Last week, a three-judge state appeals court panel ordered the state of Kansas to pay for Mary Stinemetz to have a liver transplant performed in neighboring Nebraska. The reason? Ms. Stinemetz is a Jehovah’s Witness who believes that blood transfusions violate the tenets of her faith. So she sued to have Medicaid fund a more expensive, “bloodless” version of the procedure that her hospital in Kansas doesn’t perform.

Ms. Stinemetz’s case is not a historical oddity. Jehovah’s Witnesses, though they number only about one million in the U.S., have had an outsized influence on American jurisprudence.

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Some time after the dotcom boom turned into a spectacular bust in 2000, bumper stickers began appearing in Silicon Valley imploring: “Please God, just one more bubble.” That wish has now been granted. Compared with the rest of America, Silicon Valley feels like a boomtown. Corporate chefs are in demand again, office rents are soaring and the pay being offered to talented folk in fashionable fields like data science is reaching Hollywood levels. And no wonder, given the prices now being put on web companies.

Facebook and Twitter are not listed, but secondary-market trades value them at some $76 billion (more than Boeing or Ford) and $7.7 billion respectively. This week LinkedIn, a social network for professionals, said it hopes to be valued at up to $3.3 billion in an initial public offering (IPO). The next day Microsoft announced its purchase of Skype, an internet calling and video service, for a frothy-looking $8.5 billion””ten times its sales last year and 400 times its operating income. And those are all big-brand companies with customers around the world. Prices look even more excessive for fledgling firms in the private market (Color, a photo-sharing social network, was recently said to be worth $100m, even though it has an untested service) or for anything involving China. There has been a stampede for shares in Renren, hailed as “China’s Facebook”, and other Chinese web giants listed on American exchanges.

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The diocese has received good news this month from two federal courts: Two suits initiated in 2010 against diocesan leadership have been stayed until the appeal of the primary suit has run its course in state courts, and a third will not impede an arbitration process already under way.

On Wednesday, May 11, in Fort Worth, federal court judge Terry Means responded favorably to two motions filed by the Diocese seeking to stay the intellectual-property suits brought against Bishop Iker last fall. One, brought by The Episcopal Church last September, seeks to seize control of the diocesan seal and the name “The Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth.” The other, filed a month later by All Saints’ Church on Crestline Road in Fort Worth, alleged that Bishop Iker had been using the parish’s seal and had improperly bestowed its name on another congregation. Subsequently Fr. Darryl Pigeon and the vestry of his Fort Worth congregation were added as defendants. Judge Means stayed the first suit in December; his decision of Wednesday confirms and extends that order. The stay on the All Saints’ suit is the first order he has issued in that case.

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Manchester City claimed their first piece of silverware for 35 years as Yaya Toure’s second half strike gave Roberto Mancini’s side a 1-0 win over Stoke City in the FA Cup final at Wembley.

Toure pounced to slam home an emphatic finish in the 74th minute to breach Stoke’s obdurate defence and give City their first FA Cup final win since 1969.

The Cup victory provided the proverbial icing on the cake for Mancini’s side, who clinched their primary objective of delivering a top-four finish for a Champions League spot next season, while it sealed a memorable day for the city of Manchester after United won the Premier League title.

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A penalty from Wayne Rooney allowed Manchester United to clinch a record 19th league title following a 1-1 draw with Blackburn Rovers at Ewood Park.

Tomasz Kuszczak was a surprise inclusion in the Manchester United line-up, and it was his mistake that allowed Brett Emerton to fire Blackburn into the lead on 20 minutes. The Polish goalkeeper palmed Emerton’s initial cross into the path of Martin Olsson, who sent the ball to the back post for Emerton to volley home.

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Medicare, the U.S. health insurance program for the elderly and disabled, and the Social Security trust for the disabled and retirees are running out of money sooner than the government had projected.

While Medicare won’t have sufficient funds to pay full benefits starting in 2024, five years earlier than last year’s estimate, Social Security’s cash to pay full benefits runs short in 2036, a year sooner than the 2010 projection, the U.S. government said today in an annual report.

Both forecasts were affected by a slower-than-anticipated economic recovery, the government said. The estimates for funding add urgency to talks between Democrats and Republicans on ways to cut spending to reduce the U.S. budget deficit.

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We give thee thanks, O heavenly Father, who hast delivered us from the power of darkness and translated us into the kingdom of thy Son; grant, we pray thee, that as by his death he has recalled us to life, so by his presence abiding in us he may raise us to joys eternal; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.

Then, at break of day, the king arose and went in haste to the den of lions. When he came near to the den where Daniel was, he cried out in a tone of anguish and said to Daniel, “O Daniel, servant of the living God, has your God, whom you serve continually, been able to deliver you from the lions?” Then Daniel said to the king, “O king, live for ever! My God sent his angel and shut the lions’ mouths, and they have not hurt me, because I was found blameless before him; and also before you, O king, I have done no wrong.” Then the king was exceedingly glad, and commanded that Daniel be taken up out of the den. So Daniel was taken up out of the den, and no kind of hurt was found upon him, because he had trusted in his God.

–Daniel 6:19-23

A theological disagreement between a local church and its former diocese has become a drawn-out, draining legal quarrel over a church building.

In November 2008, leaders of the now St. Francis on the Hill Anglican Church broke away from the Episcopal Diocese of the Rio Grande over a theological dispute over foundational doctrines as salvation through Christ alone and the authority of the Bible. Also highly controversial was the 2003 ordination in New Hampshire of the first openly gay bishop, the Rev. V. Gene Robinson.

It was the second church in El Paso to break away from the diocese over the same issues.

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[The running online commentary]…instead of being a distraction ”” an electronic version of note-passing ”” the chatter echoed and fed into the main discourse, said Mrs. [Erin] Olson, who monitored the stream and tried to absorb it into the lesson. She and others say social media, once kept outside the school door, can entice students who rarely raise a hand to express themselves via a medium they find as natural as breathing.

“When we have class discussions, I don’t really feel the need to speak up or anything,” said one of her students, Justin Lansink, 17. “When you type something down, it’s a lot easier to say what I feel.”

With Twitter and other microblogging platforms, teachers from elementary schools to universities are setting up what is known as a “backchannel” in their classes. The real-time digital streams allow students to comment, pose questions (answered either by one another or the teacher) and shed inhibitions about voicing opinions. Perhaps most importantly, if they are texting on-task, they are less likely to be texting about something else.

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The neighbors watched helplessly from behind locked gates as an exchange of gunfire rang out at the police station. Then about 80 prisoners burst through the station’s doors ”” some clad only in underwear, many brandishing guns, machetes, even a fire extinguisher ”” as the police fled.

“The police are afraid,” said Mohamed Ismail, 30, a witness. “I am afraid to leave my neighborhood.”

Three months after the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, a crime wave in Egypt has emerged as a threat to its promised transition to democracy. Businessmen, politicians and human rights activists say they fear that the mounting disorder ”” from sectarian strife to soccer riots ”” is hampering a desperately needed economic recovery or, worse, inviting a new authoritarian crackdown.

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This spring marks the 100th anniversary of the 11th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, generally considered the greatest manifestation of the “Great EB.” In March 1911, a full-page ad in the New York Times heralded the 11th edition as “the sum of human knowledge””all that mankind has thought, done or achieved, all of the past experience of humanity that has survived the trial of time and the ordeal of service and is preserved as the useful knowledge of today” and declared that in its 29 volumes “all is included that is relevant and everything explained that is explainable….”

At a 1968 banquet in London’s Guildhall celebrating the 200th anniversary of the Britannica, Robert Hutchins raised his glass of Madeira to the mayor, prime minister and distinguished guests and toasted the Britannica as the embodiment of “a vision in which science and technology, instead of threatening to exterminate us, will repeal the curse of Adam and enable all men everywhere to achieve their full human possibilities.” No doubt there is hubris in thinking that by adding knowledge to knowledge we attain wisdom. Yet I find too much of the true, the good and the beautiful in these 100-year-old volumes to return them to the basement. Somehow we will find a way to make room for them where they belong, next to the The Divine Comedy and the OED, on the first floor.

–Carol Zaleski, “The great EB,” Christian Century, April 5, 2011 edition, page 39

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(Please note that this also ran on the op-ed of the local paper here yesterday since it is such a huge story down here in the greater Charleston, South Carolina area. But it is anything but just a local story; recall that Philip Greenspun of Harvard Law school called it the biggest U.S. economic story of the year–KSH).

Deep into the recent recession, Boeing decided to invest more than $1 billion in a new factory in South Carolina. Surging global demand for our innovative, new 787 Dreamliner exceeded what we could build on one production line and we needed to open another….

Eighteen months later, a North Charleston swamp has been transformed into a state-of-the-art, green-energy powered, 1.2 million square-foot airplane assembly plant. One thousand new workers are hired and being trained to start building planes in July….

Yet the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) believes it was a mistake and that our actions were unlawful. It claims we improperly transferred existing work, and that our decision reflected “animus” and constituted “retaliation” against union-represented employees in Washington state. Its remedy: Reverse course, Boeing, and build the assembly line where we tell you to build it.

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Leaders of non-Christian faith groups should be invited to sit alongside bishops in the House of Lords, a historian who contributed to a commission on reform of the Second Chamber has suggested.

Writing in the Church Times today, John F. H. Smith, an architec­tural historian who made a sub­mission to the Royal Commis­sion on the Reform of the House of Lords, argues that, although bishops should re­main “in the majority”, “an interdenominational and inter­faith college” would “broaden faith repres­en­tation”.

“Religious leaders would, there­fore, continue to widen debate by bringing moral and philosophical perspectives to stand alongside the political, economic, and financial judgements of other groups,” he writes.

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This Preamble gives an account of the decisions that led to the drawing up of the Anglican Communion Covenant. It also outlines the raison d’être for the Church of the Province of South East Asia’s agreement to sign the Anglican Communion Covenant. The historical events of the past decade which caused the ”˜torn fabric of the communion’ set the context in which the Province and the constituent Dioceses see the need for this process. It follows that this Preamble also expresses our expectations that the background which has given rise to the need for this are recognised by the Churches of the Anglican Communion and provides the milieu in which it is signed.

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The formation of the Anglican Ordinariate was a natural consequence of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s mismanagement of the crisis facing the Anglican Communion, the leaders of the Gafcon movement said in a statement released on May 10.

In a strongly worded communiqué summarizing the work of their April 25-28 meeting in Nairobi, the archbishops of the Gafcon movement, representing a majority of the church’s members, voiced their displeasure with the usurpation of authority by Dr. Williams and the staff of the Anglican Consultative Council and laid upon their door responsibility for the de facto schism within the communion.

While the 13-point communiqué touched on administrative issues for the Anglican reform movement, including the creation of a Nairobi and London offices, the appointment of Bishop Martyn Minns as Deputy Secretary, and the calling of a second Jerusalem conference in 2013, the heart of the letter came in a sustained attack on the actions taken by London-based instruments of the Anglican Communion.

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Tensions within Newcastle’s Anglican Diocese have deepened, stemming from a recommendation to defrock several Hunter priests.

Formal complaints have now been lodged against the city’s Bishop.

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Just as she was preparing to mail out information to the first group of Anglican participants taking an online suicide prevention course, Cynthia Patterson received a letter from a parishioner in an indigenous community in Eastern James Bay, Ont. A 15-year-old girl had hanged herself in her grandparents’ basement.

To Patterson, appointed coordinator of the Council of the North’s suicide prevention program in 2009, this only served to underscore the urgency of addressing the high incidence of suicide among the country’s aboriginal people.

This spring, about 20 ordained and lay, aboriginal and non-aboriginal volunteers from the diocese of Moosonee took part in “River of Life,” an online suicide awareness and prevention course developed by the Calgary-based Center for Suicide Prevention. Volunteers from the diocese of Keewatin are to follow next.

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Bishop Roger Ames was officially installed as the first bishop of the Anglican Diocese of the Great Lakes within the Anglican Church in North America on Saturday, April 30 at St. Luke’s Anglican Church in Fairlawn, Ohio. Archbishop Duncan, head of the Anglican Church in North America, presided over the service.

The Anglican Diocese of the Great Lakes is one of many stories of growth within the Anglican Church in North America, resulting, in part, from the Spirit-led call by Archbishop Duncan to plant 1000 new churches in five years.

The Great Lakes Diocese was formed in 2010 and includes 21 congregations in Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan. Ames has played a pivotal role in planting churches across the region.

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A fightback by repressive governments is putting at risk a historic struggle for freedom and justice in the Arab world, Amnesty International says.

Publishing its annual report, the rights group highlights the fight for control over communications technology.

It criticises Libya, Syria, Bahrain and Yemen for targeting peaceful protesters to stay in power.

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Egypt’s Christian minority looks toward the future with hope for greater freedoms for all citizens but continues to have some fear that the revolution will be hijacked by Muslim fundamentalists, said the Vatican’s nuncio to Egypt.

Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, the nuncio and former president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, spoke about the state of Christian-Muslim relations in Egypt just hours before Christians and Muslims clashed in one of Cairo’s poorest neighborhoods, leaving at least 12 dead and hundreds injured.

The revolution that led to the downfall of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in February and to promises of greater freedom brought young Muslims and Christians to the streets together, Archbishop Fitzgerald told Catholic News Service in Rome May 6.

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Make our hearts to burn within us, O Christ, as we walk with thee in the way and listen to thy words; that we may go in the strength of thy presence and thy truth all our journey through, and at its end behold thee, in the glory of the eternal Trinity, God for ever and ever.

Then the presidents and the satraps sought to find a ground for complaint against Daniel with regard to the kingdom; but they could find no ground for complaint or any fault, because he was faithful, and no error or fault was found in him. Then these men said, “We shall not find any ground for complaint against this Daniel unless we find it in connection with the law of his God.”

–Daniel 6:4-5

Charleston County was told today it has 60 days to pay back the $11.6 million it accepted to build the Interstate 526 expansion or the State Infrastructure Bank will take legal action.

Council Chairman Teddie Pryor has said that up to 200 staff members could be laid off and services cut to make up for a $10 million shortfall in its new budget because it decided not to build the expansion.

Police, emergency medical and other vital services will not be axed, but libraries, drainage-ditch cleaning and mosquito control could suffer, Pryor said.

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“Presbyterians join a growing Protestant movement of Lutherans, Episcopalians and United Church of Christ members who have eliminated official barriers to leadership by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons,” a coalition of pro-gay Presbyterians said in a statement.

The momentum of the gay clergy movement, however, may soon grind to a halt.

“There is not another denomination I see on the horizon right now that is on the cusp of this,” said Robert P. Jones, CEO of Public Religion Research Institute, a nonpartisan research and consulting firm.

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The goal of the new logic is clear: it is to bring the accused before a competent court. Anything else would not be mere attainder. How much that goal may have shaped the planning and execution of the Abbottabad operation is not clear, but if it did so we should not refer to the raid as an “assassination.” We have been told that the assault team was ready to recover its target alive if that should prove possible. If military arrest meets resistance, of course, military necessity requires it to be forcibly overcome, and if that costs the target’s life, the loss may be proportionate to the evil of leaving him at large. That the target was personally unarmed in this case need not be decisive if he was effectively defended by others, though how much resistance was actually offered has still not been made clear. Can this serve as an explanation of what happened? Perhaps. Yet on this account we might have expected to hear a word not very much used in recent days: it was surely a failed mission!

Christian citizens need not expect, and should not pretend to, total certainty about the rights and wrongs of this or any other public act. It is no part of God’s plan for their holiness or for their service of the neighbor that they must be all-knowing about the morality of what others have done, even when it is done in the name of the political community. Christians can be useful citizens, though, by being rather fussy about the justifications and explanations offered by political actors for their consumption and approval. Faced with extraordinary actions, they may demand thorough and coherent explanations on morally serious and law-regarding grounds. For myself, I am left thinking that whatever good account there is to be given of why bin Laden was killed, it has yet to be fully made public.

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I celebrate the birthday of the King James Version, and look forward to its continued use in public discourse, to inspire and to persuade. But I do not support legislation based on the Bible, or any effort to label America a Christian nation. And I say that as a proud and practicing Christian.

Our nation is well served by the Constitution’s guarantee of the free exercise of religion, which gives us unrestrained liberty to gather for worship and read the King James Version, or any other sacred text we want.

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