The recession was a double-barrel blow to American congregations: directly hurting their budgets while also stretching them thin due to increased needs for counseling, emergency housing and other social services.

But the worst seems to be over, according to a report released Thursday (April 21) that found that one in 10 have begun to recover from the loss, and more than 40 percent are now stable or increasing financially.

The “Holy Toll” report, based on the 2010 Faith Communities Today national survey of more than 20 religious groups, found that more than half (57 percent) of U.S. congregations reported their income had declined due to the recession.

Read it all.

The England and Ireland-based St. Barnabas Society gave over $160,000 to help Anglican priests make the transition into the Catholic Church.

“It is a very generous gesture and one that will be widely appreciated,” Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols said on April 15. “It is a concrete expression of the generosity which the Holy Father asked us to show towards those who are seeking full communion in the Catholic Church.”

Read it all.

The share of renters who spend more than half their income on housing is at its highest level in half a century and it’s no longer just low-income tenants who are feeling the pain, according to a Harvard University study scheduled for release Tuesday.

About 26 percent of renters ”” or 10.1 million people ”” spent more than half their pre-tax household income on rent and utilities in 2009. That’s because incomes slipped dramatically from their peak at the start of the decade even as rents kept rising.

Read it all.

Watch it all.

China needs to guard against volatility in US Treasury prices should investors demand higher returns from US government debt, a researcher at the Chinese central bank said on Monday.

Zhang Jianhua, a head of research at the People’s Bank of China, said worries that the heavily indebted US government may not repay its debt could drive Treasury yields higher and cause US debt prices to fluctuate.

Read it all (my emphasis).

The central theme of “The Book of Mormon” is that many religious stories are silly ”” the idea that God would plant golden plates in upstate New York. Many religious doctrines are rigid and out of touch.

But religion itself can do enormous good as long as people take religious teaching metaphorically and not literally; as long as people understand that all religions ultimately preach love and service underneath their superficial particulars; as long as people practice their faiths open-mindedly and are tolerant of different beliefs….

The only problem with “The Book of Mormon” (you realize when thinking about it later) is that its theme is not quite true. Vague, uplifting, nondoctrinal religiosity doesn’t actually last. The religions that grow, succor and motivate people to perform heroic acts of service are usually theologically rigorous, arduous in practice and definite in their convictions about what is True and False.

Read it all.

Conventional wisdom and the laws and constitutions of many states have long held that the pensions being earned by current government workers are untouchable. But as the fiscal crisis has lingered, officials in strapped states from California to Illinois have begun to take a second look, to see whether there might be loopholes allowing them to cut the pension benefits of current employees. Now the move in Detroit ”” made possible, lawyers said, because Michigan’s constitutional protections are weaker ”” could spur other places to try to follow suit.

“These things do tend to be herd-oriented,” said Sylvester J. Schieber, an economist and consultant who studies pensions.

The mayors of some hard-hit cities have said that the high costs of pensions have forced them to lay off workers: Oakland, Calif., laid off one-tenth of its police force last year after failing to win concessions on pension costs.

Elsewhere there is pension envy: some private sector workers, who have learned the hard way that their companies can freeze or reduce their pensions, resent that the pensions of public workers enjoy stronger legal protections. But government workers, many of whom were recruited with the promise of good benefits and pensions, say that it would be unfair ”” and in many cases, very likely illegal ”” to change the rules in the middle of the game.

Read it all.

The White House said on Monday that it was exploring new sanctions against Syria ”” mostly involving the assets of top officials around President Bashar al-Assad ”” but officials acknowledged that the country was already under so many sanctions that the United States held little leverage.

“We’re talking about a country whose economy is about the size of Pittsburgh’s,” said one administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the continuing debate within the administration about the next steps. “There are things you can do to amp up the volume” of sanctions, the official said, “but the financial impact is slim.”

Read it all.

Atheists have license to scoff at damnation, but to believe in God and not in hell is ultimately to disbelieve in the reality of human choices. If there’s no possibility of saying no to paradise then none of our no’s have any real meaning either. They’re like home runs or strikeouts in a children’s game where nobody’s keeping score.

In this sense, a doctrine of universal salvation turns out to be as deterministic as the more strident forms of scientific materialism. Instead of making us prisoners of our glands and genes, it makes us prisoners of God himself. We can check out any time we want, but we can never really leave.

The doctrine of hell, by contrast, assumes that our choices are real, and, indeed, that we are the choices that we make. The miser can become his greed, the murderer can lose himself inside his violence, and their freedom to turn and be forgiven is inseparable from their freedom not to do so.

Read it all.

O God, the living God, who hast given unto us a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead: Grant that we, being risen with him, may seek the things which are above, and be made partakers of the life eternal; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.

For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.

–1 Corinthians 15:21-25

I have been wanting to discuss a horrifically misleading article for a week now: Americans Shun Cheapest Homes in 40 Years as Ownership Fades.

It is an object lesson in how an industry spokesgroup, engaging in biased analysis, used poor econometric models to create misleading data. That led to others making bad assumptions based on that data, which in turn leads to an unsupported conclusions. To wit, that home prices are now cheap (they are not) and home ownership is being shunned (it is not). Thus, the end result is a misleading Bloomberg.com article on residential Real Estate that is unfortunately based on these terribly flawed NAR metrics.

The reality is quite different than the spin. No, it is not, as objective data reveals, especially cheap.

Read it all.

When Prince William and Kate Middleton walk down the aisle at Westminster Abbey on Friday, Britain’s unique and historic ties between church and state will be on full display.

Some here think ”” even hope ”” the royal wedding could also be the last powerful stroll for church and state in this increasingly secular country.

Read it all.

A years-long fight between The Episcopal Church and several conservative congregations has landed back in a courtroom in Virginia.

Read it all.