Episcopalians who count 175 years of worship on Lonsdale Avenue have a decision to make this month that’s both tearing at their hearts and dividing them into two camps.

On Sunday, Jan. 30, the 300-plus members of Christ Church of Lonsdale will vote on whether to abandon their striking stone structures at the corners of John Street and merge with Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Cumberland Hill.

On the same day, Emmanuel’s congregation will be considering the flip side – whether to open their doors to these 200 new families in a move that will immediately crowd the facility where 150 generally worship on Sundays, force extra Sunday services and require an expensive expansion of their Nate Whipple Highway campus.

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What we, as students, succeed in learning has as much to do with our own self-understanding and receptiveness as it does with the abilities of our teachers to provide us with what we need in our time. A Sufi lesson says: “All of the Wise have to learn how to pass on the knowledge. But they can do this only if the student will allow himself to learn what it is and how it is that he is to learn. Technique of learning is what the teacher has first of all to teach. Unless you are prepared to study the technique of learning, you are not a student. And if your teacher advises you to learn by words, or deeds, or by baking bread””that is your way.”

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Had Baroness Warsi sought my advice, I would have counselled her not to make the speech which has been trailed in The Daily Telegraph today.

I would have told her that the Muslim faith was not discussed over the dinner tables of England, nor in the saloon bars, before large numbers of Muslims came here to our country. Then I would have told her to go to our Christian churches and listen to what was said about her religion and those who practise it, then to the Mosques to hear what is said in some of them about the Christian faith and those who practise it (or about Buddhists, Jews, or even those who have no faith at all).

After that, I would say, she might consider who is in need of her homilies on prejudice.

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Islamophobia has “passed the dinner-table test” and is seen by many as normal and uncontroversial, Baroness Warsi will say in a speech on Thursday.

The minister without portfolio will also warn that describing Muslims as either “moderate” or “extremist” fosters growing prejudice.

Lady Warsi, the first Muslim woman to attend Cabinet, has pledged to use her position to wage an “ongoing battle against bigotry”.

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China is calling President Hu Jintao’s talks with President Barack Obama successful, and says the two leaders reached “important consensus” on a wide range of issues.

Chinese newspapers Thursday carried front page pictures of President Hu with President Obama at the White House. Headlines cheered a new chapter in relations between the two countries and reports accentuated the positive news from the meeting.

An English dispatch from the official Xinhua news agency characterized Mr. Hu’s visit to Washington as “a historic masterstroke of China-U.S. diplomacy””

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In the first study, published in this week’s Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), older people without dementia whose blood showed lower levels of beta-amyloid 42/40 (proteins) had an increased rate of cognitive decline over nine years. The study found that participants with less education and lower levels of literacy had a stronger association with these biomarker levels. The study involved close to 1,000 participants with an average age of 74.

“What this implies ”” though we don’t know for sure, it’s just an association ”” is that even if you have this bad signature, you might be able to do something about it. Having a higher education appeared to be a sort of a buffer,” says study author Kristine Yaffe of the University of California-San Francisco and San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center.

The second study, also in JAMA, suggests that a certain type of brain imaging procedure may help detect beta-amyloid in living patients.

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So why is it that the young folk revolted by contemporary excess don’t simply make for the local CofE, or Catholic church, and rediscover the religion of their grandmothers, rather than getting their spirituality via Islam? It is, I think, something to do with the real malaise of contemporary Britain which I wrote about in a little essay in The Spectator concerning the film Eat, Pray, Love. It is the notion that what exists abroad, or what is foreign to your own background, is somehow superior to what you’ve grown up with, what’s under your nose. In the case of EPL, the heroine finds her spiritual identity in Buddhism. It would have been a good deal more interesting if she could have discovered it in her local Episcopalian church.

It may be that the British young don’t embrace Christianity because they simply don’t encounter it, at least not through the kind of religious education-as-anthropology they get in state school, which is about as opposite as it is possible to be from the Sunday School teaching which their grandmothers would have got. Actually, the death of the Sunday School pretty well marked the end of any practical instruction in Christianity for most children. No wonder they’re susceptible to the certainties of Islam, when they encounter it.

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Unemployment in Britain has surged by 49,000 to nearly 2.5 million, including one in every five young people ”“ putting the number of 16- to 24-year-olds out of work at close to a million, the highest since records of youth unemployment were first kept in 1992.

The rate of joblessness among 16-to 24-year-olds is now 20.3 per cent, which is two-and-a-half times therate among the population as a whole.

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When the wives of three former Church of England bishops pre­sented them with chasubles after they were ordained priests in the Roman Catholic Church in West­minster Cathedral on Saturday, it was clear that this was no ordinary service.

It heralded the beginning of the Ordinariate and the appointment of its first Ordinary, Fr Keith Newton. The Archbishop of Westminster, the Most Revd Vincent Nichols, des­cribed it during his homily as “a unique occasion marking a new step in the life and history of the Catho­lic Church”.

Fr John Broadhurst, former Bishop of Fulham; Fr Keith Newton, former Bishop of Richborough; and Fr Andrew Burnham, former Bishop of Ebbsfleet, became the first clerics to be received into the Ordinariate, which was set up for former Anglicans. They expect to be followed by more clergy and lay people.

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When President Obama welcomed Chinese President Hu Jintao to the White House on Wednesday, he was joined by a group of students from Washington, D.C.’s Yu Ying Public Charter School. It’s a Chinese-language immersion elementary school ”” the first in the nation’s capital and one of only a handful in the United States.

Interest in learning Chinese has surged in the past decade as American economic ties to China have deepened. A growing number of elementary and high schools are offering Chinese classes ”” though few teach it as intensively as Yu Ying in the northeast D.C. neighborhood of Brookland.

Housed in a former convent, the school’s 240 students alternate school days learning in entirely Chinese and English.

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You may find the agenda here; we appreciate your prayers.

Please note the William Mckeachie piece on the Conference here also. It begins as follows:

Mere Anglicanism is all about witnessing to the God who, amidst all the ups and downs of church history, has called us — whether as laity or clergy, whether as Episcopalians or members of some other Anglican entity, whether locally or globally — to renew our witness to the One who gave us the Gospel and who across the centuries has providentially provided for the Anglican Way of faithfulness to that Gospel….

From here:

Major food producers like Sara Lee Corp., Kraft Foods, General Mills and ConAgra Foods are dropping discounts and upping food prices by 6% to 10% at the stores.

Almighty God, who didst call Fabian to be a faithful pastor and servant of thy people, and to lay down his life in witness to thy Son: Grant that we, strengthened by his example and aided by his prayers, may in times of trial and persecution remain steadfast in faith and endurance, for the sake of him who laid down his life for us all, Jesus Christ our Savior; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

O God, who art Spirit, and wiliest to be worshipped in spirit and in truth: Grant to us that, loving thee in all things and above all things, we may please thee by our prayers and by our lives; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

–William Bright

Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, making the most of the time, because the days are evil.

[The] Rev. Jacob Nhail Guut recalls painfully the relentless bombardment of his village in Southern Sudan about 20 years ago.

“I was only ten years old and I can remember the intense bombing. We all had to flee to safety. After walking for 16 days in the bush without any food or water, we finally arrived in Ethiopia,” Guut, a leader from the Episcopal (Anglican) Church in Sudan who still lives in Kenya told ENInews in an interview in Nairobi on 15 January.

The clergyman’s story captures the struggles of church leaders who went into exile and assembled refugee congregations which they now hope to take back home. The leaders are counting on the success of the referendum to hope for stability, peace and security.

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Alone among the world’s economic powers, the United States is suffering through a deep jobs slump that can’t be explained by the rest of the economy’s performance.

The gross domestic product here ”” the total value of all goods and services ”” has recovered from the recession better than in Britain, Germany, Japan or Russia. Yet a greatly shrunken group of American workers, working harder and more efficiently, is producing these goods and services.

The unemployment rate is higher in this country than in Britain or Russia and much higher than in Germany or Japan, according to a study of worldwide job markets that Gallup will release on Wednesday. The American jobless rate is also higher than China’s, Gallup found. The European countries with worse unemployment than the United States tend to be those still mired in crisis, like Greece, Ireland and Spain.

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An astronomy professor who sued the University of Kentucky after claiming he lost out on a top job because of his Christian beliefs reached a settlement Tuesday with the school.

The university agreed to pay $125,000 to Martin Gaskell in exchange for dropping a federal religious discrimination suit he filed in Lexington in 2009. A trial was set for next month.

Gaskell is currently working as a research fellow in the astronomy department at the University of Texas.

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TAC Bishop Harry Entwistle – one of four TAC Bishops in Australia and the Torres Strait Islands who will be ordained as Catholic priests, likely just before the Ordinariate is officially established, told The Record the festival is a public statement that “this is no longer just a theory, it’s really happening”. “It’s an opportunity to gather those who are more than just casually interested,” he said of the festival, which is for Catholics and Anglicans who, like the TAC, have long been disillusioned with the Anglican Church’s liberalisation with female clergy, among other things.

Melbourne Auxiliary Bishop Peter Elliott, Delegate for the Holy See for the Australian Ordinariate, will address the festival, as will Adelaide-based Archbishop John Hepworth, Primate of the TAC which claims a global membership of 400,000.

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Wisconsin’s deficit, using the tougher GAAP measure, was $2.94 billion in 2010, though the state officially posted a general fund balance of $89.6 million. That gap – call it the GAAP gap – has been growing for years.

How bad is it?

Under this measure, Wisconsin’s budget hole is second only to Illinois per capita. The state’s bond rating from Moody’s is lower than 33 states.

—The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel