Indian religious organizations across all major faiths are diversifying their “business model” to maintain the loyalty of their followers and attract new devotees. This is the finding of a Cambridge University study, carried out over two years surveying 568 Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Sikh and Jain religions in Maharashtra, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Gujarat.

Cambridge, one of the world’s leading seats of learning, constituted a group drawn from its faculty of economics and Judge Business School, which discovered that cow-lending, computer-based learning, sewing and aerobics classes are some of the innovative non-religious services being offered by religious bodies to stay ahead of the game.

The survey is believed to be one of the first in India with researchers finding that although India is becoming more powerful and wealthy, rising social inequality ”” especially in the poorer states ”” means religious groups often fill the breach left by the lack of social welfare, especially in education and healthcare. In total, 272 Hindu religious groups were interviewed, along with 248 Muslim, 25 Christian and 23 Sikh and Jain religious organizations.

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The House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church is meeting at the Kanuga Conference Center in North Carolina from March 25 to March 30. The following is an account of the activities for Saturday, March 26.

The session was opened by Emcee of the Day Bishop Tom Shaw of Massachusetts.

Following Morning Prayer and Bible Study, the bishops surprised Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori on her birthday with rousing singing.
The topics and focus for the day was Proclamation of the Gospel to/with Young Adults: How can we be church in the 21st Century. Presenters were Lisa Kimball of Virginia Theological Seminary, and the Rev. Arrington Chambliss and Jason Long from the Diocese of Massachusetts.

Lisa shared personal vignettes which illustrated work needed to be done with the Episcopal Church and young adults. Defining “young adults” is very complex and depends on context, but she focused on 19 -35 years old. She shared stats and facts about this age group.

Lisa presented discussion questions for the bishops: What are the challenges facing the young adults you know? What are their strengths? To what extent is the Church in your diocese reaching people like this? The bishops shared reactions and comments.

Lisa noted: there is a deep need in the church for faith formation in the home; “sadly” young adults are missing from our worship service; and those in 20s and 30s want to be in relation with the Episcopal Church.

Noon Eucharist was celebrated by Bishop Wendell Gibbs of Michigan. Preacher was the Rev. Stephanie Spellers of the Diocese of Massachusetts and one of the chaplains for HOB.

In the afternoon session, Jason spoke about the Episcopal Service Corps. He shared his story of being evangelized, which was a transformational experience that also transformed the worshiping community. In speaking about Episcopal Service Corps he identified programs that will exist in Massachusetts and 16 other dioceses by this fall.

Arrington spoke about evangelism, and believes that the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion are poised to be the most transformative institutions in the 21st century. Arrington stated that evangelism is not a program, it’s a spiritual practice; it’s not institutional but individual; it doesn’t start with telling but starts with listening.

She led a meditation on remembering a time when someone took you and your gifts seriously.

Small group discussions allowed bishops to explore themes and needs, and to brainstorm on what might occur in the next year to partner with young adults in creating fresh expressions of Church.

The bishops concluded the session with Evening Prayer.

The Archbishop said:

“I am delighted that the Government has finally reached the right decision and will now opt in to the EU Directive on Human Trafficking. For some time I have been raising the matter with the Home Secretary calling on her to opt in to the EU Directive to ensure we have a united front across Europe tackling the evil of human trafficking.

“I am pleased the Government now acknowledges that ‘opting in would send a powerful message to traffickers that Britain is not a soft touch’. Our Government should be ensuring Britain leads the way on tackling slavery, just like it did in the days of William Wilberforce. Sex trafficking is nothing more than modern day slavery.

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The 2006 General Convention resolved that “the Revised Common Lectionary shall be the Lectionary of this Church, amending the Lectionary on pp. 889-921 of the Book of Common Prayer,” but did not deal with the resultant inconsistencies of pages within the Book of Common Prayer itself.

In anticipation of Holy Week 2011, the first year that the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL) is required for use in The Episcopal Church, the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music recommends that congregations use the RCL lections during Holy Week 2011. In our report to the 77th General Convention, the SCLM will formally propose a resolution to remove the inconsistencies between the RCL and BCP.

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As many as 100 parents braved gale-force winds on a Sunday to find out more about the new primary school opening on their doorstep. It was a testament to the appeal of the new school ”“ the first state-sponsored Hindu school to be proposed under Education Secretary Michael Gove’s flagship “free” school policy. The school only has places for 60 pupils a year and will open its reception class for the first time this September.

The school, the Krishna Avanti primary school in Leicester, is modelled on an existing Hindu school already opened in Harrow, north-west London. It, like other faith school proposals for “free” schools, has its opponents, those that think the plethora of religious schools being opened under the Gove initiative will destroy community cohesion and increase segregation on racial and religious grounds among pupils.

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Libyan rebels backed by extensive allied air raids have seized control of the frontline oil town of Ajdabiya from Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s forces.

Insurgents celebrated amid the ruins of tanks and artillery pieces and then moved west to the town of Brega.

Gaddafi loyalists seized Ajdabiya last week as they advanced east to quell an uprising which began in mid-February.

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This year, the United Methodist Church is recommending that persons conduct an alcohol-free Lent.

This practice would bring about spiritual benefits as persons think about the sacrifice of Jesus in his crucifixion, consider how much importance the use of beverage alcohol has in their lives, and free up money that would have been spent on beverage alcohol to be used for the relief of human suffering. This is in keeping with the historic stance of the Methodist movement, and offers to people an opportunity to consider how the way they live their lives impacts the world around them in positive or negative ways.

In our local congregation in Bath, we support the church’s position in several ways. We support and affirm several of our members in recovery from alcohol addiction, both in our congregational gatherings as well as in small groups; our facilities are always available at no cost for recovery groups to meet; and like all other Methodist churches, our communion services are conducted using unfermented grape juice, so that all persons can participate.

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A mass at Westminster Cathedral on Saturday will mark the 950th anniversary of a holy site in Norfolk.

The national shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham celebrates its landmark year this year, as it was founded in 1061.

Many Christians from Norfolk are expected to attend the service, which will be led by Archbishop Vincent Nichols at 1400 GMT.

Other guests will include the new Papal Nuncio Archbishop Mennini and Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor.

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Christ Church is welcoming a new building for a new era.

The Fallbrook congregation, formerly known as St. John’s Anglican Church, has been conducting services at Living Waters Christian Fellowship Assembly of God Church for the past two years. The church began sharing space with Living Waters after legal battles over property rights and organizational authority allowed the Episcopal Diocese of San Diego to take over the former church property (which is now operating as St. John’s Episcopal).

The members at St. John’s Anglican had previously voted to secede from the Episcopal Church, which is the North American branch of the global Anglican…[Communion], and reaffiliated with a more theologically traditional conservative archdiocese in Africa. Disagreements regarding homosexuality and biblical authority are at the core of an ongoing dispute between the Episcopal Church and hundreds of its congregations, as well as Anglican bishops in other countries.

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Special events are planned throughout the diocese for candidates to meet and interact with congregations. They will be held Tuesday at St. John the Evangelist in Stockton; Wednesday at St. Paul’s in Bakersfield; Thursday at St. Michael’s in Ridgecrest; and Friday at St. James’ Cathedral in Fresno.

All begin at 3 p.m.

Those events will be followed by question-and-answer sessions involving laity and clergy at 6:30 p.m.

A special convention for the election of the new bishop will be held May 14 at St. James’ Cathedral.

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With nearly 14 million unemployed workers in America, many have gotten so desperate that they’re willing to work for free. While some businesses are wary of the legal risks and supervision such an arrangement might require, companies that have used free workers say it can pay off when done right.

“People who work for free are far hungrier than anybody who has a salary, so they’re going to outperform, they’re going to try to please, they’re going to be creative,” says Kelly Fallis, chief executive of Remote Stylist, a Toronto and New York-based startup that provides Web-based interior design services. “From a cost savings perspective, to get something off the ground, it’s huge. Especially if you’re a small business.”

In the last three years, Fallis has used about 50 unpaid interns for duties in marketing, editorial, advertising, sales, account management and public relations. She’s convinced it’s the wave of the future in human resources. “Ten years from now, this is going to be the norm,” she says.

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A favorite pastime of Internet users is to share their location: services like Google Latitude can inform friends when you are nearby; another, Foursquare, has turned reporting these updates into a game.

But as a German Green party politician, Malte Spitz, recently learned, we are already continually being tracked whether we volunteer to be or not. Cellphone companies do not typically divulge how much information they collect, so Mr. Spitz went to court to find out exactly what his cellphone company, Deutsche Telekom, knew about his whereabouts.

The results were astounding. In a six-month period ”” from Aug 31, 2009, to Feb. 28, 2010, Deutsche Telekom had recorded and saved his longitude and latitude coordinates more than 35,000 times. It traced him from a train on the way to Erlangen at the start through to that last night, when he was home in Berlin.

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Early on the morning of Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent’s season of penitence, Gov. Pat Quinn of Illinois went through some final, solitary rumination. For much of his political career, he had supported capital punishment, albeit with reservations, even debating it at the dinner table with his mother. Now a legislative bill abolishing it was waiting for his signature, or his veto.

In the preceding weeks, he had heard arguments on the subject from prosecutors who spoke of the death penalty’s deterrent effect and from the grieving relatives of murder victims who saw in it fierce justice. He had reacquainted himself with about 20 capital cases overturned by DNA evidence or tainted by judicial error.

But on that decisive morning of March 9, he laid aside the secular factors and opened his Bible to a passage in II Corinthians about human imperfection. He prayed. And when he signed the bill striking down the death penalty, he cited one influence by name: Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago.

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O Jesus, Master and Lord, pour into our hearts thine own heroic love; that being filled with love we may know the love which passeth knowledge, and live in the unknown power of love to win men to trust in love, to the glory of God who is love.

–William Temple

Declare this in the house of Jacob, proclaim it in Judah: “Hear this, O foolish and senseless people, who have eyes, but see not, who have ears, but hear not. Do you not fear me? says the LORD; Do you not tremble before me? I placed the sand as the bound for the sea, a perpetual barrier which it cannot pass; though the waves toss, they cannot prevail, though they roar, they cannot pass over it. But this people has a stubborn and rebellious heart; they have turned aside and gone away.

–Jeremiah 5:20-23

Is the ecumenical project alive and well?

In Russia? As the Holy Father said in his recent book when he gave the long interview to the German journalist that there are number of people in Russia who are frightened of the Catholic Church. Not only because of the many centuries of division, but because unfortunately the Orthodox know very little about the Catholic Church and the Catholic faithful in Russia they know little about the Orthodox Church. From the beginning of my mission in Russia I wanted to be present at the liturgy of His Holiness the Patriarch every year to give him a gesture of respect as he is the head of the most important Church in Russia and considering also the meaning, the importance of Orthodox spirituality and the suffering the Russian people have passed through many decades of atheism and persecution. They have had a sad fate, with a high toll of martyrs and people who lost their lives for Jesus.

Will one of your tasks be improving relations with the Church of England in the wake of Anglicanorum coetibus?

I have not yet met His Grace, the Archbishop of Canterbury, but we have an appointment at the beginning of the next month. From what I know the official relations are very good and very friendly. On the other hand, we understand that this passage is a delicate matter, not only for the Catholic side but also the Anglican side, and so the Holy See wants to make clear that we are ready to accept them, but we don’t want to incite them to leave their identities as Anglican faithful.

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Archbishop Vincent Nichols, president of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, has said that Anglicans joining the Catholic Church this Easter will be ”˜warmly welcomed’ and will feel entirely at home.

Speaking before a Lenten lecture at Brentwood Cathedral, the archbishop (right) said that the Catholic Church will ”˜keep open and positive our relationships with the Church of England.’

Around 900 Anglicans, including 60 clergy, are expected to join the Catholic Church at Easter and Archbishop Nichols believes that Pope Benedict XVI’s ordinariate ”˜shows us not to be afraid of diversity within the Catholic Church,’ as well as adding that we can recognise that ”˜the Catholic community has got many different faces in this country now.’

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Forty years ago, divorced people were more concentrated in cities and suburbs. But geographic distinctions have all but vanished, and now, for the first time, rural Americans are just as likely to be divorced as city dwellers, according to an analysis of census data by The New York Times.

“Rural families are going through this incredible transformation,” said Daniel T. Lichter, a sociology professor at Cornell University.

The shifts that started in cities have spread to less populated regions ”” women going to work, gaining autonomy, and re-arranging the order of traditional families. Values have changed, too, easing the stigma of divorce.

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We may never know why bad things happen to good people, but most Americans””except evangelicals””reject the idea that natural disasters are divine punishment, a test of faith or some other sign from God.

The poll released Thursday (March 24), by Public Religion Research Institute in partnership with Religion News Service, was conducted a week after a March 11 earthquake triggered a devastating tsunami and nuclear crisis in Japan.

Nearly six in 10 evangelicals believe God can use natural disasters to send messages””nearly twice the number of Catholics (31 percent) or mainline Protestants (34 percent). Evangelicals (53 percent) are also more than twice as likely as the one in five Catholics or mainline Protestants to believe God punishes nations for the sins of some citizens.

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Americans have long been a people of the book. John Winthrop quoted from the Bible in his “city on the hill” sermon in 1630, and American political leaders have been quoting from it ever since.

But we craft new Bibles too, from the Book of Mormon of the Latter-day Saints to the Christian Scientists’ “Science and Health with a Key to the Scriptures” and Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s “Woman’s Bible.” Jefferson was out in front of all of these efforts. Here, too, he was a declarer of independence.

When the Jefferson Bible goes on display in November, Americans will have another opportunity to debate not only their third president’s faith (or lack thereof) but also the religious character of the nation and the true meaning of Christianity. This seems as good a time as any to ponder whether the “sum of all religion” is, as Jefferson once put it, “fear God and love thy neighbor.”

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To solve a looming pension crisis and budget gap, city officials here said, they needed to take drastic action. And everyone agrees on one thing: they did.

Nearly half of this city’s workers were told late last week that, come September, they would probably be out of a job. Nearly every city department will be eliminated. More than a dozen tasks will be outsourced, including graffiti removal, firefighting, building maintenance and street cleaning.

Unlike the drama that played out over the last two months in Madison, Wis., the battle over public workers in this bustling suburb and upscale shopping mecca in the heart of Orange County is happening at lightning speed.

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Evangelical leaders in the Anglican Church of Southern Africa have called upon the church’s Synod of Bishops to clarify their ambiguous statements on human sexuality.

On March 17, the Fellowship of Confession Anglicans (FCA) in South Africa published an open letter on the internet, making a “plea for clarity on the position and teaching of our faith” in light of bishops’ February pastoral letter.

At the close of their Feb 7-12 meeting in Natal, the Southern African bishops deferred taking action on adopting guidelines for the blessing of same-sex unions, citing legal difficulties and theological divisions within their ranks.

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The Bishop of Exeter, the Rt Revd Michael Langrish, has warned that interfaith relations may be harmed by the “unfolding events” in Libya.

Speaking in the House of Lords on Monday, the Bishop asked whether the Leader of the Lords, Lord Strath­clyde, shared his “concern that in an increasingly volatile region there are already those who for their own ends are using somewhat inflammatory language and trying to construct a reli­gious narrative around these un­folding events.

“In this account, a vulnerable Is­lamic population is being subjected to an opportunistic attack by a power­ful Christian West. Not only does such a narrative have the power to destab­il­ise the wider Middle East region, but it could impact very negatively on community relations in this country.”

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Nobody should object to the making of films on the ongoing traumas of the 21st century ”“ and some docudramas have been nuanced and even poetic. The Hamburg Cell stands out. Written by Ronan Bennett and directed by Antonia Bird, it is an exploratory journey into the heads of three of the 9/11 bombers. Impressive too was Peter Kosminsky’s Britz (Channel 4), about two highly educated British Muslim siblings, a brother and sister, and how anti-terrorist legislation devastates them. The problem is, there is almost nothing else. When the IRA were terrorising the UK, Irish characters and storylines weren’t restricted to that one political conflict to the exclusion of all else.

Where is the soulful, female Muslim singer, the wily, kebab millionaire, the two-timing Pakistani cricketer, the Arab heartthrob? They do all exist, but these roles are not written into scripts. The industry does not admit or nurture Muslim talent either ”“ writers, actors, directors, producers, editors ”“ and cannot see them as worthy professionals.

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If we live in a milieu where a great many signals discourage empathy and self-scrutiny, and thus emotional awareness, we shall develop habits of self-absorption, the urge for dominance, and short-term perspective. Our motivation to change anything other than what we feel to be our immediate circumstances will be weak, because our sense of ourselves as continuous, reflective agents will be weak. And the clear implication of all this is that without an education of the emotions ”“ which means among other things the nurture of empathy ”“ public or political life becomes simply a matter of managing the competition of egos with limited capacity to question themselves.

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A recent rise in the number of people accused of witchcraft””particularly African children””isn’t just an issue for missionaries to address, say scholars. It’s also a problem they may be contributing to.

An entire track of the annual missiology conference at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School this February was devoted to witchcraft, a topic usually neglected by the field.

“We had thought this was a phenomenon that would die out,” said Robert Priest, professor of missions and intercultural studies at Trinity. “Instead we are finding that the conditions of modernity””urbanization and social differentiation under capitalism””are contributing to accusations getting stronger and stronger.”

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Portugal’s admission that it will probably need a financial bailout raises a question that will shape the outcome of the euro zone’s debt crisis: Is Spain next?

The cost of saving Spain, a €1.1 trillion ($1.56 trillion) economy, would dwarf previous bailouts and could test the financial strength of Europe as a whole.

But if Spain can continue to repair investors’ trust, as in recent weeks, then Europe stands a chance of containing the debt crisis to three countries, Greece, Ireland and Portugal, whose combined economies are half the size of Spain’s.

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Anglican Communion members worldwide with access to the Internet can now take advantage of 90 evangelism resources on the Communion’s website here.

The resources were pooled after the Kuala Lumpur meeting of the Communion’s Evangelism and Church Growth Initiative’s core organising body. That the resources were selected by practitioners working in very different contexts in different countries means core group members are certain that visitors to the website will find some resources appropriate for their context.

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We beseech thee, O Lord, pour thy grace into our hearts; that we who have known the incarnation of thy Son Jesus Christ, announced by an angel to the Virgin Mary, may by his cross and passion be brought unto the glory of his resurrection; who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

Teach us, O God, to walk trustfully today in thy presence, that thy voice may encourage us, thine arm defend us, and thy love surround us; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

–New Every Morning