it is only in the company of the saints, that we can truly understand what the Word of God is saying.
For Episcopalians, the wisdom of Scripture and the saints, is embodied above all in the historic Prayer Book. It is no accident that when the historic prayer book was jettisoned in 1979 a tide of false teaching, moral relativism, and cultural conformity rushed in. Episcopalians still read the Bible in their services, recite the Creed, profess faith, and refer to the Church’s tradition: but as a church they do not pay much attention to them. The controversies in the church about its ordained ministry and about marriage are just two examples of this deaf ear. There may be many good reasons to ignore the scriptural distinction of sex in marriage and ordained ministry. But no one has yet demonstrated that these reasons are in accord with the Word of God. This will not do. If we are serious about being Christians and being a Church, we must not be silent in the face of this broken commitment to the Truth. We must bear witness.

The Commitment to Unity. Those who believe the word of God are called to love one another, and accept the constraints of love binding them together in the unity of the Church’s fellowship. The current controversy in the Episcopal Church makes clear that this challenge to love one another and to maintain the bond of unity is not just a local effort, but a global one. Unity in the Body of Christ means that local or national churches do not have the moral right to make decisions about matters that affect the faith a global church holds in common. As the Archbishop of Canterbury recently reminded the Episcopal Church, “What affects the communion of all should be decided by all”. When churches make unilateral decisions about matters of faith, in the words of the Windsor Report, they are breaking the “proper constraints of the bonds of affection”. They sin against charity.

In this regard, the recent record of the Episcopal Church is nothing short of disgraceful. At the 1998 Lambeth Conference, the bishops of the Anglican Communion overwhelming reaffirmed traditional teaching about sexuality in Resolution 1.10. The Episcopal Church has chosen to ignore and reject this consensus, at times by direct defiance, and at other times through deliberate ambiguity – saying one thing and doing another. Instead of engaging honestly in the “dialogue” about which it so often speaks, it has sought to intimidate its critics by litigation, and to subvert them by bureaucratic manoeuvre and financial incentive. This is not the act of the Church, but of a schismatic sect. In the face of this broken commitment to Unity, we cannot be silent. We must bear witness.

The Commitment to Witness. As the lessons for this Sunday teach us, the Word of God not only opens our deaf ears to hear the truth: it also releases our tongues to sing his praise in worship and in witness, making us, who are not “sufficient in ourselves to think any of ourselves”, to be “able ministers of the new testament” ”“ effective witnesses to the judgment and mercy of God in Christ.

Structural reforms of the Church are no doubt in order. But what is primary is the work of witness, just as it was for Christ and his Apostles. In a world where the political and religious authorities were alike opposed to God, their primary work was that of witness. As Christ said before Pilate, “to this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth” (John 18:37). Nor did he keep his head down and his criticism private. “I spake openly in the world; I ever taught in the synagogue, and in the temple”¦and in secret have I said nothing” (John 18:20). It is not witness, unless it is public. “Pray for me” says the Apostle, in prison for the sake of the gospel, “that utterance may be given unto me, that I may open my mouth boldly, to make know the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in bonds: that therein I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak” (Ephesians 6:18, 19).

Dear friends in Christ, the time has come for us to speak boldly. I do not mean stridently, or bitterly, or harshly, or self-righteously. Our principle must be that of the Apostle ”“ “speaking the truth in love”. But speak the truth we must. It is my hope that the Statement of the Clergy, Wardens and Vestry (August 30th) will indeed find wide dissemination, and that it will indeed provoke comment. Some of that will come to the clergy, some to the vestry, some to parishioners. We must not see such comment as threat but as opportunity: an opportunity to speak with clarity and charity and conviction about what matters critically to being the Church, and being a Christian. We may not always find agreement: but I suspect we shall often find respect: more importantly, we shall be bearing witness to the hope that is in us.

For such mission, such witness, such testimony is always an act of hope in God: it is God’s to vindicate, when and as he chooses. But the Scripture assures us that God most certainly does vindicate true witness. And it is in vindicating true witness that God’s plan for his Church and people is carried out. I doubt that any of us will have to die for our faith, or suffer gravely for it. But there will be no reform of the Church, if we keep our heads down, and our mouths shut. In the face of our Church’s broken commitments to Truth and Unity, we cannot remain silent. We must bear witness. May the Lord who does all things well, who makes the deaf to hear and the dumb to speak, open our ears to his Word of truth, and our mouths to his praise. Amen.

—-The Rev. Gavin Dunbar is rector of Saint John’s, Savannah, Georgia; this is a shortened form of a sermon Father Dunbar gave toward the end of August

Yes, bishops have to learn to watch what they say (although preferably not all the time), and not shoot their mouths off publicly at every oppor­tunity. But there is a difference between being carefully prepared and believing that everything you say is going to be of earth-shattering importance.

“Bishop-itis” can get out of hand, and resemble what Clement Attlee once condemned in leaders as “the continual beating of the breast and airing of agonies in public”. This is what a fellow-bishop once described to me as “the high apophatic angst”, a dynamic that can ensure that discussions go round in circles, just in case a decision might be reached.

Bishops perhaps need to take themselves ”” and the Church ”” less seriously than they often do, because, in the end, it is God’s Church, not ours, and he is the one continually re-shaping it. Perhaps that is why bishoping is such a huge privilege, especially when assisted by good colleagues, as I have been.

For all the tight corners I have known in 14 years in post, I can still leave it profoundly thankful.

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This new Pew survey gathered much useful data, but it wasted time and money in determining that roughly two-thirds of Americans see Islam as either “somewhat different” or “very different” from their own religions. The question isn’t whether Christianity and Islam are similar or different. The question is whether religious (and non-religious) people can find common ground. On this point, Patel is unequivocal. “Religions are different,” he says, “but they have shared values.” The challenge is “to identify shared values such as mercy, compassion and service,” and then to advance from there to shared projects.

In his public pronouncements on religion, Obama has repeatedly invoked the Golden Rule as common ground. But like Patel, he does not pretend that all religions are the same, and like his predecessor he does not shy away from speaking as a “committed Christian.” At Notre Dame, he denounced “outworn prejudice” as “rooted in original sin.” In Obama’s view, there is not just something wrong but something un-Christian about discrimination against Muslims, or against any other religious (or non-religious) group.

Unfortunately, this study did not ask Americans what they think of anti-Muslim discrimination. Do those who see discrimination against Muslims want it to end? Or would they like to see more of it? According to Patel, that is the $1 million question ”” “not who faces bigotry, but who would stand up against it.”

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Three inarguable facts dominate California’s system of financing state government:

”¢ It’s a mess.

”¢ It’s currently a mess in large part due to the deepest and most pervasive global recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

”¢ It’s been a mess for much of the past three decades because the combination of an out-of date tax system, reckless spending and fickle voters has made state government extremely vulnerable to the ebbs and flows of the economy.

While there’s not much the state’s elected leaders can do about the worldwide economic woes, they have tried for decades ”“ mostly unsuccessfully ”“ to wrestle with the triple threat of taxes, spending and ballot-box budgeting.

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The top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan warns in an urgent, confidential assessment of the war that he needs more forces within the next year and bluntly states that without them, the eight-year conflict “will likely result in failure,” according to a copy of the 66-page document obtained by The Washington Post.

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal says emphatically: “Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near-term (next 12 months) — while Afghan security capacity matures — risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible.”

His assessment was sent to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates on Aug. 30 and is now being reviewed by President Obama and his national security team.

McChrystal concludes the document’s five-page Commander’s Summary on a note of muted optimism: “While the situation is serious, success is still achievable.”

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Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel, thou who leadest Joseph like a flock! Thou who art enthroned upon the cherubim, shine forth before E’phraim and Benjamin and Manas’seh! Stir up thy might, and come to save us!

–Psalm 80:1-2

We thank thee, heavenly Father, for the witness of thine apostle and evangelist Matthew to the Gospel of thy Son our Savior; and we pray that, after his example, we may with ready wills and hearts obey the calling of our Lord to follow him; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God,now and for ever.

Thoroughly inspiring–a real leader, very sorry to lose him. Watch it all.