My goodness, what a terrible way for Ghana to have lost–KSH.

The Anglican Communion Office has announced that two new members will serve on the Standing Committee beginning with the July 23-27 meeting in London: Bishop Paul Sarker, moderator of the Church of Bangladesh and bishop of Dhaka; and the Rev. Canon Janet Trisk, rector of the parish of St. David, Prestbury, in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa.

Trisk was elected at the last Standing Committee meeting to replace Nomfundo Walaza, also from South Africa, and Sarker is the elected alternate for Middle East President Bishop Mouneer Anis, who resigned his membership in February saying that his presence has “no value whatsoever” and that his voice is “like a useless cry in the wilderness.”

The July 2 release also confirmed that Archbishop Henry Orombi of Uganda and his elected alternate, Archbishop Justice Akrofi of West Africa, have resigned from the Standing Committee.

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The 1910 World Missionary Conference was a watershed moment for Protestantism. Meeting in Edinburgh, Scotland, the assembled 1,200 Protestants believed that Christianity was on the cusp of spreading to every corner of the world, and that Christ would come again once every ear had heard the good news of salvation. Their master plan for missions would hasten his return.

But Edinburgh 2010, the centenary conference that concluded last month, drew only about a quarter of the crowd and received attention only from a few Christian publications. The modern master plan was less ambitious as well: a call to global missions and “to witness and evangelism in such a way that we are a living demonstration of the love, righteousness and justice that God intends for the whole world.”

This dramatic change was summed up at a small gathering of academics and missions professionals at Fuller Theological Seminary in late May. “At (1910) Edinburgh, people thought they were going to take over the world,” said C. Douglas McConnell, dean of Fuller’s School of Intercultural Studies in his opening remarks. “And now many of our students wonder if they should even try.”

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Wow.

The more specific you can be (why did you choose this particular book, what especially do you like about it, etc. etc.), the more others can enjoy your contributions–KSH.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and then-New York Fed President Timothy Geithner told senators on April 3, 2008, that the tens of billions of dollars in “assets” the government agreed to purchase in the rescue of Bear Stearns Cos. were “investment-grade.” They didn’t share everything the Fed knew about the money.

The so-called assets included collateralized debt obligations and mortgage-backed bonds with names like HG-Coll Ltd. 2007-1A that were so distressed, more than $40 million already had been reduced to less than investment-grade by the time the central bankers testified. The government also became the owner of $16 billion of credit-default swaps, and taxpayers wound up guaranteeing high-yield, high-risk junk bonds.

By using its balance sheet to protect an investment bank against failure, the Fed took on the most credit risk in its 96- year history and increased the chance that Americans would be on the hook for billions of dollars as the central bank began insuring Wall Street firms against collapse. The Fed’s secrecy spurred legislation that will require government audits of the Fed bailouts and force the central bank to reveal recipients of emergency credit.

“Either the Fed did not understand the distressed state of some of the assets that it was purchasing from banks and is only now discovering their true value, or it understood that it was buying weak assets and attempted to obscure that fact,” Senator Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat and member of the Senate Banking Committee, said in an e-mail when informed about the credit quality of holdings in the Maiden Lane LLC portfolio. The committee held the April 3 hearing.

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The world’s rich countries are now conducting a dangerous experiment. They are repeating an economic policy out of the 1930s ”” starting to cut spending and raise taxes before a recovery is assured ”” and hoping today’s situation is different enough to assure a different outcome.

In effect, policy makers are betting that the private sector can make up for the withdrawal of stimulus over the next couple of years. If they’re right, they will have made a head start on closing their enormous budget deficits. If they’re wrong, they may set off a vicious new cycle, in which public spending cuts weaken the world economy and beget new private spending cuts.

On Tuesday, pessimism seemed the better bet. Stocks fell around the world, over worries about economic growth.

Longer term, though, it’s still impossible to know which prediction will turn out to be right. You can find good evidence to support either one.

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Immediately, [defense attorney Wylie] Richardson went to forensic psychiatrist William Bernet of Vanderbilt University and asked him to give Waldroup a psychiatric evaluation. Bernet also took a blood sample and brought it to Vanderbilt’s Molecular Genetics Laboratory. Since 2004, Bernet and laboratory director Cindy Vnencak-Jones have been analyzing the DNA of people like Waldroup.

They’ve tested some 30 criminal defendants, most of whom were charged with murder. They were looking for a particular variant of the MAO-A gene ”” also known as the warrior gene because it has been associated with violence. Bernet says they found that Waldroup has the high-risk version of the gene.

“His genetic makeup, combined with his history of child abuse, together created a vulnerability that he would be a violent adult,” Bernet explains.

Over the fierce opposition of prosecutors, the judge allowed Bernet to testify in court that these two factors help explain why Waldroup snapped that murderous night.

“We didn’t say these things made him become violent, but they certainly constituted a risk factor or a vulnerability,” Bernet says.

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The U.S. bishops’ conference pro-life committee chairman is urging lawmakers to uphold current policy prohibiting U.S. military hospitals, and other federal health facilities, from performing abortions.

Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, chairman of the Committee on Pro-Life Activities, stated this in a letter sent Tuesday to the U.S. senators.

He asked that the lawmakers, when they review the National Defense Authorization Act for 2011, would “remove from the bill a misguided committee amendment” that authorizes abortions at military hospitals both in the United States and worldwide.

The prelate backed Archbishop Timothy Broglio of the Archdiocese for the Military Services, who also sent a letter to the senators on June 17, “urging congress not to impose this tremendous burden on the consciences of Catholic and other health care personnel who joined our armed services to save and protect innocent life, not to destroy it.”

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A local group representing the national Episcopal Church has hit a legal snag in its attempt to take control of the property of the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth.

The 2nd Court of Appeals ruled Friday that the group’s attorneys, who filed a lawsuit on behalf of “The Corporation” and “The Fort Worth Diocese,” cannot represent those entities because the entities are also associated with Bishop Jack Iker, the defendant in the lawsuit.

The appellate court noted that there is only one corporation and diocese, which both sides are staking claim to.

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The national debt will reach 62 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) by the end of this year, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said Wednesday.

The budget office said the debt will reach its highest percentage of GDP since the end of World War II. The jump is driven by lower tax revenues and higher federal spending in the recent recession.

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Capt. Mike Clauer was serving in Iraq last year as company commander of an Army National Guard unit assigned to escort convoys. It was exceedingly dangerous work ”” explosive devices buried in the road were a constant threat to the lives of Clauer and his men.

He was halfway through his deployment when he got a bolt from the blue ”” a frantic phone call from his wife, May, back in Texas.

“She was bawling on the phone and was telling me that the HOA [homeowners association] had foreclosed on our house, and it was sold,” he says. “And I couldn’t believe that could even happen.”

Caught this on today’s morning run–I had no idea this could happen. Read or listen to it all–KSH.

The only thing tiny about the tiny house movement is the size of the houses themselves. There are a slew of websites devoted to the scene, and tiny house evangelists based in California and Vermont are busy traveling around North America helping people build these little homes.

“I’m just a freelance, insane guy working out of his backyard building stuff for people when the need arises,” says Derek Diedricksen, 33, a tiny house enthusiast who lives outside of Boston.

Diedricksen’s backyard resembles a junkyard with piles of unlikely building materials and a handful of already-completed structures. His web video series, Tiny Yellow House, might be described as Wayne’s World meets This Old House.

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