The Bible Studies at this Encounter have been beyond extraordinary. For three days, we have studied a portion of three chapters in Isaiah, search for God’s reason for creating Covenants. Tuesday was Isaiah 61:1-13; Wednesday was Isaiah 41:1-9 and today was Isaiah 50:4-9 with 2 Timothy 1:8-14 thrown in for good measure. There is such a feeling of unity here ”“ that’s one of the reasons the Bible Studies are so enjoyable. This is not a state of political unity where we agree on a strategy or a legislative agenda, like General Convention. This is spiritual unity. We have the same understandings of the basic words of Scripture. When one says God, the Father Almighty, or Sovereign Lord, the other knows what you are referring to. You don’t have to redefine the term or question the other person’s understanding of same. So, there is much less tension here. No one is a stranger.

Couple that with the fact that the Global South bishops and archbishops are not creating anything new. Abp. Mouneer Anis reiterated this morning that the Global South has a structure that includes a Primate’s Standing Committee and an administrative team, newly elected at this Encounter. President: Abp. John Chew of Singapore; Vice President Abp. Henry Orombi, Uganda, (who is still stranded in London); Secretary Abp. Mouneer Anis of Egypt/Middle East; Treasurer Abp. Nicholas Okoh, Nigeria; at large Abp. Stephen Than Myint Oo, Myanmar and Bishop Albert Chama, Central Africa. The Global South has a structure for their own development only. They are not leaving the Anglican Communion and they are not forming their own communion.

Read it all.

[Archbishop Rowan] Williams is a fifty-nine-year-old Welshman with a beautiful voice, a full white beard, and fearsome, flyaway black eyebrows that in pictures, or when he is thinking hard, can make him look like a monk out of Dostoyevsky””a resemblance that is said to please him. He wrote a book about Dostoyevsky in 2008. His manner is friendly, more professorial than priestly. He taught theology for most of the nineteen-eighties, at Cambridge and then at Oxford, where, at thirty-six, he became the youngest person ever to hold the university’s oldest academic chair. His students””some of them now the priests berating him most strongly for his reluctance to put himself, and his office, on the line for a cause he is known to support””call him the most engrossing teacher they ever had. After a few minutes, I believed it. Williams has a disarming mind, a modesty, and an appetite for conversation, a way of thinking out loud, that belies the austerity of his title. At one point, he stopped himself, saying, “Sorry, this is turning into a sermon.”

“How do you eat an elephant?” he said, with something between a chuckle and a sigh, when I asked how he hoped to hold his church together, given that the demands of Anglican women were so completely at odds with the demands of Anglican men whose own inclusion specifically involved excluding those women from episcopal service. “I suppose it’s by using as best I can the existing consultative mechanisms to create a climate””and I think that’s often the best, to create a climate,” he told me. “There’s a phrase which has struck me very much: that you can actually ruin a good cause by pushing it at the wrong moment and not allowing the process of discernment and consent to go on, and that’s part of my view.” He thought that with time, patience, and enough discussion within the Church you could temper the opposition to female bishops””despite the fact that three synods since 1994 have tried to address the issue, and the opposition remains intractable. His friends call this “Rowan’s Obama syndrome”: the persistence of a commendable but not very realistic belief in the power of reason to turn your enemies into allies.

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No more letting industry help pay for developing medical guidelines. Restrictions on consulting deals. And no more pens with drug company names or other swag at conferences.

These are part of a new ethics code that dozens of leading medical groups announced Wednesday, aimed at limiting the influence that drug and device makers have over patient care.

It’s the most sweeping move ever taken by the Council of Medical Specialty Societies to curb conflict of interest ”” a growing concern as private industry bankrolls a greater share of medical research.

The council includes 32 medical societies with 650,000 members, from neurologists and obstetricians to family doctors and pediatricians. They include the American College of Physicians, the American College of Cardiology and the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the largest group of cancer specialists in the world.

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“The bashing of Wall Street is something that should worry everybody,” [Michael] Bloomberg declared last week.

The Republican-turned-independent mayor’s positions have made him a lone wolf among left-leaning officials in the city. Local lawmakers and others rallied at City Hall on Tuesday in support of financial reform, some holding signs that read “Goldman Suchs.”

Bloomberg plans to attend Obama’s speech at The Cooper Union college Thursday but demurred when asked whether he was concerned about what the president would say.

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Transhumanism is really a set of ideas that has developed in response to the rapid advance of biotechnology in the past 20 years (that is, technology capable of and aimed at manipulating the physical, mental and emotional condition of human beings). Conventional medicine has traditionally aimed at overcoming disorders that afflict the human condition; it has prescribed leeching, cauterizing, amputating, medicating, operating and relocating to dryer climates, all in order to facilitate health and militate against disease and degeneration; in other words, the purpose has been to heal (i.e., has been broadly therapeutic).

Technology is now making possible interventions that in addition to a therapeutic aim are intended to augment healthy human capacities. There is a gradual but steady enlargement taking place in medical ideals from simply healing to healing and enhancement. We are all too familiar with “performance enhancing drugs” in professional sports. But biotechnology promises to make possible forms of enhancement that go far beyond muscle augmentation.

Germ-line gene therapy, for example, still in its infancy, aims to genetically modify human “germ cells” (i.e., sperm and eggs) in order to introduce desirable intellectual, physical and emotional characteristics and exclude undesirable ones. Since the modifications are made to cells in the “germ line,” the traits would be heritable and passed on to subsequent generations. Drugs to improve mental function such as Ritalin and Adderall are increasingly being used by the healthy in order to enhance cognitive abilities. One study has shown that close to 7% of students at U.S. universities have used prescription stimulants for enhancement purposes.That number appears only to be increasing.

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Seventy-nine percent of investors say it’s likely Goldman Sachs committed fraud – but only 39% of Americans believe the government’s investigation of Goldman is based on a legitimate concern about fraud.

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CHARLIE ROSE: Goldman also says it’s wrong in law and in fact. Where’s it wrong in law?

DAVID BOIES: Well, I think what they mean — I think what they mean is based on the facts that are in there, it’s not an illegal conduct.

The issue is whether there are more facts that would bring it under conventional law. As Michael says, this is an unusual case. This is the first time you’ve seen a case like this. I happen to think it’s no coincidence it comes out just at the time that the administration is going after the financial regulatory reform in Congress.

CHARLIE ROSE: Wait. You think the administration had some influence with the SEC in terms of bringing this complaint now?

DAVID BOIES: I think that there’s a climate in Washington that is — wants to show aggression in terms of regulation. I think that — that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

But I think you’ve got to be careful that when you bring an SEC complaint as opposed to bring a bill to change procedures or to add new regulations that you’ve got something that is improper under existing law.
And looking at the complaint, I don’t see where that is right now.

Watch it all (a little over 34 minutes).

How does a religion teacher get an invitation to appear, in June, on Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report? By writing a book saying that Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, and others have preached about the shared, benign beliefs unifying all great religions ”” and then dismissing that message as garbage.

Stephen Prothero’s God Is Not One, which hits bookstores today, argues that the globe’s eight major religions hold different and irreconcilable assumptions. They may all push the Golden Rule, as progressives like to point out, but no religion really considers ethics its sole goal. Doctrine, ritual, and myth are crucial, too, and on these, writes the College of Arts & Sciences professor, there is no meeting of the religious minds. For example, Christians who think they’re doing non-Christians a favor by saying they too can be “saved” ignore the fact that Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and Confucians either don’t believe in sin or don’t focus on salvation from it. (Hinduism, Daoism, and the African religion Yoruba round out the eight.)

The notion of “pretend pluralism,” as Prothero derides it, may be nobly intentioned, but it is “dangerous, disrespectful, and untrue.”

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Two years into a merciless downward spiral, Antonio Moore was threatened with living on the street.

He had lost his $75,000-a-year job as a mortgage consultant, his three-bedroom house with a Jacuzzi, his Lexus sedan. He could no longer pay even the rent on his cramped studio apartment ”” not on his $10-an-hour part-time job as a fry cook at a fast food restaurant.

Faced with eviction, he was staring last month at the imminent prospect of joining the teeming ranks of the homeless. His last hope was a new $1.5 billion federal program aimed at preventing that fate. Within days of applying, a check for $775 was on its way to Mr. Moore’s landlord, enabling him to stay ”” at least for now.

Much like the Great Depression, when millions of previously working people came to rely on a new social safety net for their sustenance, a swelling group of formerly middle-class Americans like Mr. Moore, 30, is seeking government aid for the first time. Without help, say economists, many are at risk of slipping permanently into poverty, even as economic conditions improve.

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Pope Benedict XVI pledged Wednesday that the Roman Catholic Church would take action to deal with the widening scandal over sexual abuse by priests, making a rare direct public comment on the crisis.

During his weekly audience here, Benedict told pilgrims and tourists in St. Peter’s Square that he had met with abuse victims during a recent trip to Malta and had “assured them of church action.”

“I shared their suffering and emotionally prayed with them,” the pope said, describing his visit on Sunday with eight Maltese men who claim to have been molested by priests as youths.

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And God spoke all these words, saying, “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me.”

–Exodus 20:1-3

The Global South-to-South Encounter entered into its third. What does it mean for the Churches in the Global South to be a “Light for the Nations?

The day started with Archbishop Robert Duncan presiding at Holy Communion. In his homily, he reminded us that we, who are “deeply, truly and permanently loved” are truly free. We do not “go our own way” to find freedom, but we come to Jesus, the bread of life. Assistant Bishop Rennis Ponniah, led the Bible Study, sharing from Isaiah 42:1-9. Bp Ponniah emphasized the vital need for a fresh vision of the Church. The scope of the Church’s ministry has to include the bringing forth of God’s justice in society, by modeling covenantal relations and by teaching society the keeping of God’s moral law. The nature of the Church’s presence is as a servant to the world’s needs; Anglican ministers are not celebrities, but celebrants. Finally, Bp Ponniah once again reminded us to look to the Holy Spirit as the source of the Church’s power, to give us an indefatigable constancy to do God’s work every day.

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President Barack Obama suggested Wednesday that a new value-added tax on Americans is still on the table, seeming to show more openness to the idea than his aides have expressed in recent days.

Before deciding what revenue options are best for dealing with the deficit and the economy, Obama said in an interview with CNBC, “I want to get a better picture of what our options are….”

After the interview, White House deputy communications director Jen Psaki said nothing has changed and the White House is “not considering” a VAT.

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NFL commissioner Roger Goodell suspended Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger today for a maximum of six games without pay to start the 2010 season, a suspension that could be reduced to four games if he successfully completes counseling or treatment mandated by the NFL.

Roethlisberger will not be able to participate in any team activity until he completes a professional behavioral evaluation.

The suspension means Roethlisberger will miss at least four games to open the season against Atlanta, Tennessee, Tampa Bay and Baltimore. The Steelers have the bye week in the season’s fifth week and then play Cleveland and Miami, additional games Roethlisberger would miss if he gets the full suspension Goodell issued today.

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The charismatic movement in the U.S. marks its golden anniversary this year, having begun with Episcopal priest Dennis Bennett in 1960. For more than a hundred years, its parent movement, Pentecostalism, has popularized practices such as speaking in tongues and prophesying. The younger charismatic movement surfaced when many North American Christians in mainline denominations began adopting similar practices.

Vinson Synan, a professor of church history at Regent University in Virginia Beach, documents the movement’s development in An Eyewitness Remembers the Century of the Holy Spirit (Chosen/Baker). CT online editor Sarah Pulliam Bailey spoke with Synan about Pentecostalism’s past and future.

What to you has been one of the most unexpected changes of the past century?

The biggest surprise was the Catholic-charismatic renewal that started in 1967. That came as an utter shock to me, to most of my friends, and probably to the Catholic Church. It gave legitimacy to the movement, that the largest and one of the oldest churches in the world was seeing a Pentecostal movement.

What has been the high point of the movement?

The movement reached a climax in America around 1977 during the Kansas City Conference, because all the different streams came together.

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Global South Churches must work together in mutual co-operation in all the aspects for church development. For example:

* Scenario 1 ”“ Mission workers of Diocese B are sent to pioneer new frontiers in Diocese A.
* Scenario 2 ”“ Diocese A raises its own workers and sends to them to Diocese B for training with the support of Diocese B with the view to the trained workers returning to Diocese A for service.
* Scenario 3 ”“ Diocese B sends trainers to Diocese A to train its workers and leaders.

We must avoid a dependency mentality. Even if there is a need for financial support, it should be done in a way consistent with the law of diminishing support.

Links and Companionship perhaps is a better way forward ”“ two or three dioceses linking together or creating a companion relationship for mission and ministry. Today’s world is a global village and the mobility of people is rapid. People do travel frequently. We can capitalize on this and promote mission trips and awareness between dioceses and provinces. It must be a two way parallel affair where both are on the same playing field. We can encourage more East and South links. The same can be promoted for theological training. Instead of sending our students to the North and West for training, we can explore the new adventure of training in the East and South. I can identify a few factors of benefit.

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The Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin filed a lawsuit last week against St. James Anglican ”” the historic Red Church ”” in Sonora. It was news to St. James’ priest, the Rev. Wolfgang Krismanits, on Monday afternoon.

“We’ve had no word whatsoever,” he said. “I’ve seen nothing yet. I didn’t get an e-mail. I didn’t get a phone call.”

When told that a news release dated Friday said a lawsuit had been filed against his congregation, Krismanits replied with frustration: “This is what (the Episcopal[ians]s) are doing. They’re telling everyone else, but they’re not contacting the congregation until after it’s done.”

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And speaking of “responsibility.” A new poll by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center throws new light on the question of what’s-all-the-anger-about? In The Wall Street Journal, Pew Research Center president Andrew Kohut notes a national mood edgy and fractious, in the context of “a dismal economy, an unhappy public, and epic discount with Congress and elected officials.” Thirty percent of Americans, it seems, “view the federal government as a major threat to their personal freedoms.”

How come? What goes on here anyway, behind the oratorical battle smoke? A whole lot more goes on than one might surmise from tuning in to the Rush and Bill Show.

A cardinal principle of democracy is, don’t do things to demos — the people — against demos’ own ideas, notions and viewpoints. For instance, take over the health care system.

At the time of the final Senate and House votes on health care, polls indicated majority opposition to the bill, not the least reason being, apparently, that hardly anyone understood what the bill contained and proposed. Polls continue to show large majorities in favor of repeal.

No matter. The White House said we needed the bill.

Read it all (featured on the op-ed of the local paper today which is why I happened to see it).

The massive disruption caused by the volcano cloud has come at a bad time for pet shippers. Many have seen their shipment numbers drop by 50% to 60% in the past year, as companies stop paying to relocate employees’ families abroad, said Sally Smith, the owner of Johnsonburg, NJ-based Airborne Animals LLC. In 2008, 75% of pet owners polled in the U.S. said they frequently travel with their animals, according to BringYourPet.com, a directory service for pet-friendly hotels.

Pet shippers have lost precious time and money during the disruption, often having to re-file lengthy health certificates that sometimes must be completed within hours of a pet’s takeoff. Many have stranded animals in their midst, biding time until it’s safe to fly….

In Frankfurt, Mr. [Paul] Robinson was reunited with [his dog] Pen on Saturday afternoon. He found his friend “quite thin””like a hyena during a summer drought in the African Savannah kind of thin.” That night, he put Pen in the front seat of the Fiat and cruised back to Ljubljana in the slow lane of the autobahn.

Both are taking the journey in stride. “We all have adventures doing things for the people we love, the animals we love,” Mr. Robinson said. “You just take the risk and go.”

Read it all from yesterday’s Wall Street Journal.

The opportunities for mission are legion. The fields are ripe for harvest. My brothers and sisters, we are the Eleventh Hour Workers. Pray, therefore, the Lord of the harvest, to send out laborers into the harvest.

I would hope that we could leave this meeting of Global South Provinces having resolved together to make the next ten years a Decade of Mission in the Global South. Where we resolve such things as:

* Every Province will create a mission sending agency. We know how to receive missionaries very well. But, we can’t receive from one another, if we have no way to send them to one another. This means we must also address the issue of supporting missionaries we send, whether through the traditional means of support coming from the sending church, or through non-traditional means of tent-making and Business as Mission.
* We will collaborate together to strengthen our churches, especially those living in strong multi-religious contexts.
* We will commit ourselves to doubling the size of our Provinces and increasing the number of Provinces in the Global South.

Read it all.

Now, the Global South believing community has the same ethical challenge before it. We are the descendents of Abraham by faith in Jesus. We too are called to keep the way of the Lord. If we walk in the way of the Lord ”“ by following the instruction of the Lord ”“ in other words God’s word is to be a lamp to our feet and a light to our paths. Scripture has to be our guiding factor in our decision making.

If we pursue justice ”“ that is if we seek course correction ”“ if we act as a plumb line showing where the wall has gone off plumb then we would be acting as the light to the nations. We can only be a light to the nations by doing justice ”“ by this we are calling people to be accountable. Peter proclaims to the Jews in his encounter with Cornelius that he was proclaiming Jesus whom God appointed judge of the living and the dead. The resurrection of Jesus is the beginning of the final putting-to-rights of all human injustice. In the light of the Resurrection, the Covenant Community must never stop reminding the world’s rulers and authorities as well as its own rulers and authorities that they themselves will be held to account, and that they must do justice and bring wise, healing order to God’s world ahead of the day of the Lord’s coming.

The Global South of the Anglican Communion is called to be a light to the nations. As the covenant community we need to illumine the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Only Jesus can remove the veil that blinds.

Read it all.

Day 2 of the 4th Anglican Global South-to-South Encounter was a time for all present to listen, meditate and share on the richness of the covenantal idea. As Archbishop John Chew reminded us, to allow the covenant effected by Jesus to “challenge and engage us”¦ to reflect it in our lives.”

The day started off with the Holy Communion, led be participants from Asia, with the Archbishop of Melanesia, David Vanugi serving as the celebrant. Then the morning Bible Study followed, led by the Bishop Rennis Ponniah, the Assistant Bishop of Singapore. Sharing from Isaiah 6: 1-13, he exhorted us to be like the contrite prophet who was “undone by the stunning holiness of God, amazed by the sheer grace of God, and captivated by the salvation purpose of God.” It was a call to repentance and humility, that God cannot use us as His servants unless we are totally broken before Him.

Read it all.

Praised for defying political convention when he admitted in 2007 that he was an atheist, Nick Clegg appears to have undergone a rapid conversion.

The Liberal Democrat leader, who was criticised by David Cameron for his “holier-than-thou” attitude in the first of the televised leaders’ debates, has written an article for The Church of England Newspaper in which he claims that Christian values are “central” to his policies.

“My objective is to make space in society for every individual to pursue their [sic] own beliefs, and to achieve their potential,” he writes. “For me that means being willing to take a stand, even on issues that may be unpopular.”

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We are becoming a risk-averse society and that is dangerous. If Britain is a significant power in the world economy, it is because in the past this nation embraced risk rather than shunned it.

Thousands are stranded abroad clutching buckets, spades and crumpled boarding passes. Gordon Brown is commanding gunboats to rescue the beached Britons. Why are so many Brits in foreign parts in the first place? It is only thanks to the high-risk business gambles of easyJet and Ryanair. It is also thanks to the aggressive deregulation of Britain’s airspace and its airports, a risky political strategy that made cheap travel possible for millions….

The solution to our economic problems is not to tie everything down but to unwind the screws, loosen the bolts. We want true risk-takers, those people who centuries ago might finance a ship destined for a spice island. Someone truly prepared to risk the shirt on their backs, who fears that his “monstruosity” might bite off his own head.

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The Anglican Church of Canada is inviting corporate sponsorship of its national convention this year, selling space for brand logos on delegate documents, advertising signs in its meeting spaces and a private lunch for executives with the church’s senior archbishop.

It’s the first time in its 117-year history that the Canadian church made its governing synod available for a mess of pottage – to use the language of the Bible’s Old Testament allusion to Esau selling his birthright for a lentil stew. For that matter, no other Canadian church is known to have sold advertising at its formal gatherings and access to its leaders.

The synod will be held June 3-11 at St. Mary’s University in Halifax.

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Charities are always looking for new ways to raise funds, and for some, reaching out electronically with social media tools like Twitter and Facebook is a perfect match.

For example, the American Red Cross’ successful text-messaging campaign raised tens of millions of dollars for Haiti. It spurred charities’ interest in the use of social media, but nonprofits are finding that some of these new fundraising methods need to be handled with care.

Northern Virginia Family Service, a relatively small nonprofit in Virginia that helps needy families, participated in a new Pepsi Refresh contest, hoping to receive some of the $20 million Pepsi is giving away this year to nonprofits and individuals that win the most votes online for their charitable proposals.

The group wanted to win $50,000 so it could buy a much-needed walk-in freezer and refrigerator for its food pantry. It has used Facebook and Twitter as well as an updated Web site and a YouTube video to win support.

Read or listen to it all.

School districts around the country, forced to resort to drastic money-saving measures, are warning hundreds of thousands of teachers that their jobs may be eliminated in June.

The districts have no choice, they say, because their usual sources of revenue ”” state money and local property taxes ”” have been hit hard by the recession. In addition, federal stimulus money earmarked for education has been mostly used up this year.

As a result, the 2010-11 school term is shaping up as one of the most austere in the last half century. In addition to teacher layoffs, districts are planning to close schools, cut programs, enlarge class sizes and shorten the school day, week or year to save money.

“We are doing things and considering options I never thought I’d have to consider,” said Peter C. Gorman, superintendent of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools in North Carolina, who expects to cut 600 of the district’s 9,400 teachers this year, after laying off 120 last year. “This may be our new economic reality.”

Read it all.

Almighty God, who didst raise up thy servant Anselm to teach the Church of his day to understand its faith in thine eternal Being, perfect justice, and saving mercy: Provide thy Church in every age with devout and learned scholars and teachers, that we may be able to give a reason for the hope that is in us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation; for in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities–all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

–Colossians 1:15-17