I have spoken to the Rev. Jimmy Gallant, one of our black clergyman and a leader in the Charleston community, earlier this morning in the wake of the horrific shooting at Emmanuel AME Church last evening. Unconfirmed reports have nine dead from the shootings including the pastor, the Rev. Clementa Pinckney. The African American community in Charleston is crushed. The larger community staggers wondering how to respond. Many priests and lay persons in the diocese and elsewhere have contacted me this morning desiring some way to meaningfully respond.

Frankly, our hearts are crushed by this violent act. Our minds reeling as we consider the pain of our brothers and sisters who have lost loved ones””mothers and fathers, children and grandchildren, family and friends””as well as for those who have lost faith and hope from such a senseless act of hatred and insanity. My heart and thoughts also reach out to all our brothers and sisters in Christ in this diocese, especially those of African American descent, as we grieve in the aftermath of this horrific event and from whatever root causes lie beneath it.

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See also:
Sunday’s Sermon from Emanuel AME Church in Charleston SC (June 21, 2015 )
WOW””A Steven Curtis Chapman song for Charleston South Carolina (June 20, 2015)
Dylann Roof Bond Hearing. Victims Address Charleston Shooter In Court With Forgiveness (June 19, 2015)
A Call to Prayer from the Bishops in South Carolina (June 19, 2015)
Bishop Mark Lawrence Calls for Prayer in Wake of Mass Shooting; Services Today (June 18, 2015)
Please Pray””Horrific Charleston SC Shooting Incident kills 9 at AME Church (June 18, 2015)

Lent & Beyond has compiled a comprehensive list of resources, links and Twitter feeds of interest during Ramadan 2015, which began today. Traditionally many Christians and Christian ministries use Ramadan as a time to pray for Muslims and encourage outreach to Muslim neighbors and colleagues.

Go check out all the links.. Ramadan prayer entries during the coming month will be posted using the Ramadan 2015 tag.

Also, you can follow Lent & Beyond on Twitter

#BREAKING: #CharlestonShooting suspect Dylann Storm Roof caught in Shelby, NC, law enforcement confirms to @CBSNews pic.twitter.com/wEnp2LuBPi

— CBS Evening News (@CBSEveningNews) June 18, 2015

This is just a wonderful resource–check it out.

“Laudato si’, mi’ Signore” ”“ “Praise be to you, my Lord”. In the words of this beautiful canticle, Saint Francis of Assisi reminds us that our common home is like a sister with whom we share our life and a beautiful mother who opens her arms to embrace us. “Praise be to you, my Lord, through our Sister, Mother Earth, who sustains and governs us, and who produces various fruit with coloured flowers and herbs”.

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Now: Could you argue that what’s happening in Belgium is on a continuum with what’s happening in America, that the apotheosis of Caitlyn Jenner and the death of Nathan Verhelst are both manifestations of expressive individualism in action? Yes. Could you trace, with Linker and Tocqueville and others, the roots of both forms of individualism in certain Christian ideas, certain (selectively-chosen) gospel admonitions? Yes again. Could you argue that there’s a clear cultural slope that could take Americans, too, from celebrating the man who transitions to womanhood to permitting his medically-administered quietus in the event that the transition doesn’t work out? One certainly could.

But the two stories still represent very different points on the continuum, two very different places on the path away from Christendom. I look at the celebrations of Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner and see, with Bloom and Wilkinson, a gnostic-influenced Christian heresy; I look at the death of Nathan Verhelst and see Belgian Christianity’s eclipse, disappearance, defeat. I look at the United States, sexually permissive but still deeply conflicted on abortion and moving only slowly toward limited forms of physician-assisted suicide, and see a nation that’s Americanized its Christian inheritance but hasn’t yet jettisoned it. I look at the Belgium, or at least the Belgian medical and media culture, portrayed in the New Yorker and see a social reality to which the term “Christian” no longer meaningfully applies.

Again, where precisely the break happens I can’t claim to know. But in Belgium it seems to have happened; here, not yet. Not yet.

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As reported in the Guardian yesterday, the Bishop of Buckingham put forward three points in support of Jeremy Pemberton’s employment tribunal case against Bishop Richard Inwood.

All three points are remarkably weak, but they need challenging in case they gain further credence.

First, he says that Canon B 30 gives a ”˜lousy definition’ of marriage because it cannot tell you who is and is not married. It is perfectly true that the Canon does not tell you who the state may think is married. What it does tell you very clearly, however, on the basis of the teaching of Christ in the Gospels (Matthew 19:3-12, Mark 10:2-12) and what is said in the Book of Common Prayer, is what the Church of England understands marriage to be and on this basis it is clear that Jeremy Pemberton is not married regardless of what the state may say. The state may say that black is white but that does not make it so.

Secondly, he argues that the first part of the Canon, drawn from the Convocation resolutions of 1938 was not originally making ”˜a doctrinal point.’ Actually, yes it was….

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Almighty and everlasting God, who didst enkindle the flame of thy love in the heart of thy holy martyr Bernard Mizeki: Grant to us, thy humble servants, a like faith and power of love, that we who rejoice in his triumph may profit by his example; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

O God, the Father of lights, from whom cometh every good and perfect gift: We beseech thee to grant us such health of body as thou knowest to be needful for us; that both in our bodies and our souls we may evermore serve thee with all our strength and might; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

When the righteous cry for help, the LORD hears, and delivers them out of all their troubles. The LORD is near to the brokenhearted, and saves the crushed in spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous; but the LORD delivers him out of them all. He keeps all his bones; not one of them is broken. Evil shall slay the wicked; and those who hate the righteous will be condemned. The LORD redeems the life of his servants; none of those who take refuge in him will be condemned.

–Psalm 34:17-22

A white man opened fire during a prayer meeting inside a historic black church in downtown Charleston on Wednesday night, killing nine people, including the pastor, in an assault that authorities described as a hate crime. The shooter remained at large Thursday morning.

Police Chief Greg Mullen said he believed the attack at the Emanuel AME Church was a hate crime, and police were looking for a white male in his early 20s. Mullen said the scene was chaotic when police arrived, and the officers thought they had the suspect tracked with a police dog, but he got away.

“We will put all effort, we will put all resources and we will put all of our energy into finding this individual who committed this crime tonight,” he said.

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WATCH: Chief Mullen said "this is the worst night of my career." http://t.co/dWxakaPTgA #CharlestonShooting #chsnews pic.twitter.com/ergxY4MPDq

— WCBD (@WCBD) June 18, 2015

A white gunman killed nine people during a prayer meeting at one of Charleston’s oldest and best-known black churches Wednesday night in one of the worst mass shootings in South Carolina history.

Heavily armed law enforcement officers scoured the area into the morning for the man responsible for the carnage inside Emanuel AME Church at 110 Calhoun St. At least one person was said to have survived the rampage.

Police revealed no motive for the 9 p.m. attack, which was reportedly carried out by a young white man. Charleston Police Chief Greg Mullen said, “I do believe this was a hate crime.”

Mayor Joe Riley called the shooting “a most unspeakable and heartbreaking tragedy.”

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Update: the best way to try to keep up with this story is to follow the Twitter Hashtag #charlestonshooting

What is in Fed officials’ control is what they do today and tomorrow and in their policy meeting Sept. 16 and 17. So by deciding to raise rates then (or deciding not to), they are sending a more powerful signal than any speech or written statement that they believe it is time to start winding down the era of easy money.

The thing is, Ms. Yellen and her colleagues know this, and that comments like those she made Wednesday won’t do much to change it. The best they can do is try to manage expectations so that people don’t assume that a quarter-percentage point rise in the Fed’s interest rate target in September automatically translates to much higher rates in a year or two.

In other words, Ms. Yellen may be an economist, but she is well aware that her tools for managing the economy work via financial markets. So how bond traders interpret the Fed’s words and actions matter a great deal.

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“Time is catching up to me and because of that I am considering a change,” McKissick said Sunday night amid the first reports that he was considering retirement.

McKissick, who has more coaching wins than any other football coach at any level, is 88 years old. He has a world-record 621 wins during his career at SHS.

He coached 10 Green Wave football teams to a state championship.

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[Joseph] Stiglitz is also particularly critical of the banking system: “If they (the banks) are too big to fail and they know it, excessive risk-taking is a one-sided bet: if they win they keep the profits, if they lose, taxpayers pick up the tab.” He summarises this as socialising losses while privatising gains.

Furthermore, there is a growing chorus of opposition to lax executive pay habits. Fidelity Worldwide Investment has urged companies make their long-term incentive plans less short term in nature, or face votes against remuneration at annual meetings. Last year the Church Commissioners opposed executive pay deals in two-thirds of the companies where they have a holding.

Adam Smith, said to be the father of modern economics, wrote: “Servants, labourers and workmen of different kinds, make up the far greater part of every great political society. But what improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconvenience to the whole. No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed and lodged.”(2)

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Here, roughly, is what we know so far about today’s middle-class children: They seldom walk or bike to school, as generations did before them; they rarely work steady after-school jobs (their new work is strictly of the academic and extracurricular variety, one that doesn’t involve a wage); their time is rigidly structured (play dates, cello lessons, summer internships); their mothers spend more time with them than mothers did with their children in the 1960s, even though most women in the 1960s didn’t work.

When confronted with these facts, it is therefore reasonable to ask: What effect does all this involvement and insulation and scrupulous (some might call it psychoneurotic) programming have on our kids? Is it compromising their resilience in some way, or the firmness of their convictions, or their self-efficacy? Are the very things we view as horizon-stretching in fact resulting in a more circumscribed life?

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After years of infertility, Angel and Jeff Watts found a young egg donor to help them have a baby. They fertilized her eggs with Mr. Watts’s sperm and got 10 good embryos. Four of those embryos were transferred to Ms. Watts’s womb, resulting in two sets of twins ”” Alexander and Shelby, now 4 years old, and Angelina and Charles, not yet 2.

But that left six frozen embryos, and Ms. Watts, 45, had no plans for more children. So in December she took to Facebook to try to find a nearby Tennessee family that wanted them.

“We have 6 good quality frozen six-day-old embryos to donate to an amazing family who wants a large family,” she posted. “We prefer someone who has been married several years in a steady loving relationship and strong Christian background, and who does not already have kids, but wants a boat load.”

In storage facilities across the nation, hundreds of thousands of frozen embryos ”” perhaps a million ”” are preserved in silver tanks of liquid nitrogen.

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For an hour or two on a foggy morning last December, some students at the University of Iowa (UI) mistook one of their professors, Serhat Tanyolacar, for a fan of the Ku Klux Klan. Mr Tanyolacar had placed a canvas effigy based on Klan robes, screen-printed with news cuttings about racial violence, on the Pentacrest, the university’s historic heart. The effigy had a camera in its hood to record public reactions.

The reaction among some black students was to fear for their safety, and that is not surprising. What is more of a puzzle””for anyone outside American academia, at least””is that students and UI bosses continued denouncing Mr Tanyolacar for threatening campus safety even after the misunderstanding was cleared up. In vain did the Turkish-born academic explain that he is a “social-political artist”, using Klan imagery to provoke debate about racism. Under pressure from angry students, university chiefs issued two separate apologies. The first expressed regret that students had been exposed to a “deeply offensive” artwork, adding that there is no room for “divisive” speech at UI. The second apologised for taking too long to remove a display which had “terrorised” black students and locals, thereby failing to ensure that all students, faculty, staff and visitors felt “respected and safe”. An unhappy Mr Tanyolacar feels abandoned by the university. He left Iowa earlier this month, when his visiting fellowship came to an end, and has suspended his teaching career.

A crucial word in this tale is “safe”. Campus activists have stretched the meaning of safety from an important but second-order concern””shielding students from serious harm””to a defining ambition for any well-run academy.

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At this late stage of her marvelous career, Abby Wambach is no longer the centerpiece of the U.S. women’s national soccer team. The headers are not as powerful and accurate as they once were and the days of 90-minute battles every match are over. But Wambach’s value remains unquestioned, and amid a personal and collective unproductive spell in the World Cup group stage, she added to her record goal haul and clinched first place for the Americans.

Untidy with her headers, Wambach turned to her left foot for a volley on the brink of halftime Tuesday, shattering a scoreless deadlock and lifting the United States to a 1-0 victory over Nigeria before 52,193 at sold-out BC Place in Vancouver.

“Jokingly, I thought when I took the job [last year], if Abby has one leg, she is going to make this roster because she embodies a lot of the spirit of this team and our program,” Coach Jill Ellis said. “Her leadership is tremendous. Her spirit is fantastic. So when I met with her early, I said, ”˜Listen, I have not predetermined your role. Your role will be as big as you deliver.’ I just know Abby, I know big moments, I know she will deliver. I’m really pleased with the investment tonight.”

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Americans’ confidence in the church and organized religion has fallen dramatically over the past four decades, hitting an all-time low this year of 42%. Confidence in religion began faltering in the 1980s, while the sharpest decline occurred between 2001 and 2002 as the Catholic Church grappled with a major sexual abuse scandal. Since then, periodic improvements have proved temporary, and it has continued to ratchet lower.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury has joined faith leaders in Britain pledging to fast and pray for the success of key international negotiations over climate change, in a new declaration warning of the “huge challenge” facing the world over global warming.

Representatives of the major faiths, including Archbishop Justin Welby, said climate change has already hit the poorest of the world hardest and urgent action is needed now to protect future generations.

In the Lambeth Declaration, which will be launched tomorrow, signatories call on faith communities to recognise the pressing need to make the transition to a low carbon economy.

The call comes ahead of the international climate change talks in Paris this December where negotiators from more than 190 nations will gather to discuss a new global agreement on climate change, aimed at limiting greenhouse gas emissions from 2020 when current commitments run out.

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When it came time for Golden State Warriors general manager Bob Myers to pick his favorite moment of the season, it wasn’t Stephen Curry winning the Most Valuable Player award or Klay Thompson scoring 37 points in a quarter or even his own moment of glory when he was named NBA Executive of the Year. It came on the quickly assembled stage on the court at Quicken Loans Arena, when Bill Russell handed the trophy named after him to Andre Iguodala in recognition of the NBA Finals Most Valuable Player.

“That’s the one,” Myers said. “That he was up there getting it, it was perfect. Sometimes life works out like it should.”

If you have followed the Warriors, you know the reason Myers found Iguodala’s turn in the spotlight so fitting. Coach Steve Kerr told us of Iguodala’s importance all along. Well, maybe not at the moment Kerr lied about his intention to move Iguodala into the starting lineup in Game 4. But again and again, Kerr said the key to the Warriors’ season was Iguodala’s willingness to become a bench player for the first time in his career to open a spot in the starting lineup for Harrison Barnes. It was indicative of the type of unselfish attitude a team needs in order to win a championship. And Tuesday night it came to fruition.

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Appealing to the entire world, Pope Francis urged everyone to read his upcoming encyclical on the care of creation and to better protect a damaged earth.

“This common ”˜home’ is being ruined and that harms everyone, especially the poorest,” he said June 17, the day before the Vatican was releasing his encyclical letter, “Laudato Si’, on Care for Our Common Home.”

He said he was launching an appeal for people to recognize their “responsibility, based on the task that God gave human beings in creation: ”˜to cultivate and care for’ the ”˜garden’ in which he settled us.”

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In a wide-ranging interview on ABC radio yesterday, the Bishop of Grafton Sarah McNeil, spoke of the recent diocesan synod held in Port Macquarie.

Bishop McNeil said members of the synod had discussed a number of political issues, including gay marriage, asylum seeker policy and climate change.

The bishop said the synod decided to assess the views of the congregation on gay marriage in the next 12 months, then to present this to the 2016 synod.

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Several denominations partnered with the Canadian government for nearly a century to run the more than 130 residential schools, including Roman Catholic, Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian and the United Church of Canada.

Winnipeg’s Anglican bishop says the report provides a framework for action and education, such as including indigenous perspectives in theological schools, studying the history and legacy of residential schools, and understanding the role of churches in colonization.

“For us, the TRC report is not threatening and it gives us a shot in the arm to really keep the agenda of healing and reconciliation and working in partnership with aboriginal people in front of (our) people,” says Bishop Donald Phillips of the Diocese of Rupert’s Land.

Read it all from the Winnipeg Free Press.

Newcastle’s Anglican Bishop has fought back tears while apologising for past church cover-ups and the poor handling of complaints about child sexual abuse.

Greg Thompson marked 500 days in the position by saying sorry for “the terrible harm done [by] a culture of not listening”.

“If you are a victim or a survivor of abuse I want to encourage you to come forward,” he said.

“I want to assure you that when you do share your story the church will believe you and you will be supported in that process.

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“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”

This proverb does not have much resonance with Americans. In an age of numerous technological advances meant to save us time and energy, we find ourselves working more than ever. Instead of working fewer hours and taking more vacation, we have freely chosen to do the opposite.

We live by the “American Dream” where anyone can achieve anything if we simply “work hard enough.” Often it means “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” in order to realize your dreams.

While these maxims are not inherently bad, we have taken them to a new level and are working more and playing less. Unfortunately the family has been caught in the crossfire. As we continue to put emphasis on work and “getting ahead,” our families are quickly eroding and falling apart.

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O Thou, from whom to be turned is to fall, to whom to be turned is to rise, and in whom to stand is to abide for ever: Grant us in all our duties thy help, in all our perplexities thy guidance, in all our dangers thy protection, and in all our sorrows thy peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues as of fire, distributed and resting on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.

–Acts 2:1-4

What is happening?

The Revd Jeremy Pemberton is taking the Archbishop of York and Bishop Richard Inwood (who was the acting Bishop of Southwell and Nottingham) to an Employment Tribunal over the refusal of Bishop Richard to grant Mr Pemberton a licence. Jeremy Pemberton was offered a job with the Sherwood Forest Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust as a Chaplaincy Manager, but the NHS terms of employment required the appointee to hold a formal denomination’s recommendation.

Why was Jeremy Pemberton refused a licence?

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