The word ”militant” has become synonymous with atheist. Militant is simply a word used to describe someone showing opposition in a way the people being opposed don’t like.

And yes, atheists have killed, tortured, lied and stolen – never in the name of atheism, but because they’re bad.

Jews, Muslims, Christians and atheists are generally moral people. But that’s not because they’re Jews, Muslims, Christians or atheist. It’s because they’re people.

I do hate. I hate religion taking credit for most people’s innate goodness.

Read it all.

Seventy-five years ago, on August 8, 1935, the United States Congress passed the first sweeping legislation creating a welfare safety net for the American people, the Social Security Act 1935. Its champion was President Franklin D. Roosevelt….

Support in Congress was both overwhelming and bi-partisan.

Thirty years later, in July 1965, Congress passed the second major piece of the national safety net, the Medicaid and Medicare act.

It, too, passed by an overwhelming majority with bi-partisan support. That bill was championed by another Democratic President, Lyndon B. Johnson….

Now comes the third major piece in the safety net when tomorrow (local time), President Barack Obama signs the Health Care and Education Affordability Reconciliation Act of 2010, introducing almost universal health care.

The bill passed yesterday in the House by a slender and contentious majority, 219 vote to 212.

Not a single Republican voted ‘yes’.

Read it all.

One running theme in recent comments here, but also for a long time now on many blogs, is the plea to see some real discipline of TEC. Something which did not occur with any substance after 2003 (the closest was the suspension of TEC for one ACC meeting at which its suspended members were observers), and something which should now happen with the Glasspool confirmation. So the argument goes, and it is an argument with merit because the Glasspool confirmation has a deeper significance than being the confirmation of a partnered lesbian person to be a bishop. That deeper significance is this: following Gene Robinson’s consecration a series of restrained decisions on the part of TEC’s GC meant that there was plausible argument in response to calls to discipline TEC that TEC might not actually be walking apart from the Communion, the Robinson consecration being a temporary diversion from the one path of Anglican polity; now however TEC has effectively announced that no temporary diversion has taken place, it is walking apart from the Communion.

Actually I want to suggest it is walking apart from the Communion in two ways. The first is walking apart from the common direction in the Communion, that Anglican bishops who are neither single nor married are living contradictory to Scripture and tradition. The second is walking apart from an emerging direction that the Anglican Communion cannot remain as it is, essentially a meeting point of Anglicans, but must move forward to becoming a worldwide church. To me it is inescapable that a consequence of the Glasspool confirmation is confirmation that TEC under no circumstances will be beholden to any authority larger than itself and thus is deeply opposed to any movement of the Communion towards becoming a worldwide church.

Read it all.

At present quite a few sociologists specialized in the analysis of cultural tendencies and processes — for example John Micklethwait, editor-in-chief of The Economist, and Adrian Wooldridge, author of the bestseller “God Is Back” — are not convinced that atheistic secularism or religious indifference is advancing in society; rather, the opposite is happening.

Decades ago some predicted the death of religion, above all of Christianity, but later they have had to rectify themselves and admit a return of the religious under very varied forms.

Not a few say that we are in a post-secular period, characterized by a growing interest and debate on fundamental human questions, with a patent religious dimension.

In a recent report titled “The Return of God,” a non-confessional Italian newspaper, La Repubblica, was surprised by the boom of books on faith in Italian bookstores, where sales have increased by 27% in the past year.

Concretely, it stated that the sale of books on religious topics had increased by 196% in the large centers of distribution, such as supermarkets and commercial centers.

Read it all.

By bus from across the country and on foot from across town, an estimated 200,000 people flocked to the National Mall March 21 to press Congress and the president — with signs, banners, T-shirts, chants and prayers — to make good on promises to fix the immigration system.

U.S. citizens, legal immigrants and some who admitted they are in the country illegally covered a six-block stretch of the Mall to make their case for reforming a system that keeps families apart, limits students’ education prospects and causes millions of people to exist “in the shadows,” because they lack legal papers.

Before marching three miles past the Capitol to RFK Stadium, where their buses waited, the exuberant, hopeful crowd waved flags and signs as dozens of speakers took to the stage to tell their personal immigration stories. Other speakers pledged the support of their churches, unions and human rights groups.

Read it all.

Members of Mother Grove Goddess Temple will celebrate at 7 p.m. Saturday with A Breath of Appalachian Spring: A Ritual in Celebration of the Spring Equinox, in the parish hall of the Episcopal Cathedral of All Souls in Biltmore Village.

Saturday’s event is open to all faith traditions, said Byron Ballard, wiccan priestess and a member of the temple. Mother Grove “isn’t a wiccan group, though some of us are wiccans,” she said.

“Mother Grove is an outgrowth of the work of several people in the goddess/earth religions community,” Ballard said. “Its goal is to create a permanent sanctuary, where people of all faith traditions may openly and safely celebrate the divine feminine, the goddess.”

Read it all.

Almighty God, who willest to be glorified in thy saints, and didst raise up thy servant Gregory the Illuminator to be a light in the world, and to preach the Gospel to the people of Armenia: Shine, we pray thee, in our hearts, that we also in our generation may show forth thy praise, who hast called us out of darkness into thy marvelous light; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

I lift up my eyes to the hills. From whence does my help come? My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth. He will not let your foot be moved, he who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. The LORD is your keeper; the LORD is your shade on your right hand. The sun shall not smite you by day, nor the moon by night. The LORD will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life. The LORD will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and for evermore.

–Psalm 121

Almighty and most merciful God, who hast given thy Son to die for our sins and to obtain eternal redemption for us through his own blood: Let the merit of his spotless sacrifice, we beseech thee, purge our consciences from dead works to serve thee, the living God, that we may receive the promise of eternal inheritance in Christ Jesus our Lord; to whom with thee and the Holy Ghost be honour and glory, world without end.

Just over two months after threatening to leave China because of censorship and intrusions by Chinese hackers, Google said Monday that it was closing its China-based Internet search service and instead directing Chinese users to a Hong Kong-based uncensored version of its search engine, which may get blocked in mainland China.

In a blog post, Google also said that it would retain much of its existing China operations, including its research and development team and its local sales force. The stunning move represents a powerful slap at Beijing regulators but also a risky ploy in which Google ”” one of the world’s technology powerhouses ”” will essentially turn its back on the world’s largest Internet market, with nearly 400 million Web users and growing quickly.

“Figuring out how to make good on our promise to stop censoring search on Google.cn has been hard,” David Drummond, Google’s chief legal officer, wrote in the blog post. “We want as many people in the world as possible to have access to our services, including users in mainland China, yet the Chinese government has been crystal clear throughout our discussions that self-censorship is a non-negotiable legal requirement.”

Read it all.

Israel will defy American pressure to halt the construction of controversial Jewish housing in Arab east Jerusalem, when President Obama meets Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Prime Minister, in the White House today.

Fresh from his historic victory to reform American healthcare, the US leader is to be confronted, within hours, with a foreign policy crisis. This time Mr Obama must resolve the worst breakdown in relations in decades between America and its closest regional ally, Israel, and try to get the Arab-Israeli peace process moving again.

But any hopes of a compromise were dashed yesterday when Nir Barkat, the Mayor of Jerusalem, insisted that Jewish settlements would go ahead in spite of US objections.

Read it all.

This is a very good discussion of some of the real substance of the legislation.

Most of us have now learned to live with “voice mail” as a necessary
as part of our daily lives. But have you ever wondered what it would
be like if God decided to install voice mail?

Imagine praying and hearing the following:

Thank you for calling Heaven.
For English, press 1.
For Spanish, press 2.
For all other languages, press 0.

Please select one of the following options:
Press 1 for Requests.
Press 2 for Thanksgiving.
Press 3 for Laments.
Press 4 for all other inquiries.

I am sorry; all of our angels and saints are busy helping other
sinners right now. However, your prayer is important to us, and we
will answer it in the order it was received. Please stay on the line.

If you would like to speak to:
God, press 1.
Jesus, press 2.
Holy Spirit, press 3.

If you would like to hear King David sing a Psalm while you are
holding, press 4.

To find a loved one that has been assigned to Heaven, press 5, then
enter his or her social security number, followed by the “pound” sign.

For reservations at Heaven, please enter J-O-H-N, followed by the
numbers 3-1-6.

For answers to nagging questions about life on other planets, how to reconcile God’s existence with evil that occurs in history, and where Noah’s Ark is, please wait until you arrive.

Our computers show that you have already prayed today. Please hang up
and try again tomorrow.

The office is now closed for the weekend to observe a religious
holiday. Please pray again on Monday after 9:30 am. If you are calling
after hours and need emergency assistance, please contact your local
rector.

Thank you, and have a heavenly day .

Saturday, we had the presentation by the Theology Committee and their report “Same Sex Relationships in the Life of the Church.” I was a bit disappointed with the report itself, which was really simply two papers, one from the conservative viewpoint, and one from the progressive viewpoint. While they were good papers, the House of Bishops had asked for the committee to prepare “a” paper, not two. I am quite sure this will be published soon, if it is not available already out there somewhere. Still, it did provoke very good discussion, as did the report of the “Around One Table” results. This was a church wide study on the identity of the Episcopal Church. Saturday night were class dinners, and then our Sabbath began….

Sunday night after dinner we had a fireside chat with the Presiding Bishop. Many topics were covered, and much shared but perhaps the most moving was the talk by Bishop of Haiti, Zache’ Duracin….

Bishop Duracin shared with our group the day of the earthquake. It was so moving to hear his story. He had just left his car and was in his front yard, when the earthquake struck. He watched his house crumble before his eyes, with his wife and two girls still inside it. The girls came crawling out of the rubble just minutes after, basically unharmed, but his wife, although alive was trapped. Her leg was, and is, severely damaged. She is now under care in Tampa, Florida. He reported that his car, the one he had just left before the earthquake, was only unearthed this past Friday. He is a very grateful man, to be here, but also for all you have done, and many across this church….

Read it all.

Read it all.

For six decades, Elmore Leonard has been sitting at his writing desk, first in Detroit, then in the suburbs, creating robberies and murders for books and movies. Hollywood has tried many times to translate Leonard’s work from page to screen: Get Shorty, Out of Sight, two versions of 3:10 to Yuma. Leonard has written several screenplays too, and worked on the recent, short-lived ABC television series Karen Sisco.

Tonight, another television network ”” FX this time ”” takes a shot at bringing Elmore’s World to life. Leonard himself is an executive producer of Justified, but he says there are a whole bunch of those, and he doesn’t have script approval.

But Leonard’s happy. He’s met the writers, and they’re keeping their source close at hand.

“They said, ‘We all have this little plastic bracelet on that says WWED ”” What Would Elmore Do?’ ” Leonard says. “It seems to me that they sound like my writing.”

Read or listen to it all and put FX’s “Justified” on your list for possible television shows. We thought the first show as very good indeed–KSH (Hat tip:Elizabeth).

From here:

Diocesan Staff Layoffs

Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ:

As I mentioned in my Charge to Synod, “budgetary realities are among the realities that require that we change our way of doing things as a Diocese” and that this means “there will have to be a major downsizing and re-alignment of the Diocesan Staff”.

After consultation with the Officers of Synod, and after much personal prayer and reflection, I have decided that, as part of this downsizing and restructuring, to eliminate three full-time positions and four part-time positions at the Diocesan Office. Today, March 15, I have given all of the individuals in these positions working notice. As well, I have given working notice to an individual in a position in a parish that is fully funded through the diocesan budget.
These cuts directly affect a range of ministries: congregational development, finance, administrative support, the diocesan archives, financial development and planned giving, the Diocesan Post, and Urban First Nations Ministry. Because of these cuts the remaining members of the diocesan staff, as well as the diocesan leadership as a whole, will be restructuring in order to carry out essential services and to support these ministries in new ways. That being said, it is clear that these cuts will inevitably result in a reduction of service that can be provided by the Diocesan Office, and our diocesan support of certain ministries.

While this downsizing directly affects certain individuals, it is also a decision which affects every one of us in the Diocese of British Columbia. I ask that you pray for those staff who have been laid off, and for all the Diocesan Office staff. Please pray for the leadership of the Diocese as it seeks to carry out gospel ministry with diminished resources. Please pray for the whole Diocese as it follows in the way of Christ.

Yours sincerely,

–(The Rt. Rev.) James Cowan

Should a student religious group at a public university be allowed to bar a certain group of students from membership ”” gay students, to be precise ”” without losing its official student-group status, and the funding and other benefits that go with it?

Today, the answer to that constitutionally loaded question depends on which federal appellate court you ask. In a case involving the Christian Legal Society at the University of California Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco (Christian Legal Society v. Martinez), the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals held that the school was entirely within its rights when it denied recognition to the Christian Legal Society over its unwillingness to accept as members gay students or any others who did not share the group’s beliefs. The 7th Circuit reached the opposite conclusion in a similar case at Southern Illinois University’s law school.

Clarity is presumably on the way, as the U.S. Supreme Court has taken on the Hastings case and will hear arguments April 19. Let’s hope the country comes out of it with a clearer understanding of what’s in and what’s out when it comes to the membership policies of religious student groups. And let’s hope that the high court sheds some much needed light on the larger issues evoked by the law school case:

Does religious freedom include the right to discriminate on the basis of gender, race or sexuality? Do authorities have the right to foist their values on religious groups through carrots and sticks such as meeting-space privileges and the threat of withholding funds? And, as more conservatives are asking these days, shouldn’t that oft-proclaimed liberal principle of “tolerance” also be invoked to the benefit of tradition-minded Christians?

Read it all.

Two-year notes sold by the billionaire’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. in February yield 3.5 basis points less than Treasuries of similar maturity, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Procter & Gamble Co., Johnson & Johnson and Lowe’s Cos. debt also traded at lower yields in recent weeks, a situation former Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. chief fixed-income strategist Jack Malvey calls an “exceedingly rare” event in the history of the bond market.

The $2.59 trillion of Treasury Department sales since the start of 2009 have created a glut as the budget deficit swelled to a post-World War II-record 10 percent of the economy and raised concerns whether the U.S. deserves its AAA credit rating. The increased borrowing may also undermine the first-quarter rally in Treasuries as the economy improves.

“It’s a slap upside the head of the government,” said Mitchell Stapley, the chief fixed-income officer in Grand Rapids, Michigan, at Fifth Third Asset Management, which oversees $22 billion. “It could be the moment where hopefully you realize that risk is beginning to creep into your credit profile and the costs associated with that can be pretty scary.”

Read it all.

Church of the Good Shepherd in Binghamton New York. (Been there many times. About one hour south of Ithaca and Cornell University.) One of the few growing and thriving Episcopal parishes in the diocese heck in the state. They left the Diocese of Central New York. They tried to keep their property. They were sued. They lost.

The family was abruptly evicted from the parsonage. The church building was closed. (People who came looking for the soup kitchen hoping for something to eat had to look elsewhere. That is an important point. I will come back to this.)

The Episcopal Church sold the building to Muslims.

Who paid one third what the Church of the Good Shepherd was offering. (There is some question about whether they had the funds to make that offer but that is not the most important issue here.)

To Muslims.

See those nasty traditional Anglicans do not believe in same-sex relations. They do not believe in women in ministry. Oh wait they do because the rector’s wife was associate pastor so I guess they do believe in women priests….

Read it all.

Take the time to read it all as well as looking at the pictures and there is a lot more there.

The Right Reverend Stephen Cottrell, Bishop of Reading, has been nominated by Her Majesty the Queen as Bishop of Chelmsford in succession to The Right Reverend John Gladwin. He will be the tenth Bishop of Chelmsford.

Bishop Stephen Cottrell said: “I was born and brought up in Essex, and it is still the place I think of as home. Now I have been invited to return to this large, diverse and richly varied diocese to serve as your bishop. It is an immense privilege.

“What sustains me in ministry is the joy and beauty of the gospel. I want us to be a church that is gospel centred, servant hearted and mission focused. I am hungry for us to be a church that connects with every person and every community.

Read it all.

The paper aims to draw out the historic significance of the Anglican Covenant for the Anglican Communion. It begins by examining the nature and reasons of the “ecclesial deficit” of the Anglican Communion. It points out that the ecclesial status of the Anglican Communion has never been clarified. The Anglican Communion arises historically as an accident. It has never been constituted as an ecclesial body. The paper traces the transformations in the Anglican ecclesiastical map amid powerful global undercurrents in the second half of the twentieth century. It reflects on the emergence of the status of the See of Canterbury as “focus of unity” of the Anglican Communion. It proceeds to point out how uncritical adoption of the term “instruments of unity” from Protestant ecumenical dialogues led to confusion and mistrust among Anglican Churches. The paper then explores the potentials of communion-ecclesiology for the Anglican Covenant. It goes on to argue that the Anglican Covenant, grounded in the New Covenant, provides the canonical structure of the Anglican Communion. It constitutes the particular Churches to be a confident Communion of Churches. The inter-Anglican structures of the Anglican Communion should in fact be the ecclesiastical embodiment of the Anglican Covenant.

Read it carefully and read it all.

The process was wrenching, and tainted to the 11th hour by narrow political obstructionism, but the year-long struggle over health care reform came to an end on Sunday night with a triumph for countless Americans who have been victimized or neglected by their dysfunctional health care system. Barack Obama put his presidency on the line for an accomplishment of historic proportions.

The bill, which was approved by the Senate in December and by the House on Sunday, represents a national commitment to reform the worst elements of the current system. It will provide coverage to tens of millions of uninsured Americans, prevent the worst insurance company abuses, and begin to wrestle with relentlessly rising costs ”” while slightly reducing future deficits.

Read it carefully and read it all.

If you don’t care how this affects businesses, you should. Some 15 million people in this country don’t have jobs ”” and another 12 million work part-time but want full-time positions.

If America’s major employers are hit with huge, government-mandated cost increases during an economic downturn, do you really think they’ll hire more when the economy starts growing on its own again? Of course not.

Despite this, the White House predicts its plan will “cut costs” for businesses. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi even makes the bizarre prediction that passage of health reform will lead to 400,000 new jobs “immediately,” and millions more down the road.

Such claims don’t hold water because health reform includes $569.2 billion in new taxes, at last count 160 new bureaucracies and regulations, and 16,500 new IRS agents to collect all those taxes….

Read it all.

In approving the most sweeping piece of social legislation since the mid-1960s, Democrats proved that they can govern, even under challenging circumstances and in the face of significant internal divisions.

To understand how large a victory this is, consider what defeat would have meant. In light of the president’s decision to gamble all of his standing to get this bill passed, its failure would have crippled his presidency. The Democratic Congress would have become a laughing stock, incapable of winning on an issue that has been central to its identity since the days of Harry Truman.

This is why Republicans decided to put everything they had into an effort to defeat the measure. They said its passage would hurt the Democrats in November’s elections. They knew that its failure would have haunted Democrats for decades.

Without this concrete achievement, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi kept warning her troops, Democrats would have been stuck with their votes for reform bills and nothing to show for them. The real and imagined flaws of their proposed system would have been hung around their necks, yet they would have had no way of demonstrating its advantages.

With success comes the chance to defend what is, in many of its particulars, the sort of plan a majority of Americans said they wanted. Yes, it is imperfect and it won’t come cheap. But it fills a gaping hole in the American social insurance system.

Read it all.

Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., was right Sunday night when he hailed looming approval of an unprecedented expansion of the federal government’s health care role as “an historic moment.” Yet the House also made history by taking that giant step without a single Republican vote. Regardless of your opinion on how to cure what’s ailing our nation’s medical system, that lack of bipartisanship sends a disturbing signal about how deeply our nation is divided — and assures that this debate is far from over.

Our opinion remains that while major health care changes are needed, Obama-Care is a counterproductive regulatory behemoth that will impose devastating new financial burdens on both the private and public sectors.

That’s particularly alarming in these hard times of record federal deficits and high unemployment. Persisting poll trends show that a solid majority of Americans share that opinion.

But even those who think the president’s reform plan is sound should be troubled by the legislative machinations required to advance it….

Read it all.

House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn experienced the most significant legislative triumph of his congressional career Sunday evening as a historic health care bill extending insurance to 32 million Americans was passed.

Clyburn, a South Carolina Democrat, ended a week that he said was the most exhausting of his 17-plus years in Congress by finally corralling the minimum 216 votes needed for the House to pass the landmark legislation.

“We have debated this issue for several generations,” Clyburn said on the House floor at 9:30 p.m. “The time has come to act. This is the Civil Rights Act of the 21st Century.”

Read it all.

House Democrats approved a far-reaching overhaul of the nation’s health system on Sunday, voting over unanimous Republican opposition to provide medical coverage to tens of millions of uninsured Americans after an epic political battle that could define the differences between the parties for years.

With the 219-to-212 vote, the House gave final approval to legislation passed by the Senate on Christmas Eve. Thirty-four Democrats joined Republicans in voting against the bill. The vote sent the measure to President Obama, whose yearlong push for the legislation has been the centerpiece of his agenda and a test of his political power.

After approving the bill, the House adopted a package of changes to it by a vote of 220 to 211. That package ”” agreed to in negotiations among House and Senate Democrats and the White House ”” now goes to the Senate for action as soon as this week. It would be the final step in a bitter legislative fight that has highlighted the nation’s deep partisan and ideological divisions.

Read it all.

Almighty and everlasting God, the source and perfection of all virtues, who didst inspire thy servant James de Koven to do what is right and to preach what is true: Grant that all ministers and stewards of thy mysteries may afford to thy faithful people, by word and example, the knowledge of thy grace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.