The Rev. Will Campbell was fired in 1956 as the University of Mississippi’s director of religious life for speaking against the segregationist standards common to the time.

On Friday, the University honored him posthumously by naming a gathering space near Paris-Yates Chapel “the Rev. Will Davis Campbell Plaza.” The dedication, which attracted leaders such as former Gov. William Winter and U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker, was part of the university’s Racial Reconciliation Week.

“No one has had more influence on me as a person and as a leader,” said Dr. Dan Jones, whose “very personal remarks” about his late friend marked his last official duty as the university’s chancellor. He noted the inscription, “For Dan, my friend, my chancellor,” on his copy of Campbell’s book “Brother to a Dragonfly,” which he called “my favorite commentary on scripture.”

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O God, who by the passion of thy blessed Son didst make an instrument of shameful death to be unto us the means of life and peace: Grant us so to glory in the cross of Christ, that we may gladly suffer shame and loss for the sake of thy Son our Savior Jesus Christ; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Lord Jesus Christ, who for our sake didst endure the cross, and hast bidden us to follow thee: Take away from us all fear, all coldness of heart, all unwillingness to suffer; that we, glorying in thy cross, may glory also that thou hast called us to bear it with thee; for thy name’s sake.

When I am afraid, I put my trust in thee. In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust without a fear. What can flesh do to me?

–Psalm 56:3-4

In March 1990 the European rugby union championship lay in the balance. Scotland and England had both won all their matches, and England traveled to Edinburgh knowing that the winner would take the coveted Grand Slam. The game was perhaps the finest in Scottish rugby history. But the defining moment came before it started. The England players ran onto the field to a largely hostile reception, but the Scots’ captain David Sole did something different. He led his team out at a stately walking pace. It was an iconic moment. It said, “There’s nothing you can throw at us we can’t deal with. We’re going to win this game, and we’re going to walk right toward you, and we will not be overcome.” And that’s what happened. England threw everything at Scotland, but to no avail. And David Sole’s walk became part of Scottish folklore.

Get into David Sole’s mind for a moment. This is the defining moment of my life, in my nation’s cultural life. What happens in the next two hours will be my identity, my legacy, my single truth. And I’m walking slowly toward it. I’m entering the eye of the storm.

Perhaps you are facing a storm. Your life, or the joy in your life, or the well-being of someone you treasure, seems to hang by a thread. Your instinct is to dodge, escape, deny, dive for cover, find a way out, run away….

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We live in a time of exile. At least those of us do who hold to traditional Christian beliefs. The strident rhetoric of scientism has made belief in the supernatural look ridiculous. The Pill, no-fault divorce, and now gay marriage have made traditional sexual ethics look outmoded at best and hateful at worst. The Western public square is no longer a place where Christians feel they belong with any degree of comfort.

For Christians in the United States, this is particularly disorienting. In Europe, Christianity was pushed to the margins over a couple of centuries””the tide of faith retreated “with tremulous cadence slow.” In America, the process seems to be happening much more rapidly.

It is also being driven by issues that few predicted would have such cultural force. It is surely an irony as unexpected as it is unwelcome that sex””that most private and intimate act””has become the most pressing public policy issue today. (Who could have imagined that policies concerning contraception and laws allowing same-sex marriage would present the most serious challenges to religious freedom?) We are indeed set for exile, though not an exile which pushes us to the geographical margins. It’s an exile to cultural irrelevance.

Read it all from First Things.

At a country funeral this week, amid the heavy foliage of a late English summer, we sang the hymn “O God of earth and altar”. It is not directly socialist, but it is consistent with socialism.
That was the context in which it was sung when newly written ”“ after a meeting of the Church Socialist League in 1912, for example, when civil war was suggested as a solution for the nation’s ills. There was a miners’ strike on, and the meeting marched with a petition to the Archbishop of Canterbury, singing (perhaps to the tune of “The Church’s One Foundation”):

O God of earth and altar
Bow down and hear our cry,
Our earthly rulers falter,
Our people drift and die.
There is resonance between the next stanza and the feeling of the world now, 100 years later:
From all that terror teaches,
From lies of tongue and pen,
From all the easy speeches
That comfort cruel men,
From sale and profanation
Of honour and the sword,
From sleep and from damnation,
Deliver us, good Lord.

Read it all from the Telegraph.

When Thomas Newcomen built his pioneering steam engine in 1712, Queen Anne and the Duke of Marlborough were right to ignore it. Though in the long run steam engines completely reshaped the world, in the short run the war with France and the Hanoverian succession were far more important. Even when the Industrial Revolution picked up steam in the 19th century, it still moved slow enough for politicians to be one step ahead of events and to regulate and manipulate its course.

Yet whereas the rhythm of politics has not changed much since the days of steam, technology has switched from first gear to fourth. Technological revolutions now outpace political processes, causing ministers and voters alike to lose control.
The rise of the internet gives us a taste of things to come. Cyberspace is now crucial to our daily lives, our economy and our security. Yet the critical choices between alternative designs for the internet weren’t taken through a political process, even though they involved traditional political issues such as sovereignty, borders, privacy and security. Decisions made far from the limelight mean that today the internet is a free and lawless zone that erodes state sovereignty, ignores borders, abolishes privacy and poses perhaps the most formidable global security risk.

Whereas a decade ago it hardly registered on the radars, today hysterical officials are predicting an imminent cyber 9/11. Any day now we might wake up to discover that the power grid is down, the local refinery is up in flames, and crucial financial data has been erased so that nobody knows who owns what.

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Sam Espada led friends in a chorus of “Happy Birthday” for his sombrero-wearing brother at a Mexican restaurant. After dinner, they saw the latest Hollywood blockbuster.

The five-story mall could have been anywhere in America, except that every storefront sign was in Arabic as well as English. The group was in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

“This place is like Disneyland,” said Espada, a Christian from New Jersey. “But I don’t feel fully free. You can definitely tell you are living in a Muslim country.”

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Gracious Lord, we pray that your will would be done through this trial. May we want what you desire. Speak your words alone through Alan Runyan and the other attorneys who represent us. May the courtroom be filled with the pleasant aroma of Christ, and at the end of the day, protect this Diocese and its parishes that we might bring the redemptive power of the biblical gospel to the South Carolina low country and beyond. Let not our fear of outcomes tarnish our joy or deter us from the mission you have given us. Teach us to bless and never curse those on the other side of this conflict. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And make us victorious over-comers wherever this road leads. For we ask it all in Jesus’ Name. Amen.

It is by God’s grace we have come this far. It is his grace that will bring us home.
On Wednesday, September 23rd, at 10:30 a.m., the Diocese of South Carolina will enter into oral arguments before the South Carolina Supreme Court. The Court has agreed to hear TEC’s appeal of the trial court ruling in our favor that was announced by Judge Goodstein on February 3rd of this year. In that order, Judge Goodstein ruled that the Diocese and its parishes:

Ӣ Are the owners of their real, personal and intellectual property.
Ӣ TEC has no legal, beneficial or equitable interest in any of those properties.
Ӣ TEC and its officers and agents were permanently enjoined from using our names or symbols.
Ӣ All the TEC counterclaims in the trial were dismissed with prejudice.
Ӭ
It is our prayerful hope that the state Supreme Court justices will uphold this decision in its entirety….

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They are the people with whom Roof was associating in the weeks before the shooting, and this is the place he drifted into with little resistance, an American void where little is sacred and little is profane and the dominant reaction to life is what Joey does now, looking at Lindsey. He shrugs.

For several weeks, Dylann Roof slept on the floor here. He played video games. According to the Meeks, he showed off his new Glock .45-caliber handgun, drank heavily and retreated to his car to listen to opera. And sometimes he confided in his childhood friend Joey, who wasn’t the type to ask questions.

When Roof showed up asking Joey for a place to stay, Joey says, he invited him in without hesitation. When Roof told him that he believed in segregation, Joey didn’t ask why. When Roof mentioned driving two hours to Charleston and visiting a church called Emanuel AME, he didn’t ask anything about it. When Roof said that he was going to “do something crazy,” as Joey remembers it, he and Lindsey hid Roof’s gun but then gave it back, blowing it all off as a drunken episode.

“I didn’t take him seriously,” is what Joey says again and again….

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[Dale Kuehne writes]:

While today’s conversations push the boundaries of how we understand gender, they don’t understand that this brave new world of identity is about more than gender.

The students with whom I associate””from middle school to college students””have understood for several years that we now reside in a world beyond gender. The youngest of them probably don’t realize that TIME’s article announced anything “new.”

For many of them, gender discussions, even of the transgender variation, are just so yesterday. When we talk about personal identity, we don’t include the mundane questions about being male and/or female. A person can certainly identify as male or female if they wish, but there is little expectation that one would do so.

After all, today Facebook gives us over 50 “gender” identities to choose from. (Conversations about this can involve questions about why there are so few options.) And rather than looking to gender or variations on a gender, more and more young people are seeking to discover their identity by widening the options to include “otherkins” (people who consider themselves to have a non-human identity, such as various animals, spirits, mediums, and so on).

Read it all (my emphasis).

(Be forewarned–gruesome subject–KSH).

The 29-year-old said others forced her to sell sex for money from age 10 until 17, while she was in the foster care system. She recounted beatings, starvation, forced cocaine and heroin use and seeing the disappearance of other girls who stepped out of line with their traffickers.

The experience left her hooked on crack cocaine and dependent on turning tricks to feed her habit. Yet she still refers to herself as “one of the lucky ones.”

“I was caught and pulled out,” she said. “If it wasn’t for an officer here, I think I’d be dead today.”

This is the dark reality of sex trafficking in the Holy City and across South Carolina. Vulnerable children and young adults are forced to sell their bodies and held against their will, deprived of food and sleep and sometimes beaten until they meet a quota of men to service.

Read it all from the local paper.

Listen to it all.

Addressing newsmen at All Saints Anglican Church, Oshodi, Lagos to flag off the annual BSN Marathon Bible Reading programme, Ajiboye noted that the vices in the country revolve around unrighteousness and ungodliness and that the solutions given by God are embedded in the Scriptures.
He said: “Imagine what will happen if Nigerians read their Bible daily, imbibe biblical virtues and live according to the will of God; no doubt, God will be pleased with us because righteousness exalts a nation but sin is a reproach to any people.
“Nigerians are the most religious people in the world but the challenge is that our actions are against the Word of God. There are Christians who can effectively quote the scripture more than the pastors but they do not act in accordance with the Word of God that they read.

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Almighty God, who knowest our necessities before we ask, and our ignorance in asking: Set free thy servants from all anxious thoughts for the morrow; give us contentment with thy good gifts; and confirm our faith that according as we seek thy kingdom, thou wilt not suffer us to lack any good thing; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

The earth is the LORD’s and the fulness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein; for he has founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the rivers.

–Psalm 24:1

From the Last Night at the Proms, the full recording of which may be listened to here. [The traditional end starts 2 1/2 hrs in]

The number of Catholic priests in Canada has fallen sharply in recent decades, so any ordination is a rare event.

But Friday’s example of the sacrament in Saint John was particularly unusual ”” because the new priest was surrounded by his wife, children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

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I had put effort into figuring out who to be so that I could succeed as the host of a Sunday news show. But last year when I lost that job, which offered me satisfaction and a high profile, I had to find out who I was without cameras or prestigious titles. This hasn’t been rosy or easy, though I tried to leave NBC with grace, mostly as an example to my children.

It has been faith that steadied me. The humbling loss turned out to be a gift, because I have seen how many fresh opportunities for growth and happiness await””even if it hasn’t gone according to my plan. Most plainly, I understand: In joy, pain and even in personal failure, God is close.

Erica Brown wrote me a note on my last day in the job. She reminded me to trust God, quoting Isaiah 46:4. “I am He, I am He who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.”

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Tens of thousands of demonstrators in Europe rallied on Saturday to express sympathy toward migrants seeking refuge in the region amid the largest migration of displaced people since the end of World War II.

About 30,000 people converged in Copenhagen, according to city police, carrying banners such as “Refugees Welcome.” The rally, as well as smaller gatherings in other Danish cities, was calm and peaceful, police said.

In Hamburg, Germany, more than 24,000 people demonstrated against xenophobia and racism, said a spokeswoman for the city’s police. She said they were mostly peaceful but police briefly used water cannons after some stones and firecrackers were thrown.

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Having monitored the Anglican news scene for so long, I am noticing a sea change. Some Anglican news outlets seem to be having trouble finding stories to report. There have been slow seasons in Anglican news before, and the period following the Episcopal Church’s triennial General Convention (which we are now in) is often one of those seasons.

But this time it is different, and I find myself questioning whether the Anglican news scene will ever be the same again. In July, I wrote a piece entitled, “Probably My Last Post about General Convention–Ever.” I felt safe in entitling it that because, not only has the Episcopal Church moved beyond my ability to care, it has moved beyond the ability to surprise. For something to be newsworthy, there has to be a certain “Man Bites Dog” element to it; and, frankly, we will never see that kind of newsworthiness from the Episcopal Church ever again.

Gay bishops–done that. Gay marriage–done that. Transgendered clergy–done that. Panentheist theology–now so much a part of the landscape that orthodoxy is virtually extinct. Episcopal Church tries to co-opt African churches with its money–entirely predictable. What is left to surprise us? Polyamory? Rewriting the Prayer Book for a gender-neutral or feminine God? These are just the next stops on the train ride

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Louis van Gaal responded to another stagnant half of football decisively. Ashley Young brought thrust and threat to United’s attack, drew the foul from Nathaniel Clyne and Juan Mata provided the assist for Daley Blind’s majestically struck opener.

Memphis [Depuy] received plenty of the ball against Clyne in the first-half and had the pace to bypass him but was, once more, erratic and a liability in possession. Van Gaal is particularly perturbed by ‘unnecessary ball losses’ and Memphis was culpable time and again. Experience trumped youth for United for the first, if not the third. Reds will argue Anthony Martial’s £36m fee was justified just to leave Scousers crestfallen.

Read it all.

NT Wright – Spectator
..All right: much popular reaction, Christian included, has been little more than anguished arm-waving. But soundbites are not the real clue. What counts is action. To look no further than my own church, the Anglican chaplaincies in Budapest and Athens have been working with tireless generosity. The Canterbury diocese, close to Calais, has been going the second mile, then the third and fourth. It’s risky to say, ”˜Look what we Christians do’; history is littered with our follies and failures. But the early Christians were first in the field of caring for strangers, the poor and refugees, just as they initiated public medicine and education. We’re still doing it.

This still begs Matthew’s question about priorities. But there should be no puzzle. The gospels pick up the ancient Israelite narratives of hope: hope for a coming king who would do justice for the poor, defend and deliver the needy, overturn oppression and take pity on the weak. ”˜Remember the poor,’ St Peter reminded St Paul. By the end of the second century, the Roman authorities didn’t know exactly what Christianity was, but they knew what bishops were: pesky nuisances, always banging on about the plight of the poor…

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Matthew Parris – Spectator
..though an atheist, I accept that my morality ”” and to a considerable degree what we call western morality ”” is anchored in a Christian culture. Whether or not we ourselves believe in God, we’ve all soaked up the ethical teachings.

And they’re useless. ”˜Do unto others as you would that they would do unto you’ is, like ”˜Love your neighbour as yourself’, either impossible or circular. Circular if it means ”˜Act towards others as you think they should act towards you,’ because this leaves open the question of how you think people should act, and would permit a cannibal to eat another cannibal. If, however, the commandment means ”˜Treat others as it would please you to be treated by them,’ then the precept is impossible because you’d give all your money to the first beggar you encountered. We’d all be off to Calais to try to smuggle migrants in our car boots.

Christianity (as represented by the Gospels) is all but silent ”” extraordinarily so ”” on the question of familial obligation. There is some evidence that Christ was impatient with family, and none that these were ties He wanted to reinforce. As to ”˜community’, the parable of the good Samaritan suggests a certain impatience here, too. As to nation, I find ”˜Render unto Caesar”¦’ an evasive answer, because it does not assist our understanding of which things ”˜those things that are Caesar’s’ might be.

If, as I believe, the main difficulty that faces us in deciding moral duty is the difficulty of prioritising, then Christianity is profoundly unhelpful…

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James Newcome, Bishop of Carlisle, and lead bishop for the Church of England on health care issues, said: “We are heartened that MPs have decided not to change the law on assisted suicide.

“We believe that the proposals contained in the Assisted Dying Bill would have exposed already vulnerable people to increased risk. The vote in the House of Commons sends a strong signal that the right approach towards supporting the terminally ill is to offer compassion and support through better palliative care. We believe that all of us need to redouble our efforts on that front.”

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As a law student in 1975 I studied David Steel’s Abortion Bill of 1967, which it was claimed would provide a remedy to the rigidity of the Offences Against The Person Act 1861, according to which a doctor performing an abortion where the continuation of the pregnancy would endanger the mother’s life, faced prosecution and even a long jail sentence. Assurances were given or implied that this would mean a tiny number of cases each year in which such abortions would be carried out legitimately in order to save the mother’s life.

However, as we have seen since the Act was passed in 1968, giving permission in what were thought to be strictly controlled circumstances for a tiny number of cases of medical necessity, has resulted in a dramatic change to our society and culture. The historic recognition of unborn children as human beings, and the legal protection which was afforded to them, has given way to an interpretation of the Act (which Parliament said it did not intend in 1967) by means of which roughly one in five pregnancies now end in abortion, carried out even for reasons such as gender selection.

Almost all frail members of society depend on society in some way for their well-being and in many cases for the continuation of their lives from hour to hour and day to day. They are able to trust the institutions, agencies and above all the medical profession quite literally with their lives…

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MPs vote against enshrining right to die in British law, blocking second reading of Assisted Dying Bill by 212 majority in historic Commons vote
MPs have overwhelmingly rejected the legalisation of assisted dying in England and Wales after an impassioned four-and-a-half hour debate in which party lines were set aside.

Members voted by three to one against giving second reading to a bill tabled by the Labour backbencher Rob Marris, to allow terminally ill patients to be supplied with a lethal dose of drugs

It was the first ever serious attempt to change Britain’s assisted suicide laws through the House of Commons and saw calls for the issue to be put to a referendum amid polling suggesting public support running at around 80 per cent.

MPs on both sides lined up to give moving personal accounts of the loss of loved ones arguing both in favour and against.

But they were swayed by a series of warnings, including from fellow MPs qualified as doctors, that a change in the law would fundamentally alter the relationship between doctor and patient.

Read it all and read down for a helpful listing of arguments for and against.

In a landmark victory for supporters of assisted suicide, the California State Legislature on Friday gave its final approval to a bill that would allow doctors to help terminally ill people end their lives.

Four states ”” Oregon, Washington, Montana and Vermont ”” already allow physicians to prescribe life-ending medication to some patients. The California bill, which passed Friday in the State Senate by a vote of 23 to 14, will now go to Gov. Jerry Brown, who will roughly triple access to doctor-assisted suicide across the country if he signs it. Mr. Brown has given little indication of his intentions.

The California bill is modeled on the law in Oregon, with several notable changes. The California law would expire after 10 years and have to be reapproved, and doctors would have to consult in private with the patient desiring to die, as part of an effort to ensure that no one would be coerced to end his or her life ”” a primary concern for opponents of the law.

Leaders of the “death with dignity” movement said they hoped the passage of the California law could be a turning point.

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