Many Arabs have an alternative theory about the reason for the region’s backwardness: Western colonialism. But that seems equally specious and has the sequencing wrong. “For all its discontents, the Middle East’s colonial period brought fundamental transformation, not stagnation; rising literacy and education, not spreading ignorance; and enrichment at unprecedented rates, not immiserization,” writes Timur Kuran, a Duke University economic historian, in a meticulously researched new book, “The Long Divergence: How Islamic Law Held Back the Middle East.”

Professor Kuran’s book offers the best explanation yet for why the Middle East has lagged. After poring over ancient business records, Professor Kuran persuasively argues that what held the Middle East back wasn’t Islam as such, or colonialism, but rather various secondary Islamic legal practices that are no longer relevant today.

It’s a sophisticated argument that a column can’t do justice to, but for example, one impediment was inheritance law.

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A massive explosion has rocked a Japanese nuclear power plant after Friday’s devastating earthquake.

A huge pall of smoke was seen coming from the plant at Fukushima and several workers were injured.

Japanese officials say the container housing the reactor was not damaged and that radiation levels have now fallen.

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Almighty and merciful God, who didst raise up Gregory of Rome to be a servant of the servants of God, and didst inspire him to send missionaries to preach the Gospel to the English people: Preserve in thy Church the catholic and apostolic faith they taught, that thy people, being fruitful in every good work, may receive the crown of glory that fadeth not away; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Save us, O God, from the false piety that parades itself in the eyes of men and is not genuine in thy sight; and so sanctify us by thy Spirit that both in heart and life we may serve thee acceptably, to the honour of thy holy name; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

–Frank Colquhoun

Thou hast turned for me my mourning into dancing: thou hast put off my sackcloth, and girded me with gladness;
to the end that [my] glory may sing praise to thee, and not be silent. O LORD my God, I will give thanks unto thee for ever.

–Psalm 30:11-12 (KJV)

For the reformers the Bible was a treasure trove of divine wisdom to be heard, read, marked, learned, and inwardly digested, as the Book of Common Prayer’s collect for the second Sunday in Advent puts it, to the end that “we may embrace, and ever hold fast, the blessed hope of everlasting life, which thou has given us in our Savior Jesus Christ.” In his commentary on Hebrews 4:12, “The Word of God is living and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword,” John Calvin declared, “Whenever the Lord accosts us by His Word, He is dealing seriously with us to affect all our inner senses. There is, therefore, no part of our soul which should not be influenced.” The study of the Bible was meant to be transformative at the most basic level of the human person, leading to communion with God. The spiritual power of the Bible emerges for Christians from the fact that the “Word of God” is not just a matter of words. Jesus Christ is the substantial Word, the eternal Logos who was made flesh”” verbum incarnatum””for us and for our salvation. Thus the “Word of God” involved the spoken word; the preaching of the gospel is a sacramental event, a means of grace. As Heinrich Bullinger put it boldly in the Second Helvetic Confession (1566): “The preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God.”

Whether read, preached, or heard, it was the Bible that stood at the center of the age of the Reformation, a time of transition, vitality, and change. In 1522, looking back on the recent and dramatic events of the previous years, Martin Luther saw God’s Word as the agent of change. “I opposed indulgences and all papists,” he observed, “but never by force. I simply taught, preached, and wrote God’s Word; otherwise I did nothing. And then while I slept or drank Wittenberg beer with my Philip and my Amsdorf, the Word so greatly weakened the papacy that never a prince or emperor did such damage to it. I did nothing. The Word did it all.”

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The Rev. Jay R. Lawlor resigned Wednesday as pastor at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, three days after an elderly parishioner filed a police report accused him of assault, according to a letter received today by church members.

The letter from Bishop Robert Gepert, who heads the Episcopal Diocese of Western Michigan, said the church is launching its own investigation into the incident, which allegedly involved Lawlor shoving Marcia Morrison, 76.

Morrison was not injured, but told police she was emotionally traumatized.

“Regardless of what happened, and without laying blame, it does not reflect well on the whole community,” said Gepert’s letter. “As a result, I am obligated to initiate an investigation under Title IV of the Episcopal Church Canons. It also means I will begin searching for a priest-in-charge.”

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The aroma of freshly popped popcorn and the crack of soda cans opening while the “Gladiator” soundtrack blares through the speakers are a signal that it’s guys night out at Cornerstone Church.

Tonight’s feature is “Open Range,” a Western that pits those who believe in free access to water and grass for everyone’s cattle against “barbed wire” land barons, who used the fencing to block cattlemen from moving their herds.

But “Open Range” isn’t just a drama about late-19th century range wars, said Kevin Miles, founder and director of the Caledonia-based Go the Distance Ministries and sponsor of the movie series.

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The uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East have been widely described as secular rebellions led by middle-class, tech-savvy young people seeking economic and political justice. Protests have generally called for democratic, not Islamic politics, and for the rule of law, not Shariah law. Islamists were late to join the crowds, and they have participated only as one group among many. Because of all this, most Westerners have embraced the revolts. We should not, however, assume that the protesters seek to build replicas of the societies that exist in the West.

That assumption is erroneous because the Arab world is only beginning to debate basic questions of civic and political life””especially what role religion should play in government.

Westerners should avoid the so-called problem of transference: the natural tendency to assume that our historical experience is universal. It is misguided to assume that because the West””after centuries of bloodshed and experimentation””arrived at a broad consensus around democracy and secularism, so has the rest of world. The historical experience of Arab and Muslim societies has been qualitatively different.

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Churches and agencies of the Anglican Communion have begun to plan how best to respond to the 8.9-magnitude earthquake and tsunami impacting countries across the Pacific Ocean.

The Secretary of The Nippon Sei Ko Kai (The Anglican Communion in Japan) Shinya Samuel Yawata told ACNS this morning that the Provincial office is waiting to learn the extent of the destruction in northern Japan. He said he had not yet heard from any other dioceses, but wanted the rest of the Communion to know that the NSKK Province office is still functioning.

“Unfortunately we have not heard from people of northern Japan except from the news on the Internet. All phone lines are down because of heavy usage so we do not know much about what is going on. Viewing the Internet we can see that damage is substantial and already many deaths have been reported.”

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The turmoil in Libya and elsewhere in the region has toppled or undermined North African dictators who negotiated a web of benefits from Europe, including aid and diplomatic standing, in return for stopping immigrants seeking to cross the Mediterranean.

Without the assistance of those leaders, many in Europe worry that they will face new waves of illegal immigration not only from the liberated areas in the north, but from much of sub-Saharan Africa as well.

The immigrants would arrive at a time when much of Europe ”” struggling with high unemployment and lethargic economies ”” is already awash with anti-immigrant sentiment, and many countries say they are simply incapable of absorbing poor migrants.

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The Diocese of Lincoln failed to inform the Diocese of Massachusetts that one of its priests had been arrested for child abuse while serving as a vicar in Skegness.

The Rev. Franklin E. Huntress, Jr., relinquished his priestly orders rather than face a church trial last month after the Diocese of Massachusetts began an investigation into charges the 77 year old retired priest had molested a child in 1974.

During the course of its investigation, the diocese learned Mr. Huntress had been arrested by police for abusing a child in 1994 while service as vicar of St. Matthew’s Church in Skegness, Lincs. No charges were filed against the American vicar as the family did not want the child to testify in court. However, church investigators concluded the allegations were true after reading the police report and speaking to the officers involved, said Canon Mally Lloyd, the Bishop of Massachusetts’s assistant.

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The Archbishops of Canterbury and York and more than 30 bishops committed themselves to making young people a priority in the Church of England, when they attended a conference held in Sheffield last week.

The Regeneration Youth Summit took place at St Thomas’s, Phila­delphia Campus, on Thursday of last week, and was organised by the Church Army, the Archbishop of York Youth Trust, and a group of young people, including Sam Follett, aged 20, the youngest member of the General Synod.

More than 120 people aged from 15 to 21, and about 30 youth workers, discussed ways of better equipping the Church to reach out to young people. All delegates were invited to sign a pledge committing to the work of the Church and young people.

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From the BBC programme description:

Hundreds of traditionalist Anglicans intending to join the special section of the Roman Catholic church for disaffected Anglicans are to worship for the first time in Roman Catholic churches.
Father Ed Tomlinson will lead his 70 parishioners from their old church in Tunbridge Wells to the new Catholic Church in Pembury to celebrate Mass on Ash Wednesday. He explains the reasons for the migration.

Listen to it all (about 3 1/2 minutes).

In 2008, teacher assistant Johanna Munoz helped her Orlando-area fourth-graders on the state achievement test.

According to investigative documents obtained by USA TODAY, Munoz erased wrong answers and whispered corrections while she was helping non-native English speakers with difficult words. She snapped her fingers in a code students understood to mean they should correct an answer.

While the teacher was out of the room, Munoz warned the students “not to tell anyone, not even your parents, what I did.” If they told, she warned, they “would fail fourth grade.”

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The messy same-sex marriage debate continues in Australia and in the US. I remain of the view that we should not extend the definition of marriage to include same-sex unions; that we should legislate to recognise same-sex unions; and that we should leave questions about the legal availability of new technologies for the creation of children by same-sex couples for determination at a later date.

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We begin today the liturgical season of Lent with the thought-provoking rite of the imposition of ashes, through which we wish to take on the commitment to convert our hearts to the horizons of grace. In general, in common opinion, this time runs the risk of being marked by sadness, by the darkness of life. Instead, it is a precious gift of God; it is an intense time full of meanings in the journey of the Church; it is the itinerary to the Lord’s Easter. The biblical readings of today’s celebration give us indications to live this spiritual experience fully.

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Colleen McDannell knew the title of her new book, “The Spirit of Vatican II: A History of Catholic Reform in America,” would be provocative.

Modernists talk of the Catholic Church not living up to “the spirit of Vatican II,” while traditionalists mock the phrase as if it’s a ruse for turning the council on its head.
Yet McDannell says the title was nonetheless perfect for what she wanted to do: Tell the story of how American Catholics negotiated a time of dramatic change in their church.

“There was a spirit, and it was not just a light, frivolous, hippie, mini-skirted-nun type of thing,” said McDannell, a history professor at the University of Utah.

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The Philippines, Indonesia, Taiwan and Papua New Guinea were bracing for possible tsunamis after an 8.9 magnitude earthquake struck off the northeast of Japan, sending waves crashing through coastal towns.

The strongest temblor in Japan in at least a century struck at 2:46 p.m. local time 130 kilometers (81 miles) off the coast of Sendai, north of Tokyo. Buildings shook in the capital, and television footage showed a wave of water as high as 10 meters engulfing farmhouses and roads along the coast. Fires broke out in an oil plant and buildings in Tokyo.

Waves traveling as fast as 800 kilometers an hour may be radiating from the epicenter, sparking warnings in countries that lie in their path. The quake is the strongest since a 9.1 magnitude temblor off North Sumatra in Indonesia in December 2004 left about 220,000 people dead or missing in 12 countries around the Indian Ocean.

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O Heavenly Father, whose blessed Son hast taught us that whosoever will be his disciple must take up his cross and follow him: Help us with willing heart to mortify our sinful affections, and depart from every selfish indulgence by which we sin against thee. Strengthen us to resist temptation, and to walk in the narrow way that leadeth unto life; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.

–Prayers for the Christian Year

For the grace of God has appeared for the salvation of all men, training us to renounce irreligion and worldly passions, and to live sober, upright, and godly lives in this world, awaiting our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all iniquity and to purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds.

–Titus 2:11-14

France and Britain on Thursday agreed that Libya strongman Moamer Kadhafi “must go” and called on the EU to consider the country’s rebel national council a valid political interlocutor, Sarkozy’s office said.

“To stop further suffering of the Libyan people, Muammar Gaddafi and his clique should leave,” French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister David Cameron said in a joint letter to European Union president Herman Von Rompuy.

France earlier recognised the rebels as the country’s rightful representatives.

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Amid all these commentaries, I have yet to hear anyone speculate on how the communications media that fueled the Arab revolutions will reshape and define the societies and states that emerge from these uprisings. For much of the 20th century such thinking was the realm of Roman Catholic layman and media critic Marshall McLuhan (1911-80). Any student of McLuhan’s (mostly proven) theories would know this: sooner or later the structures that emerge will be rooted in the technological extension of senses implicit in these communications technologies.

McLuhan’s landmark 1964 book Understanding Media: the Extensions of Man presented his primary thesis: the dominant communications medium in any society unconsciously shapes our psychic and social lives irrespective of the content presented through that medium. His still-famous dictum was “The medium is the message.” His insights provoke a number of questions about current events in North Africa. How does mobile phone texting extend our natural capacities? How does it fit into the mélange of graphic and typographic communications technologies used in these cultures? What values are embedded implicitly in these technologies and the process of interacting with them? How does this reshape their consciousness and societies?

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We have a remarkable calling in this era to think about our relationships not only with other Christians, but with other human beings across this planet, and indeed with the rest of creation. Perhaps you might focus your Lenten discipline this year in attention to how you live on this earth.

Do you live like the Son of Man, who travels continuously with never a place to lay his head? Who doesn’t carry two bags or an extra lunch or an extra pair of sandals? That is what he encouraged his disciples to do, to travel light.

Are you traveling light on this earth?

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As the Obama administration wrestles over what to do about Libya, the voices on Capitol Hill offer no consensus on military action.

Influential senators John McCain, a Republican, and John Kerry, a Democrat, have kept up a drumbeat for U.S. military action such as a “no-fly” zone to aid the rebels fighting Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

But other senior lawmakers, like Republicans Senator Richard Lugar and Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, are warning against getting the United States into a Libyan war.

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Check them out.

Map-makers use a lovely word to describe the essential discipline of checking the map they are making, however perfect and satisfying it seems, against the uneven ground of the earth it pictures: ground-truthing.They get away from the table, outside the car, and walk across the earth, which is always bigger, richer than the map. Maps are useful guides. But we need to keep checking them against the bumpy ground we walk on. The intertwined pleasures and dangers of maps are especially good to be aware of in a school of Christian theology…[or any parish]: for theologies too are maps””human worlds imposed on the mysteries of God’s action. It is all too easy to become overly comfortable with our world of necessary maps. Perhaps, then, theological students””and pr ofes s or s ””must , more than anyone, cultivate the discipline of ground-truthing.

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Only 1 American in 7 has faith a lasting economic recovery has taken hold and a plurality say they are personally worse off than they were two years ago.

Almost half of the respondents in a Bloomberg National Poll conducted March 4-7 believe the U.S. is in a “fragile” rebound and could fall back into recession. More than a third of the country believes the U.S. never emerged from recession.

Sixty-three percent of Americans say the nation is on the wrong track, compared with 66 percent who said so in December, which was the lowest in the national mood in the one and a half years the Bloomberg poll has been conducted.

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Covenantal relationships are one way for Christians to live out their baptismal calling in the world. As the Church discerns the fruits of the Spirit in faithful commitments ”“ such as households marked by compassion, generosity, and hospitality ”“ these commitments become a blessing to the wider community. Blessing covenantal relationships, including same-gender unions, thus belongs to the mission of the Church in its ongoing witness to the good news of God-in-Christ and the Christian hope of union with God.

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A four-man gang of armed robbers Monday burgled the Bishop’s Court, the Anglican Diocese of Asaba in Delta State, taking away N800,000 and other valuables.

The bishop, [the] Rt. Rev… [Justus Mogekwu], and his wife were held at gun point inside their bedroom by the hoodlums at about 1 am who operated for about three hours.

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Reminder: Justus Emeka Mogekwu was elected the new bishop of Asaba in 2009 to replace Nicholas Okoh, now Nigerian primate