This is very enjoyable–check it out.

Guess before you check the answer.

On one of his periodic visits from New York to his father in Georgia, the Rev. David K. Brawley realized he was having trouble making out the older man’s words. For the previous four years, ever since cancer was found in his chest, Don Brawley Jr. had gone through periods when his voice weakened, when its baritone clenched into a hoarse rasp.

But this fading, labored tone, his son believed, was something different. And because doctors had recently found his father’s cancer returning, even after the years of chemotherapy and the presumption of being cured, different meant ominous. It also meant humiliating. David couldn’t bear to ask his father to keep repeating and explaining.

David’s brother, Don Brawley III, concurred. He lived near their father in the Atlanta suburbs; their father served as deacon and administrator of the church Don III pastored, Canaan Land International. They were accustomed to speaking several times a week, and in a sneaky, gradual way, his father’s voice had grown so faint that Don III was depending on reading lips and interpreting body language.

So he and his sons, his two minister sons, went in search of his voice, or something that could replace it.

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By proposing to curtail the tax deduction for mortgage interest, the president’s deficit commission is sounding an alarm.

The home mortgage deduction is one of the most widely used and expensive tax subsidies. More than 35 million Americans claim it, and the federal government estimates it will cost the Treasury $131 billion in forgone revenue in 2012. Its size, popularity and link to the emotionally charged American notion of homeownership has made it so politically sacrosanct that there are serious doubts whether Congress will even entertain the idea.

But by raising the specter of ending one of the most cherished tax breaks, the commission is trying to jar the public into recognizing the magnitude of the nation’s budget deficit and some of the drastic steps that might be needed to close it.

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Dr. Cleveland L. Sellers Jr., president of Voorhees College, was recently elected chairman of the Association of Episcopal Colleges, the U.S. chapter of the Colleges and Universities of the Anglican Communion.

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There are arguments to be made for why the Christian tradition (and all other traditions for that matter) is wrong to treat male-female sexual reciprocity as normative. I don’t find these arguments persuasive, but they’re not stupid.

But I’ve always thought it disastrous to use the “God loves you just the way your are” and “God doesn’t want you to change” slogans, along with the closely related “God doesn’t make mistakes” shibboleth.

Why? Because it turns Christianity into bourgeois religion, and the church into an affirming chaplaincy for the status quo. There’s no salt in a message that tells people that they’re basically good and don’t need to change.

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President Obama departed Friday from a summit of world leaders here with an agreement that major economies would abide by common standards that could, for example, reverse some of China’s export dominance and help put Americans back to work.

But the deal, backed by the United States and adopted by the Group of 20, is not the detailed code of behavior Obama had sought; instead it’s a statement of principle. Its impact won’t be known until a group of finance ministers and the International Monetary Fund complete what could be months of haggling over the specifics. And if the G-20 meeting proved anything, it is the difficulty of wresting meaningful consensus from nations with increasingly divergent economic interests.

“You are seeing a situation where a host of other countries are doing well and coming into their own and they are going to be more assertive in terms of their interests and ideas,” Obama said at a news conference. “The question was whether our countries can work together to keep the global economy growing. The fact is that 20 major economies gathered here are in broad agreement on the way forward.”

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For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it. For he who said, “Do not commit adultery,” said also, “Do not kill.” If you do not commit adultery but do kill, you have become a transgressor of the law. So speak and so act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty. For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy; yet mercy triumphs over judgment.

James 2:10-13

Read it all will not cut it on this one, you need to listen to it all.

The one section that you absolutely must not miss is this one:

One person who was very moved by Gorecki’s third symphony was a 14-year old girl from Sweden ”” a burn victim who wrote a letter to the composer, telling him that his music was the only thing that kept her alive. Gorecki reads from the letter in his interview.

There is an audio link where Gorecki reads the letter through a translator–it made me cry–KSH. (Hat tip: Elizabeth)

The Parochial Report Membership and Attendance Totals for 2009 have been posted to the Episcopal Church website, available here: http://generalconvention.org/gc/parochial_reports

The report was posted by the Rev. Canon Dr. Gregory Straub, Secretary of Executive Council, in accordance to Canon I.6.1 (listed below)

The figures are based on the information submitted by congregations and dioceses through the annual Parochial Report. The report was prepared by C. Kirk Hadaway, Ph.D., Officer for Congregational Research.

Reflective of members in both domestic and foreign dioceses, the report shows 2,175,616 baptized members of The Episcopal Church for 2009, with an Average Sunday Attendance (ASA) of 724,789.

In an accompanying report of Episcopal Domestic Fast Facts 2009 (not inclusive of any of the non-United States-based dioceses), the largest ASA was posted as the Cathedral of St Peter & St Paul in Washington DC (Washington National Cathedral) with 1667. The largest active membership was noted as St. Martin’s, Houston TX (Diocese of Texas) with 8,311 members.
Canon 6:

CANON 6: Of the Mode of Securing an Accurate View of the State of This Church

Sec. 1. A report of every Parish and other Congregation of this Church shall be prepared annually for the year ending December 31 preceding, in the form authorized by the Executive Council and approved by the Committee on the State of the Church, and shall be filed not later than March 1 with the Bishop of the Diocese, or, where there is no Bishop, with the ecclesiastical authority of the Diocese. The Bishop or the ecclesiastical authority, as the case may be, shall keep a copy and submit the report to the Executive Council not later than May 1. In every Parish and other Congregation the preparation and filing of this report shall be the joint duty of the Rector or Member of the Clergy in charge thereof and the lay leadership; and before the filing thereof the report shall be approved by the Vestry or bishop’s committee or mission council. This report shall include the following information:

(1) the number of baptisms, confirmations, marriages, and burials during the year; the total number of baptized members, the total number of communicants in good standing, and the total number of communicants in good standing under 16 years of age.

(2) a summary of all the receipts and expenditures, from whatever source derived and for whatever purpose used.

(3) such other relevant information as is needed to secure accurate view of the state of this Church, as required by the approved form.

The Episcopal Church welcomes all who worship Jesus Christ in 109 dioceses and three regional areas in 16 nations. The Episcopal Church is a member province of the worldwide Anglican Communion.

Check them out carefully.

In Israel, where modernity coexists uneasily with tradition, hand-wringing about the country’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish minority is a national pastime. Cloistered in poor towns and neighborhoods, exempted from conscription into the military and surviving largely off government handouts, the black-hatted ultra-Orthodox, known as Haredim, have long vexed more secular Israelis. Now, in the wake of an Israeli Supreme Court decision, this perennial tension has escalated to new heights.

The immediate issue is a decades-old state policy of providing stipends to students who attend religious schools, called yeshivas. In June, the court declared those stipends illegal, citing discrimination against secular university students who don’t qualify for such assistance. Last month, however, ultra-Orthodox lawmakers introduced a bill to reinstate the stipend. “The state sees a great importance in encouraging Torah study,” says their proposal.

Opposition to the bill is fierce, as many Israelis believe that decades of welfare and draft exemptions have created a cycle of poverty and dependence among Haredim. “If they want to live in a ghetto, fine, but why should the state pay for it?” Yossi Sarid, a former education minister, told the Associated Press. The controversy has triggered street protests across Israel, and threatens to topple the coalition government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

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Perhaps if ordinary people were publicly Catholic or Christian in their daily lives and online, that would dispel some of the stereotypes and make the civic discourse on faith more fruitful, more authentic, more varied or nuanced. I spoke to one Catholic woman who told me she viewed her Facebook profile as an “apostolate.” She shares musings about her love of the church right alongside her love of kickboxing. The transition, for her, was seamless. She is not aggressive in her posts, but it’s clear that she is deeply committed to her local parish.

If you find my page on Facebook, it will not take you long to discover that I am Catholic, but I do sympathize with friends who are reluctant to make such electronic declarations of faith. Surely it is not ideal to “discuss” religion or politics in the decidedly anti-Socratic setting that is Facebook. Still, when religion is one of the few things that remain private in our carefully constructed, very public, online universe, then religious voices at the extremes will profile us all.

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Leaders of the world’s biggest economies agreed on Friday to curb “persistently large imbalances” in saving and spending but deferred until next year tough decisions on how to identify and fix them.

The agreement, the culmination of a two-day summit meeting of leaders of the Group of 20 industrialized and emerging powers, fell short of initial American demands for numerical targets on trade surpluses and deficits. But it reflected a consensus that longstanding economic patterns ”” in particular, the United States consuming too much, and China too little ”” were no longer sustainable.

President Obama called the agreement significant, even if not as dramatic or far-reaching as the one that emerged from the first G-20 leaders’ meeting in 2008, when nations came together quickly amid fears of a global meltdown.

“Instead of hitting home runs, sometimes we’re going to hit singles,” Mr. Obama said. “But they’re really important singles.”

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The Archbishop of Canterbury has proposed suspending the Primates Meeting””the fourth ”˜instrument of unity’ in the Anglican Communion””in favour of holding multiple small group gatherings of like minded archbishops.

In a letter to the primates dated Oct 7, Dr. Rowan Williams suggested that given the “number of difficult conversations” and the threat of a boycott of its meetings, a regime of separate but equal facilitated small groups sessions might better serve the primates’ “diverse” perspectives and forestall the substantial “damage” to the communion a full-fledged boycott would entail.

Dr. Williams also called for a reform of the structure of the meetings, suggesting that an elected standing committee be created and the powers and responsibility of the meeting of the communion’s 38 archbishops, presiding bishops and moderators be delineated.

Lambeth Palace did not respond to a request for clarification about the Oct 7 letter, while a spokesman for the Anglican Consultative Council said it could not address the question of a potential boycott as “the content of correspondence between the Primates and the Archbishop of Canterbury is private.”

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After months of speculation over their future, two Provincial Episcopal Visitors (PEVs) ”” the Bishop of Ebbsfleet, the Rt Revd Andrew Burnham, and the Bishop of Rich­borough, the Rt Revd Keith Newton ”” announced this week that they are resigning to take up the Pope’s offer of joining the Ordinariate.

They will be accompanied by the Bishop of Fulham, the Rt Revd John Broadhurst, who had announced his intention to enter the Ordinariate at Forward in Faith’s National As­sembly last month… and two retired bishops, the Rt Revd Edwin Barnes, a former Bishop of Richborough, and the Rt Revd David Silk, a former Bishop of Ballarat in Australia, now an hon­orary assistant bishop in the diocese of Exeter.

The Archbishop of Canterbury said that it was “with regret” that he had accepted the two PEVs’, or flying bishops’, resignations. He wished them well in their next stage of ministry, and thanked them for their service in the Church of England. He confirmed that he would “set in train the process for filling the vacant sees” of both flying bishops.

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To return to the thesis, [environmental concern].. is just one example of where faith communities can play a critically important role in our democracy. It is not enough to lay out a case in cold fact. It requires, as Martin Luther King Jr. understood, an appeal to the heart and soul of the individual. This is the sphere in which faith moves.

Faith can be the impetus which moves grand, national debates and changes minds. But this cannot happen unless we allow for that voice in our public realm. The strict separation of church and state as codified in the U.S. constitution was never intended to deny the voice of faith in public, but to prevent potentates like George III from dictating how and in what manner one should worship. In Canada, that formal separation has never existed. Rather, we seek to protect all forms of worship in the framework of a culture of pluralism.

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Anglican Bishop of Egbu Diocese, near Owerri, Prof. Emmanuel Iheagwam, has expressed worry over the high rate of insecurity in the South East particularly the spate of kidnapping and violence, describing it as an embarrassment to Ndigbo.

Addressing [the] Anglican faithful, most of them priests, the laity, and the women’s guide at the church third session of the fifth Synod at the Umualum, Nekede, near Owerri on Monday, Iheagwam lamented that the perpetrators of the crime have no limits as they now abduct priests in sacred/hallowed institutions like in church, doctors in their theatres and so on.

Though, he expressed happiness that the crime has reduced drastically recently in the zone, the bishop warned some of the fleeing criminals to repent and confess their sins and turn to God before God’s judgment befalls them.

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The head of the World Council of Churches has affirmed its ties with the U.S. National Council of Churches, praising churches in the United States for “bringing change and reformation in this sinful world”.

“The ‘old world’ of Europe brought the teaching of Martin Luther; you had the Baptist leader and visionary dreamer of a new future, Martin Luther King,” WCC general secretary the Rev. Olav Fykse Tveit said on 11 November at the NCC’s centennial ecumenical gathering in New Orleans, Louisiana.

The WCC leader noted that the rest of the world has often criticised U.S. dominance in the 20th century, a period sometimes called the “American century”. But the Norwegian Lutheran cleric said the century would also be noted for the role of the U.S. churches in the development of the international ecumenical movement.

“This needs to be recalled at a time when you and also many others in the world are aware of less beneficial effects of the American century on others in the world,” said Tveit.

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O loving God, who orderest all things by thine unerring wisdom and unbounded love: Grant us in all things to see thy hand; that, following the example and teaching of thy servant Charles Simeon, we may walk with Christ in all simplicity, and serve thee with a quiet and contented mind; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

O God, whose truth is hidden from the wise and prudent, and revealed to babes: Grant us pure and childlike hearts, that being taught of thy Spirit we may know the things which belong to our peace and to our salvation; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren. Every good endowment and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures. Know this, my beloved brethren. Let every man be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger, for the anger of man does not work the righteousness of God.

–James 1:16-20

Regarding the resignations of Bishops Andrew Burnham, Keith Newton, John Broadhurst, Edwin Barnes, and David Silk – it is with thanksgiving that we recognize their faithful witness and service to Forward in Faith and the Anglican Communion in upholding the historic Catholic faith. We assure them of our gratitude and our prayers that God will bless and guide them in their future ministries. We pray that the Holy Spirit will provide discernment and guidance to our Forward in Faith brothers and sisters during this time of transition.

As our beloved brothers in Christ embark on their new chapter of ministry, Forward in Faith North America will remain an Anglican ministry, committed to upholding the historic, catholic faith of the church among its members and its affiliated parishes and jurisdictions.

Since its split from Rome (in a messy row about King Henry VIII’s divorce in 1529) the Anglican church has evolved into a curious hybrid. It tries to be both Catholic and Reformed (Protestant). Its adherents include people who believe every word in the Bible is true, modernists who consider it a collection of inspiring fables, and traditionalists who cherish archaic English.

One exotic bit of that ecclesiological cocktail is shrinking. Five bishops from the Anglo-Catholic strain in the Church of England (dubbed “smells and bells” for its love of incense and ritual) are leaving to join the Ordinariate. This is a new outfit set up by Pope Benedict XVI for Anglicans unable to accept their church’s decision this year to let women be bishops.

The move follows a crisis in the early 1990s over ordaining women priests, which Anglo-Catholics saw as dooming their hope for eventual unity with the (male-only) Roman Catholic priesthood. Around 500 Anglican priests switched to Rome then. Others decided to stay in the Church of England, in a parallel set-up led by “flying bishops”. This lot, concentrated in 363 of the church’s 13,000 parishes, bemoan its unilateral approach to theology and intolerance of minorities.

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Conflicts between the Episcopal Church and many in the Anglican Communion who reject same-sex unions and gay clergy, [Jefferts] Schori said, have eased in the past two years.

The Episcopal Church is even in conversation with more Anglicans around the world than it was a decade ago, she said. “The conflict has been an encouragement and an invitation to deeper dialogue and conversation.”

Whether the larger Anglican Communion eventually will accept the Episcopal Church’s approach isn’t clear.

“It takes a long time for people’s prejudices and people’s justifications for things we think are wrong to be overturned,” she said. “My hope is that eventually people will come to understand human sexuality in a broader context.”

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The Standing Committee of the Episcopal Diocese of East Tennessee announced a slate of 4 nominees for the diocese’s fourth bishop today, Thursday, November 11, during a joint meeting with the Search/Nominating Committee at the Diocesan House in Knoxville, Tennessee.

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Fashion dominates the world of evangelical Christianity and its therapeutic penumbra. The Crystal Cathedral, that glitzy architectural marvel, has become a 1980s nostalgia item. Now Rick Warren is the anointed leader of America’s “People of Faith” and, for the time being, Orange county crowds are flocking to Saddleback’s dull preaching halls.

But there is nothing new under the sun. Saddleback and the Crystal Cathedral, Willow Creek and all the other evangelical megachurches that have had their time in the sun sell the same product: mind-power through talk-magic, which in secular packaging is just what all the innumerable therapies and self-help programmes on the market promise.

In the US, where school psychologists are almost as common as school nurses, we are obsessed with talk therapies because they are in fact ecumenical and secularised versions of evangelical Christianity, our old time religion. Twelve-step programmes, beginning with Alcoholics Anonymous, appropriated the conversion scenario of revivalism, eliminating references to Jesus in favour of appeals to a generic “higher power”. Later self-help programmes and therapies dispensed with supernatural intermediaries altogether. Learning the right tricks and gimmicks, thinking the right thoughts and acquiring the proper attitudes would directly, by a law of nature, make good things happen for you.

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Of all the absurdities to emerge from the government’s never-ending bailout of the U.S. financial system, here’s a new one that’s hard to top: The government, through Freddie Mac, in effect is now suing itself.

Never let it be said that Bailout Nation doesn’t have a sense of humor. It would be only a slight hyperbole to say this may be the stupidest lawsuit ever.

Here’s what happened. In July the Internal Revenue Service told Freddie Mac, the congressionally chartered housing financier, that it owed $3 billion of back taxes and penalties for the years 1998 through 2005. Rather than pay up, the McLean, Virginia-based company sued the IRS on Oct. 22 in U.S. Tax Court to contest its claims.

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Since June, the 29-year-old [Cherish Cornish] has lived on the fifth floor of a temporary housing facility run by Father Bill’s & MainSpring, a private nonprofit group in Brockton, Mass. Cornish lives in one of five rooms reserved for homeless female veterans. She’s struggling to make a life for herself after the military.

“When I joined the Army, I was barely 20 years old,” Cornish says with a Southern accent, a legacy of years growing up in Texas. “I come out, and I’m 23, and so I just kind of came of age in the military. I wind up on my own again in an apartment. It’s the first time I’ve had to pay rent since I was a teenager. It’s the first time I had to pay a light bill ”” pretty much ever ”” and all these responsibilities and budgeting and stuff that I’d really never had to deal with in the military.”

There are other complications. Cornish suffers from PTSD. It took the VA several years to diagnose her. Cornish believes her trauma stems from her service in Iraq. She was a transmission specialist working at isolated outposts monitoring and intercepting radio communications. Still, she thinks she lucked out, because often she’d just miss getting physically hurt.

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Clayton Kendrick-Holmes, football coach at SUNY Maritime College and a graduate of the Naval Academy and a lieutenant commander in the Navy Reserve, soon will be deployed to Afghanistan. This is part of his story.

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