If we continue as now seems likely, a crunch is coming ”“ in fact three crunches ”“ our global footprint greatly exceeding what the Earth can support, climate destabilisation becoming severe, and fresh water becoming insufficient to feed the Earth’s large population. These crunches will not, by themselves, destroy humanity but they will cause a Darwinian situation; when the going gets tough there will be survival of the fittest. By mid-century, the Earth could be like a lifeboat that’s too small to save everyone.

To be politically correct, organisations don’t use the term ”˜Darwinian’ or talk about ”˜survival of the fittest’, but I am increasingly finding that at elite dinner parties there is already discussion of who the survivors will be. China has enormous fighting spirit and will soon be the world’s largest economy. In 2030 it will have 1.4 billion people. The average footprint of a Chinese person is a small fraction of an average American. The Chinese government does more detailed future planning than perhaps any other government and is determined that China will be one of the survivors. China has been buying the steel and resources it will need in the future. To the largest extent possible it has already cornered the market in rare Earth metals needed for high technology.

The USA combined with Canada will be a survivor, because it is economically powerful and resourceful, and with Canada it has a large amount of land, much of which will benefit from global warming ”“ the breadbasket of the future. Europe, in my mind, is a question mark. Japan will struggle….

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A decision by Prime Minister Najib Razak to meet with Pope Benedict XVI on Monday signals a wish to mend ties with Malaysia’s Christians following a series of incidents, including the firebombing of churches, that have strained interfaith relations in this Muslim-majority nation, analysts say.

Mr. Najib is scheduled to visit Benedict at Castel Gandolfo, the pope’s summer residence near Rome, for talks that are expected to touch on the possibility of Malaysia establishing diplomatic relations with the Vatican.

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The segment description is as follows:

Fr Joseph Marious is a priest with the young Uganda-based congregation, the Apostles of Jesus. Originally from Juba in South Sudan, he worked in the Nuba mountains as a missionary before coming to Rome, where he’s studying at the Pontifical Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies. He talked to Philippa Hitchen about his hopes for the birth of the new nation and about the ongoing plight of the people in the resource-rich Nuba mountain region….

Listen to it all (about 11 1/3 minutes).

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, hosted a roundtable meeting on South Sudan today at Lambeth Palace, with participants from government, NGOs, churches, media and academia.

The meeting, chaired by Baroness Kinnock, focused on the links between large scale development needs of the world’s newest state, and ongoing governance, peace and security issues. The Archbishop spoke about the urgent need for peace dividends to be delivered in South Sudan in education and health, in order to foster long term peace.

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U.S. employers have added 757,000 jobs to their payrolls in the first half of this year. That actually wouldn’t be so bad if there weren’t so many people out of work. The June unemployment rate of 9.2% was well above the 5% it logged in December 2007, when the recession got under way.

What would it take to get the unemployment rate back down to 5%? Much stronger growth in jobs ”” or a whole lot of time. Here’s a back-of-the-envelope calculation….

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This is the video mentioned in the prior audio piece from Vatican Radio. Watch it all–KSH.

Herewith the accompanying blurb:

The Anglican archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams and the Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols are to host an international conference on the Holy Land next week, aimed at raising awareness of the plight of Christians there.

The conference, to be held on Monday and Tuesday at Lambeth Palce in London, includes Anglican and Catholic bishops from many different countries, together with Jewish and Muslim delegates who will stress the vital role that Christians continue to play in the land where Christ was born.

The head of Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, Cardinal Jean Louis Tauran will be representing the Holy See at the conference, while the delegation of Christian leaders from Jerusalem will be headed by Latin Patriarch Fouad Twal and Anglican bishop Suheil Dawani.

Listen to it all (about 7 minutes).

To properly remember September 11, 2001, I would like to encourage all Churches in the Diocese to:

– See this Sunday as an opportunity to invite the First Responders and their families to your church
– Invite Honor Guards to participate in your Sunday service (most police, fire and EMS departments have Honor Guards, as well as the Armed Serves and ROTC who would be honored to participate in your service)
– Have special prayers for those who continue to protect us
– Have a reception after the service to thank the First Responders and their families for the job they do every day in your community

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Half of Charleston County’s high schools face a daunting challenge in educating the new crop of freshmen they will welcome this fall.

Twenty percent of their ninth-graders won’t be able to read better than a fourth-grader, but those students will be expected to learn and perform at a high-school level. Many of these teenagers likely will struggle to simply read the words on their teachers’ SmartBoards, much less understand and analyze the information being conveyed.

The Charleston County School Board recognized the severity of this problem last year by declaring literacy its top priority. Their decision followed a series of Post and Courier stories that revealed nearly 20 percent of the county’s ninth-graders read on a fourth-grade level or worse.

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Her career trajectory shifted early in 2008, after Ryan’s contract was not renewed and Pia Sundhage became the United States coach. Sundhage made a simple calculation: nobody wins anything in soccer without a capable goalkeeper. And [Hope] Solo was ”” is ”” considered by many to be the best female keeper in the world.

“Whatever happened in 2007, I respectfully listened to the stories,” Sundhage said. “I asked them not to forget ”” because probably that’s impossible ”” but I wanted them to forgive going forward. This team is not about one player or an individual. It’s about the team.”

Read it all (my emphasis).

Almighty God, who by the washing of water and the Word hast made us members of the mystical body of thy dear Son: Grant us grace, we beseech thee, to continue steadfastly in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and the prayers; that united in love one to another we may with one mind and one mouth glorify thee, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

“Brethren, sons of the family of Abraham, and those among you that fear God, to us has been sent the message of this salvation. For those who live in Jerusalem and their rulers, because they did not recognize him nor understand the utterances of the prophets which are read every sabbath, fulfilled these by condemning him. Though they could charge him with nothing deserving death, yet they asked Pilate to have him killed. And when they had fulfilled all that was written of him, they took him down from the tree, and laid him in a tomb. But God raised him from the dead; and for many days he appeared to those who came up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, who are now his witnesses to the people. And we bring you the good news that what God promised to the fathers, this he has fulfilled to us their children by raising Jesus; as also it is written in the second psalm, ‘Thou art my Son, today I have begotten thee.’

–Acts 13:26-33

Less than a week after South Sudan celebrated its long-awaited independence, Bishop Andudu Adam Elnail of the Episcopal Diocese of Kadugli has said it is “devastating and saddening” to learn that his people of the South Kordofan region, “friends, brothers and sisters, children, my flock, have been killed mercilessly and are lying now in mass graves in Kadugli.”

Elnail was responding to the Enough Project’s Satellite Sentinel report that revealed the extent of the atrocities committed along the north-south border in recent weeks and identified what it says are three vast excavated sites used to dump the bodies of those who’ve been slaughtered.

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Some will cite the 2003 General Convention, which approved the Episcopal Church’s first openly gay bishop, as the turning point, and The Episcopal Church Annual again shows an important decline (see p. 21): we have lost more than 250,000 baptized members (from 2,284,233 to 2,006,343) and 325 parishes and missions (from 7,220 to 6,895). “Episcopal Congregations Overview” records that 89 percent of Episcopal congregations reported conflicts or disagreements in the last five years, and adds: “The ordination of gay priests or bishops was the most frequently mentioned source of conflict” (p. 3).

But the essential elements of decline began in the mid-1970s. In 1970, TEC had an all-time high of 3,475,164 members. Within five years, it had lost nearly half a million, down to 3,039,136 (Episcopal Church Annual, p. 21). In the four decades since then, we bled out more than one-third of our members. Some will blame this drastic period of anemia on divisions over women’s ordination, prayer book revision and even fallout from the civil rights movements of the 1960s, but it is probably not that simple either. A massive loss between 1970 and 1975 occurred before the height of divisions over women’s ordination and prayer book revision….

Our many-faceted attempts to scramble for some method that will recharge, reawaken and revitalize the church are simply not working. What are we to do?…

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He first noted that New York passed the legislation, “hauntingly, on the Feast of the Birth of John the Baptist, whom King Herod would behead because the saint dared to defend the God-given truth about marriage.”

Then he offered a variety of reflections, ranging from gratitude for “those courageous millions who valiantly fought this unfortunate project of social engineering” to worry over the future of religious freedom in New York.

“If the experience of those few other states and countries where this is already law is any indication, the churches, and believers, will soon be harassed, threatened, and hauled into court for their conviction that marriage is between one man, one woman, forever, bringing children into the world,” he said.

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Several states have passed laws requiring affiliates of online retailers like Amazon (AMZN) to collect and remit sales taxes. “Amazon tax” laws have passed in California, New York, Colorado, Rhode Island, North Carolina, Connecticut and Illinois. Lawmakers have tried in at least 14 other states.

But in nearly every case, online retailers have cut ties with their state affiliates. Residents can still buy from the e-tailers, but the affiliates lose business or move.

“The nation’s first few Amazon taxes have not produced any revenue at all, and there is some evidence of lost revenue,” according to a National Tax Foundation study last year.

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“We were first and could not be beaten,” she said. “But that was the Soviet Union.” She feels her country now lags behind in science and technology, but adds she’s happy her country is no longer feared by the West.

That was the theme Thursday when a new statue of Gagarin was unveiled ”” not in Moscow, but in London, near Buckingham Palace, right by a statue of the great British explorer James Cook.

Sergei Krikalyov, who heads Russia’s Gagarin Center for Cosmonaut Training, was there for the unveiling. He called the setting appropriate.

Read or listen to it all.

The Venerable Julian Hubbard, Archdeacon of Oxford and Canon of Christ Church, Oxford since 2005, is to be the Archbishops’ Council’s new Director of Ministry. He succeeds the Ven Christopher Lowson, who will become Bishop of Lincoln in September 2011.

Julian Hubbard’s responsibilities will include acting as the principal adviser to the Archbishops’ Council, the House of Bishops and the Ministry Council on all ordained and licensed lay ministry issues. He will also help shape ministry for the needs of the Church in the 21st century, including by promoting more vocations – particularly of younger people to full-time ordained ministry – and by seeking to ensure that a mission focus is at the heart of the Church’s approach to ministry.

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The Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion) at its Episcopal meeting held at IBRU Centre Agbarha-Otor has elected four new Bishops and an Archbishop.

The new Archbishop for Aba Province is the Rt Rev Ikechi Nwosu, the incumbent Bishop of the Diocese of Umuahia.

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The European debt crisis has entered “uncharted territory,” rekindling concern it will spread eastward through banking and trade links, according to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

Italy’s Unicredit SpA (UCG) and Intesa Sanpaolo SpA (ISP), two of eastern Europe’s biggest lenders, fell to the lowest in more than two years July 11 as political infighting threatened to delay efforts to cut the budget deficit in the country with Europe’s largest debt burden. European leaders this week failed to agree on a new aid package for Greece.

“We are in uncharted territory,” Erik Berglof, chief economist at the London-based EBRD, which invests in eastern Europe and Central Asia, said in a July 12 interview. “The source of the contagion seems to be in worse shape.”

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The international community must not take its “eyes off Southern Sudan at the moment”, the Archbishop of Canterbury warned on Saturday, the day the new African republic was founded.

Dr Williams told the General Synod in York that the situation in the region could not be ignored, as there was still the threat of “genocidal violence”, after reports of unrest in border regions, including Abyei and south Kordofan.

He said that he would write to the Foreign Secretary, William Hague, “celebrating the inauguration of the republic, but urging the same level of international attention at this critical period” as in the run-up to the referendum in January. He would also register “profound concern” over the instability in Abyei and south Kordofan, and the “deliberate tar­geting” of the Nubian people.

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The former rector of All Saints Church in Las Vegas, Fr. Eldwin Lovelady told CEN that during the five years Fr. [Bede] Parry was his assistant “I found him to be faithful to his priestly ministry, a wonderful pastoral presence to me and to members of the parish, and a friend.”

In an apparent contradiction to the bishop’s claim that restrictions were placed on Fr. Parry’s ministry and the “reasons for it conveyed” by Bishop Jefferts Schori to his supervisors, Fr. Lovelady said he “never had even the smallest hint of any kind of inappropriate behavior, or any inclination to such. I was not aware of anything in his past and now that I’ve been made aware of these allegations, I have not changed my opinion about Bede in any way and if I were still in the diocese of Nevada, I would be supporting him.”

Bishop Edwards’ claim the diocese did not receive the 2000 psychological profile of Fr. Parry is at odds, as he notes, with the claim made in a lawsuit filed last month in Missouri, which stated the Episcopal Diocese was given a copy of the report. However, the bishop’s further contention that any psychological profile conducted in 2000 that indicated a predilection for abuse would be “dubious” as such tests would not be developed until “20 years later” appears to be a misstatement.

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….Americans are skeptical with good reason and that level of distrust will not go away if all we get is another bipartisan approach to kicking the debt problem down the road. In case you have forgotten, we raised the debt ceiling as recently as February 2010.

When will we gain control of our budget? We routinely hear about trillions in spending cuts, yet we spend more and more each year. Lip service is paid to cutting back, but we all know that spending cuts never, ever happen in Washington DC.

With a slowing economy, the argument is often made that government has to step in and do something. As you can see from the list above, our government has been doing exactly that. Yet, those policies have been ineffective so far.

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Here is a little of my personal history and reflections. I am at a point in my own journey where I find myself reflecting deeply on how God is calling us to be church. When I went to Divinity School or seminary, the model was to have a seminary trained priest for each congregation. Even in those days, there were congregations who had to share in yoked ministries or in clusters. When the Bishop of North Dakota asked me in the mid-80’s, to work with him in ministry development, a new vision opened for me. Now I believe what we are doing is part of a larger thing that God is doing. In the last few years there has been considerable talk about emergent church, sometimes called emerging church, as well as talk about the Missional Church. As I read and talk with people, my sense is that all of this is part of a broader movement led by the Spirit that is affecting Christian churches. Changes are occurring in the Anglican Communion, as well as in other branches of the Christian Church. I believe what we are doing in Total or Shared Ministry is part of this broader movement.

I believe that this is all about transformation initiated by God and led by the Holy Spirit.

First, I want to mention the terms we use in Minnesota. We use the terms “Total Ministry” and “Shared Ministry,” and while they are very similar, there is a little difference in connotation. When all this was getting started in Minnesota back in the ”˜90’s, the term Total Ministry was used. When Total Ministry got started, it was in small congregations who no longer had a vicar or rector. Then several years ago, St. Luke’s in Hastings came along as a new variation. They had had a full time rector but because of economic factors, they could not afford that model any more. Their rector agreed to go to half time and they called a ministry team to work with her. They decided the term Shared Ministry worked better for them because it indicated that they had a half time rector who shared the ministry with the team, and then by extension, all the baptized in the congregation. Whether we call it Total Ministry or Shared Ministry, most of what I have to say today applies equally to both. The process of how it works is pretty much the same either way.

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Spotify in now playing in the U.S.

The online music service, hugely popular in Europe, is now live in the States. But to start using Spotify, users need to be invited in — a very Google-esque move. Well, that is unless you’re willing to sign up and pay for Spotify.

The music-streaming service has been expected for more than a year now as Spotify had to reach agreements with record labels over licensing rights to songs on this side of the Atlantic Ocean.

Read it all.

Read it all.

The Internal Revenue Service didn’t always properly notify taxpayers after inadvertently disclosing personal information, according to a Treasury Department audit released Thursday.

Not all citizens were notified that their personal information had been released, in a sample of 98 case files from the 2009 and 2010 fiscal years that the IRS had flagged as inadvertent disclosures of personal taxpayer information, according to a report from the Treasury Inspector General for Taxpayer Administration.

Read it all.

Lord, increase our faith; that relying on thee as thy children, we may trust where we cannot see, and hope where all seems doubtful, ever looking unto thee as our Father who ordereth all things well; according to the word of thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord.

But I trust in thee, O LORD, I say, “Thou art my God.” My times are in thy hand; deliver me from the hand of my enemies and persecutors! Let thy face shine on thy servant; save me in thy steadfast love!

–Psalm 31:15-16

DJN: *DJ S&P: At Least 50% Chance Of Lowering US L/T Rtg Within 90 Days

*DJ S&P: US S/T Rtg Watch Reflects View Of Significant Uncertainty Of US Creditworthiness

Ugh.