Sermons, history shows, can be among the most revolutionary forms of human speech. From John Calvin to Billy Graham, preaching has had the power to topple princes, to set nation against nation, to inspire campaigners to change the world and impel people to begin life anew.

In many churches this most vibrant of moments has withered to little more than 20 minutes of tired droning that serves only to pad out the gap between hymns and lunch.

Yet some ember still seems to burn in Britain’s 3.6 million regular churchgoers, for almost all of them feel a sense of expectation for the Sunday sermon, according to researchers at Durham University.

Fully 96.6 per cent of those surveyed “look forward” to the sermon, with 60 per cent saying it gave them a sense of God’s love.

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The Supreme Court today overturned a century-old restriction on corporations using their money to sway federal elections and ruled that companies have a free-speech right to spend as much as they wish to persuade voters to elect or defeat candidates for Congress and the White House.

In a 5-4 decision, the court’s conservative bloc said corporations have the same 1st Amendment rights as individuals and, for that reason, the government may not stop corporations from spending freely to influence the outcome of federal elections.

The decision is probably the most sweeping and consequential handed down under Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. And the outcome may well have an immediate impact on this year’s mid-term elections to Congress.

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Not just once but twice in as many days, news media have used the word “unexpectedly” to describe serious economic bad news in the housing industry. Yesterday, CNBC used it to report on homebuilder sentiment as housing sales fall and foreclosures rise. And unemployment has builders wondering when they can expect to start selling houses again at all….

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The celebration of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity leads us to consider other important aspects for ecumenism — above all, the great progress made in relations between Churches and ecclesial communities after the Edinburgh Conference of a century ago. The modern ecumenical movement has developed so significantly that, over the last century, it has become an important element in the life of the Church, recalling the problem of union among all Christians and also supporting the growth of communion among them. This not only favors fraternal relations between the Churches and ecclesial communities in response to the commandment of love, but it also stimulates theological research. Moreover, it involves the concrete life of the Churches and of the ecclesial communities with topics that touch upon pastoral care and the sacramental life as, for example, the mutual recognition of baptism, the issues relating to mixed marriages, the partial cases of comunicatio in sacris in well-defined particular situations. In the wake of this ecumenical spirit, contacts have spread also to Pentecostal, evangelical and charismatic movements, for greater reciprocal knowledge, though serious problems are not lacking in this sector.

Since Vatican II and thereafter, the Catholic Church has entered into fraternal relations with all the Churches of the East and the ecclesial communities of the West, organizing, in particular, with the majority of them, bilateral theological dialogues, which have led to the finding of convergences and even consensus on several points, thus deepening the bonds of communion.

In the year that just ended, these dialogues have achieved positive steps….

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Questions recently have been raised regarding Bishop Ted Gulick’s interpretation of the 2009 General Convention’s resolution (C056) on “Liturgies for Blessings,” approved last summer by the House of Deputies and House of Bishops. The resolution asks The Episcopal Church leaders to gather and create “theological and liturgical resources” for same-gender blessings for future consideration by General Convention and, in the meantime, to allow bishops to permit their clergy “to provide generous pastoral response” to gay and lesbian Episcopalians who wish to affirm their partnerships, especially those residing in dioceses in which same-sex civil unions are legal. Last fall Bishop Gulick met with the diocese’s clergy to discuss how “pastoral generosity” should be practiced in the diocese….

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A friend of mine, in her college days, had a bumper sticker that offered this peaceful counsel: Don’t Buy War Toys. Once, she and a companion were stuck in a traffic jam on the highway, next to several young men in a pickup on their way home from deer hunting. The traffic was creeping along, one lane inching forward and coming to a halt, the next lane overtaking it momentarily before stopping a few yards ahead. Every time my friend’s car had to stop, the men in the pickup pulled alongside, windows cranked down, and held up various examples of the deer-rifle genre. They also hollered in tones of good-natured hilarity that became more good-natured and hilarious the lower my friend’s passenger cringed in her seat, “Hey, ladies! Don’t buy war toys? Like this?”

As it happens, in my family, with boys in the house, we do buy war toys””not nuclear missiles, of course, just the normal assortment of blasters and cork shooters and swords of various kinds, including an actual antique Indian scimitar in a moth-eaten velvet scabbard, which was the one thing our eleven-year-old wanted for his birthday.

We don’t buy toys of any kind often, mind you, relying as much as we can on nature to provide materials for hours of imaginative play. And what nature provides a lot of are war toys….

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Nigerian authorities have relaxed the 24-hour curfew in the central city of Jos, where fighting between Muslims and Christians has left hundreds dead.

Army chief Lt Col Shekari Galadima said he was satisfied the violence which began on Sunday had been halted.

Officials said easing the curfew would allow people to find food and water and those displaced to return home.

Eyewitnesses say the army is patrolling the streets and people are wary about venturing too far.

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Jews are a famously accomplished group. They make up 0.2 percent of the world population but 54 percent of the world chess champions, 27 percent of the Nobel physics laureates and 31 percent of the medicine laureates.

Jews make up 2 percent of the U.S. population, but 21 percent of the Ivy League student bodies, 26 percent of the Kennedy Center honorees, 37 percent of the Academy Award-winning directors, 38 percent of those on a recent Business Week list of leading philanthropists, 51 percent of the Pulitzer Prize winners for nonfiction.

In his book, “The Golden Age of Jewish Achievement,” Steven L. Pease lists some of the explanations people have given for this record of achievement. The Jewish faith encourages a belief in progress and personal accountability. It is learning-based, not rite-based.

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A desert tranquility surrounds the buildings of the Anglican Church of the Good Shepherd in San Angelo. Mesquite trees shade its parking lot and sway in the breeze, a broad expanse of rolling grass and dirt spreads out to the east of the buildings, and a large cross adorns the side of one of the walls, while ivy creeps up others.

This peaceful domain, however, has been the field of a legal battle for more than two years. And now the congregation of the Good Shepherd has been left in limbo after Judge Blair Cherry ruled in favor of giving the property to the Diocese of Northwest Texas.

“We’re just waiting and watching and praying,” said Stanley Burdock, the pastor of the Anglican Church of the Good Shepherd. “It’s an unfortunate situation, and we can trust to God to bring it to its appointed conclusion, although we don’t know what that conclusion will be.”

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You may find the agenda here; we appreciate your prayers.

The majority party normally loses seats in midterm elections, but the Republican resurgence of recent months is more than a conventional midterm rebound. How can a little known Republican run a competitive Senate campaign in Massachusetts? The culprit is the unpopularity of health reform, and it means that Democrats will face even worse problems later this year in less liberal places than Massachusetts.

We have polled voters in 11 states likely to have competitive Senate races in November on how they feel about health reform and how they might vote in November. The interviews were conducted from Jan. 6-11 with 500 registered voters in Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Louisiana, Missouri, Nevada, North Dakota, Ohio and Pennsylvania. The polls were conducted by YouGov using a panel of Internet users selected to be representative of the registered voters in each state.

Health reform is more popular in some of these states than in others. Where it’s popular, Democratic candidates don’t have too much of a problem, but where it’s unpopular””and that includes most states””the Democratic Senate candidates are fighting an uphill battle. Support for health reform varies in these 11 states from a low of 33% in North Dakota to a high of 48% in Nevada. Democrats trail Republicans in six of the states; three are toss-ups; and in two, Democrats have a solid lead.

Read it all from yesterday’s Wall Street Journal.

During a Vatican press conference yesterday presenting the outline of the Synod of Bishops for the Middle East, Archbishop Nikola Eterovic told reporters there was talk of having another special assembly for America.

The last synod for America was held in 1997. It included bishops, priests, religious and lay representatives from the northern reaches of North America all the way down to the southern tip of South America.

The decision to hold a special assembly, he said, “depends on the pastoral situation (of the region) and also on the bishops requesting it.”

There has been “talk of a special assembly for America. However, it is an idea that needs fleshing out,” he added.

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No wonder the White House was surprisingly nice in its first public statements about Scott Brown’s victory in the Massachusetts campaign. After all, Brown’s victory just handed Obama what he needs to win his own campaign for reelection as president in 2012.

From Truman to Clinton, embattled presidents have seen a path to reelection by running against the Senate and House. Of course, that’s usually because those legislatures are in the hands of the other party. But Obama now has a chance to run against an obstructive Senate that contains””oh, the shame of it””less than a supermajority of his own party. It’s the best of both worlds….

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When I was introduced to the congregation by the lay leader, Faubert Baptiste, he spoke one sentence in English for my benefit and then a sentence in French for the congregants.

“We have never had a bishop here,” he said. “We are glad you have come.” With Faubert’s help, I offered words of consolation and support. When I announced that I would be reading from Psalm 46, everyone immediately took out their Bibles and rose to their feet.

“God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea … the Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.”

Following my comments, another lay member, Lucien Jendy, came forward to bring the sermon for the day. He read from Matthew 24: “As Jesus came out of the temple and was going away, his disciples came to point out to him the building of the temple. Then he asked them, ”˜You see all these, do you not? Truly I tell you, not one stone will be left here upon another, all will be thrown down.’”

He explained every word of the Bible is true, and that our earthly buildings and our lives are temporary. He stressed that in life we will have suffering, but those who endure to the end will be saved.

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Lamenting the dwindling number of Christians in the Middle East, the region’s Catholic bishops called for greater religious freedom in Muslim countries, denounced Islamic fundamentalism, and criticized Israel’s “occupation” of the Palestinian territories.

The statements came in a document, released at the Vatican on Tuesday (Jan. 19), laying out topics of discussion for a special synod of Middle Eastern bishops, to take place at the Vatican in October.

Written by a committee of bishops, most of them members of the Eastern Catholic Churches in communion with Rome, the document noted the exodus of Christians from the Middle East over the last century, and especially in recent years.

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The new year began for me badly ”” with a thick head cold and one of those artfully written novels that start off with a lot of beguiling razmatazz and turn out to be about nothing. The novel in question, The Privileges, chronicles 20 years in the life of a golden couple who never lose their luster. Other critics have rightly enthused over the novel’s evocation of the world of the New York mega-rich, but I found myself growing crankier with every passing chapter in which very little of substance happened. By frustrating narrative expectations, The Privileges certainly makes readers conscious of the cliched plot lines we carry around in our heads, but my poor head was too congested for games. I wanted a dose of diverting plot, and interesting characters, and a point, along with my Nyquil.

That’s just when Rebecca Newberger Goldstein’s new novel appeared like an answer to a fevered prayer. Ever since her 1983 debut, The Mind-Body Problem, Goldstein has marked out a singular space for herself in the world of contemporary fiction. A philosopher by training, (she holds a Ph.D. from Princeton), Goldstein writes about what happens when worlds collide: the realms of the ethereal vs. the everyday; of erudition vs. gut instinct; of ration vs. lust. Her novels tackle the Big Questions of Life and unapologetically reference philosophers like Spinoza and William James. Best of all, Goldstein gets away with this high-hatting because she’s so funny and she knows how to tell an engrossing story. When you have as much gleeful gravitas as Goldstein, you don’t have to find quirky ways to show off.

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Between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ,” wrote Frederick Douglass in 1845, “there is the widest possible difference.” He referred, of course, to the enmeshment of American Christianity with slavery. That deep complicity, encompassing not just slavery but also churches’ participation in de jure segregation and in racism more broadly, has long been of interest to historians of religion in America, especially historians of religion in the South. Three recent books illuminate how slavery shaped Christianity in early America; how white Christians, North and South, helped scuttle a postbellum politics of equality; and how white and black Christian advocates of interracialism in the early 20th century were drowned out by advocates of segregation.

Too often our received notions of “religion in the South” are limited to Baptists in South Carolina, Methodists in Virginia, and their close kin. In her innovative and carefully researched monograph Masterless Mistresses, a study of the Ursulines who arrived in New Orleans in 1727, Emily Clark opens up the world of Gulf Coast Catholicism. Clark’s title encapsulates some of her central concerns: to what extent were these women, indeed, masterless? What did a Francophone vowed femininity look like? Mistress denotes not only their femininity but also the Ursulines’ adoption of the “custom of the country” (as one 18th-century novice put it). Until the Civil War, the community owned slaves, and the Ursulines’ dealings with slavery constitute a third major theme of Clark’s study.

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The tendency to look for a saviour is hard to curb. People want a superhero. From football to Presidents they are looking for the special one who’s going to change everything. Which is why it’s helpful to be reminded that leaders are just people. I found it a relief when Mr Obama fluffed his lines at his inaugural address. It’s only when a man stops being a superhero that people start thinking: “Hang on. I want you to lead but you can’t save the world on your own and nor should you try”.

In the book of Samuel, when the people of Israel – fed up with a lack of leadership – asked for a king, God wearily agreed but warned them that it would end in tears. “A king,” God said, “will send your sons to fight wars, tax you heavily, and spend your hard-earned wealth on their own houses until you cry out for relief.” Despite the warning the people got their kings. Some were just; most were just awful. In the end, God was proved right.

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Did God abandon Haiti?

No, say its people of faith — and there are many here in a place without much beyond faith. The earthquake was a sign of God’s presence.

So, it should be no surprise that on a narrow street choked by debris, outside a church with a shattered ceiling open to the morning sky, what was left of the congregation of Haiti’s Second Baptist Church stood in a courtyard and waved their hands in the air and shouted, “Victoire! Victoire!”

Victory.

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Almighty and everlasting God, who dost choose those whom the world deemeth powerless to put the powerful to shame: Grant us so to cherish the memory of thy youthful martyr Agnes, that we may share her pure and steadfast faith in thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner shrine behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest for ever after the order of Melchiz’edek.

–Hebrws 6: 19,20

As Senate Democrats reconvened Wednesday at the Capitol in the wake of their devastating loss in Massachusetts, they vowed to press ahead toward enacting a health-care bill, possibly with a scaled-back package of provisions that could gain Republican support.

But Democrats cautioned that discussion of such plans is just getting underway. “We’re not going to rush into anything,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.). “Remember, the bill we passed in the Senate is good for a year. There are many different things that we can do to move forward on health care, but we’re not making any of those decisions now.”

Scott Brown’s victory in a special election Tuesday “changes the math in the Senate,” Reid conceded. But just as Democrats face new pressures to reach across the aisle, he added, GOP senators must be willing to meet halfway.

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With Democrats reeling from the Republican victory in the Massachusetts special Senate election, President Obama on Wednesday signaled that he might be willing to set aside his goal of achieving near-universal health coverage for all Americans in favor of a stripped-down measure with bipartisan support.

“It is very important to look at the substance of this package and for the American people to understand that a lot of the fear-mongering around this bill isn’t true,” Mr. Obama said in an interview on ABC News. “I would advise that we try to move quickly to coalesce around those elements of the package that people agree on.”

He continued: “We know that we need insurance reform, that the health insurance companies are taking advantage of people. We know that we have to have some form of cost containment because if we don’t, then our budgets are going to blow up and we know that small businesses are going to need help so that they can provide health insurance to their families. Those are the core, some of the core elements of, to this bill.”

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Caritas search and rescue teams Jan. 19 miraculously found and pulled five people from the rubble of the badly damaged Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption, where they had been clinging to life for seven days.

The first to be rescued, Enu Zizi, was pulled out by expert teams from Mexico and South Africa who worked for two hours to extract her. Caritas officials said she suffered injuries to her hips and possibly a broken leg, but “was not critically injured.”

Zizi told her rescuers, “I love you,” upon being pulled from the rubble.

Wow–read it all.

If you believe some of the blogs, the Democrats lost Massachusetts, and Obama’s approval is plummeting nationwide, because he alienated his left-wing base. Perhaps that does account for an absence of turnout among young voters in the Virginia gubernatorial or Massachusetts Senate races, but the polls have not shown growing dissatisfaction among young, minority, or liberal voters–the three voting blocs that accounted for Obama’s strongest support in 2008. Where he has lost ground–and where the Democrats have lost ground–is primarily among white working and middle-class voters and senior citizens.

The Suffolk University poll in Massachusetts, which like the PPP poll, was pretty much on target in the final result, singled out two white working-class towns, Gardner and Fitchburg, as bellwethers. Obama won Gardner, where Democrats hold a three-to-one registrations edge, by 59 percent to 31 percent in 2008. Brown won it by 56 percent to 42 percent. Obama won Fitchburg, with a similar Democratic edge, by 60 percent to 38 percent in 2008. Brown won it by 59 percent to 40 percent. That suggests a fairly dramatic shift among white working class voters.

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DJ reports Senate Democrats are to seek an increase to the federal government’s borrowing limit by $1.9 trillion lifting the total amount the U.S. government can owe to $14.294 trillion, several congressional aides said. The increase is forecast to support the federal government’s borrowing needs the end of 2010, one Senate Democratic aide said. The borrowing hike comes soon after a $290 billion increase to the debt ceiling agreed to by lawmakers at the end of 2009.

It is true that for many African church members and leaders homosexual behaviour is regarded as unnatural, not moral, not Christian, nor African. But this is also true of a large number of other traditional societies anywhere in the world who resist modern cultural pressures and seek to deal with them in their own way. Churches with their global communities and their willingness to assess traditional and cultural norms by transcendent divinely authorized Christian values and norms and by their partnership with the global church and drawing on the knowledge and resources of the global church are best placed to help African societies deal with the challenges of modernity in an African way, relating the best of their cultures, refining their cultures and rejecting those who would assault their cultural identity and integrity.

It is sad to see that some leaders of TEC who have advised this project have departed from this very tradition of support of Anglican churches in the non-Western world to negotiate their cultural challenges in which Anglican mission work along with Roman Catholics has been a leader. It raises the question of their motivation in promoting such an attack on the African Anglican Churches ”“ perhaps it is a backlash against the African Anglican Churches breaking communion with TEC. Far from going beyond colonialism, this report falls back into it by universalizing the local culture of the United States.

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Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) told a local reporter, “It’s probably back to the drawing board on health care, which is unfortunate.” Rep. Bill Delahunt (D-Mass.) told MSNBC this morning he will advise Democratic leaders to scrap the big bill and move small, more popular pieces that can attract Republicans. And Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) said his leadership is “whistling past the graveyard” if they think Brown’s win won’t force a rethinking of the health care plan.

Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), who now might draw a challenge from Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), said the party needs to rethink its entire approach to governing.

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