The Bishop of Durham, Dr N. T. Wright, has announced that he will be retiring from the See of Durham on August 31.

Dr Wright, who will be 62 this autumn, is returning to the academic world, in which he spent the first twenty years of his career, and will take up a new appointment as Research Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of St Andrews in Scotland.

Announcing his move, Bishop Tom said, ”˜This has been the hardest decision of my life. It has been an indescribable privilege to be Bishop of the ancient Diocese of Durham, to work with a superb team of colleagues, to take part in the work of God’s kingdom here in the north-east, and to represent the region and its churches in the House of Lords and in General Synod. I have loved the people, the place, the heritage and the work. But my continuing vocation to be a writer, teacher and broadcaster, for the benefit (I hope) of the wider world and church, has been increasingly difficult to combine with the complex demands and duties of a diocesan bishop. I am very sad about this, but the choice has become increasingly clear.’

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We need leaders who know God’s word, not guessing what God might be doing, offering opinions on this or that gospel truth, but going deep into God’s word as a means of grace to shape how we enter the mind of Christ. The crisis we face as a Communion is theological at heart, and needs to be addressed with theological depth.

This is the painful lesson in New Zealand: how damaging it is when the theological education of men and women in ministry brings doubt and confusion, especially in matters where the word of Scripture is clear. And the impact on our churches after more than a generation of such theological education has been devastating.

I read the report to the House Of Bishops in TEC regarding questions of same sex relationships and sexual expression. To be perfectly honest, and speaking personally from an academic perspective, the case put forward to justify same sex blessings and marriage is extraordinary in its treatment of various scriptures. Passages that are actually quite clear are made to say the opposite of their plain meaning. The logic and reasoning is strained and at key points quite incoherent.

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I thought this was a nice photo.

The drama class had just gotten out, and everybody was standing around talking when Jessica noticed her 9-year-old, Isabelle, making her way over to an elderly woman Jessica had never seen. The woman was neatly dressed, most likely just a well-meaning suburban grandmother who had come to retrieve a grandchild on behalf of an over-extended parent, most likely a perfectly harmless person.

Isabelle, as she usually did, exchanged hellos and struck up a conversation. It was the usual post-drama-class conversation until about two minutes in. Then Isabelle dropped the bomb.

“Will you take me? Can I go home with you?” Jessica heard Isabelle plead.

Jessica’s daughter, Isabelle, has Williams syndrome, a genetic disorder with a number of symptoms. Children with Williams are often physically small and frequently have developmental delays. But also, kids and adults with Williams love people, and they are literally pathologically trusting. They have no social fear. Researchers theorize that this is probably because of a problem in their limbic system, the part of the brain that regulates emotion. There appears to be a disregulation in one of the chemicals (oxytocin) that signals when to trust and when to distrust.

This means that it is essentially biologically impossible for kids like Isabelle to distrust.

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Pope Benedict XVI isn’t the world’s most prolific celebrity blogger. In fact, he’s not on Twitter and his Facebook profile is more empty than St. Peter’s Basilica on a Monday. But His Holiness isn’t as out of the Internet loop as you might think (The Vatican does have its own YouTube channel). On Saturday, the Pope took to the airwaves to discuss the spiritual advantages (and shortcomings) of the Internet, and to inspire Internet users to be more conscious of how we connect.

It’s our responsibility to preserve the “quality of human contact, guaranteeing attention to people,” Pope Benedict said at “Digital Witness,” a panel organized by the Italian Episcopal Community.

“The dangers of homologation and control, of intellectual and moral relativism are also increasing, as already recognizable in the decline of critical spirit, in truth reduced to a game of opinions, in the many forms of degradation and humiliation of the intimacy of the person.”

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Bishop Gumbs called on the members to be responsible for turning the crime corners in Road Town upside down just by their presence.

“Take the name of Jesus with you there and pray about the situation in those areas, and you will find after a time with you calling on the name of God there, whatever may be in that place is goning to move”, Bishop Gumbs explained.

“When we leave here, we have to go out to do ministry”, he said.

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For we know, brethren beloved by God, that he has chosen you; for our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction.

–1 Thessalonians 1:4,5a

O Lord, who by triumphing over the power of darkness, didst Prepare our place in the New Jerusalem: Grant us, who have today given thanks for thy resurrection, to praise thee in that city whereof thou art the light; where with the Father and the Holy Spirit thou livest and reignest, world without end.

We haven’t formally disaffiliated from the Episcopal Church. We added the other affiliation in order to obtain godly episcopal care. The opposition wants the court to order our Anglican bishops to not set foot in our building without their permission. The judge refused.

Also, 35-40 (not 25) of us attended court. At the most recent hearing, Father David Cannon – so-called “priest in charge” – had nobody with him except attorneys, because there are no dissenters in the parish.

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We are encouraged by and welcome the Communique from the Fourth Anglican Global South to South Encounter in Singapore, with its positive emphasis on mission. We particularly endorse….

2. Their agreement that the future of the Communion lies in winning the next generation for Christ and therefore their call to each region to adopt initiatives to better understand the needs and characteristics of this new generation so that we might better communicate the Gospel and Christian values to them. [12]

3. Their statement of ”˜the absolute necessity and priority for the Church to disciple her members under the authority of the inspired Scriptures so that they may transform their societies and reach the nations with the Gospel’. [13]

4. Their recognition that TEC and ACC’s ”˜continued refusal to honor the many requests made of them by the various meetings of the Primates throughout the Windsor Process have brought discredit to our witness’; the urging of the Archbishop of Canterbury to implement the recommended actions’; and their encouragement to Provinces ”˜to reconsider their communion relationships with The Episcopal Church USA and the Anglican Church of Canada until it becomes clear that there is genuine repentance’. [18 and 19]

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From here:

One of the newest medical ethics dilemmas is the collision between the Internet and the traditionally strict boundaries between patients and doctors. Caregivers, especially psychiatrists and therapists, have historically disclosed personal information only when it might benefit a patient ”” as when a patient is struggling with the loss of a child and the therapist discloses that he, too, has experienced such a loss.

Likewise, patients have typically disclosed personal details in their own time, as therapy continues and trust develops. The Web challenges that model head-on.

Facebook, founded in February 2004, now has more than 400 million active users. MySpace, founded a month earlier, has 100 million. Google.com, the search engine founded in 1998, currently handles 100 billion searches per day.

There’s no question that Internet searches can be an important tool for healthcare consumers. “Patients should Google their doctors, to check on credentials, training, scholarly articles and the like,” says Dr. Daniel Sands, the senior medical director of clinical informatics for the Internet Business Solutions Group at networking giant Cisco Systems.

But what about the reverse ”” doctors searching patients? “Why would they ever want to?” asks Sands, also a physician at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.

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The one thing we know about the financial “reform” now moving toward what looks like eventual congressional approval is that it will be oversold, says economist Robert Litan of the Kauffman Foundation. We will be told that it will forever prevent a repetition of the recent financial crisis; that it will root out corruption on Wall Street; that it will eliminate “bailouts”; that it will protect consumers against greedy lenders. In the present anti-Wall Street mood, no one wants to be accused of coddling America’s money merchants.

What can we really expect?

History counsels caution. Every financial reform, even if mostly successful, ultimately gives way to another because there are unintended consequences or unforeseen problems. Sheila Bair, the head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., has noted that the reforms of the early 1990s, which curbed risk-taking within the banking system, perversely shifted lending to the largely unregulated “shadow banking system” — mortgage brokers, specialized lenders and “securitization.” The central aim of today’s reform is to avert another financial panic. A panic is not a bubble or just big losses. These are inevitable and, in part, desirable: Without losses, investors would become reckless. A panic is a stampede of selling and hoarding, driven by fear, that threatens the financial system and, through it, production and jobs. A panic occurred in September 2008 when Lehman Brothers failed. Distrusting most financial institutions, investors and money managers fled to safety (a.k.a. Treasury bills).

By its nature, a panic is unanticipated. Reform may resemble generals fighting the last war….

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The Catholic Church in Scotland last night accused the Foreign Office of a lack of respect and Vatican sources warned the papal visit to the UK could be cancelled after the publication of an internal memo mocking Pope Benedict.

The Foreign Office was forced to issue a public apology to the Vatican while Sir Peter Ricketts, the permanent under-secretary, contacted Cardinal Keith O’Brien, the head of the Catholic Church in Scotland, to apologise personally for any offence caused by the document.

The memo joked the Holy Father could open an abortion clinic, launch a range of condoms or sing a charity duet with the Queen. The document also suggested Benedict XVI could show his hard line on the sensitive issue of child abuse allegations against Roman Catholic priests by “sacking dodgy bishops” and launching a helpline for abused children.

And last night a senior Vatican source said the incident could threaten the papal visit in September, saying: “It’s possible the trip could be cancelled as this matter is hugely offensive.”

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It’s a slender thread, admittedly, that runs from a 16th-century pope to the Olsen twins to a converted car dealership in San Bernardino.

It’s there, though, hidden in the unlikely form of a new iPhone application that is dedicated to support of the Vatican Observatory, one of the quirkier institutions in Christendom.

Confused? Pause for a moment and step into St. Bernardine’s Catholic Church in downtown San Bernardino, where muted light filters through stained-glass windows and Father Mike Manning is at the pulpit, just finishing an impassioned sermon on “the power of accepting God’s love.” He is answering the question of whether it’s hypocritical for a sinner to go to church.

“The church is a place of sinners,” says Manning, a distinctly cinematic sort of priest with milky blue eyes and a glistening smile. “May we sinners never give the impression that we’re better than anyone else, and may we never hinder anyone from coming into our experience of the Lord in our church. Thank you ”¦ and may Jesus’ love for you always make you smile.”

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Check it out.

Small bands of elite American Special Operations forces have been operating with increased intensity for several weeks in Kandahar, southern Afghanistan’s largest city, picking up or picking off insurgent leaders to weaken the Taliban in advance of major operations, senior administration and military officials say.

The looming battle for the spiritual home of the Taliban is shaping up as the pivotal test of President Obama’s Afghanistan strategy, including how much the United States can count on the country’s leaders and military for support, and whether a possible increase in civilian casualties from heavy fighting will compromise a strategy that depends on winning over the Afghan people.

It will follow a first offensive, into the hamlet of Marja, that is showing mixed results. And it will require the United States and its Afghan partners to navigate a battleground that is not only much bigger than Marja but also militarily, politically and culturally more complex.

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In monastic terms, the liturgy is the path towards an exalted “ecstasy”, a flight into the cloud of unknowing, the place where God is, and where the true contemplation of the creative stillness of God is possible.

And this is a reality which is beyond the ability of historians, theologians, linguists, biblical scholars or even pastoral liturgists to express. Their contributions may even hinder rather than help. The intensity and intangibility of this experience can only be expressed through the arts.

This is why music of quality is a critical element within the life of the Church. It is a necessity, not a luxury. It is neither a frivolous confection nor an elitist distraction from the real business of faith. Music of quality, in the context of worship, does not entertain or divert. It reveals.

By means of evolving harmonies, rhythms, textures, modulations, orchestrations, melodies, counterpoints, imitations, this rich art form has the potential to create an aural environment which enables us to contemplate the mystery of God.

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…fidelity to Thomas also demands that a Catholic university teach theology as a divine science, and not religious studies, a human one dependent on rational inquiry alone. Even though the core beliefs of Christianity are revealed and held by faith, students have to be informed of what they are. Aquinas never suggests that explaining the content of the articles of faith will bring about a response of faith, but he does think that we need to be told them. Theology courses at a Catholic university propose sacra doctrina. They set out what Christ taught in the Gospels, since he “is the first and chief teacher of spiritual doctrine and faith”. Consequently, a Catholic university should be a place in where special attention is given to ensuring that students learn from theologians who propose the teaching of Christ as historical and authoritative.

Authentic Christian faith does not fear reason “but seeks it out and has trust in it”. Faith presupposes reason and perfects it. Nor does human reason lose anything by opening itself to the content of faith. When reason is illumined by faith, it “is set free from the fragility and limitations deriving from the disobedience of sin and finds the strength required to rise to the knowledge of the Triune God”. The Holy Father observes that St Thomas thinks that human reason, as it were, “breathes” by moving within a vast horizon open to transcendence. If, instead, “a person reduces himself to thinking only of material objects or those that can be proven, he closes himself to the great questions about life, himself and God and is impoverished”. Such a person has far too summarily divorced reason from faith, rendering asunder the very dynamic of the intellect.

What does this mean for Catholic universities today? Pope Benedict answers in this way: “The Catholic university is [therefore] a vast laboratory where, in accordance with the different disciplines, ever new areas of research are developed in a stimulating confrontation between faith and reason that aims to recover the harmonious synthesis achieved by Thomas Aquinas and other great Christian thinkers”. When firmly grounded in St Thomas’ understanding of faith and reason, Catholic institutions of higher learning can confidently face every new challenge on the horizon, since the truths discovered by any genuine science can never contradict the one Truth, who is God himself.

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Archbishops representing three-quarters of the Anglican world are rallying for firm action against two Western Churches for ”˜celebrating’ homosexuality.

The decision by the top leadership of the Global South of the Anglican Communion was prompted by the recent election by The Episcopal Church (U.S.) of a partnered lesbian as a bishop.

Heads of Churches in the Anglican Global South will be persuading their representative assemblies to reconsider communion with the North American Churches. This is “until it becomes clear there is genuine repentance,” in the words of a communiqué. The ”˜Fourth Trumpet’ was released Friday after an Anglican Global South summit held throughout the week at St. Andrew’s Cathedral.

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There is a lot of reporting on how terrorist groups get started and how they develop, but very little about how they end. Obama administration officials have been saying for weeks that its drone attacks over the past year have got al-Qaida on the run, but experts say it isn’t just drone attacks that are weakening al-Qaida. The group is defeating itself.

Al-Qaida is still a serious threat, and nothing could deny the fact the group is focused on attacking the U.S. any way it can. But if history is any guide, terrorist groups can eventually burn out.

Audrey Kurth Cronin, a professor at the National Defense University, lists the way such movements end.

“There are different ways that groups end, and those include decapitation, the capture or the killing of the leader,” she said. “Sometimes negotiations can help lead to the end — success which is, by the way, relatively rare; failure where groups lose popular support; and finally reorientation of the violence of a group.”

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The latest school battle over the separation of church and state may not feature prayers at football games, after-school Bible clubs or even a moment of silence.

Actually, there’s no prayer at all.

The newest battleground could be a church building itself ”” and whether it’s a proper venue for public school graduation ceremonies. In school districts searching for ever-bigger venues at bargain prices, churches are an appealing (and weatherproof) alternative to civic centers, high school gyms and athletic fields.

An advocacy group that monitors church-state disputes says it has intervened in nine proposed church commencements in seven states over the past two years.

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By his election, Okoh, a civil war veteran, becomes the first non-Yoruba to become the head of the Anglican Church. He follows a line of distinguished former Primates like Olufosoye Adetiloye and Akinola who were all giants of the church. It is the foot-prints of these men that Primate Okoh would now follow and possibly surpass.

We welcome the election of Primate Okoh to this elevated position in the Anglican Church. More so, as his election addressed a sore point within the Anglican Communion that has seen parishioners chaff under the headship of shepherds they felt did not share their culture and who they felt ensured that they were marginalized in church affairs.

This situation led to instances where, within the same communities, rival Anglican Churches emerged to cater to the different ethnic groups that established them.

It is a mark of the sagacity of the College of Bishops that elected Okoh that they shifted the office away from the ethnic group that has traditionally produced the top leadership of the Church. Call it zoning, if you like.

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The school’s action not only raises questions about the CLS students’ freedom of association ”” which lead counsel Michael McConnell compellingly raised in Monday’s oral arguments before the court ”” but it also threatens a founding principle of religious freedom. Hastings says that it is banning discrimination against gays and lesbians, but they are doing so by singling CLS out and punishing it for its religious beliefs. If a future, more liberal CLS leadership decided to allow voting members to promote or engage in premarital or homosexual intercourse, they would obviously regain official status because they will have adopted the school’s preferred belief: the affirmation of homosexual practice.

This decision could set a precedent for broader state action against traditional religious groups. Would the court be prepared to apply the all-comers standard to organizations representing any and all faiths? The justices should remember that many religions, including Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Sikhism have significant constituencies with similar beliefs about sexual behavior.

Christians like those in the CLS hold that the Old and New Testament’s prohibitions against premarital and homosexual sex still apply today. This is a serious, albeit disputed, religious belief about sexuality that is protected by the First Amendment. Authentic freedom of religion requires broad, utterly compelling justifications for the state to deprive anyone of privileges because of his beliefs, no matter how offensive the precepts in question are to some Americans. We should not require religious organizations such as the CLS to abandon core convictions in order to remain in the state’s good graces.

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Annie Laurie Gaylor clicked through a flurry of e-mail messages warning her to repent or she would burn in hell.

“Herod,” one messenger called her.

Ms. Gaylor leaned back and sipped from a cup of tea, unfazed and even a bit surprised at the relative tameness of the attacks. Fresh from her latest godless triumph, she had expected more vitriol.

“It used to be a lot worse,” said Ms. Gaylor, 54, an atheist whose organization, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, recently won a suit in federal court here that declared the National Day of Prayer to be a violation of the First Amendment. “Things are changing. Society is becoming more secularized. It’s becoming acceptable to be atheist and agnostic. And there are more of us.”

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The rector of Christ Church Grosse Pointe has been temporarily removed from his position because of a “serious allegation” that wasn’t specified, congregants learned this morning.

Rev. Brad Whitaker has run the prominent Episcopal church since 2002.

A representative of the Episcopal Bishop of Michigan addressed worshippers at the 9 a.m. service, followed by remarks by vestry senior warden Libby Candler.

Two calls placed to the home phone number listed for Whitaker the rector were hung up.

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I was struck during that zoning controversy how little I did to keep the church together. The ones really leading were the old ladies””molasses-sweet, blue-haired, Bible-believing old ladies who attended our Wednesday night prayer meeting.

The dispute did hurt our church. Longtime members threatened to leave, or at least resign leadership posts (which they left effectively vacant anyway). People worried openly about a church split. In one administrative board meeting I found myself with one candidate and his spouse and the campaign manager of the other and his spouse. The two men had once been close friends. Their sons still were. They’d known each other since their baptisms. Their parents still talked about how wonderful the other’s grandparents were. And their dispute wasn’t nearly as nasty or personal as that between their wives. But the two couples were not speaking. How were we to pass a budget together?

The most painful part was that they were all good people who still knew how to get their hands dirty and fix a motor, prepare a casserole and teach a Sunday school lesson, and in their business lives they could balance a million-dollar budget. But they could not, for the life of them (or their pastor), get along.

And precisely there is the small church’s glory. You can’t avoid the person you hate. You can’t wiggle out of the meeting with the person you’re not speaking to. And so you have a shot at being Christian.

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Almighty God, who by the hand of Mark the evangelist hast given to thy Church the Gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God: We thank thee for this witness, and pray that we may be firmly grounded in its truth; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down his disciples came to him. And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’

–Matthew 5:1-3

O God our Father, who hast taught us that our citizenship is in heaven, and hast called us to tread a pilgrim’s path here on earth: Guide us, we pray thee, on our journey through this world to the Celestial City; defend us from the perils that await us in the way; give us grace to endure faithfully to the end; and at the last bring us to thy eternal joy; through the mercy of thy Son, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.