In Syracuse, as in countless other communities, 9/11 set off a phenomenon that may seem counterintuitive in an era of increasingly vocal Islamophobia. A terrorist attack that provoked widespread distrust and hostility toward Muslims also brought Muslims in from the margins of American religious life ”” into living rooms, churches, synagogues and offices where they had never set foot before.

American Christians and Jews reached out to better understand Islam and ”” they will admit ”” to find out firsthand whether the Muslims in their midst were friends or foes. Muslims also reached out, newly conscious of their insularity, aware of the suspicions of their neighbors, determined that the ambassadors of Islam should not be the terrorists.

“Before 9/11 we were somewhat timid,” said Saad Sahraoui, president of the Islamic Society of Central New York, the largest mosque in Syracuse, when the attacks occurred in 2001. “We just kept to ourselves, just concerned with our families and our children….

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Germany is divided over Europe’s bailout fund. Finland may be jeopardizing Greece’s latest rescue. And Italy is suddenly backpedaling on austerity.

Jean-Claude Trichet and Mario Draghi, the current and incoming presidents of the European Central Bank, had a sharp message for Europe’s leaders Monday as financial markets swooned: Get your act together.

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The job market is even worse than the 9.1 percent unemployment rate suggests.

America’s 14 million unemployed aren’t competing just with each other. They must also contend with 8.8 million other people not counted as unemployed ”” part-timers who want full-time work.

When consumer demand picks up, companies will likely boost the hours of their part-timers before they add jobs, economists say. It means they have room to expand without hiring.

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Boeing has only been in South Carolina a few years, depending on how you count its ownership interest in suppliers it eventually acquired entirely, but it’s already making its mark on the community.

As it ramps up production of the 787 Dreamliner at its campus next to the Charleston International Airport, it seems the company is also ramping up its giving, especially to area civic events and various health and education initiatives.

Last year, for example, Boeing gave $25,000 to the Trident Technical College Foundation as one of several sponsors of the organization’s ‘A Night in the Valley’ wine dinner and auction. This year, Boeing’s doubled its giving to become the sole presenting sponsor, said Meg Howle, vice president for advancement at the college.

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Perhaps Secretary [Hilda] Solis, in her zeal to bolster U.S. manufacturing, could use her influence in high places to urge an NLRB retreat on this absurd action against Boeing — and on similarly misguided administration pandering to organized labor.

After all, as she writes in her column: “In the Charleston area alone, more than 900 manufacturing jobs have been added since July 2010 — an increase of 4.3 percent.”

In other words, President Obama’s labor secretary is bragging, in part, about jobs added in the Charleston area by Boeing, even as President Obama’s NLRB acting general counsel takes Boeing to court for adding those jobs.

And that, by any logical analysis, doesn’t add up.

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(ACNS) The Archbishop of the Province of the Anglican Church of Burundi, the Most Rev. Bernard Ntahoturi, and the Archbishop of the Anglican Church of Rwanda, the Most Rev. Onesphore Rwaje, have co-hosted an interdenominational conference for Church leaders in collaboration with UNAIDS and Tearfund in Burundi’s capital, Bujumbura, to consider the role of the Church in the fight against sexual violence in Burundi and Rwanda.

In March 2011 the Most Rev. Bernard Ntahoturi, along with the Archbishop of the Anglican Church of Congo, was present at the launch at Lambeth Palace of the ”˜We Will Speak Out’ coalition, initially comprising the Anglican Communion, Tearfund, Christian Aid, and Restored. The coalition was established to urge the Church to speak out against sexual violence and came about as a response to the findings in Tearfund’s research report, ”˜Silent No More’, which documented the role of the church in response to sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Liberia, with some later study in Burundi. It concluded that the Church had largely failed to respond adequately to sexual violence and had sometimes been unintentionally instrumental in marginalising those who have experienced its devastating consequences.

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They will be hard to miss in their pointy hats and long robes, standing at a train station at 5:00 a.m.

On Sept. 22, Archbishop Fred Hiltz and Bishop Michael Pryse (ELCIC) will visit the Brampton, Ont. train station””wearing copes and mitres””and invite commuters to Back to Church Sunday (B2CS). They will join thousands of Canadian Anglicans who are inviting friends to check out church Sept. 25.

2011 is the third official year of Back to Church Sunday in the Anglican Church of Canada. Founded in 2004 in the Church of England, “B2CS” encourages people to invite just one person to church, whether a friend, neighbour or co-worker.

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Almighty God, you have so linked our lives one with another that all we do affects, for good or ill, all other lives: So guide us in the work we do, that we may do it not for self alone, but for the common good; and, as we seek a proper return for our own labor, make us mindful of the rightful aspirations of other workers, and arouse our concern for those who are out of work; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philip’pi, with the bishops and deacons: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy, thankful for your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. 6 And I am sure that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.

–Philippians 1:1-6

Most Americans had not lived with…vulnerability until 9/11, says Mathew Schmalz, a religion professor at Holy Cross University in Massachusetts who once lived in Karachi, Pakistan.

“We had this sense of specialness and invulnerability that 9/11 shattered,” he says. “Given that a large section of the world’s population deals with random violence every day, one of the outcomes of 9/11 should be a greater feeling of solidarity with people who live in cities like Karachi in which violence is a part of everyday life.”

Recognizing that vulnerability, though, is difficult for some Americans because of how they see their country, Schmalz and others say.

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On the other side of the table the extra-parliamentary dialogue group ”“ also led by an Anglican bishop ”“ has been consciously constructed to accommodate government sensitivities. To avoid antagonising [President Bingu wa] Mutharika’s government, key activists Undule Mwakasungula (Malawi Centre for Human Rights and Reconciliation), Rafik Hajat (Institute for Policy Interaction) and cleric Moses Mkandawire (Church and Society) have been kept out of the six-person team.

It is headed by current Anglican Bishop James Tengatenga and includes: Martha Kwataine (Malawi Health Equity Network), Robert Mkwezalamba (Malawi Congress of Trade Unions), Dorothy Ngoma (Nurses’ Union), Robert Phiri (Public Affairs Committee) and group spokesperson Voice Mhone (Council of NGOs of Malawi).

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“Headline: Prosecutors clear way for assisted suicides…”

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The percentage of working-age Californians with jobs has fallen to a record low, and employment may not return to pre-recession levels until the second half of the decade, according to a research group.

Just 55.4 percent of working-age Californians, defined as those 16 or older, had a job in July, down from 56.2 percent a year earlier and the lowest level since 1976, the Sacramento- based California Budget Project said in a report released late yesterday.

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Thousands of Libyan rebel fighters have encircled the pro-Gadhafi stronghold of Bani Walid waiting for orders to attack as negotiations to resolve the standoff peacefully appeared to founder on Sunday.

Bani Walid, a city of 100,000 residents 90 miles southwest of Tripoli, stands as a first test of rebels’ ability to assert control over a large swath of central Libya still controlled by Col. Moamar Gadhafi’s loyalists and dominated by the three tribes that formed the backbone of his regime….

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Now, 10 years on, the mood is different. Like all military commitments that last a long time, the war in Afghanistan has less public support.

But the merits have not altered: the safe haven must still be denied. There is, in fact, the added dimension of a nuclear-armed Pakistan, now more fragmented and unstable than in 2001. If the United States and her allies leave Afghanistan prematurely, the terrorist cause in neighbouring Pakistan will receive a huge boost.

Rather, the perspective has changed. Americans and others have lost their fear of further terrorist attacks….

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[Archbishop] Dmitri [Royster] made that Knoxville trip to ordain yet another priest in his diocese, which grew from a dozen parishes to 70 during his three decades. The 87-year-old missionary died last Sunday (Aug. 28) in Dallas, in his simple bungalow ”” complete with leaky kitchen roof ”” next to Saint Seraphim Cathedral, the parish he founded in 1954.

Parishioners were worried the upstairs floor might buckle under the weight of those praying around his deathbed.

The future archbishop was raised Southern Baptist in the town of Teague, Texas, before moving to Dallas. As teens, Royster and his sister became intrigued with the history of the major Christian holidays and began visiting a variety of churches, including an Orthodox parish. The services were completely in Greek, but they joined anyway ”” decades before evangelical-to-Orthodox conversions became common….

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The U.S. bishops are objecting to a Health and Human Services mandate that will force private insurance plans to cover abortions and sterilizations, with an exemption for religions so narrow that not even Jesus would qualify.

In a statement to the HHS today, Anthony Picarello, USCCB general counsel, and Michael Moses, associate general counsel, called the mandate an “unprecedented attack on religious liberty.”

The mandate would force private insurance plans to cover contraception — including abortifacients — and sterilization.

And the narrow “religious employer” exception provides “no protection at all for individuals or insurers with a moral or religious objection to contraceptives or sterilization,” instead covering only “a very small subset of religious employers,” the bishops’ representatives declared.

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The aftermath of drought and the global financial crisis has led to a proposed rationalisation of church institutions and management across the three Anglican dioceses of Canberra and Goulburn, Bathurst and Riverina.

The proposal was supported yesterday after a day-long debate by the synod of Canberra and Goulburn, meeting in Goulburn. Synods of Bathurst and Riverina are still to meet, but as they are the major beneficiaries of the proposed changes, there seems little likelihood they will oppose them.

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Update: I see Time has an interesting article on this over here.

Two anxieties dominate most of our lives. We are anxious in the face of our unchangeable past; we long to recreate segments of our private histories, but we are stuck with them. We are anxious in the face of our unpredictable futures; we long to control our destinies, but we cannot bring them under our management. Thus, two basic longings, lying at the root of most others, are frustrated: we cannot alter a painful past or control a threatening future.

God offers two answers to our deepest anxieties. He is a forgiving God who recreates our pasts by forgiving them. He is a promising God who controls our future by making and keeping promises. By forgiving us, he changes our past. By promising, he secures our future.

By his grace we participate in his power to change the past and control the future. We, too, can forgive, and must forgive….

Read it all–quoted by yours truly in this morning’s sermon.

In the 21st century, parenthood and paranoia often walk hand in hand.

For some, the blessed event is followed by high-tech surveillance – a monitoring system tracks the baby’s breathing rhythms and relays infrared images from the nursery. The next investment might be a nanny cam, to keep watch on the child’s hired caregivers. Toddlers and grade schoolers can be equipped with GPS devices enabling a parent to know their location should something go awry.

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Challenging the cultural climate is a major component of the new apologetics, said Sean McDowell, head of Worldview Ministries. “The apologetics resurgence has been sparked ultimately by teens who are asking more questions about why people believe the things they do,” he said. “Those who thought that kids in a postmodern world don’t want an ideology were wrong.”

Greg Stier, founder of Dare 2 Share Ministries, agrees. “[Teens] are aware of the latent apologetic conversations in culture””Harry Potter, for example””and want to react,” he said.

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O God, who hast brought life and immortality to light by the gospel, and hast begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead: Make us steadfast and immovable in the faith, always abounding in the work of the Lord, who died for our sins and rose again, and now liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, world without end.

–James Mountain

O God, thou art my God, I seek thee, my soul thirsts for thee; my flesh faints for thee, as in a dry and weary land where no water is. So I have looked upon thee in the sanctuary, beholding thy power and glory. Because thy steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise thee. So I will bless thee as long as I live; I will lift up my hands and call on thy name.

–Psalm 63:1-4

“There is so much inbredness in this profession….They all read the same sources. They all use the same data sets. They all talk to the same people. There is endless extrapolation on extrapolation on extrapolation, and for years that is what has been rewarded.”

—Economist Carmen Reinhart of the University of Maryland.

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Scenes of joy and praise played out as hundreds of Christians who attended the rededication and reopening ceremony celebrated the completion of the project. The Anglican archbishop, Henry Luke Orombi, led the mass in which the church was rededicated to God before it was symbolically re-opened by fisheries minister Ruth Nankabirwa who represented President Yoweri Museveni.

Museveni and Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi were some of the individuals who were honoured in absentia with accolades and certificates in recognition of their outstanding contribution towards the renovation.

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Confined to their hospital beds, patients can only fantasize about stripping off all the wires that connect them to monitors and bolting for the door.

Suppose, however, that all of a convalescent patient’s electrode patches were consolidated into a single, nearly invisible and weightless version ”” as thin as a temporary, press-on tattoo. And suppose that a tiny radio transmitter eliminated the need for any wires tethering the patient to monitoring machines.

“Epidermal electronics” ”” a term coined by researchers who have produced prototype devices at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign ”” may enable constant medical monitoring anywhere.

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Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has declared a state of emergency in the Blue Nile State following heavy fighting in the region, the Sudan Tribune reported on Saturday.

Bashir has also dismissed Blue Nile state governor Malik Agar, who is also chairman of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement North (SPLM-N), amid reports of aerial bombardments in the region. He instead appointed the commander of Sudanese army (SAF) base in the Blue Nile’s capital of al-Damazin, Major General Yahya Mohamed Khair, as a military ruler of the state.

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Peter Spiegel, Brussels bureau chief, reviews his interview with Amr Moussa, former secretary general of the Arab League and candidate in the upcoming Egyptian elections. He considers Mr Moussa’s message to Col Gaddafi and what threat extremism pose to Egypt’s future.

Watch it all (just over two minutes).