….personal observation and a smattering of data belie the current reality and in the time since Ms. [Hanna] Rosin’s essay and the release this month of her book The End of Men: And The Rise of Women, I can’t help but wonder if about this claim of victory by authors such as Ms. Rosin and others is premature.

Women hold only 10 per cent of seats on boards of directors in Canada, and 16 per cent in the United States, according to a recent report by Catalyst. The number of female lead directors of Fortune 500 companies fell in 2011, even as Ms. Rosin was busy writing her book. How can women claim victory when the European Union is struggling with legislation to ensure 40 per cent of non-executive board seats are filled with women by 2020?

Social upheaval doesn’t occur overnight. of course, but I caution against believing that a matriarchy is definitively in the cards and that it’s just a matter of time before the power flip.

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[BOB ABERNATHY]I want to explore that with Kim Lawton, managing editor of this program, and Haris Tarin, director of the Washington office of the Muslim Public Affairs Council.

Haris, how are you trying to persuade, how are American Muslims trying to persuade other Muslims around the world that putting any kind of limit on free speech is dangerous?

HARIS TARIN (Muslim Public Affairs Council): Well, I think the first way we’re trying to convince fellow Muslims of this is the fact that the idea of free speech is a foundational part of the Quran itself. We don’t only believe that in terms of Americans and our belief in the Constitution , but the Quran challenges folks to engage in dialogue and in discourse, challenges people of the same faith and various different faiths, as well. So it’s foundational to the text of Islam, we believe. The Quran actually records insults to the Prophet Muhammad himself and challenges people to engage in that discourse. So I think it’s foundational not only to the Constitution but to our sacred texts, as well.

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[In his book “One Nation without God?” David] Aikman prefers to sketch the religious character of the colonial, Revolutionary, and early national periods, letting readers see the good and the bad, the religious and the worldly, and decide for themselves whether it all amounted to a “Christian nation.” Jamestown, the first enduring English colony, was clearly founded for business reasons, yet faith played a strong role there. The Pilgrims and Puritans, however, self-consciously created covenant-based societies, fully devoted to biblical principles in matters of both church and state. The Great Awakening reinvigorated the lagging Puritan ethos, setting the stage for a revolution that was religiously diverse, yet undergirded by powerful religious principles.

Aikman maintains that, despite the quote-bending contortions of popular Christian writers, key figures such as Franklin and Jefferson were Deists, not Christians. While rejecting many tenets of biblical orthodoxy, including the divinity of Christ, they affirmed belief in a Creator God who endowed his creatures with a range of rights and liberties. They were not, then, atheists or secularists, and they helped frame some of the essential religious principles that animated the Revolution. Among those principles were religious liberty, God’s providential role in history, and the need for moral virtue to sustain the republic.

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Both India and China have intense national testing programs to find the brightest students for their elite universities. The competition, the preparation and the national anxiety about the outcomes make the SAT testing programs in the U.S. seem like the minor leagues. The stakes are higher in China and India. The “chosen ones”””those who rank in the top 1%””get their choice of university, putting them on a path to fast-track careers, higher incomes and all the benefits of an upper-middle-class life.

The system doesn’t work so well for the other 99%. There are nearly 40 million university students in China and India. Most attend institutions that churn out students at low cost. Students complain that their education is “factory style” and “uninspired.” Employers complain that many graduates need remedial training before they are fully employable.

For now, the U.S. university system is still far ahead. But over the next decade, there will be a global competition to educate the next generation, and China and India have the potential to change the balance of power.

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“The steps of a good man are ordered of the Lord,” reads Psalm 37:23. On the margin of his Bible at this verse George Mueller had a notation, “And the stops…”

–quoted by yours truly in this morning’s sermon

The more hours per day Americans get to use their strengths to do what they do best, the less likely they are to report experiencing worry, stress, anger, sadness, or physical pain “yesterday.” Fifty-two percent of Americans who use their strengths for zero to three hours a day are stressed, but this falls to 36% for Americans who use their strengths for 10 hours per day or more.

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The atmosphere on Capitol Hill’s brick sidewalks stays frosty year round as the power-walking professionals rush along in suits of wool-blend armor, their earphones in place, smartphones loaded and eyes focused dead ahead.

But things change at the corner of Second Street and Massachusetts Avenue NE. That’s where streams of pedestrians converge near Union Station, U.S. Senate office buildings, the Federal Judiciary Center, the Heritage Foundation and other buildings packed with prestige and power.

For the past decade, this was where the late Peter Bis kept his office, sitting on a blue plastic crate under an oak tree, sharing cigarettes, coffee and conspiracy theories with whoever passed by, greeting most of them by name. He was the friendly homeless man with his own website, business cards and a life story that ”” even when warped by schizophrenia ”” touched thousands.

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“Pastors continue to preach that we’re a cult. This stuff just grows in people’s minds,” said [Nathan] Hale, a Mount Pleasant father and business owner whose ancestry reaches back to the church’s pioneers. “It hasn’t changed.”

Even as the Charleston Stake, or group of churches, celebrates its 40th anniversary amid tremendous growth and on the eve of an election with a Mormon presidential candidate, Mormons remain an oddity to some and a sacrilegious sect to others ”” even among their Christian brethren.

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Suppose there had not been a single riot in response to the now infamous video “The Innocence of Muslims,” Not a single car burned, not a single embassy breached, not a single human being physically hurt. Would the makers of this risible little clip have done anything wrong? If so, to whom, and why?

These questions are now at the center of an international debate. President Obama himself touched on the issue in his speech to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, in which he directly addressed the violent reaction in the Muslim world to the “crude and disgusting video.” But does philosophy have anything to say to the view that many people have that there is something about this kind of speech itself ”” not just its harm to public order or its adding of insult to the injury of imperialism and war ”” that should not be uttered or produced?

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The Crown Nominations Commission (CNC), which met last week to choose a new Archbishop of Canterbury, has been unable to agree on the two names it submits to the Prime Minister. A short statement put out by the C of E communications department on Friday does not admit this as such, but this is the only reasonable interpretation of the phrase: “The work of the Commission continues.”

All meetings of the CNC are confidential, and it was a new departure this time to let it be known that a meeting was taking place. Church House staff were careful beforehand not to be drawn on whether this was the CNC’s final meeting, with good reason as it now appears.

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One of the country’s leading Anglican priests has attacked the “secrecy” surrounding the appointment of the next archbishop of Canterbury, amid claims that the committee making the choice has been unable to reach a decision.

Dr Giles Fraser, former canon chancellor of St Paul’s Cathedral, said there was “no good reason for secrecy. “[It] always looks like an Establishment stitch up,” he said. “We ought to have open elections.”

He spoke amid confusion over who will succeed Dr Rowan Williams as the leader of the Anglican church.

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(The interview is conducted by Julian Hardyman, Senior Pastor of Eden Baptist Church, Cambridge–KSH).

Vaughan: The fact that a pastor struggles with image, lust, guilt, doubt, pride and keeping spiritually fresh is not exactly a revelation to anyone who knows their own heart and understands that Christian leaders are weak and sinful too; and the admission of an occasional struggle with depression causes no surprise these days. The fact that the other chapter is on homosexuality, however, has caused a small ripple of reaction and led some to ask why I wrote those words and what I meant by them….

Julian: Does the disclosure that same sex attraction is one of your personal battles mean you are defining yourself as a homosexual?
Vaughan: No, it doesn’t. It’s important to reiterate that I have acknowledged a struggle in all eight of the areas the book covers and not just in one. The brokenness of the fallen world afflicts us all in various ways. We will be conscious of different battles to varying degrees at different moments of a day and in different seasons of our lives. No one battle, of the many we face, however strongly, defines us, but our identity as Christians flows rather from our relationship with Christ.

All of us are sinners, and sexual sinners. But, if we have turned to Christ, we are new creations, redeemed from slavery to sin through our union with Christ in his death and raised with him by the Spirit to a new life of holiness, while we wait for a glorious future in his presence when he returns. These awesome realities define me and direct me to the kind of life I should live. In acknowledging that I know something of all eight battles covered in my book, therefore, I’m not making a revelation about my fundamental identity, other than that, like all Christians, I am a sinner saved by grace, called to live in the brokenness of a fallen world until Christ returns and brings all our battles to an end.

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O God our Father, let us find grace in thy sight so as to have grace to serve thee acceptably with reverence and godly fear; and further grace not to receive thy grace in vain, nor to neglect it and fall from it, but to stir it up and grow in it, and to persevere in it unto the end of our lives; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

–Lancelot Andrewes (1555-1626)

Bless our God, O peoples, let the sound of his praise be heard, who has kept us among the living, and has not let our feet slip.

–Psalm 66: 8-9

Estimates of the number of businesses eligible to take the tax credit have ranged from 1.4 million to 4 million companies, but in May, the Government Accountability Office reported that only 170,300 firms actually claimed the credit in 2010. Of these, only a small fraction, 17 percent, were able to claim the whole credit….

So why has the credit fallen short of expectations? The G.A.O. concluded that the credit was too small to sway business owners. Moreover, it said, claiming the credit is a task so complicated as to discourage many companies from trying.

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The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) is being sued for religious discrimination. On [this past] Monday, Safiya Ghori-Ahmad’s case against the USCIRF took another step closer to trial. It is now in the hands of a federal judge to decide whether to dismiss some of Ghori-Ahmad’s complaint or allow the entire religious discrimination case to go to trial.

Ghori-Ahmad’s case against the USCIRF goes back to 2009, but it literally took an act of Congress for it to become a federal lawsuit. Congress created the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom in 1998 as a watchdog to investigate violations of religious liberty worldwide. But before last December, the USCIRF remained exempt from civil rights laws that prohibit discrimination based on religion. According to a lawsuit filed in June, the commission had a history of discrimination against Muslims, including retracting an employment offer to a researcher because of her Muslim faith and her work with a Muslim organization.

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Beyond any doubt, religious freedom has emerged as the premier social and political concern of the Catholic church in the early 21st century. Pope Benedict XVI offered confirmation as recently as last Saturday, during his trip to Lebanon.

Speaking to politicians, diplomats and religious leaders (including representatives of all four major branches of Islam in Lebanon — Sunni, Shi’ite, Druze and Alawite), the pope insisted that “religious freedom is the basic right on which many others depend.”

A new report released Thursday by the Pew Forum illustrates why, at least in this case, it’s impossible to argue that the concern is misplaced.

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[Jo Henderson]… went through a rigorous three-day selection process in England, she said, to see if her calling was genuine and if she could handle the training at the theological Ripon College Cuddesdon outside of Oxford, England.

After her selection, she had to travel back and forth between the UAE and the UK every six weeks.

Her 20-year-old son, James, said it was tough.

“It was hard for her to leave her family every month or so,” he said. “We were supportive of her. And very proud of her today.”

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….[Bishop Suheil Dawani] said the task was harder than ever, with a Christian population that has shrunk from about 30 percent of the population of the overall total just after World War II to about 1 percent today.

The Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem oversees the Anglican community in Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, but only has 29 parishes and about 7,000 members. Its reach, though, is deeper and wider than what shows up in the pews, with direct support of two hospitals, five health clinics, five rehabilitation centers and 17 schools.

“Our main influence is through the work of our institutions,” Dawani said.

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Forty years ago, long before the recent afternoon when Dr. Joseph Dutkowsky knelt at the warped feet of his 4-year-old patient, he was a small-town teenager approaching his Catholic confirmation and needing to select a patron saint. He made an unlikely choice, a newly canonized figure, St. Martin de Porres, the illegitimate child of a former black slave in 16th-century Peru.

Back then, in the early 1970s, as the child of a factory worker and a homemaker, Joseph had no aspiration toward medicine. Nor did he know that Martin de Porres had been elevated to sainthood in part because of his healing miracles.

Decades later, something ”” call it coincidence, call it providence ”” has bent the vectors of faith and science together in the career of Dr. Dutkowsky. The confluence of these often-clashing ideals has taken him to the top of his profession as an orthopedic surgeon specializing in the care of children disabled from cerebral palsy, spina bifida, Down syndrome and other afflictions. It has also taken him to the healing shrine of Lourdes and to the Lima barrio where his patron saint tended to the poor and broken and cast out.

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The teenager was walking down the Wando High School hallway when someone grabbed his booksack strap and shoved him into the boys’ bathroom.

He tried to get away, but his classmate used both hands to force his head and neck down into a urinal. Desperate to break loose, he swung his leg backward into his aggressor’s crotch and fled the bathroom.

He’s the kind of kid who is picked on a lot, and it’s the kind of incident that schools and police take seriously.

Read it all from the front page of yesterday’s local paper.

The Church of England has said the body responsible for choosing the next Archbishop of Canterbury is continuing its work after a three-day meeting, amid speculation that internal wrangling has left it unable to choose a candidate.

As the secretive Crown Nominations Commission (CNC) reached the end of a meeting scheduled to be its last, the CofE issued a statement apparently aimed at dampening down commentary on who will succeed Rowan Williams, who steps down at the end of the year.

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[In reference to the Crown Nominations Commission release yesterday] A Church source added: “This is saying ”˜back off, we’ve got our own timetable’ … you can probaby take from that that the decision isn’t imminent.”

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It would seem that the Crown Nominations Commission (CNC) has failed to conclude its deliberations this week. Press reports that this is the case appear to be confirmed by the official statement that “the work of the Commission continues”.

Why is the CNC undecided and what can break the deadlock? To try to answer this it is necessary to understand matters of both composition and process within the CNC. These are set out in General Synod Standing Orders (para 122).

Composition

There are 16 full voting members of the Commission whereas usually there are only 14. This is because the appointment of the Archbishop of Canterbury introduces both a lay Chair chosen by the Prime Minister (Lord Luce) and a Primate of the Communion (Barry Morgan, Archbishop of Wales). In addition there are six members elected by Canterbury diocese and two bishops elected by the House of Bishops (to replace the two Presidents, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York). All 10 of these members have little or no experience of CNC processes. Then there are the 6 permanent members ”“ 3 lay and 3 clergy ”“ elected by General Synod most of whom have several years’ service and much experience in selecting bishops. One complicating factor is therefore that usually there are 8 permanent and experienced members and 6 new members (from the vacant diocese) but this time there are only 6 permanent members and 10 new members and neither Archbishop is present.

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Anglican Ink’s Peter Ould told host Kevin Kallsen that he interpreted the statement to mean the committee had deadlocked. He speculated the likely cause of the deadlock could have been the potential selection of the Archbishop of York, Dr. John Sentamu, or Bishop of Durham, Justin Welby.

Dr. Sentamu has angered liberals within the Church of England over his robust rejection of same-sex marriage and a small but vocal minority of opponents has consistently objected to his candidacy. The Bishop of Durham has been in office for less than a year, and Mr. Ould speculated his selection for the church’s top post would be a cause of concern due to his inexperience. Sources have also informed Anglican Ink that a third contender, the Bishop of London, Richard Chartres ”“ whose chances for selection have risen sharply in the past few weeks, has been passed over for the post.

The way forward is unclear. At the present time no further meetings have been set for the commission, but no other body is able to submit names to the Prime Minister.

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The Anglican Church of the Province of West Africa yesterday elected the Rt Revd Dr Solomon Johnson as its ninth Archbishop and Primate.

Dr Johnson, who is currently the Bishop of Gambia, was elected to be the next Primate for the province at a special synod held at Cuttington University, Suacoco, Bong Country, Liberia, between 25 to 28 September.

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O everlasting God, who hast ordained and constituted the ministries of angels and men in a wonderful order: Mercifully grant that, as thy holy angels always serve and worship thee in heaven, so by thy appointment they may help and defend us on earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Eternal God, who hast taught us that the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty to the pulling down of strongholds: Help thy soldiers to fight the good fight of faith, refusing the weapons of the devil and the world, and overcoming hatred with love, evil with goodness, falsehood with truth, and so extending the victory of the cross; through him who triumphed thereon, even thy Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ.

A Psalm of the Sons of Korah. A Song. On the holy mount stands the city he founded; the LORD loves the gates of Zion more than all the dwelling places of Jacob. Glorious things are spoken of you, O city of God. Among those who know me I mention Rahab and Babylon; behold, Philistia and Tyre, with Ethiopia–“this one was born there,” they say. And of Zion it shall be said, “This one and that one were born in her”; for the Most High himself will establish her. The LORD records as he registers the peoples, “This one was born there.” Singers and dancers alike say, “All my springs are in you.”

-Psalm 87

The body responsible for choosing the next Archbishop of Canterbury has failed to agree who should be the successor to Dr Rowan Williams.

Despite a three day session, aided by prayers invoked on Twitter with the hashtage #prayforthecnc, the 16-member committee has been unable to decide on who should take on the job that the present incumbent today implied was “impossible”.

A source told The Times that a decision on who should succeed Dr Rowan Williams was not expected soon. “A decision is not imminent,” he said.

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