Meet the social media “nones.” A new survey finds that Americans, while mostly religious, generally do not use social media to supplement worship and mostly keep their faith private online.

The Public Religion Research Institute survey found about one in 20 Americans followed a religious leader on Twitter or Facebook. A similar number belonged to a religious or spiritual Facebook group.

The results seem to defy the familiar story of prominent religious leaders using social media to build a following ”” and a brand.

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The dream is simple: To have a baby.

In generations past, couples faced with infertility had two choices: adopt a child or accept life without one.

Advances in medicine and science have provided more options: Fertility drugs. Artificial insemination. In vitro fertilization. Sperm donors. Egg donors. Surrogate mothers.

Approximately 2.7 million American couples put their faith in one or more of these options every year.

Still, not everyone who begins the quest ends with a baby. Only about 65% of women who seek fertility treatment ultimately give birth.

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A hundred meters (yards) or so from taxiing airliners, Iraqi archaeologist Ali al-Fatli is showing a visitor around the delicately carved remains of a church that may date back some 1,700 years to early Christianity.

The church, a monastery and other surrounding ruins have emerged from the sand over the past five years with the expansion of the airport serving the city of Najaf, and have excited scholars who think this may be Hira, a legendary Arab Christian center.

“This is the oldest sign of Christianity in Iraq,” said al-Fatli, pointing to the ancient tablets with designs of grapes that litter the sand next to intricately carved monastery walls.

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We live in an age of angst and anxiety. Nearly everywhere I look, almost everyone I speak to, seems vexed, fearful, frustrated, worried, or some basic variation on this theme. What about a job, what about the economy, why won’t the slow motion train wreck of the Eurozone ever end, what about the health even of our own American democracy which increasingly seems polarized and stuck, what about the future, what about Anglicanism, what about our parish”¦and I am guessing you could add your own items to elongate this list even further.

Yet the God revealed to us in Holy Scripture is Jehovah-Jireh, The LORD will provide (Genesis 22), and Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount reminds us that our Heavenly Father does quite well, thank you, for the birds of the air and the lilies of the field, and of how much more value are we than they (Matthew 6)?

Our Lord wants us not to focus on ourselves and what could be coming or should be different but on Him and what is given as grace and gift.

We didn’t make ourselves, we didn’t make our friends and family, we didn’t make this day, we didn’t make our parishes where we worship. All of life itself, and all that eternal life in Jesus Christ means, is grace and gift. The Prayer Book has the opening individual devotions of the day begin “open our lips O Lord and our mouth shall show forth thy praise,” because simply to arise from sleep and be alive, and to have our Lord and Redeemer to praise, is a marvelous wonder to behold.

My early mentor when I first graduated seminary and began parish ministry, Charlie Walton, tells a wonderful story of a children’s sermon where he brought little ducklings as a surprise to show the children. They were all seated around him and he had a box brought in, and one could begin hearing noise and then””ta da””the box top was removed and there were expressions of joy and wonder at the ducklings. Father Walton went on to ask what the animals were and then he asked carefully if the children felt any of the ducklings they saw seemed afraid, anxious or concerned. Oh no, said each child who was asked. They aren’t; indeed they wouldn’t be. Why, asked Father Walton. Because their parents would take care of them all the children asserted. It was what parents did.

The punchline came when he asked the children if God cared more for them than the ducklings’ parents cared for their baby ducks. Indeed God did, said the children. Then Father Walton looked up at the parents of the very same children in the congregation and saw faces of formerly anxious people convicted by the truth of the lesson.

It is a teaching that never gets old, particularly in times like these. The Lord has, does and will provide. May he give us a greater awareness of the degree to which that is true for us in the days and weeks ahead.

–The Rev. Dr. Kendall Harmon is Canon Theologian of the Diocese of South Carolina and convenor of this blog

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In a show of technological wizardry, the robotic explorer Curiosity blazed through the pink skies of Mars, steering itself to a gentle landing inside a giant crater for the most ambitious dig yet into the red planet’s past.

Cheers and applause echoed through the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory late Sunday after the most high-tech interplanetary rover ever built signaled it had survived a harrowing plunge through the thin Mars atmosphere.

“Touchdown confirmed,” said engineer Allen Chen. “We’re safe on Mars.”

Read it all. This video is very helpful in terms of what was going on into the landing–watch it all.

With a box of Bibles as cargo, John Bird steered his Chevy Suburban off a two-lane road in the oil patch of East Texas and pulled up to the isolated derrick of Energy Drilling Company Rig 9. He was delivering the holy books to a man named Robert Bailey, the site superintendent, known in industry jargon as a tool pusher.

The two men had never met, and Rig 9 was a modest destination, a cluster of turbines and trailers around a steel tower, all of it surrounded on three sides by a cattle ranch. On a brilliant autumn Saturday, the kind normally reserved for the Texan religion of football, Mr. Bird had driven there, 140 miles from his home outside Houston, on behalf of the Oilfield Christian Fellowship.

He had helped found the lay ministry 20 years earlier with the aim of evangelizing among the itinerants and tough guys and hard livers who populate the rigs. That effort took the textual form of a Bible interspersed with testimonies from oil workers, sized to fit in the back pocket of overalls and titled “God’s Word for the Oil Patch: Fuel for the Soul.”

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O God, who on the holy mount didst reveal to chosen witnesses thy well-beloved Son, wonderfully transfigured, in raiment white and glistening: Mercifully grant that we, being delivered from the disquietude of this world, may by faith behold the King in his beauty; who with thee, O Father, and thee, O Holy Ghost, liveth and reigneth, one God, world without end.

O Lord God Almighty, who dost by thy Holy Spirit endow thy servants with manifold gifts of knowledge and skill: Grant us grace to use them always for thine honour, and for the service of all people; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

–John 1:1-5

Message from Canterbury (1944) from British Council Film on Vimeo.

After 8 1/2 months crossing the millions of miles between planets, the biggest and most complex rover ever sent to another world is now on its final approach for a hair-raising touchdown on Mars.

NASA’s 1-ton Curiosity rover is set to land inside the Red Planet’s Gale Crater at 10:31 p.m. PDT tonight (Aug. 5; 1:31 a.m. EDT and 0531 GMT on Aug. 6). As with any planetary landing, success is not a given, and tensions may be especially high tonight given Curiosity’s elaborate, unprecedented landing sequence.

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Oddly, “American Empire: “The Rise of a Global Power, the Democratic Revolution at Home”””contrary to the proud spirit with which so many Americans view their country’s postwar success””is a tale of almost unrelieved gloom. For Joshua Freeman, the “rise of global power” is the story of brutal imperial hubris, from the Cold War to the invasion of Iraq and the post 9/11 war on terror. The tale of the “democratic revolution at home” is a happier one in some respects””involving the civil-rights movement, feminism, environmentalism and the counterculture revolution in the 1960s””but the promise of such movements and upheavals, according to Mr. Freeman, has been steadily undercut by corporate power.

The author’s views of the Cold War hark back to the hoary “moral equivalence” argument popular in the days after Vietnam, which saw the U.S., not the Soviet Union, as the primary instigator of the Cold War. Mr. Freeman says that it was America’s anticommunist “ideological crusade” that turned the Soviet Union into a hostile rival, creating “international tension and conflict and an increasing militarism of American society.”

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When asked if he favored mandatory helmet laws for cyclists, Wiggins responded that he did, adding, “because ultimately, if you get knocked off and you ain’t got a helmet on, then how can you kind of argue?” He went on to say, “when there’s laws passed for cyclists, then you’re protected and you can say, ‘well, I’ve done everything to be safe.’ ”

Wiggins was denounced for his remarks.

Cyclists and non-cyclists; conservatives and liberals ”” they all united in arguing that wearing a cycling helmet should be a matter of choice, or else the popularity of cycling might decline. Darren Johnson a London Assembly member from the Green Party, said the issue of mandatory helmet laws missed the point. “We need to focus on the solutions to the problem of left-turning lorries,” he said.

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The General Convention which took place in Indianapolis in July offered new and creative responses to the call of the gospel in our day. We saw gracious and pastoral responses to polarizing issues, as well as a new honesty about the need for change.

General Convention addressed a number of significant issues that will impact the life and witness of this Church for years into the future ”“ and they include many more things beyond what you’ve heard about in the news. The way we worked together also represented a new reality, working to adapt more creatively to our diverse nature as a Church.

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Recently, I began communicating with a student at Fuller Seminary on the track for ordination. He has a new kind of church plant stirring in his heart. The Rev. Jamal Scarlett along with The Rev. Cameron Lemons are working together to plant The Grove Church of Lake Elsinore (CA). “Cameron and I started meeting together two years ago as we believed God was stirring our hearts toward multicultural ministry. I am Afro/Latino-American (Black Hispanic) and he is an Irish-American,” shared Rev. Scarlett.

When they met, they were both Southern Baptists. Cameron was a Youth Pastor at a local church and Jamal was a Worship Leader and Youth Pastor at another church. Over many coffee hours, they began a conversation about what it might look like to be a church that is multicultural. That is, a church that is not just multicolored, but sees diversity of culture as a ministry asset versus a liability. The desire was to be a church that reflected Revelation 7:9 where people of every nation, tongue and tribe worshiped and glorified the Lord together. Ultimately, this led to the call of planting The Grove Church with a missional imperative set on acts of kindness (feeding the hungry, caring for the lonely and the outcast) as well as seeking the restoration of all things, including reconciliation.

As these two pastors were praying for a vision for their church plant, they were led on a journey to Anglicanism.

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In September 2011, the General Synod of the Church of Nigeria passed a resolution supporting the formation of the Missionary Diocese of the Trinity (MDT), under the oversight of the Rt. Rev’d Amos Fagbamiye. The MDT is currently comprised of congregations and clergy in both the United States and Canada. Bishop Fagbamiye leads the Anglican Cathedral Church of the Resurrection in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Plans are underway for the inauguration of the MDT on August 19, in Indianapolis with the Most Rev’d Nicholas Okoh, Primate of the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion) officiating. Everyone is welcome to attend the celebration….

Read it all and there is more information there.

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A suicide bombing in the north-eastern Nigerian city of Damaturu has killed several soldiers, reports say.

According to an eyewitness, the suicide bomber rammed a car into a military vehicle that was part of a convoy.

The attacker’s vehicle was being chased by troops when the bomb went off, a police spokesman said. No group has said it carried out the bombing.

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Myra Walz comes off as shy and quiet. Not much of an activist. But in late June came the phone call that forced her out of her shell.

Hundreds of miles away, on a barren strip of Wyoming highway, her niece had crossed the center line, slamming into an oncoming truck.

Sabrina “Bree” Wilson, 31, a mother of two daughters, died on the scene in a horrific crash.

“As soon as we found out that she was texting while driving, I said ”˜no more, never again,’?” Walz said.

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At least seven people were killed, including one shooter, just after 10 a.m. Sunday at the Sikh Temple in Oak Creek, police said.

Four of the dead were inside the temple at 7512 S. Howell Ave. and three of the dead, including a shooter, were outside the temple.

A police SWAT team entered the building before noon and brought uninjured people out of the building at 7512 S. Howell Ave.

They started removing injured people from the temple’s prayer room.

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Truth is, in Southern California, “Presbyterian” can describe everything from evangelical megachurches to old-line Protestant congregations on the religious left.

So was the [James] Holmes family active in the liberal Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) or the conservative Presbyterian Church in America? How about the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, the Bible Presbyterian Synod, the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America or the American Presbyterian Church?

Then again, journalists were soon reporting that this family has been active ”” for nearly a decade ”” in some kind of Lutheran congregation.

The problem, explained [Amy] Colon, is that journalists assigned to cover these media storms in the digital age are trying to report as much information as they can, as fast as they can, as easily as they can, while competing against legions of websites, Twitter feeds, 24-hour cable news and, often, smartphone videos uploaded to YouTube by eyewitnesses. Reporters are tempted to use as many easy labels and stereotypes as possible, simply to save time and space.

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Yet again the grim title of “world’s greatest humanitarian crisis” goes to Sudan ”“ this time for developments in the border regions between Sudan and the newly independent country of South Sudan. The crisis is exploding as the rainy season descends fully upon this area, and humanitarian resources are overwhelmed.

Khartoum’s denial of all humanitarian access to rebel-controlled areas within its border, along with a relentless campaign of aerial bombardment, is generating a continuous flow of tens of thousands of refugees ”“ up to 4,000 per day according to Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). But even that June figure is being quickly overtaken, according to reports.

And no wonder. The regime faces no significant international condemnation or consequences for its role in creating this crisis. That must change.

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To the white majority, who even now think of this country as a placid place, it will seem extraordinary that the author of this dramatic memoir was born in Southend. Maajid Nawaz is still only in his mid-thirties. He was brought up in a prosperous, middle-class, anglophile household of Pakistani origin. In his teens, he became an Essex ”b-boy’’, and got into fights with Paki-bashing skinheads. In college in London, and later at its renowned School of Oriental and African Studies, he was an extreme Islamist activist. He was present when one of his fellow extremists stabbed an African student to death. He married at 21, and had a son.

Nawaz was a leading firebrand in Hizb al-Tahrir (HT), the militant organisation that wishes to overthrow all infidel regimes and establish a new Muslim Caliphate. Although it is not itself a terror organisation, its ideology legitimises violence. The author traces what he calls its ”snail’s trail’’ all the way to al-Qaeda….

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O God, who art faithful to thy people and dost not permit them to be tempted above that they are able, but with the temptation also makest a way of escape that they may be able to bear it: We humbly entreat thee to strengthen us thy servants with thy heavenly aid and keep us with thy continual protection; that we may evermore wait on thee, and never by any temptation be drawn away from thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

–Edward Bouverie Pusey (1800-1882)

The point is this: he who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each one must do as he has made up his mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that you may always have enough of everything and may provide in abundance for every good work. As it is written, “He scatters abroad, he gives to the poor; his righteousness endures for ever.” He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your resources and increase the harvest of your righteousness. You will be enriched in every way for great generosity, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God; for the rendering of this service not only supplies the wants of the saints but also overflows in many thanksgivings to God. Under the test of this service, you will glorify God by your obedience in acknowledging the gospel of Christ, and by the generosity of your contribution for them and for all others; while they long for you and pray for you, because of the surpassing grace of God in you. Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift!

–2 Corinthians 9:6-15

The US has confirmed it would resist efforts to put the internet under the control of the United Nations.

At present several non-profit US bodies oversee the net’s technical specifications and domain name system.

They operate at arms-length from the US government but officially under the remit of its Department of Commerce….

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Pope Benedict XVI has concluded the third and final volume of Jesus of Nazareth dedicated to the Gospels relating to Jesus’s childhood, and a new encyclical may follow it, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican secretary of state, said last night.

Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a Mass he celebrated in the parish of Introd, a village in the Valle d’Aosta region of the northern Italian Alps, where he is on vacation, the cardinal said the book would be “a great gift for the Year of Faith,” which begins in October.

“We will read the third book by Benedict XVI avidly and with great relish,” he predicted, according to a report by Vatican Radio.

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What a wild first half between Great Britain and South Korea.

Update–Ugh, they lost in a penalty shoot out so South Korea goes through.