This much is known: In the mid-eighth century, the ruling elite of the Khazars, a Turkic tribe in Eurasia, converted to Judaism. Their impetus was political, not spiritual. By embracing Judaism, the Khazars were able to maintain their independence from rival monotheistic states, the Muslim caliphate and the Christian Byzantine empire. Governed by a version of rabbinical law, the Khazar Jewish kingdom flourished along the Volga basin until the beginning of the second millennium, at which point it dissolved, leaving behind a mystery: Did the Khazar converts to Judaism remain Jews, and, if so, what became of them?

Enter Shlomo Sand. In a new book, “The Invention of the Jewish People,” the Tel Aviv University professor of history argues that large numbers of Khazar Jews migrated westward into Ukraine, Poland and Lithuania, where they played a decisive role in the establishment of Eastern European Jewry. The implications are far-reaching: If the bulk of Eastern European Jews are the descendents of Khazars””not the ancient Israelites””then most Jews have no ancestral links to Palestine. Put differently: If most Jews are not Semites, then what justification is there for a Jewish state in the Middle East? By attempting to demonstrate the Khazar origins of Eastern European Jewry, Mr. Sand””a self-described post-Zionist who believes that Israel needs to shed its Jewish identity to become a democracy””aims to undermine the idea of a Jewish state.

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Check it out–the Convention album pictures are great. You can set them to view as a slide show.

In the wake of Vatican plans to make it easier for Episcopalians to become Catholic, the Episcopal bishop of Maryland would like to make one point clear: The door swings both ways.

Lost in talk of the splintering of the Anglican Communion, Bishop Eugene Taylor Sutton says, is the appeal that the 45,000-member Episcopal Diocese of Maryland has held for former Roman Catholics and others looking for a big-tent church.

While attention focused on the conversion en masse last month of a Catonsville-based order of Episcopal nuns to the Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore, the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland has received three former Roman Catholic clergy in the past couple of months, Sutton says.

“We just want to remind people that this switching from Anglicans becoming Roman Catholics goes both ways,” Sutton said. “Many, many laypeople in our churches came from the Roman Catholic Church. We get many clergy.”

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A group of churches that split from the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh will appeal an Allegheny County judge’s ruling that allowed the diocese to retain control of more than $15 million in assets, officials said Thursday.

The Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh, composed of 51 local congregations in 11 Southwest Pennsylvania counties and led by Bishop Robert Duncan, said it will file an appeal once the court issues a final order directing the transfer of diocesan property.

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Leaders of Christ Church of Savannah are asking the Georgia Supreme Court to reverse a decision earlier this week granting ownership of the historic building and property to the Episcopal Diocese of Georgia.

Christ Church member and attorney Neil Creasy said church officials filed a notice of appeal Thursday in Chatham County seeking to reverse Superior Court Judge Michael Karpf’s ruling Tuesday granting the diocese “immediate possession” of the church property.

Creasy said the process should allow the congregation to remain on the property in Savannah’s historic district until the state Supreme Court responds.

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The church’s membership, counted as active baptized members, also declined by three per cent, falling by 59,457 to 2,057,292. The rate of decline in attendance and membership also rose last year, with the 10-year rate of decline in attendance rising from 13 to 16 per cent, and the 10-year rate of decline in active membership rising from 10 to 11 per cent.

Fifty per cent of US Episcopal churches saw a decline in attendance last year, while only 35 per cent registered growth. The median average Sunday worship attendance in 2008 was 69.

For the first time the church’s income fell, with recorded “pledge and plate” income falling by 0.2 per cent.

Critics assert the numbers may be overstated as some dioceses have not recorded the secession of breakaway congregations. While the Diocese of San Joaquin recorded a membership drop of almost 8,000, or 77 per cent ”” reflecting the secession of a majority of its congregations, the Diocese of Los Angeles continues to carry St James Newport Beach’s 1,500 members on its books ”” even though the congregation’s fight to quit has already taken the fight to the US Supreme Court.

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The Archbishop of Westminster’s comments come as research exploring the quailty of care provision among the Catholic community found that care home places will have to rise 150 per cent to cope with the ageing population over the next decade.

Latest demographic projections indicated there will be more than 11 million people over 65 within 10 years, with the number of people aged 85 and over projected to reach 3.2 million by 2033.

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What kind of personal pain would cause a 42-year-old pastor to abandon his family, his calling and even life itself? Members of a Baptist church here are asking that question after their pastor committed suicide in his parked car in September.

Those who counsel pastors say Christian culture, especially Southern evangelicalism, creates the perfect environment for depression. Pastors suffer in silence, unwilling or unable to seek help or even talk about it. Sometimes they leave the ministry. Occasionally the result is the unthinkable.

Experts say clergy suicide is a rare outcome to a common problem.

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In a tacit acknowledgment that the promise of human embryonic stem cells is still far in the future, California’s stem cell research program on Wednesday awarded grants intended to develop therapies using mainly other, less controversial cells.

The $230 million in grants awarded Wednesday to California universities and companies represent a big step toward moving stem cells from basic research toward application in treating diseases like cancer and AIDS. Grant recipients are supposed to have a therapy ready for initial human testing in four years.

But only 4 of the 14 projects involve embryonic stem cells. The others will use so-called adult stem cells or conventional drugs intended to kill cancer stem cells, which are thought to give rise to tumors.

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A former Marine captain who became the first foreign service official to publicly resign in protest over the war in Afghanistan says staying in the country is not in America’s interest.

“The losses of our soldiers do not merit anything that comes in line with our strategic interests or values,” Matthew Hoh, who signed on as a foreign service official in Afghanistan after fighting in Iraq, tells NPR’s Melissa Block.

Hoh resigned last month after spending five working months in Afghanistan. In his resignation letter, he said he had “lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purpose of the United States’ presence in Afghanistan.”

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The audio here is very entertaining–listen to it all.

The Internet began with a whimper, not a bang. And not everyone agrees on when that whimper occurred.

But 40 years ago Thursday, something called the ARPANET came into existence, and since then, communication hasn’t been the same.

Read or listen to it all but before you do guess the text of the very first message.

A row has broken out behind the Vatican walls over the “confusion” surrounding Pope Benedict XVI’s opening to disaffected Anglicans, according to a papal biographer.

Andrea Tornielli, the biographer of several modern Popes including Pope Benedict, said that just over a week after its existence was revealed by the Vatican, the text of the Apostolic Constitution laying down the conditions for the creation of a new “Anglo-Catholic” section of the Church was still not ready for publication.

This was not because of translation problems but “something more serious”, Mr Tornielli said. There was still debate behind the scenes over priestly celibacy, the “most sensitive point for public opinion”.

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When someone in authority says “these reforms will bring the law into line with public expectation and attitudes”, you know that it is time to worry. Those were the words of Professor Elizabeth Cooke, of the Law Commission, as she proposed a change in the law to give the surviving half of an unmarried couple the automatic right to inherit a proportion of their late partner’s wealth. At present, unmarried couples who die intestate may have to go to court when one dies and can face a challenge from their partner’s family.

At the risk of sounding like an outraged Victorian parson snooping through the windows of cottages on the lookout for couples living in sin, I can’t see a problem with the law as it stands. Yes, it does make life difficult for couples who can’t be bothered either to get married or make a will. But there is every reason why the law should encourage marriage.

It is not a case of moralising, but money.

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ANGLICANS are divided over the announcement, last week, by the Vatican that they could form “Per­sonal Ordinariates” under the author­ity of Pope Benedict XVI. Many Anglicans said that it was no substi­tute for restored communion between the two Churches. Others welcomed the move.

The “pastoral” move by the Pope was widely believed to be his response to approaches by, among others, the leader of the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC), Archbishop John Hepworth, who is based in Australia, in April 2007. The head of TAC in Canada, Bishop Carl Reid, said last week that although its members were “on the same page” as Roman Catholics on ethics and family life, there were “weighty” doctrinal issues that could cause problems. “I can’t really predict how everyone is going to respond.”

The former Bishop of Rochester, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, a long-term mem­ber of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) and the International Anglican- Roman Catholic Commis­sion for Unity and Mission (IARCCUM), who was the subject of press speculation that he could accept the offer, said on Tuesday that he was not going to become a Roman Catholic.

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For the second time this month, the Church of Scientology has won a battle against its dissolution in Europe, despite a stiff sentence handed down by a French court against its operations here.

In a verdict delivered Tuesday (Oct. 27), a Paris court fined the church’s Celebrity Center and its bookshop in the French capital nearly $900,000 for defrauding former members. It handed suspended prison sentences to four church leaders and fined two others.

But the court stopped short of banning the church’s operations in France, as demanded by the prosecution. A recent legal change bars courts here from dissolving organizations convicted of fraud.

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The Diocese of Quincy held its 132nd annual Synod October 16-17, and formally aligned itself as a constituent member of the newly formed Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), a group of more than 700 Anglican churches in the US and Canada that was founded in June. Since that time another 40 churches have joined the new body.
The Synod, hosted by the Church of the Transfiguration in Princeton, also reaffirmed its pastoral relationship with the Anglican Church of the Southern Cone which offered the diocese “safe harbor” a year ago when the diocese separated from the Episcopal Church.

“God has truly blessed us over the last 12 months,” said Fr. John Spencer, President of the Standing Committee which currently oversees the diocese. “Our churches remain strong, we are focused on the future, and we are blessed to now be part of an orthodox Anglican body here in the US.” The ACNA is led by Archbishop Robert Duncan, Bishop of Pittsburgh and a leader over the last several years of the movement to restore a traditional, biblically grounded Anglican presence in the US.
In addition to routine business, the annual Synod welcomed three new parishes into the diocese. “They applied to become part of Quincy,” Fr. Spencer said, “because they know our diocese had taken a firm stand for the historic faith and practice of the Church. They know we adhere to biblical teaching and biblical morality, and they found a home with us.” Several other parishes have approached the diocese about possibly becoming members.

“God isn’t hampered by the rebellion of some in the church. When some stray from the Gospel, God raises up faithful Christians who are willing to stand against the social and moral decay that can infect and destroy a culture.” That decay, Spencer said, has infected some US churches. “There is a cost when you stand against the flow of society. But Christian faith is not a popularity contest. Our first calling is to uphold the teaching of Christ. Cultures have always resisted the Gospel. That’s no reason to stop teaching it, or stop living it.”

Two of the largest Provinces of the world-wide Anglican Communion have already formally recognized the new ACNA. As the ACNA receives growing recognition around the Communion, Spencer said, the diocese will maintain is pastoral relationship with the Province of the Southern Cone as its “official” link to world-wide Anglicanism.

Christ Church, the oldest church in Georgia, has appealed the ruling of Judge Michael Karpf, which granted control of the congregation’s property to the Episcopal Diocese of Georgia.

“This is another step in what we knew would be a long process,” stated the Rev. Marcus B. Robertson, Rector of Christ Church. In order to maintain its fidelity to the historic Christian faith, Christ Church withdrew from the Episcopal Church on September 30th, 2007. “This decision, though set in the context of a legal contest, remains consistent with the commitment we made before God and one another at that time,” Robertson added.

Neil Creasy, Chancellor of Christ Church, said, “The Supreme Court of South Carolina is the only state supreme court to have ruled in a case involving facts, law and issues similar to ours. It ruled in favor of the local congregation. We are confident of a similar result here.”

Numerous messages of support have been given to the parish. “We are grateful for the prayers and words of encouragement we have received from churches and individuals from around the world,” said Sr. Warden Carol Rogers Smith.

Christ Church is a member of the Anglican Church of North America (ACNA) and a congregation in the Gulf Atlantic Diocese, which came into being in August as a diocese of ACNA, covering north Florida and south Georgia.