Monthly Archives: July 2011
(WSJ Houses of Worship) William McGowan: Life and Faith in Hell's Kitchen
Guests have included the homeless, pregnant and undocumented Tanzanian who showed up sobbing on the lawn of the sisters’ retreat center in Stamford, Conn., and later likened the care at Sacred Heart to “angels planting a root and watering it every day.” Then there was the Trinidadian nanny, six months pregnant with twins, whose boyfriend was trying to induce a miscarriage by kicking her down the stairs. There was the Polish immigrant who studied for the MCAT exam while living at the convent, as well as the former network journalist whose boyfriend split when she got a Down Syndrome diagnosis, and whose friends could not believe she’d throw herself so far “off-track” to have the child.
Another alumna had just finished a graduate program in England, gotten pregnant, been dumped by her law-student boyfriend and returned to the U.S. “in a horrible state of depression.” For an educated woman with professional ambitions, she said “an abortion seems like the most practical thing in the world. But once you do get pregnant, it’s not so easy.”
She had a daughter, got a magazine job and a subsidized apartment.
(Bloomberg) Recession in U.S. Was Even Worse Than Estimated, Revisions Show
The worst U.S. recession since the 1930s was even deeper than previously estimated, reflecting bigger slumps in consumer spending and housing, according to revised figures.
The world’s largest economy shrank 4.1 percent from the fourth quarter of 2007 to the second quarter of 2009, compared with the 3.7 percent drop previously on the books, the Commerce Department said today in Washington. Household spending fell 1.2 percent in 2009, twice as much as previously projected and the biggest decline since 1942.
“We do tend to get bigger revisions at turning points in the economy,” Steven Landefeld, director of the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis, said in a press conference this week. On the more positive side, “in the past, we’ve tended to undershoot the recovery” as well, he said.
(CEN) Hate the key to Oslo bombing
The Oslo bomber, Anders Behring Breivik, was a self-appointed Knight Templar tasked with freeing Europe from the scourge of ”˜cultural Marxism’ and Islam, according to his 1,518-page manifesto posted on Stormfront.org, a white supremacist internet forum.
Initially tagged as a “Christian fundamentalist” by Norwegian police, Breivik’s apologia shows only a passing concern with religious belief, but professes a fanatical faith in European culture.
On 22 July, the 32-year-old Norwegian detonated a car bomb in central Oslo, killing at least eight people. He then proceeded by ferry boat to Utoya Island where he shot and killed 68 people attending a youth camp organized by the Labour Party.
Judge orders San Francisco circumcision ban off ballot
Judge Loretta M. Giorgi ordered San Francisco’s director of elections to strike the measure from the city’s ballot because she said that it is “expressly preempted” by the California Business and Professions Code.
Under that statute, only the state is allowed to regulate medical procedures, and “the evidence presented is overwhelmingly persuasive that circumcision is a widely practiced medical procedure,” the ruling said.
After a brief hearing, Giorgi also found that the proposed ban would violate citizens’ right to the free exercise of religion, said Deputy City Atty. Mollie Lee, because it targets Muslims and Jews, whose faiths call for circumcising males.
John Stott memorial Website
Check it out; as of this posting there are 598 entries in the remembrance book and they make for moving reading.
The T19 Open Thread is here
An Irish Times Article on RC priests–The fearful Fathers
There is clearly a deep anger among ordinary priests. This is reflected in the 550-plus membership of the fledgling Association of Catholic Priests. But where were those angry, articulate voices when the damage was being done, when Rome was directing this republic’s affairs and their brothers in Christ were violating the young and vulnerable? They were where they always were, says Hoban, “trying to do 1,001 things and trying to do them the best they can.”
So does that explain their silence? There are two “difficulties”, Hoban says. The first is the mistaken belief that a diocese is run by the bishop and the priests together. “The fact is we are totally excluded from any say . . . Priests are effectively disenfranchised.”
The other difficulty is loyalty. Priests live isolated lives. “The dynamic of our ministry is that friends are very few and far between, but there is extraordinarily strong loyalty among the clergy,” Hoban says. As well as that, “we were not people who would challenge the status quo. Those who would were weeded out in the seminary.” Then there is the perennial problem of being “at the bishop’s mercy” in relation to transfers and advancement. And thus the silence. Does it all sound a bit self-serving? “Yes, it’s fair to say that it was self-serving. That lack of moral courage.”
Remy: Raise The Debt Ceiling Rap
Bloomberg TV played this from time to time recently, and it helped a bit. Check it out–KSH.
Robert Samuelson–Why are we in this debt fix? It’s the elderly, stupid.
If leadership is the capacity to take people where they need to go ”” whether or not they realize it or want it ”” then we’ve had almost no leadership in these weeks of frustrating and maddening debate over the budget and debt ceiling. There’s been an unspoken consensus among President Obama, congressional Democrats and Republicans not to discuss the central issue underlying the standoff. We’ve heard lots about “compromise” or its absence. We’ve had dueling budgets with differing mixes of spending cuts and tax increases. But we’ve heard almost nothing of the main problem that makes the budget so intractable.
It’s the elderly, stupid.
By now, it’s obvious that we need to rewrite the social contract that, over the past half-century, has transformed the federal government’s main task into transferring income from workers to retirees. In 1960, national defense was the government’s main job; it constituted 52 percent of federal outlays. In 2011 ”” even with two wars ”” it is 20 percent and falling. Meanwhile, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other retiree programs constitute roughly half of non-interest federal spending.
(CSM) Libya rebel leader Younes killed, Benghazi wobbles
That Abdel Fateh Younes, the longtime enforcer for Muammar Qaddafi whose stunning defection to the Libyan rebellion in February was an early indication of the depth of the challenge to Qaddafi’s regime, is dead, you can take to the bank. General Younes had been head of the embryonic rebel army from practically the moment he’d switched sides.
As far as the rest of the story ”“ who killed him, when, precisely where, and why ”“ all remains murk and conjecture, created by cross-cutting rivalries within the rebellion and the often misleading and contradictory way that Libya’s Transitional National Council (TNC) communicates with the press and the Libyan public.
([London] Times) Middle classes are going soft on drugs
Middle-class, high-earning professionals are more tolerant of casual cannabis and cocaine use than the rest of the population, according to the first official study of British attitudes toward illegal drugs.
Adults in their 30s, those who live in cities, and those who are educated to degree level also have a more relaxed approach to the “occasional” use of drugs than other groups, such as low-earners with no qualifications.
The latest findings from the British Crime Survey (BCS), a study of 26,000 households, also show that the recently banned drug mephedrone, or “meow meow”, is as popular as cocaine among young people.
(Washington Post) The incredible, shrinking debt deal in one graph
A Prayer for the Feast Day of Saint Ignatius of Loyola
O God, by whose grace thy servant Ignatius, enkindled with the fire of thy love, became a burning and a shining light in thy Church: Grant that we also may be aflame with the spirit of love and discipline, and may ever walk before thee as children of light; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with thee, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, liveth and reigneth, one God, now and for ever.
A Prayer to Begin the Day
O Almighty God, who hast taught us that thy Word is a lantern unto our feet and a light unto our path: Grant that we, with all who devoutly read the holy Scriptures, may realize our fellowship one with another in thee, and may learn thereby to know thee more fully, to love thee more truly, and to follow more faithfully in the steps of thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God blessed for evermore.
From the Morning Bible Readings
Now when they had passed through Amphip’olis and Apollo’nia, they came to Thessaloni’ca, where there was a synagogue of the Jews. And Paul went in, as was his custom, and for three weeks he argued with them from the scriptures, explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead, and saying, “This Jesus, whom I proclaim to you, is the Christ.” And some of them were persuaded, and joined Paul and Silas; as did a great many of the devout Greeks and not a few of the leading women.
–Acts 17:1-4
John Stott and Global Anglicanism ”“ Vinay Samuel
What is the legacy of Keele? It is not the place of evangelicals in the church of England governance structures. Keele’s legacy was the global self-identity of orthodox Anglicans as evangelical. Evangelical Anglicanism developed in a dramatic way ”“ globally . I was General Secretary of the Evangelical Fellowship in the Anglican Communion in the eighties. I saw this development before my eyes. While EFAC groups grew in England and North America and Australia, in Africa there seemed no need for them: for the Church of Kenya was evangelical; the Church of Uganda and Rwanda, fresh from the inspiration of the East African Revival was charismatic and evangelical. The Church of Tanzania had both evangelical and orthodox Anglo-Catholic roots.
Where there was biblical evangelical and orthodox faithfulness, the churches grew. Where these elements were not present, the church died, as in Japan. The result today is that two-thirds of the non-western Anglican Churches are biblically faithful Anglicans of the evangelical variety. This is the fruit of the identity and space forged for evangelical Anglicans in the Communion by the Keele Congress. Keele and its products validated the possibility of there being evangelical Anglicans in a liturgical Church that was seen as Catholic or liberal.
The Bishop Of Down And Dromore pays Tribue to John Stott
For young evangelicals, and especially Anglican evangelicals, in their early years of discipleship and ministry, John Stott was a great encouragement. Here was a man who had devoted his entire life to ministry within the Church of England, but whose ministry was never to be contained in one denomination or country, because it was essentially Gospel ministry with a worldwide vision. His thinking was clear, his writings articulate and his judgements balanced. And, thank God, he has left a heritage in his writings, from solid Biblical commentary to deep theology and practical outworking of issues. He was a person of kindness, mannerliness and carefulness, not someone who was easy to get to know, but someone who, perhaps because of a degree of privacy and distance, was able to hold together and influence vast numbers of disparate evangelicals, and gain the respect of many beyond the evangelical fold.
(RNS) Catholic Bishops Urge House Against Steep Budget Cuts
The nation’s Roman Catholic bishops are urging the GOP-led House to reject a cuts-only approach to the budget as Washington tries to avert an unprecedented government default on its multi-trillion-dollar debts.
“A just framework for future budgets cannot rely on disproportionate cuts in essential services to poor persons,” wrote Bishop Stephen Blaire of Stockton, Calif., and Bishop Howard Hubbard of Albany, N.Y., in a Tuesday (July 26) letter to House members.
Peter Coy–Why the debt crisis is worse than you think
That’s why the posturing about whether and how Congress should increase the debt ceiling by Aug. 2 has been a hollow exercise. Failure to increase the borrowing limit would harm American prestige and the global financial system. But that’s nothing compared with the real threats to the U.S.’s long-term economic health, which will begin to strike with full force toward the end of this decade: Sharply rising per-capita health-care spending, coupled with the graying of the populace; a generation of workers turning into an outsize generation of beneficiaries. Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Michael J. Boskin, who was President George H.W. Bush’s chief economic adviser, says: “The word ”˜unsustainable’ doesn’t convey the problem enough, in my opinion.”
Local Paper Front Page–$1 million grant a lifeline for vets
George Krowska traveled to Myrtle Beach this spring after a relationship went sour.
He had been staying in a Colorado shelter for a couple of months, the first time in his life the 62-year-old Army veteran was homeless. But in Myrtle Beach, he was abandoned, he said.
Krowska has a heart blockage that qualifies him for disability benefits and requires a certain proximity to a VA hospital, so he hitchhiked to Charleston. At the Ralph H. Johnson VA Medical Center, he received treatment, learned about Crisis Ministries, the area’s homeless shelter and got a bus pass.
The former construction worker is living off of $923 a month, but cannot work because of his heart. More than two months into a maximum 90-day stay, he said he’s growing worried about where he’ll go next.
What one Innovative North American Seminary is Teaching this Week
Owning Poverty: A Transformational Spiritual Journey
This course takes a Christian spiritual formation approach to the exploration of the crushing human poverty experienced in our world today. A theology of poverty requires a posture and epistemology of poverty of spirit. Until poverty is taken into ourselves, it is not a truth we can really know, although we might acknowledge it as an undisputed fact or recall statistics of injustice in our world. As poverty is allowed to engage us internally, our mode of engagement with the poor shifts from distant empircism and observation, to identification and incarnational compassion. As we engage hands, heads, and hearts in this course, our desire is that participants will come to better understand poverty (spiritual and physical poverty, their own poverty and others) and experience God’s heart and blessing for the poor. We want students to internalize biblical truths to facilitate Kingdom transformation in themselves and the world.
NY Times Obituary–The Rev. John Stott, Major Evangelical Figure, Dies at 90
Though less known in the United States and hardly a household name outside the evangelical sphere, Mr. Stott, an author, preacher and theologian, was often compared to the Rev. Billy Graham, his American contemporary.
But while Mr. Graham’s influence is rooted in a rousing preaching style and a personal magnetism that has filled stadiums, Mr. Stott’s relied on a proliferation of books ”” grounded in learning but accessible to all ”” and the evangelical organization he founded, Langham Partnership International, named after its cradle, All Souls Church at Langham Place in London’s West End.
“We must be global Christians,” he once wrote, “with a global mission, because our God is a global God.”
Bruce Flickinger–In memory of John Stott
[Yesterday]…in England, at 3:15 pm Greenwich Mean Time, John R. W. Stott died and went to be with the Lord.
John will be remembered as one of the greatest preachers and Bible teachers of the twentieth century, even TIME magazine named him as such at one time. He will also be remembered as one of the great evangelists of the same century and one of the greatest contributors to the building up of the Christian community of faith around the world, especially in Africa and Asia where he was instrumental in aiding in the development of young clergy.
John was a primary force behind the resurgence of Anglican evangelicalism in the Church of England and elsewhere around the world, including the United States and the Episcopal Church. In regard to the former he was a strong supporter of Inter Varsity (ICCU in England) and of evangelical theological colleges in Britain, especially his own alma mater Ridley College, Cambridge. (John was a graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, having earned academic firsts prior to enrollment at Ridley for theological study.) And, John was the long-serving pastor/rector of All Soul’s Church in the west end of London. He was responsible for the founding of numerous fellowships in the Church of England which contributed to the growth and positive influence of Anglican evangelical clergy and laity across the nation.
In the United States he was supportive of and instrumental in the founding of the Evangelical Fellowship of the Anglican Communion ”“ USA, a branch of the international organization he had served to found in England. EFAC-USA brought together evangelical clergy and laity of the Episcopal Church for mutual support and witness and out of EFAC-USA American evangelical Episcopalians, with the support and help of John and other Anglican evangelical leaders such as Jim Packer, founded the Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry, Ambridge, Pennsylvania, the authentic Anglican evangelical seminary in the American province.
In the United States John was a popular guest visitor at numerous evangelical and other institutions of learning including Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, IL, Wheaton College, Illinois, and Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California. (I first heard John speak in Ann Arbor at the University of Michigan when I was a senior in high school where he spoke to a large gathering of academics and collegians.)
John was a prolific and gifted writer as well as an oral communicator. His books have served to deepen the faith of people around the globe and contributed to the spiritual development of countless generations of college students. Scholarly substantive and grounded, his writings are at the same time easily accessible and clear. His best known book, Basic Christianity has been especially formative of bringing many thousands of people to Jesus and Christian faith and discipleship.
Alongside the writings of C. S. Lewis, N. T. “Tom” Wright, J. B. Phillips, and William Temple, John Stott and his lectures, sermons, and writings have had the greatest influence in my own spiritual and intellectual development as an evangelical Christian, scholar, philosopher, and theologian. I have been privileged to know John personally since I was a college student at Trinity College, Deerfield, IL (now Trinity International University) and attended his lectures at TEDS. From that time forward we have regularly communicated via mail and our friendship was sustained by personal meetings when I had opportunity to be present at various of John’s presentations in our country or by visits to All Souls Church, London while I was a student at Trinity College, Bristol, England (a Church of England Anglican evangelical theological college).
I was first introduced to John’s writings while in high school, introduced to them by the man singularly responsible in being used by the Holy Spirit to introduce me to Jesus Christ and Christian discipleship, David Knapp. David was the same person that took me to hear John at U of M where John was giving a series of talks on the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7). Little did I think at that time I would become personally acquainted and encouraged by John over the years in my Christian life and later in my professional ministry as an Anglican/Episcopal presbyter.
While I was a student at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, Evanston, IL (where I earned my Masters of Divinity degree), I was successful in convincing the Dean, O. C. Edwards to permit John coming to SWTS and preaching in chapel and engaging students in an open forum. After his visit to SWTS John would go on to make another of his numerous appearances at Wheaton College. I was responsible for picking John up at O’Hare airport in Chicago, taking him to SWTS and then delivering him latter to Wheaton.
As it happens, Chicago was hit with one of the worse snow storms that particular winter on the day John’s flight landed at O’Hare. Despite the building snow, my little green Chevrolet Chevette and I were able to make it to O’Hare on time and meet John at the gate. Driving from O’Hare to Evanston and SWTS the snow continued to accumulate, such that at one point the car got stuck in the snow. I learned then how ordinary and normal a person John was as well as a remarkably saintly Christian as John got out and alongside the fellow student accompanying pushed the car out of the deep snow drift. John took it all in stride. We arrived in time at SWTS and had a successful forum and chapel experience as students and faculty with John. Fortunately, the snowing subsided and by the time had come to deliver John to Wheaton the roads had begun to be plowed. At Wheaton we helped John check in and then we had a memorable time of prayer with John in his room before I and my two fellow colleagues headed back to Evanston.
Another significant moment spent with John was during a visit Joann my spouse and I made to the IVCF Urbana Missionary Conference at the University of Illinois in December 1976. After hearing John’s presentation to the conference, John met with Joann and I in his room at the Illini Union and we talked at length about the possibility of ordained ministry, academic teaching, and other aspects of the life of discipleship we were feeling called to pursue. Joann and I came away from that meeting with John encouraged in our sense of discipleship and vocation and, like later at Wheaton, spent a meaningful time in prayer with John in communication with the Lord Jesus.
Another contribution John made to Joann’s and my life was his role, alongside that of Jim Packer and John Rodgers and O. C. Edwards, to arrange for the opportunity to live a year in Bristol, England and for me to study at Trinity College. As a result I was privileged to study with Alec Motyer, Joyce Baldwin, Peter Williams, Garvis Angel, Michael Wilcocks, Colin Brown, Jim Packer, and Philip Budd. Joann was able to attend Alec’s lectures on the Old Testament and Colin’s lectures on philosophy. In addition to the academic opportunities Trinity afforded us, one of the lasting fruits and joys of our life was the long-standing friendship with David and Eluned Bourne who went on to serve as presbyter and spouse in the C of E. (Sadly, Eluned preceded John in being called to return to the Lord a couple of years ago. David has since remarried, and to a remarkable Christian woman, a widow herself of a C of E presbyter and continues in ordained ministry as Rector of a C of E parish.)
It is with a certain amount of sadness to learn of John’s death today. It is a sadness tempered by the Christian hope to go and be with Christ and of the future resurrection of the dead when God will complete his work of new creation and we are set free to enjoy and do remarkable things in the new heaven and earth (ref: the writings of Tom Wright). My life and that of Joann will always remained marked by the presence and positive influence of John on our lives and for that we are grateful to God.
May John rest in peace and his witness here will continue to have impact for years to come in many, many lives and a variety of ways.
Into your hands, O merciful Savior, we commend your servant John. Acknowledge, we humbly beseech you, a sheep of your own fold, a lamb of your own flock, a sinner of your own redeeming. Receive John into the arms of your mercy, into the blessed rest of everlasting peace, and into the glorious company of the saints in light. Amen.
– Book of Common Prayer, p. 465
Lord Jesus Christ, by your death you took away the sting of death; Grant to us your servants so to follow in faith where you have led the way, that we may at length fall asleep peacefully in you and wake up in your likeness; for your tender mercies’ sake. Amen.
– Book of Common Prayer, p. 504
John Stott is the 2nd most influential clergyman in the Church of England of the 20th century
According to whom? Glad you asked:
“With the exception of William Temple, John Stott is the most influential clergyman in the Church of England of the twentieth century”.
–David Edwards, Essentials
Archbishop Peter Jensen–On John RW Stott 1921-2011
There were two features of…[his] preaching which I remember in particular. The first is to do with its simplicity. It was not that he strove for popularity and delivered trivia. On the contrary. It was the simplicity of the master craftsman, who could analyse the text of Scripture and by carefully tracing the development of its thought, help his hearers to be better readers. We could see what he could see, and we could be inspired to believe that we too could read the Bible for ourselves.
The second feature was the basis of the first ”“ he was a scholar. I don’t mean that he had a PhD or taught in a university. He was beyond such measures. I mean that he had mastered the arts needed for biblical exposition and he gave the time and energy to make sure of his results. You can only achieve true simplicity by working very hard. That is what he did. Our debt to him, under God, flows from his willingness to give time and energy and thought to the study of Scripture in the light of modern thought and modern needs and to pastor us through his preaching.
In this, as in much else besides, he was a Prince amongst God’s people.
IVP–World-Renowned Evangelical Leader John Stott Dies
“We are deeply grateful for this long publishing partnership and friendship with one of the most influential and beloved evangelical leaders for the past half-century,” saidInterVarsity Press publisher Bob Fryling. “John Stott was not only revered; he was loved. He had a humble mind and a gracious spirit. He was a pastor-teacher whose books and preaching not only became the gold standard for expository teaching, but his Christian character was a model of truth and godliness. We will miss ”˜Uncle John’ but we celebrate his life and writings as an extraordinary testimony of one who was abundantly faithful to his Lord Jesus Christ.”