The diocese�s 2010 and 2011 budgets, which were approved by Diocesan Council on Sept. 24 and will go to synod on Nov. 21 for final consideration, contain the following highlights:

� Parish allotment is going down from 24% of assessable net income to 22.65%, leaving more money in the parishes for ministry.
� Episcopal area budgets will be increased from $95,000 each to $112,500 each, creating more opportunity for area-based initiatives.
� Curacy grants will increase from $143,000 to $190,000, allowing more new clergy to receive on-the-job training.
� More money will be put into parish stewardship workshops, advocacy in the media, volunteer training, creating new Christian communities and church planting.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury has called for “unsustainable” air-freighted food to be replaced gradually by homegrown produce from thousands of new allotments.

In an interview with The Times, Dr Rowan Williams said that families needed to respond to the threat of climate change by changing their shopping habits and adjusting their diets to the seasons, eating fruit and vegetables that could be grown in Britain.

He said that the carbon footprint of peas from Kenya and other airfreighted food was too high and families should not assume that all types of food would be available through the year. Dr Williams called for more land to be made available for allotments, saying that they would help people to reconnect with nature and wean them off a consumerist lifestyle.

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Children should be banned from watching television until they are 2 years old because it can stunt their language development and shorten their attention span, according to new Australian recommendations.

The guidelines warn of the damage done by sitting inactive for hours and advise that reading, drawing or solving puzzles should also be kept to a minimum.

For children aged between 2 and 5, time in front of the TV screen should be limited to an hour a day, according to health experts, in the first official guidelines on children’s viewing habits.

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The latest violence in Pakistan, including a successful Taliban attack on its Pentagon, may be an indication that the country is coming apart, or at least on the verge of sharp change.

The degree to which the calamitous situation is a result of U.S. policy toward it or U.S. actions nearby is open to question. What is clear is that whatever U.S. policy toward Pakistan is at the moment, it is not working to achieve U.S. interests there.

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The cardinal archbishop of Nairobi and president of Kenya’s episcopal conference summarized today the overall problem in Africa, saying the continent “continues to thirst for good governance.”

Cardinal John Njue said many African nations “struggle under bad governance where unchecked hunger for power has led to impunity, corruption, manipulation of people, and other similar social political evils bled from human hearts in need of conversion.”

And, he observed, “This is what has impoverished the people across the continent.”

“Bad governance,” the cardinal asserted, “[…] by and large can be termed the cancer of Africa.”

“This synod gives us a special opportunity to reflect on the cancer that is eating up our continent,” Cardinal Njue said. “Good governance is not only a priority but a must. I can as well add that politics in Africa is so important that we cannot leave it to politicians alone. […] The time to act constructively is now!”

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The Israelites spent 40 years a building without a permanent home, the congregation of St John’s Chapel say it took them longer than that but they’re back where they belong Downtown.

The church on 18 Hanover Street was first consecrated in 1840 by Rt Bishop Christopher Gadsden but closed it’s doors in 1958.

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There is no God, there is no heaven and there is no afterlife. At least, not in the way we have traditionally thought of such things.

These days, with atheist arguments topping bestseller lists, such statements might not seem all that contentious.

But when a retired bishop says it, it’s worth noting.

“My audience is not the people who go to church on Sunday morning,” John Shelby Spong, the retired Episcopal bishop of Newark, N.J., said on a recent visit to Toronto.

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Lenny Macklin made it to 10th grade before having a teacher who looked like him ”” an African-American male. Gregory Georges graduated from high school without ever being taught by a black man.

Only about 2% of teachers nationwide are African-American men. But experts say that needs to change if educators expect to reduce minority achievement gaps and dropout rates.

Macklin, now an 18-year-old college student, said he understands the circle that keeps many of his peers out of the classroom professionally.

“A lot of males, they don’t like being in school because they can’t relate to their teacher,” said Macklin, of Pittsburgh. “So why would you want to work there?”

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We look to the Copenhagen conference with hope but also with realism . . . there must be a desire on the part of every nation to do what they know they must, not because they are legally bound, but because they share a vision for a more just and sustainable future . . . We pray that each nation will come to the conference wanting the highest level outcome; that demanding targets will be set, not in an attempt to discipline reluctant participants, or to give some preferential treatment which undermines the whole; but that a greater vision might be shared.

The Anglican Communion occupies a unique position globally in terms of affecting and suffering from climate change:

From all points of the globe we point to the reality of climate change and to the very serious effect it is already having upon our people; from severe weather events, to prolonged droughts, major floods, loss of habitat and changing seasons.

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This is a nice story–before you watch it, guess the estimated number of grandparents taking care of their grandchildren in America right now.

Before I go any further, I had better point out that I am fully aware that it’s a bit rich of me to criticise clergy for recycling sermons when I referred to their obsession with all things ecological in my last column for the Church of England Newspaper. But I can guarantee I won’t do it again, whereas I doubt they could make the same promise.

Anyway, as I was saying, if you look at the website that lists all the press releases put out by Church House during 2009, the words climate (nine times) and environment (eight) crop up more times than God (six), Bible (four) or Jesus (two).

If they’re not ordering you to count your carbon or urging you to pray for the planet, they’re telling you much more than you ever wanted to know about compost toilets.

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It’s Sunday night at Woodlands Church, and Pastor Kerry Shook tells parishioners to pull out their cell phones.

He has pocketed his own iPhone for now, but tells everyone else to turn theirs on.

“OK guys, you can start the twitters,” he tells the crowd of about 250.

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Often, The Episcopal Church is called a “bridge church” between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. Many couples who join The Episcopal Church do so when a Catholic marries a Protestant. Both find in The Episcopal Church a theology and a style of worship that honors the faith traditions in which they were formed.

The foundation of faith in The Episcopal Church is often described using the image of a Three-legged stool.

The first leg of the stool is Holy Scripture. The catechism in the Prayer Book says of the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament that “God inspired their human authors” and that “God still speaks to us through the Bible” (BCP 853). The Old Testament conveys the story of the covenant relationship between Israel and God. The New Testament reveals the Incarnation of God in the person of Jesus Christ. Holy Scripture serves as the touchstone of our lives.

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My generation’s desire for religion”“but not yet”“is indicative of the sort of relativism that Riley clearly disdains. The Anglican scholar C.S. Lewis once wrote, “Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.” The same, I think, could plausibly said of all religions. They are more than lifestyles that we adopt, and they are deeper than our decisions to “settle down” and raise a family. It is precisely that notion of religion that my generation clearly fails to understand.

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Last week I tabled a question in parliament asking the government about the measures it is taking to tackle prostitution.

The Policing and Crime Bill is making its way through the House of Lords and it is important that everyone, regardless of political allegiance or background, unites to ensure the bill is passed so we can send a strong message that funding sex slavery, and the systematic abuse of women, is not acceptable in this country. That is why I feel the time is right to speak out.

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Around the world millions of children are not getting a proper education because their families are too poor to afford to send them to school. In India, one schoolboy is trying change that. In the first report in the BBC’s Hunger to Learn series, Damian Grammaticas meets Babar Ali, whose remarkable education project is transforming the lives of hundreds of poor children.

At 16 years old, Babar Ali must be the youngest headmaster in the world. He’s a teenager who is in charge of teaching hundreds of students in his family’s backyard, where he runs classes for poor children from his village.

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Father John Sewell wants people in Memphis to stop screaming.

From St. John’s Episcopal Church, where he is rector, he is spreading a message that Central Avenue motorists can see.

In front of the church, a sign reads “ScreamFree Zone.”

Screaming is not always about people raising their voice, Sewell said, “Sometimes they scream by drinking, sometimes they scream by getting depressed. It’s really about how we relate to one another.”

The aim of “ScreamFree Living” is to teach people how to stay calm before reacting, he said.

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My husband retired from IBM about a decade ago, and as we aren’t old enough for Medicare we still buy our health insurance through the company. But IBM, with its typical courtesy, informed us recently that we will be fined by the state.

Why? Because Massachusetts requires every resident to have health insurance, and this year, without informing us directly, the state had changed the rules in a way that made our bare-bones policy no longer acceptable.

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