Watch it all-very inspiring.

It is now evident that the wedding was planned in order to avoid breaking the letter of each denomination’s law while clearly violating their spirit. The Baptist Union of Victoria prohibits its ministers from conducting same-sex weddings but has no equivalent prohibition on its buildings. The Anglican Church prohibits both minister and building. Thus we have the use of a baptist building, with Anglican ministers who are not technically officiating at the wedding although they clearly take a significant part in it (Rev. Moore essentially conducted the service). Finally a former baptist signs the paperwork.

It is a clear challenge to the teaching, doctrine and good order of at least 2 major denominations.

Read it all.

The federal government’s debt has risen from less than 40% of GDP a decade ago to 78% now, and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) predicts that the ratio will rise to 96% in 2028. Because foreign investors hold the majority of US government debt, this projection implies that they will absorb more than $6 trillion in US bonds during the next ten years. Long-term interest rates on US debt will have to rise substantially to induce domestic and foreign investors alike to hold this very large increase.

Why is this happening? Had last year’s tax legislation not been enacted, the 2028 debt ratio would still reach 93% of GDP, according to the CBO. So the cause of the exploding debt lies elsewhere.

The primary drivers of the deficit increase over the next decade are the higher cost of benefits for middle-class older individuals. More specifically, spending on Social Security retirement benefits is predicted to rise from 4.9% of GDP to 6%. Government spending on health care for the aged in the Medicare program – which, like Social Security, is not means tested – will rise from 3.5% of GDP to 5.1%. So these two programs will raise the annual deficit by 2.7% of GDP.

Read it all.

The U.S. debt burden may soon be in the same league as that of Italy, Greece, & Portugal, with or without the recently-passed tax cuts. https://t.co/CpwIFWux94

— Paul Banura (@pbanura) May 29, 2018

After legalizing abortion and same-sex marriage in recent times, Portuguese lawmakers will decide Tuesday on another issue that has brought a confrontation between faith and politics in this predominantly Catholic country: whether to allow euthanasia and doctor-assisted suicide.

The outcome of the vote is uncertain and is likely to be close, but Portugal could become one of just a handful of countries in the world to permit euthanasia under certain circumstances.

Euthanasia — when a doctor kills patients at their request — is legal in Belgium, Canada, Colombia, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. In Switzerland, and some U.S. states, assisted suicide — where patients administer the lethal drug themselves, under medical supervision — is permitted.

Read it all.

On a chilly Saturday in February, about sixty Christians packed into a church hall in Shoreditch, east London. But they hadn’t come to discuss theology or argue about women bishops. They had come to code. From morning to evening, the delegates at the first Church of England Digital Labs batted around ideas, sketched out wireframes, discussed user interfaces and began building websites, apps, and social media campaigns. A panel of judges then picked out the two best ideas, which will be funded, fully developed and released by the Church of England later this year.

The mastermind behind this unlikely Christian hackathon was Adrian Harris, the head of digital for the Church of England. A mild-mannered man in his thirties, Harris was happily making a career for himself in digital communications – working at Bupa, Tesco, and the Conservative Party – when he was recruited by the Church of England in 2016.

His appointment was effectively an admission by the church that it had fallen badly behind on digital media and new technologies. “It was half of a junior staff members’ time,” he says. “It was a bare bones operation – I think the web budget was ten grand a year. It was neglected.”

Read it all.

In the London Church Times (18th May 2018), Bishop Josiah Idowu-Fearon, the Secretary General of the Anglican Consultative Council claimed that Gafcon had been ‘inaccurate’ in describing the newly formed Anglican Church in Brazil as part of the Anglican Communion and claimed that “To be part of the Anglican Communion requires being in communion with the see of Canterbury, which this Church is not.”

Here lies the difference between mere institutionalism and spiritual reality.

The basic reason why there is a division amongst the Anglicans of Brazil is because the Episcopal Church of Brazil has departed from the teaching of Scripture, and hence from Anglican teaching, concerning sex and marriage. The division is not over a matter of church politics or personal ambition. It is a matter of the fundamentals of the faith, of what makes a true church, of the authority of God’s word.

In 2005, the Diocese of Recife withdrew from the existing Church body over this issue. In so doing it was being true to Scripture and to the overwhelming majority view of the Communion’s Bishops as expressed in Lambeth 1.10 of 1998. In 2016, after court cases, it had to surrender much of its property. And yet, under God, the Diocese continues, grows and is now in a position to become a Province, with several Dioceses.

Throughout this period, orthodox Bishops (such as Archbishop Greg Venables of South America) upheld the Diocese and supported it and ministered within it. Because this was an issue of basic theology, the Gafcon movement recognised the Diocese and arranged for the consecration of the present Archbishop. Gafcon held on to faithful Anglican Christians whose ‘fault’ was merely that they were accepting biblical and Anglican teaching. Gafcon holds the Communion together while we wait to see if other instruments of the Communion will do what is right.

Read it all.

Read it all.

Gafcon – Uniting and Reforming: Part 3 https://t.co/iZOrGRx2vt #anglican #nigeria #gafcon2018

— Kendall Harmon (@KendallHarmon6) May 29, 2018

A court in the Netherlands has said a third gender should be enshrined in law in a ground-breaking ruling for people who do not identify as either male or female.

The Limburg District Court in the city of Roermond decided an unnamed applicant could be recorded on their birth register as “gender undetermined”.

Until now, Dutch citizens have had to be registered as either a man or woman.

Read it all.

Lord God Almighty, who hast given to us the vision of thy holiness, and therewith of our unworthiness to be thy witnesses: Touch, we pray thee, our lips with thy cleansing fire; that so cleansed and hallowed, we may go forth amongst men as those whom thou hast sent; for Jesus Christ’s sake.

—Daily Prayer, Eric Milner-White and G. W. Briggs, eds. (London: Penguin Books 1959 edition of the 1941 original)

Better is a little with the fear of the LORD than great treasure and trouble with it.

–Proverbs 15:16