…before pornography is a legal or cultural or moral issue, it is an ecclesial one. Judgment must, as Scripture tells us, begin with the household of God (1 Pet. 4:17). The man who is sitting upstairs viewing pornography while his wife chauffeurs their children to soccer practice might well be a religionless, secular culture warrior. But he is just as likely to be one of our church members, maybe even one who reads Touchstone magazine.

To begin to address this crisis, we call on the church of Jesus Christ to take seriously what is at stake here. Pornography is about more than biological impulses or cultural nihilism; it is about worship. The Christian Church, in all places and in all times and in all communions, has taught that we are not alone in the universe. One aspect of “mere Christianity” is that there are unseen spiritual beings afoot in the cosmos who seek to do us harm.

Read it all.

God our Creator,

who knows each of us by name

and loves us from all eternity:

we give you thanks for new life and human love.

Bless William and Catherine

as they welcome their son into the world.

Give them patience and wisdom

to cherish and love him as he grows.

Surround the family with the light of hope and the warmth of your love today and always; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

More than 1,200 people have signed an online petition decrying the “silence” and “inattention” of evangelical leaders to sexual abuse in their churches.

The statement was prompted by recent child abuse allegations against Sovereign Grace Ministries, an umbrella group of 80 Reformed evangelical churches based in Louisville, Ky.

“Recent allegations of sexual abuse and cover-up within a well known international ministry and subsequent public statements by several evangelical leaders have angered and distressed many, both insi

de and outside of the Church,” reads the three-page statement spearheaded by GRACE (Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment).Read it all.

In principle, what needs to be known about the nominees can already be known. It is a candidate’s past performance, outside the walls of Synod Hall, that really matters. Evidence can be gathered from the spheres in which his ministry has been exercised, for that evidence already exists in the real world amongst the real people who have experienced his ministry already. There is nothing mysterious about any candidate, the data simply needs to be gathered:

Has he been gospel focussed (or not)? Has he encouraged Christ’s mission (or not)? Does he clarify gospel truth and stand for it (or not)? Has he made good appointments of other people (or not)? Has he built and encouraged a ministry team (or not)? What is his track record of growing a congregation in strength and size (or not), or of successfully planting and growing new congregations (or not)? Does he know the world of the laity””has he encouraged ”˜people like me’ in my part of Christ’s mission-field (or not)? Does he know the weaknesses and struggles of being a human being in a suffering world, so that, having been comforted himself, he can bring the comfort of the grace of God to others (or not)? Does he know how to encourage his fellow clergy to keep at their task of shepherding God’s flock with patience and joyful endurance (or not)?

Read it all.

Al Qaeda not only remains a threat to the United States, but its capabilities and scope are expanding, a new analysis from a respected think tank has concluded.

“There has been a net expansion in the number and geographic scope of Al Qaeda affiliates and allies over the past decade, indicating that Al Qaeda and its brand are far from defeated,” argues Seth Jones, an analyst at the RAND Corporation and the study’s author.

Why, after a decade of wars ”“ the longest in America’s history ”“ is the terrorist organization that the US military set out to defeat still active and growing? And does it really have an impact on the everyday safety of most Americans?

Read it all.

Holy Father, who hast nourished and strengthened thy Church by the writings of thy servant Thomas a Kempis: Grant that we may learn from him to know what we ought to know, to love what we ought to love, to praise what highly pleaseth thee, and always to seek to know and follow thy will; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

O God of peace, who hast taught us that in returning and rest we shall be saved, in quietness and confidence shall be our strength: By the might of thy Spirit lift us, we pray thee, to thy presence, where we may be still and know that thou art God; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.” And leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. And other boats were with him. And a great storm of wind arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already filling. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care if we perish?” And he awoke and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you no faith?” And they were filled with awe, and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even wind and sea obey him?”

–Mark 4:35-41

Arise my body, my small body, we have striven
Enough, and He is merciful; we are forgiven.
Arise small body, puppet-like and pale, and go,
White as the bed-clothes into bed, and cold as snow,
Undress with small, cold fingers and put out the light,
And be alone, hush’d mortal, in the sacred night,
-A meadow whipt flat with the rain, a cup
Emptied and clean, a garment washed and folded up,
Faded in colour, thinned almost to raggedness
By dirt and by the washing of that dirtiness.
Be not too quickly warm again. Lie cold; consent
To weariness’ and pardon’s watery element.
Drink up the bitter water, breathe the chilly death;
Soon enough comes the riot of our blood and breath. (Hat tip:BH)

By all accounts, Pope Francis has already won over many hearts in Brazil with his simplicity and message of caring for the poor. But as he travels the country on his first overseas trip as pontiff, he will be speaking to a group of young Catholics who hold far more liberal views than the church hierarchy on a number of issues, including female priests, homosexuality and abortion.

After arriving in Rio to enormous crowds on Monday, the pope spent Tuesday resting and having private meetings at the Sumare residence where Pope John Paul stayed in 1980 and 1997. Thousands of young pilgrims filled a rainy Copacabana beach to attend a series of religious-themed concerts that were part of World Youth Day, which, despite the name, is a five-day event that began Tuesday and is ostensibly the reason for the pope’s visit to Brazil.

But the young people Francis encounters are not necessarily representative of young Catholics worldwide, and they hold some views that run sharply counter to those espoused by Francis and the Roman Catholic Church.

Read it all.

No fewer than 400 Nigeria Immigration Service officers have been killed by the dreaded Boko Haram since it began it’s violent campaigns against the nation.

Chairman, Senate Committee on Interior, Senator Bagudu Atiku, who made this disclosure on Monday in a chat with newsmen at the National Assembly complex in Abuja, said the figure was gotten from the Immigration and Prisons Services during the committee’s oversight functions.

The lawmaker added that in the last one year, the nation had witnessed no less than 11 jail breaks, a situation he described as worrisome.

Read it all.

The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby has described both the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby and recent attacks on Muslims as “evil acts” by those who seek to “spread hate and cause division”.

“The attacks on minority ethnic groups across the country that there have been over the last few weeks are inexecusable, unacceptable and a scandal to a tradition of hospitality in this country of which we should be deeply proud and which has contributed far more to us than it has taken from us,” he told an inter-faith audience gathered at Featherstone High School in Southall, west London.

He added: “I want, as I have already done, to acknowledge the pressure that our Muslim friends and colleagues have faced over the last few weeks. There have been terrible attacks, I know that the vast majority of those in this country and especially people of faith would join me in condemning utterly any act of violence against anyone because of their faith.

Read it all.

The Church of England has announced today that the Revd Canon Jeremy Worthen is to be the new Secretary for Ecumenical Relations and Theology at the Council for Christian Unity.

Based in Church House Westminster, this is a newly-configured role which combines the functions of the Secretary of the Council for Christian Unity and theological adviser to the House of Bishops and the Faith and Order Commission. Dr Worthen will work closely with the Chairs of the Council of Christian Unity and the Faith and Order Commission and will report to Jacqui Philips, the Director of Central Secretariat and Clerk to the Synod.

Read it all.

Read it all.

One of the best new books out there ”“ “something close to a non-fiction masterpiece,” according to a New York Times reviewer ”“ is The Unwinding by George Packer….The book’s author is not an American declinist. There have been other unravellings; rebuilds inevitably follow. But the context is different now. America’s greatest century is behind it. Its degree of dominance will likely never be the same.

In response to all this, how does Canada, the big neighbour to the north, position itself?

Read it all.

After only two days of serving as the bishop of the Central Florida Diocese, I found myself marching in the streets of Sanford, FL and speaking at city hall at a city commission meeting due to the developments following the death of Trayvon Martin. As a bishop, I am a Christian leader for a geographic region of 15 counties, not merely a group of churches. This meant I had to act.

While my responsibilities extend to 87 congregations, the whole region and all of its citizens are within my spiritual oversight. What happened in the shooting of Trayvon Martin mattered to me because it mattered to the people under my care.

Read it all.

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

Read it all.

Nine people have died in Cairo in overnight clashes between supporters and opponents of ousted President Mohammed Morsi, officials say.

Most of the victims were killed at a sit-in held by pro-Morsi demonstrators near Cairo University.

Mr Morsi’s family earlier accused the military of abducting him.

Read it all.

Christianity in Brazil is big business ”” not only are major superstar pastors represented at the convention, but businesses like Sony Music have booths as well.

Brothers Lucas and Renault Lourenço have been singing together since they were in their teens, and together they are the Brazilian evangelical version of the boy band. Now in their early 20s ”” sporting matching faux hawks and wearing jeans ”” they came to reach out to their established fans and sell records to new ones.

“This fair attracts many people, even people who are not evangelicals, which is essential because that way people will know the gospel and so every day there will be even more of us evangelicals,” Renault says.

Read (or listen to) it all.

…reading a good book won’t make you a more moral person, but it will help you understand others better. Got it. But what else does reading great literature do? My friend Karen Swallow Prior””who is a professor of English at Liberty University””gave an intriguing answer recently in The Atlantic Monthly. Reading a good book and reading it well makes us more human.

Prior says that “What good literature can do and does do””far greater than any importation of morality””is to touch the human soul. “Reading,” she continues, “is one of the few distinctively human activities that set us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom.” Reading does not come naturally to us, like language does. We must be taught how to read. And, she says, there’s something decidedly spiritual about considering a bunch of words and symbols, understanding them, analyzing them, interpreting them, and especially finding meaning in them.

Read it all.

…Paul went further. To those who imagine that “living biblically” means keeping all the rules you can possibly find in the Bible, I think he would say, “You haven’t understood the first thing about the gospel. The Good News is not, ‘Here are the rules, see how many of them you can keep.’ ” Instead, I believe he would say, “Here is Jesus. See what God has done for you through him.”

The good news is that the God who created the world has kept his promise to save the world. He has done it through the death and resurrection of Jesus. And we can be part of the story that ends in a new creation, with Christ reigning as king. The good news also is that once we have entered that story by repentance and faith, God gives us his Spirit, precisely so that “the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit” (Rom. 8:4).

There is plenty that we can learn from Old Testament laws that can still usefully guide our ethical and missional thinking and action. The Torah was always intended to do just that. But the heartbeat of Christian life and freedom is not keeping all the rules. Instead, it is living as people whose whole life and character are shaped by God’s Word in all its Christ-centered fullness, becoming more like the Christ we trust and follow, and bearing the fruit of God’s Spirit. That’s living biblically.

Read it all.

“We spent five months at Harper High School in Chicago, where last year alone 29 current and recent students were shot. 29. We went to get a sense of what it means to live in the midst of all this gun violence, how teens and adults navigate a world of funerals and Homecoming dances. We found so many incredible and surprising stories, this show is a two-parter….”

You can find the link to part one here and part two is there. I finally got to this during some recent driving–very hard to listen to, very important to try to ponder–KSH.

Are cures within reach for brain disorders such as Alzheimer’s, epilepsy, schizophrenia, autism and post-traumatic stress? President Obama and three key government organizations say yes.

The president has launched an initiative that aims to help doctors better understand how the brain works, and use that knowledge to treat these disorders. The Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (Brain) Initiative will focus on finding technologies to show how individual cells and neural circuits interact.

Read it all.

First-time home buyers, long a key underpinning of the housing market, are increasingly getting left behind in the real-estate recovery.

Such buyers, typically couples in their late 20s or early 30s, have accounted for about 30% of home sales over the past year. They represented 40% of sales, on average, over the past 30 years, and accounted for more than 50% in 2009, when recession-era tax credits fueled the first-time market, according to data from the National Association of Realtors.

Read it all (an additional link if necessary is there).

Come, Lord, and reign over us this day 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.

Then Ab’igail made haste, and took two hundred loaves, and two skins of wine, and five sheep ready dressed, and five measures of parched grain, and a hundred clusters of raisins, and two hundred cakes of figs, and laid them on asses. And she said to her young men, “Go on before me; behold, I come after you.” But she did not tell her husband Nabal. And as she rode on the ass, and came down under cover of the mountain, behold, David and his men came down toward her; and she met them. Now David had said, “Surely in vain have I guarded all that this fellow has in the wilderness, so that nothing was missed of all that belonged to him; and he has returned me evil for good. God do so to David and more also, if by morning I leave so much as one male of all who belong to him.”

–1 Samuel 25:18-22

Check it out.

How does this affect our understanding of poverty? There is one group of Christians who tend to think of Christianity as an exclusively spiritual matter, where we are all equal spiritually and the church community is secondary and not the primary social focus. That can sometimes translate into an individualist approach to social policy.

On the other hand, there has been another tendency since the nineteenth century to hand over the incarnational mission of the church to the state – in other words, to see the state as the more complete realisation of the church’s social mission than the church itself. It is sometimes said that we can’t stop at charity, and that all Christian reformers have wanted to go onto law. One can see the serious point of this and in certain respects such an advance is crucial, and yet there is a profound question mark over that whole tradition which William Temple exemplified. It is a rather Hegelian one that tends ultimately to surrender things to the state, as if the political lay beyond the social. Modern Anglican social thought has always been divided between that approach and one (associated with J.N. Figgis and Vigo Demant) which less stresses state intervention, but much more interpersonal action and people taking the initiative to do things for themselves.
The temptation to advocate legislation often means losing focus on interpersonal relationships, and losing focus on the notion that you treat recipients of charity as human beings. It is because the Christian vision keeps people’s humanity central that we accord them the dignity of demanding something from them. The problem with the dominant alternatives to this vision is that they are devoid of this social concern and therefore deeply impersonal. We either get the pure market theorists who think welfare will trickle down in a perfect economy and it will all sort itself out, or else you get a left-wing version of the same impersonality where you want to redress the balance so that everyone can act equally in the same depersonalised market – an approach with dire consequences for the inevitable “losers” in such a agonistic game.

If the church is confused about its response to poverty, then more specific confusion exists over how to approach the issue of child poverty in particular.

Read it all.

If Jason Heap has his way, he’ll trade his Oxford tweeds for the crisp whites of a newly minted U.S. Navy chaplain.

This is my chance to give back to my country,” said Heap, 38. “I want to use my skills on behalf of our people in the service. Hopefully, the Navy will see where I can be useful.”

But Heap’s goal is not assured. He fits the requirements”” with master’s degrees from both Brite Divinity School and Oxford University. His paperwork is complete. He passed the physical tests and has been interviewed by a Navy chaplain. The only thing he does not have is an endorsement from a religious organization approved by the Navy.

Read it all.

He weighed 8lb and 6oz, and was born at 4.24pm local time.