Here’s the sad truth: Mainstream Muslims have zero influence over extremists. In fact, if one of those guys had a single bullet in his gun and you and I were up against the wall, he would shoot me first. He hates me more because not only do I not follow his perverse vision of Islam, I also represent an alternative interpretation. He insists Islam requires domination; I suggest Islam inspires cooperation.

Extremists have a strategy. They want their terrorist acts to be front-page news, to stain a 1,400-year-old religion, to smear a community of 1.3 billion people.They want Americans to be suspicious of their Muslim neighbors. If we want to defeat extremists, we have to reject their world view and drown out their message. Indignantly asking, “Where are the moderate Muslims?”, as if there aren’t any, is allowing the extremists to set the terms, effectively aiding and abetting their agenda.

The truth is, mainstream Muslims are right in front of you, speaking all the time, advancing a Muslim vision of mercy and cooperation. It’s time people added their voices to ours, instead of amplifying the message of the extremists.

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When I dug into this topic five years ago, I thought the story would be how children of the divorce revolution aren’t all messed up. We’re not the truants and drug addicts the ’70s pop psychologists predicted we’d be. But it also wasn’t quite true that if our parents were better off getting out of the marriage, we kids would be too.

Social scientists have had decades to study the children of divorce. They confirm some of our worst fears. We’re about 50 percent more likely to fail in our own marriages.

But it doesn’t stop us from trying. After 12 years of dating, I made it to the altar. I even tempted fate and wore my mother’s wedding dress.

I still believe in love.

Even for divorced kids.

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Read it carefully and read it all.

You can view the ASA numbers from 1998-2008 here (7th line down).

A visual depiction of some of the statistics of the diocese from 1998-2008 may be seen here.

Most Rev. Peter Akinola, Primate of the Church of Nigeria, Anglican Communion, on Saturday urged Nigeria’s political leaders to work toward the reduction of poverty in the country. Akinola made the call in Ile-Ife during the interdenominational service held to commemorate the 80th birthday anniversary of the Ooni of Ife, Oba Okunade Sijuwade, Olubuse II.

He noted that Nigeria had abundant resources that could be harnessed and used to enhance the citizens’ living standards, adding that the bane of the country was crass mismanagement, corruption and other forms of malfeasance.”In the midst of abundance, Nigerians now use second-hand clothes, cars and other materials, as they cannot afford to purchase new products due to hardship,” he said.

Read the whole article.

The final text of the Anglican Communion Covenant pleased the Rev. Dr. Ephraim Radner, who has served on the document’s design group since its inception in 2006. Dr. Radner, an Episcopal priest, is professor of historical theology at Wycliffe College in Toronto, Ontario.

“My sense about it is that they didn’t really change anything substantial,” he told The Living Church, referring to the working group charged with revising the document from its previous iteration as the Ridley Cambridge draft.

“They salvaged what could have been a bad mess from May [2009],” when the Anglican Consultative Council met and, after a chaotic legislative session, ultimately asked for revisions to the document’s fourth section, which proposes how provinces will be accountable to the Anglican Communion as a whole.

Because changes to the fourth section did not reflect what Episcopal Church leaders were seeking, Dr. Radner said, the document helps change that province’s standing. He described it as being part of a pattern, along with the ecumenical dialogues of the Anglican”“Roman Catholic International Commission and the recent meeting of the Archbishop of Canterbury with Pope Benedict XVI.

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The French government wants to pass a new law banning, what it calls, “psychological violence” between married couples or partners living together.

However, there are concerns about how such a crime could be proved.

David Chazan reports from Paris.

Watch it all (just over 2 1/3 minutes).

Christmas is a call to faith: but it is not a flight from the facts. And the ultimate mystery of Christmas faith is the Emmanuel Factor: God with us. And he has no way of doing that without implicating and embroiling himself in human history. The very first book of Christian history – the Book of Acts in the New Testament – has more recorded names and places than it does miracles.

The intellectual feud between fact and faith converges around the story of a stable in Bethlehem where God is reputed to have come to us in human flesh.

And it is hard to believe.

For the story calls us to much more than abstract agreement. It demands personal assent.

Mary herself couldn’t take it in. “How can this be?” she asked.

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The close of a year and the beginning of another is always a time when many of us look back on the year that has past and look forward to the year to come. For the Armed Services community of this country, 2009 has been marked by more casualties in Afghanistan ”” those who have died and those who now face life in a very different way as a result of injuries. For the families of these Service personnel, bereavement brings a sense of loss that is sometimes almost unbearable. Many new challenges lie ahead for those whose loved ones have returned with life-changing injuries. For some of our Service families, a look back into 2009 is a painful experience and the future is tinged with sadness and challenge. For others, there will be the joy that a loved one has returned safely from deployment.

One thing that is constant is the dedication and commitment shown by the personnel of all our Armed Services. This is something for which all should be thankful and which merits our unstinting support.

Recent visits to naval and army training establishments have brought me into contact with young men and women who were keen to talk about the new skills they were acquiring and whose commitment to their training is a source of inspiration.

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Christmas itself is by grace. It could never have survived our own blindness and depredations otherwise. It could never have happened otherwise. Perhaps it is the very wildness and strangeness of the grace that has led us to try to tame it. We have tried to make it habitable. We have roofed it and furnished it. We have reduced it to an occasion we feel at home with, at best a touching and beautiful occasion, at worst a trite and cloying one. But if the Christmas event in itself is indeed–as a matter of cold, hard fact–all its cracked up to be, then even at best our efforts are misleading.

The Word became flesh. Ultimate Mystery born with a skull you could crush one-handed. Incarnation. It is not tame. It is not beautiful. It is uninhabitable terror. It is unthinkable darkness riven with unbearable light. Agonized laboring led to it, vast upheavals of intergalactic space, time split apart, a wrenching and tearing of the very sinews of reality itself. You can only cover your eyes and shudder before it, before this: “God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God…who for us and for our salvation,” as the Nicene Creed puts it, “came down from heaven.”

Came down. Only then do we dare uncover our eyes and see what we can see. It is the Resurrection and the Life she holds in her arms. It is the bitterness of death he takes at her breast.

—Whistling in the Dark (New York: HarperCollins, 1988), pp. 30-31

Fra Filippo Lippi, Mystical Nativity or The Adoration in the Forest, c. 1459 pic.twitter.com/QkCROXBNdT

— vojnaslo91(Aleš) (@vojnaslo91) December 25, 2021

See what you make of it.

The Anglican constitutional and canon law tradition is a minimalist tradition. I remember studying at Boston College, a Jesuit university, during my doctoral work and always being able to find a chair and table in the library’s canon law room which had shelves and shelves of books on Roman Catholic canon law. There was one whole wall devoted to canon law for the various religious societies. In contrast the canon law of The Episcopal Church or any of its dioceses is one smallish book. Our tradition is the minimum of ecclesiastical jurisprudence that is needed to maintain the order of the church. This covenant is in that tradition. I wish that it were more robust in places but I think it adequate to be the basis of an ongoing life of mutual submission and growth in unity and mission for the Anglican Communion but much will depend on the integrity of the individuals who will be because of their office the stewards of this covenant.

When I was a young man and entering into a business contract for the first time, I asked my father for some advice about the enforceability of a particular contract. He told me that if a man’s word wasn’t any good, his paper wasn’t any good either. In many cases the current chaos that we are experiencing in the Churches of the Anglican Communion is not a result of a lack of articulated rules and procedures of church discipline, but is the result of an unwillingness by those charged with the stewardship of the order of the church to enforce such discipline as has already been established. This version of the Anglican Covenant is a minimalist document. It does clarify issues of communion life and order and provide an agreed-upon process for handling disputes. It can be a real instrument for growth in truth, unity and mission, but only if those to whom the responsibility has been given to be stewards of the church’s order have the necessary moral courage to fulfill their office.

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Here is one:

To the Editor:

Re “Weighing the Medical Costs of End-of-Life Care (“Months to Live” series, front page, Dec. 23):

How refreshing to read an article challenging the conventional wisdom that the money our society spends on aggressive medical end-of-life care is wasted. But how chilling to see it portrayed as a problem that when death is imminent, “it may be the patients and families who cannot let go.”

The conventional claim that “the bigger challenge may be changing the ”˜we’re not going to let you die’ culture at places like U.C.L.A.” overlooks the fact that this culture accords with the rational wishes of patients who want to extend their lives as long as possible.

Maybe the bigger challenge is changing the culture that tells us to “chip away” at these patients until they agree to bow out gracefully.

Felicia Nimue Ackerman
Providence, R.I.

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The Pew summary picked up by Prothero reveals that the U. S. is a “nation of religious drifters.” In response I could exercise the historian’s yawn and ask, “So what else is new?” Haven’t we always been such? Immigrants brought their old faiths along and then often picked and chose among the options other immigrants brought, adaptations of these, or new inventions in the spaces between existing faiths. Revivals, awakenings, ethnic shifts, mobility, and religious marketplaces have always invited such drifting. But the Pew people can show that there are reasons to stifle the “nothing new” yawns and say that if there is not a qualitative difference from the past, there is such a big quantitative shift that it amounts to a change in the quality of commitments.

In the Lutheran and Episcopal parishes and their kin we know best, we hear members and clergy say, half-jocularly, that half their members seem to have been brought up Roman Catholic but they changed, just as we know several Lutherans and Episcopalians who turned Catholic. Still, such moves are ecumenically “all in the family.” Pew folks find more and more people being equally drawn to Buddhisms, Hinduisms, New Ageisms, and a bazaar-tent full of other options. Kate Shellnut in the December 11th Chicago Tribune tells how many, many young and youngish post-Christian people abandon Christian practice and hang out almost cultishly brunching at pancake houses, hoping in their “communing” to fill the void that is left as they drift.

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After an improbable rise from the Bronx projects to a job selling Gulf Coast homes, Isabel Bermudez lost it all to an epic housing bust ”” the six-figure income, the house with the pool and the investment property.

Now, as she papers the county with résumés and girds herself for rejection, she is supporting two daughters on an income that inspires a double take: zero dollars in monthly cash and a few hundred dollars in food stamps.

With food-stamp use at a record high and surging by the day, Ms. Bermudez belongs to an overlooked subgroup that is growing especially fast: recipients with no cash income.

About six million Americans receiving food stamps report they have no other income, according to an analysis of state data collected by The New York Times.

Makes the heart sad. Read it all.

Rosario and Igor Montoya used to buy, buy, buy for themselves and their two children without a second thought. Expensive sneakers, a new laptop, Legos ”” they all got what they wanted. But with the recession slashing the Montoyas’ workload and income by more than half, their priorities have shifted from products to activities.

After school and on weekends, the family now hops into a pink canoe they bought secondhand. They paddle though Biscayne Bay to nearby islands, naming each, sometimes making boats out of sticks and leaves.

“I’m trying to teach the kids that you don’t need to have expensive toys to have fun,” said Mr. Montoya, 47, an artist and freelance art director in advertising. “You can make it fun, from anything.”

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The Lowcountry is full of remarkable people. Faith & Values, a section concerned with religion, culture and social priorities, has featured many of them over the years.

In 2009, readers met church bishops and other leaders, local professionals, artists, craftsmen, a few people determined to affect helpful change and others simply fighting to survive.

This week, we look back at 10 of Faith & Values’ newsmakers of 2009, the work these dedicated people pursued, their goals and struggles, controversies and accomplishments….

Read it all from the Faith and Values section of the local paper.

In a move that is both ethically profound and (so far, at least) politically rare, Montana has become the third state to legalize physician-assisted suicide.

A divided state supreme court ruled Thursday that neither state law nor public policy prevented doctors from prescribing lethal drugs to terminally-ill patients who want to end their lives.

In essence, the court ruled, suicide is not a crime. The majority justices wrote:

“We find nothing in Montana Supreme Court precedent or Montana statutes indicating that physician aid in dying is against public policy. The ”˜against public policy’ exception to consent has been interpreted by this court as applicable to violent breaches of the public peace. Physician aid in dying does not satisfy that definition. We also find nothing in the plain language of Montana statutes indicating that physician aid in dying is against public policy. In physician aid in dying, the patient ”“ not the physician ”“ commits the final death-causing act by self-administering a lethal dose of medicine.”

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As this debate moves toward conclusion, it is crucial that we remember why we’re trying to provide quality, affordable health care to Virginia’s families. In March 2009, the Episcopal Church published its position on health reform in a booklet titled “Promoting Health Care for All.” The booklet was circulated by the Episcopal Public Policy Network, and includes this quote from the Book of Common Prayer:

“Almighty and most merciful God, we remember before you all poor and neglected persons whom it would be easy for us to forget: the homeless and the destitute, the old and the sick, and all who have none to care for them. Help us to heal those who are broken in body and spirit, and to turn their sorrow into joy. Grant this, Father, for the love of your Son, who for our sake became poor, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

But the Episcopal Church is not alone. In June 2009 other Christians have also declared that health reform was an urgent priority in a press release: “The health of our neighbors and the wholeness of the nation now require that all segments of our society join in finding a solution to this national challenge.”

Recently, the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia supported a resolution reiterating “the Gospel message of concern for others which extends to concern for their physical health as well as spiritual well being.”

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[Dr. Suzanne] Mitchell says Dick taught her the difference between medical treatment and medical care.

“To be willing to follow your patient to where they want to go is an uncomfortable journey, and it changed me forever,” she says.

She’s no longer afraid, she adds, “to allow my patients to take me on their journey. Whatever expertise we have, the patient holds the wisdom of their life. And we need to be with our patients ”” really be with them.”

Mitchell often tells the story to medical students and young doctors in training. Sometimes they say, “How will we have time to get to know our patients?”

Her response is: “How can you afford not to? How can you afford not to connect to your patient before anything else happens?”

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The second important lesson involves understanding why markets often do not work the way they are meant to. There are many reasons for market failures. In this case, too-big-to-fail financial institutions had perverse incentives: if they gambled and succeeded, they walked off with the profits; if they lost, the taxpayer would pay. Moreover, when information is imperfect, markets often do not work well – and information imperfections are central in finance. Externalities are pervasive: the failure of one bank imposed costs on others, and failures in the financial system imposed costs on taxpayers and workers all over the world.

The third lesson is that Keynesian policies do work. Countries, like Australia, that implemented large, well-designed stimulus programs early emerged from the crisis faster. Other countries succumbed to the old orthodoxy pushed by the financial wizards who got us into this mess in the first place.

Whenever an economy goes into recession, deficits appear, as tax revenues fall faster than expenditures. The old orthodoxy held that one had to cut the deficit – raise taxes or cut expenditures – to “restore confidence.” But those policies almost always reduced aggregate demand, pushed the economy into a deeper slump, and further undermined confidence – most recently when the International Monetary Fund insisted on them in East Asia in the 1990’s.

The fourth lesson is that there is more to monetary policy than just fighting inflation….

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Within the Church of England’s parish churches there are many people who have responded to this openness and generosity of ministry, drawn gently to consider more deeply their need for faith and to find it in a Church that does not immediately ask hard questions or require formal membership as a precondition of receiving its ministry.

There are considerable numbers who have been divorced and later married again, who would not be eligible to receive holy communion in other churches, including those who have become Anglicans for this very reason, having found them­selves excom­municated in their own church community.

Equally, there can be very few who would accept the requirements of Humanae Vitae concerning birth control, or who would consent to private confession as a compulsory requirement of membership.

The Apostolic Constitution has no doubt been designed with generosity of spirit as a response to the expressions of need being received from Anglicans, but Anglicanorum Coetibus is not the Uniate-style solution for which many had hoped ”” a Church with its own jurisdiction and its own rite, capable of maintaining the very identity that enriches our Christian faith as Anglicans.

Those who embrace it must face a hard decision: to leave behind the very things that have sustained them in their Christian pilgrimage thus far, for assimilation into an unknown future in an Ordinariate that is neither Anglican nor fully part of mainstream Roman Catholicism.

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….at its core, this is also a spiritual crisis. More and more people are coming to understand that underlying the economic crisis is a values crisis, and that any economic recovery must be accompanied by a moral recovery. We have been asking the wrong question: When will the financial crisis end? The right question is: How will it change us? This could be a moment to reexamine the ways we measure success, do business and live our lives; a time to renew spiritual values and practices such as simplicity, patience, modesty, family, friendship, rest and Sabbath.

Faith communities can help lead the way, challenging the idols of the market and reminding us who is God and who is not. “The Earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world, and they that dwell therein,” say both Christianity and Judaism; the Earth does not belong to the market. Human beings are stewards of God’s creation and should preside over the market — not the other way around. We must replace the market’s false promise of limitless growth and consumption with an acknowledgment of human finitude, with a little more humility and with some moral limits. And the market’s first commandment, “There is never enough,” must be replaced by the dictums of God’s economy — namely, there is enough, if we share it.

Many of our religious teachings, from our many traditions, offer useful correctives to the practices that brought us to this sad place. Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount instructs us not to be “anxious” about material things, a notion that runs directly counter to the frenzied pressure of modern consumer culture. Judaism teaches us to leave the edges of the fields for the poor to “glean” and to welcome those in need to our tables. And Islam prohibits the practice of usury. (Muslim-owned financial institutions that charge fees for service rather than interest have done amazingly well during this crisis; their practices offer some interesting models.)

We need nothing less than a pastoral strategy for the financial crisis; we must use these religious teachings to develop Christian, Jewish and Islamic responses to it. What should people of faith be thinking, saying and doing now? What is the responsibility of the churches, synagogues and mosques to their communities, to the nation and to the world?

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For most of the past 70 years, the U.S. economy has grown at a steady clip, generating perpetually higher incomes and wealth for American households. But since 2000, the story is starkly different.

The past decade was the worst for the U.S. economy in modern times, a sharp reversal from a long period of prosperity that is leading economists and policymakers to fundamentally rethink the underpinnings of the nation’s growth.

It was, according to a wide range of data, a lost decade for American workers. The decade began in a moment of triumphalism — there was a current of thought among economists in 1999 that recessions were a thing of the past. By the end, there were two, bookends to a debt-driven expansion that was neither robust nor sustainable.

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