The topics include:

00:00 Blame the Africans
11:07 Anglicans not swimming Tiber’s
16:42 The IRS and you
26:06 Radical Islam want’s you dead.

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After traveling 250,000 miles through Dar al-Islam (“House of Islam”) as Muslims call their world, career missiologist David Garrison came to a startling conclusion:

Muslim background believers are leading Muslims to Christ in staggering numbers, but not in the West. They are doing this primarily in Muslim-majority nations almost completely under the radar””of everyone. In the new book, A Wind in the House of Islam: How God is Drawing Muslims Around the World to Faith in Jesus Christ, Garrison takes the reader on his journey through what he describes as the nine rooms in the Muslim-majority world: Indo-Malaysia, East Africa, North Africa, Eastern South Asia, Western South Asia, Persia, Turkestan, West Africa, and the Arab world. Muslims in each of those regions have created indigenous, voluntary movements to Christ.

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A few months ago, a Twitter friend deleted her account in favour of Facebook, then signed on again because she missed the interaction with her Twitter friends. Another friend signed up for Twitter, but soon dropped out because it seemed too noisy and busy, and the short form was just too short for what he wanted to say.

I agree that Twitter can be overwhelming, but mainly I’ve found it fun and a great way to connect with people who I might not otherwise have gotten to know. Here are my best tips on how I’ve managed to make the most of Twitter without getting lost in an endless stream of tweets….

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Is Britain still a Christian country?

He ponders this for a moment, head on one side, eyes on the garden. The sound of the traffic presses in, before he speaks. “If I say that this is a post-Christian nation, that doesn’t mean necessarily non-Christian. It means the cultural memory is still quite strongly Christian. And in some ways, the cultural presence is still quite strongly Christian. But it is post-Christian in the sense that habitual practice for most of the population is not taken for granted.

“You need to pick your way quite carefully here,” says a man accustomed to doing so. “A Christian nation can sound like a nation of committed believers, and we are not that. Equally, we are not a nation of dedicated secularists. I think we’re a lot less secular than the most optimistic members of the British Humanist Association would think.”

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Britain is now a “post-Christian” country, the former archbishop of Canterbury has declared, as research suggests that the majority of Anglicans and Roman Catholics now feel afraid to express their beliefs.
In an interview with The Telegraph, Lord Williams of Oystermouth says Britain is no longer “a nation of believers” and that a further decline in the sway of the Church is likely in the years ahead.
While the country is not populated exclusively by atheists, the former archbishop warns that the era of regular and widespread worship is over.

Read it all from the Sunday Telegraph.

The Johnsons both work, earning $90,000 between them, not a princely sum but one that places the couple squarely in the middle of household incomes for the Washington region. But for the Johnsons and many other American families, being middle class means living paycheck to paycheck.

The couple’s retirement savings are meager. The college fund? Nonexistent.

The Johnsons, whose blended family includes three children under 18, are part of a drawn-out, disquieting shift that is recasting what it means to be middle class in America.

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At least 250 Parochial Church Councils, who administer Anglican parishes, have registered Chancel Repair Liability (CRL) against 12,000 properties where ancient deeds permit this. Under the medieval law affected landowners, whether or not they are Anglicans let alone Christians, can be liable for repair of their local Anglican church if built before 1536 even though this was not shown in their deeds when they purchased the property.

The potential bills, and crippling legal fees if they decide to fight, has left families struggling to deal with the anxiety and is tearing parishes apart. The list, seen by The Independent, includes PCCs spread over practically every diocese, with the greatest number of parishes affected in Ely and Lincoln.

The greatest number of registrations are in Lytham St Annes, Lancashire, and Gorleston, Norfolk. In others only far fewer properties have been registered ”“ sometimes only one ”“ potentially exposing the owners to far greater liabilities. A further 5,000 parishes have not registered CRL but theoretically could still do so.

Read it all from the Independent.

Huge crowds gathered in Vatican City to see a historic ceremony where two popes – John Paul II and John XXIII – were declared saints.

A Mass co-celebrated by Pope Francis and his predecessor Benedict was watched by roughly one million pilgrims and a vast TV and radio audience.

Nearly 100 foreign delegations attended, including royal dignitaries and heads of state and government.

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Almighty God, who broughtest again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the glorious Prince of Salvation, with everlasting victory over sin and the grave: Grant us power, we beseech thee, to rise with him to newness of life, that we may overcome the world with the victory of faith, and have part at last in the resurrection of the just; through the merits of the same risen Saviour, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end.

–Book of Common Order

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life”” the life was made manifest, and we saw it, and testify to it, and proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the Father and was made manifest to us”” that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you may have fellowship with us; and our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. And we are writing this that our joy may be complete.

This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not live according to the truth; but if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.

–1 John 1:1-7

6. The rich experience of sharing fellowship as we met in Nairobi encourages our sense of needing to maintain our common life in faithfulness to Christ. Meeting shortly after the recognition in English law of same sex marriage, which we cannot recognise as compatible with the law of God, we look to the Church of England to give clear leadership as moral confusion about the status of marriage in this country deepens. The Archbishop of Canterbury has rightly noted that the decisions of the Church of England have a global impact and we urge that as a matter of simple integrity, its historic and biblical teaching should be articulated clearly.

7. We are particularly concerned about the state of lay and clerical discipline. The House of Bishops’ guidance that those in same sex marriages should be admitted to the full sacramental life of the church is an abandonment of pastoral discipline. While we welcome their clear statement that clergy must not enter same sex marriage, it is very concerning that this discipline is, apparently, being openly disregarded. We pray for the recovery of a sense of confidence in the whole of the truth Anglicans are called to proclaim, including that compassionate call for repentance to which we all need to respond in our different ways.

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By now I am sure that most savvy Christians are long since inured to the drivel that Time and Newsweek foist upon us every Easter and Christmas. It was not always thus. David van Biema (formerly of Time) and Kenneth Woodward (formerly of Newsweek) were knowledgeable, conscientious religion editors and took great care with their reporting (not to mention the estimable Peter Steinfels, late of The New York Times).

It’s very different today. Case in point: the cover story on heaven in…[2012’s] Time. Who’s the author? None other than Jon Meacham, Sewanee graduate, author of several highly praised historical works (Franklin and Winston, American Gospel, and American Lion) and former editor of Newsweek. In addition, he has been on the vestry at St. Thomas Fifth Avenue.

Unfortunately, Meacham does not know when to back off gracefully from subjects he does not understand–which includes theology….

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Heaven Is for Real is more than just a field guide to the marvels of heaven. It’s the story of how God comforted a frightened child. It’s the story of God’s faithfulness to a grieving father.

What exactly happened to Colton Burpo””whether he actually experienced the glory of heaven or had a mere hallucination””will remain a mystery. But we live in a mysterious world, and we shouldn’t be surprised when we encounter the miraculous and the supernatural. We should approach tales like this with critical discernment. We can’t immediately accept them, but neither should we reject them haphazardly. We should test them under the light of Scripture, and we should celebrate the fact that God, who reveals himself through his Word, is faithfully active in our world, meeting us in ways that can’t (and sometimes shouldn’t) be explained.

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Listen to it all (an MP3 file).

SIMON: You’ve written that serious chronic pain is a bigger problem than cancer, and for that matter, cancer, heart disease and diabetes combined.

FOREMAN: And you can even throw in AIDS. There are more people suffering from chronic pain than all those four other things put together. That’s 100 million American – American adults, by the way, not kids, not people military returning from the wars, or even people in nursing homes – so that may actually be an underestimate. That figure comes from a report in 2011 from the Institute of Medicine. They’re not all in excruciating, debilitating pain, but an estimated 10 to 30 percent are. So that’s a lot of people.

SIMON: Well, help remind people what that means for someone’s life.

FOREMAN: Oh, my God. Some people can’t get out of bed, or they can’t walk. Many people get very depressed, and it really is a life-wrecking thing. And in some cases, it’s a life-ending thing because what a lot of people don’t realize is that the suicide risk among people in chronic pain is twice that for people not in pain.

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