(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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