The first Anglican theological college in Ethiopia, named after Saint Frumentius, has been officially opened by the Archbishop of Jerusalem and the Middle East, Mouneer Anis. Ethiopia is part of Archbishop Mouneer’s diocese of Egypt with North Africa and the Horn of Africa.

For many years, St Matthew’s Church in Addis Ababa was the only Anglican congregation in Ethiopia. But that changed with the arrival of large numbers of refugees arriving in the country seeking sanctuary from the protracted civil war in Sudan from the mid-1970s.

“Many of these new refugees were Anglican and they began churches in the refugee camps,” the college said. “Later, Anglican churches were established in the villages of the Gambella region, in the west of Ethiopia.

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Archdeacon Bruce Myers, the Anglican Church of Canada’s co-ordinator for ecumenical and interfaith relations, is now in line to be the 13th bishop of Quebec after being elected the diocese’s co-adjutor bishop Friday, November 27.

The election, which involved six candidates, went to six ballots before the only remaining candidate, Canon Stuart Pike, voluntarily withdrew his name. Following the rules of the diocese, it then went to one more vote so that the synod could confirm its choice of Myers. The decision required at least two-thirds majorities of both the lay and clerical delegates.

“I think it took longer than anyone anticipated, although I think it’s also a testament to what a really fine slate of nominees the synod was presented with,” Myers said after his election. “You never know how things are going to go, at an electoral synod especially, and the Spirit moves as it wills, and that can sometimes take us in unexpected places.”

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THE Anglican Diocese of Tasmania has elected a new Bishop to replace the recently retired Bishop John Harrower.

The Church held its Election Synod gathering in Launceston over the past two days, with Dr Richard Condie selected for the top job.

Dr Condie is Vicar of St Jude’s Carlton, one of Melbourne’s largest Anglican churches.

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Pope Francis prayed at a shrine honoring Ugandan martyrs who died rather than renounce their faith on Saturday, amid hopes that his presence might ease the unrest that has emerged as the country prepares for next year’s election.

On the fourth of the pontiff’s six-day African tour, he honored a group of Catholic and Anglican martyrs who were burned alive after refusing to renounce their faith in the late 19th century. Earlier in the day, he visited sanctuaries honoring the Catholic and Anglican martyrs in the city of Namugongo and celebrated Mass to commemorate the 50th anniversary of their canonization.

The martyrs’ stories show that “fidelity to God, honesty and integrity of life, and genuine concern for the good of others bring us that peace that the world cannot give,” the pope said.

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#OnThisDay 1628, John Bunyan was born in Elstow, near Bedford, the son of a tinsmith. pic.twitter.com/qDndaRI201

— Oxford Classics (@OWC_Oxford) November 28, 2015

O Lord, take thou full possession of my heart, raise there thy throne, and command there as thou dost in heaven. Being created by thee, let me live to thee. Being created for thee, let me ever act for thy glory. Being redeemed by thee, let me render to thee what is thine, and let my spirit ever cleave to thee alone; for thy name’s sake.

By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion.
On the willows there we hung up our lyres.
For there our captors required of us songs, and our tormentors, mirth, saying, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”
How shall we sing the LORD’s song in a foreign land?

–Psalm 137:1-4

The zoning meeting, in a community room packed beyond capacity, was intended to focus on traffic, lighting and parking impacts from a proposed building.

But the building in question was a new mosque ”” and the meeting occurred four days after the terrorist attacks in Paris.

A thickly built man interrupted the discussion about stormwater runoff, saying to the small group of Muslims in the crowd, “Nobody wants your evil cult,” and “Every one of you are terrorists. I don’t care what you say. I don’t care what you think.”

The unidentified man pledged to do everything in his power to block the mosque, jabbing his finger toward one of the mosque’s trustees, a civil engineer leading the presentation, according to a video posted by the Free Lance-Star of Fredericksburg.

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Number 10 has announced this morning that the Ven Karen Gorham, currently Archdeacon of Buckingham, is to be the 36th Bishop of Sherborne and the 9th in modern times. The Bishop of Sherborne works in the Diocese of Salisbury with responsibility mainly for parishes in Dorset.

Karen said, “It has been a real privilege to serve the church in Buckinghamshire and work in the Diocese of Oxford. I now look forward to getting to know the people and places of Dorset, an area I have loved since childhood holidays.”

Bishop Nicholas added, “Karen has experience and brings gifts to help us with Renewing Hope: Pray, Serve, Grow. I think St Aldhelm would be pleased with her appointment, the first woman to the See of Sherborne which he founded. She emerged as the right person for this post from a company of excellent men and women considered equally. The Anglo-Saxon Church included women in authority as well as men, like St Cuthberga of Wimborne and St Edith of Wilton. Karen’s appointment is good news for Salisbury and for the Church of England.”

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At first the rise of charter schools””to 7,000 today from 1,900 in 2000””was thought to be the nail in the coffin for Catholic education, which had been in decline for decades. Charters offer many of the same strengths as Catholic schools: order, kindness, discipline, high expectations (ideas initially borrowed from parochial institutions). But because charters are publicly funded, families don’t have to pay tuition. How could Catholic schools possibly compete with that?

Within the past few years, however, the borrowing has begun to go in the other direction, as Catholic schools poach staff from charter networks, draw from the same donors, and model their operations on charter successes. America’s usual miracle-workers””competition, civil society, entrepreneurial wealth and philanthropy””have come to the rescue of religious education.

Consider the Partnership for Inner-city Education, a nonprofit formed in 2010 to take responsibility for six Catholic schools serving disadvantaged children in Harlem and the South Bronx. The chairman of the Partnership’s board is Russ Carson, an equity-capital pioneer who also helped build KIPP charter schools in New York. Mr. Carson and fellow donors put millions of dollars into upgrading the campuses of these six Catholic schools.

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The American student loan crisis is often seen as a problem of profligacy and predation. Wasteful colleges raise tuition every year, we are told, even as middle-class wages stagnate and unscrupulous for-profit colleges bilk the unwary. The result is mounting unmanageable debt.
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There is much truth in this diagnosis. But it does not explain the plight of Liz Kelley, a Missouri high school teacher and mother of four who made a series of unremarkable decisions about college and borrowing. She now owes the federal government $410,000, and counting.

This is a staggering and unusual sum. The average undergraduate who borrows leaves school with about $30,000 in debt. But Ms. Kelley’s circumstances are not unique. Of the 43.3 million borrowers with outstanding federal student loans, 1.8 percent, or 779,000 people, owe $150,000 or more. And 346,000 owe more than $200,000.

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Something he is keen to stress is the cross-faith work going on around climate change ”“ particularly in light of the Pope’s encyclical, which he says has had a “huge” impact. Holtam himself recently presented to the Jewish Board of Deputies with former Friends of the Earth Director Jonathon Porritt. “There is a sense that we really want to work across the faith communities,” he says ”“ pointing to an “ecumenical convergence” on the issue. The force of events ”“ an “existential crisis” ”“ was pushing faiths together to find a common solution. Indeed, our meeting coincided with a visit to London by the Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I, who insisted at an event with Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby that global warming is a “moral crisis” requiring behavioural change.

“What we need to move to is a low carbon economy and therefore there needs to be a positive investment into renewable energy,” Holtam says. “There’s going to become a tipping point at which there are stranded assets and the question is, who’s going to spot when that comes? Because there’ll be a moment when you’re much better off investing in renewables than you are in fossil fuel.” Holtam doesn’t engage directly with corporate executives directly, but what would he say to the senior people at BP and Shell? “There’s a community of common interest,” he observes.

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