That said, I think part of the business community’s complaint about Obama has merit. Although there are many “innovation” initiatives ongoing in this administration, they are not well coordinated or a top priority or championed by knowledgeable leadership. This administration is heavily staffed by academics, lawyers and political types. There is no senior person who has run a large company or built and sold globally a new innovative product. And that partly explains why this administration has been mostly interested in pushing taxes, social spending and regulation ”” not pushing trade expansion, competitiveness and new company formation. Innovation and competitiveness don’t seem to float Obama’s boat. He could use a buoyant growth strategy.

What might that include? I asked two of the best people on this subject, Robert Litan, vice president of research and policy at the Kauffman Foundation, which specializes in innovation, and Curtis Carlson, the chief executive of SRI International, the Silicon Valley-based innovation specialists.

Carlson said he would begin by creating a cabinet position exclusively for promoting innovation and competitiveness to ensure that America remains “the world’s new company formation leader.” “Secretary Newco” would be focused on pushing through initiatives ”” including lower corporate taxes for start-ups, reducing costly regulations (like Sarbanes-Oxley reporting for new companies), and expanding tax breaks for research and development to make it cheaper and faster to start new firms. We need to unleash millions of entrepreneurs.

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The crowds are thinner, the people older and the routes shorter, but the procession is an important cultural event that reaffirms not just faith, but ties to the old neighborhood and the old country.

“There really has been no Italian immigrant narrative written about Williamsburg,” said Joseph Sciorra, a folklorist who has long studied Italian-American traditions. “They have been invisible. But a lot of the history can be tracked by its religious expression.

“Processions map out networks of affiliations,” he added, “people who are devoted to a saint, or are from the same town. It maps out the connections in the community. As people move out and get replaced by new residents, the route gets truncated.”

Devotees of St. Cono, who hail from Teggiano, Italy, first settled the area in the 1880s, establishing one of the many saint societies that exist to this day. After World War II, another society for St. Cono was formed by more recent immigrants; it sponsored this week’s feast.

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In light of the current financial crises, many banks are starting to turn down students’ requests for loans. In some cases, before a degree is even earned. Without a job and without a degree to, presumably, get a higher paying job, these people are left without a way to repay their debts. And, it gets worse”¦.

Whereas the homeowners who defaulted on their loans were able to declare bankruptcy in many cases, student loans cannot be discharged by bankruptcy. In turn, these young people are left with very few options for repayment and are burdened by a debt that is not going away any time soon. The balance will increase through interest, fees, service charges, etc. until it extinguishes their chances to get a home loan or even find a life partner (i.e. many people would rather not take on a $2,000/month payment just to be married to someone).

In reality, many of these new graduates are left with a singular option ”“ the federal Income-Based Repayment plan, or IBR, if they qualify….

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Q: In Dar es Salaam there was a call for a fourth moratorium for a cessation of litigation. We now have only three moratoria but both TEC and the ACoC claim to be missional churches; how does the spectacle of lawsuits look to the unchurched?
KJS: the reality is that sometimes the church does need to resort to civil courts to assert its rights. It’s not just TEC and the ACoC, the church in Jerusalem is in court with a former bishop who absconded with assets belonging to the Diocese of Jerusalem. Similar things have happened in Sudan, in Mexico, in Columbia, Ecuador, it’s not unique to North America….

Q: Has the ABC responded adequately to cross border interventions?
KJS: I don’t think he understands how difficult, painful and destructive it’s been, both in the ACoC and TEC. When bishops come from overseas and say, well, we’ll take care of you, you don’t have to pay attention to your bishop, it destroys pastoral relationships. It’s like an affair in a marriage: it destroys trust and I believe it does spiritual violence to vowed relationships. It is a very ancient teaching of the church that a bishop is supposed to stay home and tend to the flock to which he was originally assigned.

Q: you mentioned in your Pentecost letter ”“ from the duelling Pentecost letters ”“ “we note the troubling push towards centralised authority “ in response to Rowan Williams. Is not the resistance to cross-border interventions a similar push towards central authority on a smaller scale?
KJS: The resistance to cross-border interventions is for the reasons I’ve pointed out: it destroys pastoral relationships. It prevents any possibility of reconciliation; it prevents growth in understanding among people who disagree. The idea that one person in one location in the world can adequately understand contexts across the globe and decide policy across the globe, I think contravenes traditional Anglican understanding of local worship in a language understood by the people. This is what we were arguing about 500 years ago.

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Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori has described the decision by Lambeth Palace to remove Episcopalians serving on international ecumenical dialogues as “unfortunate … It misrepresents who the Anglican Communion is.”

Jefferts Schori’s comments were made during a June 8 press conference at the Anglican Church of Canada’s General Synod 2010 in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Before the sanctions were imposed on the Episcopal Church as a consequence for having consecrated a lesbian bishop, Jefferts Schori said she had written a letter to Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams expressing her concern.

“I don’t think it helps dialogue to remove some people from the conversation,” she said shortly after addressing General Synod. “We have a variety of opinions on these issues of human sexuality across the communion … For the archbishop of Canterbury to say to the Methodists or the Lutheran [World] Federation that we only have one position is inaccurate. We have a variety of understandings and no, we don’t have consensus on hot button issues at the moment.”

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When Nashville’s Richard Land talks to Hispanic Southern Baptists this month, he’ll tell them the denomination supports establishing a path to U.S. citizenship for illegal immigrants.

After borders are secure, he’ll say, there needs to be a way for them to pay back taxes, take a civics course and get in line with others seeking legal status.

Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, admits it’s a message that will test some of the church’s mainstream membership, but it’s one that needs to be said.

“It’s love your neighbor, do unto others,” Land said. “This is a kingdom issue. They are disproportionately suffering because they are forced to remain in the shadows because of their illegal status.”

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Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas survived a tough challenge from her party’s left wing on Tuesday to capture the Democratic nomination in a runoff primary election, resisting the anti-incumbent wave that has defined the midterm election year.

Mrs. Lincoln withstood a multi-million-dollar campaign against her from organized labor, environmental groups and liberal advocacy organizations from outside Arkansas as she prevailed over Lt. Gov. Bill Halter. She faces a difficult contest in the fall, but her victory challenges the suggestion that voters are poised to oust all officeholders.

“We proved that this senator’s vote is not for sale and neither is yours,” Mrs. Lincoln said. “We took on the outside groups seeking to manipulate our votes.”

In California, Republican primary voters chose female business executives to run for Senate and for governor after both crushed their opponents.

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South Carolina voters sent a message to their elected officials Tuesday: Experience counts ”“ against you.

As with primaries in other states, incumbents faced a tough year.

The results also show that a poor economy and an unhappy electorate have rendered conventional wisdom wrong and that Democrats head into November’s general election with their most viable chance at capturing the Governor’s Mansion and other offices in more than a decade.

I bet you are not surprised about such “wisdom;” I wasn’t either. Read it all-KSH.

Brushing aside allegations of extramarital affairs, tea party favorite Nikki Haley pushed aside a tough group of political stalwarts and nearly won outright the GOP primary race for governor. Just shy of the 50 percent needed to earn the Republican bid, Haley now faces U.S. Rep. Gresham Barrett in a runoff June 22.

Meanwhile, Democrats overwhelmingly chose Vincent Sheheen as their nominee for governor. Sheheen, a state senator from Camden, took 59 percent of the vote, topping Jim Rex, state superintendent of education, with 23 percent. State Sen. Robert Ford of Charleston finished with 18 percent.

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By the time she graduated from Vanderbilt Divinity School in May 2009, the Rev. Kara Hildebrandt could translate a passage from the Greek New Testament with relative ease, write a sermon like a pro and pass her ordination exams with flying colors.

Finding a job as a pastor?

That was a bit more difficult.

A combination of many preachers, too many small churches and a bad economy have led to one of the worst job markets for ministers in decades. That has led to the so-called clergy glut. According to the Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches, there are more than 600,000 ministers in the United States but only 338,000 churches. Many of those are small churches that can’t afford a full-time preacher. Among Presbyterians, there are four pastors looking for work for every one job opening.

That has left many good pastors out in the cold, waiting before finding a new job or finding alternative employment, denominational leaders say.

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The Islamic extremist group in Somalia that two New Jersey men were seeking to join when they were arrested in New York on Saturday has recruited several hundred foreign fighters to help wage an intensifying civil war in a destitute East African country, American officials said on Sunday.

But interest in the movement, Al Shabab, among American recruits appeared to have waned in recent years as news spread in Somali communities in Minneapolis and other cities that some of the recruits had been killed.

“Since the 2007-2008 period, when foreign fighters were flowing in, you haven’t heard about too many other Americans going there,” said Andre Le Sage, a senior research fellow who specializes in Africa at the National Defense University in Washington.

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The case of an abortion at a Catholic hospital in Phoenix prompted an angry bishop to rebuke the Sister of Mercy who allowed the surgery to save the mother’s life.

But you don’t have to be a pregnant woman with a rare heart condition to be affected by the questions raised at St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center.

You don’t even have to be Catholic.

If you are in a Catholic facility (where one-sixth of U.S. hospital beds are located), the Phoenix case could make you question who has final say in life-and-death decisions: You, or the local bishop?

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The Church of England Evangelical Council observe that the Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church (USA), the Most Revd Katharine Jefferts Schori, is to preach and preside at the Eucharist at Southwark Cathedral on June 13.

We are concerned about the following: her recent statements strongly affirm the current policy of TEC to consecrate openly homosexual persons as bishops. Such a policy is in clear contradiction to the teaching of Scripture and the stated position of the Church of England. Furthermore Bishop Jefferts Schori recently rejected the Archbishop of Canterbury’s exercise of discipline on the relation of TEC to the Anglican Communion.

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Heavy rain hampered an evening rally through the city’s streets.

Spanish unions said 75-80% of public sector workers had joined the day-long strike.

The labour ministry, however, put the figure at 16%.

“We are very angry because this is not only an attack to our rights and to our salaries – there is an attack to the welfare,” protester Elisia Deoran told the BBC.

“It’s an attack on all the public services.”

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Inmates are converting to Islam in order to gain perks and the protection of powerful Muslim gangs, the Chief Inspector of Prisons warns today.

Dame Anne Owers says that some convicted criminals are taking up the religion in jail to receive benefits only available to practising Muslims.

The number of Muslim prisoners has risen dramatically since the mid-1990s ”” from 2,513 in 1994, or 5 per cent of the population, to 9,795 in 2008, or 11 per cent. Staff at top-security prisons and youth jails have raised concerns about the intimidation of non-Muslims and possible forced conversions.

Dame Anne’s report, Muslim Prisoners’ Experiences, published today, says that, although several high-profile terrorists have been jailed recently, fewer than 1 in 100 Muslim inmates have been convicted of terrorism.

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Facing a reduced budget and a third round of layoffs, officials at Washington National Cathedral are considering disposing of priceless treasures — including a trove of rare books — that are no longer considered part of its central mission.

The cathedral has begun tentative talks with the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., as it reorients itself as an Episcopal congregation, tourist landmark and promoter of interfaith dialogue.

The cathedral’s rare book library, which dates to 1964, can no longer be considered a “core function” in the current economic climate, said Kathleen Cox, the cathedral’s chief operating officer.

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O God, who by the preaching of thy blessed servant Columba didst cause the light of the Gospel to shine in Scotland: Grant, we beseech thee, that, having his life and labors in remembrance, we may show forth our thankfulness to thee by following the example of his zeal and patience; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to the men of skill; but time and chance happen to them all.

–Ecclesiastes 9:11

Lord God Almighty, who hast given to us the vision of thy holiness, and therewith of our unworthiness to be thy witnesses: Touch, we pray thee, our lips with thy cleansing fire; that so cleansed and hallowed, we may go forth amongst men as those whom thou hast sent; for Jesus Christ’s sake.

–Daily Prayer

So far the proposed disciplines within the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Pentecost letter have affected only the Episcopal Church, but the letter also has raised questions for the Anglican Church of Canada and the Anglican Church of the Southern Cone.

The Secretary General of the Anglican Communion has informed two representatives of the Episcopal Church that they will no longer serve as members of the Anglican”“Orthodox Theological Dialogue. Those representatives are the Rev. Thomas Ferguson, the Episcopal Church’s interim deputy for ecumenical and interreligious relations, and the Rt. Rev. William O. Gregg, assistant bishop of North Carolina.

Episcopal News Service reported that the decision affects the Episcopal Church’s involvement in all ecumenical dialogues involving the Anglican Communion.

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Vast underwater concentrations of oil sprawling for miles in the Gulf of Mexico from the damaged, crude-belching BP PLC well are unprecedented in “human history” and threaten to wreak havoc on marine life, a team of scientists said today, a finding confirmed for the first time by federal officials.

Researchers aboard the F.G. Walton Smith vessel briefed reporters on a two-week cruise in which they traced an underwater oil plum 15 miles wide, 3 miles long and about 600 feet thick. The plume’s core is 1,100 to 1,300 meters below the surface, they said.

“It’s an infusion of oil and gas unlike anything else that has ever been seen anywhere, certainly in human history,” said Samantha Joye of the University of Georgia, the expedition leader.

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The Episcopal Church

* The Episcopal Church is an autonomous church which is a member of the worldwide Anglican Communion, serving God and working together to spread through word and action the good news of God in Christ.

* The Episcopal Church has over 7400 congregations in 109 dioceses plus three regional areas in 16 countries with 2.2 million members.

* The Episcopal Church has members in the United States, as well as in Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Haiti, Honduras, Micronesia, Puerto Rico, Taiwan, Venezuela, the Virgin Islands, and the Convocation of Churches in Europe.

* The Presiding Bishop and Primate of The Episcopal Church is the Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, the first woman to lead The Episcopal Church as well as any of the 38 provinces of the Anglican Communion.

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The Anglican Communion has suspended U.S. Episcopalians from serving on ecumenical bodies because of the election of a lesbian as a bishop in California.

The U.S. church opened a rift in the global communion, and within its own ranks, seven years ago by electing a gay man, V. Gene Robinson, as bishop of New Hampshire. Conservative African Anglicans have taken a lead in opposing moves in the United States and Canada to promote gays and to bless homosexual relationships.

Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury and spiritual leader of the Anglican Communion, had called for a moratorium on appointing homosexuals to leadership positions. He asked for action against the Episcopal Church after the Rev. Canon Mary Glasspool was made an assistant bishop of Los Angeles.

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Of all the incumbents on the ballot across the nation Tuesday, of all the establishment figures whose careers are on the line in this midterm election year, there is no bigger target than Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic majority leader.

But will Mr. Reid’s prospects rise after Tuesday night?

That’s one of the questions that will be answered when the outcome of primary contests in 11 states ”” the biggest day so far this election season ”” provides a layer of clarity as to how Republicans and Democrats will be positioned in their battle for control of Congress over the next five months.

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Here are the circumstances and the answers:

*Synod passes a motion that approves same-sex blessings. This would break the moratorium.

* Synod passes a motion that allows dioceses to decide for themselves whether to conduct same-sex blessings. This would break the moratorium.

* Synod passes no motion, but continues to ignore dioceses that are already blessing same-sex unions and those who are about to start. This would not break the moratorium.

The distinguishing feature of the last option is that it is not “formal”; the fact that what should not happen is happening is immaterial so long as it is happening informally. A secular equivalent would be a loose association of astute crooks committing uncoordinated burglaries, emboldened by the certain knowledge that the informality of their crimes insulates them from prosecution.

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[Canon Kenneth Kearon]… said those who do not share the faith and order of the Anglican Communion should not be making decisions on matters in the Communion. “We’ve asked them to be consultants and we would hope that they would participate in the conversations and discussions,” he added.

Canon Kearon’s announcement looked beyond The Episcopal Church to Canada as well as to the Southern Cone in South America. Canon Kearon has written to Archbishop Fred Hiltz, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, to ask whether or not the General Synod or House of Bishops has formally adopted policies authorizing same-sex blessings.

In his presidential address to synod last week, Archbishop Hiltz made it clear that the answer to that question currently is ”˜no.’ However, members of General Synod 2010 are still in the process of discussing the issue of same-sex blessings until the triennial meeting ends Jun. 11.

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Here in Nova Scotia the foundation for theological education were laid. Here ministries were supported by the United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (USPG). Here movements reflecting both the evangelical and the anglo-catholic traditions of the Church took firm root. Here Cursillo has grown and blossomed and borne fruit. Here Teens Encounter Christ ministry has had a tremendous impact on the lives of many young people, wetting their appetite for further experiences in faith development and calls to ministry of many kinds. The compassion of the people of Springhill and many other communities throughout the Maritimes in the aftermath of the mining disaster of October 1958 moved people all across the country to respond. And that response which was generous inspired our national church to establish the Primate’s World Relief Fund, now known as PWRDF, and its 50th year of practical witness to the compassion, mercy and justice of God.

Here with others across the country we’ve seen Anglicans in Mission, generating new resources to support the work of the church in the north and overseas. Here in recent years many of you have made a “leap of faith” in support of many new initiatives focused on congregational development, stewardship education, fresh start programs, and leadership development for a variety of ministries among all the baptized.

There is so much for which to be so thankful. We come praying that, after the example of our forbears in the faith, we will be faithful, diligent and generous in our witness to the Gospel.

In the spirit of David’s prayer for the people we pray “that our hearts will be set in God and our lives directed to the doing of God’s will.”

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Reports from election officials throughout the state indicate that so far turnout throughout the state has been low to moderate. However, there are reports of moderate to heavy turnout in some counties and precincts.

Historically, primary turnout is lower than that of general elections ranging from 18% to 26% over the past 12 years. Turnout in General Elections has ranged from 45% to 76% during that same period.

Polls close at 7:00 p.m. Voters in line at 7:00 p.m. will be allowed to vote. The State Election Commission will report election results and voter turnout tonight at www.scVOTES.org. Look for the 2008 Primary Results link on the front page.

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