Abroad, Christians are facing persecution and even death in many countries; the Arab Spring is threatening to turn into winter for Christian communities and the conflict in Syria is fraught with menace for a minority that is being driven out of parts of the Middle East it has inhabited for two millennia. The Coptic Christians in Egypt are suffering murderous attacks and the Lebanese patriarch is warning of dire consequences as a result of revolution across the Middle East, with militant Islamists now looking like the main beneficiaries rather than secular democrats. The courage of the embattled Christian communities in those areas is the most eloquent embracing of the Easter message that could be imagined. For the Easter drama illustrates the worst and the best of human behaviour: Judas’s betrayal, Peter’s craven denial, Pilate’s abdication of responsibility, contrasted with the humility, sacrifice and forgiveness of Christ. Christianity is no soft option.

In Britain, the tide may be turning. There is a sense that the Dawkins years are coming to an end. Richard Dawkins and the militant secularists are confronting the inevitable limitations of their atheist creed: how do you energise a crusade around a vacuum? Even when competing religions historically clashed, they had rival narratives to proclaim. “There is nothing” is not a message to which people in our stressful, increasingly fragmented society will warm. It is cold comfort to bring to a recession-hit household, a hospital ward or a deathbed. Yet to all those forums of human misery the Christian faith has a more consoling message to take: that of the empty tomb, the risen Christ, the joy that is to come. We wish all our readers a very happy Easter.

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President Obama’s signature health reform law will add as much as $527 billion to federal deficits over the next decade, not cut them as advertised, according to a report released Tuesday.

The Affordable Care Act will add as much as $1.2 trillion to federal spending between 2012 and 2021, the report also finds. Charles Blahous, who serves as one of Medicare’s trustees, wrote the report, published by George Mason University’s Mercatus Center.

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The Spanish reading public now has a very good grasp of the fundamental realities of EMU. This will have consequences. Spain is not on the fringes of the Balkans, terrified of being cast into Ottoman banishment. It is not a small country that can be pushed around for year after year.

How and when all this will end is anybody’s guess but I have suspected for a long time that Spain is the lynchpin of the system. The intellectual atmosphere has changed entirely. Politics must surely follow.

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Almighty God, whose blessed Son did, as in this season, burst the bonds of death, because it was not possible that he should be holden of it: Grant that we may be risen with him and walk henceforth in newness of life; and bring us at last to the joy of thy eternal kingdom. Hear us, O Father, for the sake of him who is the firstborn from the dead, and is now alive for evermore, even the same Jesus Christ our Lord.

There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory. So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body. Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual which is first but the physical, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust; and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. I tell you this, brethren: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.

–1 Corinthians 15:41-50

Manchester United blew open the Premier League title race by slumping to a surprise 1-0 loss at lowly Wigan on Wednesday, allowing second-place Manchester City to close the gap to five points with a 4-0 win over West Bromwich Albion.

Shaun Maloney scored the winner in the 50th minute at the DW Stadium, leaving United five points clear at the top after second-place Manchester City beat West Bromwich Albion 4-0.

“You wish the lead was better but considering where we were a few months ago, you have to take it,” United manager Alex Ferguson said. “I said both teams would drop points.”

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Bettany Hughes, an expert in ancient history, was quoted recently in London’s Daily Telegraph as saying that Christianity “was originally a faith where the female of the species held sway. To oppose the ordination of women bishops in the Church of England is to deny the central role women played in the faith’s founding.” She added: “Who knows whether God is a girl, but mankind has turned to the female of the species for good ideas.”

It is not clear from the report whether Ms. Hughes was speaking as a Christian or as an expert in ancient history, but it doesn’t really matter, for she is wrong on both counts. In fact, though, her remarks can be connected loosely with two very old Christian heresies, Marcionism and Montanism, which seem to have undergone something of a revival among trendy religion pundits.

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…when the family courts get involved in resolving disputes between contracting parents, they are being asked to give parental rights to someone who is not related to the child, either by blood or adoption. Let us call this person a “non-parent.” In response to these cases, the courts are defining a new category of parenthood. The “de facto parent” category usually involves multi-part tests to determine whether the non-parent should be counted as a parent. The court then inquires into issues such as how much care the non-parent provided and whether the child called her “Mommy.” The state decides that a person not related to a child, by either birth or adoption, can count as a parent. A perfectly fit mother can be compelled to allow her former lover access to her child, against her own wishes.

Think about it. The concepts of “mother” and “father” are natural, pre-political concepts, immediately intelligible to the human race. Up until now, the state has seen its role as simply recording this natural reality. But now parenthood is becoming the creation of the state. This is what “contract parenting” will come to mean: the state taking over parenthood and recreating it for its own purposes. Do you seriously think this can possibly be a “libertarian” or minimum-government move? I do not think that it can.

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Virginia is the epicenter of the Episcopal schism. Heathsville is one of seven churches ”” including two of the largest and most historic in the country ”” that broke away from the denomination in 2006. Now that they’ve lost their lawsuit, they all have to find new homes.

Church of the Apostles is one of the seven breakaway churches. At its home in Fairfax, a half-dozen men wrestle with a 360-pound cross, panting as they remove it from its moorings in the sanctuary. Parishioner Wayne Marsh says the cross is going into storage and the church is being shuttered.

“It’s sad and heartbreaking, and it’s a tremendous loss,” he says, “but God has just given me a peace to understand this is his will and we’re going forward with it, not knowing exactly where we’re going.”

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Diane Winston, Knight Chair in Media and Religion at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, says the focus on the evolving nature of journalism is causing the disconnect between readers and reporters, according to the school’s press release.

“News organizations are rightly worried about creating smart business plans and developing cutting-edge technology,” Winston said. “But they’re overlooking their most basic resource: knowledgeable reporters.”

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(I am taking the liberty of putting this on in full text since this is soon to be lost to posterity, I am sorry to say. Please remember that I intensely dislike the terminology of “open” baptism [or “”open” communion] because it confuses the practice being advocated by some in TEC with something altogether different; this is why I plead for what some TEC reappraisers advocate to be described as “communion of the unbaptized” –KSH).

Seminary ruined my ministry. By this I do not mean what we tired old priests often mean by this statement. I am referring here very specifically to the understanding of Holy Baptism that was beat into my head. Actually, it wasn’t beat into my head at all. I drank it in and embraced it in the heart. I was taught and have ever since believed that Baptism is the foundational sacrament of the Church and therefore must be attended to by as much prayer and catechetical preparation as is possible. The key influences here were my liturgics professor, Fr Louis Weil; the Lutheran theologian, Robert W. Jenson; but most especially the writings of the Catholic liturgist, Fr Aidan Kavanagh. Later on William Willimon and Stanley Hauerwas would come along to reinforce what I had already learned, that we no longer live in a Christian culture and therefore can no longer rely on the culture to transmit to our children the beliefs, values, and practices of Christian faith. The Church must become what it once was”“a disciplined community.
Ecclesial discipline begins with the sacrament of Holy Baptism, the gateway into the community of faith. If we do not practice discipline at this point, we cannot effectively foster discipline later down the road. Baptism is not a right. It is a privilege and gift that the Church is authorized to administer under very specific conditions.

I remember years ago hearing an apocryphal story of Catholic missionaries to Indonesia who would beat drums and make a lot of noise in a village, so that its inhabitants would come out of their huts to see what was going on”“at which point they would be met by the missionaries, water buckets in hand: “Ego te baptizo ”¦”

When may the Church baptize? The Scriptures are clear. The Church may baptize an individual when that individual has responded to the gospel in faith and repentance. The Church does not baptize everyone indiscriminately. Faith and conversion are necessary conditions. In the second and third centuries, we see the Church developing a catechumenal process to prepare adult converts for baptism. This process would often last one to three years, concluding with examination by the bishop and sacramental initiation at the Great Vigil of Easter. Kavanagh describes this catechumenal process not so much as intellectual instruction but as “conversion therapy.” He notes that the early Church was not interested in indiscriminately baptizing the multitudes. It wanted to make Christians.

Tertullian had already observed that Christians are not born but made. Augustine and his colleagues over a century later would have agreed, perhaps extending the epigram to say that they do not just wander in off the streets either. They are honed down by the teaching and discipline of the catechumenate until their metal is tough, resilient, sharp, and glowing. The “enlightenment” of baptism was not a flickering flame but a burst of God’s glory in those whose capacities to receive it had been expanded to their utmost. And although things were different since the pagan Celsus had written archly in 168 that “if all men wanted to be Christian, the Christians would no longer want them,” being prepared in the fifth century to absorb a whole society did not mean that the churches would do so indiscriminately. The fathers’ catechetical homilies suggest that they still needed more Christians less than they needed better ones, even as they wished and worked for the conversion of all.

What about the baptism of children? They are the exception, not the norm. We risk the baptism of children only because their parents are practicing Christians and have demonstrated that they will raise their children within the household of faith, in the fear and admonition of the Lord. If their parents are not practicing Christians, then the Church has no authority whatsoever to baptize their children, no matter what the grandparents want!

And so this young priest took this understanding of Baptism and catechumenate out into the world. No other issue has caused me more trouble than this in my ministry of twenty-four years! Indeed, it is probably safe to say that it destroyed my ministry in one parish and has caused me nothing but grief in my present parish. How I wish I could in good conscience offer “open baptism.” Disciplined baptismal policy always offends, no matter how gently and graciously it is articulated. No one wants to hear that there are conditions and requirements that must be fulfilled if baptism is to be administered with sacramental and spiritual integrity. No one wants to hear that the faith and commitment of the parents necessarily and rightly affects the Church’s decision to baptize a baby. No one wants to hear the word no.

So when I read about “open baptism” I am filled with both envy and anger. I am envious, because these priests are able to avoid all of the grief and problems of trying to communicate to nonbelieving parents they must begin to take their baptismal vows seriously if they wish their children to be baptized into the Church. The open baptism policy makes everything so easy. There are no conditions to be imposed. No requirements are insisted upon. Difficult conversations are avoided. We just toss the water and say the magic words and everyone is happy. Oh if only I could in conscience offer open baptism. How nice it would be for me and everyone else if I could just adopt a no-conflict, no-grief, no-aggravation policy like St Bart’s in Poway, California:

We are an open and affirming church. No classes are required and no judgments are passed at St. Bartholomew’s. If you wish to be baptized and become Jesus Christ’s own forever, just ask and you can be.

But as I said, I was ruined in seminary. When I read a baptismal policy like the above, I become angry. These open baptism priests are prostituting the gospel. Baptism is not a spiritual tonic that we dispense to everyone who asks for it. Baptism is conversion, the renunciation of evil, and the embrace of love, self-denial, and the way of the cross. It’s all so cozy for these open baptism pastors and their congregations. No judgments are made. No discipline is imposed. No one has to say “no.” Baptism becomes a nice little ceremony of cultural affirmation. Everyone is blessed. Everyone feels good. But the identity and mission of the Church is sold out for a bowl of pottage.

(Please note that for now you can find the original post there. You may be interested to read the comments–KSH)

(If you are interested, you may read a bit more about the author here–KSH.)

Dr Rowan Williams has served as head of the Anglican Communion for ten years and the world has changed markedly in that time, and not for the better. Within the UK there have been profound changes in society: the complex responses to 9/11; the rise of exaggerated political correctness; the financial crisis; an increasingly confused and vague national spirituality; and a continuing numerical decline and division within the Anglican Church. In the light of this, I suggest that the new Archbishop needs to have the following qualities[:]

1) He should be a man who knows God’s priorities….2) He should be a man of conviction, a man confident in the Christian faith as revealed by Scripture and taught by the Church over centuries….3) He should be a man who can connect, and is able to express himself in words that can be understood….He should be a man who will confront the culture….5) He should be a man of discernment, not simply intelligence or wisdom but that combination of God-given grace and human intellect that allows someone to detect problems and identify opportunities…6) He should be a man of courage. It is a long-standing rule that anyone who goes out and preaches the good news of Jesus will face opposition. As far as I’m aware the last Archbishop of Canterbury to be martyred was Thomas Cranmer, who went to the stake in 1556 but these are frankly dark days for the church in the West.

Read it all from the April 8, 2012, Church of England Newspaper on page E3 (requires subscription).

Arkansas fired football Coach Bobby Petrino on Tuesday, saying he engaged in reckless behavior that included hiring his mistress and then intentionally misleading his bosses about their relationship and her presence at the motorcycle accident that ultimately cost him his job.

“He made the decision to mislead the public, [and it] adversely affected the university and the football program,” Athletic Director Jeff Long said at an evening news conference, choking up at one point as he discussed telling players the news. There was a “pattern of misleading and manipulative behavior to deceive me.”

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This year’s Easter service at the Tabernacle Church of God in La Follette, Tenn., will include many of the holiday’s traditional rituals, like Holy Communion and footwashing. There will also be some startling novelties.

“It will be filled with shouting, dancing, speaking in tongues, serpent handling and fire handling,” said its 21-year-old pastor, Andrew Hamblin. “We’ll celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ with a good old time.”

Since he opened its doors last fall, Mr. Hamblin’s small Pentecostal church, 39 miles north of Knoxville, has grown to almost 50 members, most of them in their 20s. Part of his strategy for expansion has been to use Facebook to publicize the daredevil spiritual exploits of his congregation.

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Four of the Episcopal Church’s key property dispute cases have moved to the state and U.S. Supreme Courts for review.

Briefings have been filed in the Episcopal v. Anglican Dioceses of Fort Worth cases in the Texas Supreme Court, while the breakaway congregations in Northern Virginia have asked the Virginia Supreme Court to review the lower court’s ruling giving the diocese custody of the parish properties.

The breakaway congregations in Christ Church v. Diocese of Georgia and Bishop Seabury Church v. Diocese of Connecticut have filed writs of certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has also been asked to review a third property dispute, Timberridge Presbyterian Church v. the Presbytery of Greater Atlanta, that addresses the same legal issues.

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Commemorations of the sinking of the Titanic 100 years ago will put the spotlight on a young Irish priest whose photographs are some of the only surviving images of life onboard the liner on its first and last voyage.

Jesuit Father Frank Browne, 1880-1960, became a prominent documentary photographer and a much-decorated chaplain in the British army in World War I.

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…the most significant new departure, contained in the appendix of the book, concerns cremation. Msgr. Lameri explained that the issue of cremation had been placed in an appendix to highlight the fact that the Church, “although she does not oppose the cremation of bodies, when not done ‘in odium fidei’, continues to maintain that the burial of the dead is more appropriate, that it expresses faith in the resurrection of the flesh, nourishes the piety of the faithful and favours the recollection and prayer of relatives and friends”.

In exceptional cases the rites normally celebrated at the cemetery chapel or the tomb may be celebrated at the cremation site, and it is recommended that the coffin be accompanied to that site. One particularity important aspect is that “cremation is considered as concluded when the urn is deposited in the cemetery”. This is because, although the law does allow ashes to be scattered in the open or conserved in places other than a cemetery, “such practices … raise considerable doubts as to their coherence to Christian faith, especially when they conceal pantheist or naturalistic beliefs”.

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Witches have been breaking into churches and graveyards to perform black magic rituals, a leading Church in Wales cleric has revealed.

Bishop of Monmouth Dominic Walker said the incidents coincided with a resurgence in witchcraft in recent years, with the number of occult groups performing both wicca ”“ or white magic ”“ and black magic on the rise.

And while not a frequent occurrence, Bishop Walker said he had been called on several occasions during his nine-year ministry to help people escape these “satanic groups”.

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In the service lay a story of black Christians and white Jews who once shared a kind of promised land, a peacefully integrated section of Indianapolis called Southside. Its decades of harmony were a rebuke to the Southern-style racial divisions that characterized Indiana for much of the 20th century, from the Ku Klux Klan’s heyday in the interwar years to George Wallace’s popularity with the state’s voters in the 1960s.

Upward mobility, Interstate 70 and the construction of a football stadium hollowed out the neighborhood starting in the late 1960s, scattering its residents and severing bonds of commerce and friendship. But in the last four years, an anthropology professor at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, Susan B. Hyatt, has set about finding former Southsiders and restoring those ties through social events and reciprocal worship services at South Calvary and the Etz Chaim Sephardic synagogue.

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We give thee thanks, O heavenly Father, who hast delivered us from the power of darkness and translated us into the kingdom of thy Son; grant, we pray thee, that as by his death he has recalled us to life, so by his presence abiding in us he may raise us to joys eternal; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.

–Mozarabic Sacramentary

The Lord reigns; let the earth rejoice; let the many coastlands be glad! Clouds and thick darkness are round about him; righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne. Fire goes before him, and burns up his adversaries round about. His lightnings lighten the world; the earth sees and trembles. The mountains melt like wax before the LORD, before the Lord of all the earth. The heavens proclaim his righteousness; and all the peoples behold his glory.

–Psalm 97:1-6

John McCain and Joseph Lieberman have already called for arming Syria’s rebels, in statements last month from the US Senate where they serve. But they repeated their demand in more dramatic fashion Tuesday ”“ from a Syrian refugee camp in Turkey and with violence unabated, as the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad disregarded the UN plan that was to have silenced the Syrian Army’s guns Tuesday morning.

The two senators joined a growing international chorus of voices finding that the unimplemented plan, brokered by former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, is simply allowing the Assad regime to continue its oppression.

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In The Brothers Karamazov, the rationalist and unbelieving Ivan is visited by the devil, who lays out the moral consequences of atheism. After belief in God is extinguished, “man will be exalted with the spirit of divine, titanic pride, and the man-god will appear.” Of course few will have the courage of the “man-god” to live in an entirely secular world. Ivan has the courage to face the fact that God is dead, or so the devil seductively suggests. And thus for him, “everything is permitted.”
I used to think that Dostoevsky was echoing a long tradition of anxious concern about atheism, one that presumes that without religious belief people will descend into a nihilistic state of self-regard and the moral order of society will crumble. This has not come to pass, at least not yet. Secular Sweden remains well-ordered. New York City, where many people don’t believe in God, is run by a neo-Puritan mayor who crusades against cigarettes and soft drinks. Today’s unbelievers have rules, plenty of them. Dostoevsky, it would seem, was wrong.

Or not. When the devil tells Ivan that “everything is permitted,” he was not suggesting that without God there are no rules. Instead, “everything is permitted” means that nothing is always wrong. Everything is, at least at some point and under some circumstances, permitted….

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The Reverend Fenhagen served as Rector of several parishes in Maryland, the District of Columbia, and at St. Michael and All Angels’ Episcopal Church in Columbia SC before becoming active in academic settings.

He was Director of the Church and Ministry Program at the Hartford Seminary Foundation.

He was named President and Dean of the General Theological Seminary in New York City in 1978 and retired from there in 1992.

Read it all. You may also find an ENS article there.

Japan and other countries in the Asia-Pacific appear to have failed to persuade North Korea to abort a rocket launch planned for as early as this week. Reports suggest that the region could be further unsettled by a rumored third nuclear weapons test by the regime.

The North insists that the launch, which could come on any morning between April 12 to 16 and will coincide with the centenary of the birth of the country’s founder Kim Il-sung on April 15, is designed to put an observation satellite into orbit. Japan, South Korea, and the US, however, say the launch would violate United Nations Security Council resolutions banning the North from engaging in missile development.

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Bruce Boling will celebrate Easter Sunday this weekend among Southern Baptists, just as he did when he prayed at a tiny Kentucky church where his family filled half the pews.

After decades away from faith, “I slowly began to see what I was missing was the relationship with God that I could find in my church,” said Boling, 45, who has settled in with a little Baptist congregation in Hendersonville, Tenn.

Lydia Scrafano’s heart will again thrill to hear Catholic hymns sounding on a great pipe organ, just as she did as a child in Detroit.

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Dr. Mark Rosenberg, chairman of emergency medicine at St. Joseph’s, said he had consulted on more than 50 geriatric emergency rooms to be opened across the country, from Princeton, N.J., to California, overcoming initial resistance from doctors and nurses who saw assignments to the units as scut work.

“They thought it was a bedpan unit, focused on nursing home patients,” Dr. Rosenberg said. “When they finally realized this was the unit that gave better health care to their parents and grandparents, they jumped onboard.”

Hospitals also have strong financial incentives to focus on the elderly. People over 65 account for 15 percent to 20 percent of emergency room visits, hospital officials say, and that number is expected to grow as the population ages.

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Moving hastily to curb possible political fallout from a scandal involving Bo Xilai, a major Communist Party figure, China’s top leaders have decided to expel him from the Politburo, the 25-member body that runs China, according to two sources with knowledge of the case.

Already ousted from his regional party role and under house arrest, Mr. Bo will placed under formal investigation, the sources said.

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