Read it all and please take the time to read the material at the links at the bottom of this piece.

And that brings me to my third point.

The Bible has helped to shape the values which define our country.

Indeed, as Margaret Thatcher once said, “we are a nation whose ideals are founded on the Bible.”

Responsibility, hard work, charity, compassion, humility, self-sacrifice, love”¦

”¦pride in working for the common good and honouring the social obligations we have to one another, to our families and our communities”¦

”¦these are the values we treasure.

Yes, they are Christian values.
And we should not be afraid to acknowledge that.

But they are also values that speak to us all ”“ to people of every faith and none.

And I believe we should all stand up and defend them.

Those who oppose this usually make the case for secular neutrality.

They argue that by saying we are a Christian country and standing up for Christian values we are somehow doing down other faiths.

And that the only way not to offend people is not to pass judgement on their behaviour.

I think these arguments are profoundly wrong.

Read it all.

Colleen Kegg hasn’t worked out the details of her exit plan yet. But about one thing, Kegg is clear: When she can no longer feed herself or go to the bathroom without assistance, she will take steps to end her life. A rare and incurable neurological disease is gradually stealing the things the 60-year-old Santa Barbara-area resident lives for, and she wishes a California physician could legally prescribe life-ending medication, as doctors can in Oregon, Washington and Montana. Instead, she’ll have to find another way.

“I know I can stop eating and drinking,” Kegg told me one evening in her sister’s home, her speech already slowed by corticobasal degeneration, a condition somewhat similar to Parkinson’s and Lou Gehrig’s disease.

To Kegg and her family, it seems unjust that how she must die is dictated in part by law, and influenced by religious convictions and social mores she doesn’t share. Starving herself could make death drag out for a couple of weeks, while just north of the state border, people can say their goodbyes and leave on their terms, quickly, comfortably and peacefully.

Read it all.

The Obama administration will give states broad latitude to define the minimum benefits that many health insurance policies will be required to offer under the 2010 health-care law, officials announced Friday.

The plan sparked criticism from interest groups on all sides of the issue. Consumer advocates worried that millions of Americans could end up with insurance substantially less comprehensive than the law’s drafters intended. Representatives of employers and insurers warned of an opposite scenario: A state could make the benefits package so comprehensive that the resulting plans would be prohibitively expensive.

Read it all.

O God, Father of mercies, who didst so love the world that thou didst give thine only begotten Son to take our nature upon him for us men and for our salvation: Grant to us who by his first coming have been called into thy kingdom of grace, that we may always abide in him, and be found watching and ready when he shall come again to call us to thy kingdom of glory; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.

–The Rev. Henry Stobart (1824-1895)

For thus says the LORD of hosts: “As I purposed to do evil to you, when your fathers provoked me to wrath, and I did not relent, says the LORD of hosts, so again have I purposed in these days to do good to Jerusalem and to the house of Judah; fear not. These are the things that you shall do: Speak the truth to one another, render in your gates judgments that are true and make for peace, do not devise evil in your hearts against one another, and love no false oath, for all these things I hate, says the LORD.”

–Zechariah 8:14-17

Christopher Hitchens””the incomparable critic, masterful rhetorician, fiery wit, and fearless bon vivant””died today at the age of 62. Hitchens was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in the spring of 2010, just after the publication of his memoir, Hitch-22, and began chemotherapy soon after. His matchless prose has appeared in Vanity Fair since 1992, when he was named contributing editor.

Read it all.

In the Freiburg Concert Hall, Benedict frankly told the German leaders: “For some time now we have been experiencing a decline in religious practice and we have been seeing substantial numbers of the baptized drifting away from church life.” Benedict is a realist. So demands for change arise, changes almost always modeled on secular institutions and not on the sources of the original founding of the Church. Such radical changes would never work. The Church is of divine, not human law, in its essence.

Here, Benedict recalls that someone once asked Mother Teresa this same question about what needs to be changed in the Church. Her answer was “you and I.” Chesterton was once asked a similar question. “What’s wrong with the world?” He answered with wonderful brevity and profundity, “I am.” Mother Teresa meant by this response that the Church is not “other people.” “Every Christian and the whole community of the faithful are called to constant change,” change away from sin, change to accept what is revealed, to accept what is true. What sort of change? “The fundamental motive for change is the apostolic mission of the disciples and the Church herself.” Why is this? It is because ultimately this mission is not of our own making and arises from God’s presence in the world.

The Church is to keep its mission in mind. Christians are told: “You are witnesses.” They are not, at bottom, originators. They are to pass along what is heard, what is witnessed to every age and place. All nations, all times, and all places are in the original intention of the Church’s founding. This means that we must not think as the world, for something less than what we are. The Church must be rather in a way “unworldly.”

Read it all.

…the heroes of the Jewish story fought not only against a foreign persecutor. They also fought against fellow Jews who””perhaps more attracted to the cosmopolitan and sophisticated Greek culture than to the ways of their ancestors””cooperated with their rulers….

Over time, the stories of the persecutions that led to this war came to serve as models of Jewish faithfulness under excruciating persecution. In the most memorable instance, seven brothers and their mother all choose, successively, to die at the hands of their torturers rather than to yield to the demand to eat pork as a public disavowal of the God of Israel and his commandments….

“Hanukkah” means “dedication.” Originally, the term referred to the rededication of the purified Temple after the Maccabees’ stunning military victory. But as the story of the martyrs shows, the victory was also associated with the heroic dedication of the Jewish traditionalists of the time to their God and his Torah. If Hanukkah celebrates freedom, it is a freedom to be bound to something higher than freedom itself.

Read it all.

Everything’s going digital these days ”” including cheating….

“There’s an epidemic of cheating,” says Robert Bramucci, vice chancellor for technology and learning services at South Orange Community College District in Mission Viejo, Calif. “We’re not catching them. We’re not even sure it’s going on.”

Several security-related companies, such as Spycheatstuff.com, will even overnight-mail a kit that turns a cellphone or iPod into a hands-free personal cheating device, featuring tiny wireless earbuds, that allows a test-taker to discreetly “phone a friend” during a test and get answers remotely without putting down the pencil.

Read it all.

Christians are using the social-media site Twitter to re-tell the Christmas story in novel ways this year.

In Germany, a Twitter-user called Joseph von Nazareth is journalling the nativity story from the perspec­tive of Joseph. Describing himself as a “35-year-old third-generation car­penter from Nazareth”, he regularly updates the site with short descrip­tions from the Christmas story.

Read it all and check out the winning tweets in the Bishop of Bradford’s competition.

Read it all.

Continuing the region’s recent streak of national recognition, greater Charleston has been tagged as one of the economically healthiest metropolitan statistical areas in the country.

The Charleston-North Charleston MSA ranked 11th in the nonpartisan Milken Institute’s “Best-Performing Cities 2011,” up from 19th last year and from 30th in 2009….

Charleston climbed to just outside the top 10 on the strength of its “vibrant aerospace sector,” “stable military presence” and other high-tech, high-skill employers, according to the report.

Read it all.

Dioceses will be better placed to meet financial challenges in 2012 after the Archbishops’ Council cut its request for funding next year by £0.5 million. The Council has decided to request the same overall level of funding for its work in 2012 as in 2011, rather than the 1.8 per cent increase approved by the General Synod in July.

Although dioceses have already set their 2012 budgets, the resulting saving of £0.5 million will help dioceses meet other financial challenges whilst enabling the Council to meet all the commitments made when its budget was approved by General Synod in July….

Read it all.

…Every year, mysteriously, all our plans seem to evaporate and it’s the usual mess, with all the last minute panic. There’ll be a good few people concerned just now about what they can afford for a start.

Yet it’s odd in a way, this business of Perfect Christmasses. The story of the first Christmas is the story of a series of completely unplanned, messy events ”“ a surprise pregnancy, an unexpected journey that’s got to be made, a complete muddle over the hotel accommodation when you get there…Not exactly a perfect holiday….

But in the complete mess of the first Christmas, God says, ‘Don’t worry ”“ I’m not going to wait until you’ve got everything sorted out perfectly before I get involved with you….’

Read it all.

(Please note the content of this piece may not be appropriate for some blog readers–KSH).

The shift in the gay movement away from demanding equal rights and towards calling for recognition of the idea that gayness is “natural” occurred in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Feeling under attack from a conservative backlash, gay-rights activists in the West started to argue, very defensively, that being gay was a simple biological trait and therefore it should not be criticised….

The aim of those who bang on endlessly about how beetles and penguins are just as likely as humans to be gay is to avoid testy moral debate about homosexuality in favour of effectively presenting gayness almost as an animalistic instinct, which therefore cannot be helped or “corrected” and which should not be criticised.

Homosexuality is not “natural”. It is not a mere biological instinct. Rather, like all human relations and interactions, it is a complex mix of desire and choice and love and lust. The campaigners who hold up the grunting antics of penguins and dogs as evidence that being gay is okay imagine that they are doing gay people a favour….

Read it all.

I will take comments on this submitted by email only to at KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

Girls are starting sex at ever younger ages ”“ but boys, it seems, are not.

The trend, revealed in the annual Health Survey for England 2010, published yesterday, triggered claims about the “pornification” of British culture.

The survey found more than one in four women (27 per cent) aged 16 to 24 said they’d had sex before the age of 16 ”“ the legal age for consent ”“ compared with just over one in five men (22 per cent).

Read it all.

One wishes that financial investors were made of the same stuff as German Chancellor Angela Merkel. With virtually the entire world convinced that the euro zone has not done enough to save the common currency, Merkel remains stoic in the face of demands to erect a gigantic firewall. On Thursday, she ruled out increasing the size of the permanent euro backstop fund, the European Stability Mechanism, beyond the currently planned €500 billion ($648.5 billion).

“The German government has always made it clear that the European debt crisis is not to be solved with a single blow,” she told German parliamentarians one day earlier. She said that overcoming the debt crisis would take years and made a plea for patience and endurance.

It would appear, however, that not many are listening. This week has seen several indications that financial markets are by no means impressed with the results of last week’s European Union summit….

Read it all.

For three years before the church closed, a priest celebrated Mass in the basement because scaffolding cluttered the main nave. But a small, committed cluster of neighborhood residents and Lithuanian immigrants kept coming, and other groups also held services in the building, including Portuguese and Filipino contingents, parishioners said.

“There was like a renaissance happening in the church, with ebbs and flows,” said Ramute Zukas, the president of the New York chapter of the Lithuanian American Community.

Before deciding to close the church, the archdiocese consulted with the regional vicar, the parish administrator and the neighboring pastors, according to court documents. There was no need to get the agreement of the parishioners under church law, the archdiocese said.

Read it all.

Paul Klingler likes his job as a mold-maker for a Rochester plastics manufacturer.

But the 54-year-old Parma resident also liked his last mold-making job, which he held for four years before being laid off early this year. And when he didn’t get a call back regarding an open position at another company, Klingler chalked it up to his lack of a college degree. “I know I have all the other skills they’re looking for,” he says.

That’s why Klingler is working with Monroe Community College here to figure out what coursework he needs to earn an associate’s degree in its machine trades apprentice training program. He plans to start this spring.

Read it all.

Lord God Almighty, King of glory and love eternal, worthy art thou at all times to receive adoration, praise, and blessing; but especially at this time do we praise thee for the sending of thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ, for whom our hearts do wait, and to whom, with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, be honour and dominion, now and for ever.

He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not winnow; so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.’ But his master answered him, ‘You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sowed, and gather where I have not winnowed? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him, and give it to him who has the ten talents. For to every one who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away. And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness; there men will weep and gnash their teeth.’

–Matthew 25:24-30

So after reading all the articles on AMiA, I have determined that there is no simple summary so I will take a shot at it. By the way, “summary” means I left out a bunch of details. My blog; my prerogative on which details I leave out. The Anglican Mission in America (AMiA) is an organization of churches Chuck Murphy created when he left the Episcopal Church. In order to be an official Anglican organization recognized in the world by other Anglicans, he needed an endorsement from a genuine Anglican province. Rwanda and Asia stepped in to fill that role and now Chuck is Bishop Murphy. What they didn’t tell us (or at least what I didn’t get)….apparently this organization is not part of the province of Rwanda, as I had thought. It is a business venture of Bishop Murphy. So when Bishop Murphy breaks ties with Rwanda and leaves, so does the Anglican Mission. And that is what has happened. Bishop Murphy has cut our relationship with the Province of Rwanda.

This is where it gets complicated. Our church is an AMiA church, but our priests were received as official missionary priests in the province of Rwanda. So it would seem our church is under the authority of Bishop Murphy, but our priests are under the authority of Rwanda, but not Bishop Murphy. What? Exactly.

Read it all.

The cast and producers of “All-American Muslim,” a reality-TV show that has been a lightning rod for controversy, said Wednesday (Dec. 14) they are helping change negative perceptions of Muslims, and rejected criticisms that the show is propaganda that sugarcoats Islam.

“These are our lives. This is what we’ve been doing for years,” said Mike Jaafar, a sheriff’s deputy in the Wayne County Sheriff’s Department, who appears on the show that follows the everyday lives of Muslims in and around Dearborn, Mich.

“The charge of propaganda is based on the fact that the reality of the Muslim American experience does not jibe with their preconceptions of what Islam is,” said Reza Aslan, co-founder of BoomGen Studios, which is helping promote the show.

Read it all.

Read it all.

Carl F. H. Henry, the dean of evangelical theologians, argued that the Virgin Birth is the “essential, historical indication of the Incarnation, bearing not only an analogy to the divine and human natures of the Incarnate, but also bringing out the nature, purpose, and bearing of this work of God to salvation.” Well said, and well believed.

Nicholas Kristof and his secularist friends may find belief in the Virgin Birth to be evidence of intellectual backwardness among American Christians. But this is the faith of the Church, established in God’s perfect Word, and cherished by the true Church throughout the ages….

This much we know: All those who find salvation will be saved by the atoning work of Jesus the Christ ”” the virgin-born Savior. Anything less than this is just not Christianity, whatever it may call itself. A true Christian will not deny the Virgin Birth.

Read it all.

15 December 2011

On Wednesday, December 14, Province IV bishops diocesan were invited to attend a meeting in Charleston, South Carolina with Bishop Mark Lawrence to discuss the recent issuing of quitclaim deeds by Bishop Lawrence and the Standing Committee of the Diocese of South Carolina to parishes of the diocese. A representative group who were available at the appointed time and date attended the meeting.

Gracious hospitality and collegiality characterized the gathering during which we prayed and participated in open, honest, and forthright conversation. Probing questions were asked by all, and it is fair to say that we did not agree on all matters discussed. For the visiting bishops, the gathering particularly helped to clarify the context of the Diocese of South Carolina’s quitclaims decision. Where we go in the future is a matter of prayer and ongoing engagement of concerns before us, an engagement we embrace out of our love for Christ and his Church.

The Right Reverend Scott Anson Benhase
The Episcopal Diocese of Georgia

The Right Reverend Michael B. Curry
The Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina

The Rt. Rev. Clifton Daniel III
The Episcopal Diocese of East Carolina

The Rt. Rev. Don E. Johnson
The Episcopal Diocese of West Tennessee

The Rt. Rev. Mark J. Lawrence
The Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina

The Rt. Rev. G. Porter Taylor
The Episcopal Diocese of Western North Carolina

The Rt. Rev. W. Andrew Waldo
The Episcopal Diocese of Upper South Carolina

Google’s annual run-down of Britain’s most popular and fastest rising searches always makes for a revealing list ”“ the internet search engine calls the study “Zeitgeist” because it aims to capture the spirit of our age.

This year the royal wedding was fastest-rising but, tellingly, it doesn’t even make the top 10 most popular UK searches. That’s dominated by functional queries for Facebook, eBay, YouTube, Hotmail and, oddly, Google itself. When it comes to individuals, the same is true: Kim Kardashian, Victoria Beckham and Emma Watson are most popular, untouched by the fastest-rising people such as the late American TV star Ryan Dunn or singers Adele and Ed Sheeran.

Read it all.

“Massive and effective street protest” was a global oxymoron until ”” suddenly, shockingly ”” starting exactly a year ago, it became the defining trope of our times. And the protester once again became a maker of history.

It began in Tunisia, where the dictator’s power grabbing and high living crossed a line of shamelessness, and a commonplace bit of government callousness against an ordinary citizen ”” a 26-year-old street vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi ”” became the final straw. Bouazizi lived in the charmless Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid, 125 miles south of Tunis. On a Friday morning almost exactly a year ago, he set out for work, selling produce from a cart. Police had hassled Bouazizi routinely for years, his family says, fining him, making him jump through bureaucratic hoops. On Dec. 17, 2010, a cop started giving him grief yet again. She confiscated his scale and allegedly slapped him. He walked straight to the provincial-capital building to complain and got no response. At the gate, he drenched himself in paint thinner and lit a match.

Read it all.

Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta landed in the Iraqi capital on Thursday for the ceremony officially ending the military mission here and closing out a bloody and controversial chapter of American relations with the Islamic world.

Pentagon officials said Mr. Panetta would thank all American service members who served here since the 2003 invasion, and would laud them for “the remarkable progress we have seen here in Baghdad and across this country.”

Mr. Panetta also was expected to note that the American effort “helped the Iraqi people to cast tyranny aside and to offer hope for prosperity and peace to this country’s future generations.”

Read it all.