J.C. Michael Allen didn’t consider himself religious. But that was before he found himself interviewing a controversial Episcopal priest as a writer for Look magazine.

The priest was James Albert Pike and he spoke of racism, abortion, birth control and exploitation of workers.

Allen was taken with Pike’s activism and told him: “If I could believe in God, I’d become a priest.”

Allen was baptized soon after. He went on to become an ordained Episcopal minister and the dean, or head priest, at Christ Church Episcopal Cathedral in downtown St. Louis.

Read it all.

Another historic Euclid Avenue church is facing demolition, now that a marketing effort by the Episcopal Diocese of Ohio appears to have netted a big buyer: the Cleveland Clinic.

The diocese recently applied for a demolition permit for the Church of the Transfiguration, a shuttered Gothic Revival building that occupies 0.83 acres on the northwest side of the Clinic’s main campus. The Cleveland Landmarks Commission, which exerts some control over significant buildings and historic districts in the city, expects to consider the demolition request at its Thursday meeting….

Read it all.

Seamus Heaney’s last words – “Noli timere,” Latin for “Don’t be afraid” – came in a text message to his wife, it was revealed at the poet’s funeral this week. Test yourself on other famous last words.

See how you do on the quiz.

Simply terrific, and way more than just a who–done–it, but a deeply moving drama about fractured people in one English town–KSH.

More and more we are finding people who neither believe nor disbelieve in God — they can’t even verbalize what faith might be like. They have never experienced faith of any sort whatsoever.

In the Episcopal Church, all are welcomed at each and every worship service. It does not have to be a national crisis.

The Episcopal Church looks at life, especially our spiritual life, as a journey in which we grow in a deeper and fuller knowledge and love of God.

Read it all.

As students consider how to use their devices in the classroom, they should remember, above all, that tuition merely gets them into the lecture hall. If they want college to culminate in life-changing courses, mentoring from dedicated teachers and compelling recommendations for the world after graduation, they will earn these things the time-honored way, with courtesy and hard work.

As for professors, we can make things easier for students by including detailed etiquette policies in our syllabi. Too many of us leave our likes and dislikes to be discovered by trial and error.

But even the most detailed code of conduct can’t hope to specify or resolve every possible sticking point. Society writ large is constantly struggling to come to grips with technological disruption, and so too are the adults at the front of the college lecture hall and the wired, distracted young adults who are there to learn from them.

Read it all.

The Coalition has been swept to a convincing election victory in a result that could keep Labor in the political wilderness for a decade, with incoming prime minister Tony Abbott declaring the country is “under new management”.

ALP seats fell across the country on Saturday, ensuring Tony Abbott will be the 28th prime minister of Australia and have a commanding majority, holding up to 90 seats in the 150 seats in the House of Representatives.

Mr Abbott said he would methodically deliver on his promises with a government that accepts it will be judge more by it’s deeds than its word.

Read it all.

On the eve of Rosh Hashana last year, as Lois Kittner was passing through security at the airport in Newark, a security screener halted her. He had a question about several strange items in her carry-on bag. One looked like some kind of animal bone; the other was a piece of metal that came to a suspiciously narrow point.

So Ms. Kittner set about explaining. She was a cantorial student at the Academy for Jewish Religion and was headed to North Carolina to help lead services at a synagogue there. The bony thing was a shofar, the instrument fashioned from a ram’s horn and blown to herald the Jewish New Year. As for that supposed weapon, it was a yad, a thin rod with a tip shaped like a pointing hand, which is used to follow the handwritten text on a Torah scroll.

“You don’t want to be that person in security who looks scared and uncomfortable,” Ms. Kittner, 56, recalled in a recent interview. “It didn’t even occur to me there’d be a problem. Friends tell me there’s never a problem with shofars when you go to Miami.”

Read it all.

O Lord God, in whom we live and move and have our being, open our eyes that we may behold thy fatherly presence ever about us. Draw our hearts to thee by the power of thy love. Teach us to be anxious for nothing, and when we have done what thou hast given us to do, help us, O God our Saviour, to leave the issue to thy wisdom. Take from us all doubt and mistrust. Lift our thoughts up to thee in heaven; and make us to know that all things are possible to us through thy Son, our Redeemer Jesus Christ.

–B. F. Westcott

Thou hast turned for me my mourning into dancing: thou hast put off my sackcloth, and girded me with gladness;

To the end that [my] glory may sing praise to thee, and not be silent. O LORD my God, I will give thanks unto thee for ever.

–Psalm 30:11-12 (KJV)

ROFL–read it all.

The long, slow recovery in the U.S. job market is leaving ever-more Americans on the sidelines””and complicating the calculus for Federal Reserve policy makers weighing when the economy can get by with less help.

Employers added 169,000 jobs in August, the Labor Department said Friday, a bit more than in July, and the unemployment rate fell to 7.3%, the best mark of the recovery.

But beneath such positive numbers lay evidence of a job market stuck in second gear. The government revised down its estimate for June and July hiring by a combined 74,000 jobs, and a disproportionate share of the jobs that are being added are in low-paying sectors such as restaurants and retail.

Read it all.

The Anglican Church of Melanesia has a new bishop for the Diocese of Banks and Torres.

The Diocese of Banks and Torres Electoral Board of the Anglican Church of Melanesia has today elected the Revd Patteson Alfred Worek as the third Bishop for the Diocese of Banks and Torres. The meeting which was preceded by a retreat yesterday was held at Tete Ni Kolivutu, East of Honiara.

The Revd Patteson Worek is currently undertaking a Master of Theology Studies at the Pacific Theological College in Suva, Fiji. He graduated with a Bachelor in Theology from the University of Auckland, New Zealand in 1998.

Read it all.

“It’s much like a divorce,” said the Rev. J.T. Jeffords, minister at St. Paul’s Church in Conway, which was formerly St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. “Everyone is affected.”

“In these situations, even if you win, you lose,” said Dan Ennis, dean of the Edwards College of Humanities and Fine Arts and one of the leaders of the group of Episcopalians who left St. Paul’s last year and has now formed the community of St. Anne’s.

Read it all.