Debate over the so-called Ground Zero mosque, followed by the inflammatory press attention paid to Pastor Terry Jones’s threat to burn Qur’ans on September 11, has stirred an excess of angst over the Muslim presence in America. Opportunists have exploited that anxiety for political advantage. The overheated debate may be moot: while the legal standing of the planned Muslim community center is solid, its financing is reportedly shaky.

What is not settled is the place of Muslims in American society. Anxiety about Islam has spread in response to proposed mosques in Wisconsin, California, and Tennessee, where an arsonist set construction equipment ablaze. Muslims who wish to build places of prayer meet resistance, both violent and verbal. How should American Christians respond?…

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Many people assume that there has been a steady decline in worship attendance for all the mainline denominations since the mid-1960s””the era when most of them began to see their memberships decline. But trends in attendance””usually thought to be a better indicator of church vitality than trends in membership””have actually followed their own patterns.

For example, the Episcopal Church re ported higher attendance in 2000 than in any year since 1991, the year the denomination began recording attendance figures. The United Methodist Church re ported worship attendance figures in 2000 that were higher than those in the mid-1980s. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America had relatively flat attendance rates in the years before 2001, and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in the 1990s had several years showing modest gains in attendance.

But the years following 2001 have shown a deep recession in worship attendance (see graph below). The losses in worshipers year after year were more dramatic than what data from the previous decade would have predicted.

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Anglican Bishop Sue Moxley is determined to get more people into church, even if she has to go out and get them.

Moxley, leader of the Anglican church in Nova Scotia and P.E.I., handed out invitations to passersby on the Halifax waterfront Wednesday morning. In full bishop’s regalia, she certainly stood out.

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The former Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, in South Africa, Desmond Tutu arrives in Ghana on Thursday for a three-day visit. He is visiting Ghana at the instance of Anglo-Gold Ashanti. South Africa and Ghana are joint share holders in Anglo-Gold Ashanti.

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The visit by Pope Benedict XVI to England and Scotland last week could have been a disaster. Indeed, more than a few involved were worried: about the crowds who would come to see him and the prospect of large-scale demonstrations, and about the often gratuitously antagonistic commentary in much of the British press in the days before he arrived.

Instead, it bordered on the triumphant. Decent crowds, if not those matching the 1982 visit of Pope John Paul II, turned out to see him. Even larger numbers gathered as his popemobile passed by in Edinburgh, London and Birmingham, though a significant percentage were not locals, but tourists, or eastern European immigrants.

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The scene near the concession stands resembled something closer to a strip mall on Black Friday than the hour preceding a worship service.

Hundreds of women lined up outside a temporary “boutique” with displays of $25 T-shirts and $40 hoodies emblazoned with messages like “Love Revolution” and “Think Happy Thoughts.”

A staff member controlling the flow of shoppers wondered aloud whether a bullhorn would help.

Nearby, a crush of women lined up three deep to pick up copies of DVDs and books, most bearing the smiling face of Joyce Meyer, the woman they’d all paid an average of $55 to see and hear.

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Relations between the Catholic Church and the Church of England were strengthened by the Pope’s visit, according to leading Anglican bishops, writes Victoria Combe.

The Bishop of Oxford and the Bishop of Guildford both spoke of the positive impact the papal visit will have on strengthening ties between the denominations.

The Rt Rev John Pritchard, Bishop of Oxford, said he was struck by the emphasis on “common stories and friendship” by both the Pope and Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams.

The Rt Rev Christopher Hill, of Guildford, a passionate ecumenist, said the visit had “given real encouragement to local churches to work together”. He also said Pope Benedict’s visit had helped heal any hurt felt among bishops about the Vatican’s proposal for an Anglican Ordinariate.

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Some people suffering from a life-threatening heart condition known as severe aortic stenosis could benefit from an experimental treatment that avoids open-heart surgery to replace the aortic valve, a new study indicates.

As many as 1.5 million Americans have aortic stenosis, a progressive narrowing of the aortic valve that prevents blood from being pumped from the heart to the body and brain. About 300,000 of these people have a sufficiently severe condition as to require an artificial replacement. But open-heart surgery can be too risky for about one out of three of these patients, many of whom are elderly. For them, there is currently no effective treatment.

The experimental therapy, developed by Edwards Lifesciences Corp., of Irvine, Calif., is designed to place a new aortic valve in position in the heart without major surgery. The replacement valve is attached to a catheter, which is threaded through blood vessels until it reaches the heart.

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North Charleston City Council opened the door Wednesday night for gambling boats to sail out of the Cooper River, rejecting the idea of a citywide referendum next year.

In a series of votes, council gave initial approval to the casino boat package. And since Mayor Keith Summey appears to have the majority six council votes he needs to pass the final measure, the boats could begin operating from the waterfront as soon as this winter if all of the necessary City Code changes pass in the coming weeks.

Speaking to a council committee, Summey said the boats would not be a radical introduction of the vice of gambling, pointing out that the state already backs games of chance by running a lottery.

I have one word for this–mistake. Read it all–KSH.

The nation’s top counterterrorism officials were blunt. The threat from within—of Americans willing to commit terrorist acts— is growing. FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III told a congressional hearing today that a spike in recent terrorism cases is direct evidence of the evolving threat.

“Groups affiliated with al Qaeda are now actively targeting the United States and looking to use Americans or Westerners who are able to remain undetected by heightened security measures,” Mueller said. “It appears domestic extremism and radicalization appears to have become more pronounced based on the number of disruptions and incidents.”

Mueller appeared before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs committee along with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and National Counterterrorism Chief Michael Leiter.

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American pundits and politicians continue to argue over whether building an Islamic cultural center two blocks from ground zero ”“ where Al Qaeda destroyed the World Trade Center nine years ago ”“ is appropriate.

But as the debate, centered around religious freedom and the role Islam itself played in the 9/11 attacks, continues in New York another of the world’s great cultural cities is arguing over a proposal for its first mosque. And proponents are getting help from an unlikely corner: the Vatican.

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The Indian members of Parliament left their shoes on the floor beneath a wall covered in photographs of slain Kashmiris. The five men sat cross-legged on the floor of the headquarters of the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front, staring into a throng of television cameras as they delivered a carefully scripted message of reconciliation.

“We have come to get your counsel,” said Ram Vilas Paswan, a member of Parliament, turning to the leader of the Liberation Front, a former guerrilla fighter named Yasin Malik. “What is the way out? What is the way to stop the bloodshed?”

For more than 100 days, in which Indian security officers have killed more than 100 Kashmiri civilians, the Indian government has seemed paralyzed, or even indifferent, as this disputed Himalayan region has plunged into one of the gravest crises of its tortured history.

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To visit China today as an American is to compare and to be compared. And from the very opening session of this year’s World Economic Forum here in Tianjin, our Chinese hosts did not hesitate to do some comparing. China’s CCTV aired a skit showing four children ”” one wearing the Chinese flag, another the American, another the Indian, and another the Brazilian ”” getting ready to run a race. Before they take off, the American child, “Anthony,” boasts that he will win “because I always win,” and he jumps out to a big lead. But soon Anthony doubles over with cramps. “Now is our chance to overtake him for the first time!” shouts the Chinese child. “What’s wrong with Anthony?” asks another. “He is overweight and flabby,” says another child. “He ate too many hamburgers.”

That is how they see us.

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O Lord, our heavenly Father, by whose providence the duties of men are variously ordered: Grant to us all such a spirit that we may labour heartily to do our work in our several stations, as serving one Master and looking for one reward. Teach us to put to good account whatever talents thou hast lent to us, and enable us to redeem our time by patience and zeal; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Praise the LORD! Praise the LORD, O my soul! I will praise the LORD as long as I live; I will sing praises to my God while I have being. Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no help.

–Psalm 146:1-3

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“Well I’d love to take you back,” …[my Mom] said. “I’m really trying to figure out what this whole overhaul is going to mean. There have been so many rules, at least with my insurance.”

I told my mom I’d take care of sorting out the rules. I called the benefits office of the University of Southern Maine where my mom works and found out that I can re-enroll in her plan in November and be covered by January. Yeah, it’s not Sept. 23 ”” the date the provision “officially” takes effect. I’m just glad my parents have a plan that qualifies.

Right now, I am completely financially independent of them, something I’ve been working for since graduating from college. It is a strange and kind of demeaning concept to revisit a dependent type of relationship with them. I asked my mom recently if she thought this was awkward, too.

“It is what it is,” she told me. “It’s a stopgap measure. And you will be only covered for a couple of years until you turn 26. My hope would be that you would get a job that pays benefits. As far as it costing extra money for us, it didn’t make a huge difference. It wasn’t a whole lot more because I think in general people your age are healthy. And so it would be peace of mind to me to know that you have health care coverage.”

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Q: It’s been a historic day for you, welcoming the first pope ever to Lambeth Palace, then praying together at the tomb of Edward the Confessor here in Westminster Abbey. Can you share your impressions?

A: The main thing I want to say is it’s been an enormously happy occasion and the reception that he’s had from Bishops, from people on the streets and also of course in Westminster Hall, has been hugely positive. And certainly Evening Prayer at the Abbey was intensely moving for everyone who was there.

Q: It exceeded expectations didn’t it?

A: I think one of the nice things about today and yesterday has been the sense of so many predictions being proved wrong. In the sense that this has been an occasion greatly blessed and that people have come out onto the streets in favour of faith.

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Italian police have seized seven tons of the powerful RDX explosive which they found in a shipping container they believe were likely destined for a terrorist organization.

While the origin and destination of the contraband is still being investigated, police are convinced the huge amount of explosive was in transit, possibly from Iran to Syria.

“The truly astonishing amount (of explosive) we seized leads us to believe the recipients could be large international criminal organizations, perhaps tied to terrorism,” Carmelo Casabona, the chief of police said at a press conference in Reggio Calabria today, according to the ANSA news agency.

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Very few novels make clear and provocative arguments about American life anymore, but Jonathan Franzen’s important new book, “Freedom,” makes at least two. First, he argues that American culture is overobsessed with personal freedom. Second, he portrays an America where people are unhappy and spiritually stunted.

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The pope and the archbishop prayed together last weekend, a rare event at Westminster Abbey meant to show the fundamental closeness of Catholics and Anglicans, their churches separated in doctrine by few degrees and each battered by secularism and division. The signal sent was that, someday, a more formal union would strengthen both.

But beyond the smiles, the prayers and the self-conscious focus on the things the two spiritual leaders share, Benedict XVI’s four-day visit to Britain was more than a moment of reconciliation, underscoring that the two churches that split during the Reformation over issues of papal authority are as divided as ever.

Everyone was polite, including the archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, not allowing the dissent to show much publicly. Still, it did not go unnoticed that Benedict broke his own rules and personally presided on Sunday over the beatification Mass of Cardinal John Henry Newman, a 19th-century thinker and writer who left the Church of England to convert to Catholicism. He had said earlier in his papacy that he would celebrate Mass only for canonization, the final step of sainthood.

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The town [of Fishkill, New York] boasts an impressive involvement in the Revolutionary War, with several of its buildings having been used for various military purposes at the time. Among those sites, Trinity Episcopal Church on Route 52, just east of Route 9, served as a hospital for Gen. George Washington’s troops.

A formal plan to form the Fishkill church began in 1756, following a missionary visit to the village by the Rev. Samuel Seabury, which was sponsored by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. Seabury convinced the society there was adequate support for an English church in the region.

Because the new church was required to provide a priest’s salary and a glebe (a farm to house clergy), Trinity Church and Christ Church in the City of Poughkeepsie agreed to share a priest, who was housed in today’s historic Glebe House along Main Street in the city.

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Well-educated parents who wage legal war over their children after separation have been condemned by England’s most senior family court judge.

Separating parents “rarely behave reasonably” and have no idea how much damage they inflict on their children with protracted custody battles and personal attacks on one another, Sir Nicholas Wall said.

Children were routinely used as “the battlefield and ammunition” for parents to hammer out their own personal disputes.

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On paper, I should be a progressive voter. I am an agnostic. I am a woman in my 20s with an Ivy League graduate degree and liberal arts background.

But I’m a conservative. I vote for Republicans because I believe they have the best strategies for where the country should be headed fiscally, militarily and culturally.

Secular conservatives like me are in a bind. We want to work with religious conservatives because we agree with them on most issues. We respect the ethical contributions from many faith traditions, which inspire millions to seek the public good. But we’re troubled by the religious right’s dominance over the conservative movement, a trend that repels rational, independent-minded folks who see religious zealotry as anathema to the Founding Fathers’ pluralistic vision.

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For centuries, doctors diagnosed illness using their own senses, by poking, prodding, looking, listening. From these observations, a skilled doctor can make amazingly accurate inferences about what ails the patient.

Technology has changed that. “We’re now often doing expensive tests, where in the past a physical exam would have given you the same information,” says Jason Wasfy, a cardiologist-in-training at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

As a result, many doctors are abbreviating the time-honored physical exam ”” or even skipping it altogether….

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In a letter dated Sept. 17 to the department [of Health and Human Services], the bishops’ conference general counsel, Anthony Picarello, and associate general counsel, Michael Moses, expressed the “particular concern” of the prelates regarding the proposed mandate of contraceptives and sterilization as preventive services.

“To prevent pregnancy is not to prevent a disease,” it stated. “Indeed, contraception and sterilization pose their own unique and serious health risks to the patient.”

The letter pointed out that these “services” are also “morally problematic for many stakeholders, including religiously-affiliated health care providers and insurers.”

“In our view,” it affirmed, “prescription contraception as well as chemical and surgical sterilization are particularly inappropriate candidates for inclusion under mandated ‘preventive services’ for all health plans.”

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You have to guess the year before you click the link–KSH

I need not, I think, expound to you what I mean by the Anglican Tradition: for it is what you mean by it also. It has its strong Catholic element–which emphasizes the historic continuity and organized life of the Church as the appointed channel of the Divine grace through creed, ministry, and sacraments. It has its strong Evangelical element, which emphasizes Gospel before Church, personal conversion before corporate expression of it, spiritual immediacy, the direct response to the Holy Spirit wherever He may breathe. It has its third strong element, not easy to give a name to, which acts as a watchdog of both the other elements, and brings into our tradition a special element of intellectual integrity, of sobriety and moderation of judgment, of moral earnestness–an element which is as aware of what we do not know as of what we do, which does not wish to go beyond the evidence but to judge all things with a large and reasonable charity.

No Anglican should be without something of these elements. But difference of emphasis does often lead to widely different results in the presentation and practice of our common faith. Therein is an apparent weakness. I would say that it is the real strength and glory and special responsibility of the Anglican Churches that they hold together these three elements in one fellowship without resort either to schism or suppression. For all these elements are essential parts of the Christian Faith already visible in the New Testament; they need each other for their own correction. While the frailty of man makes them centrifugal, the truth of Christ should hold them together in Him as their center. An Anglican, as it seems to me, is one who above all does not desire or wish that any one element shall part company with the others; that any one shall prevail over or suppress the others. He cannot be a partisan, in the sense of thinking he is right and the others are wrong. Rather it is part of his special profession a part which requires of him humility, patience, and a real cost in spiritual effort and discipline, to think of, to value, and to learn from the others, and never to push his own emphasis or preferences to a point which could unchurch his partners. I do not know whether the term “Central Churchman” is here a term of praise or abuse. Sometimes in England it is used to mean a person who believes and who does nothing very much. I would say that he is a man who is to be highly regarded. There is a center, in the Anglican tradition, where the various tensions within the thought and life of the Church come nearest to being harmonized in a full energy of utterance and witness to the truth of Christ and His Church. Because it exists, it is possible for varying emphases to coexist without breaking the fellowship but rather enriching it.

It is because we are by the grace of God what we are in the Anglican Communion that we have so important a part to play, as I think, in the difficult field of reunion. I read in a book on religion in America that America thinks of the problem as one not so much of “reunion” as of “union.” In this country, it was said there never has been a Church visibly one; so the question is seen as one of creating what has never been rather than of recreating what has been lost. But in the Episcopal Church the historic sense is, I am sure, strong enough to make the term “reunion” right. For we have in our bones the memory of the Church which preceded all the divisions of it, the Church as it sprang from Christ on the foundation of the Apostles and prophets. It is that unity we desire, not to be made by us, but to be recovered from Christ Who made it first and wills it still.

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“The search for consensus can result in a flattened document ”” or, as one bishop put it, documents that have found their least common denominator,” noted Bishop Robert Vasa, speaking on “The Bishop and the Conference” at the InsideCatholic Partnership Award Dinner. It is an excellent talk, not only for Catholics frustrated by the apparent deadening effect of the national conference on episcopal clarity and courage, but for any religious believer who has seen what happens when pastors combine in some way at the national level.

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Augusta [Georgia] is host to the nation’s only Episcopal Order of St. Helena convent. I discovered this recently, and I knew I had to visit.

Without knowing a thing about Episcopal monasticism, I decided to visit the 10-acre property last week. I went with my mother, who was also curious about how they are different from their more familiar Catholic counterparts. Located just off Lumpkin Road, the property is exactly what the nuns intend it to be ”” a secluded retreat….

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