The last two quarters were even more extreme: Productivity in the nonfarm business sector grew at a shocking 8.1% annual rate. There are two possible explanations. One: The last two quarters were among the most technologically innovative and entrepreneurial in the history of the United States. Two: Fearful businesses pared payrolls to the bone. If the second is closer to the truth, payrolls are extraordinarily lean right now. Which means that firms will need to hire more workers as their sales and production grow. Which means that employment may start growing sooner than the pessimists think.

I have been pointing this out for months, but until the last employment report, it was a hypothesis supported by no evidence. Not anymore. While payrolls continued to decline in November, it was by only a scant 11,000 jobs; and the job counts for September and October were revised upward. The data now show a clear trend that suggests that net job creation may be only a month or two away. We’ll see.

There is more to the case for optimism. For one thing, less than 30% of February’s $787 billion fiscal stimulus has been spent to date; over 70% is still in the pipeline. Pessimists dote on the fact that the rate of increase of stimulus spending has probably peaked and will be lower in 2010. True. But the level of GDP will continue to get support from fiscal policy, and a second job-creation package (“Please don’t call it a stimulus!”) looks to be in the works.

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When the Vatican recently announced the reception of Anglican communities into the Catholic Church it was a dream come true not only for Anglo-Catholics seeking their own pastoral provision, but also for many Roman Catholics with Anglican backgrounds. Over the last thirty years there has been a quiet but steady trickle of Anglicans into the Roman Catholic Church. In the American province of the worldwide Anglican Communion, “The Episcopal Church,” it began with alterations to the Book of Common Prayer in 1979 and increased with the ordination of female clergy, along with the widespread acceptance of homosexuality.

Springfield Missouri is home to about four Episcopalian parishes and two continuing Anglican parishes. There was one small Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC) parish about ten years ago, but it was later disbanded and the chapel sold. That being said, there are currently no Anglican parishes within the city that are interested in entering the emerging Anglican ordinariates within the Roman Catholic Church.ӬӬ

However, that does not mean Springfield is lacking individuals with Anglican backgrounds who have taken interest in accepting the pope’s offer. That being the case, a few pioneering Christians are starting their own prayer group in Springfield, with the intent of eventually forming an Anglican Use parish under the pastoral care of the soon to be Anglican Use ordinary bishop. They’ve named their group simply “Anglican-Use Catholics of Springfield Missouri.”

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In June 2008, 1200 Anglican leaders, bishops, clergy and lay people, from 27 provinces of the Anglican Communion met in Jerusalem for the Global Anglican Future Conference.

The result of their deliberations in the cradle of Christianity was the Jerusalem Declaration. The document has since formed the basis of ”˜The Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans’, a worldwide movement of orthodox believers which has launched several regional groups (such as FCA UK) and is growing in strength by the month.

Now, the work of 40 theologians, from 14 countries throughout the Anglican Communion, provides a commentary on this important document and how it relates to scripture, Anglican formularies and historic Anglicanism.

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A Statement from the Vestry of Christ Episcopal Church
Accokeek, Maryland
August 2009 (Made earlier but released now–KSH)

Christ Church was established in 1698 and has consistently sought to be faithful to the teachings of the Church catholic””as found in the Scriptures, the Creeds and the Book of Common Prayer””as this Church has received them.

We reaffirm our commitment to the teaching of human sexuality as revealed in the Holy Scriptures and affirmed by the Church catholic: sexual intimacy is a gift and mystery which God has designed to be expressed solely in the covenant of marriage between one man and one woman. All are called to chastity; some are called to celibacy. Consequently, all who are ordained are likewise called to live according to
these standards. We also reaffirm our commitment to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ in word and deed to Accokeek and the whole world.

Therefore, we reject resolutions D025 and C056 of General Convention 2009. Whether prescriptive or descriptive, they will not repair the broken bridges in the Anglican Communion, whose fabric is torn at its deepest level. They demonstrate an unwillingness to observe two of the moratoria which all four Instruments of Unity have asked for. They violate the explicit teaching of the Communion regarding human sexuality, especially as expressed in the 1998 Lambeth Conference resolution 1.10. They ignore the consensus of Christians throughout all time. They stand in contradiction to the explicit teaching of Scripture regarding human sexuality. And in particular, C056 violates the Episcopal Church’s own canons concerning the Covenant of Marriage. Therefore, we repudiate these resolutions and dissociate ourselves from them and their consequences.

We emphasize that we believe we are upholding the teaching of human sexuality which God has revealed. This teaching is entirely harmonious with the proclamation of the good news of God in Jesus Christ: that God’s love for all people””whether male or female, rich or poor, gay or straight””is ferociously manifest in Jesus’ cross and resurrection.

Lastly, we commend the work, at various levels within the Communion, on the Anglican Covenant and welcome the opportunity to review, study and sign its final draft.

When Congressional Democrats last week pushed to lift the U.S. federal debt ceiling by nearly two trillion dollars, Republicans blasted the move as fiscally irresponsible and voiced concern over the long term consequences of a level of deficit spending not seen since World War II.

So on Monday House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer indicated that lawmakers would seek to pass a temporary borrowing limit to last through 2010.

Still, fiscal conservatives fret over what they view as runaway spending and Congress’ silence over how to deal with the growing deficit….

“We haven’t got any clear indication that there’s a strategy to control this,” said Desmond Lachman, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “We hear the Obama administration paying lip service but there is no clear indication of how to prevent the U.S. from getting into increasing debt.”

Read it all .

Bishop Venner later apologised for his comment, saying it was ”one small phrase in quite a long interview” intended to suggest that not all members of the Taliban were ”equally evil”.

He told the BBC: ”If that has caused offence, I am deeply grieved by it because that’s the very last thing that I would want to do.”

The bishop also issued a statement condemning the Taliban’s tactics and expressing his backing for UK forces.

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The Rt Rev Stephen Venner called for a more sympathetic approach to the Islamic fundamentalists.

The Church of England’s Bishop to the Forces said it would be harder to reach a peaceful solution to the war if the insurgents were portrayed too negatively.

His comments in an interview with The Daily Telegraph came as the Prime Minister visited Afghanistan and claimed that the Taliban was fighting a “guerrilla war” aimed at causing “maximum damage”.

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On July 28, the Kehoes announced the arrival of twins, Ethan and Bridget, at University Hospital in Ann Arbor. Overjoyed, they took the babies home on Aug. 3 and prepared for a welcoming by their large extended family.

A month later, a police officer supervised as the Kehoes relinquished the swaddled infants in the driveway.

Bridget and Ethan are now in the custody of the surrogate who gave birth to them, Laschell Baker of Ypsilanti, Mich. Ms. Baker had obtained a court order to retrieve them after learning that Ms. Kehoe was being treated for mental illness.

“I couldn’t see living the rest of my life worrying and wondering what had happened, or what if she hadn’t taken her medicine, or what if she relapsed,” said Ms. Baker, who has four children of her own.

Now, she and her husband, Paul, plan to raise the twins.

The creation of Ethan and Bridget tested the boundaries of the field known as third-party reproduction, in which more than two people collaborate to have a baby. Five parties were involved: the egg donor, the sperm donor, Ms. Baker and the Kehoes. And two separate middlemen brokered the egg and sperm.

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Call it the fractal geometry of fiscal crisis. If you fly across the Atlantic on a clear day, you can look down and see the same phenomenon but on four entirely different scales. At one extreme there is tiny Iceland. Then there is little Ireland, followed by medium-size Britain. They’re all a good deal smaller than the mighty United States. But in each case the economic crisis has taken the same form: a massive banking crisis, followed by an equally massive fiscal crisis as the government stepped in to bail out the private financial system.

Size matters, of course. For the smaller countries, the financial losses arising from this crisis are a great deal larger in relation to their gross domestic product than they are for the United States. Yet the stakes are higher in the American case. In the great scheme of things””let’s be frank””it does not matter much if Iceland teeters on the brink of fiscal collapse, or Ireland, for that matter. The locals suffer, but the world goes on much as usual.

But if the United States succumbs to a fiscal crisis, as an increasing number of economic experts fear it may, then the entire balance of global economic power could shift. Military experts talk as if the president’s decision about whether to send an additional 40,000 troops to Afghanistan is a make-or-break moment. In reality, his indecision about the deficit could matter much more for the country’s long-term national security. Call the United States what you like””superpower, hegemon, or empire””but its ability to manage its finances is closely tied to its ability to remain the predominant global military power. Here’s why….

A very important piece–make sure you read it all.

High-speed broadband will become almost as basic a telephone line in the near future, the Anglican Bishop of Manchester has predicted.

Bishop Nigel McCulloch described as “rather too modest” the Government’s target of getting superfast broadband to 90 per cent of homes in the next eight years.

In a debate on the Digital Economy Bill in the House of Lords, Bishop McCulloch also suggested the “bar has been set too low in terms of universal connection speed”.

The Government is planning to impose a 50p per month tax on phone lines to pay for the role out of broadband in hard-to-reach areas.

Read the whole article.

With poverty, hunger and environmental degradation on the rise worldwide, people must do all they can to not waste precious food, said Cardinal Renato Martino.

“In developed countries every year, 30 percent of foodstuffs are wasted, ending up in the garbage,” he said, adding that during the Christmas holidays the amount of wasted food rises to 40 percent.

In the United States, however, up to half its food supply is wasted year round, he said.

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Americans’ views of the “honesty and ethics” of clergy have hit a 32-year low, with just half rating their moral caliber as high or very high, according to Gallup’s annual Honesty and Ethics Ratings of Professions survey.

The reason for the decline from 56 percent last year to 50 percent in 2009 is “unclear,” according to a Gallup news release, which also noted that “now the clergy’s ratings are below where they were earlier this decade” at the height of the Catholic Church’s clergy abuse scandal.

Barbara Dorris, outreach coordinator for the Chicago-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, attributed the drop to ripple effects from seven years of negative press surrounding predatory priests.

Read the whole thing.

Scientists have an obligation to “tell the truth they know,” the Episcopal Church’s presiding bishop recently told a forum at MIT in Cambridge, and they should keep in mind the average person’s unasked question about their research: “What difference does that make for me?”

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori cited controversial areas of current research””bio-fuel crops, stem cell science, women’s cancer screening””with human and environmental interconnections and consequences.

“The very passion that is expressed in these discussions is an indication of the greater need for the scientific community’s engagement with the larger society. None of us can hide behind the technical work and leave the ethical work to other experts,” she said.

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Members of All Saints’ Anglican Church in downtown Whitby, Ont. gathered outside on Monday to mourn the loss of their 140 year old church that burned in a fire before dawn.

Also lost in the fire were about 90 Christmas hampers that were ready to be delivered to needy families in the area, but the community is pulling together to help both the congregation and the families.

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Washington University in St. Louis will open a new academic center in January that will focus on the intersection of religion and politics and will be named for a former Missouri senator, John C. Danforth.

The John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics will eventually have five full-time faculty members, offer an undergraduate minor and sponsor conferences and lectures, Mr. Danforth, a former three-term Republican senator, said in an interview.

An ordained Episcopal priest and author of a book titled “Faith and Politics,” Mr. Danforth said the center would strive to be ideologically neutral and spark open-minded discussion on religion and politics. “I think all of us benefit from thinking about these issues more deeply, in a more scholarly way that is respectful to all points of view,” he said.

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Federal regulators initially told Citigroup and other troubled banks that they would be required to hold on to the federal aid for some time as they return to health. But in recent months, the government switched to pushing the companies to repay the money as soon as possible. All nine firms that took federal money last October now have approved plans to pay it back.

This urgency has come despite the lingering concerns of many financial experts about the companies’ health. These analysts said they worry that the firms could face rising losses next year as high unemployment and economic weakness continue to drive great numbers of borrowers into default.

“They are rolling the dice big time,” said Christopher Whalen, a financial analyst with Institutional Risk Analytics. “My fear is that the banks will definitely have to raise a lot more capital next year. The question is from whom and on what terms.”

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Episcopal Diocese of Washington Bishop John Chane celebrated the Washington D.C. City Council’s passage of a same-gender marriage bill Dec. 15

Like some other Episcopal Church bishops, Chane permits the clergy in his diocese to bless same-sex relationships. He had previously said that the diocese had begun studying the church’s canons to determine whether diocesan priests will be allowed to solemnize same-gender marriages and sign marriage licenses if same-gender marriage became legal in the district. In the Dec. 15 statement, Chane said an announcement would be forthcoming.

He said in the statement that was e-mailed to ENS and posted here that he “support[s] and celebrate[s]” the council’s decision “because it ends discrimination against gay and lesbian couples.”

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It should be evident that the ecological crisis cannot be viewed in isolation from other related questions, since it is closely linked to the notion of development itself and our understanding of man in his relationship to others and to the rest of creation. Prudence would thus dictate a profound, long-term review of our model of development, one which would take into consideration the meaning of the economy and its goals with an eye to correcting its malfunctions and misapplications. The ecological health of the planet calls for this, but it is also demanded by the cultural and moral crisis of humanity whose symptoms have for some time been evident in every part of the world.[8] Humanity needs a profound cultural renewal; it needs to rediscover those values which can serve as the solid basis for building a brighter future for all. Our present crises ”“ be they economic, food-related, environmental or social ”“ are ultimately also moral crises, and all of them are interrelated. They require us to rethink the path which we are travelling together. Specifically, they call for a lifestyle marked by sobriety and solidarity, with new rules and forms of engagement, one which focuses confidently and courageously on strategies that actually work, while decisively rejecting those that have failed. Only in this way can the current crisis become an opportunity for discernment and new strategic planning.

Is it not true that what we call “nature” in a cosmic sense has its origin in “a plan of love and truth”? The world “is not the product of any necessity whatsoever, nor of blind fate or chance”¦ The world proceeds from the free will of God; he wanted to make his creatures share in his being, in his intelligence, and in his goodness”.[9] The Book of Genesis, in its very first pages, points to the wise design of the cosmos: it comes forth from God’s mind and finds its culmination in man and woman, made in the image and likeness of the Creator to “fill the earth” and to “have dominion over” it as “stewards” of God himself (cf. Gen 1:28). The harmony between the Creator, mankind and the created world, as described by Sacred Scripture, was disrupted by the sin of Adam and Eve, by man and woman, who wanted to take the place of God and refused to acknowledge that they were his creatures. As a result, the work of “exercising dominion” over the earth, “tilling it and keeping it”, was also disrupted, and conflict arose within and between mankind and the rest of creation (cf. Gen 3:17-19). Human beings let themselves be mastered by selfishness; they misunderstood the meaning of God’s command and exploited creation out of a desire to exercise absolute domination over it. But the true meaning of God’s original command, as the Book of Genesis clearly shows, was not a simple conferral of authority, but rather a summons to responsibility.

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It came as no surprise that there was the usual outcry against the interim report on prosecution in respect of cases of assisted suicide by the Director of Public Prosecutions. Headlines appeared saying, “Assisted suicide proposals ”˜unacceptable in a civilised society’ ”” Roman Catholic bishops”, while last month a letter to The Times from Lord Mackay of Clashfern, et al, accused the policy of placing people at risk, and directed readers to the response of the alliance Care Not Killing (CNK).

The CNK is an organisation created to oppose assisted suicide. Its core members include the Church of England, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference and most other faith-based organisations, all of which are implacably opposed to assisted suicide. The alliance demands that the policy be restructured using a provision in the code for crown prosecutors that says prosecution should take place unless public interest weighs against it. Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, in his judgment on the Debbie Purdy case, criticised the unhelpfulness of the code itself as any sort of guide in cases of assisted suicide.

The CNK’s response also makes no reference to public opinion. As Baroness Hale of Richmond said in her judgment: “The British public have consistently supported assisted dying for people with a painful or unbearable incurable disease from which they will die.” Meanwhile, a survey conducted by The Times in July found 74 per cent in support of assisted suicide for the terminally ill and only 23 per cent against.

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The battle lines are drawn. The armies are lined up. The guns are loaded. But here in Copenhagen, a phony war is underway.

For the past two days, negotiators have been bogged down in minor technical details and endless delays. For hours plenary meetings have been taken up by countries complaining about the process. Then finally solutions are agreed, and everyone files out to the relevant gatherings ”“ only to find them cancelled on arrival. All of Monday disappeared down that hole….

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Cold war liberalism had a fine run in the middle third of the 20th century, and it has lingered here and there since. Scoop Jackson kept the flame alive in the 1970s. Peter Beinart wrote a book called “The Good Fight,” giving the tendency modern content.

But after Vietnam, most liberals moved on. It became unfashionable to talk about evil. Some liberals came to believe in the inherent goodness of man and the limitless possibilities of negotiation. Some blamed conflicts on weapons systems and pursued arms control. Some based their foreign-policy thinking on being against whatever George W. Bush was for. If Bush was an idealistic nation-builder, they became Nixonian realists.

Barack Obama never bought into these shifts. In the past few weeks, he has revived the Christian realism that undergirded cold war liberal thinking and tried to apply it to a different world.

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More than half of the nation’s unemployed workers have borrowed money from friends or relatives since losing their jobs. An equal number have cut back on doctor visits or medical treatments because they are out of work.

Almost half have suffered from depression or anxiety. About 4 in 10 parents have noticed behavioral changes in their children that they attribute to their difficulties in finding work.

Joblessness has wreaked financial and emotional havoc on the lives of many of those out of work, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll of unemployed adults, causing major life changes, mental health issues and trouble maintaining even basic necessities.

Read it carefully and read it all.

The videos are well worth watching here also.

From here:

Like many other Dioceses across the Episcopal Church, we will soon consider the election of Canon Mary Glasspool as Bishop Suffragan of the Diocese of Los Angeles. We pledge to do so prayerfully, recognizing, as the Archbishop of Canterbury stated, that our decision “will have very important implications” for the future of the Episcopal Church and its place in the Anglican Communion.

We regret the recent statement by the Bishop of Los Angeles, The Rt. Rev. John Bruno, that withholding consent because of Canon Glasspool’s sexuality “would be a violation of the canons of this church.” The theme of the most recent General Convention, hosted by the Diocese of Los Angeles, was “Ubuntu.” At that convention the Presiding Bishop invited the Church “into a larger and more expansive way of understanding identity in community.” We thus find the threat of canonical discipline, however veiled or unintended, sadly ironic to the call of living in community despite our differences, even differences on the subject of human sexuality.

For our part, we pledge to respectfully and prayerfully consider Canon Glasspool’s election, not only in light of her qualifications, but also in light of our valued place in the Anglican Communion and the call of the proposed Covenant to act in continuity and consonance with Scripture and the catholic and apostolic faith, order, and tradition, as received by the Churches of the Anglican Communion. We encourage other Standing Committees in the Episcopal Church do the same, pledging our prayers for Canon Glasspool, Bishop Bruno, The Diocese of Los Angeles, and the Episcopal Church.