KIM LAWTON, correspondent: New York has been called the most secular city in America. But don’t tell that to Tony Carnes. He has made it his mission to systematically document all the religious sites in New York’s five boroughs, as he puts it, block by block, alleyway by alleyway. He and his team of freelancers have found a lot to document.

TONY CARNES (Editor and Publisher, A Journey Through NYC Religions): New York is experiencing a religious surge.

LAWTON: The project is called “A Journey Through NYC Religions.” Since they began in July of 2010, Carnes and his team have visited nearly 7,500 houses of worship and other religious sites. He estimates that’s more than 77percent of them [Editor’s note: Numbers updated as of 2014]. They interview, photograph, videotape, even draw, and post their articles and other material on their website, nycreligions.info. Carnes says he launched the project because he believed a vital part of New York life was being given short shrift.

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The video, posted about a year ago, went viral, and John Biggins, a Cambridge physicist, saw it.

He had been talking with another physicist at Cambridge, Mark Warner, about a project Dr. Warner was working on, an online course to improve physics education in high school. Dr. Biggins brought the chain fountain video to Dr. Warner’s attention and they agreed it was an ideal problem to present to students because it involved Newtonian physics, not some extreme variant of string theory or quantum mechanics.

Then they realized that they didn’t actually understand it.

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There’s a musical stramash going on within the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland.

In popular parlance it has been described as a battle between the “post-Vatican II hippies and the right-wing traditionalists”.

More seriously, it’s about the difference between respecting, protecting and reinterpreting the centuries’ old tradition of people-friendly Gregorian Chant within the context of congregational participation in the liturgical mass, and the banal sentimental dirges that have infested Sunday worship in most Catholic churches since the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s told its churches to open up to the modern world.

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Welcome Richard Giersch! As our new Director of Student Ministries, Rich will focus on transforming the hearts of our 6th-12 graders. Rich joins us with a wealth of experience and spiritual depth. Since 1988, Rich has been ministering to teenagers working with such organizations as Young Life and St. Andrews Church, Mount Pleasant. Rich was also ordained as an Anglican Priest and served as the interim Rector of Resurrection Fellowship Anglican Church in Greenville, SC.

Rich is married to Holly and they have two sons, Griffin and Oliver. Rich graduated from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and has produced two Christian C-D’s of original songs.

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There are a lot of links including resolutions, workshops, etc.–read it all.

The Diocese of South Carolina will hold its annual convention Friday and Saturday at Christ Church in Mount Pleasant using the theme “Move forward with strength.”

Nearly 400 clergy and delegates from 50 congregations across the lower and coastal areas of South Carolina are expected to gather for the two-day event.

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Captain Dave Anderson of Capt. Dave’s Dolphin and Whale Safari in Dana Point, California, at great personal risk, has recently filmed and edited a 5-minute video that contains some of the most beautiful, jaw-dropping, footage ever taken with a drone from the air of a huge mega-pod of thousands of common dolphins stampeding off Dana Point, California, three gray whales migrating together down the coast off San Clemente, California, and heartwarming close-ups hovering over a newborn Humpback whale calf snuggling and playing with its mom as an escort whale stands guard nearby, filmed recently in Maui.

It is only about 5 1/3 minutes long– it all.

Blessed Lord, who wast tempted in all things like as we are, have mercy upon our frailty. Out of weakness give us strength; grant to us thy fear, that we may fear thee only; support us in time of temptation; embolden us in time of danger; help us to do thy work with good courage, and to continue thy faithful soldiers and servants unto our life’s end.

–B. F. Westcott

Because thy steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise thee. So I will bless thee as long as I live; I will lift up my hands and call on thy name. My soul is feasted as with marrow and fat, and my mouth praises thee with joyful lips, when I think of thee upon my bed, and meditate on thee in the watches of the night; for thou hast been my help, and in the shadow of thy wings I sing for joy.

–Psalm 63:3-7

(If you EVER get a chance to get near New York and see this play DO NOT MISS IT! We saw it last year and rolled in the aisles–KSH).

Jefferson Mays, leading man of “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder”, has died 1,000 times on stage — faster than any lead actor in Broadway history. His fellow actors marked that deadly landmark outside the stage door at the Walter Kerr Theatre on West 48th Street.

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In his new book, The Next America, Pew Research executive vice president of special projects Paul Taylor identifies two key trends that are already reshaping the United States and will continue doing so for decades to come. The first: far greater racial and ethnic diversity, driven largely by immigration. In 1960, the U.S. population was 85% white, 10% black and 4% Hispanic. By 2060 whites will be a minority (43%), while 31% of the population will be Hispanic, 13% black, 8% Asian and 6% other races or ethnicities. As Taylor puts it, “We were once a black and white country; now we’re a rainbow.”

But there’s also going to be a lot more gray in that rainbow. Not only are some 10,000 Baby Boomers turning 65 every day (and will continue doing so till 203o), but Americans are living longer and having fewer children than ever. Result: The nation’s “age pyramid” is turning into more of a rectangle. That poses challenges for, among other things, Social Security. In 1960, near the peak of the Baby Boom, there were 5.1 workers for every Social Security-eligible retiree. By the time the last Boomer retires, that ratio will be down to 2 workers per retiree.

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The legislation of assisted suicide has moved a significant step closer after the Government made clear that it would not stand in the way of a change in the law.

Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs and peers ”“ including Coalition ministers ”“ will be given a free vote on a Bill that would enable doctors to help terminally ill patients to die, The Telegraph can disclose.

The proposed legislation will come before Parliament in the next few months.

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Is God dead? Not in academia. As someone who teaches philosophy at Wycliffe Hall, University of Oxford, Vince Vitale is well placed to know what the top scholarship says about God. Vince shows how in the fields of philosophy and sociology, God is very much alive. If you think intellectual objections undermine belief in God, Vince suggests that you may be unaware of the arguments at the highest level.

SDR: What is your main concern as a member of the clergy?

FB: The enormous shift in our culture away from religion as a part of everyday life. There is a sort of ”” I won’t say it’s a science ”” but a certain quasi-intellectual scientism that assumes anything to do with the spiritual realm or religion is inherently irrational and that what one does when one chooses to believe is to close one’s mind. But I am of the conviction ”” and one of our great witnesses, a woman named Flannery O’Connor, who was a fiction writer for the most part back in the ’50s and ’60s made it clear ”” that it’s the fullness of the Catholic faith that keeps the mind open to mystery. Anything else that limits our understanding to what we can see and measure through the tools we have, it is that kind of thing which narrows the mind because there is so much more going on than meets the eye.

SDR: Why Anglican?

FB: Being a Catholic represents and embodies continuity with the church from the very first centuries, and Anglicanism expressed its Catholicity by endorsing fundamentals about which everyone was expected to agree, but everything after that, we could disagree. They centered on the decisions of the church in the first millennium before the first split between East and West. So, what all Christians believed in the first millennium ”” that’s what I mean by Catholicism”¦. I don’t believe Catholicity is limited to Anglicanism by any means. It is certainly embedded in the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches as well.

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Ryan Orbuch, 16 years old, rolled a suitcase to the front door of his family’s house in Boulder, Colo., on a Friday morning a year ago. He was headed for the bus stop, then the airport, then Texas.

“I’m going,” he told his mother. “You can’t stop me.”

Stacey Stern, his mother, wondered if he was right. “I briefly thought: Do I have him arrested at the gate?”

But the truth was, she felt conflicted. Should she stop her son from going on his first business trip?

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“God is here, God is here,” croons Singapore church official Sun Ho as she struts across a neon-lit stage and thousands of people in the congregation pump their hands and sing along.

Kong Hee, the church’s founding pastor and Sun Ho’s husband, then takes the stage. In keeping with the electrifying mood, he invites his followers to speak “in tongues” and a pulsing murmur echoes through the auditorium of 8,000 people.

During the service, ushers hand out envelopes for donations, which consume at least a tenth of the salaries of most church members, going to fund different ministries, mission trips and special events.

Welcome to one of Asia’s most profitable churches: Singapore’s City Harvest.

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Pastor Johannes Block can consider himself Martin Luther’s successor. He’s the vicar of Stadtkirche St. Marien zu Wittenberg, Luther’s own church. The church is the St. Peter’s Basilica of Protestantism.

Here, Luther preached his incendiary sermons against Vatican corruption that led to the Reformation and the rise of the Protestant movement. It is where Protestant pastors were first ordained.

But on a typical Sunday, Block looks out over a mere 50 to 100 people in the pews: a tiny number in a city of 135,000, especially one whose official name is Lutherstadt (Luther City) Wittenberg. Indeed, nowhere in Germany is the share of Protestants lower than right here in Luther’s homeland.

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Lots of good stuff here–take a look.

Christ Church Cathedral, Victoria, was filled to capacity on Sunday, March 2 as the Very Rev. Doctor Logan McMenamie was consecrated bishop in the church of God and installed as the 13th bishop of the diocese of British Columbia.

The Most Rev. John Privett, metropolitan of the ecclesiastical province of British Columbia and the Yukon presided and was the chief consecrator.

The Most Rev. Fred Hiltz, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, was the chief celebrant of the eucharist. The Most Rev. Caleb Lawrence, assistant bishop and diocesan administrator, and the newly consecrated bishop, the Rt. Rev. Logan McMenamie, assisted him.

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Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde, leader of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, and members of St. Paul’s Parish in Washington, D.C., imposed ashes on commuters and other passers-by on Ash Wednesday (March 5) near the Foggy Bottom Metro station in the nation’s capital. Wednesday marked the beginning of Lent, the period of penance and fasting preceding Easter.

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Glorious God, we give thanks not merely for high and holy things, but for the common things of earth which thou hast created: Wake us to love and work, that Jesus, the Lord of life, may set our hearts ablaze and that we, like Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy, may recognize thee in thy people and in thy creation, serving the holy and undivided Trinity; who livest and reignest throughout all ages of ages. Amen.

O God, our Judge and Saviour, set before us the vision of thy purity, and let us see our sins in the light of thy holiness. Pierce our self-contentment with the shafts of thy burning love, and let that love consume in us all that hinders us from perfect service of thy cause; for as thy holiness is our judgment, so are thy wounds our salvation.

–William Temple

I rejoice in the Lord greatly that now at length you have revived your concern for me; you were indeed concerned for me, but you had no opportunity. 11 Not that I complain of want; for I have learned, in whatever state I am, to be content. I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound; in any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and want. I can do all things in him who strengthens me.

–Philippians 4:10-13

Please make sure to read the text of this resolution and the rationale which are linked in the bishop’s comments–KSH.

Today, March 7, 2014, Canon Jim Lewis emailed to all our diocesan clergy and the lay delegates to our upcoming March 14-15, 2014, Diocesan Convention a resolution that God-willing, and with the Convention’s consent, will come to the floor. This resolution, R-3: “Response to Offer of Provisional Primatial Oversight,” originated in the Anglican Communion Development Committee (ACD) but has also been supported by a majority of the clergy of the West Charleston deanery with whom I met at their recent clericus on Shrove Tuesday. The ACD Committee is an arm of Diocesan Council. It was established in 2009 in order to strategically establish mutually-enriching missional relationships with provinces and dioceses of the Anglican Communion. It has played a key role in pursuing our diocesan vision of “Making Biblical Anglicans for a Global Age.” As your bishop I fully support this resolution and for all of the reasons mentioned in the Rationale attached to it. But particularly for the reasons presented in the final rationale: “Most importantly, however, this resolution is the response to something others in the communion have created, and it provides a means for us to better make biblical Anglicans for a global age in this in between-time. We choose to see it as a providential provision which gives us further sacramental closeness with the global Anglican family which we so richly treasure.”

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You and I both know the difference between forgiveness and reconciliation. Forgiveness is a unilateral act that we must repeat, according to Jesus, “seventy times seven,” precisely because we have been forgiven of our sins by God in Christ on the cross, and precisely because it is a hallmark of following Jesus. We forgive whether or not the person who has offended us recognizes their offense, or repents, or expresses any remorse at all. We forgive because Jesus first forgave us.

Reconciliation, unlike forgiveness, is neither a unilateral act nor a one way street. 2 Corinthians 5:18 reminds us that the primary and central context for biblical reconciliation is God’s reconciliation of himself to humankind through the death of Jesus Christ and his blood shed for our sins. From this, all people may be at peace with God through Jesus Christ. It is this reconciliation that the Christian primarily offers. Whatever other ministries of reconciliation we may have to offer are always shaped in every way by this God-initiated, Christ-effected process of reconciliation.
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We do not have biblical reconciliation in the Anglican Communion today. From the See of Canterbury and the Anglican Communion Office we have “facilitated conversations.” We have “continuing Indaba.” We have peace-making- really peace-keeping if truth be told-with many crying “peace, peace” where there is no peace. But there is no repentance. Lambeth Resolution 1.10 (1998) continues to be violated in regards to the prohibition against the blessing of same-sex unions and the consecration of non-celibate homosexuals as bishops. As others have noted from the Pastoral Statement of the Bishops of the Church of England to The Pilling Report, pastoral blessings of same sex unions are now permitted in the mother church. We do not have accountability- welcomed or otherwise. Even the Archbishop of Canterbury admitted in his sermon in Nairobi on the eve of GAFCON 2013 that the Anglican Instruments of Unity have failed. The hurtful behavior not only continues but is accelerating.

We are far from any place of reconciliation within the Anglican Communion. For that we need genuine, Biblical reconciliation. To move from forgiveness to such reconciliation we need genuine repentance that “will not continue in the hurtful behavior or anything associated with it.” For as John Stott observed in Confess Your Sins, ”If we can restore to full and intimate fellowship with ourselves a sinning and unrepentant brother, we reveal not the depth of our love, but its shallowness, for we are doing what is not for his highest good. Forgiveness which by-passes the need for repentance issues not from love but from sentimentality.”

God save us from shallow and sentimental substitutes for genuine reconciliation, rooted in the Cross of Jesus Christ.

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Stephen Smith doesn’t look like a mad scientist, because he’s not one. Not really. He’s not even a code guy by training. But he has packed the room at BibleTech, an occasional gathering of coders, hackers, publishers, scholars, and Bible technology enthusiasts. And the standing-room-only crowd is starting to turn on him. No pitchforks and torches. But for once in this collegial, tight-knit retreat, you can feel the tension growing.

They’ve seen his experiments before. You might have, too. He’s the guy who wrote the code to quantify what folks on Twitter gave up for Lent and how the fasts change from year to year (forswearing swearing is up, dropping alcohol is down). He figured out what Bible verses went viral after Osama bin Laden was killed, or at any other time (chances are good that “I can do all things through him who strengthens me” and “For I know the plans I have for you” are doing really well right now), and the most popular saints and mountains in American church names. (Mt. Pisgah beats out Mt. Nebo. And Lutherans almost never call their church “First Lutheran”””though “First” is a fifth of Presbyterian churches.)

If someone releases a new API (code that lets applications interact with each other), or if Google unveils a new tool in beta, or if a new dataset is published online, it’s a fairly safe bet that Smith will try to connect it to the Bible. In 2012, Stanford University published a Geospatial Network Model of the Roman World. Smith used it to calculate the time and cost of each of Paul’s missionary journeys.

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The religious slaughter of animals should be banned if Muslims and Jews refuse to adopt more humane methods of killing, the new leader of Britain’s vets has said.

John Blackwell, president-elect of the British Veterinary Association, said that the traditional practice of slitting animals’ throats and allowing them to bleed to death for halal and kosher meat caused unnecessary suffering.

He urged Jews and Muslims to allow poultry, sheep and cattle to be stunned unconscious before they are killed. If the two faiths refuse, Mr Blackwell wants ministers to consider following the example of Denmark by banning the slaughter of animals that are not stunned first.

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Despite ”” or perhaps because of ”” their long, shared and often tortured history, there is a curious fondness between some Britons and some South Africans. Two events this week, far-flung and disparate, illustrated some of the ambiguities, too.

Indeed, it almost seemed as if South Africa’s Jekyll-and-Hyde soul was weaving itself anew into the relationship, offering the conflicting visages that make any definition of Africa’s 20-year-old “rainbow nation” so elusive, particularly in a land that has, in turn, been its invader, its overlord and its champion.

Here, in the soaring, august confines of Westminster Abbey, 2,000 congregants, including Prince Harry and Prime Minster David Cameron, assembled Tuesday for a memorial service to Nelson Mandela, who died in December. It fused liturgical solemnity and Anglican pomp with the light and sound of a Soweto gospel choir, feting the inclusive Mandela legacy in rousing renditions of both nations’ anthems, “Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika” and “God Save the Queen.”

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At the heart of any company is its mission. A business’ mission defines what it stands for — its purpose and the reason for its existence. Mission declares the difference a company seeks to make in the world. A strong mission is lofty, ambitious, and sometimes audacious.

Many executives don’t realize that mission is an underused asset in improving organizational performance and profitability, and they neglect their ultimate responsibility of aligning their brand and culture with their highest purpose. Failure to meet a company’s mission-related needs is failure of leadership.

To instill a passion for the company’s purpose, the best leaders in the world hold managers accountable for addressing employees’ basic engagement needs. Then they focus on aligning mission, culture, and brand to empower high performance among individuals and teams. By providing this strategic direction, mission-driven leaders maximize employee engagement as a key driver of organizational performance — and as a strong predictor of business success.

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