Shopkeeper Nevzat Cavan is rushing to meet orders for the white, fur-trimmed costumes worn by Muslim boys for their circumcision, relieved that Berlin’s city government has allowed the operations to resume.

For three months, the elaborate suits, capes and oriental slippers languished unsold due to a shock court ruling that raised the possibility of criminal charges being brought against families who had their sons circumcised.

“There were days when we didn’t even open the till, but now the phone never stops ringing,” Turkish-born Cavan said.

Read it all.

All are invited to visit and interact with a new website www.churchgrowthresearch.org.uk built to support the work of the Church Growth Research Programme – the national 18-month academic research project exploring the factors related to spiritual and in particular numerical church growth of the Church of England. The research is being funded through funding set aside by the Church Commissioners and Archbishops’ Council for research and development. This project is being undertaken in partnership with the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex; Cranmer Hall, St John’s College, Durham and the Oxford Centre for Ecclesiology and Practical Theology, Ripon College, Cuddesdon.

Read it all.

A major study published by the United Nations has warned that the growing numbers of the elderly presented significant challenges to welfare, pension and health care systems in both developing and developed nations.

And it bemoans the fact that skills and knowledge that older people have acquired are going to waste in societies rather than being used to their full.

“We must commit to ending the widespread mismanagement of ageing,” said Richard Blewitt, chief executive of HelpAge International, which collaborated on the report, Ageing in the 21st Century.

Read it all.

After spending 18 of the last 30 years in Egypt, I am not a romantic when it comes to the realities of religious intolerance, social discrimination and sectarian violence experienced by many Christians due to religious fanatics who claim to be Christian, Jewish or Muslim. I have overheard various “men of religion” refer to Christians using the religious “M” word, “mushrik” meaning polytheist and idolater or “K” word “kafr” meaning infidel. I’ve heard it all and seen a lot. While two wrongs never make a right, Christians of most denominations should never fail to recall the violence, discrimination and persecution we have been guilty of during our own 2,000 year history “in the name of God and Jesus Christ”.

I cannot speak for Muslims outside of Egypt, but I can try to explain the reactions of many to such a film without equating these reasons to being justifications. Most Americans get quite upset when we watch the American flag being burned or trampled on. We at least get upset if someone desecrates the Bible and Catholics get very upset if someone desecrates the Eucharist. Maybe we don’t burn those who do or torture them anymore, but we have in the past. We claim to be “one nation under God with liberty and justice for all” and yet we have always found at least one race, nationality, religion or orientation to focus on and “go after”.

Western societies that profess “freedom of religion” have moved toward “freedom FROM religion”. Personally, even as a Catholic priest, I feel that “religion” in civil democracies have the obligation to form and educate the individual and collective conscience of its followers and to be “a voice of conscience” in society. However, I oppose any religion dictating to government how it should legislate morality according to any particular religious belief system. At the same time, this is NOT the current reality in the Muslim world whether I/we like it or not. Cultural sensitivity must include religious and social sensitivity.

Read it all.

The group that has taken the Anglican Church court in an attempt to save ChristChurch Cathedral says the decision to demolish the building is breaches an Act of Parliament.

The Great Christchurch Building Trust is arguing at the High Court in Christchurch the significant national and international interest in the cathedral’s future means it should be subject to judicial review.

Read it all.

I come this morning very grateful for the chance to promote an initiative I consider crucial and promising for this city and state I am now proud to call my earthly home;

I come with deep admiration for the prophetic leadership of Chief Judge Lippman, encouraged by other esteemed jurists like Judge Gail Prudenti and Mr. Thomas More; as well as our own Catholic Lawyers Guild.

I come, hardly as a legal expert or politician”¦but only as a pastor, to heartily support an endeavor that I’m convinced will bring justice to people who, simply put, have nowhere else to go but to the courts, which enflesh the assurance of this great country that there is, indeed, “equal protection under the law.”

Read it all.

One has to wonder: Where are the fathers? According to the Pew Research Center, the number of children living apart from their fathers jumped from 11% in 1960 to 27% in 2010. What’s more, there are plenty of fathers who are physically present but not involved.

Too often, it seems to be by design. Last month, the ACLU succeeded in getting a Rhode Island school district to end the practice of father-daughter dances, as if such traditions are the threat to American girlhood. The ACLU victory news release announced: “In the 21st century, public schools have no business fostering the notion that girls prefer to go to formal dances while boys prefer baseball games. This type of gender stereotyping only perpetuates outdated notions of ‘girl’ and ‘boy’ activities and is contrary to federal law.”

The point of father-daughter dances was never to keep girls in dresses and off athletic fields. These events symbolize a more important old-fashioned goal: to protect girls. And in an era when many teens attend post prom “P&H” (pimp and ho) parties in which girls shed prom dresses to prance around in lingerie, girls can probably use all the protection they can get.

Read it all.

4) Sexual desire, sexual intention, and sexual action must be distinguished, whether for psychological or moral or legal purposes, and each may be well ordered or disordered.

5) Well-ordered sexual intentions have in view goods both of body and of soul, goods that are at once personal and societal.

6) Consideration of these goods ought to respect the conjugal nature and reproductive potential of the most fundamental sexual act.

7) Consideration of these goods ought to respect the highest human good, which is enjoyment of God and of one another in God.

8) All human persons are constitutionally ordered to this highest good and as such are deserving of respect regardless of their desires, intentions, or actions.

Read it all.

The increasingly common refrain that “I’m spiritual, but not religious,” represents some of the most retrogressive aspects of contemporary society. The spiritual but not religious “movement” – an inappropriate term as that would suggest some collective, organizational aspect – highlights the implosion of belief that has struck at the heart of Western society.

Spiritual but not religious people are especially prevalent in the younger population in the United States, although a recent study has argued that it is not so much that people have stopped believing in God, but rather have drifted from formal institutions.

Read it all.

In Uganda, during the eight years in the 1970’s when Idi Amin and his men slaughtered probably half a million Ugandans, “We live today and are gone tomorrow” was the common phrase.

We learned that living in danger, when the Lord Jesus is the focus of your life, can be liberating. For one thing, you are no longer imprisoned by your own security, because there is none. So the important security that people sought was to be anchored in God.

As we testified to the safe place we had in Jesus, many people who had been pagan, or were on the fringes of Christianity, flocked to the church or to individuals, asking earnestly, “How do you prepare yourself for death?” Churches all over the country were packed both with members and seekers. This was no comfort to President Amin, who was making wild promises to Libya and other Arab nations that Uganda would soon be a Muslim country. (It is actually 80 per cent Christian)….

It became clear to us through the Scriptures that our resistance was to be that of overcoming evil with good. This included refusing to cooperate with anything that dehumanizes people, but we reaffirmed that we can never be involved in using force or weapons.

…we knew, of course, that the accusation against our beloved brother, Archbishop Janani Luwum, that he was hiding weapons for an armed rebellion, was untrue, a frame-up to justify his murder.

The archbishop’s arrest, and the news of his death, was a blow from the Enemy calculated to send us reeling. That was on February 16, 1977. The truth of the matter is that it boomeranged on Idi Amin himself. Through it he lost respect in the world and, as we see it now, it was the beginning of the end for him.

For us, the effect can best be expressed in the words of the little lady who came to arrange flowers, as she walked through the cathedral with several despondent bishops who were preparing for Archbishop Luwum’s Memorial Service. She said, “This is going to put us twenty times forward, isn’t it?” And as a matter of fact, it did.

More than four thousand people walked, unintimidated, past Idi Amin’s guards to pack St. Paul’s Cathedral in Kampala on February 20. They repeatedly sang the “Martyr’s Song,” which had been sung by the young Ugandan martyrs in 1885. Those young lads had only recently come to know the Lord, but they loved Him so much that they could refuse the evil thing demanded of them by King Mwanga. They died in the flames singing, “Oh that I had wings such as angels have, I would fly away and be with the Lord.” They were given wings, and the singing of those thousands at the Memorial Service had wings too.

–Festo Kivengere, Revolutionary Love, Chapter Nine

[See here for further information, and, through the wonders of the modern world, you may also find a copy online there]; this was used by yours truly in a recent teaching on the Book of Acts

The Archbishop of Canterbury has defended his occasionally outspoken interventions on issues such as the Iraq war and Sharia law.

In one of his last public appearances before he retires after 10 years, Dr Rowan Williams told theological think tank Theos he had felt a duty to say what he believed was right.

But the archbishop acknowledged that some of his judgements were “risky”.

Read it all.

God of peace, who didst sustain thy bishop George Bell with the courage to proclaim thy truth and justice in the face of disapproval in his own nation: As he taught that we, along with our enemies, are all children of God, may we stand with Christ in his hour of grieving, that at length we may enter thy country where there is no sorrow nor sighing, but fullness of joy in thee; through Jesus Christ our Redeemer, who with thee and the Holy Spirit livest and reignest, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.

Come, Lord, and reign over us as our rightful King. Rule in our hearts and fill them with thy love; rule in our minds and bring every thought into captivity to thyself; rule in our lives and make them holy like thine own; for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, for ever and ever.

After these days we made ready and went up to Jerusalem. And some of the disciples from Caesare’a went with us, bringing us to the house of Mnason of Cyprus, an early disciple, with whom we should lodge. When we had come to Jerusalem, the brethren received us gladly. On the following day Paul went in with us to James; and all the elders were present. After greeting them, he related one by one the things that God had done among the Gentiles through his ministry. And when they heard it, they glorified God. And they said to him, “You see, brother, how many thousands there are among the Jews of those who have believed; they are all zealous for the law, and they have been told about you that you teach all the Jews who are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children or observe the customs. What then is to be done? They will certainly hear that you have come. Do therefore what we tell you. We have four men who are under a vow; take these men and purify yourself along with them and pay their expenses, so that they may shave their heads. Thus all will know that there is nothing in what they have been told about you but that you yourself live in observance of the law. But as for the Gentiles who have believed, we have sent a letter with our judgment that they should abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from unchastity.” Then Paul took the men, and the next day he purified himself with them and went into the temple, to give notice when the days of purification would be fulfilled and the offering presented for every one of them.

–Acts 21:15-26

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, delivered the fifth annual lecture hosted by think tank Theos with the title ”˜The person and the individual: human dignity, human relationships and human limits’.

The lecture explored ways of understanding the human person as shaped and conditioned by relations with God and others ”“ and the risks of reducing personal dignity to individual well-being alone.

Read it all and note there is a link to both the audio of the lecture and also of the Q and A which followed.

In a question and answer session at the end of a densely theological lecture on the nature of the individual, organised by the religion think tank Theos, Dr Williams admitted some of his statements, which have touched controversially on issues from the Iraq war to government economic policies, were risky.

He said: “I just don’t think that it will do to be too cautious in a job like this, you are here, as is true for any archbishop, you are here to try and say what you believe you have been given to say – by which I don’t mean by divine inspiration.

“To try and share a particular picture of what the world is like, what God is like, which of course leads you into sometimes risky and anything but infallible judgments about particular issues of the day.”

Read it all (requires subscription).

In one of his last major public lectures before he steps down later this year, Dr Rowan Williams said he had “regrets” but insisted it was his job to speak out on important issues.

He added that when examining the divisions in the Church today, there was no point looking for a “golden age” which never existed.

In a wide-ranging lecture to the Theos thinktank in London he spoke about his views on the dignity of human beings, touching on subjects from abortion, disability rights and the economy.

Read it all.

Maybe religion really is the opiate of the masses ”“ just not the way Karl Marx imagined.

A University of Washington study posits that worship services at megachurches can trigger feelings of transcendence and changes in brain chemistry ”“ a spiritual “high” that keeps congregants coming back for more.

“We see this experience of unalloyed joy over and over again in megachurches. That’s why we say it’s like a drug,” said James Wellman, an associate professor of American religion who co-authored the study.

Read it all.

One thing that is often said of Dudamel is that he conducts music as if it had just been composed, without regard for what one critic termed “the accretions of past performances.”

But that’s part of the Rite’s magic, the conductor says. “It’s a hundred years later,” he says, “and it’s still so modern. Still, Sacre is new all the time. For me, that is the secret of the piece. I love to bring every line up. Sometimes, you listen to something very horizontal, but when you see the music in a vertical way ”” I’m talking about the line, every line in the orchestration ”” it’s amazing. You discover new colors, you discover, ‘Oh look, this is a very traditional harmony,’ but then you see the details ”” and then every time it’s different. I’m sure that this version will be completely different to the last one that I did.

“I think that the Rite is a symbol of the beginning of life,” Dudamel continues. “It’s beautiful because it’s so natural. Of course, you have these crazy moments of wild dynamics, but at the same time you feel that the rhythms and the melodies are so natural. They’re like this ancestral feeling of … ‘Wow, I think I have belief.’ ”

Read (or better listen to) it all (emphasis mine).

Listen to it all if you so desire.

And to draw, dear reader, what I think are critical relative comparisons, look at who’s in that ring of fire alongside the U.S. There’s Japan, Greece, the U.K., Spain and France, sort of a rogues’ gallery of debtors. Look as well at which countries have their budgets and fiscal gaps under relative control ”“ Canada, Italy, Brazil, Mexico, China and a host of other developing (many not shown) as opposed to developed countries. As a rule of thumb, developing countries have less debt and more underdeveloped financial systems. The U.S. and its fellow serial abusers have been inhaling debt’s methamphetamine crystals for some time now, and kicking the habit looks incredibly difficult.

As one of the “Ring” leaders, America’s abusive tendencies can be described in more ways than an 11% fiscal gap and a $1.6 trillion current dollar hole which needs to be filled. It’s well publicized that the U.S. has $16 trillion of outstanding debt, but its future liabilities in terms of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are less tangible and therefore more difficult to comprehend. Suppose, though, that when paying payroll or income taxes for any of the above benefits, American citizens were issued a bond that they could cash in when required to pay those future bills. The bond would be worth more than the taxes paid because the benefits are increasing faster than inflation. The fact is that those bonds today would total nearly $60 trillion, a disparity that is four times our publicized number of outstanding debt. We owe, in other words, not only $16 trillion in outstanding, Treasury bonds and bills, but $60 trillion more. In my example, it just so happens that the $60 trillion comes not in the form of promises to pay bonds or bills at maturity, but the present value of future Social Security benefits, Medicaid expenses and expected costs for Medicare. Altogether, that’s a whopping total of 500% of GDP, dear reader, and I’m not making it up. Kindly consult the IMF and the CBO for verification. Kindly wonder, as well, how we’re going to get out of this mess.

Please take the time to read it all and examine the chart closely. The only difference on this between Mr. Gross and myself is that I believe he understates the problem with the 60 trillion dollar figure. As has been discussed on the blog in the past, the correct figure may be as much as three plus times that amount–KSH.

According to the non-partisan Tax Policy Center, the U.S. is on the threshold of one of the largest tax increases in history, a tax hike that could average $3,500 for every American household.

Without actions from Congress, the report says taxes will go up next year by 20 percent, or $536 billion overall. It will hit Americans at every income level including those living below the poverty line. For a middle income family making $40,000 per year, the tax increase is $2,000.

Read it all.

“The Spanish were a bit hesitant but now they are ready to request aid,” a senior European source said. Three other euro zone senior euro zone sources confirmed the shift in the Spanish position, all speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss the matter.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble has said Spain is taking all the right steps to overcome its fiscal problems and does not need a bailout, arguing that investors will recognise and reward Spanish reforms in due course.

Privately, several European diplomats and a senior German source said Chancellor Angela Merkel preferred to avoid putting more individual bailouts for distressed euro zone countries to her increasingly reluctant parliament.

Read it all.

Instead of a common theology, Unitarian Universalists have a set of common values. They believe in the worth and dignity of every human being, she said.

That belief in the individual choice in faith can been seen in a practice known as water communion. In most churches, communion bread and wine start in a common vessel and then are passed out to church members. In water communion, everyone starts with a cup of water and pours it in a common bowl.

“We are bunch of individuals finding our own path ”” but we are doing it as a group,” [Nathan] De Lee said.

Read it all.

David Cameron may have to break the deadlock over the choice of the next Archbishop of Canterbury, according to a former member of the committee charged with nominating Rowan Williams’s successor.

The call came as sources said that the Crown Nominations Commission had agreed on the first name but was divided over the “runner-up” to submit to Downing Street. Justin Welby, the Bishop of Durham and a former oil industry executive, has secured the necessary two-thirds majority to be recommended as first choice. But members seem divided over whether the Bishop of Norwich, Graham James, or the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, should be the second choice.

Read it all (requires subscription).

Since then, a number of features of the papyrus have occasioned skeptical questions. Most prominently, the fragment is of unknown provenance, a very significant warning sign when evaluating sensational archaeological finds. Second, the lettering of the fragment seems unusually thick; King attributes this to the use of a dull pen, but some scholars find that suggestion unconvincing. Stephen Carlson, a specialist on literary forgery, notes that so far the fragment seems to have been studied only for physical signs of antiquity, not for the characteristics that might betray a forger’s activity, and Francis Watson of Durham University has produced an ingenious comparison of the lines of Coptic in the Jesus’ Wife Fragment with other known Coptic and Greek sources, reaching the conclusion that the fragment is most likely a pastiche of other previously known texts. Moreover, if the fragmentary lines were fully written out, they would not fit on the typical size of columns of Coptic text. Of course, these challenges do not themselves decide the case, any more than King’s positive analysis demonstrates the genuineness of the fragment. In all likelihood, there is a long way to go before the preponderance of scholarly judgment weighs on one side or the other.

Another question, though, concerns the implications of the papyrus if it be found to be the true record of a fourth-century scribe. On that score, exciting as the discovery undeniably would be, the answer is relatively less dramatic. We already know that some Christians from the late second century onward may have thought Jesus had a wife. Although this would be a solid confirmation of what we already have reason to believe, it would not change the status of that point. As King herself emphasizes, it tells us nothing whatever of Jesus’ marital status; on that count, the situation remains that we know of no reason to think that anyone before the late second century thought Jesus was married.

Read it all.

“Substantial reasons would lead one to conclude that the papyrus is indeed a clumsy forgery,” the Vatican’s newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, said in an editorial by its editor, Gian Maria Vian. “In any case, it’s a fake.”

Joining a highly charged academic debate over the authenticity of the text, written in ancient Egyptian Coptic, the newspaper published a lengthy analysis by expert Alberto Camplani of Rome’s La Sapienza university, outlining doubts about the manuscript and urging extreme caution.

The fragment, which reads “Jesus said to them, my wife” was unveiled by Harvard Professor Karen King as a text from the 4th century at a congress of Coptic Studies in Rome last week.

Read it all.

(Please note that this piece is largely a repeat of something released much earlier this year [a fact missed by many others it appears]–KSH).

….some of the deficiencies of Rowan’s era have to be put down to the horrendous lack of support which the Church of England gives to the Archbishop of Canterbury, while trammelling him with useless and outdated bureaucratic inhibitions. If the Primate of All England is rightly expected to be a global figure, besides being an organic yet vitally critical part of the British political and social fabric, then his office needs to be resourced at a modern, dynamic and media-savvy level well beyond that of a pumped-up diocesan bishop, as currently prevails.

Yet I would reiterate, in conclusion, that the huge gain of Rowan’s primacy has been the way he has commanded intellectual and cultural respect in a time of renewed atheistic and liberal attacks on the Christian legacy. Were this gain allowed to lapse, it could be catastrophic. For this reason, I support continuity with Rowan’s remarkable and unprecedented mission, and suggest that the person best able to provide this continuity is John Inge, the bishop of Worcester. Like Rowan, he is a moderate Anglo-Catholic capable of resonating with evangelicals, and politically he is a postliberal communitarian. Above all, Inge is a creative traditionalist with a mystical and yet practical sense of the importance of place and temporal legacy.

What is essential is that the Crown Nominations Commission does not sacrifice vision to efficiency – lack of the former, at this juncture, could prove disastrous. I remain optimistic though, for besides Inge, there are several able potential candidates, and more crucially, among the younger generation, real signs of Anglican revival, on both the Anglo-Catholic and Evangelical wings. All the while, whiggish liberalism in the Church of England continues its rapid and inexorable decline.

Read it all.

Americans have poured record amounts of money into savings accounts even though interest rates are at historic lows, new federal data show, a sign that average people may be missing out on a booming stock market and recovering real estate sector.

The total amount in those accounts climbed nearly 5 percent to $6.9 trillion in the spring, the highest level recorded since the Federal Reserve launched its regular reports on the flow of money in the economy in 1945. At the same time, other data show that Americans are fleeing the stock market and avoiding the purchase of new homes.

The pattern suggests that Americans, wounded by the financial crisis and scared by an uncertain job market, do not want to take any risks with their money ”” even as the government is encouraging risk-taking.

Read it all.

Take from us, O Lord God, all pride and vanity, all boasting and self-assertion, and give us the true courage that shows itself in gentleness; the true wisdom that shows itself in simplicity; and the true power that shows itself in modesty; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

–Charles Kingsley (1819-1875)