The affectionately named “Vicar of Baghdad”, Canon Andrew White, has been named as this year’s recipient of the prestigious International First Freedom Award for his extraordinary commitment to peace-keeping and religious freedom in Iraq.

Past winners include former British Prime Minister Tony Blair in 1999 for his efforts in the Northern Ireland peace process; former Czech President Václav Havel for his role in Charter 77 and the Velvet Revolution; as well as three-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee Father Elias Chacour, founder of Israel’s Mar Elias Educational Institutions.

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Florida-based Spirit Airlines has announced it will charge a $5 fee for passengers who ask an agent to print their boarding pass at the airport.

You can bypass the fee by checking in online and printing your own boarding pass, or by checking in at an airport kiosk — for now. (Starting next summer, boarding passes at airport kiosks will cost $1.)

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Twenty years into the Web, academic publishing has retained pretty much the same structures it had in the 19th century.

That’s the argument made by Dan Cohen, director of the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. Most journals, he notes, will not allow comments on articles. Pieces can’t be revised after publication. They’re locked up behind digital gates, so no one can link to them. And multimedia work? Forget it.

But much scholarship thrives outside that system, Mr. Cohen says, in formats like lengthy blog posts and the “gray literature” of conference papers. On Wednesday, the professor announced a new publishing platform to showcase the best of that online work….

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Dr (Tracey) Rowland, the author of Ratzinger’s Faith: the Theology of Pope Benedict XVI and Benedict XVI: A Guide for the Perplexed, said many commentators have observed an affinity between the Anglo-Catholic approaches to liturgy and the Pope’s own liturgical theology.

“In particular, (Pope Benedict) is very concerned about what he has variously described as ”˜parish tea party’ liturgy, ”˜pastoral pragmatism’, ”˜emotional primitivism’, ”˜Sacro-pop’ and ”˜utility music’,” Dr Rowland told an Anglican Ordinariate Festival in Melbourne on 11 June.

Dr Rowland, a former Anglican, said that, in her personal experience, the barriers to full communion with the Catholic Church are primarily cultural rather than doctrinal.

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Transitional Deacon Warren Tanghe’s path to the Catholic priesthood may have been long and winding, but the former Anglican priest will be open to all the gifts of the holy spirit as he is ordained June 24 at 6 p.m. in the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Baltimore.

“I prayed before my diaconate that the Lord would give me anything that was lacking in diaconal character,” said Deacon Tanghe, who was a member of the Anglican Church for 37 years. “I prayed that the Lord would renew and refresh those gifts he had already given me for diaconal ministry and that he would pour out upon me in their fullness anything that might be lacking. And that is my prayer going into the priesthood as well.”

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For the second year running, Anglicans in Zimbabwe have been forced to find another place to mark the memorial of African martyr Bernard Mizeki after being denied access to their official shrine.

Last year worshippers, who had travelled from all over the country, were driven away by the Zimbabwe Republic Police despite assurances from the government that they would not be disturbed or harassed.

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Methodist pastors who have increasingly defied a church ban on marrying gays were dealt a setback Wednesday when a colleague was found guilty in a church trial of marrying a lesbian couple in 2009.

A 13-person jury of clergy peers unanimously convicted The Rev. Amy DeLong of Osceola. The jury found the 44-year-old not guilty of a second charge of being a “self-avowed practicing homosexual.” That vote was 12-1.

After the verdicts were announced Wednesday afternoon, church officials began hearing a second round of testimony to help jurors recommend a penalty that could range from suspension to defrocking. At least five DeLong supporters were scheduled to testify.

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JAKARTA, Indonesia ”” The bang of a ceremonial gong opens festivities in a cavernous downtown office building here, where representatives from 56 U.S. colleges stand ready to peddle their wares.

The University of Cincinnati passes out pennants. At a booth for Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, three young Indonesians talk up their alma mater. And U.S. Embassy officials tout the 95% approval rate in Indonesia for student visas.

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The European Union (EU) risks “undermining its core values” unless it treats refugees and asylum-seekers more humanely, according to a senior Protestant expert.

“Two decades ago, most Europeans would never have believed people would be dying on Europe’s borders simply trying to get in,” said Torsten Moritz, executive secretary of the ecumenical Churches’ Commission for Migrants in Europe (CCME). “Yet thousands have died doing just that, especially in the Mediterranean, this year alone. This is really undermining our core values and having a de-humanizing effect on European society.”

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The Church of England has today submitted its response to the Government’s consultation on Civil Partnerships in Religious Premises.

A Church of England spokesman said: “Given the decision that Parliament has already taken to amend the Civil Partnership Act 2004 in the Equality Act 2010, the response focuses on the need to assure that the forthcoming regulations continue to provide unfettered freedom for each religious tradition to resolve these matters in accordance with its own convictions and its own internal procedures of governance…

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Liverpool will honour its service men and women this Saturday as part of British Armed Forces Day celebrations.

The service, starting at 11am, will take place in Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral and aims to show support for the men and women in the armed forces.

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They are the crown jewels of Greece’s socialist state, and they are now likely to go to the highest bidder: the ports of Piraeus and Thessaloniki; prime Mediterranean real estate; the national lottery; Greek Telecom; the postal bank and the national railway system.

And then comes the mandated deeper round of austerity measures, which will slash the wages of police officers, firefighters and other state workers who are protesting in Athens, and raise the taxes of citizens already inflamed by a recession-plagued economy and soaring joblessness.

After winning a pivotal confidence vote on his new cabinet on Tuesday, Prime Minister George Papandreou now has an even tougher task: to carry out a radical remedy of forced auctions and fiscal austerity for a sickened economy already in a deep slump.

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Our Lord asks, “which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone?”. If I ask, out of the deep longing of my heart, as Our Lord commands us to do, and the answer is No, it is very hard not to think that I have been given a stone.

CS Lewis writes in “The Weight of Glory,”

“”¦ if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

The problem is not that God has said No to the deepest longings of my heart.

The problem is that I have not longed deeply enough.

Our Lord says “If you, then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!”

I can’t imagine what those good things are, that surpass what I want.

But the poverty of my imagination does not limit the graciousness of my heavenly Father.

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Mara Hvistendahl is worried about girls. Not in any political, moral or cultural sense but as an existential matter. She is right to be. In China, India and numerous other countries (both developing and developed), there are many more men than women, the result of systematic campaigns against baby girls. In “Unnatural Selection,” Ms. Hvistendahl reports on this gender imbalance: what it is, how it came to be and what it means for the future.

In nature, 105 boys are born for every 100 girls. This ratio is biologically ironclad. Between 104 and 106 is the normal range, and that’s as far as the natural window goes. Any other number is the result of unnatural events.
Yet today in India there are 112 boys born for every 100 girls. In China, the number is 121””though plenty of Chinese towns are over the 150 mark. China’s and India’s populations are mammoth enough that their outlying sex ratios have skewed the global average to a biologically impossible 107. But the imbalance is not only in Asia. Azerbaijan stands at 115, Georgia at 118 and Armenia at 120.

What is causing the skewed ratio: abortion…

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In Deborah Brown’s family lore, the American South was a place of whites-only water fountains and lynchings under cover of darkness. It was a place black people like her mother had fled.

But for Ms. Brown, 59, a retired civil servant from Queens, the South now promises salvation.
Three generations of her family ”” 10 people in all ”” are moving to Atlanta from New York, seeking to start fresh economically and, in some sense, to reconnect with a bittersweet past. They include Ms. Brown, her 82-year-old mother and her 26-year-old son, who has already landed a job and settled there.

The economic downturn has propelled a striking demographic shift: black New Yorkers, including many who are young and college educated, are heading south.

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People of the Nuba Mountains region in Sudan are under armed assault from government forces, said the region’s Anglican bishop June 17 during an annual meeting of the American Friends of the Episcopal Church of Sudan.

“As many people have heard, it is really a genocide,” said the Rt. Rev. Andudu Elnail, Bishop of Kadugli and the Nuba Mountains for the Province of the Episcopal Church of Sudan. “There is no food for the people of Kadugli. There is no water.”

President Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir, a Sunni Muslim who came to power in 1989, wants Christians in the border region to migrate to the southern half of Sudan, which is more hospitable to Christianity and which will establish an independent government July 9.

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(ENS) As agriculture ministers from the Group of 20 (G20) nations meet in Paris, France, this week to discuss how to combat food shortage and soaring prices, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori has written to U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, urging “consideration of the needs of people in developing countries most affected by food insecurity.”

Jefferts Schori, noting that most of the Anglican Communion’s 80 million members live in developing countries, said: “The focus on food at this year’s G20 represents an important recognition by the world’s leaders that rising food prices present a potential crisis for areas of the world most affected by hunger and malnutrition, especially Africa and South and Southeast Asia.”

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Found here:

“These people have lived their lives with borrowed money,” [Attorney Sorrell] Trope said. “They have to stop spending. This isn’t the federal government.”

O Thou whose eye is over all the children of men, and who hast called them into a kingdom not of this world: Send forth thy Holy Spirit into all the dark places of life. Let him still the noise of our strife and the tumult of the people, carry faith to the doubting, hope to the fearful, strength to the weak, light to the mourners, and more and more increase the pure in heart who see their God; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

–James Martineau

When Samuel became old, he made his sons judges over Israel. The name of his first-born son was Jo’el, and the name of his second, Abi’jah; they were judges in Beer-sheba. Yet his sons did not walk in his ways, but turned aside after gain; they took bribes and perverted justice. Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah, and said to him, “Behold, you are old and your sons do not walk in your ways; now appoint for us a king to govern us like all the nations.” But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, “Give us a king to govern us.” And Samuel prayed to the LORD. And the LORD said to Samuel, “Hearken to the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them. According to all the deeds which they have done to me, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt even to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are also doing to you. Now then, hearken to their voice; only, you shall solemnly warn them, and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them.”

–1 Samuel 8:1-9

The strategic argument for a fast drawdown is premised on the claim that Al Qaeda is already crippled and therefore we have nothing to fear by pulling 10,000 or more troops out of Afghanistan this summer, another 10,000 early next year and 10,000 more by the end of 2012. If White House leaks are to be believed, some senior administration officials concluded that the counterinsurgency campaign launched only last year is a waste of time; all we need to do is rely on targeted air and commando strikes of the kind that have devastated Al Qaeda’s senior leadership in Pakistan.

What that argument misses is the extent to which our presence in Afghanistan enables us to project power into Pakistan. It was from Afghanistan, after all, that the Navy SEALs took off to kill Osama bin Laden. If we pull back in Afghanistan, the Taliban will gain ground and the willingness of the Afghan government to provide us the bases we need will decline. That, in turn, will make it markedly more difficult to keep the pressure on Al Qaeda and prevent it from regenerating itself as it has in the past.

Moreover, we shouldn’t get overly fixated on Al Qaeda….

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“For the last several months, the Vestry, the Wardens and I have been working and praying very hard to discern how best to meet the needs of the Parish and do the work we have been given to do in the name of Christ,” the letter [to the parish from the Rev. Rich Martindale] begins.

“At times, that discernment has been exhilarating; other times it has felt like a struggle.

“After consultation with the Bishop of Atlanta, the Wardens, and of course, my dear wife, my own portion of that discernment has led me to understand that the time has come for me to conclude my ministry to and with my friends at Trinity.”

Read it all and you may find the parish website here.

Singer has spent a lifetime justifying the unjustifiable. He is the founding father of the animal liberation movement and advocates ending “the present speciesist bias against taking seriously the interests of nonhuman animals.” He is also a defender of killing the aged (if they have dementia), newborns (for almost any reason until they are two years old), necrophilia (assuming it’s consensual), and bestiality (also assuming it’s consensual)….

For far too many years, Singer’s ill-conceived sophistry has been considered and debated by some of our country’s best minds. It’s time to end such silliness. Let’s assign a sophomore philosophy student to rebut his arguments and the rest of academia can move on to squashing the bad ideas being championed by morally and intellectually serious people.

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A temporary fix to the U.S. debt problems could be a sign that Washington’s final budget agreement will not be enough to meaningfully cut the nation’s deficit, Moody’s main analyst for the United States warned on Wednesday.

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The international basketball federation has decided to permit an Orthodox Jewish basketball player to cover her arms during competitions in accordance with her religious beliefs.

FIBA made the decision several weeks after point guard Naama Shafir, a member of the Israeli national women’s basketball team, said she would be unable to play in the sleeveless regulation jerseys worn by all players

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The Vatican is betting an iPod beats “Shush!” in lowering the tour guide noise level in basilicas.

It will even lend you one for free to try to prove its point.

From a tiny booth in the back of St. John in Lateran, the Holy See’s pilgrim agency has been quietly asking tourists if they want to tour Rome’s oldest basilica with an iPod in hand loaded with an app specially designed to access the place’s art, architecture and Christian history.

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New figures released Wednesday by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) show debt rising to 190 percent of the gross domestic product by 2035.

The annual long-term budget outlook forecasts a surge in public debt this year that will rise to 70 percent of GDP by the end of fiscal 2011, compared to 62 percent by the end of 2010.

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Check it out if you have not seen it. I had occasion to show it to a friend this morning who was moaning about the over 4 dollars he was paying in Connecticut, whereas whereas where I am in South Carolina we have the 3.30’s and 3.40’s/gallon–KSH.

Bishop Mouneer outlined his concerns for the church in a region that has seen popular uprisings against repressive governments.

The bishop said: ”˜If the Middle East is heading towards Islamic-based states with the application of the Sharia Law, the challenges facing Christians will include more restrictions on freedom. If the Middle East is heading towards real democracy based on the rights of citizenship, then Christians will have more options to be involved in building the future of the countries.’

In response to a question regarding what the international community could do, Bishop Mouneer said: ”˜The international community needs to ensure that citizens everywhere enjoy their full human rights. Governments that fail to provide these rights need to be challenged by the UN….

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We are now 22 dioceses stretching from Arctic Canada to the Rio Grande, and from Newfoundland to California. Three new dioceses were organized in preparation for this meeting of Provincial Council: the Mid-Atlantic, the Carolinas and the Southwest. A fourth, Cascadia ”“ originally built from congregations that had been under Recife and from congregations of the Reformed Episcopal Church ”“ sought change of status from diocese-in-formation to diocese. One Diocese has asked this Council for discharge, for recognition that its call as a diocese has been completed. The Diocese of the Holy Spirit grew out of the Missionary Convocation of Uganda. All of its congregations and clergy have now been dispersed to other dioceses and a remarkable chapter in our early history is closing. Holy Spirit’s bishop, John Guernsey, has been elected Bishop of the Mid-Atlantic, a diocese principally formed by parishes that had been under Nigeria (chiefly in CANA’s Anglican District of Virginia). But Mid-Atlantic also draws in some congregations that had been part of Southern Cone and others part of Uganda. In microcosm we see the transition from our early history of global protection and sponsorship toward domestic geographical coherence.

There are many evidences of God’s favor toward us, not because we deserve it, but because we continue to work so hard to align ourselves with His will. As this Provincial Council meets, I am announcing a re-organization of my team of advisors (my “cabinet”) to reflect where we are headed, rather than where we have been. This change is like the change represented in the diocesan stories just told. The Lead Bishops of the Common Cause Partnership ”“ representing all the jurisdictions and organizations out of which the Anglican Church in North America was gathered ”“ were the original Executive Committee of the Anglican Church in North America. Last June the transition was made to an Executive Committee of six clergy and six laity, chaired by the Archbishop. Yet because we are ”“ in the best Anglican fashion ”“ to be “episcopally led and synodically governed” [Lambeth Conference, 1930] the need for wisdom from Lead Bishops representing our jurisdictional and organizational roots caused me to retain a body that had literally led us together into unity. They ceased to be the Province’s Executive Committee, but became the Archbishop’s Cabinet.

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