We used to talk about children learning from their elders and betters.

How do we explain it when the situation is getting worse? Whose fault is it?

Recently statistics in N.S.W. emerged to show that physical attacks between girls have risen by 15 per cent each year since 2005. Most of this violence takes place outside schools, but the Bureau of Crime Statistics demonstrate the increase of 70 per cent over this period.

By and large young people go where they are led by the society that surrounds them. It is too easy to blame the young and absolve ourselves, but more difficult to identify causes accurately and more difficult again to put strategies into place that will help.

Read the whole article.

Pope Benedict hopes to address a “gap” in public perception of the Catholic Church after recent child sex scandals when he visits the country this year, aides said in plans for the trip unveiled Tuesday.

Archbishop Vincent added that the pope’s September 16-19 visit could give a crucial spiritual boost to Britain as it struggles to recover from the global financial downturn.

“Catholicism can easily become defined in the public mind in the light of one or two recent controversies,” said a pamphlet setting out the purpose of the three-day papal visit, the first to Britain in nearly 30 years.

“This is the gap in public knowledge that this pamphlet aims to address,” it added, without referring specifically to the sex abuse scandals rocking the Roman Catholic Church, notably in Britain’s neighbour Ireland.

Read it all.

Religious organizations reported a 0.7 percent decrease in donations last year, according to a study by Giving USA Foundation, a marked contrast from the 5.5 percent increase in giving reported in 2008.

Religious congregations accounted for 33 percent of the total $303 billion in contributions in 2009. This is the third year in a row that religious donations have exceeded $100 billion.

Total donations for all charitable groups in 2009 were down by 3.6 percent.

Read it all.

It seems to me that love must, by its essential nature, be always unconditional. We welcome Katharine Jefferts Schori to this pulpit because we love our sisters and brothers in the Episcopal Church of the United States; not because she is female, or a woman bishop ahead of us, or has permitted a practising lesbian to become a bishop (As it happens she couldn’t have stopped it after all the legal and proper canonical electoral processes resulted in the election and nomination), we welcome her because she is our sister in Christ.

The lesson from the Hebrew Scriptures is enormously topical. Disaffected Anglicans have been threatening to ”˜walk separate ways’ for many months. Abram and Lot travel together and their herdsmen bicker and fight, in modern translation there is ‘strife’ between them. They reach agreement to take separate paths and settle down and so their mutual belonging as members of one family is secured. The lesson is even more pertinent because it describes how Lot ended up near Sodom, which was a very wicked city, and of course it is sodomy that so curiously and constantly preoccupies so many disaffected Anglicans. The story of Sodom is often misrepresented from scriptures, the abuse which leads to its reputation and much social mythology, current even today, in Chapter 19, is a more sophisticated story of torture and coercion than misrepresented as a matter of sex.

It may be that some Anglicans will decide to walk a separate path. I believe the Chapter and congregation of this church will walk the same path as the Episcopal Church of America, the links are deep in our history, especially here. Their actions in recent months have been entirely in accord with the Anglican ways of generosity and breadth. They have tried to ensure everyone is recognised as a child of God. They have behaved entirely in accord with their canon laws and their freedom as an independent Province of the Church, not imposing or interfering with others with whom they disagree but proceeding steadily and openly themselves.

Read it all.

It is as if the breath of the Spirit has the capacity to translate the gospel of the Word made flesh, not only into the different languages of the first day of Pentecost, and all the languages of our twenty-first century world; the Spirit can also translate into every culture of our world ”“ and between the inculturation of the gospel in different cultures. So, when we cannot understand each other, we must be sure that we have listened carefully to the still small voice of the Spirit. Is the Spirit speaking to each of us? Can we recognise the presence of Christ, which is the touchstone, the standard, of the true Spirit of God?

I am convinced that in our current situation within the Communion neither have we done, nor are we continuing to do, enough of this sort of listening to one another. We do not understand one another and one another’s contexts well enough, and we are not sufficiently sensitive to one another in the way we act. Autonomy has gone too far. I do not mean that we should seek a greater uniformity ”“ I hope it is clear I am saying nothing of the sort. But we risk acting in ways that are so independent of one another that it becomes hard for us, and for outsiders, to recognise either a committed interdependent mutuality or a common Christian, Anglican, DNA running through our appropriately contextualised and differentiated ways of being.

Bishop Katharine, what I am going to say next is painful to me, and I fear it may also be to you ”“ but I would rather say it to your face, than behind your back. And I shall be ready to hear from you also, for I cannot preach listening without doing listening. It sometimes seems to me that, though many have failed to listen adequately to the Spirit at work within The Episcopal Church, at the same time within your Province there has not been enough listening to the rest of the Anglican Communion. I had hoped that those of your Bishops who were at the Lambeth Conference would have grasped how sore and tender our common life is. I had hoped that even those who, after long reflection, are convinced that there is a case for the consecration of individuals in same sex partnerships, might nonetheless have seen how unhelpful it would be to the rest of us, for you to proceed as you have done.

There are times when it seems that your Province, or some within it, despite voicing concern for the rest of us, can nonetheless act in ways that communicate a measure of uncaring at the consequent difficulties for us. And such apparent lack of care for us increases the distress we feel. Much as we understand that you are in all sincerity attempting to discern the best way forward within your own mission context, the plea is: be sensitive to the rest of who are still drinking spiritual milk and are not yet eating solids.

Read it all.

Three years ago Ben Huh visited a blog devoted to silly cat pictures ”” and saw vast potential.

Mr. Huh, a 32-year-old entrepreneur, first became aware of I Can Has Cheezburger, which pairs photos of cats with quirky captions, after it linked to his own pet blog. His site immediately crumbled under the resulting wave of visitors.

Sensing an Internet phenomenon, Mr. Huh solicited financing from investors and forked over $10,000 of his own savings to buy the Web site from the two Hawaiian bloggers who started it.

“It was a white-knuckle decision,” he said. “I knew that the first site was funny, but could we duplicate that success?”

Mr. Huh has since found that the appetite for oddball Internet humor is insatiable.

Read it all.

At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them, and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

–Matthew 18: 1-4

O God, eternal light, in whom is no darkness at all: Illuminate our hearts and minds, we pray thee, in this time of corporate Bible study; and grant that thy Holy Spirit, who is the inspirer of all holy Scripture, may be to us its interpreter, and may lead us through the written word to him who is the living Word and the Truth incarnate, even thy Son our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Over the course of his more than 40 years as grand rebbe, he transformed this tiny Hasidic sect, with its headquarters in Brooklyn, into an influential global network of Jewish followers and emissaries and turned it into one of the most important religious movements within American Jewry. His life and philosophy are essential to understanding contemporary Jewish life.

Mr. Heilman, a sociologist at Queens College, and Menachem Friedman, a professor emeritus at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, offer a view into his world in their new biography, “The Rebbe: The Life and Afterlife of Menachem Mendel Schneerson” (Princeton University Press). But they have provoked a growing chorus of complaints from people inside and outside Chabad with their characterization of the rebbe.

Controversy is perhaps inevitable. “Any attempt to humanize the rebbe is going to provoke this reaction.” said Elliot R. Wolfson, a professor of Hebrew and Judaic studies at New York University and the author of “Open Secret: Postmessianic Messianism and the Mystical Revision.”

Read it all.

There are many adjectives one can use to describe legendary investor Robert Arnott, but “bullish” is not one of them. Arnott, who is chairman of Research Affiliates and manager of several successful Pimco portfolios, was a Cassandra of the subprime crisis. He correctly predicted in early 2008 that the housing market along with consumer spending would crumble.

Now Arnott, 55, is bearish once again. He said in a telephone interview with Reuters that the global markets are in “the very early stages” of a sovereign debt crisis which could lead to another recession in the fourth quarter of 2010. “People should not worry about is not the Greeces and Hungarys of the world, but contagion to the Italys and Spains and, heaven forefend us, the United States,” Arnott says.

Arnott isn’t sure how long the recession will last. “I would not expect it to be as deep,” he predicts. “But if it’s even a modest recession from this starting point, it will feel deeper.”

Read it all.

I recently spoke with military historian and former classics professor Victor Davis Hanson in his office at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace at Stanford University. He is the author of more than a dozen works of history, and his new book The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern was just released by Bloomsbury Press.

We discussed military history, Peace Studies programs, warfare in the ancient and modern Mediterranean, the Arab-Israeli conflict, Iran’s push for hegemony in the Middle East, and the Obama Administration’s foreign policy.

Read it all.

eneral Synod 2010 did not approve the so-called local option that would allow dioceses to grant same-sex blessings. Neither did it take a legislative decision on the matter.

It did, however, recognize that local option has been exercised by some and may be taken by others in future, even though “it’s not local option approved by the national church…,” said Archbishop Fred Hiltz, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada.

“We’re not ready as a national church to say, ”˜We’re building this into our doctrine that we approve of same-sex unions,’ ” he told a press conference following the close of General Synod 2010 in Halifax. What synod did say was, “We need to have more conversation,” confirmed Archbishop Hiltz, adding, “That’s an action.”

Read the whole thing.

Democracy could ”˜collapse’ in Greece, Spain and Portugal unless urgent action is taken to tackle the debt crisis, the head of the European Commission has warned.

In an extraordinary briefing to trade union chiefs last week, Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso set out an ”˜apocalyptic’ vision in which crisis-hit countries in southern Europe could fall victim to military coups or popular uprisings as interest rates soar and public services collapse because their governments run out of money.

The stark warning came as it emerged that EU chiefs have begun work on an emergency bailout package for Spain which is likely to run into hundreds of billions of pounds.

Read it all.

The Harvard leadership guru Ronald Heifetz makes a fundamental distinction between a technical challenge and an adaptive one. A technical challenge is one that can be solved by an expert. You’re ill; you go to a doctor; he prescribes a pill. Your car breaks down; you call a mechanic; he replaces the broken part. They’re the easy problems.

An adaptive challenge is where we’re part of the problem, and it’s we who have to change: when the doctor tells us that if we’re to avoid a serious condition we’re going to have to change our lifestyle, or when the mechanic tells us the problem isn’t the car: it’s how we drive it. Most of us don’t like having to change, so we’re constantly tempted to look for a technical solution. Let somebody else fix it, not us.

Our addiction to oil is remarkable….

Read the whole thing.

Watch it all (just over 8 minutes).

The Provincial Council of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) unanimously recognized the Anglican Diocese of the South and the Diocese of the Great Lakes on June 9 at its meeting in Amesbury, Massachusetts. More than 1,500 Anglicans from 20 churches in four states (AL, GA, NC, TN) have joined together to form the new regional Diocese of the South. More than 1,500 communicants from 14 congregations in Ohio, Michigan and Indiana are uniting to form the regional Anglican Diocese of the Great Lakes.

Following the Provincial Council’s meeting, the ACNA’s College of Bishops elected the Rev. Dr. Foley Beach as the first bishop of the Diocese of the South. Bishop-elect Beach, who had been nominated by the diocese’s inaugural Synod, is the Rector of Holy Cross Anglican Church in Loganville, GA. He is expected to be consecrated this Fall. The College of Bishops also approved the election of Bishop Roger Ames as the first bishop of the Diocese of the Great Lakes. Bishop Ames, who previously served as a suffragan bishop for the Convocation of Anglicans in North America, is tentatively scheduled to be formally installed as the diocesan bishop this coming October.

Read the whole thing.

The chart above captures the takeaway point of David Autor’s new report, “The Polarization of Job Opportunities in the U.S. Labor Market,” published by the Center for American Progress and the Hamilton Project.

Professor Autor ranks occupations by mean wages (using these as a proxy for skill). Between 1999 and 2007, growth took place primarily at the low end. Between 1979 and 1989, the share of high-wage jobs grew fastest. Between 1989 and 1999, the share of low-wage jobs began to grow, but high-wage jobs continued to expand. Between 1999 and 2007, growth took place primarily at the low end.

The cumulative effect is polarization and increased inequality, intensified by job losses during the recent recession that also hit the middle-wage group particularly hard.

Read the whole blog entry (and take a careful look at the chart).

Another difficulty sperm donor offspring suffer is the secrecy about their origins. In most cases, parents let the child believe that he or she is biologically related to both of them in the beginning. Then, when the child finally discovers the truth, the child feels lied to and the parent-child relationship is strained. This leaves a legacy of distrust, with 47% of them declaring that their mother might have lied about important matters when they were growing up. This compares with 27% for those who were adopted and 18% for those who were raised by their biological parents. Similar results were given for worrying that their father might have lied.

Not surprisingly, a substantial majority of adults conceived through sperm donation expressed support for their right to know everything. This included the identity of the donor and the right to have some kind of relationship with him. They also said they wanted to know about the existence and number of their half-siblings. As it now stands, the law in the United States does not give them any of these rights. In fact, it protects the donors and fertility clinics at the cost of the children conceived.
But the problems do not end with secrecy. The survey results showed that 44% of the donor-conceived adults were comfortable with donor conception so long as parents tell their children the truth, preferably from an early age. Nevertheless, 36% had concerns about it even if parents told the truth, and 11% said it is hard for kids even if parents handle the issue well.

In fact, the report commented that: “openness alone does not appear to resolve the potential losses, confusion and risks that can come with deliberately conceiving children so that they will be raised lacking at least one of their biological parents.”

The report concluded with a series of recommendations. Among them was the observation that no other medical procedure has such enormous implications for a person who did not seek the treatment — the offspring. And they asked: “Does a good society intentionally create children in this way?” A question well worth reflecting on.

Read it all.

“We’re trying here to create a Catholic theology that is no longer a European or Eurocentric Catholic theology,” Father Massingale explained. “The way I put it we’re trying to create a Catholic theology that is truly Catholic, truly universal. And if we’re going to be Catholic, genuinely universal, then inclusion is not something of political correctness. Inclusion is a requirement of our faith.”

The effort to include formerly missing voices in the development of theology in the United States stems from necessity because Catholics of European descent no longer make up the majority of the U.S. Catholic Church, said Dominican Sister Jamie Phelps, director of the Institute for Black Catholic Studies at Xavier University of Louisiana.

“Once you get into the minority position and you have the power and the authority, but you don’t have the manpower to be in charge … then we’re forced to do what the Second Vatican Council told us to do a long time ago: that everyone is called to communion,” Sister Jamie told Catholic News Service during a convention break. “We’re supposed to call leadership from each cultural family.”

That leadership extends not only to positions within the church and its various ministries, but the development of theology as well, she said.

Read it all.

The National Council of Churches accused Kenya’s government on Monday of involvement in a grenade attack on a rally against a draft constitution that would allow abortions in life-threatening pregnancies and recognize Islamic courts.

The accusation over Sunday evening’s attack, which killed six people, could set a contentious tone between the groups supporting and opposing the draft constitution, which the country votes on Aug. 4. Political analysts said leaders of the groups needed to tamp down emotions or violence could flare.

The August referendum will be the first nationwide vote since Kenya’s 2007 presidential election, which saw more than 1,000 people killed following days of rampaging violence after the contentious vote.

Political leaders on Monday tried to separate the blasts, which the police said were caused by grenades, from the political issues around the referendum. Prime Minister Raila Odinga said the attack was an “isolated case.” But the National Council of Churches blamed the attack on the government and supporters of the draft constitution.

Read it all.

Among the five religions officially recognised in China are both Catholicism and “Christianity”, ie, Protestantism. They are differentiated historically in Chinese minds by the use of different terms for God, different transliterations of the names of the Apostles and so on, rather than by matters of theology. Protestantism is nowadays said to be “post-denominational”. Anglican, Methodist, Lutheran and so on are defunct labels in modern China.

From the end of the 19th century there were Chinese Christians for whom the Western labels imported by missionaries were a distraction from Jesus-focused discipleship and an obstacle to evangelisation. They pressed the case for a unified church which could claim to be authentically Chinese and not a foreign religion.

Their case was understood by missionary leaders, but more in theory than in practice….

Read it all.

For the moment, there is only one Sunday school pupil in Room 120 at State Street Baptist Church, in Columbia, S.C., a 19-year-old young man who loves puzzles and songs and has painstakingly memorized the books of the Bible.

John Stack’s autism and halted mental development set him apart. But his parents, Tim and Ann Stack, don’t believe that should limit their son’s access to Sunday school and the spiritual lessons that have been so important to him through his life.

The Stacks have developed a class for teenagers and young adults like John, people with special needs who require routine and repetition but who have “aged out” of traditional Sunday school classes.

Read it all.

At this Provincial Council, we were inspired by a new generation of thirty-something preachers and teachers, including the Rev’s Stewart Ruch, Theresa Russell and Rusty Elisor, who reminded us that God is sovereign and in control (Eccl. 8:16-17), that at Pentecost the Holy Spirit birthed a missional church whose first step was to leave the buildings, get out into the streets, cross cultural boundaries, hang out with people, share the good news in their own language, and establish communities of incarnational discipleship marked by radical generosity and joy (Acts 2:42-47), and that we must always hide ourselves in no other foundation than Jesus Christ (I Cor. 3:11-15). The election of the Rev. Dr. Foley Beach as bishop of the new Anglican Diocese of the South – one of the youngest bishops to serve in the College of Bishops – heralds a new and rising generation of leaders within the ACNA. I can assure you that we will be well served by this new generation of shepherds, preachers and teachers who will both guard and proclaim the faith once delivered!

All of this would not be possible without the resurrection power of Jesus Christ at work in our midst. May it ever be so!

“…And the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings…” We all want to share in the power of Jesus’ resurrection. But how many of us want to share in the sufferings of Jesus Christ, including persecutions? Paul wants us to know that there is no knowing Jesus Christ, or the power of his resurrection, without sharing in the fellowship of his sufferings.

Read it all.

In a world where differences between religious groups are often stressed, too few of us realise how many similarities there are between Christian beliefs and Paganism. Though many of us are aware of the pagan roots of some Christian tradi­tions, such as the Yule log and holly, there are deeper rooted similarities than these Christmas trimmings. History has too many examples of conflicts over real or imagined reli­gious differences; so a greater under­standing of each other’s religion might bring a heightened sympathy between us.

The Neo-Pagan religions have many names, including Paganism, Asatru, Wicca, Witchcraft, and Druid­ism. While Paganism stresses a bond with nature and an acknow­ledgement of the natural cycle of life in the world, there is no one tenet of faith that all followers acknowledge as central to their religion.

The word “pagan” has a long and confused history. In the first centuries Anno Domini (also known as the Common Era), a Pagan was someone who did not believe in the Abrahamic religions. The Latin word “paganus” means countryman, and it is easy to see the link between this and the Pagan religion, which is often de-scribed as being that of country-folk.

Paganism celebrates the cycle of the year, and there is no central reli­gious text; so it would have been accessible to peasants who could not read. Its emphasis on the changes that ordinary people could see around them in the trees and earth would have made sense to them.

Read the whole reflection.

Awil Salah Osman prowls the streets of this shattered city, looking like so many other boys, with ripped-up clothes, thin limbs and eyes eager for attention and affection.

But Awil is different in two notable ways: he is shouldering a fully automatic, fully loaded Kalashnikov assault rifle; and he is working for a military that is substantially armed and financed by the United States.

“You!” he shouts at a driver trying to sneak past his checkpoint, his cherubic face turning violently angry.

“You know what I’m doing here!” He shakes his gun menacingly. “Stop your car!”

The driver halts immediately. In Somalia, lives are lost quickly, and few want to take their chances with a moody 12-year-old.

Read the whole article.

O God, Origin, Sustainer, and End of all creatures: Grant that thy Church, taught by thy servant Evelyn Underhill, guarded evermore by thy power, and guided by thy Spirit into the light of truth, may continually offer to thee all glory and thanksgiving, and attain with thy saints to the blessed hope of everlasting life, which thou hast promised us by our Savior Jesus Christ; who with thee and the same Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, now and for ever.

For I am not ashamed of the gospel: it is the power of God for salvation to every one who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, “He who through faith is righteous shall live.”

–Romans 1:16,17

O Lord, who hast given us thy Word for a light to shine upon our path: Grant us so to meditate upon that Word and to follow its teaching, that we may find in it the light that shineth more and more unto the perfect day; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

–Based on the Thought of Saint Jerome

The Court of Confirmation of the Church of the Province of Central Africa has rejected the election of the Rev Leslie Mtekateka as Bishop of Northern Malawi. A new election to succeed the Rt Rev Christopher Boyle, who has returned to England to serve as Assistant Bishop of Leicester, has been scheduled for June 26.

Rector of St Timothy’s, Chitipa, Fr Mtekateka was the sole candidate on the ballot in Northern Malawi, and is the son of the Rt Rev Josiah Mtekateka, the first African bishop of Malawi, who was consecrated in 1965 as Suffragan Bishop of Nyasaland, and in 1971 as the first Bishop of Lake Malawi.

Read it all.

The hardline spiritual mentor of Iran’s president has made a rare public call for producing the “special weapons” that are a monopoly of a few nations – a veiled reference to nuclear arms.

The Associated Press on Monday obtained a copy of a book written by Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah Yazdi in which he wrote Iran should not deprive itself of the right to produce these “special weapons.”

Iran’s government, as well as its clerical hierarchy, have repeatedly denied the country is seeking nuclear weapons, as alleged by the U.S. and its allies.

Read it all.