Hospitality can encourage what discussion and debate cannot: reconciliation. As we see across the globe today, theology tends to divide people and too often leads to conflict. Our own nation is still highly segregated on Sunday mornings. But a shared meal can unite people at the level of a basic human need. Over the course of my 23 years of ministry, I’ve seen the power of a simple international potluck dinner. As James Beard wrote, “Food is our common ground, a universal experience.”

Meals also can build relationships across enormous socio-economic divides. My friend Kathleen Kline Chesson is the senior pastor of First Christian Church in Falls Church, Va., a congregation that serves 150 homeless people breakfast and lunch every Tuesday and Thursday. One rainy day, Chesson saw a homeless man ”” uninvited and dripping wet ”” shuffle into an elegant reception being held at the church after the funeral of a longtime member. Chesson greeted him, then smiled as three other members of the congregation rushed up to welcome him, making sure that he quickly had a plate of food.

So how are churches evolving today? Many are trying to become the “third place” that Starbucks has staked out in our culture a place for people to go after (1) home and (2) work.

Read it all.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, comes in for a lot of stick – not least from columnists like me.

But in the past few days, he has said something important. He has criticised Government ministers for thinking that Christian beliefs are no longer relevant in modern Britain, and for looking at religion as a ‘problem’.

Many Government faith initiatives, he observed, assumed that religion was an eccentricity practised by oddballs, foreigners and minorities.

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Love casts out fear. The truth is that what is most likely to get us to take the right decisions for our global future is love. The temptation is to underline fear so as to persuade one another of the urgency of the situation: things are so bad, so threatening, that we have to do something. And indeed there are moments when we might think, rather bitterly, that the human race is still not frightened enough by the prospect of what it has stored up for itself. But this is to drive out one sickness by another. That kind of fear can simply paralyse us, as we all know; it can make us feel that the problem is too great and we may as well pull up the bedclothes and wait for disaster. What’s more, it can tempt us into just blaming one another or waiting for someone else to make the first move because we don’t trust them. We need more than that for lifegiving change to happen.

And that is what we are here to say today. We meet as people of faith in the context of this critical moment in human history; and so we are not here just to plead or harangue, let alone to encourage panic and terror. We are here to say two simple things to ourselves, our neighbours and our governments.

First: don’t be afraid; but ask how the policies you follow and the lifestyle that you take for granted look in the light of the command to love the world you inhabit. Ask what would be a healthy and sustainable relationship with this world, a relationship that would in some way manifest both joy in and respect for the earth. Start with the positive question ”“ how do we show that we love God’s creation?

Second: don’t separate this from the question of how we learn to trust one another within a world of limited resources. In such a world there can be no trust without justice, without the assurance of knowing that my neighbour is there for me when I face insecurity or risk. How shall we build international institutions that make sure the resources get where they are needed ”“ that, for example, ‘green taxes’ will deliver more security for the disadvantaged, that transitions in economic patterns will not weigh most heavily on those least equipped to cope?

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The election of a lesbian priest as a bishop in the Episcopal Church is likely to cause further problems in the divided Anglican Communion, said Arch bishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams.

“The election of Mary Glasspool by the diocese of Los Angeles as suffragan [assistant] bishop-elect raises very serious questions not just for the Episcopal Church and its place in the Anglican Communion, but for the communion as a whole,” said Williams, the spiritual leader of the 77-million Anglicans worldwide, in a December 6 statement.

Glasspool, who has served as canon, or assistant, to the bishops of the Diocese of Maryland, has lived in a two-decade partnership with another woman. She is the first gay candidate elected as bishop since the Episcopal Church in July opened all levels of church service to gays and lesbians in committed relationships.

Read it all.

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is hell.

–C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1960), pp. 138-139; also quoted by yours truly in yesterday’s sermon

…to a Christian the true tragedy of Nero must be not that he fiddled while the city was on fire but that he fiddled on the brink of hell. You must forgive me for that crude monosyllable. I know that many wiser and better Christians than I in these days do not like to mention heaven and hell even in a pulpit. I know, too, that nearly all the references to this subject in the New Testament come from a single source. But then that source is our Lord Himself. People will tell you it is St. Paul, but that is untrue. These overwhelming doctrines are dominical. They are not really removable from the teaching of Christ or of His Church. If we do not believe them, our presence in this church is great tomfoolery. If we do, we must sometime overcome our spiritual prudery and mention them.

–C.S. Lewis, from a sermon at the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Oxford on October 22, 1939, quoted by yours truly in yesterday’s sermon

We call for further reflection on these matters within the Christian Church, and request the Lausanne movement to be willing to make a very clear statement rejecting the excesses of prosperity teaching as incompatible with evangelical biblical Christianity.

1. We affirm the miraculous grace and power of God, and welcome the growth of churches and ministries that demonstrate them and that lead people to exercise expectant faith in the living God and his supernatural power. We believe in the power of the Holy Spirit.

However, we reject as unbiblical the notion that God’s miraculous power can be treated as automatic, or at the disposal of human techniques, or manipulated by human words, actions or rituals.

2. We affirm that there is a biblical vision of human prospering, and that the Bible includes material welfare (both health and wealth) within its teaching about the blessing of God. This needs further study and explanation across the whole Bible in both Testaments. We must not dichotomize the material and the spiritual in unbiblical dualism.

However, we reject the unbiblical notion that spiritual welfare can be measured in terms of material welfare, or that wealth is always a sign of God’s blessing (since it can be obtained by oppression, deceit or corruption), or that poverty or illness or early death, is always a sign of God’s curse, or lack of faith, or human curses (since the Bible explicitly denies that it is always so).

Read it all.

What is at the core of the temptation to practice a Christless Christianity?

When the emphasis becomes human-centered rather than God-centered. In more conservative contexts, you hear it as exhortation: “These are God’s commandments. The culture is slipping away from us. We have to recover it, and you play a role. Is your life matching up to what God calls us to?” Of course there is a place for that, but it seems to be the dominant emphasis.

Then there is the therapeutic approach: “You can be happier if you follow God’s principles.” All of this is said with a smile, but it’s still imperative. It’s still about techniques and principles for you to follow in order to have your best life now.

In both cases, it’s law rather than gospel. I don’t even know when I walk into a church that says it’s Bible-believing that I’m actually going to hear an exposition of Scripture with Christ at the center, or whether I’m going to hear about how I should “dare to be a Daniel.” The question is not whether we have imperatives in Scripture. The question is whether the imperatives are all we are getting, because people assume we already know the gospel””and we don’t.

One of the real heroes on the contemporary Christian scene in my view–read it carefully and read it all.

Q How did this all come about?

A I’ve been teaching here at the Episcopal Divinity School for 22 years. I love the vocation of teaching and I’ve been very pleased with the community and colleagues I’ve been blessed with here at EDS. I’m from Massachusetts, my wife’s family is from Massachusetts ”” from Belmont ”” so it wasn’t as if I was looking to go and switch vocations and locations. But as a Christian and someone who is ordained in the Episcopal Church, I felt like I always needed to be open to see what God and the community, known as the church, might be calling me to do and be next. I’m 51. Our third and final child is graduating from high school. My wife’s vocation as a midwife is changing because of the medical insurance realities in Massachusetts. So it was a good time for us as a family and me professionally to imagine taking on some new challenges and some new possibilities. The question of timing, the question of how can I best serve God and God’s church in the wider world were questions before me.

Q When you applied for the job, did you think you had a shot?

A When it was first recommended I look at Connecticut because they were beginning a search process, my response was, “Yeah, that’s nice, but I’m not from Connecticut.” The reason why I said that is because Connecticut itself in 225 years ”¦ has never elected someone from outside the state. I thought, “It’s a great place, it’s a great diocese, but it’s futile to put my name in because they’ll never elect me.” When the job description came out, many of the things they were looking for I felt very much fit my gifts, my capabilities and experiences. And so I went ahead and allowed my name to stand and went through an application process. There was an ongoing winnowing with paper application review, telephone interview, site visit where people from Connecticut came and heard me preach. I’ve been an associate priest at St. James’ in Porter Square for 22 years. In June I was invited to be one of the finalists and ultimately one of the nominees.

Read it all.

Judge eternal, throned in splendor, who gavest Juan de la Cruz strength of purpose and mystical faith that sustained him even through the dark night of the soul: Shed thy light on all who love thee, in unity with Jesus Christ our Savior; who with thee and the Holy Spirit livest and reignest, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, no, and never will be. And if those days had not been shortened, no human being would be saved; but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened. Then if any one says to you, ‘Lo, here is the Christ!’ or ‘There he is!’ do not believe it. For false Christs and false prophets will arise and show great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect. Lo, I have told you beforehand. So, if they say to you, ‘Lo, he is in the wilderness,’ do not go out; if they say, ‘Lo, he is in the inner rooms,’ do not believe it. For as the lightning comes from the east and shines as far as the west, so will be the coming of the Son of man.

Matthew 24: 21-27

Take a careful look if you haven’t yet.

So much for the jealous God. A survey released earlier this year by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life found that the U.S. is a “nation of religious drifters.” If, in the realm of love, Americans gravitate toward serial monogamy (moving from marriage to divorce to remarriage and so on), we likewise flit from one religious affiliation to another, pledging our fidelity, say, to Methodism in our youth, Catholicism in middle age and Episcopalianism in our dotage.

A new Pew study, released last week, shows that Americans are swingers as well as switchers, flirting with religious beliefs and practices other than their own without officially changing their religious affiliation. Catholic leaders have long denounced “Cafeteria Catholics” for going down the line and picking and choosing the Catholic beliefs and practices they choose to uphold. According to this new study, Americans as a group are now bellying up to what my Boston University colleague John Berthrong has referred to as the “divine deli.”

Not counting travel, or special events such as weddings and funerals, more than one-third of Americans attend worship services at more than one place, and nearly a quarter attend services held by another religion.

Read it all.

There is a brewing crisis, which, if it develops as seems inevitable, has the potential of reducing all of the drama of the early Obama administration to child’s play beginning next year. Only this time, it will be the government’s crisis, not the nation’s.

The New York Times recently noted that the government has gone on what the Concord Coalition’s Robert Bixby calls a “teaser rate” borrowing binge, at an interest rate approaching … zero. Rates will rise, substantially, and soon. (The Treasury Department already is attempting to lock in rates on longer-term borrowing– already driving its short-term costs up.)

How bad could this be? So glad you asked.

The federal government currently pays, according the article, $202 billion a year in interest. White House estimates that interest payments will rise to $700 billion a year in 2019.

Read it all.

Almost 70 per cent of Australians claim to have some kind of religious affiliation and religion continues to be an unmistakeable global force. It shapes personal and collective identity and most particularly how we conceive of and respond to “the other”.

The major and some minor world religions were well represented at the Parliament of the World’s Religions that ended last week in Melbourne, though perhaps not quite the entire world. The organisers, based in Chicago and offering these ambitious international, inter-religious festivals each five years, hoped for 10,000 people. Over a crowded week of activities about 6000 people attended, but with noticeably few speakers or participants from Africa, Asia and even Europe.

A further vast group, or group of groups, conspicuous by their absence, were religious exclusivists or fundamentalists. A few souls stood outside with banners to assure participants that Jesus was the only way, but most didn’t come close. There is a long, agonising history to those absences.

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One bishop spoke deliberately, professorially, with flashes of droll humor and poetic phrasing. The other told stories from his long ministerial career, rounding them off with insights into Christian faith and practice.

But what had been billed as a debate between the Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, and the Rev. William Frey, retired Episcopal bishop of Colorado, yielded much common ground and no outright conflict on the identity and meaning of Jesus.

“I heard a great deal of convergence,” Frey said afterward.

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Pope Benedict XVI shares “the outrage, betrayal and shame” felt by Irish Catholics over cases of clerical sexual abuse and the way abuse claims were handled by church leaders, and he plans to write a special pastoral letter to the Catholics of Ireland, the Vatican said.

The letter “will clearly indicate the initiatives that are to be taken in response to the situation,” said a statement issued by the Vatican Dec. 11. The statement was released after the pope and top Vatican officials spent 90 minutes meeting with Cardinal Sean Brady of Armagh, Northern Ireland, president of the Irish bishops’ conference, and Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin.

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The audio link is here (about 39 minutes):

The Press conference’s subject: Beyond politics and business -Climate change from a religious and ethical perspective. Christian leaders urge world leaders to agree on a fair, effective and binding climate deal that put the needs of the poor first.

The Speakers:

– The Rev. Samuel Kobia (moderator)
General secretary, World Council of Churches, Switzerland
– Archbishop (emeritus) Desmond Tutu
Nobel Peace Prize laureate 1984 and anti-apartheid champion
– Bishop Sofie Petersen
Evangelical Lutheran Church in Denmark, Greenland
– The Rev. Tofiga Falani
President, Congregational Christian Church of Tuvalu, Tuvalu

People are confused about the war. The situation is difficult to resolve even for those who are here. For most of us, the conflict remains out of focus, lacking reference of almost any sort. Vertigo leaves us seeking orientation from places like Vietnam””where most of us never have been. So sad are our motley pundits-cum-navigators that those who have never have been to Afghanistan or Vietnam shamelessly use one to reference the other. We saw this in Iraq.

The most we can do is pay attention, study hard, and try to bring something into focus that is always rolling, yawing, and seemingly changing course randomly, in more dimensions than even astronauts must consider. All while gauging dozens of factors, such as Afghan Opinion, Coalition Will, Enemy Will and Capacity, Resources, Regional Actors (and, of course, the Thoroughly Unexpected). Nobody will ever understand all these dynamic factors and track them at once and through time. That’s the bad news.

The good news is that a tiger doesn’t need to completely understand the jungle to survive, navigate, and then dominate. It is not necessary to know every anthropological and historical nuance of the people here. If that were the case, our Coalition of over forty nations would not exist. More important is to realize that they are humans like us. They get hungry, happy, sad, and angry; they make friends and enemies (to the Nth degree); they are neither supermen nor vermin. They’re just people.

Take the time to read it all.

At the Episcopal church’s General Convention last summer, Thompson was with the majority of delegates who voted to declare partnered gay men and lesbians eligible for any ordained ministry. He also voted to direct church resources to preparing rites for same-sex unions.

Indeed, as the New Orleans convention was ending, Episcopalians in Los Angeles were on their way to electing the second openly gay bishop in the worldwide Anglican communion. There delegates elected the Rev. Mary Glasspool of Baltimore as an assistant bishop. Her election seemed likely to further damage relations between U.S. Episcopalians, and Anglicans in Africa and Asia, who vastly outnumber them.

“I believe the church is moving in a direction that is more inclusive when it comes to the issue of sexuality, and I think the church needs to support people who are gay,” Thompson said in an interview Saturday.

“But that’s not big the issue for me. That’s not the platform people will know me by.”

Read it all.

It Is basically a second stimulus, though no one wants to call it that. On December 8th President Barack Obama announced a set of proposals to address unemployment and made it clear that he wanted to use some of the unspent TARP funds (money set aside to support failing banks) to help pay for them. No precise figure was given. Some $50 billion will be spent on infrastructure projects; there will also be new rebates for home insulation and other energy-saving incentives. But the linchpin of the administration’s effort is a broad push to support small businesses.

That sounds reasonable. Small businesses (firms employing 500 workers or fewer) have accounted for 64% of net new job creation over the past 15 years, according to the Small Business Administration (SBA), an independent government agency. And a recent economic study found that cities with more small firms have done better at creating jobs over the past 20 years. But America’s most recent recession has hit small businesses hard. The very small, with fewer than 50 workers””employing almost one-third of working Americans””have suffered around 45% of the job losses of the downturn.

Unfortunately, helping small businesses has not proved easy.

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The Episcopal Church is the Anglican body in the United States. In 2003, it caused an uproar by consecrating its first openly gay bishop, V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire.

The following year, Anglican leaders asked the Episcopal Church to hold off on electing another gay bishop while they tried to prevent a permanent break in the fellowship.

But in July, the U.S. church’s top policy making body affirmed that gay and lesbian priests were eligible to become bishops despite pressure from other Anglicans.

The Archbishop of Canterbury called for gracious restraint on the matter, but Jefferts Schori said Saturday that “there was never any time frame attached to that request.”

[Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori] added that she didn’t know whether six years was long enough to wait but “the church is in the process of discerning that.”

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President Barack Obama and his economic team lashed out at Wall Street, with the president calling bankers “fat cats” who “don’t get it,” in a move that could escalate tensions with the nation’s biggest bankers ahead of a meeting with industry representatives.

Mr. Obama, speaking on the eve of Monday’s meeting with the heads of top banks at the White House, said he would try to persuade bankers to free up more credit to businesses, with the aim of helping boost job growth. But the president also expressed frustration with banks that the government has assisted.

“I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street,” Mr. Obama said in an interview to be broadcast on CBS’s “60 Minutes” program Sunday evening, according to excerpts made available ahead of the program.

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Two years ago this week, the Diocese of San Joaquin seceded from the U.S. Episcopal Church, launching a legal battle over church property that is now headed toward a decisive showdown.

The rebel diocese changed its name and became a founding member of a new church, the Anglican Church in North America. But religious and legal experts say holding on to its property — including real estate and cash — will prove to be far more challenging.

Already, a Fresno County Superior Court judge has handed a critical victory to the national Episcopal church, which sued not long after the San Joaquin diocese voted to break away. The diocese is appealing that July ruling.

Several legal issues in the case remain to be decided. But even the breakaway diocese acknowledges it will likely lose if it cannot persuade the 5th District Court of Appeal to overturn Judge Adolfo Corona’s ruling.

Read it all.

Google Inc. has designed a cellphone it plans to sell directly to consumers as soon as next year, according to people familiar with the matter.

The phone is called the Nexus One and is being manufactured for Google by HTC Corp., these people said. It runs Android, the operating system for mobile phones that Google developed, they added.

But unlike the more than half-dozen Android phones made by phone manufacturers today, Google designed virtually the entire software experience behind the phone, from the applications that run on it to the look and feel of each screen.

The Internet giant is taking a new, and potentially risky, approach to selling the device. Rather than selling the phone through a wireless carrier””the way the bulk of phones are sold in the U.S. today””Google plans to sell the Nexus One itself online. Users will have to buy cellular service for the device separately.

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MR. GREGORY: Governor Romney, why is it that companies are not investing, that they’re not hiring?

FMR. GOV. MITT ROMNEY (R-MA): Well, companies are going to hire if there’s additional purchases that require them to, to staff up and to beef up and to start their production lines. People have to be buying things. And unfortunately, what the president created with this $780-plus billion stimulus plan was something which grew government but did not grow the private economy. In fact, in some respects, the, the work that’s been done by The Washington Post recently points that out. It shows that there’s, there’s 10 times as much spending per person in the Washington, D.C., area as there is in the nation at large. This is not going to be a jobless recovery. The economy will come back, the private sector will grow again. But it has been a jobless stimulus. And, and that’s unfortunate, because the president had an opportunity to focus on the economy, to create jobs; but instead, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid created something that, that stimulated government.

MR. GREGORY: You know, it’s interesting. I mean, some people would, would hear that and say that’s a partisan view, Jim Cramer. But the reality is that there are people who say, “Well, what if you got this stimulus to take effect sooner, you got more than 20 percent of the money actually paid out?” The president this week said that Republicans seem to be rooting for failure; and yet, it was Republicans who, at the outset of the stimulus debate, said, “What about a payroll tax holiday? Let’s do something to prime the economy faster.”

MR. JIM CRAMER: I don’t think that–when I talk to CEOs, and I talk to dozens of them for my show, no one has seen it. I keep asking, “Where’s the money? Have you seen any money coming from Washington?” Even companies that are involved with road building, the most elementary aspect of any sort of stimulus, are saying, “No, this is the first quarter that we may have seen a trickle.” So I agree with you, David, this–the stimulus is not helping create jobs. And that’s not Republican or Democrat. I just don’t see anything beyond municipal and state worker compensation.

Read or watch it all.

In a lecture on 13 October 2009 at Southwark Cathedral, (sponsored by the Christian environmental group Operation Noah) Dr Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, sets out a Christian vision of how people can respond to the looming environmental crisis.

Listen to it all (approximately 3/4 of an hour).

….a couple of weeks ago, I had a visitor from the Pacific, who told me about how his island and some of its neighbours were actually going to be uninhabitable in a few years time because of rising water levels ”“ almost certainly connected with climate change.

That brings it home all right. It’s not quite good enough to say it’s all too difficult ”“ or that it’s nothing to do with religion anyway. We’re getting ready for Christmas; and it’s worth remembering that one of the things we celebrate at Christmas is God taking an interest in the real material stuff of this earth, the flesh and blood, and all the things that keep flesh and blood secure ”“ food and shelter and so on. It would be pretty peculiar if we took the world less seriously than God does.

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In case you haven’t noticed, the U.S. economy today is actually being hit by two tsunamis at once: The Great Recession and the Great Inflection.

The Great Inflection is the mass diffusion of low-cost, high-powered innovation technologies ”” from hand-held computers to Web sites that offer any imaginable service ”” plus cheap connectivity. They are transforming how business is done. The Great Recession you know.

The “good news” is that the Great Recession is forcing companies to take advantage of the Great Inflection faster than ever, making them more innovative. The bad news is that credit markets and bank lending are still constricted, so many companies can’t fully exploit their productivity gains and spin off the new jobs we desperately need.

Read it all.