The Report of the Archbishops is short, and with less clarity than you or I might have desired. But it reflects a particular culture that abhors a “winner-takes-all” outcome, having fought civil and religious wars where such an outcome was only narrowly averted, and with much bloodshed. In that light, here are some important observations about the Archbishops’ report that are, on balance, positive for ACNA:

1. The ACNA as an institution was not rejected, as TEC and its proxies no doubt desired. Our Anglican “bona fides” will be subject to review and discussion while the wounds remain fresh from the realignment here in North America. The Archbishops state that the concept of membership in the Anglican Communion is not straightforward (Paragraph 8). Within that declaration, they discuss the role of both the ACC and the assent of 2/3 of the Primates of the Churches already listed in the current schedule of membership as providing a basis for membership. But in contrast to previous statements by ++Canterbury and the Secretary of the Anglican Communion, there is no insistence here upon the ACNA submitting an application to the ACC or following its “schedule” as necessary steps for recognition. I believe this is a significant concession between the lines to those who have challenged the purported authority of the ACC to make such decisions, especially in light of actual precedent where it was recognition by the Primates that gave membership within the Communion.

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The Euclid Avenue Church of God and the Church of the Transfiguration sit empty on Cleveland’s former Millionaires’ Row, remnants of a heyday when mansions marched east from downtown.

Their congregations have fled. And historic preservationists fear that both churches will disappear, swallowed up by the Cleveland Clinic’s appetite for land.

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On Saturday night self described ‘Jill-of-all-trades’ Denesse McBayne devoted herself to her real passion– cooking.

“We’re not only feeding their bodies,” says McBayne. “We’re feeding their spirit.”

She spent the afternoon at the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd whipping up a Caribbean feast to feed the members of the Family Promise program.

For one week, four times a year, a network of 16 churches throughout the Knoxville area take turns hosting homeless families of all sizes and descriptions.

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[Jefferts] Schori presides over Episcopalians in 16 countries. She made her first visit to North Carolina, in part, to help St. Martin’s celebrate its 125th anniversary, a century of it spent in the small building tucked between Seventh Street and Independence Park.

As Schori noted often in her sermon, St. Martin’s has a long tradition of community involvement. It was home to the city’s first Boys and Girls Scout troops. Today, its 750 members are active participants in a host of community affairs, from AIDS and HIV awareness to homelessness and affordable housing.

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Archbishops Rowan Williams of Canterbury and John Sentamu of York have suggested that the Church of England and the Anglican Communion ought to be in “an open-ended engagement” with the Anglican Church in North America.

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In 1978, the farmers in a small Chinese village called Xiaogang gathered in a mud hut to sign a secret contract. They thought it might get them executed. Instead, it wound up transforming China’s economy in ways that are still reverberating today.

The contract was so risky ”” and such a big deal ”” because it was created at the height of communism in China. Everyone worked on the village’s collective farm; there was no personal property.

“Back then, even one straw belonged to the group,” says Yen Jingchang, who was a farmer in Xiaogang in 1978. “No one owned anything.”

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“The Clear Call” is the title–listen to it all.

The prayer list for today’s parishioners includes eight expectant couples. Parish life includes an annual golf tournament between Episcopalians and Presbyterians, who would have been free to worship but known as dissenters 300 years ago. Another sign of modern life is a program to help families cope with divorce and separation; there’s also a ministry for women in prison. The Good Neighbor Free Medical Clinic started in the church. It has a mission to Africa for adults and youth, focusing on providing solar-power lighting.

Miller said the church is growing while others shrink because it is clear on where it stands, yet does not dwell on “walls of hostility” that can divide churches today as easily as they could have divided the diverse church in Antioch.

“We believe the gospel is good news, offering a living, transformative relationship with Jesus Christ,” Miller said. “That is what their hearts crave….”

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Britain has sunk deeper into debt. Three years after bubble burst, the UK has barely begun to tackle the crushing burden left by Gordon Brown. The contrast with the United States is frankly shocking.

The latest report on “Debt and Deleveraging” by the McKinsey Global Institute shows that total public and private debt in the UK is still hovering at an all-time high. It has risen from 487pc to 507pc of GDP since the crisis began….

It is a very different picture in the US where light is emerging at the end of the tunnel. American banks, firms, and households have been chipping away at their debts, more than offsetting Washington’s double-digit deficits.

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Courage…is the indispensable requisite of any true ministry…. If you are afraid of men and a slave to their opinion, go and do something else. Go make shoes to fit them. Go even and paint pictures you know are bad but will suit their bad taste. But do not keep on all of your life preaching sermons which shall not say what God sent you to declare, but what they hire you to say. Be courageous. Be independent.

—-Phillips Brooks, Lectures on Preaching, the 1877 Yale Lectures (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1969), p. 59

O everlasting God, who didst reveal truth to thy servant Phillips Brooks, and didst so form and mold his mind and heart that he was able to mediate that truth with grace and power: Grant, we pray, that all whom thou dost call to preach the Gospel may steep themselves in thy word, and conform their lives to thy will; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

O Lord, who hast pity for all our weakness, put away from us worry and every anxious fear; that having ended the labours of the day as in thy sight, and committing our tasks, ourselves, and all we love into thy keeping, we may, now that night cometh, receive as from thee thy priceless gift of sleep; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

17 After his return from the defeat of Ched-or-lao’mer and the kings who were with him, the king of Sodom went out to meet him at the Valley of Shaveh (that is, the King’s Valley). 18 And Mel-chiz’edek king of Salem brought out bread and wine; he was priest of God Most High. 19 And he blessed him and said, “Blessed be Abram by God Most High, maker of heaven and earth; 20 and blessed be God Most High, who has delivered your enemies into your hand!” And Abram gave him a tenth of everything. 21 And the king of Sodom said to Abram, “Give me the persons, but take the goods for yourself.” 22 But Abram said to the king of Sodom, “I have sworn to the LORD God Most High, maker of heaven and earth, 23 that I would not take a thread or a sandal-thong or anything that is yours, lest you should say, ‘I have made Abram rich.’ 24 I will take nothing but what the young men have eaten, and the share of the men who went with me; let Aner, Eshcol, and Mamre take their share.”

–Genesis 14:17-24

Mitt Romney needs a big idea. And it’s not the one he cited at the beginning of his speech after his humiliating loss to Newt Gingrich in the South Carolina primary Saturday. Executive experience matters, Romney said. He has it and Gingrich, like President Obama, doesn’t.

That’s not a winning argument””far from it. Voters in South Carolina rallied to Gingrich because his campaign is based on a big idea: he’ll crush Obama in debates and win the White House. And he’s fervent and tough in pursuing the presidency, as he showed in denouncing CNN debate anchor John King for raising charges by his ex-wife that he wanted an “open marriage.”

A big idea and passion trump experience….

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The General Synod, the national assembly of the Church of England, released a report this week providing further clarity on its working relationship with the Anglican Church in North America, and encouraged an “open-ended engagement with ACNA on the part of the Church of England and the (Anglican) Communion.”

“We are encouraged by the desire of the Church of England to continue to embrace the Anglican Church in North America and remain in solidarity with us as we proclaim the Gospel message and truth as revealed in Scripture in the way it has always been understood in Anglican formularies,” said Archbishop Duncan.

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BOB ABERNETHY: The last of the U.S. troops in Iraq came home last month, and we want to explore today how they are being received. Are they getting the help they need? How do they feel about the violence in the country they left behind? Meanwhile, what can be said about the incident in Afghanistan when four Marines defiled the bodies of Taliban fighters, and the picture of that went online around the world? Kim Lawton, managing editor of this program, joins me to talk with Nancy Sherman, a University Professor at Georgetown University in Washington. Her specialty is the ethics of war, including what she has called “moral wounding.” Her most recent book is The Untold War. Nancy, thank you for being with us.

NANCY SHERMAN (University Professor, Georgetown University): My pleasure.

ABERNETHY: When people see the pictures of the Marine incident, everybody says that’s terrible, reprehensible, no excuse for it. But, you know, here are guys who may have been on several tours, they’re tired, they see their friends, their buddies, blown up, killed, maimed. It would seem to me a fairly natural reaction to demonize the enemy, hate the enemy and want to do something despicable to express your feelings about this enemy.

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A couple of dozen years ago the Anglican Church of Nigeria was a sleepy outpost of British colonialism. White bishops from England presided over tea-sipping ex-pats and a few hundred thousand middle-class Europe-gazers from among the Nigerian population. All that changed when the Holy Spirit began reviving the Nigerian church””largely through a youth movement.

Into the Anglican Church of Nigeria poured young people eager to share their newfound love of Jesus with the staid, Anglicized believers in the pews. Eventually many of them rose to leadership, and today the Anglican Church of Nigeria is completely Nigerian, and alive with evangelistic zeal.

In 1990 when the global Anglican Communion announced a “decade of evangelism” the Nigerians responded by electing and consecrating ten priests as bishops and sending them into the north of the country to bring the Good News to Muslims there. Within a decade there were a dozen new dioceses formed, and today there are many converts from Islam in the northern part of the country. Today overall there are some 19 million Anglicans in Nigeria ”“ many more than in all of Europe, North and South America combined.

And this has hardly pleased the Mullahs and their followers….

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