Like lots of college students, Lauren has a smartphone loaded with some of the most popular apps around ”” Facebook, Twitter and eBay. And like a lot of unbelievers, she asked to not use her full name because her family doesn’t know about her closet atheism.

One of the apps she uses most regularly is YouVersion, a free Bible app that puts a library’s worth of translations ”” more than 700 ”” in the palm of her hand. Close to 115 million people have downloaded YouVersion, making it among the most popular apps of all time.

But Lauren, a 22-year-old chemistry major from Colorado, is not interested in the app’s mission to deepen faith and biblical literacy. A newly minted atheist, she uses her YouVersion Bible app to try to persuade people away from the Christianity she grew up in.

Read it all.

Read it all.

At 98, Hal Lasko is an unlikely master of computer art. Born before the invention of broadcast radio, Lasko spent his career as a commercial graphic designer, working with his hands to create typography and design. But as age caught up with Lasko the brush strokes became more difficult. “When I lost my eyesight, I thought my painting days were over,” says Lasko. Instead, around 15 years ago, Lasko’s grandchildren bought him a computer and introduced the artist to Microsoft Paint. The program allows Lasko to magnify the area large enough to draw pixel by pixel. “If it takes me two years to do that [create a painting], I can do it. I got a lot of patience,” says Lasko.

Read it all and watch the whole video.

The Bishop of London, Richard Chartres, has launched a campaign to conserve 100 treasures in Anglican churches, and the Church of England hopes to raise £3m for their conservation.

Church Care, the central Anglican organisation that runs the campaign, points out that caring for over 16,000 churches in England is an enormous burden. Repairs to buildings cost a total of £115m a year, “to keep them watertight and fit for the 21st century”. Too often, there are simply no funds left for conserving works of art.

Read it all.

One of the most beloved prayers in the Anglican tradition is called the Prayer of Humble Access, but some cherished words were omitted from the Anglican-use Mass, the Vatican-approved liturgy that allowed former Episcopalians and Anglicans to bring elements of their liturgical tradition with them into the Catholic Church.

Come the First Sunday of Advent, however, the missing words of Humble Access will be included in the new ordinariate-use Mass, no doubt gladdening the hearts of many former Episcopalians who recently have become Catholics through the ordinariate.

Read it all.

Llandaff Cathedral is planning a financial overhaul to protect the future of its ministry.

It is taking action to increase income and reduce expenditure in order to tackle a significant budget deficit.

Parishioners have already been asked to increase their weekly giving and cutbacks have been made to save on energy bills and staffing costs.

Now the Dean and Chapter are proposing slimming down the Cathedral Choir in order to save nearly £50,000 which would significantly cut down the anticipated deficit of £81,000. Seven men ”“ five lay clerks, one choral scholar and the assistant organist”“ are at risk of redundancy and will be invited to take part in consultation meetings over the next few weeks.

Read it all.

After it sparked controversy and opposition from a number of area residents, the Anglican diocese is scrapping plans to build a subsidized housing facility in a south west Edmonton neighbourhood….

The decision came after news of the project sparked rising tensions in the neighbourhood.

“We don’t think the project can be successful in this particular place,” Anglican Bishop Jane Alexander said.

Read it all.

The Chambésy process is the worst form of Orthodox church government for the 21st century, except for all the others. The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople has the power to bring bishops together, but he cannot force them to accept an unwelcome edict. When disputes arise, they must be resolved honestly by brother bishops and their flocks, even if the solutions are slow to come.

Last Saturday the Antiochian Orthodox Church commemorated St. Raphael of Brooklyn. Born in Beirut and educated in Syria, Turkey, and Russia, he humbly and tirelessly served the diverse Orthodox flock in America in the early 20th century as their bishop. Even if churches of Slavic rite celebrated his memory back in February, he is a reminder to all Orthodox in this land that despite our formal divisions, we remain one body in Christ.

While our Church is hampered by human weakness and pettiness, much of the world is still what Protestants would call a mission field. The Orthodox Church has great riches, if like Fr. Raphael we allow ourselves to overcome our own ethnic allegiances and allow Christ to shine forth.

Read it all.

The title of a new paper from three economists at the Federal Reserve is bloodless: “Aggregate Supply in the United States: Recent Developments and Implications for the Conduct of Monetary Policy”

But its conclusions are chilling.

The paper offers a depressing portrait of where the economy stands nearly six years after the onset of recession, and amounts to a damning indictment of U.S. policymakers. Their upshot: The United States’s long-term economic potential has been diminished by the fact that policymakers have not done more to put people back to work quickly. Our national economic potential is now a whopping 7 percent below where it was heading at the pre-2007 trajectory, the authors find.

Read it all from The Washington Post.

The most recent meeting of the Town Board here had typical local fare: a new sidewalk proposal, permitting issues and a failed attempt to get a bid on some surplus soil.

Before all of those mundane matters, however, there was one considerably more controversial item on the agenda: a moment of prayer, a practice that has been a religious aperitif to the town’s civic business for more than a decade.

But that could soon change. On Wednesday, the United States Supreme Court will hear arguments on whether those prayers ”” almost always delivered by Christian clergy members to the assembled audience ”” violate the First Amendment clause that prohibits the establishment of religion. The court’s ruling, expected next June, could be one of the most significant church-state decisions in 30 years, and could affect the nature of such invocations in municipal meetings nationwide.

Read it all.

The local option sales tax proposal was defeated again Tuesday in Dorchester County, ending a bruising campaign marked by short tempers and personal attacks.

More than 65 percent of voters cast ballots against the proposal, according to unofficial election results.

Read it all.

From here:

Working with his Rugby contemporary R. H. Tawney, the seminal Labour thinker, and William Beveridge, the architect of the welfare reforms which sought to banish the five giants of want, idleness, squalor, ignorance and disease, Temple’s book Christianity and Social Order, published in 1942, provided a challenging theological gloss to this vision: “. . . there is no hope of establishing a more Christian social order except through the labour and sacrifice of those in whom the Spirit of Christ is active, and that the first necessity for progress is more and better Christians taking full responsibility as citizens for the political, social and economic system under which they and their fellows live.”

After Temple’s death at the age of 63 after being Archbishop of Canterbury for only 30 months, Bishop Barry of Southwell asked angrily in The Spectator: “Is the Church so rich in prophets that it can afford to squander the gifts of God?” A contrasting view, expressed by Hensley Henson, was that he died just in time “for he had passed away while the streams of opinion in Church and State, of which he became the outstanding symbol and exponent, were at flood, and escaped the experience of their inevitable ebb”.

Although a much different world than that of 60 years ago, the weight of Temple’s greatness is still felt. Once described as “a man so broad, to some he seem’d to be Not one, but all Mankind in Effigy”, his wide informed vision checks our growing narrowness and self-obsession, his realism our Utopian perfectionism, his generosity of heart a worthy riposte to the mood of cynicism and anger epitomising the age and his statesmanship a powerful reminder of what it is to serve as the national church.

O God of light and love, who illumined thy Church through the witness of thy servant William Temple: Inspire us, we pray, by his teaching and example, that we may rejoice with courage, confidence and faith in the Word made flesh, and may be led to establish that city which has justice for its foundation and love for its law; through Jesus Christ, the light of the world, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

O God, who art nigh to all them that call upon thee in truth; who art thyself the Truth, whom to know is life eternal: Instruct us with thy divine wisdom, and teach us thy law; that we may know the truth and walk in it; through him in whom the truth was made manifest, even Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord.

–From the thought of Saint Augustine

Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel, who alone does wondrous things. Blessed be his glorious name for ever; may his glory fill the whole earth! Amen and Amen!

–Psalm 72: 18,19

Zombies are coming, according to the Fox News website.

The news outlet’s homepage accidentally displayed numerous fake but funny headlines on Tuesday morning in the US after accidentally turning live a homepage prototype. Initially, many believed Fox News’ website had been hacked.

Read it all.

A group of experts in medicine, law and ethics has issued a blistering report that accuses the United States government of directing doctors, nurses and psychologists, among others, to ignore their professional codes of ethics and participate in the abuse of detainees in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The report was published Monday by the Institute on Medicine as a Profession, an ethics group based at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, and the Open Society Foundations, a pro-democracy network founded by the billionaire George Soros.

The authors were part of a 19-member task force that based its findings on a two-year review of public information. The sources included documents released by the government, news reports, and books and articles from professional journals.

Read it all.

The Rev Baden Stace, rector of St Cuthbert’s Carlton and chair of the Jesus brings steering committee says the aim is really to support the local parishes to push particularly hard in 2014 with mission.

“We’re trying to energise the parishes,” he says. “Connect 09 was a great time for many churches across the Diocese, and they sounded energised to be part of something bigger, and to be part of something together… we’re wanting to equip them and give a mission focus such that 80,000 Christians in Anglican churches across Sydney and the Illawarra can collectively shout out to our region what Jesus brings, and get to the heart of the gospel.”

Read it all.

IRD: I noticed that GAFCON focused on a re-evangelization of the West. What can you tell us about that? What are some of your hopes and plans on this front?

BDH: As you know, the reason for the first GAFCON in 2008 was in response to certain actions and movements going on the western church that were deemed again to be something as an impediment to the clear proclamation of the Gospel. So it’s been recognized that there are certain issues facings the western church that, in some circles, have undermined the credibility of the Church and the Gospel being preached in those areas””that something needs to be done in terms of addressing these issues.

It’s also been recognized that the western church, as far as church attendance goes (we could say on some level fervency and evangelism and things related to that) are waning, whereas in the Global South being planted at a dramatic rated, church attendance is dramatically higher there than it is in the West. So there’s something going on there in the Global South that is to be emulated and learned from by the western church. And so, I think everyone at GAFCON has recognized there are things that the Global South can do to help us as we try to wrestle with our culture and doing evangelism and the work of the church.

Read it all.

The news of the day is full of loud, messy intersections between religion and politics.

Roman Catholic bishops go to court to resist the birth control provisions of the Affordable Care Act. Muslims in Dearborn, Mich., lobby successfully for accommodations on student-led prayer in public schools. The Pennsylvania House of Representatives declares 2012 the “Year of the Bible.”

Mothers who still warn their children not to talk religion or politics in polite company may be wasting their breath. Yet the debates that turn on people’s religious freedom and government’s regard (or disregard) for faith are worth having in a society that must balance assorted rights.

Read it all.

Grocery aisles in Washington state could look a little different in 2015 if voters approve a ballot measure on Tuesday (Nov. 5) to require product labels to disclose when genetically modified crops are included.

Most of the processed foods and beverages that dominate the shelves are made with some sort of genetically modified crop, like soy or corn.

Campbell Soup Co., PepsiCo Inc. and Kellogg Co. are among the companies pumping money into the fight against the referendum, known as Initiative 522, claiming the measure is misleading, would hurt farmers and raise grocery costs.

Read it all.

Samaritans was started in 1953 in London by a young vicar named Chad Varah, then incumbent of St Stephen Walbrook. Through his work in a number of different parishes in the City he had seen the range and extent of the distress experienced by people everywhere, every day. During his career he had offered counselling to his parishioners, and he increasingly wanted to do something specific to help people in distress who had no one to turn to. He makes reference to one example of a girl aged 14, whom he had buried – in unconsecrated ground. She had started her periods, but having no one to talk to believed that she had a sexually transmitted disease and took her own life.

He says, “I might have dedicated myself to suicide prevention then and there, providing a network of people you could ‘ask’ about anything, however embarrassing, but I didn’t come to that until later”.

Read it all.

Q.: You said recently that most of our disagreements are about power and prestige rather than dogma or doctrine. What exactly do you mean?
Archbishop Welby: ”¦We exist in different church communities, different ecclesial communities around the world and the longer that goes on, the more our different communities embed their own institutions and put down roots. Some of them have been putting down roots for centuries and that makes it harder and harder for us to say, well, actually, perhaps we need to reimagine what it means to look like the church and to surrender some of the things that give us our sense of identity in the cause of Christ. There are very fundamental and extremely important doctrinal and dogmatic differences that we have between us and they have to be worked on, as they are with Rome and the Anglicans with ARCIC, and we take those extremely seriously. It’s absolutely essential that those are worked on. But we need to make sure we’re working on them in the context of churches and ecclesial communities that say no sacrifice is too great to be obedient to the call of Christ that we may be one.

Q.: ”¦ Neither you nor Pope Francis seem remotely interested in power and prestige. Does this mean therefore that we can expect some kind of surprising healing or reconciliation in the near future?
Archbishop Welby: God has given you, and given us all, a great Pope. And he’s a great Pope of surprises”¦ and I think people are inspired and uplifted by what they see in Pope Francis, as I am. I think he’s a wonderful person. Surprises? Yes, I think there’ll be one or two surprises. We’re hoping to produce a few surprises.

Read or listen to it all (just slightly under 9 1/3 minutes).

Watch it all.

Read it all.

A tumblr entitled “Selfies at Funerals” is the latest variation on the theme of spiritual entropy facing the modern world. The tumblr consists of self portraits of pretty youngsters making goofy expressions or showing off how flattering their dress or hair cut makes them look on the way to or after a funeral.

The phenomenon of “the funeral selfie” is inevitable in a culture entirely adverse to pain and terrified of dying. We would much prefer to make a silly face and strike a pose then to contemplate the fact we will inevitably die. As the Atlantic observed, what formerly inspired reflection and mourning now inspires a goofy grin or a suggestive pose. When death confronted Macbeth he pondered perhaps that life is nothing more than “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” We are content to shout “YOLO! LMFAO!” and pose for a quick photo to show off how good our hair looks for the funeral. To see a loved one as a corpse and realize that we too shall be just as dead is too much for modern man’s constitution; he is too used to taking every available short cut with the aid of modern science and technology. The idea that pain, suffering and death are things we must come to grips with in order to be fully human is entirely foreign to our sensibilities.

As a result, we tend to gloss over death whenever possible when it rears its head in our lives.

Read it all.

Insurers say the early buyers of health coverage on the nation’s troubled new websites are older than expected so far, raising early concerns about the economics of the insurance marketplaces.

If the trend continues, an older, more expensive set of customers could drive up prices for everyone, the insurers say, by forcing them to spread their costs around. “We need a broad range of people to make this work, and we’re not seeing that right now,” said Heather Thiltgen of Medical Mutual of Ohio, the state’s largest insurer by individual customers. “We’re seeing the population skewing older.”

The early numbers, described to The Wall Street Journal by insurance executives, agents, state officials and actuaries, are still small””partly a consequence of the continuing technical problems plaguing the federally run exchanges, experts say. HealthCare.gov, the federally run marketplace serving 36 states, is suffering serious technical problems that have prevented many people from signing up.

Read it all.

[Bumped from Saturday]
Jeff Walton, Anglican program director at the Institute on Religion & Democracy, told The Christian Post that these losses may even be larger than what is recorded.

According to Walton, TEC’s numbers are not factoring in the losses it technically sustained when the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina voted to leave the denomination last year.

“The reported nearly 29,000 member drop does not include an estimated 22,000 that departed with the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina in November of 2012. So the real decline is about 51,000 persons,” said Walton. “The Episcopal Church is continuing a gradual, predictable decline in both members and attendance.”

Read it all.

[Bumped from Saturday]
Read it all and think about what is said and left unsaid.

[Bumped from Saturday]
Read it all and read it carefully. You may also find still more material there.