The e-reader may be old hat in some countries but South Africa’s Anglican leader plans to use them in training seminarians.

The Anglican archbishop of Southern Africa launched his project to “promote electronic learning in dioceses” in South Africa’s Western Cape province at the local residential college for ordinands involving e-readers on January 28.

Archbishop Thabo Makgoba launched the new initiative when he opened and blessed a new Centre for Reflection and Development at his official residence and offices in Cape Town.

Read it all.

Read it all.

Read it all.

Thanks to Trinity School for Ministry

Hosted by the Diocese of St Mark the Evangelist, the meeting will hear from a number of outside speakers and consider a range of important issues in church life.

Vistors to the Synod will include General Bantu Holomisa of the United Democratic Movement, who will speak on leadership and planning, Ms Hendrietta Ipeleng Bogopane-Zulu, the Deputy Minister for Women, Children and Persons with Disability, who will address issues including the accessibility of churches to the disabled.

Read it all.

The alleged cheating may be the result of a great deal of pressure on nuclear missileers, which “is not a healthy environment,” James said.

“What I mean by that is although the standard on our test ”“ a passing grade on these tests is 90 percent ”“ the missileers are still driven to score 100 percent, all of the time.”

That’s because commanders there are using the test scores “to be a top differentiator, if not the sole differentiator, on who gets promoted,” she added. “So I believe that a very terrible irony in this whole situation is that these missileers didn’t cheat to pass. They cheated because they felt driven to get 100 percent. Getting 90 percent or 95 percent was considered a failure in their eyes.”

Read it all.

Read it all.

“There’s hardly a more pressing issue at the dawn of the 21st century than science and faith,” the Rev. Jeff Miller, chairman of Mere Anglicanism, said in a statement.

About 650 people attended the three-day event that this year explored “the evidences of God’s handiwork in the cosmos,” said the Rev. Dr. Peter Moore, associate rector at St. Michael’s in Charleston.

Oxford University mathematician John Lennox, who has debated prominent atheists Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, opened the conference tackling naturalism and “scientific fundamentalism.”

Science, he argued, needs God to account for the origins of things.

“Science may explain the how, but it cannot explain the why,” Lennox said.

Read it all.

The Anglican Church in North America is pleased to announce the release of To Be a Christian: An Anglican Catechism produced by the provincial Catechesis Task force.

Led by the Rev. Dr J.I. Packer, the Task Force has developed a unique and powerful resource for helping inquirers come to an understanding of the Christian faith, and for helping disciples deepen their relationship with God. Written in a “Question and Answer” format, this Catechism, in the words of Packer, “is designed as a resource manual for the renewal of Anglican catechetical practice. It presents the essential building blocks of classic catechetical instruction: the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Ten Commandments (the Decalogue). To these is added an initial section especially intended for those with no prior knowledge of the Gospel; as such, this catechism attempts to be a missional means by which God may bring about both conversion to Christ and formation in Christ.”

Read it all and note the link at the bottom to the text of the catechism itself.

Throughout the history of the social teachings of the Church, the right of all people to fair compensation for their labor has been upheld as an essential element of a just society. As early as the late 19th century, Pope Leo XIII recognized the principle that workers should be paid a wage
sufficient to support a family as“a dictate of natural justice more imperious and ancient than any bargain between man and man.” [Rerum Novarum]
As Pope Francis continues to captivate the world through his powerful challenges to care for the least am ong us, he frequently echoes his
predecessors in highlighting the importance of providing opportunities for meaningful work as a path out of poverty.

Read it all.

Almighty and everliving God, we humbly beseech thee that, as thy only-begotten Son was this day presented in the temple, so we may be presented unto thee with pure and clean hearts by the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

As a hart longs for flowing streams, so longs my soul for thee, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God?

–Psalm 42:1-2

The English Archbishops of York and Canterbury have fired the equivalent of a broadside into the respective Anglican Provinces of Kenya, Uganda and Nigeria, and naturally it has to do with the Western hot button issue of homosexuality. While this subject seems to be causing the implosion of Anglican Provinces in America, Canada, England, Wales, and Scotland, the English Archbishops, rather than stand their Biblical ground against unnatural acts between individuals, choose rather to lecture and caution the three largest Anglican Provinces on the laws their civil governments are enacting.

When the head, nominal though he be, of the Anglican Communion lectures and cautions any Province, the implications and threat cannot be missed. It is odd that this lecture and caution would be directed toward the orthodox Anglicans of the Communion and not against the heterodox Anglicans both in North America and indeed within the Church of England itself. It seems that the Pilling Report may define the path that the Church of England will actually take. The Anglican Communion will soon have to face the prospect of a Mother Church which is spiritually unable to lead the worldwide flock of Anglicans. Interestingly, both the Archbishop of Kenya and now Uganda have responded to this English broadside and, commendably, they understand exactly the kind of spiritual bullying that is being directed toward them.

Read it all

The economy had its best second half in a decade, indicating that the U.S. is on firmer footing. But the current expansion remains slow, and the pace of growth still is weak historically.

Read it all and look at the three charts carefully.

Harvard Law School, one of the most prestigious institutions of its kind in the world, has posted a verse of the Holy Quraan at the entrance of its faculty library, describing the verse as one of the greatest expressions of justice in history.

Verse 135 of Surah Al Nisa (The Women) has been posted at a wall facing the faculty’s main entrance, dedicated to the best phrases articulating justice:

Read it all.

The pediment of The Cathedral Church Of St. Paul in Boston has stood empty for 190 years, as the builders of the impressive Greek Revival structure ran out of money during the initial construction phase. It was finally completed in May of 2013, but since then it’s come under fire for its unusual design, which features a backlit nautilus sculpture.

Though the original plans for the Episcopal church called for a classical relief of St. Paul preaching to King Agrippa, the current design is absent of traditional Christian iconography, featuring instead the clean lines of a seashell’s interior which allude to Oliver Wendell Holme’s poem “The Chambered Nautilus,” writes The Living Church in a review.

Reverend and Dean of St. Paul’s, Jep Streit, told Radio Boston that the nautilus was “the perfect metaphor for a spiritual journey.” He elaborated, “The nautilus is evocative of so much more than the church. It creates its shell by outgrowing each previous compartment. It’s always moving into a new, bigger space, and it can never go back.”

Read it all and follow the many links.

[In this next video report]…one brother competes and the other is cheering him on, that could be said of a lot of olympic athletes, but for Alex Bilodeau who won a gold medal in Canada yea years past it is all about the remarkable bond we first learned about in the last winter games; Bob Costas has more.

Watch it all–fantastic and heartwarming.

Why is Oklahoma so Republican? Why is Maine so white? And why is Pennsylvania so haunted?

Not to be too Benedict Anderson about it, but if there is such thing as a national psyche, that thing is ably documented by Autocomplete. Do a Google search for “Why is Mississippi so…,” for example, and you will be greeted with…

Read it all and check out the map.