He considered moving to a Zen monastery before shifting his sights to Silicon Valley, where he became a brash businessman.
He preached about the dangers of desire but urged consumers to covet every new iPhone incarnation.
“He was an enlightened being who was cruel,” says a former girlfriend. “That’s a strange combination.”
Now, we can add another irony to the legacy of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs: Since his death on Oct. 5, the famously private man’s spiritual side has become an open book.
Martin Luther has many claims to fame. In recent years I have found him useful in an unexpected way: as a guide to understanding emerging AfriÂcan Christianity. Here is my unscientific rule: if Martin Luther treated a biblical book with disdain or outright hostility, then that book is really popular in modern Africa.
As a Bible scholar, Luther was a perceptive and quite daring critic. He tested the authority of books by their claims to apostolic authority and judged their faithfulness against what he considered the core teachings of the earliest church. By this standard, he argued that four New Testament books in particular””Revelation, Hebrews, James and Jude””fell short of true canonical status and should be printed separately in future versions of the Bible.
In different ways, each of these books enjoys enormous popularity in Africa. Each speaks to the harsh conditions in which believers must live: conditions of poverty, social fragility and political oppression; a world in which vestiges of older religions still flourish; a world of complex religious coexistence.
–Philip Jenkins, “Within the African canon,” Christian Century (November 1, 2011 edition), page 45
Irom Sharmila’s mother has a simple dream: sitting down to a meal with her daughter.
Irom hasn’t willingly ingested food or water for 11 years, in protest of a law granting legal immunity to the armed forces for human rights abuses. As the anniversary of her hunger strike nears, her mother imagines what might be.
“I’m still waiting for her to come home,” said Shakhi Devi, 78, holding an album of her daughter’s photos. She rarely visits the 39-year-old, the world’s longest-serving hunger striker, because it’s too painful.
A chill has descended over relations between the Church of Nigeria and the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) in the wake of the creation of a diocese for Nigerians in America by the Church of Nigeria.
While official statements from Archbishop Robert Duncan of the ACNA and Bishop Martyn Minns of CANA ”“ the Church of Nigeria’s American outreach ”” have been upbeat, sources at the top of the ACNA tell The Church of England Newspaper the situation surrounding the formation of the Diocese of the Trinity has been a “mess”….
Writing in the Church Times today, Canon Fraser says that the “very difficult” situation at St Paul’s is “a historic opportunity for the Church to reset its relationship with the marketplace. . . For too long the Church has been obsessed with its own internal workings and with silly arguments about sex. Now is the time for a new debate and a new emphasis.”
The director of the Christian Socialist Movement, Andy FlanÂnagan, said on Tuesday: “We don’t have to sign up to the protesters’ complete agenda to engage with what they are talking about. Church and politicians need to get back into this debate about morality in markets.”
The Anglican Covenant is all but dead in the water as far as this church is concerned. This follows a crucial vote by Tikanga Maori at its biennial runanganui in Ohinemutu today.
The Covenant will still come before General Synod in July, but a decision to accept it requires a majority vote in all three houses ”“ lay, clergy and bishops ”“ and by all three tikanga.
Today’s runanganui decision effectively binds all Maori representatives on General Synod to say no.
What happens when you get George Soros, Tom Harkin, Bill Gates, Ralph Nader and the Archbishop of Canterbury together in a French hotel room with a stick of incense and a magnum of champagne””and turn off the lights?
Answer: the…[Financial Transaction] Tax.
OK, so we need to work on our punchlines. But a tax on financial transactions is exactly what these characters have all endorsed in one form or another as the miracle cure to the world’s economic ills. French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have also picked up the cause, and they are leaning on President Obama to endorse it at this week’s G-20 summit in Cannes, France.
So here we go again.
Readers of the blog will know I do not like to call this the Tobin Tax since strictly speaking Tobin originally was focused explicitly on something else less broad than the current proposal. Read it all–KSH.
Consumers might feel like they’re playing Whac-A-Mole when it comes to shenanigans involving the banking industry. Just as one issue gets resolved, something else pops up.
Bank of America retreated this week from its planned introduction of a $5 monthly fee for many customers to use their debit cards. The bank said it “listened to our customers very closely” and decided that charging people money to access their money maybe wasn’t the best idea after all.
At the same time, Chase credit card customers are receiving a letter about their privacy preferences. The letter says that even though the bank’s records “indicate that you are not being mailed any offers from Chase,” the bank wants “to be sure that you know about available offers and that you have the opportunity to consider them.”
On a Sunday morning two years ago, Paula Celani and about 80 members of her Catholic lay group gathered in a hall they had rented from the city. They watched an inspirational video, they prayed, they celebrated mass and they capped it off with a potluck lunch. “We had a beautiful day,” Ms. Celani recalls.
But now that beautiful day has generated a nasty court battle after she was hit with a $144 ticket from the city, which alleged her event was illegal because it involved religious worship.
This week her lawyer advised Montreal municipal court that he will challenge the fine on constitutional grounds.
Assembled as we are today, dear brethren, to assist in, or to witness one of the most solemn events, that can take place on earth, the commission of this trust of ministerial power, in its highest forms, with its heaviest responsibility, to a brother young in years for such a charge, but already known and honored by the Church, and deeply beloved by those who best know him; remembering that that trust is to be exercised by him in regions remote from the friends, by whose sympathies he has been accustomed to be soothed, and by whose counsels he has been accustomed to be assisted, in the midst of a frontier population, many of them rude, and wild, and lawless, and, to some extent, over a people of a strange tongue, a foreign race, and a corrupt and intolerant religion, nay, over the very savages themselves; with such high and arduous duties before him, entering upon them while still so young, with a frail body, gently nurtured, tenderly cared for to this hour; is there one of us who will not, in heart and spirit, come before God, and earnestly and importunately cry out to Him “to bless this, our brother, and to send His grace upon him, that he may duly execute the office whereunto he is called, to the edifying of the Church, and the honor, praise and glory of God’s great name?” And that we may pray thus the more fervently, and that he may more deeply feel the magnitude of the obligations he is about to take on himself, let us consider some of the particulars of the trust which our Lord and master is about to commit to him, by the hands of the Bishops of the Church, the successors in office of His Apostles.
He is, in the first place, to “teach and exhort with wholesome doctrine, to withstand and convince gainsayers, and to drive away from the Church all erroneous and strange doctrine contrary to God’s word.” It belongs to the office of a Bishop, then, to preserve, transmit and diffuse evangelical Catholic truth, the truth as it is in Jesus. This is a function which our Blessed Lord himself did not disdain to declare to be one main object of His incarnation. “To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I might bear witness unto the truth.” When He left the world, he bequeathed this office to His Church. The Church is the pillar and ground of the truth, its monument and its foundation, proclaiming it, upholding it. This truth is of inestimable value; it is the life-blood of the souls of men. It enfranchises them from sin and death. If we believe it not says St. Paul, we shall be damned, and conversely, he tells us, we are chosen to salvation through belief of it. Being then of such high origin and such untold value, St. Paul considered himself set as its champion, planted as a warrior, with watchful eye and armed hand to guard it. For where God’s truth is, there is liberty, there is light and peace, there is purity of morals, there is solid prosperity in the blessings of this life, there is a good hope of eternal life.
Enable us, O heavenly Father, to walk with thee this day and every day in sure and simple trust; ever remembering that our little things are all big to thy love, and our big things are all small to thy power; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Then I saw another portent in heaven, great and wonderful, seven angels with seven plagues, which are the last, for with them the wrath of God is ended. And I saw what appeared to be a sea of glass mingled with fire, and those who had conquered the beast and its image and the number of its name, standing beside the sea of glass with harps of God in their hands. And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, “Great and wonderful are thy deeds, O Lord God the Almighty! Just and true are thy ways, O King of the ages! Who shall not fear and glorify thy name, O Lord? For thou alone art holy. All nations shall come and worship thee, for thy judgments have been revealed.” After this I looked, and the temple of the tent of witness in heaven was opened, and out of the temple came the seven angels with the seven plagues, robed in pure bright linen, and their breasts girded with golden girdles. And one of the four living creatures gave the seven angels seven golden bowls full of the wrath of God who lives for ever and ever; 8 and the temple was filled with smoke from the glory of God and from his power, and no one could enter the temple until the seven plagues of the seven angels were ended.
–Revelation 15:1-8
The state’s largest religious group, the Mississippi Baptist Convention, supports the proposal, as does the Tupelo-based American Family Association.
The bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Mississippi, the Rt. Rev. Duncan Gray III, says he is “gravely concerned about the unintended consequences” of the initiative.
The possibility that the adjacent Episcopal dioceses of Fond du Lac and Eau Claire could form a new diocese in northern Wisconsin has been laid aside due to “an irregularity” in the counting of the Fond du Lac vote.
The irregularity appears to have occurred in the reporting of the vote of the Fond du Lac lay order.
Americans put the most trust in the ideas and opinions of small-business owners and local business leaders on how best to create jobs. Americans have progressively lower levels of trust in the opinions of President Obama, economists, major-corporation executives, congressional leaders, and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.
The public’s trust in politicians, business leaders, and others on job creation in the U.S. is of particular importance at a time when Americans view jobs as the most important problem facing the nation.
The British government said Wednesday (Nov. 2) that same-sex couples will be allowed for the first time to use churches to seal their civil partnership vows, starting in December.
But the directive added that no religious group will be forced to conduct or host such a ceremony, and the Church of England quickly announced it would permit no such rites on its premises.
In a statement, the church said it “has no intention of allowing civil partnerships to be registered” in its churches.
Breathless but beaming, Sheng Zisu sounds confident after five months in a maze-like Buddhist encampment high on the eastern Tibetan plateau, nearly 400 miles of bad road from the nearest city.
“Look around. They could never find me here,” Sheng, 27, says of parents so anxious about their only child’s turn to Tibetan Buddhism that they have threatened to kidnap her.
Sheng is far from her home ”” and from the bars where she used to drink and the ex-boyfriends she says cheated on her. She is here with 2,000 other Han Chinese at the Larung Gar Buddhist Institute in Serthar, Sichuan province, the rain-soaked mountainous region of southwest China.
Times are tense for North Sudan’s Christians, said Episcopal Bishop of Khartoum Ezekiel Kondo, who was visiting the U.S. in October to meet with the Department of State and major nongovernmental organizations and to speak on a panel at an anti-genocide conference sponsored by Save Darfur.
Since July 9, when South Sudan became an independent country, Christians in the majority Muslim north have been under increasing pressure, Kondo said.
“As far as the north goes, the independence has brought a difference,” he said. Christian government officials and private sector workers have been laid off; the government is introducing full Islamic Sharia law which poses a challenge to the church; and South Sudanese are not being given citizenship. People are leaving or being forced out, and the church in Khartoum has been diminished.
Pope Benedict XVI prayed that a summit of the leaders of countries with the world’s largest economies would find ways to overcome the current economic crisis and promote real development.
At the end of his weekly general audience Nov. 2, the pope issued a special appeal to the leaders of the G-20 nations scheduled to meet Nov. 3-4 in Cannes, France.
“I hope the meeting will help overcome the difficulties, which — on a global level — block the promotion of an authentically human and integral development,” the pope said.
The Archdiocese of Baltimore added a new religious order of nuns Tuesday, its first in decades and one that began as an Anglican community.
The All Saints’ Sisters of the Poor left the Episcopal Church for the Roman Catholic Church two years ago. By a decree from the Vatican, they are now an official diocesan priory, or order, the same designation carried by the School Sisters of Notre Dame or the Daughters of Charity.
“We feel we have broken ground,” said Mother Christina Christie, leader of the community and a nun since 1966.
A day after St. Paul’s Cathedral suspended legal action to evict hundreds of anti-capitalist protesters camped outside its doors, the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury and the spiritual leader of the world’s Anglicans, was quoted on Wednesday as expressing sympathy for their cause….
With the Church of England’s leadership in a crisis over its handling of the protesters, the archbishop’s remarks seemed to offer a belated attempt to lay out an agenda.
Archbishop Williams supported a Vatican statement last week endorsing the idea of a “Robin Hood” tax on financial transactions and for a separation of retail and investment operations at banks that have relied on bailouts from public funds.
This evening witnessed one of the most profound moments of my entire life. I beheld, in an immediate and very real way, the height of human civilization. I also tasted the eternal and awe-inspiring nature of our Catholic liturgy, made manifest in that way which makes it the most beautiful thing this side of Heaven. Where had I been, and what had I seen and heard? Well, I had attended the Brompton Oratory’s Solemn Mass for All Souls, set to the orchestral version of Mozart’s Requiem.
I go to the Oratory often, weekly in fact. Like many others, I am well aware that this church offers a liturgical standard that is rarely, if ever, found anywhere else in the world. I also know that the Oratory’s Choir is amongst the best in the land. Of course, along with most men and women, I am familiar, too, with Mozart’s Requiem – his religious master-piece, which was finished by Franz Xaver Süssmayr. It has inspired me since my youth. But, the combination of liturgical excellence and one of the finest musical compositions the world has ever heard meant that tonight even the Oratory’s surpassed itself.
When an interviewer for the Atlantic Monthly blog asked me “What prompted you to write this book?” I apparently replied, “Deep desire to know everything: what the universe is and where we are in it.” I don’t deny that I said it””it’s just that I would have thought I would have given a more pedestrian reply, because I am a sociologist, with a Ph.D. in my discipline and some 40 years experience as a professor at Harvard and Berkeley. And I am quite aware that early in the last century Max Weber, in a famous 1918 talk called “Science as a Vocation,” warned that “science has entered a phase of specialization previously unknown and this will forever remain the case.” It does seem that he didn’t apply this dictum to himself, but he was talking about the future when huge projects like his own would no longer be possible. So what is this “deep desire to know everything” in a world of super-specialization? When I look at books like Robert Wright’s The Evolution of God, Nicholas Wade’s The Faith Instinct, Pascal Boyer’s Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought. and Scott Atran’s In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion, recent books that might seem parallel to my own new book, I can only say Weber was right””these books should not have been written, or, to be charitable, they may be good journalism but they are not serious contributions to understanding….
I’m sure there will be some who will gladly throw my book on the same heap as those I have criticized, but I will try to show a third way, a way that could possibly overcome the split between knowledge and meaning. This way would be to take Weber seriously about specialization but to follow him in not giving up the search for the big picture.
…local protests, in order to be effective, must have a specific local object; in this case, they are presented with one that could indeed make an immense global difference.
the Occupy movement… is remarkably a spontaneous populist expression, not clearly linked to any established political tendencies….
[In a general sense]…its implicit rejection of the alliance of financial and bureaucratic oligarchies aligns it naturally with the new “post-liberal” politics….
Yet it is only if they adopt some such more specific goal that the protestors will be equal to the symbolic resonance of the local hornet’s nest where they find themselves encamped.
And curiously, it is the same lamentable failure to be alert to symbolic resonance which has characterised the official Anglican response so far – though, in this respect, it limps behind the vast majority of Anglican clergy and laity.
One of my friends reminded me of this yesterday and I have to say I was stunned at the impact it had on me. My wife had a similar reaction last night. Simply fabulous. Listen to it all–KSH.
The lesson of LTCM was that no trading operation is better than its ability to withstand losses. This lesson was proved in spades, in 2008, at highly leveraged banks such as Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers.
A second lesson is that seemingly unlikely events may be more likely than market history suggests. Russia had not defaulted since 1917, but that didn’t stop it from happening in 1998.
And a further lesson of LTCM’s demise was that the widespread belief that liquidity offers safety is, in fact, an illusion, and a terribly dangerous one at that.
In response to the package, the bond market has not changed its tune. The new 50% “haircut” to private sector investors in Greece hasn’t altered the conviction of traders that the troubles in Athens will inevitably be contagious. Pricing of Spanish, Italian and even French bonds reflect this pessimistic outlook.
Europe’s politicians are aware of what the markets have long known: Patches are destined to fail. But the urge to pass the hot potato without instituting meaningful structural change is, evidently, irresistible. So instead of muscular reforms, we see the same unsuccessful rescue packages supersized. Sunny optimism and mutual back-patting continue, paired with pep talks from the rescue fund controllers at the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
The latest steps don’t end the Greek crisis. A Eurozone-wide problem requires a Eurozone-wide solution. The European Central Bank should be creating something along the lines of the U.S. TARP program, buying bonds to calm the volatility until a bold, permanent solution is crafted. Greece and the rest of Europe would ultimately survive the disintegration of the Eurozone and the death of the euro. But the end of a unified Europe would leave the entire world poorer.
Abuse of prescription painkiller have reached “epidemic” levels in the US, a government report says.
Overdoses of pain relievers cause more deaths than heroin and cocaine combined, the report has found.
It says sales and prescriptions of the drugs rose sharply in recent years and this was linked to the rise in overdoses.
O God of truth and peace, who didst raise up thy servant Richard Hooker in a day of bitter controversy to defend with sound reasoning and great charity the catholic and reformed religion: Grant that we may maintain that middle way, not as a compromise for the sake of peace, but as a comprehension for the sake of truth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.