Where would Jesus drill?
Religious leaders who consider environmental protection a godly mission are making the Gulf of Mexico oil spill a rallying cry, hoping it inspires people of faith to support cleaner energy while changing their personal lives to consume less and contemplate more.
“This is one of those rare moments when you can really focus people’s attention on what’s happening to God’s creation,” said Walt Grazer, head of the National Religious Partnership for the Environment.
In this debate we need to keep in mind that we are looking at providing for the Church of England in 50 years time, not just in five years time.
Many orthodox evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics are agreed that there must be transferred jurisdiction to alternative bishops, which includes ordination, appointment and licensing. It is not clear whether these are included in the Archbishops’ proposals.
The difficulty in the way of securing this without creating two classes of bishops, in that people could appeal against the jurisdiction of a woman bishop, is the tradition of mono-episcopacy.
This is the irreducible minimum to which the Revision Committee have hung on. Yet it gives rise to the oddity that an innovation (women bishops) is resulting in objectors being excluded because of appeal to a tradition (mono- episcopacy). This theologically threadbare understanding of sole jurisdiction has no biblical or theological warrant that I have seen deployed in these discussions. This tradition is an accretion to the church ”“ arguably through exercise of male power. A male pattern of ministry was developed over centuries without asking what pattern of ministry women should exercise in different situations.
That’s why the best booster shot for this recovery and the next would be to allow states to borrow from the Treasury during recessions. We did this for Wall Street and Detroit, fending off disaster. It’s even more important for states.
Here’s how this would work. States already receive regular federal matching grants to help pay for Medicaid, welfare, highway construction programs and more. For instance, the federal government pays a share of state Medicaid costs, from 50 percent to more than 75 percent, depending on a state’s wealth. The matching rates were temporarily sweetened by last year’s stimulus.
But Congress should pass legislation that would allow a state to simply get an “advance” on these future federal dollars expected from entitlement programs. The advance could then be used for regional stimulus, to continue state services and to hasten our recovery.
Without legal safeguards many traditional Anglo-Catholics claim that they will in conscience have no recourse but to convert to Rome, a decision recently made easier by Anglicanorum coetibus, which creates an “ordinary” within Roman Catholicism for Anglican converts. Whether this will amount to the great exodus some traditionalists have predicted remains to be seen, but even the loss of a few Forward in Faith congregations will have a potentially serious effect on the income of some dioceses in an already ailing church.
So far, however, Anglicans have again demonstrated an inability to proceed toward difficult decisions in a way that is constructive and charitable. With similarly divisive issues on the horizon, such as the approval of the Anglican Covenant and questions surrounding human sexuality, it seems likely that the church will remain polarized, inwardly focused, and combative.
The great irony of our age may be that the avowedly more tolerant Church of England of today is in practice less compromising than the supposedly less tolerant Church of England of yesterday. As in the Episcopal Church the divide between “liberals” and “conservatives” may therefore prove to be far more unbridgeable than the historical divide between evangelicals and Catholics.
The Church of England is reviewing its investment in a company building Jerusalem’s light railway amid concern that the tramline “will help to cement Israel’s hold on occupied east Jerusalem”.
But the Church has stopped short of endorsing a campaign urged by Palestinian churches to boycott “everything produced” by Israel’s West
Bank occupation.
The boycott call was made in a document known as ‘Kairos Palestine’, issued by Palestinian Christians last December. It denounces “Israeli occupation of Palestinian land” as “a sin against God and humanity”.
Federal Reserve officials, increasingly concerned over signs the economic recovery is faltering, are considering new steps to bolster growth.
With Congress tied in political knots over whether to take further action to boost the economy, Fed leaders are weighing modest steps that could offer more support for economic activity at a time when their target for short-term interest rates is already near zero. They are still resistant to calls to pull out their big guns — massive infusions of cash, such as those undertaken during the depths of the financial crisis — but would reconsider if conditions worsen.
Top Fed officials still say that the economic recovery is likely to continue into next year and that the policy moves being discussed are not imminent. But weak economic reports, the debt crisis in Europe and faltering financial markets have led them to conclude that the risks of the recovery losing steam have increased. After months of focusing on how to exit from extreme efforts to support the economy, they are looking at tools that might strengthen growth.
The LORD is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.
–Psalm 18:2
Members of the Crown Nominations Commission, which includes Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, rejected calls for Dr Jeffrey John to be made the next Bishop of Southwark.
The Dean of St Albans, who is in a civil partnership with another priest, was on the shortlist for the post and was considered to be a front-runner for the job.
The sun beat down on Uphams Corner yesterday; by midmorning it was more than 90 degrees. But a few blocks away, in cool shade beneath tall trees, children frolicked on a brand-new playground. St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, which sits in the heart of a neighborhood often torn by shootings and stabbings, offered its backyard yesterday as a safe space for children to play.
“I think, honestly, it’s a sanctuary,’’ said Liz Meffen, 23, who serves as teen staff coordinator for the B-SAFE summer program, run by St. Stephen’s in the South End, a mission church of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts.
For years the church’s backyard was littered with dirt, broken glass, and matted patches of grass. The playground equipment was so old and broken that the children in the preschool housed in the church basement could not use it, said the Rev. Cathy H. George, the priest in charge of St. Mary’s.
George, who two years ago left her affluent suburban parish in Lincoln, St. Anne’s in the Fields Episcopal Church, to spend three years in Dorchester, resolved to fix it.
[ELEANOR] BEARDSLEY: In France, 100 percent of three, four and five-year-olds attend preschool. So everyone starts first grade on an equal footing. While the French do recognize problems with many aspects of their education system, ecole maternelle is held in high regard. It is one of the cherished symbols of the French Republic, embodying both equal treatment for all and the emancipation of women.
Chicago-native Barbara Legron(ph) says she has been able to work full-time with no worries since her daughter Natasha began attending ecole maternelle.
Ms. BARBARA LEGRON: I was very skeptical at first, to send her there for basically all day. But eventually as the year went on, I realized that she was learning so much. I mean, she was teaching me rhymes, French nursery rhymes that I should’ve been teaching her. So she’s having a good time, she’s learning and she’s with other kids, so she’s playing. And I can’t really compete with that, even though I’m the mom.