It was like a scene from a movie, except there was no Iron Man swooping to the rescue. More than a hundred girls sitting in a clearing, chanting the Koran. Their eyes downcast, the girls were swathed in ghostly grey and black hijabs. Their captors said this was evidence that they had “converted to Islam”, but their fear was palpable. They held themselves unnaturally still, as though to move would mean death.

Many of the girls were abducted on April 14 from a school in northern Nigeria, which means they have had less than a month to memorise those Koranic verses, or at least to have the chants beaten into them. More than half of the 276 stolen girls were missing from the terrorists’ video. Among them were Rebeccas and Esthers and Ruths ”“ lovely, strong Biblical names. One girl was led to the front and told to give a Muslim name, not her Christian one. You wondered about her missing sisters and whether they had displeased their captors by refusing to surrender either their name or their faith.

“These girls you occupy yourselves with”¦ we have indeed liberated them. These girls have become Muslims,” jeered Abubakar Shekau, the leader of Boko Haram. He addresses the camera as if he were straight out of Evil Villain school.

Read it all.

The euro zone’s economy expanded at a weak pace last quarter despite a strong recovery in Germany, putting added pressure on the European Central Bank to enact fresh easing measures to prevent the region from sliding into a lengthy period of low inflation and economic stagnation.

Gross domestic product grew 0.2% in the euro zone during the first quarter compared with the final three months of 2013, the European Union’s statistics agency Eurostat said Thursday, well short of the 0.4% quarterly gain expected by economists.

Read it all.

‘Despair, or folly?’ said Gandalf. ‘It is not despair, for despair is only for those who see the end beyond all doubt. We do not. It is wisdom to recognize necessity, when all other courses have been weighed, though as folly it may appear to those who cling to false hope. Well, let folly be our cloak, a veil before the eyes of the Enemy!

–J.R.R. Tolkien The Fellowship of the Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings (Mariner Books 2012 reissue of the 1954 original), p. 302 (emphasis mine)

What does “recognise” mean?

Listen to it all (about 4 1/2 minutes). You may read more Philip Richardson there.

The Anglican Church has agreed to look at ways same-sex relationships can be part of church life, but will not marry gay couples.

The church’s General Synod, held at Waitangi this week, has decided to uphold the “traditional doctrine of marriage” but work towards ways to recognise committed same sex relationships.

In a statement, the church said the Synod recognised the pain to the LGTB community, and apologised unreservedly for the times the church had contributed to that pain.

A working party will now be appointed to look at options for same gender blessings, while mindful gay marriage is still unlawful in some Pacific countries.

Read it all.

The current-day church sits on the same patch of land as the original cathedral when it was built in 1848.

“Unfortunately in this area, there’s a river bed right down low and the old cathedral didn’t have good enough foundations,” says the co-ordinator of the cathedral’s guides, Lalage Gabb.

“In 1895 they decided to put heating in and they put in a furnace below ground, which dried-out the clay and caused the old cathedral to crack.

“In 1911, the Bishop wanted to replace the cathedral. If the present occupational health and safety laws had been in, the cathedral would’ve been closed because it was dropping bits off it,” she says.

Read it all.

It happens quickly””more quickly than you, being human, can fully process.

A front tire blows, and your autonomous SUV swerves. But rather than veering left, into the opposing lane of traffic, the robotic vehicle steers right. Brakes engage, the system tries to correct itself, but there’s too much momentum. Like a cornball stunt in a bad action movie, you are over the cliff, in free fall.

Your robot, the one you paid good money for, has chosen to kill you. Better that, its collision-response algorithms decided, than a high-speed, head-on collision with a smaller, non-robotic compact. There were two people in that car, to your one. The math couldn’t be simpler.

This, roughly speaking, is the problem presented by Patrick Lin, an associate philosophy professor and director of the Ethics + Emerging Sciences Group at California Polytechnic State University….

Read it all.

After a decade marked by deep grief, partisan rancor, war, financial boondoggles and inundation from Hurricane Sandy, the National September 11 Memorial Museum at ground zero is finally opening ceremonially on Thursday, with President Obama present, and officially to the public next Wednesday. It delivers a gut-punch experience ”” though if ever a new museum had looked, right along, like a disaster in the making, this one did, beginning with its trifurcated identity.

Was it going to be primarily a historical document, a monument to the dead or a theme-park-style tourist attraction? How many historical museums are built around an active repository of human remains, still being added to? How many cemeteries have a $24 entrance fee and sell souvenir T-shirts? How many theme parks bring you, repeatedly, to tears?

Because that’s what the museum does….

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

“You have heard that it was said to the men of old, ”˜You shall not kill; and whoever kills shall be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that every one who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother shall be liable to the council, and whoever says, ”˜You fool!’ shall be liable to the hell of fire. So if you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. Make friends quickly with your accuser, while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison; truly, I say to you, you will never get out till you have paid the last penny.”

–Matthew 5:21-26

Narendra Modi, the man most likely to become India’s next prime minister, has a wicked turn of phrase. In one of his most memorable remarks, he subverted his strong association with Hindu asceticism by declaring his support for “toilets before temples”. The same phrase, spoken by a Congress party cabinet minister, had provoked outrage from the Bharatiya Janata party of which Mr Modi is head. The BJP said the remark threatened to “destroy the fine fabric of religion and faith”. But the party hierarchy, knowing that its fate depends on the so-called “Modi wave”, barely demurred when its candidate adopted the slogan as his own.

The BJP leader is quite right to declare that India should spend less money on devotion and more on sanitation. According to 2011 census data, nearly half of households have no access to a toilet, forcing inhabitants to defecate in the open. More Indians own a mobile phone than a lavatory of their own. Poor hygiene, not lack of food, is the main reason that 40 per cent of children are malnourished. Much of Mr Modi’s appeal, which has swept through India like a brush fire, lies in his promise to conjure the growth that will eradicate such dire conditions and set his supporters on the road to a middle-class life.

Read it all.

As the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission meeting continues its work in Durban, South Africa, the head of Rome’s Anglican Centre says he expects “significant progress” at the 10 day meeting. Archbishop David Moxon, who serves as the Anglican co-chair of the ARCIC III talks that run from May 12th to 20th, also told Vatican Radio that new collaboration in mission has brought the dialogue to “the verge of something quite new which will bear real fruit”

The theme for this fourth phase of the current ARCIC talks is to explore the Church as Communion, local and universal, and how, together, they come to discern correct ethical teaching. Just before his departure for Durban, Archbishop Moxon sat down with Philippa Hitchen to talk about the goals of the meeting and his own hopes for the future of Anglican-Catholic relations….

Read and listen to it all.

The National Security Agency might be tracking your phone calls. But private industry is prying far more deeply into your life.

Commercial data brokers know if you have diabetes. Your electric company can see what time you come home at night. And tracking companies can tell where you go on weekends by snapping photos of your car’s license plate and cataloging your movements.

Congress and the administration have moved to rein in the National Security Agency in the year since Edward Snowden disclosed widespread government spying. But Washington has largely given private-sector data collection a free pass. The result: a widening gap in oversight as private data mining races ahead. Companies are able to scoop up ever more information ”” and exploit it with ever greater sophistication ”” yet a POLITICO review has found deep reluctance in D.C. to exercise legislative, regulatory or executive power to curb the big business of corporate cybersnooping.

Read it all.

The ubiquitous blue COEXIST bumper sticker incorporates symbols of Islam, pacifism, male and female, Judaism, Wicca, Taoism, and Christianity. Piotr MÅ‚odozeniec, a Polish graphic artist, created the original COEXIST image. Various companies sell merchandise with some form of the image, and ”” o a note of inevitable conflict ”” some have threatened legal action to protect their control of profits. At it core the image represents a belief that spiritual harmony can be wished into existence.

What is not to admire in this goal? Why would a Christian hesitate to display this sticker during a daily commute? We may begin with how philosophy ”” that supposedly esoteric pursuit ”” matters in our everyday lives. A fundamental rule of logic is the “law of noncontradiction”: a statement cannot be both true and untrue.

Consider how the Abrahamic faiths understand Jesus Christ. At John 14:6, Jesus says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except by me.” Judaism considers Jesus a prophet but not the Messiah. In Islam, Isa (Jesus) is a messenger of God. Islam makes the specific claim that revelation did not end with “the people of the book” (the Jews) or with the prophet Isa, but with Muhammad.

Read it all.

All of the considerable affection and admiration I feel for Robinson provides the backdrop for my dismay over her recent interview with Sarah Pulliam Bailey for Religion News Service. The thoughtfulness for which Robinson is known is largely absent as she couples promotion of politically liberal values with disdainful dismissal of conservative ones. She engages here in the very mean-spirited partisanship she critiques elsewhere. While acknowledging her difficulty in understanding the mentality of 2nd Amendment defenders, her characterization of their position is reductionist, evidencing little charity by the presumption to know the motivations of her political “others.” And even worse is what appears to be gloating over her superior insight about the issues she discusses.

Regarding gay marriage, for example, she foists an intended pejorative of biblical “literalist” on those who retain a traditional view of marriage, equating through juxtaposition that stance with the stoning of witches. The generous engagement with others that she champions in earlier essays and that reverberates throughout her fiction is scarce in her dismissal of pro-lifers as “attentive to babies that don’t exist yet” and “negligent of babies that need help” through social programs. In short, she does in this interview exactly what she warns against elsewhere: she obscures the individual conservative behind general political ideology. Doing so thwarts imaginative engagement….

Read it all (my emphasis).

Americans made more progress in repairing their postrecession finances and have increased their overall borrowing, yet they are also showing an aversion to credit cards and new mortgages that could hinder the economic recovery.

Household debt””including mortgages, credit cards, auto loans and student loans””rose $129 billion between January and March to $11.65 trillion, new figures from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York showed Tuesday. That was the third consecutive quarterly increase.

Behind the uptick: Mortgage balances””which make up the bulk of U.S. household debt””rose $116 billion to $8.2 trillion, thanks in part to fewer people going into foreclosure, which drags down mortgage debt. Auto-loan balances grew $12 billion to $875 billion. Student-loan balances increased $31 billion to $1.1 trillion, maintaining its place as the fastest-growing debt category.

Read it all and the picture of the incredible graph on student loan explosion is there.

After three deployments to Iraq and three to Afghanistan, Staff Sgt. Dennis Swols is agitated, prone to bouts of anger and unable to really talk about his time on the battlefield.

But as Swols sits in a small office in the Robinson Health Clinic at Fort Bragg, his hand drops to the furry head beside him and his mood brightens. Settled at his feet, Lexy, a 5-year-old German shepherd, gives Swols a few moments of distraction.

It’s her job. And, according to Swols, she’s good at it.

Read it all.

Across the world there is a precise fit between social unfairness and the power of the priesthood,” Steve Jones, professor of genetics at University College London, has said. “In countries whose governments are fair and effective the influence of the clergy fades.

“The most devout nations have more crime, more infant deaths, more mental illness and less social mobility. Chaos and credulity go together.” Professor Jones, who will speak on science in the Bible at The Times Cheltenham Science Festival next month, said that his intention was not to engage in an atheist attack on religion, but instead to discuss its origins ”” and what, if anything, that can tell us about why and how it developed.

“There is lots of consistency,” he said. “Look at hunter-gatherers and agriculturalists. Hunter gatherers often have a god, but generally it is god up there who makes rains come and plants grow. He is not an interfering god, he doesn’t deal with individuals and say, ”˜You’ve sinned, go to Hell’. As soon as you get farming, there is a complete swing. He becomes an interfering god, and says you must follow these rules and if not you are in trouble.”

Read it all (requires subscription).

1. This General Synod/Te Hīnota Whānui resolves to appoint a working group to bring and recommend to the 62nd General Synod/Te Hīnota Whānui:

(a) A process and structure by which those who believe the blessing of same-gender relationships is contrary to scripture, doctrine, tikanga or civil law, will not be required to perform any liturgy for the blessing of same-gender relationships, will continue to have integrity within the Church, and will remain compliant with the parliamentary legislation within any relevant jurisdiction;

(b) A process and structure by which those who believe the blessing of same-gender relationships is consonant with scripture, doctrine, tikanga and civil law may perform a yet to be developed liturgy for blessing same-gender relationships in a manner which maintains their integrity within the Church, is compliant with the parliamentary legislation within any relevant jurisdiction, and can remain in communion under scripture, doctrine and law; including

(i) A proposal for a new liturgy to bless right ordered same-gender relationships;

(ii) A process and legislation (whether church or parliamentary) by which a new liturgy to bless right ordered same-gender relationships may be adopted…

Read it all.

General Synod today passed a resolution that will create a pathway towards the blessing of same-gender relationships ”“ while upholding the traditional doctrine of marriage.

It will appoint a working group to report to the 2016 General Synod on “a process and structure” that would allow those clergy who wish to bless same-gender relationships ”“ using a yet-to-be developed liturgy ”“ to do so.

The working group will also be charged to develop “a process and structure” to ensure that clergy who believe that same sex blessings are contrary to “scripture, doctrine, tikanga or civil law” to remain fully free to dissent.

The “process and structure” in their case would mean these clergy would not only be exempt from performing these same-sex blessings ”“ but that their “integrity within the church” would be assured, and they would have full protection for their dissent in any relevant human rights legislation.

Synod has therefore upheld the traditional doctrine of marriage ”“ but also moved to find ways to respond to committed relationships between two people, regardless of gender.

Read it all.

The Church of England has been forced to reaffirm its opposition to same-sex marriage after the Archbishop of Canterbury appeared to suggest that he thinks it is “great”.

In his first interview with a gay publication, the Most Rev Justin Welby, told PinkNews that the Church had to accept that same-sex marriage is now the law in England and Wales after securing overwhelming support in Parliament.

He said it was “right and proper” that same-sex marriage has now come into force, adding: “And that’s great.”

Read it all.

After a private meeting the Archbishops prayed together in the Crypt Chapel at Lambeth Palace.

In a greeting to Archbishop Chrysostomos, Archbishop Justin said: “Between our two churches there has always been more that unites us than that which divides us and so we can pray together and welcome all sincere efforts for peace in your country, in Europe and in the world. Certainly there is need for peacemakers today, and I pray that God’s love may move us beyond what we can hope for, that our endeavours in interfaith dialogues will create greater understanding for the world as one human family.”

Read it all.

You may never find a better example of the sprawling sameness of suburbia than Southern California. From San Diego to Santa Clarita and beyond, middle class hamlets of homogeny epitomize the master-planned neighborhoods that first sprang up in the 1950s.

These suburbs, like others across the globe, impose their will on the natural environments. Endless stretches of green lawns and golf courses defy the area’s arid climate, and perfectly uniform rows of houses transform any hillside or empty canyon into a ready-made community.

Living in LA during the housing boom of the late ’90s, photographer Robert Harding Pittman was troubled by the loss of nature to these environments. An expanding creep of paved valleys, leveled hillsides, and cloned homes with thirsty lawns were a cookie-cutter contagion. He decided to document its spread on a global scale.

Read it all.

Nicholas, with wife Heather and children Samuel (aged 10) and Jessica (8), is planning to make the move this summer after 13 years leading St Luke’s, St Augustine’s and launching the Norwich Christian Meditation Centre in the city.

Nicholas will take up the role as an Episcopal Chaplain and be licensed by the Episcopal Bishop of Colorado to the multi-faith Aspen Chapel, 7,000ft up in the mountainous area of Colorado well know for its skiing and outdoor pursuits. The Episcopal Church in the US branch of the Anglican Church.

The Aspen area is also the home of centering prayer author Cynthia Bourgeault’s Wisdom School, whom Nicholas has previously brought to Norwich, and the contemplative Fr Tom Keating at the Benedictine Snowmass Monastery.

Read it all.

O gracious Lord, Who as at this time, didst raise Thy Son Jesus Christ with power from the grave, raise us up, we beseech Thee, from the death of sin to the life of righteousness; Revive our faith, and make us followers of Him Who hath taken away the “sin of the world; Who by His death hath destroyed death, and by His rising to life again hath restored to us everlasting life.” Hear us, O merciful Father, we pray Thee, for the sake of our risen Saviour, to Whom, with Thee and the Holy Ghost, be all honour and glory, world without end.

–The Pastor’s Prayerbook

For you yourselves know, brethren, that our visit to you was not in vain; but though we had already suffered and been shamefully treated at Philippi, as you know, we had courage in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in the face of great opposition. For our appeal does not spring from error or uncleanness, nor is it made with guile; but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not to please men, but to please God who tests our hearts. For we never used either words of flattery, as you know, or a cloak for greed, as God is witness; nor did we seek glory from men, whether from you or from others, though we might have made demands as apostles of Christ. But we were gentle among you, like a nurse taking care of her children. So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us.
For you remember our labor and toil, brethren; we worked night and day, that we might not burden any of you, while we preached to you the gospel of God. You are witnesses, and God also, how holy and righteous and blameless was our behavior to you believers; for you know how, like a father with his children, we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to lead a life worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory.

–1 Thessalonians 2:1-12

The Primate of Nigeria (Anglican Communion), the Most Rev. Nicholas Okoh, has advised the Federal Government not to yield to the demands of Boko Haram for the release of the abducted schoolgirls.

Boko Haram is reportedly demanding the release of some of its captured members in exchange for the abducted schoolgirls.

Read it all.

A European Union top court ruling that may require technology companies to delete personal information on request pits Europeans’ rights to privacy against the freedom to publish.

Google Inc. (GOOG) risks being ordered to remove search results where citizens’ fundamental rights are harmed by personal information posted online and where there is no public interest in publishing it, the EU Court of Justice said today.

The result could “open the floodgates for tens of thousands of requests to have legal, publicly available information about Europeans taken out of a search index or links removed from websites,” said James Waterworth, the head of the Brussels office of the Computer & Communications Industry Association.

Read it all. Astute blog readers will remember this phrase “right to be forgotten” because it has resonances with Jeffrey Rosen’s NY Times Magazine: The Web Means the End of Forgetting in 2010.

Archbishop Justin gave an interview to Radio 4’s The World This Weekend on Sunday about the kidnap of more than 200 schoolgirls in Nigeria.

Follow the link provided and listen to it all.

Christians are taught in their churches and schools that prayer is the most powerful way to experience God. But aside from learning prayers by rote, few receive instruction or guidance in how to make the most of this essential Christian act””how to make prayer genuinely meaningful. In Prayer, renowned pastor Timothy Keller delves into the many facets of this everyday act.

Read it all.