(ACNS) The Anglican Communion Network for Inter Faith Concerns (NIFCON) has this week launched an exciting and valuable new resource to assist Anglicans and other Christians in their engagement with people of other faiths.

Generous Love: the truth of the Gospel and the call to dialogue ”“ an Anglican theology of inter faith relations was produced in 2008 by NIFCON members. The report, which formed the basis for work at the 2008 Lambeth Conference in this field, has become increasingly well-known over the last three years, and is becoming a bench-mark for involvement by Anglicans in inter faith relations throughout the Communion.

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St. Peter’s Episcopal Church is helping tornado victims get back on their feet through the use of a disaster emergency response trailer.

This trailer does not carry your usual non-perishable items. Instead, it is outfitted with heavy duty tools and equipment, such as chainsaws, nails, generators and power tools, for home repairs.

“Our parish stocked it with 50 pounds of nails and screws and other emergency needs, including first aid kits,” said Father Ray Waldon, parish priest at St. Peter’s.

Read more: The Daily Home – Church uses trailer to help tornado victims….

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You may find the key page here with many links.

People sometimes mock the idea of a committee producing a document, but with the King James Version it wasn’t like that. It was an exercise in collaborative scholarship. Many eyes, minds, hearts and voices all contributed, anticipating in a measure the way in which, today, international journals, seminars and conferences enable a rich conversation to take place and, sometimes at least, produce fresh insight and clarity.

In the first decade of the seventeenth century, then, many translators contributed to one Bible, intending that it should be the only one. I, in the first decade of the twenty-first century, have done the opposite. I have worked alone over many years to produce a translation of the New Testament, intending that this translation should be one of many.

When people ask me which version of the Bible they should use, I have for many years told them that I don’t much mind as long as they always have at least two open on the desk. It is, of course, better for everyone to learn Greek. The finest translations are still, basically, a matter of trying to play a Beethoven symphony on a mouth-organ.

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For more than 800 years, the University of Oxford has led the world in the study of the divine. For centuries, it has sat alongside Cambridge as the leading centre for the study of the Bible.

Now academics are considering a proposal to rebrand theology at Oxford as “religious studies” because of the growing demand from students who wish to study Islam, Hinduism and Judaism as well as Christianity.

The requirement to have an A level in religious studies to study religion at Oxford is also to be dropped.

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Labour unions hate right-to-work laws, and are hoping that the NLRB will undermine them. They should be careful what they wish for. The NLRB’s line of reasoning would make it potentially illegal to build a new factory in a right-to-work state if you already operate one in a heavily unionised state””creating a powerful incentive never to do business in a heavily unionised state in the first place. It would be safer to make things only in places like South Carolina, or perhaps south China.

The NLRB is an autonomous body, but its board members are appointed by the president. Under a Democratic president, American businesses expect a more pro-union line, but the agency’s recent militancy is shocking, reminiscent of “loony-left” posturing in Britain in the 1970s. Not only does the agency in effect claim the power to tell firms where they may build factories. It is also suing two states (Arizona and South Dakota) where voters have decided that workers should be guaranteed a secret-ballot election before their workplace is unionised. Mr Obama has so far said nothing about any of these cases. The president claims he understands business. Condemning the NLRB would be a good way to prove it.

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Mr. [John] Garcia survived two of the most dreadful fires any New York City firefighter has ever faced ”” the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001, and the fire at the 41-story former Deutsche Bank building, which was damaged on 9/11 and was being dismantled. Mr. Garcia was on a hose line alongside the two firefighters who died in the Deutsche Bank fire ”” Firefighters Robert Beddia and Joseph Graffagnino ”” and as a lieutenant and the officer on duty for Ladder 5, he was their immediate superior.

In the months and years following the Deutsche Bank fire, Mr. Garcia struggled to cope with the deaths of the two men. He told friends that he felt responsible, and by the time he retired in July 2009, he was found to be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

“One of the toughest things is when an officer loses a firefighter who’s under him,” said Frank McCutchen, 53, a retired firefighter and friend of Mr. Garcia’s who worked with him at Engine 24 and Ladder 5 in SoHo. “There’s nothing worse on the job. It’s like a parent losing a kid. You can’t get in his head to say, ”˜Hey, it’s not your fault.’ ”

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Part one is here and part two is there; listen to them both.

The persecuted Catholic Church in China needs and deserves the prayers of Catholics throughout the world, Pope Benedict XVI said.

“There, as elsewhere, Christ is living his passion” because of government restrictions and pressures on the church, the pope said May 18 at the end of his weekly general audience.

He asked Catholics everywhere to observe May 24, the feast of Our Lady Help of Christians, as a day of prayer for Catholics in mainland China. Pope Benedict established the annual day of prayer in 2007 when he wrote a letter to Catholics in China outlining ways to promote greater unity between those exercising their faith clandestinely and those participating in communities overseen by the government-backed Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association.

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O Lord Jesus Christ, who on the evening of the first Easter Day didst appear to thy disciples when they were afraid and didst speak to them thy word of peace: Grant to me thy servants that same holy peace, that I may walk henceforth in the light of thy presence and know the power of thy risen life, until I come to the joy of thy everlasting kingdom.

Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness, and patience, forbearing one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful.

–Colossians 3:12-15

From here:

We are looking forward to having Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali visit our diocese May 22-25 for a teaching mission. He is the former Bishop of the Diocese of Rochester in England and a recognized expert on the subject of Muslim-Christian relations. He is a native of Pakistan who converted to the Christian faith and then felt called to the ordained ministry. He will preach at St. Vincent’s Cathedral on Sunday, May 22, and lead a diocesan clergy day on Tuesday, May 24, at the Church of the Holy Apostles in Fort Worth. That evening, everyone is invited to hear him speak at the Will Rogers Center in Fort Worth’s cultural district. His theme is “Hold Fast: An Urgent Call to the Western Church.” The event begins at 6:30 p.m., and I hope you will come and bring friends with you.

The Covenant is a framework for just this mutual sibling encouragement and admonition around the pole of “recognizability.” This responsibility is in fact entailed in the very idea of “oversight,” of episcopacy. That is why bishops are not merely local administrators, but also constitute a worldwide collegium of stewards of the recognizability of the Gospel in the Church’s life and teaching. This is why, in the patristic era, there arose a custom that three bishops, ordinarily from neighboring dioceses, would participate in consecrations. The ministry of vouching for the catholic and apostolic nature of life and teaching was held by them jointly.

In other words, embedded in the very concept of a bishop is a ministry of recognizability beyond the merely local. A covenant of oversight for the sake of communion is implied by episcopacy itself. This ministry, to be sure, is best exercised in a flexible manner that provides for discernment over time and gathering in council. (The Covenant presents such opportunities in abundance, which makes the accusations of quasi-Romanism so extraordinary.)

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The Episcopal Church’s national office has given a backhanded blessing to the practice of allowing those not baptized to receive Holy Communion””a practice forbidden by canon law.

Supporters of Communion without Baptism (CWOB) have argued that relaxing the church’s Eucharistic discipline will serve as a recruiting tool for those outside the faith. However, traditionalists have rejected the practice as uncanonical and contrary to church teaching.

Last month the Episcopal Church Office of Congregational Vitality posted a video to the national church’s website highlighting the ministry of parish of St Paul & the Redeemer in Chicago. The congregation “exemplifies transformative work,” the Rev. Bob Honeychurch, the Episcopal Church’s officer for congregational vitality, said, adding that the parish “sees its primary point of contact with the wider community through its Sunday morning experience. The worship becomes its witness to the world.”

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Secularism is moving slowly in America, but the story of religious belief and practice here looks even more complex if one takes a long view. More than 60% of Americans belong to some formal religious body today. In the late 18th century, that number was less than 10%.

Any intellectually serious program in secular studies will avoid triumphalism and deal with the complexity of secularism’s history. It will know that the recent history of Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand is not the history of all humanity. It will also acknowledge that there is not merely one variety of secularism””some secularists have strong beliefs in paranormal phenomena, which disgusts other secularists. A serious program will also acknowledge that some of the best work on secularism has been done by Christians, foremost among them the Catholic philosopher Charles Taylor.

A few years down the line, how can we know that secular studies at Pitzer is living up to its promise? One sign: If some of its students come in as devout atheists or agnostics and leave as religious believers.

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(ACNS) Today, Friday, the Commission looked particularly at the mandate given to it, which is to engage in theological dialogue and reflection with the tasks of:

– Re-examining how the goal (to seek “restoration of complete communion in faith and sacramental life” is to be understood today
– Presenting the work of ARCIC II for reception
– Continuing to work in the established dialogue method
– Discussing the Church as communion, local and universal, and
– How in communion the local and universal Church discern right ethical teaching

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Since my area of specialization in research is eschatology, I have gotten a lot of questions about a certain individual (and his entourage of followers) getting a lot of press this past little while for stating the time of the end of the world (he thinks it is soon). I refuse to post stories on this because I am not going to give him/his group any more publicity.

So if Jesus says he doesn’t know, and if history is littered with examples of people who have confidently predicted the day with certainty and later were shown to be wrong, why should we presume to say we know? That it is coming and that it is coming “soon” we can be sure, the New Testament is quite clear on that. But as for when exactly, we don’t know. I do not know. Part of being a dependent creature is to admit there are things we simply do not know–that isn’t a bad thing, it is actually a key part of Christian witness–KSH.

Bishop Danbinta spoke on Thursday in a sermon at the opening of the first session of the 10th Synod of Remo Anglican Diocese….[He] disclosed that it was becoming increasingly difficult for Christians to openly carry the Bible in some areas in the North.

Although he did not mention such places, the Kaduna-born bishop said he had had nasty experiences of hostility against adherents of the Christian faith in Kano and Zamfara states, where he is currently a bishop.

“Those of you who are Christians in the South here do not know what it really means to be Christians. In the North, we live daily preparing to be killed for the sake of Jesus Christ. And we suffer a lot for Christ sake….”

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In the end, there does not seem to be any single explanation for the church attack and the other recent incidents of violence. What is clear is that a confluence of forces””an army seeking the opportunity to consolidate power, remnants of a regime stirring havoc, a cabinet with little authority of its own, radical Islamists aspiring to an Islamic State, and deep-rooted currents of social intolerance that Egypt has long failed to confront””have created a situation in which the Copts, among other groups, have become particularly vulnerable. As the economy plummets, financial woes may lead to more instability””prices have already risen, and on the streets people are complaining they have no work. Reports indicate that many are already resorting to theft to feed their families.

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A US man who was paralysed from the chest down after being hit by a car is now able to stand with electrical stimulation of his spinal cord.

Rob Summers, from Oregon, said standing on his own was “the most amazing feeling”.

He can voluntarily move his toes, hips, knees and ankles and also walk on a treadmill while being supported, according to research in the Lancet.

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The Principal of Pusey House, Oxford, the Revd Jonathan Baker, is to resign as a Freemason after being encouraged by the Archbishop of Canterbury to reconsider his membership before his consecration as the next Bishop of Ebbsfleet.

It was announced earlier this month…that Mr Baker would be one of the two new Provincial Episcopal Visitors, to replace Mgr Andrew Burnham, a leader of the RC Ordinariate, who seceded in January.

Mr Baker, who recently served as an Assistant Grand Chaplain to the Freemasons, posted a statement on the Ebbsfleet website last Friday, the day when he was contacted by a Sunday newspaper. He said that he had joined as a lay undergraduate in Oxford, and had found it to be “an organisation admirably committed to community life and involvement with a record of charitable giving second to none, especially among, for example, unfashionable areas of medical research”.

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…anyone surveying the cultural and political scene with a dispassionate eye would surely have to come to other conclusions: the general erosion of the instance of life-long marriage in North America and Europe, the rise in divorce rates, and the concomitant upsurge in the number of single-parent families, are all well-known to us in secular discussions, but are by no means absent from church-attending, or indeed Protestant clerical, families.

Only a short time ago, for instance, the clergy of the Diocese of Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts received a mailing calmly announcing that one of their suffragan bishops was undergoing a divorce.

One could not but be struck by the air of enforced “normalcy” and psychological adjudication that hung over this letter – no regrets, no confessions, no distress even, and certainly no reference to either bible or Christian tradition: just an insistence that the couple had been “faithful in caring for … each other” in the past, but were now “clear” about the fact that their marriage was “ending.”

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In Denmark, sperm donation does not have to come with a name and telephone number – unlike in Britain and in a fast-increasing number of other European countries.

That has made Denmark something of a Mecca for foreign women who want to conceive by artificial insemination, because it has no shortage of officially screened and tested semen.

Danish clinics which provide insemination (often for a fraction of the price of similar treatment in the UK) have three main types of customer: lesbian couples, heterosexual couples and single women. It is the final category which is growing – by far – the fastest.

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Almighty God, who in a rude and barbarous age didst raise up thy deacon Alcuin to rekindle the light of learning: Illumine our minds, we pray thee, that amid the uncertainties and confusions of our own time we may show forth thine eternal truth, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

O Lord God, who hast revealed in holy Scripture what conquests faith has made both in doing, and in suffering: Grant us no smaller faith than that which overcometh the whole world, that Jesus thy Son is God, very God from the beginning, the First and the Last, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, world without end.

If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

Colossians 3:1-4

Somehow oh so appropriate for the easter season–KSH.

Communist China has earned praise in the past few years for a perceived thaw in its strict opposition to religious observance””particularly Christianity. A visitor to China will see Christian churches out in the open; a printing facility in Nanjing is the largest Bible publisher in the world. There is the appearance, at least, of a faith that is free and tolerated.

This helps explain some of the shock over a series of brutal crackdowns that have come as startling departures. Over Easter, Chinese authorities escalated their campaign against a Protestant “house church,” Shouwang, detaining dozens of believers and placing hundreds more under house arrest for the “crime” of worshipping in a public square. And late last month, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) released its annual report, which flagged several incidents of horrific abuses of Christians in China”‹”””‹including “disappearances,” beatings, the destruction of churches, and forced “re-education through labor.”

But these two trends are not in fact contradictory. The “thaw” in China’s treatment of Christians was nothing more than a savvy and sophisticated new twist on its longstanding assault on religious freedom….

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One might wonder if it’s foolish optimism that has gathered 10 Anglicans and seven Catholics of the Anglican-Catholic dialogue commission in northern Italy today, to begin the third session of the decades-long dialogue between the two groups.

The obstacles separating Anglicans and Catholics are steeper than they’ve been in years, with Anglicans forging ahead on the ordination of women and homosexuals, despite the dismay of some within the Communion. Catholics, meanwhile, have been accused of “fishing in Anglican ponds,” since Benedict XVI established a new ecclesial structure for Anglicans to enter Catholic communion en masse.

But, nestled within the ecumenical monastic community of Bose, Italy, the 17 ecumenically minded men and women are, according to the Catholic co-chair of the the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC), devoted to an ultimate aim that “must remain the same.”

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Swiss voters rejected a proposal to ban assisted suicide and suicide tourism in the Canton (political district) of Zurich.

In a referendum on Sunday, about 85% of voters in Zurich rejected a proposal to end legalized assisted suicide while about 78% rejected a proposal to stop the practice of suicide tourism by foreigners in their Canton.

Two conservative political parties, the Evangelical People’s Party and the Federal Democratic Union, supported the referendum, promoting palliative care as the best option to care for seriously ill people at the end of their lives. The groups argued that the presence of assisted suicide clinics run by the Exit and Dignitas organizations, and their promotion of suicide tourism, damages Zurich’s image.

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Religious and human rights activists are asking U.S. churches to invite Jewish and Muslim clergy to their sanctuaries to read from sacred texts next month in an initiative designed to counter anti-Muslim bigotry.

The June 26 initiative, called “Faith Shared: Uniting in Prayer and Understanding,” is co-sponsored by the Interfaith Alliance and Human Rights First. Leaders of the two Washington-based groups said the event hopes to demonstrate respect for Islam in the wake of Quran burnings in recent months.

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