In the near future, he said, United Methodist annual conferences may be able to reduce health coverage costs by allowing local churches to send lower-paid clergy and lay employees to the exchanges.

However, [Andrew Q.] Hendren warns that conferences also should be wary of sending too many church employees onto the exchanges or they may have too small a pool of people to buy affordable insurance.

“The conferences will have to balance that potential savings with the risk to the remaining smaller plan made up of a few large churches and small churches with higher paid clergy and lay employees,” he said. “The smaller plan may be less cost-effective, and appointment frictions may develop as local churches may prefer premium tax-credit-eligible clergy over higher paid clergy ”” two concerns in a connectional system like ours.”

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The proportion of children born to unmarried mothers hit a record 47.5 per cent last year, according to the Office for National Statistics. The figure has risen from 25 per cent in 1988 and just 11 per cent in 1979.

If the trend continues at the current rate, the majority of children will be born to parents who are not married by 2016.

Conservative MPs and experts warned that the stark decline of marriage is likely to lead to more family breakdowns and damage children’s prospects.

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What is rarer than a shooting star?

Rarer than a diamond?

Rarer than any metal, any mineral, so rare that if you scan the entire earth, all six million billion billion kilos or 13,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 pounds of our planet, you would find only one ounce of it?

What is so rare it has never been seen directly, because if you could get enough of it together, it would self-vaporize from its own radioactive heat?

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Asked in a 1999 Republican debate in Iowa who his favorite political philosopher was, then-candidate George W. Bush said that it was Jesus.

“And like a lot of people I kind of scratched my head at that,” said religion scholar Randall Balmer. “I don’t fault Governor Bush for that answer. It’s a legitimate answer. What are you going to say to a question like that? ”˜Machiavelli’ is probably not going to win you a lot of votes. So I’m not criticizing the answer.”

However, this answer got him thinking about “how 40 years earlier the Democratic nominee for president, John Kennedy of Massachusetts, had to address the so-called religion issue in the 1960 presidential campaign.

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The belief that religious schools erode civic goals has a long history. In the mid-19th century, religious schools, Catholic schools in particular, were accused of reinforcing separate identities rather than shared American values. Much has changed in education since then, but a suspicion lingers in some quarters that church-operated schools breed intolerance.

Yet this view has been contradicted by a growing body of social-science evidence. In a review of the research, my colleague Patrick Wolf identified 21 studies of the effect that public and private schooling have on political tolerance. Tolerance is typically measured by asking students to name their least-liked group and then determining whether students would allow members of that group to engage in political activities, such as running for elected office or holding a rally. The more willing students are to let members of their least-liked group engage in these activities, the more tolerant they are judged to be.

I conducted two of those 21 studies, and others were produced by researchers at institutions including Harvard, Notre Dame and the University of Chicago. The studies varied in whether they looked at national or local samples of students and whether they examined secular, religious or all types of private schools. Of those studies, only one””focusing on the relatively small sector of non-Catholic religious schools””found that public-school students are more tolerant.

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I do remember how many folk on the other side of the argument about 10 or so years ago were at pains to point out this was about blessings, not marriage ”“ marriage was not going to be touched. We were not fooled by that, even then.

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The General Synod has asked for new legislation to be drafted to enable women to be bishops. After a long debate on Monday morning and afternoon, it carried a motion from the House of Bishops embodying Option One, which was amended so as to specify the addition of a mandatory grievance procedure for parishes, and to urge that “facilitated conversations” continue to be used during the legislative process.

Amendments seeking to make provision for opponents by Measure or regulations made under Canon, “for co-provincial provision for alternative episcopal oversight”, and to retain Resolutions A and B for parish churches combined with a new Act of Synod all fell.

WATCH welcomed the passing of Option One, and said that facilitated small-group discussions, carried out behind closed doors on Saturday, had contributed to a better “tone” of debate. Traditionalists were heartened that the Synod had shown a commitment to providing for opponents. All sides welcomed the continuation of “facilitated discussions”, under the guidance of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s director of reconciliation, David Porter.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, in a recent speech said the following:

“In some things we change course and recognize the new context. Revolutions change culture. In others we stand firm because truth is not set by culture, nor morals by fashion. But let us be clear, pretending that nothing has changed is absurd and impossible.”

This statement raises the question, “What beliefs can we as Christians, in our efforts to evangelize, maintain and what can we allow to be compromised?”

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Following fresh turmoil in Egypt, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York have sent a message of ‘committed solidarity’ to Pope Tawadros II and Bishop Mouneer in Cairo.

The Archbishops of Canterbury and York have joined the call for prayers for unity, reconciliation and an end to violence in Egypt.

Archbishop Justin Welby and Archbishop Dr John Sentamu wrote to the Coptic and Anglican leaders in Cairo today, pledging their ‘committed solidarity’ amid the recent turmoil in the country.

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It is a fact little appreciated that the presidents of America’s early universities were pioneers of what we would now call mental health care, and bear some credit for central features of today’s therapeutic institutions. These teachers, like today’s, felt an obligation to provide their students with guidance on how to overcome life’s inevitable stresses and setbacks.

But this was before the days of psychiatry and psychotherapy, which did not come into existence until the early twentieth century. Rather, the approach of these early university presidents was to integrate moral education into liberal education in the arts and sciences. Although the most highly acclaimed American colleges and universities today enjoy a reputation as secular institutions, it is often forgotten that nearly all of these schools started in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as seminaries under the leadership of staunchly Christian presidents, and that the therapeutic guidance they provided was given within avowedly religious contexts.

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[George] Gilman anticipated, by some 30 years, the fundamental contours of industrial-age selling. Both the high-end faux-naturalism of Whole Foods and the budget industrial starkness of Costco have their origins in the original A&P retail experience. The modern system of retail pioneered by Gilman ”” distant large-scale production facilities coupled with local human-scale consumption environments ”” was the first piece of what I’ve come to think of as the ”˜American cloud’: the vast industrial back end of our lives that we access via a theatre of manufactured experiences. If distant tea and coffee plantations were the first modern clouds, A&P stores and mail-order catalogues were the first browsers and apps.

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Assist us mercifully with your help, O Lord our Father, that we may approach this day with joy in our hearts and openness to the wind of your Holy Spirit whereever and however he may choose to lead us, through Christ our Lord

I keep the LORD always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. Therefore my heart is glad, and my soul rejoices; my body also dwells secure. For thou dost not give me up to Sheol, or let thy godly one see the Pit. Thou dost show me the path of life; in thy presence there is fulness of joy, in thy right hand are pleasures for evermore.

–Psalm 16:8-11

The military’s ouster of President Mohamed Morsi has unleashed a new wave of violence by extremist Muslims against Christians whom they blame for having supported the calls to overthrow Mr. Morsi, Egypt’s first Islamist elected leader, according to rights activists.

Since Mr. Morsi’s ouster on July 3, the activists say, a priest has been shot dead in the street, Islamists have painted black X’s on Christian shops to mark them for arson and angry mobs have attacked churches and besieged Christians in their homes. Four Christians were reported slaughtered with knives and machetes in one village last week.

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“How are you feeling?” It seems like a simple question, but it has significant implications for hospitals and their patients. Understanding those ramifications could be the key to improving patients’ perceptions of their hospital stay — and their overall health. Gallup World Poll research has found that positive emotions are effective predictors of self-reported health status and are closely associated with health.

Gallup has also observed this relationship in analyzing the results of HCAHPS surveys. HCAHPS, which stands for Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems, is a federally mandated 27-item survey that patients take up to six weeks following a hospital stay. Patients’ ratings are aggregated by hospital and adjusted to control for factors including survey mode and patient characteristics (patient mix). The resulting scores are reported publicly so the public can compare hospitals. These scores also affect a hospital’s Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement.

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Yes, Tyler is still a boy.

That’s what people who heard about him have wondered.

After a Maryland couple decided to listen to their 5-year-old daughter’s urgent and persistent insistence that she is a boy, after a psychiatrist told them it would be healthy to let the child live as a boy, after they let him pick a boy name and found a school that would enroll the child in kindergarten as a boy last year, Tyler’s parents have had no second thoughts.

“It’s not a phase,” said his mother, Jean. “Anyone who meets him says, ”˜Yeah, that’s a boy.’ ”

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I will take comments on this submitted by email only to KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

To understand the unrest that toppled the Egyptian government this week, start with a visit to Cairo’s Yacoubian Building.

In fiction, the apartment block is the setting for the widely praised 2002 novel of that name by Ala’a Al Aswany, who described many of the woes that contributed to the uprising in Tahrir Square 2½ years ago. In Mr. Al Aswany’s tale, a young man, stigmatized by the fact that his father is a doorman, can’t find employment with the Egyptian police and heads down a route that leads him to violent jihad. On the rooftop, a shantytown sprouts up thanks to a corrupt deal with the landlord.

But the Yacoubian Building is also an actual place, nestled in Cairo’s downtown, a short walk from the Nile. Here, on a once-stately street that has decayed with the decades, people say that life under President Mohammed Morsi and the government of the Muslim Brotherhood only became worse. If the fictional building predicted the revolution of 2011 that ousted Hosni Mubarak, the real building now reflects the sentiments that erupted into Wednesday’s coup.

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If and when divorce happens, it usually comes as a surprise. I have yet to meet a married couple that expects to get divorced. For most of us, the marriage vows are part of a sacred ritual surrounded by scripture, prayer and blessing….To me, this was the most mysterious aspect of divorce. How could these words spoken before God no longer hold any truth? It’s a question that’s rarely discussed. Instead I heard unsolicited and unwanted answers to the unasked question, “Why did my marriage end?” Well-intentioned people would say, “Every marriage has its struggles,” as if my divorce came about because we couldn’t agree on the children’s bedtime. The underlying message was, “you took the easy way out,” “you’ve given up” or “you obviously didn’t try hard enough.”

These people assumed that divorce is a kind of cheating; in other words, if we had taken our marriage seriously enough, it would have worked. This assumption glosses over the fractured, damaged and sinful reality of human life. Divorce among God’s people is a fact. Even though we strive for a spiritual ideal, marriages can fail. Contrary to some conventional wisdom, divorce is not easy, and for most of us it is not entered into lightly.

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Since the beginning of the year various national bodies, including the House of Bishops, have used facilitated conversations, an approach to which Welby brings considerable experience and expertise. The small-group sessions included a drama in which all members played a part. Reports from the groups are being circulated to the House of Bishops but for now the documents remain under wraps.

Will it lead to Synod members changing their minds? Probably not. There are already signs that some opponents are digging in for a long battle. The conservative evangelical group Reform announced in June that it had appointed its first full-time officer with the job title of director. The new director is Mrs. Susie Leafe, who was a notable speaker against the Measure voted down in November.

The sticking point is not the principle of women in the episcopate but of safeguards for those opposed.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, is in talks with Pope Francis about a new initiative that would link the Anglican Communion with the Vatican in the fight against poverty.

It is understood that the plan, which emerged from meetings between Archbishop Welby and the Pope in June, will focus on how both Churches can work together to help those in poverty around the world.

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After the Germans invaded Poland, the Lewis brothers opened up The Kilns to children forced to evacuate the big cities. The first group was four school girls, and throughout the war several other groups of children came in and out of their home. The highlight during this time was a delightful sixteen-year-old named June Flewett. She brought much fun and laughter to the household. The Lewises’ gift of hospitality was being reciprocated by the gift of joy that emanated from this young lady.

In his later years Lewis opened his home to a brash, gifted, divorced, Jewish American follower of Jesus, Joy Gresham Davidman, and her two sons. This relationship, retold in the movie Shadowlands, once again highlights Lewis’s hospitality. After spending time with Joy’s sons, David and Douglas, Lewis wrote humorously in a letter to his friend Ruth Pitter, “I never knew what we celibates are shielded from. I will never laugh at parents again. Not that the boys weren’t a delight: but a delight like surf-bathing which leaves one breathless and aching. The energy, the tempo, is what kills.”

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This toddler is bound to be a thrifty spender.

Fourteen-month-old Sorella Stoute has already made her first adult purchase ”” a 1962 Austin-Healey Sprite.

While her dad wasn’t looking, the little girl used his smartphone to snag the car for a clean $225 on eBay.

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Anglicanism was the fastest-growing major Christian tradition in Africa between 1970 and 2010, while the centre of gravity of Christianity has shifted to the Global South, reports a study published by the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Massachusetts,.

Demographic data published in “Christianity in Its Global Context, 1970”“2020: Society, Religion, and Mission” reports that while agnosticism and atheism has grown in Europe and Christianity plateaued, Europe remains the exception on the world scene as religions continue to gather new adherents round the world.

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American evangelicals’ view of themselves should resemble more closely that held by the church in the first century than that held by Christians in recent decades, Southern Baptist ethicist Russell D. Moore said in a nationally televised interview.

Moore, in an appearance on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal” Monday (July 8), said there was a message for evangelicals and other social conservatives in the U.S. Supreme Court’s invalidation of a federal law defining marriage as only between a man and a woman.

“For a long time, social conservatives in America had a kind of silent majority view of ourselves, and conservative evangelicals and conservative Roman Catholics had a moral majority view of ourselves, as though we somehow represent the mainstream of American culture — most people really agree with us except for some elites somewhere,” the president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission said. “That really isn’t the case.”

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There are few of us who have not learned by experience the remedial value of suffering when we have used it as a sacrament. It is astonishing how evanescent the memory of pain is, both in its acute and in its more prolonged forms, and how living a thing is the deposit made by a right correspondence with the opportunity hidden in the heart of suffering. This latter softens the disposition of that which at the moment seemed like unrelieved disaster and, as we look back, gives a benign expression to its severe countenance. To the growing character all his past suffering is a distinct asset, and from none of it would he be separated. He would not, if he could, eliminate a single pang.

The memory of past suffering and its deposit is varied. First and highest stands the vicarious suffering by which we lived in the lives of others and, without fault ourselves, shared the shame and sorrow of others, or else entered into the rich experience of blameless sufferers. Perhaps there is no pain quite like it for intensity. Then there comes the sharing of the common lot in which we receive our due portion of harsh treatment at the rough hand of those relentless forces which are resident in the nature of which we are a part. Some, many, there are who appear to be afflicted beyond measure and without apparent reason. The disparity of suffering is one of the most baffling features of the mystery and would be a fatal one were it not that the most perfect, the one altogether perfect, representative of the human family was afflicted beyond His brethren of every age, and not only took no hurt but even reaped a golden harvest for the world from the field of His suffering. With His stripes we are healed.

And then there are the pangs which we can trace directly to our own fault, and which are nothing more or less than the chastising of the benignly austere hand of God….

—The Mount of Vision: Being a Study of Life in Terms of the Whole, Chapter 8, by Bishop Charles Henry Brent

Not long after moving to the University of Southampton, Constantine Sedikides had lunch with a colleague in the psychology department and described some unusual symptoms he’d been feeling. A few times a week, he was suddenly hit with nostalgia for his previous home at the University of North Carolina: memories of old friends, Tar Heel basketball games, fried okra, the sweet smells of autumn in Chapel Hill.

His colleague, a clinical psychologist, made an immediate diagnosis. He must be depressed. Why else live in the past? Nostalgia had been considered a disorder ever since the term was coined by a 17th-century Swiss physician who attributed soldiers’ mental and physical maladies to their longing to return home ”” nostos in Greek, and the accompanying pain, algos.

But Dr. Sedikides didn’t want to return to any home ”” not to Chapel Hill, not to his native Greece ”” and he insisted to his lunch companion that he wasn’t in pain.

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Almighty and everlasting God, whose precepts are the wisdom of a loving Father: Give us grace, following the teaching and example of thy servant Benedict, to walk with loving and willing hearts in the school of the Lord’s service; let thine ears be open unto our prayers; and prosper with thy blessing the work of our hands; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

O Lord Jesus Christ, who when on earth wast ever about thy Father’s business: Grant that we may not grow weary in well-doing. Give us grace to do all in thy name. Be thou the beginning and the end of all: the pattern whom we follow, the redeemer in whom we trust, the master whom we serve, the friend to whom we look for sympathy. May we never shrink from our duty from any fear of man. Make us faithful unto death; and bring us at last into thy eternal presence, where with the Father and the Holy Ghost thou livest and reignest for ever.

–E. B. Pusey