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The security situation in Egypt has “deteriorated considerably” since former president Hosni Mubarak stepped down on Feb. 11, leaving a security vacuum and Christians feeling “threatened more than ever,” according to aid workers.

“Security is still not where it needs to be to give people a greater sense of personal safety. Undoubtedly, there has been an increase in the tensions between Muslims and Christians since Mubarak stepped down … All Egyptians, not just [Coptic Christians], feel more insecure these days,” said Jason Belanger of Catholic Relief. Christians make up about 10 percent of Egypt’s 80 million people. Copts are a branch of the Orthodox church.

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An Horry County judge recently awarded Krystal Renee Thornhill, pastor at Charity African Methodist Episcopal Church in Huger, a judgment of more than $3.3 million in the case. The trouble now is finding the man who took her money six years ago.

Thornhill met Theodore Collins at an annual church seminar in Myrtle Beach in 2005, where Collins presented a program called “Trust Your Church,” which encouraged people to invest with his Trust Management Associates….

Collins told Thornhill that the $99,000 she invested would accrue 35 percent returns annually and that she would receive $3,500 every 40 days, according to court filings. Bank records show that Thornhill’s money and another investor’s $1 million instead went into an account used to fund purchases such as airline and hotel reservations, meals at chain restaurants and furniture.

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Significant majorities of Americans say it is possible to disagree with their religion’s teachings on abortion and homosexuality and still remain in good standing with their faith.

The findings, released Thursday (June 9) in a detailed survey by Public Religion Research Institute, held true for major religious groups, including Catholics and white evangelical Protestants.

The findings reflect the complicated tasks faced by Catholic bishops to discipline politicians who stray from church teaching, or evangelical groups that try to toe a traditional line as cultural values shift around them.

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Computer modelling based on the Voyager insights suggests the edge of our Solar System is a froth of activity, like “an agitated jacuzzi”, said Eugene Parker from the University of Chicago, US.

Magnetic field lines carried in the “wind” of material coming off our star are breaking and reconnecting.

This process is sculpting the wind into discrete bubbles that are many tens of millions of kilometres wide.

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The US will still face high unemployment in 2020 except in “the most optimistic scenario for job creation”, according to a new report to be published on Friday.

America needs to create 21m new jobs to keep up with population growth, say analysts at the research arm of consultancy McKinsey, but that will only happen if the economic trends of the last decade are reversed.

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Companies that are looking for a good deal aren’t seeing one in new workers.

Workers are getting more expensive while equipment is getting cheaper, and the combination is encouraging companies to spend on machines rather than people.

“I want to have as few people touching our products as possible,” said Dan Mishek, managing director of Vista Technologies in Vadnais Heights, Minn. “Everything should be as automated as it can be. We just can’t afford to compete with countries like China on labor costs, especially when workers are getting even more expensive.”

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Homosexual relations are a sin, the Archbishop of the Church of the Province of Central Africa said last week, releasing a statement clarifying the province’s stand on the issue dividing the Anglican Communion.

Archbishop Albert Chama also said that his church’s continued interaction with those portions of the Anglican Communion that have sought to normalize same-sex relations should not be construed to mean the Central African church had endorsed the innovation.

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Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Lord Tebbit, the former Conservative minister who described the Church of England’s 1985 Faith in the City in report as “Marxist”, said: “No one would dispute the right of the Archbishop to make comments of a political kind in this area; it’s part of his job, I think, to do so. And he’s quite right there are policies of the Coalition for which nobody seemed to vote and policies for which people voted which are not being carried through by the Coalition. But that’s the problem of coalition.”

Speaking on the same programme, the Bishop of Oxford, the Rt Revd John Pritchard, said that Dr Williams was acting as “a critical friend” of the Government, and raising “issues which are of concern to the constituencies we represent.

“What he’s saying is . . . it has come to be [that] we have a speed and scale of change which is sometimes hard to cope with.”

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The problem, however, is not a lack of Americans who want to be nurses. It’s finding the schools that can teach them.

“There’s definitely a lot of people interested in nursing,” said Robert Rosseter, spokesman for the American Association of Colleges of Nursing.

“The number of students who met all the requirements but weren’t admitted was over 67,000 students last year [in U.S. nursing programs],” he said. “People do want in, but there just aren’t enough seats.”

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When I became a Catholic 20 years ago, it all seemed to me suddenly a rather ridiculous thing to do. Evensong was profoundly Anglican and therefore Protestant: how could you Catholicise it by sticking on to the end of it a “Benediction” celebrated with a monstrance containing an invalidly consecrated host? The whole thing was an illusion, irredeemably defective (what an ecclesial snob one could suddenly become). But what has happened to Evensong now? Now, it is the ordinariate’s evening office: it has the Pope’s blessing and validation: now it is effectively a Catholic liturgy, duly recognised and authorised. What I looked down on, the Pope has now affirmed, making me feel suddenly very foolish.

What the Pope, God bless him, has actually done is to re-appropriate a liturgy whose origins were in the first place entirely Catholic. As the Anglo-Catholic liturgist and divine Percy Dearmer (a friend of G K Chesterton) pointed out, the first Anglican Prayer Book “was not created in a vacuum, but derives from several sources. First and foremost was the Sarum Rite, or the Latin liturgy developed in Salisbury in the 13th century, and widely used in England. Two other influences were a reformed Roman Breviary of the Spanish Cardinal Quiñones, and a book on doctrine and liturgy by Hermann von Wied, Archbishop of Cologne.”

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Six-Word Memoirs: Video Story from SMITHmag on Vimeo.

This is wonderfully inspired! The website is here but BE WARNED–it is totally hypnotizing and addictive.

Courtship for the Christian, after all, isn’t a means of entertainment; it’s about discerning whether someone would make a good husband or wife. But the discussion is fraught with peril because it is tied up with deeper conversations about Christianity itself, about the tensions between law and grace, between justice and forgiveness.

The sexual past of a potential future spouse is important to know about because of the nature of marriage as a one-flesh union (Gen. 2:23”“24; Eph. 5:28”“33). Biblically speaking, marriage is not a partnership between two individuals who have compartmentalized off parts of their lives. The Apostle Paul dismisses any such notion with his radical statement that a husband’s sexuality does not belong to him but to his wife (1 Cor. 7:4), and vice-versa. In a very real sense, your spouse’s sexual past becomes part of your story, too.

Of course, the act itself, disconnected from the conjugal vow, does not create a marriage; otherwise, there would be no concept of “fornication” in the Scriptures. Even so, in the Christian perspective, there is no such thing as a casual sexual encounter….

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An Aberdeen church is expected to break away from the Church of Scotland following the decision to allow the appointment of gay ministers.

Gilcomston South Church in Union Street will formally vote on the issue at a later date.

The Kirk’s General Assembly last month voted to allow the induction of some gay ministers.

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Mark Shea points us here to see a letter to the editor which begins thus:

The lowest temperature this year was minus 22 in January, while on Tuesday, the high was 103 — a range of 125 degrees. We Minnesotans take that incredible diversity in stride like few other places in the world…..

Now consider–this is “the Letter of the Day” the paper says. What is he arguing for? Guess before you click–KSH.

Pour out upon us, O Lord, that same Spirit by which thy deacon Ephrem rejoiced to proclaim in sacred song the mysteries of faith; and so gladden our hearts that we, like him, may be devoted to thee alone; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Blessed art thou, O Lord God Almighty, the Ancient of Days, who hast set thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord upon the glorious throne of thy kingdom, exalted far above all peoples, all places, all times, eternally; that he who hath worn our flesh, and borne our manhood into the holy of holies, should henceforth pour down heavenly gifts upon his brethren, and be both our righteous judge and most merciful intercessor; to whom with thee, O Father, and thee, O Holy Spirit, one God, be ascribed all might, majesty, dominion, and praise, now and for ever.

And I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd. And I, the LORD, will be their God, and my servant David shall be prince among them; I, the LORD, have spoken. “I will make with them a covenant of peace and banish wild beasts from the land, so that they may dwell securely in the wilderness and sleep in the woods. And I will make them and the places round about my hill a blessing; and I will send down the showers in their season; they shall be showers of blessing. And the trees of the field shall yield their fruit, and the earth shall yield its increase, and they shall be secure in their land; and they shall know that I am the LORD, when I break the bars of their yoke, and deliver them from the hand of those who enslaved them.

Ezekiel 34:23-27

The UN nuclear watchdog is to report Syria to the Security Council over its alleged covert nuclear programme.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) voted to rebuke Syria on claims of an undeclared nuclear reactor.

The structure, which Syria has maintained was a non-nuclear military site, was destroyed by Israel in 2007.

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Mr Cameron hit back by insisting the Government was acting in a “good and moral” fashion.

Speaking during a visit to Northern Ireland, he said: “I am absolutely convinced that our policies are about actually giving people a greater responsibility and greater chances in their life, and I will defend those very vigorously.

“By all means let us have a robust debate but I can tell you, it will always be a two-sided debate.”

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…recent ecumenical contacts by [Hilarion Alfeyev, the] high-profile representative of the Moscow Patriarchate[,] is evidence that times are changing. Time after time, during meetings with evangelical leaders and others here in America, Hilarion has stressed that it is time for Orthodox leaders to cooperate with traditional Catholics, evangelical Protestants and others who are trying to defend ancient moral truths in the public square.

“I am here in order to find friends and in order to find allies in our common combat to defend Christian values,” said the 44-year-old archbishop, who became a monk after serving in the Soviet army. He also speaks six languages, holds an Oxford University doctorate in philosophy and is an internationally known composer of classical music.

For too long, Orthodox leaders have remained silent. The goal now, he said, is to find ways to cooperate with other religious groups that want to “keep the traditional lines of Christian moral teaching, who care about the family, who care about such notions as marital fidelity, as giving birth to and bringing up children and in the value of human life from conception until natural death.”

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A former Ludlow priest today revealed he is turning his back on the Church of England so he can lead the weddings of gay and mixed-religion couples.

Mark Townsend, from Leominster, said he had grown tired of the “creakiness and backwardness” of the church so he will join the Open Episcopal Church.

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Faced with a decision on how quickly to draw down troops, President Obama spoke by videoconference with Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Wednesday as his nominee for ambassador to Afghanistan cautioned against walking away from its 10-year-old war.

The U.S. must “ensure that the country doesn’t degenerate into a safe haven for al-Qaeda,” Ryan Crocker told skeptical lawmakers at his Senate confirmation hearing.

The White House, meanwhile, challenged the findings of a Senate Foreign Relations Committee probe of U.S. aid in Afghanistan. The panel’s Democrats issued a report saying that nearly $19 billion in aid over a decade has generated waste and corruption and been of limited success.

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Estimates of monthly GDP indicate that the only growth in the first quarter of 2011 was from February to March. After a temporary rise in March, the economy began sliding again in April, with declines in real wages, in durable-goods orders and manufacturing production, in existing home sales, and in real per-capita disposable incomes. It is not surprising that the index of leading indicators fell in April, only the second decline since it began to rise in the spring of 2009.

The data for May are beginning to arrive and are even worse than April’s. They are marked by a collapse in payroll-employment gains; a higher unemployment rate; manufacturers’ reports of slower orders and production; weak chain-store sales; and a sharp drop in consumer confidence.

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Check out all seven.

Already, in nine major cities tracked by Rosealea Yao, an analyst at market-research firm Dragonomics, real-estate prices fell 4.9% in April from a year earlier. Last year, prices in those nine cities rose 21.5%; in 2009, the increase was about 10%, as China started to recover from the global economic crisis, with much steeper increases toward the end of that year.

A downturn in property and apartment prices would harm Chinese industry and investment, and crimp consumer spending. China is a “housing-led economy,” says UBS economist Jonathan Anderson, who estimates that property construction alone accounted for 13% of gross domestic product in 2010, twice the share of the 1990s.

While China’s anticipated growth is still well above that of other large economies, any reduction could have deep consequences. The global economy is now even more dependent on China for demand for anything from commodities to luxury goods, given the tepid recovery in the U.S. and Europe’s continuing sovereign-debt problems.

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Photos of St George’s Church, Linwood, Christchurch–take a look.

St. Luke’s Episcopal Church abruptly closed its preschool and kindergarten after the school year ended two weeks ago, surprising faculty and parents. Up until the decision was made, the church had still planned to operate the coming school year, but several reasons contributed to the decision to close the 50-year-old school.

The church vestry, a 12-member board that oversees buildings and other assets of the parish, met after the school year ended. The director of St. Luke’s Preschool and Kindergarten had recently resigned, so it was a chance for the vestry to come together and reflect on where they were and where they were called to go, said the Rev. Anne Hodges-Copple, rector of St. Luke’s. After they made the decision to close, they sent a letter out to parents and quickly held another meeting to tell the teachers.

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Since there are [already] over 40 and counting, there is no way I am posting them all–check them out if you so desire.