France has now joined a global struggle against the sexualization of women, especially girls, in public. On Wednesday [last week], the French upper house of Parliament voted to end beauty pageants for girls younger than 16.

The bill, which must still be approved by the lower house, was introduced to fend off a growing popularity of such pageants but also in response to public outrage over a French Vogue photo spread showing child models in tight dresses, lipstick, and high heels. Many in France were also upset that the company Jours Après Lunes came out with a line of “loungerie” ”“ a mix of loungewear and lingerie ”“ for girls as young as 4.

“Let us not allow our girls to think from a young age that their worth is judged only by their appearance,” said Sen. Chantal Jouanno, a champion of the pageant ban.

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Burials have been taking place in the Pakistani city of Peshawar after a double suicide bombing killed at least 80 people at a church on Sunday.

It is thought to be the deadliest ever attack on Pakistan’s Christians.

Two militant groups with links to the Taliban said they ordered the attack to retaliate against US drone strikes.

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Angela Merkel won a landslide personal victory in Germany’s general election on Sunday, but her conservatives appeared just short of the votes needed to rule on their own and may have to convince leftist rivals to join a coalition government.

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Live updates from the BBC today here

There is also a report in the East African ‘Standard’ newspaper this morning:
Explosions go off inside Westgate Mall in Nairobi [title of article amended later]

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The Episcopal Church in West Virginia will bless same sex unions, Bishop Michie Klusmeyer announced Saturday.

Klusmeyer said he gave the issue much thought and prayer before making the decision, which he announced in Flatwoods at a three-day convention of the Diocese of West Virginia.

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Gunfire and explosions were heard at a shopping mall in Kenya’s capital early Monday as a hostage standoff which has left at least 68 people dead entered its third day.

The FBI said it was investigating reports that as many as five Americans were among the group of al Qaeda-linked terrorists who raided the Westgate mall in Nairobi on Saturday.

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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.

Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel, thou who leadest Joseph like a flock! Thou who art enthroned upon the cherubim, shine forth before E’phraim and Benjamin and Manas’seh! Stir up thy might, and come to save us!

–Psalm 80:1-2

Dear Diary:

While I was riding the subway home after a delightful dinner with a visiting friend, the young woman seated opposite me noticed my cast and asked how I injured my leg. I replied that it was my foot that was injured and that I had fractured my fifth metatarsal.

She asked if she could say a healing prayer for me. I said if she thought that would help, sure, go ahead. She then asked if I would mind if she touched my foot and said a prayer right now….

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An Anglican bishop is marking the tenth anniversary of his consecration with a cash gift to churches in his diocese.

The Bishop of Wakefield, the Right Reverend Stephen Platten, said churches should use the £100 to start community projects.

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Bishop Joel Waweru of Anglican Church of Kenya called for his followers and his countrymen to maintain peace.

“We are so disheartened with whatever happened, but we would want to call upon our Christian brothers and sisters to keep peace and to maintain peace,” said Waweru.

Read here
Reuters: 10-Islamist gunmen hold hostages in Kenya siege, 68 dead

NAIROBI, Sept 22 (Reuters) – Islamist militants were holding hostages on Sunday at a shopping mall in Nairobi, where at least 68 people were killed in an attack by Somalia’s al Shabaab group.

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Live updates from the BBC here

Update
News from the local paper the Standard with a live link from KTN here

A message from +Peter Jensen about GAFCON II here

The Anglican Diocese of Wellington has voted to remove all of its investments in companies which extract or produce fossil fuels.

The decision came at a meeting of delegates in Palmerston North this weekend and follows a similar decision by the Anglican synod in Auckland.

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Early in the 20th century, it was easy to predict which flocks of believers would produce the most children ”” with Mormons reporting the highest numbers, followed by Catholics, then Protestants and so forth as fertility rates declined. But things changed as the century rolled on and America became more pluralistic and, in elite ZIP codes, secular.

After Woodstock and the sexual revolution, it was clear that “what really mattered wasn’t what religion you claimed to be practicing, but the degree to which you actually practiced it ”” especially whether or not you were in a pew week after week,” said journalist Jonathan A. Last, author of “What to Expect When No One’s Expecting….”

“When it comes to people having what people today consider large families ”” three or more children ”” there are two Americas out there,” he said, and the division is between those who actively practice a faith, especially a traditional form of faith, and those who do not.”

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“Are you worried about the future?” So asked eight year old Nana, in a letter when she heard about my life-threatening illness.

What do you say when you have had two major operations and Salmonella poisoning?

Sentamu, are you worried about the future? No.

Concerned? Yes.

Shaken but not stirred.

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Evangelical adoptions picked up in earnest in the middle of the last decade, when a wave of prominent Christians, including the megachurch pastor Rick Warren and leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention, began to promote adoption as a special imperative for believers. Adoption mirrored the Christian salvation experience, they argued, likening the adoption of orphans to Christ’s adoption of the faithful. Adoption also embodied a more holistic “pro-life” message ”” caring for children outside the womb as well as within ”” and an emphasis on good deeds, not just belief, that some evangelicals felt had been ceded to mainline Protestant denominations.

Believers rose to the challenge. The Christian Alliance for Orphans estimates that hundreds of thousands of people worldwide participate in its annual Orphan Sunday (this year’s is Nov. 3). Evangelicals from the Bible Belt to Southern California don wristbands or T-shirts reading “orphan addict” or “serial adopter.” Ministries have emerged to raise money and award grants to help Christians pay the fees (some $30,000 on average, plus travel) associated with transnational adoption.

However well intended, this enthusiasm has exacerbated what has become a boom-and-bust market for children that leaps from country to country. In many cases, the influx of money has created incentives to establish or expand orphanages ”” and identify children to fill them.

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A pair of suicide bombers blew themselves up outside a 130-year-old church in Pakistan after Sunday [Mass?], killing at least 60 people in the deadliest attack on Christians in recent history…

Two suicide bombers are believed to have entered the All Saints Church after shooting dead police guards, and detonated their explosive vests. Police said 350 members of the congregation were in the church when the bombers struck and that the death toll is expected to increase because many were being treated in hospital are in a critical condition.

Read it all. More on the attack from the Diocese of Peshawar and a message from Bishop Humphrey Peters here

A senior judge, leading members of Parliament and human rights activists are calling for an urgent debate on the explosive issue of whether Muslim women should be allowed to wear veils when they testify in court.

The call for national debate follows Judge Peter Murphy’s Sept. 16 ruling that a 22-year-old Muslim woman standing trial on charges of intimidating a witness at a north London mosque must remove her facial veil, called a niqab, when testifying so the jury can better evaluate her facial expressions.

If she refuses, the woman ”“ known only as Defendant D ”“ could face a prison sentence for contempt of court.

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A barrage of new statistics on American living standards offers some grounds for optimism. A typical American household’s income has stopped falling for the first time in five years, and the poverty rate has stopped rising. At last, it seems, the expansion is strong enough at least to stabilise ordinary people’s incomes.

But the main message is a grim one. Most of the growth is going to an extraordinarily small share of the population: 95% of the gains from the recovery have gone to the richest 1% of people, whose share of overall income is once again close to its highest level in a century. The most unequal country in the rich world is thus becoming even more so.

You do not have to be an egalitarian to worry about this trend. Although some degree of inequality is good for an economy, creating incentives to work hard and take risks, the recent concentration of income gains among the most affluent is both politically dangerous and economically damaging.

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BETTY ROLLIN, correspondent: The Metropolitan United Methodist Church in Washington, DC recently had an unusual celebration. The event, called “Church Quake,” honored married couples of the same sex and the clergy who married them.

One of those colleagues, who is facing a potential church trial for performing a same-sex marriage, is 79 year old Rev. Tom Ogletree, the retired dean of Yale Divinity School.

The marriage that Rev. Ogletree performed was that of his own son, Thomas.

[THE] REV. TOM OGLETREE: I was thrilled that he asked me to play a role because I’ve known he was gay for a long time and we’ve been watching him, you know, adjust and adapt to the demands of the culture in creative ways.

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“After I stepped away from my ministry, I literally stepped off the cliff,” Ms. [Teresa] MacBain, 45, recalled in a recent interview. “I didn’t know what life would be like without a church. I was depressed. I was out there in limbo all at once. There is no community. There is no social network. The majority of friendships are gone. There is no place I can go every week where I know people and they know me.”

Now, 18 months into a new life, Ms. MacBain is bringing much of her old one to the task of building congregations of nonbelievers. She has been hired as the director of the Humanist Community Project at Harvard with the mandate to travel the country helping atomized groups of atheists, agnostics, humanists and freethinkers replicate the communal structure and support that organized religion provides to its faithful.

This line of work draws directly on Ms. MacBain’s experience of seeing her father create and build congregations throughout the small-town South and of her own track record of ministering in churches, prisons, nursing homes and drug-rehab centers.

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Grant, O Lord, that as there is one Spirit, one Lord, one faith, one hope of our calling; so thy Church, being one body, may draw all nations to the one baptism, as children of the one God and Father of us all, who is above all and through all and in all, now and for evermore.

Now there was a disciple at Damascus named Anani’as. The Lord said to him in a vision, “Anani’as.” And he said, “Here I am, Lord.” And the Lord said to him, “Rise and go to the street called Straight, and inquire in the house of Judas for a man of Tarsus named Saul; for behold, he is praying, and he has seen a man named Anani’as come in and lay his hands on him so that he might regain his sight.” But Anani’as answered, “Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to thy saints at Jerusalem; and here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who call upon thy name.” But the Lord said to him, “Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel; 16 for I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.” So Anani’as departed and entered the house. And laying his hands on him he said, “Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus who appeared to you on the road by which you came, has sent me that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” And immediately something like scales fell from his eyes and he regained his sight. Then he rose and was baptized, and took food and was strengthened. For several days he was with the disciples at Damascus.

–Acts 9:10-19

Los Angeles filmmaker Andrew Thomas has turned his attention from the secular to the religious by directing a feature-length documentary on the life and times of the Rev. Malcolm Boyd, an Episcopal priest who says the church needs to be more relevant to the everyday person and has worked to improve that issue.

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Hugo smashed apart the Lowcountry on Sept. 21, 1989, 24 years ago today. Roll the numbers around in your head: 35 dead, more than 50,000 homeless, half the state without electrical power.

The $6.5 billion in damage the storm did then has been estimated to be more than $8 billion in damage today.

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A festival in celebration of Christian apologist and Chronicles of Narnia author CS Lewis is underway in Oxford.

The CS Lewis Jubilee Festival is taking place over four days to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the writer’s death.

The festival has been organised by Holy Trinity Church, Headington Quarry, where Lewis worshipped for some 30 years and is buried.

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When the Russian Orthodox Church is in the news, which has been quite often of late, the image that comes to mind is of an army of archbishops and abbots, commanded by Patriarch Kirill I, operating in conspiracy with the country’s authoritarian rulers in the Kremlin. This is not without reason. The church’s conservative clerics have, in fact, given their support to the government’s most polarizing recent laws, including the jailing of three members of Pussy Riot for offending believers’ religious sensibilities, legislation proscribing “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations,” and the institution of a limit of three legal marriages per Russian, to discourage divorce.

But to conclude that the Russian Orthodox Church is nothing more than a bastion of extreme conservatives is to miss the many ways that change is being forced upon it. In some sense, the church’s ultraconservatism is on the wane — for confirmation, one need only look to what’s happening among the laity, rather than to the very top of the church’s hierarchy. Devout Orthodox Christian journalists, academics, and political scientists — as well as free-thinking priests — are becoming increasingly assertive as alternative spokespeople for their faith. This burgeoning Orthodox intelligentsia is already posing a challenge to the conservative church hierarchy and, by extension, to Vladimir Putin’s regime.

This is not the first time that the church has produced prominent dissident intellectuals….

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The married mother of two, who grew up in Belfast, said she was both “excited and daunted” by the historic appointment.

“I have had an extraordinarily happy experience in St Augustine’s and in this wonderful city, which I will be sad to leave,” she said.

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The Church of Ireland has appointed its first ever woman bishop as the new Bishop of Meath and Kildare.

Fifty-three-year-old Revd Pat (Patricia) Storey is married with two adult children and is currently Rector of St Augustine’s Parish in Derry.

She succeeds the Church of Ireland Primate, Archbishop Richard Clarke of Armagh, in the role.

Responding to the news, Archbishop Clarke said he was “certain that her ministry in the Dioceses of Meath and Kildare and the wider Church will be a blessing to many.”

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