Tuesday, September 9, 2008, at 6:05 PM:

Please see below, information about the movie FIREPROOF coming in two weeks. Please make plans to see it (great date-night movie) and talk with your friends and family about it. The success of the movie will largely depend on word of mouth since they haven’t been able to do a great deal of advertising. I have seen the movie and it is excellent! You won’t be disappointed.

Please check out their website and see the trailer and other resources.
http://www.fireproofthemovie.com

Blessings,
Bill

The service will be held at the Cathedral of Praise; please continue to pray especially for the family and the four children.

[For background on this tragic death please read here, there, there and here]

Churches in northern Minnesota are part of a presbytery that voted in favor in February. The presbytery in southern and western Minnesota voted against it in April.

“There is more and more ambiguity within the culture and within the church on topics like human sexuality,” said the Rev. Paul Detterman, the executive director of Presbyterians for Renewal, a group that opposes the change in ordination standards. “It does nothing to clarify questions that people are asking. What it basically also does is it removes a national standard for ordination, and it makes this much more of a territorial issue.”

Detterman conceded the measure is likely to pass. His group of opponents will meet in Minneapolis in late August to consider next steps. He said if the vote is about inclusivity, he hopes that will also will extend to accepting Presbyterians who disagree on the matter, and he says leaving the church would be a last resort.

Read it all.

“The voting results surprised me,” [Jack] Marcum, of the denomination’s Research Services. “After more than three decades of disagreements over homosexuality and ordination, I hadn’t seen any trends suggesting that 2011 would be the decisive year.”

The denomination’s researchers have been tracking opinion on the subject for decades. While they’ve phrased the question differently over time, the trend line is clear: From the 1970s through 2001, a majority of pastors, elders and members opposed gay ordination, according to Marcum.

But the margins narrowed over time, particularly among pastors.

Read it all.

Companies looking to do business in secret once had to travel to places like the Cayman Islands or Bermuda.

Today, all it takes is a trip to Vermont.

Vermont, and a handful of other states including Utah, South Carolina, Delaware and Hawaii, are aggressively remaking themselves as destinations of choice for the kind of complex private insurance transactions once done almost exclusively offshore. Roughly 30 states have passed some type of law to allow companies to set up special insurance subsidiaries called captives, which can conduct Bermuda-style financial wizardry right in a policyholder’s own backyard.

Read it all.

Elizabeth Lorch, a professor of psychology at the University of Kentucky and one of the authors of that study, also studied children’s ability to comprehend televised stories. While children with A.D.H.D. were able to recall facts from the stories they watched just as well as other children, there was a difference in their ability to understand the narrative and to separate out what was important.

“Why did an event happen, why did a character do this ”” that’s where the comprehension and recall of children with A.D.H.D. tends to fall down,” she said.

Her co-author Richard Milich, also a professor of psychology at the University of Kentucky, suggested that besides the primary implications of this problem for academic performance, this finding may also shed light on social difficulties.

“This inability to see causal relations may affect this social problem we’ve known for 30 years,” he said. “These kids have dramatic social problems. They’re highly rejected by their peers.”

Read it all.

You can check here and there. This is what stood out to me:

1863–Confederate General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson (age 39) died 8 days after being shot by friendly fire at Chancellorsville, Virginia.

1886–Karl Barth (died 1966), Swiss theologian, was born.

1940–German forces have invaded Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg by air and land….In London, it has been announced that Winston Churchill will lead a coalition government after Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain said he was stepping aside.

Colleges and universities have long offered majors in religion or theology. But with more and more people now saying they have no religion, one college has decided to be the first to offer a major in secularism.

Starting this fall, Pitzer College, a small liberal arts institution in Southern California, will inaugurate a department of secular studies. Professors from other departments, including history, philosophy, religion, science and sociology, will teach courses like “God, Darwin and Design in America,” “Anxiety in the Age of Reason” and “Bible as Literature.”

The department was proposed by Phil Zuckerman, a sociologist of religion, who describes himself as “culturally Jewish, but agnostic-atheist on questions of deep mystery.” Over the years he grew increasingly intrigued by the growth of secularism in the United States and around the world. He studied and taught in Denmark, one of the world’s most secular countries, and has written several books about atheism.

Read it all.

Celebrities including the author Sir Terry Pratchett and the actor Sir Patrick Stewart have backed a campaign to allow terminally ill patients to receive help to die.

But a new poll found 70 per cent of disabled people were concerned that such a reform would create pressure on vulnerable patients to “end their lives prematurely”.

The survey for Scope, the leading disability charity, also found 3 per cent of the 500 disabled people questioned in the ComRes poll feared that they would personally come under pressure to commit suicide if the law were changed.

Read it all.

Try this on for a Holy Week discipline: Arrive at your parish at 9 p.m. Maundy Thursday and stay there until 10 a.m. Good Friday. Fill those hours with 30-minute segments of silence, music, silence, minimal light ”” and listening to a live reading of Dante’s Inferno.

St. Philip’s in the Hills Church in Tucson, Ariz., has done this for three years running, and the program grows in popularity each year, says the Rev. Greg Foraker, a transitional deacon and assistant to the rector.

This year the service involved 59 volunteers and drew 150 people. People come and go during the overnight service.

“Some people do come and stay the entire night,” Foraker said. “Some stay for two or three hours.”

Read it all.

(The Episcopal Church Office of Public Affairs)

College For Bishops announces endowment campaign to insure future health, wellness, education of Episcopal bishops

The College for Bishops has announced the formation of a $15 million endowment campaign to insure the future of the organization, which is designed to provide education and formation for Episcopal bishops in all stages of their ministry.

The campaign, Endowing a Sustainable Future, is chaired by the Rt. Rev. F. Clayton Matthews, Bishop for Pastoral Development and Managing Director of the College for Bishops. He is joined by a group of 30+ other bishops from throughout the United States.

“Through its myriad of programs, offerings, and educational enrichment sessions, the College for Bishops has proven to be invaluable for our bishops, which in turn has greatly benefitted clergy and laity,” explained Bishop Matthews. “Our goal now is to make sure that these offerings are available for future generations of Episcopalians.”

The mission of the College for Bishops is to provide opportunities for education and formation that will strengthen bishops in their personal lives, as diocesan leaders in God’s mission and in their vocation in service to the Episcopal Church.

——————————–
About the College For Bishops

The College for Bishops was created in 1993 in response to a specific need to strengthen the Episcopal Church’s bishops. The College for Bishops received non-profit status in 2010.

The College for Bishops provides the only formal resource to engage and guide bishops in the Episcopal Church and some parts of the Anglican Communion in the formation of their episcopal ministry. It can take a minimum of three years for a newly-ordained bishop to become comfortable in his or her new role.

Since the health of bishops, clergy and congregations are tied together, through the College, bishops develop vision and resources to deepen their own and the Church’s sense of mission thereby giving them the ability to sustain the benefit of forming and supporting clergy and equipping laity within dioceses.

Among the programs: 90 Day Companion Program for a newly-elected bishops; New Bishops and Spouses’ Conference; Living Our Vows Program, a canonically mandated three-year transitional resource program; Short Courses, Small Group Studies and Continuing Education; CREDO for Bishops

“I have found the work of the College for Bishops to have had an immensely positive impact not only on bishops, but on the functioning of the entire Church,” Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori has noted. “I believe that it is essential to secure the future of this program in order to ensure the continued educational and formational growth of episcopal leaders in a community environment.”

Greetings in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ!

Thank you very much for your messages and prayers for us as we go through this difficult time.

With great sadness, I would like to tell you about the tragic situation in Imbaba, Giza. Imbaba is a densely populated area, a few kilometres south of Cairo. Over the past two days, there have been clashes in this area between Christians and Muslims. The outcome ofthe clashes was the death of 12 people, and more than 232 injured. Moreover, several houses and shops were burnt, cars were destroyed, and the church of st. Mary, in the same area, was completely burnt.

The clashes started because of a rumour that a Christian woman who converted to Islam was being hidden by Mar Mina Coptic Orthodox Church. As a result of this rumour, a group of Muslim fundamentalists that belong to the Salafi sect gathered around the church, and wanted to go inside to search for this woman. Young people from the church prevented them from entering, because they were afraid that they may burn the church as it happened a few weeks ago in Sole, Giza.

Read it all.

Gracious Lord, we remember that thou didst accompany thy two disciples as they journeyed to Emmaus. Do thou go with us, O Lord, on our journey through this world. Guide us, uphold us, strengthen us; make our hearts to burn within us; and evermore manifest thyself to our souls in gracious and heavenly power. For thine own name’s sake we ask it.

And he went down to Caper’na-um, a city of Galilee. And he was teaching them on the sabbath; and they were astonished at his teaching, for his word was with authority. And in the synagogue there was a man who had the spirit of an unclean demon; and he cried out with a loud voice, “Ah! What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be silent, and come out of him!” And when the demon had thrown him down in the midst, he came out of him, having done him no harm. And they were all amazed and said to one another, “What is this word? For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits, and they come out.”

–Luke 4:31-36

Today in 1265 Dante Alighieri was born; you can read the other entries here.

The nation’s largest Presbyterian denomination is on the brink of removing its longstanding ban on ordaining non-celibate gays and lesbians.

The decisive vote could come as soon as Tuesday at a meeting of the Presbytery of the Twin Cities Area in Minnesota. Or possibly in Western Kentucky.

A yes vote in either place would mark the 87th presbytery ”” making a majority of the regional governing bodies in the Louisville-based church ”” to ratify a proposed constitutional amendment. It would remove the denomination’s historic ban on ordaining anyone in a sexual relationship outside of a heterosexual marriage. The ban applies to potential pastors, elders and deacons.

Read it all.

The sounds of Helen Reddy’s 1972 anthem to the women’s liberation movement, “I Am Woman,” filled the Irvine hotel ballroom where several hundred participants gathered Saturday for the American Muslim Women’s Empowerment Conference.

The song selection was fitting because the message speakers gave was basically the same as it was four decades ago: Know your rights, and exercise them.

But there was an added twist: By standing up for their rights inside and outside the home, American Muslim women can be a force against religious and political extremism.

Read it all.

Historic Christ Church, a prominent Savannah fixture since Georgia’s colonial days, now is divided in a bitter legal dispute over its future sparked by an argument about homosexuality that has riven Episcopal churches nationwide.

The congregation, which proudly embraces its nickname, “The Mother Church of Georgia,” has been wrangling over the ownership of its property in the heart of downtown Savannah ever since 87 percent of the members voted to split with the Episcopal Church in 2007. They were among dozens of congregations that broke away from the denomination in the years after the national group affirmed its first openly gay bishop.

On Monday the divided church membership battled in Georgia’s Supreme Court over who owns the $3 million property and the building. Many legal observers believe the case could reach the U.S. Supreme Court.

Read it all.

Georgia’s top court is trying to sort out who gets to own Christ Church, the state’s oldest church, in a contest that grew out of conservatives’ disagreement with the national Episcopal denomination’s decision to have an openly gay bishop.

Monday morning, the pews were packed with bishops, clergy and parishioners as the Supreme Court heard oral arguments. The court’s justices peppered lawyers for both sides about which documents to rely on in sorting out ownership of the building.

The church was formed in 1733, and Georgia’s founder, James Oglethorpe, granted the land where it sits, on the edge of one of Savannah’s shaded squares. Among its early priests were John and Charles Wesley, authors of dozens of hymns and the Methodist movement.

Read it all.

Guess first please and then read it all.

(Really sharp blog readers may remember I asked this question in November 2010 but the percentage has changed since then–KSH).