As arduous as exercise can be, and as ardently as yoga class namastes stress the body-spirit connection, and as often as one wishes to take the Lord’s name in vain during the third set of squat-thrusts, it was only a matter of time before someone put it all together: Enter “Body Gospel.”

“Can you feel His presence?” asks the chipper fitness instructor on the new workout DVD, available for $79.90 (“Give Praise. Get Results”). Right now, she is demonstrating Hallelujah Hands — a move that combines a side squat with an arm scoop — which are not to be confused with Praise Arms, Praise Lunges or the Praise Run. “It’s all about combining God’s love . . . and fitness!”

Behind her, in a fitness studio designed to look like a church — soaring ceilings, stained glass — are a half-dozen or so spandex-clad fitness types.

Read it all.

Almighty God, whose Son Jesus Christ is the pioneer and perfecter of our faith We give thee heartfelt thanks for the pioneering spirit of thy servant Philander Chase, and for his zeal in opening new frontiers for the ministry of thy Church. Grant us grace to minister in Christ’s name in every place, led by bold witnesses to the Gospel of the Prince of Peace, even Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Grant, Oh Lord! that what out of Thine infinite bounty Thou hast vouchsafed to lavish upon us, into whosoever hands it may devolve, may always be improved to thy glory. Amen.

–John Donne

And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan, and was led by the Spirit for forty days in the wilderness, tempted by the devil. And he ate nothing in those days; and when they were ended, he was hungry. The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.” And Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone.'”

(The Episcopal Church Office of Public Affairs)

[September 21, 2010] The House of Bishop of The Episcopal Church, meeting in Phoenix, AZ, approved the following resolution:

Grace to you and peace in Jesus Christ our Lord. As the bishops of The Episcopal Church, bound by solemn vows to share in the governance of the whole church, guard its unity, and defend those who have no helper, we are committed to safeguarding the dignity of every person entrusted to our care. We are devoted especially to the care of the young, the weak, and those most vulnerable among us. Because of the depth of these commitments, long held among us, we are profoundly troubled by the outcome of the disciplinary action against the Bishop of the Diocese of Pennsylvania, The Right Reverend Charles E. Bennison, Jr.

In a lengthy judicial process Bishop Bennison was found guilty on two counts of conduct unbecoming a member of the clergy during a lengthy judicial process. Subsequently, the Court of Review reversed one count, upheld one count, but vacated the sentence because the statute of limitations had expired. We respect the decision of the Court of Review and we share their disappointment and find the ultimate resolution of this matter unsatisfactory and morally repugnant. The wholly inadequate response of our brother bishop to the sexual assault upon a minor is an inexcusable violation of his ordination vows. We note here two excerpts from the decisions of the ecclesiastical court:

The tragedy of this conduct unbecoming a member of the clergy is exacerbated by the fact that, during the trial of the case, Appellant testified that, upon reflection on his failure to act, he concludes that his actions were “just about right.” They were not just about right. They were totally wrong. Appellant’s testimony on this subject revealed impaired judgment with regard to the conduct that is the subject of the First Offence and that is clearly and unequivocally conduct unbecoming a member of the clergy. (Court of Review, page 25).

”¦ we find that Appellant committed conduct unbecoming a member of the clergy. Because the statute of limitations has run on that offense, we have no choice under the canons of the Church but to reverse the judgment of the Trial Court finding that Appellant is guilty of conduct unbecoming a member of the clergy . . . (Court of Review, page 38).

The bishops of this church stand in unequivocal solidarity with anyone who has been sexually abused or mistreated by a member of our clergy or by any member of our church. We apologize, out of the depths of God’s compassion for every human being, to the woman who has been victimized by Bishop Bennison’s lack of responsible action, and to all those who have in any way been hurt by our church. We are deeply sorry and we are committed to consistent discipline for those who bring shame upon the Body of Christ by sinful, demeaning, and selfish behavior that takes from another human being their God-given dignity.

As the House of Bishops, we have come to the conclusion that Bishop Bennison’s capacity to exercise the ministry of pastoral oversight is irretrievably damaged. Therefore, we exhort Charles, our brother in Christ, in the strongest possible terms, to tender his immediate and unconditional resignation as the Bishop of the Diocese of Pennsylvania. For the sake of the wholeness and unity of the body of Christ, in the Diocese of Pennsylvania and in the church, we implore our brother to take this action without further delay.

This matter has weighed heavily upon the hearts of every member of the House of Bishops and it has been held in prayer not only among us, but by the good and faithful clergy and people of our church. We will continue to pray for Charles, his family, and every person who has been hurt by the church. We pledge to continue to seek God’s guidance and we resolve to lead our church with compassion, justice, and mercy.

It is a very scary picture.

News that student loan debt, at $830 billion, exceeded credit card debt for the first time has sparked renewed interest in the financing of college and its implications for students. Largely ignored in the discussion, however, is the shadow debt, which consists of unorthodox methods of borrowing for college, including home equity loans and lines of credit, retirement account loans, credit card debt, and run-of-the-mill bank loans. Because these borrowing instruments often have many alternative uses, we have to rely on surveys to determine how much of the total amount borrowed in each category is devoted to paying for college. The most comprehensive such survey is conducted by Sallie Mae and Gallup. Their findings indicate that shadow debt adds just under $30 billion to the annual borrowing for higher education (see this link for more details on the calculation). As shown in the table below, when this is added to the $96 billion in college specific loans, we can conclude that Americans borrow roughly $126 billion a year to pay for college.

Of course, there are a number of caveats to this number. To begin with, this is at best a back of the envelope calculation, and better data would allow for a more accurate picture to be painted. In addition, some of this may not be borrowing in the normal sense of the term. For instance, some well off families may pay for tuition on a credit card to receive the rewards associated with their card, and then pay off the balance immediately. There is also the fact that some of the education borrowing is not used solely for education. I knew people who used student loan money to purchase a car, or a big screen TV, and even breast implants. At the same time, not counted are informal loans from family and friends. Thus, $126 billion is the best estimate we have for the amount of money that Americans borrow for college.

Read it all.

The House reconvened in the afternoon and discussed “The Changing Contexts for Evangelism in the Third Millennium: Developing Leadership for Evangelism.” During this portion of the program, the bishops heard from the following:

Bishop Diane Bruce of Los Angeles addressed the changing demographics of congregations, stressing that what is necessary is the three-fold welcome of radical hospitality, listening, and love. Time is needed to learn about the community, to “honor and welcome those among us” through language needs as well as community needs, such as a communal meal after services (important in the Asian populations).

Bishop Michael Smith of North Dakota said his diocese is racially diverse, with six First People congregations on four reservations, as well as those of Swedish descent and Sudanese; one-quarter of the clergy are people of color, 50-50 split of men and women. He believes people need to grow in their own sense of discipleship He further believes there needs to be an invitation to grow as disciples, which requires people willing to be transformed from church members to actual disciples of Jesus Christ.

Read it all.

A move to make it easier for non-Christians to get married in an Anglican church failed yesterday when the clergy at the General Synod reversed their vote from Monday and rejected it.

The synod (national church parliament) voted down a proposal that the church abandon its requirement that at least one partner be already baptised.

Liberals and evangelicals agreed at the synod at Melbourne Grammar that a church wedding provided an opportunity of contact with people who now knew little of church. Opponents, mostly from the church’s Catholic wing, argued Christian marriage is a sacrament of the church intended for its members.

Read it all.

A letter alleging the Anglican Church of Southern Africa and the Church of the Province of Central Africa have dissented from the final communiqué of last month’s All African Bishops Meeting in Entebbe, does not have the official backing of the two provinces The Church of England Newspaper has learned.

Leaders of the two provinces tell CEN that while parts of the dissenting letter reflect the views held by some Southern and Central Africa bishops, neither province’s House of Bishops have discussed nor endorsed the letter purportedly issued on their behalf.

Read it all.

You read the news about that poor football player, right? The University of Pennsylvania lineman who killed himself? And the autopsy, which showed that his head had been rattled by all those blows over the years? And the fact that the damage may have caused depression and lack of impulse control, which may have resulted in his suicide?

Now, what do you do with this information?

Whether the growing attention to concussions in young athletes will lead to an exodus from the football field (or the basketball court, or the hockey rink) will say a lot about how we humans process risk. Which means it’s anybody’s guess.

If history is any guide, we seem to veer between overreaction and underreaction ”” all while defining our own response as “moderate.”

Read it all.

Voting confusion dominated the final decision to oppose moves to change the requirements of marriage in the Anglican Church. Currently at least one member of a couple wishing ot marry in the Anglican church in Australia must be baptised. An amendment before the General Synod would have seen this requirement removed.

An unusual procedural move at the sitting of the church’s national parliament saw the matter voted on twice, after a vote rejecting the amendment on Monday was thrown into doubt when some members of the House of Bishops were reportedly confused about voting procedure. Today the General Synod again rejected the amendment, this time in the House of Clergy.

The Provisional Canon to amend the Solemnization of Matrimony Canon 1981 was sent to all the Dioceses of the Anglican Church of Australia after the 2007 sitting of General Synod. The majority of dioceses around the country have since assented to the canon, a fact that Bishop Glenn Davies (Sydney) brought to the floor when urging the General Synod to give its final approval to the Canon.

“We have an obligation to listen and weigh that assent from those diocese[s] in our vote today,” he said.

Read it all.

In the annals of Stephen McCray Smith’s stellar academic career — ranging from undergraduate study at Stanford University to more than two decades as a professor at Trinity Seminary in Ambridge — the 1963 school year at Multnomah University in Oregon stands out as an exception.

“We didn’t get very good grades that year,” laughed his wife, Joyce, who was an undergraduate there while Dr. Smith was in graduate school. “We fell in love in the fall and got married in June.”

Dr. Smith died Sunday from Parkinson’s disease. He was 70.

“He was just a great teacher,” said Bishop John Rodgers, former dean and president of Trinity Seminary who hired Dr. Smith in 1981 to teach Christian doctrine and ethics. “He gave his students a sense that they’d really have a chance to master something — not just survey it.”

One of God’s truly marvelous saints–he preaching at our wedding. Read it all–KSH.

Attorneys for the Rev. Donald Armstrong and the Pueblo District Attorney’s office were pleased Monday with the plea agreement in the criminal case involving the former rector of Grace and St. Stephen’s Church in Colorado Springs.

A Fourth Judicial District grand jury indicted Armstrong in May 2009 on 20 felony counts of embezzling $392,000 from Grace Church. Armstrong on Friday pled no contest to one felony count, according to El Paso County court files. Though Armstrong in his plea doesn’t admit guilt, the court views it in a legal sense as a guilty plea.

As part of the agreement, Armstrong admitted guilt to a new charge, misdemeanor theft, said Pueblo District Attorney Bill Thiebaut. A sentencing hearing on this charge will happen before the end of the year.

Armstrong’s sentence could include a fine of up to $5,000 and up to 18 months in the El Paso County Jail. Misdemeanor charges are brought for thefts between $500 and $1,000.

Read it all.

The leadership of the Episcopal Diocese of Colorado was recently advised by Special Prosecutor, Stephen Jones that he had entered into a plea bargain with Donald Armstrong, a former priest of the diocese….

Read it all.

I will take comments on this submitted by email only to at KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

There is no gain to be had, no hearts and minds to be won, in Imam Rauf insisting that Ground Zero can’t be hallowed ground because there is a strip joint and an off-track betting office nearby. This may be true, but it is irrelevant.

A terrible deed took place on that ground nine years ago. Nineteen young Arabs brought death and ruin onto American soil, and discretion has a place of pride in the way the aftermath is handled. “Islam” didn’t commit these crimes, but young Arabs and Muslims did.

There is no use for the incantation that Islam is a religion of peace. The incantation is false; Islam, like other religions, is theologically a religion of war and a religion of peace. In our time, it is a religion in distress, fought over, hijacked at times, by a militant breed at war with the modern world.

Read it all from the op-ed page of yesterday’s Wall Street Journal.

An online music video praising Osama bin Laden has driven home a troubling new reality: A radical brand of Islam embraced by al-Qaida and the Taliban is gaining a foothold in the Balkans.

“Oh Osama, annihilate the American army. Oh Osama, raise the Muslims’ honor,” a group of Macedonian men sing in Albanian, in video posted on YouTube last year and picked up by Macedonian media this August. “In September 2001 you conquered a power. We all pray for you.”

Although most of Macedonia’s ethnic Albanian minority are Muslims, they have generally been secular. But experts are now seeing an increasing radicalization in pockets of the country’s Islamic community, particularly after armed groups from the ethnic Albanian minority, which forms a quarter of the population of 2.1 million, fought a brief war against Macedonian government forces in 2001.

Read it all.

He was an acolyte of Aleister Crowley, an employee of Howard Hughes, a victim of L. Ron Hubbard, and an enthusiastic phone buddy to Wernher Von Braun. He was an only child, his adulterous dad booted by his angry mom. In seeking father figures and brotherhood, he became a vital link in two mighty chains in human history: rocketry and ritual magic. His science was built on intuition, and his magic on experiment.

John Whiteside Parsons was born in 1914 and died in 1952. His short life is a fascinating case study in the limits and the contradictions of unbounded amateur enthusiasts, no matter how bold or brilliant. It limns both the conflicts and the codependency between freewheeling innovators and hidebound institutions, both governmental and private.

Read it all. Mr. Parsons was one of the figures featured in the NPR piece I posted yesterday morning about interesting figures in the past about whom we may not have known–KSH.

Epiphany Celebration Anglican Church celebrated its new house of worship on Sunday by offering praise for the stately red brick building on Bay Street that once belonged to their Baptist friends.

“This is a joyous off-the-charts happy day,” the Rev. Dr. W.H. Volland said to the 255 people sitting in the pews. “The only reason we are in this place is because of the faithful, Godly obedient ministry of the folks of Bay Street Baptist Church. We offer a great deal of thanksgiving to them.”

Epiphany Celebration Anglican Church was formed on Jan. 6, 2007, the day of Epiphany on the liturgical calendar.

Read it all.

As children, teachers and parents sprint, slink or stumble into the new school year, they also find themselves laboring once again in the shadow of standardized tests. That is a real shame, given that there are few indications that the multiple-choice format of a typical test, in which students are quizzed on the specific formulas and bits of information they have memorized that year, actually measures what we need to know about children’s education.

There is also scant evidence that these tests encourage teachers to become better at helping individual children; in fact, some studies show that the tests protect bad teachers by hiding their lack of skill behind narrow goals and rigid scripts. And there are hardly any data to suggest that punishing schools with low test scores and rewarding schools with high ones improves anything. The only notable feature of our current approach is that these tests are relatively easy to administer to every child in every school, easy to score and easy to understand. But expediency should not be our main priority when it comes to schools.

Instead, we should come up with assessments that truly measure the qualities of well-educated children: the ability to understand what they read; an interest in using books to gain knowledge; the capacity to know when a problem calls for mathematics and quantification; the agility to move from concrete examples to abstract principles and back again; the ability to think about a situation in several different ways; and a dynamic working knowledge of the society in which they live.

Read it all.

We thank thee, heavenly Father, for the witness of thine apostle and evangelist Matthew to the Gospel of thy Son our Savior; and we pray that, after his example, we may with ready wills and hearts obey the calling of our Lord to follow him; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

Come, Holy Spirit, we do know You; You have often overshadowed us. Come, more fully take possession of us. Standing now as we feel we are right up at the mercy seat our very highest prayer is for perfect holiness, complete consecration, entire cleansing from every evil. Take our heart, our head, our hands, our feet, and use us all for You. Lord take our substance, let us not hoard it for ourselves, nor spend it for ourselves. Take our talent let us not try to educate ourselves that we may have the reputation of being wise, but let every gain of mental attainment be still that we may serve You better.

May every breath be for You; may every minute be spent for You. Help us to live while we live and while we are busy in the world as we must be, for we are called to it, may we sanctify the world for Your service. May we be lumps of salt in the midst of society. May our spirit and temper as well as our conversation be heavenly; may there be an influence about us that shall make the world the better before we leave it. Lord hear us in this thing.

–C.H. Spurgeon

And when he wished to cross to Acha’ia, the brethren encouraged him, and wrote to the disciples to receive him. When he arrived, he greatly helped those who through grace had believed, for he powerfully confuted the Jews in public, showing by the scriptures that the Christ was Jesus.

–Acts 18:27-28

The Rev. Daniel H. Martins was chosen as the 11th bishop-elect of the Springfield Episcopal Diocese after the third ballot Saturday.

Martins received 38 clergy and 42 laity ballots in the third round of voting, needing 25 and 38 in each respective category to be bishop-elect. However, the process is far from finalized.

“There is a process, which is in our constitution and canon, that he now goes through the consent process,” said the Rev. Christopher Ashmore, rector of Trinity Church in Jacksonville.

Read it all.

Pope Benedict XVI’s Sept. 16-19 visit to the United Kingdom…offered a series of tasters on what a universal primacy might look like. To begin, even if the British press tried to be cynical, it still gave the visitor acres of coverage. Only a papal visitor on a once-in-a-lifetime journey could achieve that. Inevitably media pundits were talking about how there were things Benedict XVI could do that Rowan Williams could not.

There are other signs that this new kind of papacy is emerging.

Benedict offered apologies. He apologized for the undiplomatic language of Walter Cardinal Kasper, who had told Focus magazine in Germany: “England is a secularized, pluralistic country nowadays. When you land at Heathrow you sometimes feel as though you were in a third world country.” It didn’t mean that he avoided the intent Kasper expressed. He simply found effective ways of putting across the message not to put trust in materialism and secularist ideology.

Read it all.

Patricia Reid is not in her 70s, an age when many Americans continue to work. She is not even in her 60s. She is just 57.

But four years after losing her job she cannot, in her darkest moments, escape a nagging thought: she may never work again.

College educated, with a degree in business administration, she is experienced, having worked for two decades as an internal auditor and analyst at Boeing before losing that job.

But that does not seem to matter, not for her and not for a growing number of people in their 50s and 60s who desperately want or need to work to pay for retirement and who are starting to worry that they may be discarded from the work force ”” forever.

Read it all.

[His words]… were delivered in the calmest, meekest, least ranting way possible, and yet they carried a great authority that largely comes, I think, from the Pope’s sense of holiness and evident goodness, as well as from the dignity of his office.

Even hard-hearted cynics and sceptics could not fail but listen.

Most extraordinary of all, here was a religious leader prepared to confront the modern secular world ”“ and modern secular Britain ”“ with the timeless values of Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular.

These values, said Pope Benedict in his final address yesterday, had been traduced by abusive priests who had seriously undermined the moral credibility of the Roman Catholic Church.

It is almost a shock to hear a religious leader speak in so blunt a way, so inured are we to our own religious leaders, particularly Church of England bishops, accommodating themselves to secular values.

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There were 32 worshipers at noontime Mass in a side chapel of the soaring Cathedral of SS. Michael and Gudula, which dates from the 11th century. A third of the faithful were African; there were two nuns and a police officer.

The priest, a stocky man with brushy white hair, murmured about a “time of difficulty” and spoke of Jesus and of the Pharisees, who kept the letter of God’s law without understanding his love. “The Pharisee doesn’t recognize the border between the pure and the impure,” the priest said.

His sermon before a thin crowd seemed an obvious demonstration of the anguish of the Roman Catholic Church in Belgium, staggered by a sexual-abuse scandal that has already affected 475 victims. There have been 19 suicide attempts, 13 of them successful, by Belgians abused by clergy members.

Read it all.

A senior Christian leader has warned much of the aid flowing into Pakistan to help deal with massive flooding may never be used for relief.

Retired Anglican bishop Michael Nazir-Ali, a Pakistani national who has spent much of his life in Britain, is visiting Australia to discuss issues around Islam and its growth in the West.

“The misery that the (Pakistani) people are in has been caused, to some extent, by corruption and incompetence,” Bishop Nazir-Ali told reporters in Canberra on Monday.

Read it all.

Australian Anglicans have committed themselves to three years of debate before a decision is taken on whether to embrace an international covenant designed to preserve the unity of their church.

The General Synod, meeting at Melbourne Grammar School, adopted a resolution asking the synods of all 23 Australian dioceses to consider whether the Anglican Church of Australia should adopt the Anglican Communion Covenant and to report to the Standing Committee of the General Synod by December 2012. The resolution asked the Standing Committee to report to the next meeting of the Church’s national parliament in 2013.

The Covenant proposal, which is endorsed by Archbishop Rowan Williams of Canterbury, arose out of divisions in the Church over human sexuality. The Episcopal Church in the United States has consecrated two openly gay bishops in the past seven years, while many Anglicans in the developing world hold to traditional Christian teaching against homosexuality.

Read it all.