San Bernardino, California, filed for municipal bankruptcy after disclosing a $46 million shortfall in the city’s budget, the third California city to seek court protection from creditors since June 28.

California cities from the Mexican border to San Francisco Bay are confronting rising pension costs as they contend with growing unemployment and declining property- and sales-tax revenue. The costs stem from decisions made when stock markets were soaring and retirement funds were running surpluses.

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Cash-hungry states have long tried to poach business from one another. Now many are stepping up their efforts to lure gamblers from their neighbors to their growing ranks of slot machines, leaving states like Delaware, which embraced gambling early, struggling to keep up in what has become a feverish one-armed-bandit arms race.

Gambling revenue accounts for more than 7 percent of Delaware’s general fund budget, making it the state’s fourth biggest revenue stream, ahead of its corporate income tax and gross receipts tax. But when new casinos in Maryland and Pennsylvania began to attract the gamblers who once fed quarters into Delaware’s machines, the state acted. First it legalized a form of sports betting. Then it allowed table games including blackjack, craps and roulette. But its gambling revenues have continued to fall.

So at the end of June, Gov. Jack Markell, a Democrat, signed a law that could make Delaware the first state to offer Internet gambling ”” giving its residents the chance to bet on video lottery games and online versions of games like poker, blackjack and roulette without leaving their homes.

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Monday, July 09, 2012

Dear Bishop Lawrence:

Just prior to our vestry meeting this evening we learned that the House of Bishops approved the Same Sex Blessing Resolution A049 (as Amended in Committee). We, the vestry of Christ-St. Paul’s agree with the Standing Committee of our Diocese that the House of Bishop’s approval, and the expected approval tomorrow of the House of Deputies, is “contrary to the unequivocal mandate of Holy Scripture, the historic Christian faith, Anglican doctrine, and the pronouncements of the four instruments of Anglican unity.”
We believe the actions of this General Convention require the Diocese of South Carolina to respond to the overwhelmingly approved resolution at our 2009 Special Convention authorizing “ the Bishop and Standing Committee to begin withdrawing from all bodies of the Episcopal Church that have assented to actions contrary to Holy Scripture, the doctrine, discipline and worship of Christ as this Church has received them, the resolutions of the Lambeth Conference which have expressed the mind of the Communion, the Book of Common Prayer and our Constitution and Canons, until such bodies show a willingness to repent of such actions “ We therefore urge you and our Deputies to this convention to publicly separate us as a Diocese from these actions.

For our parish this decision brings significant pastoral problems. Already, long standing members have begun withdrawing from the parish. There is a growing despair and loss of confidence because our Diocesan leadership has not followed through with the called for withdrawal. The continued “persistent movement of the General Convention away from orthodox Christianity “ is a significant hindrance to our mission and ministry. It is imperative that we “not walk” with them down this road.

As our Bishop, we want you to know that you have our love, our prayers, and support. We are blessed to be a part of the Diocese, and to be under your leadership. It is our heartfelt desire to remain so. However, not separating ourselves more completely from TEC as a Diocese leaves very few options open for us. We strongly encourage action to clearly separate us from this drift away from our Lord Jesus Christ and His Holy Word.

Our prayers tonight have been offered for you, our deputation and our Diocese.

Faithfully Yours in Christ,

The Vestry
Christ-St. Paul’s Parish
Yonges Island, SC

While many young people in the U.K. are gearing up for a summer of backpacking or the beach, one group is choosing to stay home and spend their holidays in a more unusual way — doing voluntary conservation work in ancient cathedrals, chapels and churches.

Cathedral Camps, run by the U.K. charity Community Service Volunteers, is seeing about 150 young people from ages 16 to 25 painting walls, polishing spires, ringing bells, surveying tombstones and cleaning graveyards during the day and sleeping overnight in gardens, presbyteries or cloisters.

“The experience is a chance to see the hidden corners of some of the nation’s most iconic religious buildings in England, Scotland and Wales,” said Hannah Foxon, a seasoned camper. “It’s also a great way to meet new people and learn new skills. Most volunteers come away with the feeling of great pride, success and achievement. This is my fourth year and fifth camp as a leader for CSV Cathedral Camps, and each camp I have attended has been totally different.”

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…people…are concerned about a persistent gender gap in college degrees in science, technology, engineering and math — STEM, for short. The notion that it might have to do with aptitude has long been dismissed. Yet research shows that girls who enjoy — and excel at — math and science in high school are less likely than boys to pursue a college major in those fields.

And even if they start college majoring in a STEM field, women are more likely than men to change majors, federal data show. Women make up 24% of STEM jobs, which offers some of the most lucrative careers, a Commerce Department report says. More than half of them have degrees in the physical and life sciences.

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This weekend, NBC kicked off its expensive coverage of the London Olympics by cutting out the part of the opening ceremony that commemorated the victims of the July 7, 2005 bombings, in favour of a soft soap interview with Michael Phelps, the record-breaking swimmer. Then, when Phelps swam (and lost) the next day, it waited eight hours to televise him in action.

What, if anything, goes through the minds of people who make such decisions? We know because the broadcasting network that has infuriated me and others, by refusing to broadcast popular events live, has been honest. It thinks that Americans are interested in live US athletes, not the foreign deceased, and it needs to recoup the $1.2bn it laid out on the London rights.

As a result, NBC’s coverage of the Olympics has been less like a sports broadcast than a surrealist farce in which the characters affect to know less than the audience.

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The scandal engulfing four Olympic badminton teams has abruptly ended the career of one of China’s most promising players.

Yu Yang announced Wednesday she was quitting the sport after the Badminton World Federation disqualified her and her doubles partner, along with three other teams, for “not using one’s best efforts to win a match.”

“This is my last match,” Yu Yang wrote in a microblog to her 1.3 million followers. “Farewell Badminton World Federation; farewell my beloved badminton.”

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The Federal Reserve is heading toward launching a new round of stimulus to buck up the weak economy, but stopped short of doing so right away.

The decision to make what amounted to a conditional promise of action came Wednesday at the end of the central bank’s two-day policy meeting. In an uncharacteristically strong statement, the Fed said it will “closely monitor” the economy and “will provide additional accommodation as needed to promote a stronger economic recovery and sustained improvement in labor market conditions.” Translation: The Fed will move if growth and employment don’t pick up soon on their own.

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For better or worse, we’re not the people we were when we fell in love with this music. I wrote a book about Christian rock in the ’90s, and one thing that struck me as I was putting it together was just how important some of that music was to my generation in pointing us toward the things that mattered to us: authentic faith, honest humanity, artistic integrity. Those are good things. But going to a rock show when you’re 18 and when you’re 35 are very different experiences. Have you noticed, for example, that when you go to see a band like Weezer or Jimmy Eat World, the fans are still mostly the age you were when you started listening to them? Have you noticed that you think less about buying their new records, and more about who you used to be and how you felt when you first bought their records?

I’m really happy to see new material from some of my favorite musicians, but I know that I’m not the same person I was when I started going to rock shows in church basements. I no longer put band stickers on my car or wear their buttons on my jacket. I no longer listen to Christian radio or buy my music from Bible bookstores. But these are some of the people who taught me what I know about faith, hope and love””and I’ll be forking over some cash this year to hear them do it again.

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While I tend toward the progressive side in this controversy, I am not persuaded by either analysis. My own sense is that we face a crisis of credibility. For those especially under 40, the Episcopal Church (and its companion churches and faith traditions) no longer seems a credible place in which to engage God, learn to pray or to give ourselves in ministry. We seem, to those outside us, exclusive and opaque.

Those of us who love the traditions (and habits) of institutional Christianity might feel somewhat wounded by the seeming disinterest in the practices we have come to live by. But if the Episcopal Church is to thrive in the 21st century, it must do three things. It must develop a clear, missional identity. It must project that identity outward and invite people into it. And it must take seriously the needs and concerns of those who come toward us and adapt to the new life and energy they bring.

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[Daniel] Rodriguez served in Iraq during the troop surge of 2007. On his second tour, he found himself in Afghanistan and in the line of fire during one of the war’s bloodiest fights, the battle of Kamdesh in October 2009.

Rodriguez said close to 400 Taliban combatants overwhelmed the U.S. outpost of fewer than 40 soldiers. Eight Americans were killed, including Rodriguez’s friend, Pfc. Kevin Thompson.

Just a few days earlier, the two young men shared their dreams of what they’d do after returning home. Thompson made Rodriguez promise to chase his goal of playing college football.

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“I like to look at my gymnastics ability as a great gift from God,” she says. “Without God in my life, I feel like there would be no meaning.”

Jordyn says her strong faith comes from her parents: Rita and David.

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Make us tender and compassionate towards those who are an overtaken by temptation, considering ourselves, how we have fallen in times past and may fall yet again. Make us watchful and sober-minded, looking ever unto thee for grace to stand upright, and to persevere unto the end; through thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord.

In thee, O LORD, do I take refuge; let me never be put to shame! In thy righteousness deliver me and rescue me; incline thy ear to me, and save me! Be thou to me a rock of refuge, a strong fortress, to save me, for thou art my rock and my fortress.

–Psalm 71:1-3

A trading glitch Wednesday morning led to some puzzling stock movements on Wall Street, prompting reviews by the New York Stock Exchange and securities regulators.

“Irregular trading” in 148 stocks led the exchange to review activity after the opening bell, the exchange’s operator, NYSE Euronext, said in a statement….

The issues appear to stem from a “technology issue” at Knight Capital Group, a major Wall Street brokerage firm based in Jersey City, N.J.

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A scheme in Norwich Diocese which gives broadband access to remote rural communities has been highlighted as an example of best practice in a report released today from the Lords Communications Select Committee which says the Government’s broadband strategy must not leave communities behind.

WiSpire – a joint venture between the Diocese of Norwich and Freeclix, a local ISP – was cited as an example “of emergence of a new industry of infrastructure providers in the final mile who will be able to respond to local demand and compete effectively with their national cousins to build out local access networks accordingly”.

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Bishop Hollerith, what was your reaction to the Episcopal Church’s recent decision to allow the Blessing of Same-gender unions and did you vote in favor?

We have been struggling with this matter for many, many years now – attempting to discern the full place of Gays and Lesbians in the life of the church. In fact, the theological dialogue on a national level began way back in the mid-seventies. And yes, I did vote in favor because I believe the Church needs to move forward now. I do find I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, I know that many among us welcome this new reality with great joy and celebration having waited long and patiently for what is seen as a new, grace-filled opportunity. On the other hand, I also know that others among us will be upset and not at all comfortable with this new direction. As I stated in my address to Council, I believe both responses are legitimate expressions of who we are in our diocesan family. I find I have deep respect for both. And this is something that is not easy for me to reconcile. But, in the end, I am joyful about our moving forward and ready to do so.

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Just at the point of exhaustion and irritability, when we think the debate on homosexuality in the church has reached its end””with every position articulated, every line drawn in the sand, every constituency ghettoized””other voices emerge to remind us that the conversation must proceed. Despite anxiety for ourselves and the church, the conversation must proceed because God has called us to this annoyance as he has called previous generations of Christians to other annoyances; the interpretation of Scripture requires us to think deeply and wait patiently upon God; the shalom of the church is at risk if we close down the search for agreement; and, lest we forget, some of God’s precious children live upon the rack.

Three fresh and challenging voices aid us in their books: Wesley Hill’s Washed and Waiting: Reflections on Christian Faithfulness and Homosexuality (Zondervan), Jenell Williams Paris’s The End of Sexual Identity: Why Sex Is Too Important to Define Who We Are (IVP), and Oliver O’Donovan’s Church in Crisis: The Gay Controversy and the Anglican Communion (Cascade). Here’s a “gay Christian” and burgeoning New Testament scholar who pursues the vocation of celibacy (Hill), an anthropologist who questions our unexamined appropriation of sexual identity categories (Paris), and a British theologian who reflects on the troubles in his church without entanglement in America’s culture wars (O’Donovan). Two big ideas emerge from their writing. They who have ears, let them hear.

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Te Deum – John Rutter – University of Utah A Cappella Choir

[Improve the sound through the ‘change quality’ cogwheel at lower right of video when playing]

The number of civil partnership dissolutions soared by nearly 30 per cent last year, according to provisional figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

Civil partnerships were brought in by the former Labour Government in December 2005, and they offer same-sex couples the same rights as marriage.

According to the ONS there were 672 dissolutions in 2011, a 28.7 per cent rise on the previous year’s figure of 522.

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[It is important that we do some]…thinking about how easy it is for us to differentiate ourselves from other Christian believers, and very subtly to consider our way of being Christian superior to theirs. It’s a sin I’m as guilty of sometimes as it is of those I accuse. But how sad! Part of the brokenness within the worldwide Christian movement is the way groups of believers will build up their own church or denomination by denigrating others. Of course, when there are basic theological differences at stake (as there frequently are), that’s a different thing.

But I recently came across an article by the distinguished rector of another downtown Charleston church in his Church’s magazine. He was arguing that his approach to the Bible was vastly different from others who take it more literally than he, and whom he dubbed “fundamentalists.”

Of course “fundamentalist” is a label that has long been a term of opprobrium. Ever since the Scopes Trial it has been an epithet flung by self-styled liberals at other more conservative believers thought to be naïve, literalistic, uneducated, or simplistic. In recent years, by association with extreme Muslims, the moniker has taken on an especially sinister cast.

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Canon Andrew White, the vicar of the only Anglican church in Baghdad, said it was “a major miracle” that a bus load of children returning from their First Communion were not killed in a double bomb attack.

Canon White had first alerted his supporters across the Anglican Communion in Facebook and Twitter posts at around 1pm BST. At that time, he believed that some of the children had been killed.

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There are eleven pictures and eleven quotes–read them all.

Compared to Hispanic Americans, black Americans are far more likely to believe abortion should be legal in most circumstances, even when they personally reject the procedure as immoral.

That’s one of the findings of a poll released Thursday (July 26) by the Public Religion Research Institute, which also explored these groups’ attitudes toward birth control and the extent to which their churches influence their opinions.

“Generally these social issues will not play a major role when these Americans vote in November’s elections,” said Daniel Cox, PRRI’s research director. “Obama has a significant advantage over Romney among both African-Americans and Hispanics, and neither candidate’s views on these questions will likely have much effect on their support.”

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Power was restored in India on Wednesday after two days of blackouts that had cast a huge shadow over the nation’s economic ambitions.

On Tuesday, the overburdened electrical grid had collapsed across the whole of northern and eastern India, depriving more than half the country, or around 600 million people, of power. It was the largest blackout in global history in terms of the number of people affected ”” about 10 percent of the world population.

“Superpower India, RIP,” said the banner headline in The Economic Times newspaper.

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In the middle of ongoing cultural convulsions over the definition of marriage, I have found one question increasingly on the minds of many people: “Didn’t God in the Old Testament allow for polygamy? If that is true, then how can you say that marriage is defined as being only between one man and one woman?”

The truth is that the story of polygamy in the Old Testament is, well, a problem. Although monogamy was clearly God’s intent from the beginning, the picture blurs pretty quickly after Adam and Eve’s first sin and expulsion from the Garden. By Genesis 4, you have Cain’s son Lamech taking two wives. The patriarchs Abraham and Jacob themselves had multiple wives and concubines. Technically, the practice was polygyny. In other words, men could have more than one wife, but not the other way around (polyandry)….

How does one respond to this situation? The answer begins by seeing that God always points His creation back to the primacy and perfection of the original design. Next, you have to read every book to the end — especially if it is the biblical context.

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Regrettably, “incarnational ministry” approaches fail to recognize key New Testament passages about union with Christ. The New Testament makes strong claims about the “missions” of the Son and Spirit in the world. This makes the “sending” of the church fundamentally derivative and subordinate. We are adopted into Christ by the Spirit; we do not have a divine nature, like the incarnate Christ, but only a human nature. The Spirit brings us into the benefits of Christ as ones who belong to him; fundamentally, the church is sent as witnesses to Christ and ambassadors of reconciliation in him. We are always to point beyond ourselves, as witnesses.

Christ lives in us by the Spirit. But a biblical account of union with Christ is clear that we are not Christ; we are not an “ongoing incarnation” in the world. While John’s gospel speaks about how we are sent into the world (John 20:21), the gospel uses different language for the sending of the Son. As New Testament scholar Andreas Köstenberger points out, terms such as ” ‘coming into the world’ or ‘descending’ or ‘ascending’ ” are “reserved for Jesus.” The way we are sent, he writes, is “not the way in which Jesus came into the world (i.e. the Incarnation), but the nature of Jesus’ relationship with his sender (i.e., one of obedience and utter dependence).” We are not sent into the world to perform another incarnation, but as disciples who bear witness to Christ and his reign by the Spirit.

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Merciful God, whose servant Joseph of Arimathaea with reverence and godly fear did prepare the body of our Lord and Savior for burial, and did lay it in his own tomb: Grant, we beseech thee, to us thy faithful people grace and courage to love and serve Jesus with sincere devotion all the days of our life; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.