The Republican who will head the House committee that oversees domestic security is planning to open a Congressional inquiry into what he calls “the radicalization” of the Muslim community when his party takes over the House next year.

Representative Peter T. King of New York, who will become the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said he was responding to what he has described as frequent concerns raised by law enforcement officials that Muslim leaders have been uncooperative in terror investigations.

He cited the case of Najibullah Zazi, an Afghan man and a legal resident of the United States, who was arrested last year for plotting to bomb the New York subway system. Mr. King said that Ahmad Wais Afzali, an imam in Queens who had been a police informant, had warned Mr. Zazi before his arrest that he was the target of a terror investigation.

“When I meet with law enforcement, they are constantly telling me how little cooperation they get from Muslim leaders,” Mr. King said.

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On Dec. 3, I had the privilege of ordaining Dennis Garrou, a married former Episcopal priest, to the sacred order of deacons for the Archdiocese of Denver. God willing, Deacon Garrou will be ordained a Catholic priest in May.

All this is made possible by a “Pastoral Provision” implemented by Pope John Paul II in 1980. In its own small way this special occasion fulfills one of the main goals of Vatican II””Christian unity. As the first sentence in the Decree on Ecumenism says, “The restoration of unity among all Christians is one of the principal concerns of the Second Vatican Council.”

The importance of Christian unity cannot be emphasized enough, because Jesus Christ founded one Church and one Church only. This is not just a matter of faith, but of historical fact. The divisions that have occurred over the centuries are a sad testimony to the Fall and the effects of original sin. The separation of Christians from each other is contrary to God’s will, a wound to Christ’s body and a scandal to the outside world. It is like the amputation of limbs from a body, or divorce and the breakup of a family.

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A landmark church in Northwest Gainesville might be torn down and replaced with a Walgreen’s.

St. Michael’s Episcopal Church was designed in the seventies by Nils M. Schweizer, a student of the famous architect Frank Loyd Wright.
And some members of the community are fighting to save what they consider a spiritual and architectural treasure.

St. Michael’s Episcopal Church is a mid-century modern building featuring a column-less design. It’s home to a congregation of about 100 people and the idea of it being torn down is very upsetting to some long time community and church members.

Susan Halbert has been a member of the church for 15 years. She said, “To tear down a beautiful church to put another drugstore was a real disappointment to me.”Bishop Samuel Johnson Howard of the Episcopal Diocese of Florida made the announcement last month that a contingent contract had been signed with Walgreen’s to sell the property.Halbert said, “It would be futile to speculate on why he made this decision, but for me personally it’s a devestating thing.” Some church members are struggling with the idea of losing the building they consider they’re spiritual home.

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As the Catholic Diocese of Phoenix and St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center continued to talk Wednesday about the church’s role in medical decisions, the national debate escalated over whether the local bishop’s threat to remove the hospital’s Catholic status was appropriate.

Several national observers questioned whether Bishop Thomas Olmsted, who oversees matters concerning the Catholic Church in the Phoenix diocese, should be allowed to impose upon a hospital’s potentially life-saving medical practices. The issue stems from the hospital’s decision last fall to terminate a pregnancy that posed serious health risks to the mother.

Other observers, however, said the bishop’s move underscores the beliefs of many patients.

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Suppose the unthinkable happened, and terrorists struck New York or another big city with an atom bomb. What should people there do? The government has a surprising new message: Do not flee. Get inside any stable building and don’t come out till officials say it’s safe.

The advice is based on recent scientific analyses showing that a nuclear attack is much more survivable if you immediately shield yourself from the lethal radiation that follows a blast, a simple tactic seen as saving hundreds of thousands of lives. Even staying in a car, the studies show, would reduce casualties by more than 50 percent; hunkering down in a basement would be better by far.

But a problem for the Obama administration is how to spread the word without seeming alarmist about a subject that few politicians care to consider, let alone discuss. So officials are proceeding gingerly in a campaign to educate the public.

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…the change in the global social structure has created a psychological crisis in the U.S. Since World War II, we’ve built our national identity on our rank among the nations ”” at the front with everybody else trailing behind. But in this age of convergence, the world doesn’t have much of a tail anymore.

Some people interpret this loss of lead-dog status as a sign of national decline.

Other people think we are losing our exceptionalism. But, the truth is, there’s just been a change in the shape of the world community. In a world of relative equals, the U.S. will have to learn to define itself not by its rank, but by its values. It will be important to have the right story to tell, the right purpose and the right aura. It will be more important to know who you are.

Americans seem uncertain about how to answer that question. But one answer is contained in [Hans] Rosling’s chart. What is the core feature of the converging world? It is the rise of a gigantic global middle class.

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Priests in Australia’s new Anglican Ordinariate will celebrate mass facing east, away from their congregations, using 500-year old liturgies.

Archbishop John Hepworth, Primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion, said the traditional sacred liturgies — more in the language of Shakespeare than modern vernacular — would be held in parishes in all capital cities, the Gold and Sunshine coasts, Rockhampton and Torres Strait.

The process took a major step forward yesterday when Archbishop Hepworth and Catholic Bishop Peter Elliott announced the establishment of an Australian Ordinariate implementation committee comprising senior Catholic, Anglican and TAC clergy.

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In November, the British Columbia Court of Appeal upheld a 2009 Supreme Court of B.C. decision that ruled the Anglican diocese of New Westminster should retain possession of four Vancouver-area church properties.

But this week, the congregations that filed the original lawsuit have announced they intend to file an appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada.

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Considering that you couldn’t turn on your TV, go to the movies or hit the bookstore this year without seeing Mark Zuckerberg, it’s absolutely fitting that the 26-year-old founder of Facebook was named Time magazine’s “Person of the Year.”

At the same time it’s astonishing that, at such an early stage of his career, Zuckerberg finds himself on the receiving end of an honor that places him in some remarkable company.

He is the second-youngest to receive the nod, edged out only by 25-year-old Charles Lindbergh in 1927. He becomes only the second recipient from Silicon Valley, following Andy Grove in 1997 — who was honored almost 30 years after founding Intel. Among other tech titans, the list is a short one: Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com in 1999 and Bill Gates in 2005 (though for his charitable works).

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You have stood before some landscape, which seems to embody what you have been looking for all your life; and then turned to the friend at your side who appears to be seeing what you saw””but at the first words a gulf yawns between you, and you realise that this landscape means something totally different to him, that he is pursuing an alien vision and cares nothing for the ineffable suggestion by which you are transported . . . All the things that have deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it””tantalising glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest””if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself””you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say ‘Here at last is the thing I was made for.’ We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want . . . which we shall still desire on our deathbeds . . . Your place in heaven will seem to be made for you and you alone, because you were made for it””made for it stitch by stitch as a glove is made for a hand.

–C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (my emphasis)

It would be very surprising if this religion, so youthful, yet so varied in its historical experience, has now revealed all its secrets.

–Diarmaid MacCulloch, Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (Viking, 2010)

The federal government has filed suit against an Illinois school district for not allowing a Muslim teacher to make the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, and the ACLU has filed suit on behalf of a Georgia woman who was thrown in jail after refusing to remove her headscarf.

U.S. officials on Monday (Dec. 13) sued Berkeley School District 87 in suburban Chicago for denying a Muslim schoolteacher’s request for almost three weeks of paid leave of absence so she could perform the hajj, the pilgrimage to the Islamic holy city of Mecca.

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Interreligious dialogue — perhaps especially Catholic-Muslim dialogue — must deal with how world religions confront secular modernity, Canadian theologian Gregory Baum said in a major lecture in Washington Nov. 17.
Catholic dialogue with Jews and Muslims does not contradict the Catholic proclamation of the Gospel, although tensions between dialogue and evangelization are not always easily resolved, he said. “Interreligious dialogue transforms the traditions involved in it: It purifies them and enriches them,” he said.

But if such dialogues are to be authentic, he said, they must also work together to face up to the challenges that classic world religions face in today’s globalized world of technology, finance, trade, and other cultural and secular forces.

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Some years ago we were doing a renewal conference in a great Gothic cathedral-like Presbyterian church in Omaha. As people came in they were given a balloon filled with helium. They were told to release it at some point in the service when they felt like expressing joy in their hearts””during the anthem, the hymns, the prayers or the sermon. Since they were Presbyterians, they were not free to say “Hallelujah,” or “Praise the Lord.” Letting go of the balloon would represent praise going up to God. So all through the service, brightly colored balloons were rising up to bounce off the ceiling, visual signs of praise to the Lord. But oddly enough, when the service was over, about a third of those balloons were still left unreleased. Those Presbyterians either felt no joy, or, feeling it, could not bring themselves to express it. You may have had parents who have hung onto their balloons. They can’t rejoice at your birth if they are unable to rejoice at all. At John [the Baptist’s] birth, parents and neighbors alike released their balloons.

–Bruce Larson, Luke: The Preacher’s Commentary, Vol. 26 (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2002), p.43

Gracious God, we offer thanks for the vision of Ralph Adams Cram, John LaFarge and Richard Upjohn, whose harmonious revival of the Gothic enriched our churches with a sacramental understanding of reality in the face of secular materialism; and we pray that we may honor thy gifts of the beauty of holiness given through them, for the glory of Jesus Christ; who livest and reignest with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.

Almighty and most merciful God, who has given the Bible to be the revelation of thy great love to man, and of thy power and will to save him: Grant that our study of it may not be made vain by the callousness or the carelessness of our hearts, but that by it we may be confirmed in penitence, lifted to hope, made strong for service, and, above all, filled with true knowledge of thee and of thy Son Jesus Christ.

–George Adam Smith

Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. “I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry; he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

–Matthew 3:10-12

As the ordinations of bishops-elect Diane Bruce and Mary Glasspool approach on May 15, I hope we can all celebrate with them, their families, the Diocese of LA and TEC. At this time, it seems to me, we are living into our Baptismal Covenant and the resolutions ratified at the last General Convention; that we are following the Holy Spirit in calling the best people for particular ministries. We are modeling an Easter life for the greater Communion, and this is indeed who we are!

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When Episcopal Life Monthly publishes its last paper edition in January, retired founding editor Jerrold Hames will launch an independent monthly publication to help fill the gap.

Episcopal Journal will debut in February, reaching 50,000 households through printing partnerships with diocesan publications in Bethlehem, Delaware, Eastern Oregon, Easton, Iowa, Long Island, New Hampshire, Nevada, Northern Michigan, San Joaquin, Southwestern Virginia, Vermont and West Tennessee.

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Polyamory, according to author Deborah Anapol, refers to a set of “lovestyles” wherein individuals are free to engage romantically with any person””or group of people””they wish. In her new book, Polyamory in the 21st Century, Anapol aims to distinguish just what these lovestyles look like, vis-à-vis a popular contemporary “bias [toward] mononormativity.” Subsequently, she suggests the benefits that “sexual fluidity” holds for the future.

Anapol, who is a full-time relationship coach, writes as a “participant observer in the polyamory community,” and her commentary on the intricacies of multi-partner relating spares no details. Drawing from her professional practice, she brings readers right into the high-occupancy bedrooms””or “sex rooms” as they are sometimes called””of today’s most vigorous polyamorites.

Anapol’s account is designed as an all-around apologia of the consensual free love movement and attempts to radically and critically redefine the very meaning of sex. But although it’s intended to be both revolutionary as well as educational, Polyamory in the 21st Century leaves the discerning reader more puzzled than enlightened. The author’s ultimate report, laden as it is with obvious contradictions and vagaries, betrays a quixotic and confused fascination with an incoherent form of living….

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More than 150,000 people have come back to church since the first Back to Church Sunday in 2004 – enough to fill Wembley Stadium and the Emirates Stadium put together.

Around 3,500 churches from participating denominations welcomed back 51,000 people on Back to Church Sunday 2010 (26th September), which by comparison is more than all those attending worship on a typical Sunday in the Diocese of Oxford.

The Bishop of Hertford, the Rt Revd Paul Bayes, said: “For thousands of churches, and tens of thousands of Christians, Back to Church Sunday has become part of what they do each September. It’s the shortest step in evangelism ”“ invite someone you know to something you love ”“ ”˜would you like to come to church with me?’ And year after year, people are responding positively.”

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The former Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the UK’s Department of International Development, Sally Keeble has been appointed as the Director of a new cross-Communion Alliance set up to connect and strengthen the development, relief and advocacy activities of the Anglican Communion.

Ms Keeble, who has degrees in Theology and Sociology from the University of Oxford, UK and the University of South Africa respectively, will oversee the work of the Alliance (full title The Anglican Alliance: Development, Relief, Advocacy). The Alliance is made up of churches and agencies collaborating and sharing knowledge and skills to add value to the range of development, relief and advocacy activities already undertaken by Anglicans around the world.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has welcomed the key contribution that Ms Keeble will play in the development of this new initiative: “I am delighted at Sally’s appointment. She will bring a well-tried level of skill and profound commitment to the role, and I believe she is ideally suited to the task of drawing together the diverse hopes and enterprises of Anglicans around the world in our work of holistic mission.”

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“This is magnificent,” an American visitor whispers to his Toronto host. Then adds, “Of course, this is an Anglican town.”

Was he hallucinating? No. In 1963, it was. Then there were enough Anglicans in Toronto to host the largest world conference that denomination ever held ”“ with delegates from five continents.

Why in 2010 is all that unthinkable? Instead of sponsoring that kind of mega-event, why do Anglican leaders in Toronto have to cope with a report recommending the closing of 15 once thriving parish churches.

What has happened in the past 50 years to produce this decline? Are Anglicans finding “godlessness” a better option? Have they lost all confidence in their bishops and clergy? Are they flocking to other religions?

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The United States is too reliant on China for minerals crucial to new clean energy technologies, making the American economy vulnerable to shortages of materials needed for a range of green products ”” from compact fluorescent light bulbs to electric cars to giant wind turbines.

So warns a detailed report to be released on Wednesday morning by the United States Energy Department. The report, which predicts that it could take 15 years to break American dependence on Chinese supplies, calls for the nation to increase research and expand diplomatic contacts to find alternative sources, and to develop ways to recycle the minerals or replace them with other materials.

At least 96 percent of the most crucial types of the so-called rare earth minerals are now produced in China, and Beijing has wielded various export controls to limit the minerals’ supply to other countries while favoring its own manufacturers that use them.

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The recession has finally caught up with churches.

After two years of treading water, more Protestant congregations have seen their Sunday collections drop this year.

Pastors blame high unemployment and a drop in per-capita giving by members. To make ends meet, churches have laid off staff and frozen salaries, put off major capital projects and cut back on programs. At the same time, more of their congregation members and neighbors are asking for help with basic needs such as paying the rent and buying groceries.

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A Christmas show camel got a little too close for comfort for audience members at a West Palm Beach Baptist church Thursday night, after it did a belly flop onto a row of pews during a rehearsal.

The incident happened at the First Baptist Church of West Palm Beach and was filmed and posted to YouTube, thankfully.

The video shows the massive hump-backed mammal being escorted down the aisle before it tumbles over a few rows of pews an onto helpless spectators.

Read it all and yes, there is a link to the video.

Sometimes it seems like President Obama just can’t catch a break, from the long-faltering economy to the Gulf oil well explosion. But some problems are just of his own making. Nowhere is this more clear than in his clumsy use of religious language. The president cannot stop stumbling over the religious maxims that have defined us as a nation.

Earlier this fall, President Obama repeatedly misquoted the Declaration of Independence, saying “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that each of us are endowed with certain inalienable rights.” Why leave out the “Creator”? Doing this once would have gathered no notice. Twice, and the grumbling began. Three times, and people began to wonder whether he had made a conscious decision to reword this founding document, presumably for the purpose of political correctness.

Another misstep came in his speech in Indonesia a month ago, when Obama told the audience that America’s national motto was E Pluribus Unum, or “Out of Many, One.” Of course, this is incorrect: the national motto, since 1956, is “In God We Trust….”

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When President Obama lit the National Christmas Tree behind the White House last year, he spoke of a “child born far from home” and said “while this story may be a Christian one, its lesson is universal.”

This year, Obama referenced that same “child born far from home,” but added a more personal twist: “It’s a story that’s dear to Michelle and me as Christians.”

Three days later, at a Christmas benefit concert, the president again talked about how the story of Christmas “guides my Christian faith.”

What changed? For one, three separate polls in the past year have found that one in four Americans think the president is a Muslim, 43 percent don’t know what faith he follows, and four in 10 Protestant pastors don’t consider Obama a Christian.

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I will take comments on this submitted by email only to at KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

“Learn from the farmer,” St. James writes, “he awaits with constancy the precious fruit of the earth until it has received the first and the last rains. You too must be constant, strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near” (James 5:7-8). The comparison with the farmer is quite expressive: He who has sown seeds in the field has before him some months of patient and constant expectation, but he knows that in the meantime the seed goes through its cycle thanks to the autumn and spring rains. The farmer is not a fatalist, but is the model of a mentality that unites faith and reason in a balanced way because, on one hand, he knows the laws of nature and does his work well, and, on the other hand, he trusts in Providence, because certain basic things are not in his hands but in God’s hands. Patience and constancy are precisely the synthesis between human effort and trust in God.

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As Anglicans and Episcopalians met last week in the Dominican Republic to share their stories and organize around issues of climate justice, in Panama heavy rains and floods killed at least 10 people, displaced 4,700 more, and forced the first-ever weather-related closure of the Panama Canal.

“While we are here for the conference on climate justice, in Panama people are being evacuated out of areas that are being flooded,” said Bishop Julio Murray of the Episcopal Church of Panama Dec. 9, in an interview with ENS. “The groups that are mostly affected are the indigenous groups that live in the area of Alto Bayano … it is the first time in my lifetime that the Panama Canal has had to suspend traffic ”¦ this is an example of what happens when water levels rise in rapid ways.”

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