The International Anglican Family Network (IAFN) is using the season of Advent to encourage member Churches of the Communion to get involved with making birth registration a universal reality.

More than just a legal formality, birth registration opens the door to education and healthcare. Without it people may not be able to obtain a passport, own a house or land, or marry.

“In this season of Advent, as Christians everywhere wait to celebrate the birth of Jesus, our Network is calling on Anglican churches to partner with state and other agencies to ensure that babies born in 2012 and beyond are registered”, said IAFN’s Ian Sparks.

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The question of same-sex marriage concerns every morally sensitive citizen. And so it is no wonder that it has been the subject of debate everywhere, among politicians and jurists, scholars and intellectuals.

Professor Martha Nussbaum and I have locked swords over this issue on many occasions, such as in Sexual Orientation and Human Rights in American Religious Discourse. Her recent essay in the California Law Review entitled “A Right To Marry?” provides a welcome opportunity to return to this hotly debated question, and sharpen the points of difference between us….

She draws upon precedents that seem to be already changing the legal definition of marriage from a union of a man and woman into the union of two persons, irrespective of their sex. Conversely, I want to change or undo those very precedents that have led to a situation where what might be called “the traditional Western definition of marriage” can now be seriously and powerfully challenged.

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Read it all; and thanks.

Guess please where ths U.S. is and what the The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average is first. Then go and check it out.

Evangelist Billy Graham was resting comfortably Wednesday night in an Asheville hospital after being admitted with a possible case of pneumonia.

A statement from the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association said Graham was admitted Wednesday morning to Mission Hospital for respiratory problems. It’s Graham’s fifth hospital stay since 2007. In May, he spent five days at Mission, also for pneumonia.

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Address Is Approximate from The Theory on Vimeo.

Watch it all–wonderful fare from Theoryfilms; KSH.

Pseudoephedrine is found in over-the-counter cold medicines such as Sudafed. While these pills may provide relief to cold sufferers, to criminals who are in the business of making meth, these pills are gold. Meth-makers legally buy as much of the raw product as they can at local pharmacies and drug stores.

A federal law designed to crack down on methamphetamine abuse sets a hard limit on pseudoephedrine: No more than nine grams, or about seven packs, per customer each month. But to get around that limit, which is electronically tracked by drug stores in certain states, meth users will team up so that each can buy the maximum at once. [Deputy director Dan] Smoot explained that it’s a practice known as “smurfing,” named after the little blue cartoon characters, Smurfs, who are small, but mighty as a team.

Caught this one on the morning run. The video is highly recommended if you have time. Did you know that Kentucky is number 3 in America in Methamphetamine production? I didn’t. Read it all–KSH.

Wall Street executives, in a private meeting with a top Federal Reserve official in late September, recommended a coordinated effort by central banks to remedy the European financial crisis, according to Fed documents received in an open-records request.

The meeting, led by Louis Bacon, founder of hedge fund Moore Capital Management, preceded a joint action Wednesday by the world’s major central banks, which banded together to provide liquidity to the markets through cheap U.S. dollar loans….

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Jesus’ prayer touches all the phases of His ministry and all of His days. Hardships do not impede it. Indeed, the Gospels clearly show that it was a custom of Jesus’ to pass part of the night in prayer. The Evangelist Mark recounts one of these nights, after the hard day of the multiplication of the loaves, and he writes: “Immediately He made His disciples get into the boat and go before Him to the other side, to Bethsaida, while He dismissed the crowd. And after He had taken leave of them, He went into the hills to pray. And when evening came, the boat was out on the sea, and He was alone on the land” (Mark 6:45-47).

When decisions become urgent and complex, His prayer becomes more prolonged and intense. Faced with the imminent choice of the Twelve Apostles, for example, Luke emphasizes that Jesus’ prayer in preparation for this moment lasted the entire night: “In these days He went out into the hills to pray; and all night He continued in prayer to God. And when it was day, He called His disciples, and chose from them twelve, whom he named apostles” (Luke 6:12-13).

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Emerging from the front lines in Tahrir Square earlier this week, with red, streaming eyes and a gas mask dangling from his neck, Mohamed Ghoneim was in an angry mood. But the target of the 43-year-old secular activist’s ire wasn’t the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces or even the combined police and army troops who were battling protesters with tear gas and buckshot a few meters away. His anger was reserved for the people who weren’t in the square: the Muslim Brotherhood.

“We’re not surprised that the military was unhappy with the revolution, but we’re very, very disappointed in the Muslim Brotherhood,” Mr. Ghoneim said, spreading his arms in an arc. “Look around you. How many beards and niqabs [Islamic full-face veils] do you see? Almost none. The Brotherhood can push a button and bring out four million people, but we are 80 million. These people around me are Egypt.”

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Lord God, make us so reflect thy perfect love; that, with thy deacon Nicholas Ferrar and his household, we may rule ourselves according to thy Word, and serve thee with our whole heart; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David the servant of the LORD, who addressed the words of this song to the LORD on the day when the LORD delivered him from the hand of all his enemies, and from the hand of Saul. He said: I love thee, O LORD, my strength. The LORD is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. I call upon the LORD, who is worthy to be praised, and I am saved from my enemies.

–Psalm 18:1-3

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In spite of many assurances, some Anglicans evidently still think that the Covenant changes the structure of our Communion or that it gives some sort of absolute power of ”˜excommunication’ to some undemocratic or unrepresentative body. With all respect to those who have raised these concerns, I must repeat that I do not see the Covenant in this light at all. It sets out an understanding of our common life and common faith and in the light of that proposes making a mutual promise to consult and attend to each other, freely undertaken. It recognizes that not doing this damages our relations profoundly. It outlines a procedure, such as we urgently need, for attempting reconciliation and for indicating the sorts of consequences that might result from a failure to be fully reconciled. It alters no Province’s constitution, as it has no canonical force independent of the life of the Provinces. It does not create some unaccountable and remote new authority but seeks to identify a representative group that might exercise a crucial advisory function. I continue to ask what alternatives there are if we want to agree on ways of limiting damage, managing conflict and facing with honesty the actual effects of greater disunity. In the absence of such alternatives, I must continue to commend the Covenant as strongly as I can to all who are considering its future.

These questions are made all the more sharp by the fact that the repeated requests for moratoria on problematic actions issued by various representative Anglican bodies are increasingly ignored. Strong conscientious convictions are involved here. No-one, I believe, acts out of a desire to deepen disunity; some believe that certain matters are more important than what they think of as a superficial unity. But the effects are often to deepen mutual mistrust, and this must surely be bad for our mission together as Anglicans, and alongside other Christians as well. The question remains: if the moratoria are ignored and the Covenant suspected, what are the means by which we maintain some theological coherence as a Communion and some personal respect and understanding as a fellowship of people seeking to serve Christ? And we should bear in mind that our coherence as a Communion is also a significant concern in relation to other Christian bodies ”“ especially at a moment when the renewed dialogues with Roman Catholics and Orthodox have begun with great enthusiasm and a very constructive spirit.

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In reporting these observations, however, the Bureau is mindful that they are drawn from a non-random sample of roughly 5,000 credit card consumers.

First, many complaints show consumers struggling to understand the terms of credit cards and associated products like debt protection services. These show a mismatch between consumer understanding and product function or issuer practice.

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A disciplinary committee of the Episcopal Church has decided that Bishop Mark Lawrence has not abandoned his church.

The judgment came Monday after the Disciplinary Board of Bishops reviewed 63 pages of material submitted by individuals in the Diocese of South Carolina who asserted that recent actions taken under Lawrence’s leadership amounted to a withdrawal from the church.

But the board — led by the retired bishop of the Diocese of Upper South Carolina, the Rt. Rev. Dorsey Henderson — decided otherwise, citing Title IV, Canon 16 of the church’s constitution.

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