Margaret Thatcher was forever the thrifty Methodist grocer’s daughter of Grantham. Her father was both lay preacher and Conservative Party stalwart. They attended the Methodist church several times every Sabbath and heeded many then Methodist strictures against theater-going and dancing. Her family’s social life was enmeshed in the church’s sewing meetings, youth guilds, and missions work, as she recalled to the Catholic Herald 35 years ago.

“Methodism is the most marvelous evangelical faith and there is the most marvelous love and feeling for music in the Methodist Church which I think is greater than in the Anglican Church,” she then remembered. “But you sometimes feel the need for a slightly more formal service and perhaps a little bit more formality in the underlying theology too.”

Although married in John Wesley’s London Chapel, Thatcher later converted to her husband’s Anglicanism.

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O God our Father, whose blessed Son, being falsely accused, answered nothing; being reviled, reviled not again: Give us faith, when others accuse us falsely, to go quietly on our way, committing ourselves to thee, who judgest righteously, after the pattern of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If any one loves the world, love for the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world passes away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides for ever.

–1 John 2:15-17

… a shocking number [of responses to the Warrens] are taking the moment of media attention to lash out at Warren on their digital tom-toms. The attacks are aimed both at him personally and at his Christian message.

Some unbelievers want to assure Rick and Kay Warren, his wife and Matthew’s bereaved mother, that there’s no heaven where they’ll meet their son again.

“Either there is no God, or God doesn’t listen to Rick Warren, despite all the money Rick has made off of selling false hope to desperate people,” one poster from Cincinnati wrote in to USA Today.

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“It is not a true sea change from seriously religious to unbelieving. It might actually helpfully clarify where people really stand. Still, behind all of this is a longer-term distancing of some from any association with religious faith and practice, which is significant.”
Christian Smith, sociologist, University of Notre Dame

“It’s an important shift, but it’s also important not to jump to conclusions about the meaning of this change. Even over the past five years, when the ‘nones’ have been going up””albeit at a slowing rate””there has been no change in Gallup’s measure of church attendance or importance of religion.”
Frank Newport, editor in chief, Gallup

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In Argentina, they say that if you want to understand the priestly soul of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, then you have to know the villas miserias, literally “villas of misery,” meaning the slums in Buenos Aires where the poorest of the poor are found.

According to Fr. Juan Isasmendi, who lives and works in one of the villas, this is where the future Pope Francis filled his lungs with the “oxygen” he needed to think about what the church ought to be.

There are roughly 20 of these slums in Buenos Aires, often just a block or so away from gleaming high-rise office towers and luxury apartment buildings. Bergoglio’s pastoral revolution was to hand-pick a cadre of especially strong, dedicated priests not just to visit the villas but to live and work here, sharing the lives of the people down to the last detail.

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Boeing Co. said today it will invest another $1 billion and add at least 2,000 jobs at its North Charleston 787 campus by 2020, citing steep demand for commercial airplanes over the next two decades.

The company’s “phase two” growth plans are expected to be part of in a bill to be introduced around noon in the General Assembly in Columbia.

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On April 9 at 6 p.m. we have the rare opportunity to hear from several Bishops from East Africa. We’ll hear first hand accounts of the vital work God is doing in the Anglican Communion. We’ll also hear how we can pray for their ministries and explore opportunities for further partnerships in “Making Biblical Anglicans for a Global Age.” Supper will follow in the Bishop Allison Courtyard, hosted by the Anglican Communion Development Committee. Students are encouraged to attend and to bring their youth leaders. We also welcome The Rev. Dr. Peter Moore who will moderate the conversation with the Bishops. Parking is available in the Cathedral lot and the CPW parking lot on Vanderhorst St. behind the parish house.

Read it all and we ask your prayers; thanks..

Rick Pitino has had teams during his 12 seasons at the University of Louisville loaded with more talent.

And better shooters. And more heralded out of high school.

But he’s never had a team like this.

One that picked each other up when they struggled. One that got better in areas of weakness. One that was prone to unexpected performances when they absolutely needed it….

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Basically, she outlined the problems with the euro perfectly, that Germany would chafe at the inevitable need for greater inflation, and that the poorer countries would inevitably be uncompetitive and need bailouts that would not easily be forthcoming.

This paragraph is from “The Path To Power,” where she discusses conversations with John Major (her successor) about negotiating with the rest of Europe. She just totally nails the inflation and competitiveness angles….

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Senior pastor Kenton Beshore said the first sermons on the plight of illegal immigrants didn’t go over well with many members of his evangelical church, which sits on a 50-acre campus in Orange County and has a 3,400-seat sanctuary, sports facilities, restaurant and a man-made lake.

“We took a hit on it,” said Mr. Beshore. “We had people who walked out and whose giving went away.” It was part of the reason the church ended 2012 with a $500,000 budget shortfall, he said.

But much has changed in the two years since””both at Mr. Beshore’s 14,000-member Mariners Church and at conservative evangelical congregations around the U.S.

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In Togo, the Rev. Rodolphe Folly used to conduct exuberant Sunday services for a hundred believers of all ages, who sang local gospel music and went up to him to offer what they had.

In this quiet town in Burgundy, he preaches to a more somber audience of about 40 gray-haired retirees in an unadorned 19th-century church that can accommodate up to 600 people.

“In my country, we applaud, we acclaim, we shout,” said Father Folly, a Roman Catholic priest who spoke in the living room of his modern, modest house. “Here, even when I ask people to shake hands, they say no.”

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PRESENTER: Should Bonhoeffer be regarded as a Protestant Saint?

ARCHBISHOP: What makes it an interesting question is that he himself says in one of his very last letters to survive, that he doesn’t want to be a saint; he wants to be a believer. In other words he doesn’t want to be some kind of, as he might put it, detached holy person. He wants to show what faith means in every day life. So I think in the wider sense, yes he’s a saint; he’s a person who seeks to lead an integrated life, loyal to God, showing God’s life in the world. A saint in the conventional sense? Well, he wouldn’t have wanted to be seen in that way.

—Archbishop Rowan Williams on Dietrich Bonhoeffer, speaking in 2006

I have made a mistake in coming to America. I must live through this difficult period of our national history with the Christian people of Germany. I will have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people.

–Dietrich Bonhoeffer in a final letter to Rienhold Niebuhr before departing America for Germany in 1939

This is what we mean by cheap grace, the grace which amounts to the justification of sin without the justification of the repentant sinner who departs from sin and from whom sin departs. Cheap grace is not the kind of forgiveness of sin which frees us from the toils of sin. Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves.

Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without Church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without contrition. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the Cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.

Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble, it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows Him.

Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock.

Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of His son: ‘ye were bought at a price,’ and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon His Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered Him up for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God.

–Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

One day near the middle of the last century a minister in a prison camp in Germany conducted a service for the other prisoners. One of those prisoners, an English officer who survived, wrote these words:

“Dietrich Bonhoeffer always seemed to me to spread an atmosphere of happiness and joy over the least incident, and profound gratitude for the mere fact that he was alive”¦ He was one of the very few persons I have ever met for whom God was real and always near”¦ On Sunday, April 8, 1945, Pastor Bonhoeffer conducted a little service of worship and spoke to us in a way that went to the heart of all of us. He found just the right words to express the spirit of our imprisonment, and the thoughts and resolutions it had brought us. He had hardly ended his last prayer when the door opened and two civilians entered. They said, “Prisoner Bonhoeffer, come with us.” That had only one meaning for all prisoners”“the gallows. We said good-bye to him. He took me aside: “This is the end; but for me it is the beginning of life.” The next day he was hanged in Flossenburg.”

Gracious God, the Beyond in the midst of our life, who gavest grace to thy servant Dietrich Bonhoeffer to know and teach the truth as it is in Jesus Christ, and to bear the cost of following him: Grant that we, strengthened by his teaching and example, may receive thy word and embrace its call with an undivided heart; through Jesus Christ our Savior, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

O Living Lord, who on the first Easter Day didst stand in the midst of thy disciples as the conqueror of sin and death, and didst speak to them thy peace: Come to us, we pray thee, in thy risen power and make us glad with thy presence; and so breathe thy Holy Spirit into our hearts that we may be strong to serve thee and spread abroad thy good news; for the glory of thy great name.

–Frank Colquhoun (1909-1997)

My little children, I am writing this to you so that you may not sin; but if any one does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the expiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.

–1 John 2:1-2

Watch it all.

This is what my father as a Jew discovered.
During Rabbinical school studies he was assigned to visit a Christian Church.
But over the course of a year found himself drawn back to that church over and over and didn’t
know why”¦
One day he finds himself going to the altar rail, not to get communion, but to simply receive a blessing,
when all of a sudden, as a Jew, the Living and resurrected Jesus Fills his body-
And in his mind just one sentence,
What if this is all true”¦
What if this is all true?
A year later he’s baptized and receives the Living Lord Jesus through the power of the Holy
Spirit.

Ӣ Are you looking for the dead, among the living?
Ӣ Or the Living among the living?

Read it all and listen if you wish.

Almost half a century ago, the Episcopal Church Foundation’s Pusey Report foretold, among other things, consolidation and radical change among the denomination’s theological seminaries. Such change is finally upon us. Several schools in the United States and in Canada have closed, a number are alive in name only, and others in each country approach their demise. Several years ago I was surprised to hear that a majority of Episcopal ordinands had attended none of the established 11.

In the face of this dire climate, the Episcopal seminaries’ effort at cooperation did not touch on core tasks; similarly in 2010 in the Anglican Church of Canada, when all the stakeholders were gathered in Montreal, the life-and-death institutional issues had to be bracketed and left aside. Simultaneous with a major reordering of our parishes and dioceses, this is a turning point for theological education, but we should not expect some grand compromise or new deal. This is as it should be, since the network of schools was never planned systematically. The remedies sometimes float about as well-meaning generalizations: diversity, lay empowerment, the missional. True enough, but such themes do not get to the heart of the matter….

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Anglican leaders cannot spend insurance money from the Christ Church Cathedral on the new cardboard cathedral, a judge has confirmed.

In a judgment released yesterday, Justice Graham Panckhurst ruled that the use of $4 million of insurance money from the cathedral to fund the $5.3m transitional project near Latimer Square was a breach of the terms of the Cathedral Trust.

Church Property Trustees (CPT) asked the High Court for direction on whether the money could be used to fund the cardboard cathedral after it was called into question last year.

Read it all and the judgment is here [pdf]

The death toll in clashes between Muslims and Christians in Cairo has risen to two, health and security officials said Monday. Another 89 were injured in the clashes outside Cairo’s main Coptic cathedral, which brought Egypt’s growing religious tension to the seat of the church’s pope.

The clashes broke out following the funeral of four Christians killed in sectarian violence the day before…

Read it all and there is an eyewitness report in the Independent

The unexpectedly large number of American workers who piled into the Social Security Administration’s disability program during the recession and its aftermath threatens to cost the economy tens of billions a year in lost wages and diminished tax revenues.

Signs of the problem surfaced Friday, in a dismal jobs report that showed U.S. labor force participation rates falling last month to the lowest levels since 1979, the wrong direction for an economy that instead needs new legions of working men and women to drive growth and sustain a baby boomer generation headed to retirement.

Michael Feroli, chief U.S. economist for J.P. Morgan, estimates that since the recession, the worker flight to the Social Security Disability Insurance program accounts for as much as a quarter of the puzzling drop in participation rates, a labor exodus with far-reaching economic consequences.

Read it all.

Baroness Thatcher, Britain’s greatest post-war prime minister, has died at the age of 87 after suffering a stroke, her family has announced.

Read it all and there is coverage from Reuters and the BBC and a tribute from Cranmer

As I set off in 2008 to begin my freshman year studying government at Harvard (whose motto is Veritas, “Truth”), I could never have expected the change that awaited me.

It was a brisk November when I met John Joseph Porter. Our conversations initially revolved around conservative politics, but soon gravitated toward religion. He wrote an essay for the Ichthus, Harvard’s Christian journal, defending God’s existence. I critiqued it. On campus, we’d argue into the wee hours; when apart, we’d take our arguments to e-mail. Never before had I met a Christian who could respond to my most basic philosophical questions: How does one understand the Bible’s contradictions? Could an omnipotent God make a stone he could not lift? What about the Euthyphro dilemma: Is something good because God declared it so, or does God merely identify the good? To someone like me, with no Christian background, resorting to an answer like “It takes faith” could only be intellectual cowardice. Joseph didn’t do that.

And he did something else: He prodded me on how inconsistent I was as an atheist who nonetheless believed in right and wrong as objective, universal categories…

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Almost a month on from the election of the first Latin American pontiff, the head of the Vatican’s Council for Social Communications says Pope Francis is pioneering new ways of sharing the faith with people in and outside the Christian Church.

Archbishop Claudio Celli travelled to Santiago del Chile at the weekend for a conference on the challenges and opportunities facing the Church in Latin America in our era of rapidly developing digital technologies. The conference, which opens on Monday at the Catholic University of Chile, brings together some 400 communications specialists from across the continent.

At the heart of the discussion, Archbishop Celli says, lies not just the question of how to use the new technologies, but rather of how to bring the Word of Christ to men and women living in an increasingly digitalized world. The new Pope, he says, is already showing us an innovative approach to communicating that Gospel message”¦

Read and listen to it all.

To hear Grier Allen tell it, BoomTown’s first office in the old Faber House on East Bay Street had rats.

Now several years on, the CEO’s workspace has a cinder block and glass brick wall and was once the seafood section of the former Jaber’s Market on Rutledge Avenue.

Moving a little over a mile in seven years, from live rodents to fish souls, might not scream success.

But Allen likes where he and his real estate software firm are. That’s because BoomTown has been covering ground in other ways. You might even say business is booming.

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Take the time to listen to it all (and note there is a live excerpt of the Kenyon Commencement address).