Anglican Erich Junger has seen a lot in his wide-ranging career as an enlisted sailor in the US Navy, a medical examiner, a police detective, and a crime scene analyst.

More than a decade ago, his calling shifted to a different kind of investigation. It’s careful work, sometimes secretive and sensitive. He goes after a master manipulator, an enemy responsible for physical, psychological, and spiritual havoc.

Well, not just any enemy. The Enemy.

An exorcist in the Anglican Church of North America, Junger now dons a clerical collar as he advises fellow believers to “put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes” (Eph. 6:11).

Scriptural directives to defend against the Devil take on a heavy urgency once you have seen the twisted work of Satan up close, again and again. Junger dedicated his ministry to studying spiritual warfare—specifically, the physiological effects of demonic activities—back in 2007. Ten years later, he became licensed as an exorcist.

To outsiders, the work of exorcism carries significant cultural baggage, whether due to misperceptions gleaned from the movies or the many real-life cases where possession had been faked or confused with mental illness. This is tricky spiritual territory to navigate. That’s why exorcists like Junger would say their expertise in identifying and combating the presence of the demonic is so crucial right now.

Read it all.

This year, eighth-grade reading scores in 31 states dropped two to seven points — which the federal government deemed significant — compared with their performances in 2017. Indiana, New Hampshire and Virginia had the largest declines. Fourth-grade reading scores dropped in 17 states, with New Jersey’s six-point drop the largest. Only one state, Mississippi, improved, the data showed.

James F. Lane, the superintendent of public instruction in Virginia, said that while grade-level proficiency was a goal, the school system “must also recognize that Virginia’s schools are enrolling increasing numbers of students whose learning is impacted by poverty and trauma.” He said the school system needed to recruit and retain high-quality teachers and equip them to meet the needs of a “changing student population.”

Average math scores fared considerably better, particularly among fourth graders. Nine states had significant increases in fourth-grade math, compared with 2017. Again, Mississippi led the pack. The eighth-grade score in three states improved, while those in six states declined.

American students have made large gains in math and small gains in reading since 1990. But those improvements began to level out around 2009. There is no consensus on why that happened.

Read it all.

The average American 8th-grade reading score on a national exam declined in more than half of the states https://t.co/XQa5pQWfzE

— The New York Times (@nytimes) October 30, 2019

Last week the literary world bade adieu to Professor Harold Bloom, the most prodigious and well-known literary critic of the second half of the twentieth century. Looking back over approximately fifty years of writing, we conclude that one of the recursive and unifying features of his extensive output is the insistence upon regarding sacred works as rhetorical products, along with the attunement to the theological dimensions of imaginative fiction. In creating a model of how to construe the relationship between religion and literature as modes of cultural activity, Bloom fused the insights of two formidable precursors. From the minister-cum-scholar Northrop Frye, he began to view the totality of literary creation as an organic and interconnected whole, a “great code” founded on and decipherable with the aid of Scripture. From M.H. Abrams, his undergraduate adviser at Cornell, he learned not just that poets too were preoccupied with spiritual concerns, but that every instance of poetic communication necessarily involves four components: author, text, world, and audience.

Nevertheless, we can also speak of three discrete stages of Bloom’s criticism. The first is crystallized in the oft-misunderstood book The Anxiety of Influence (1973), in which he used Freudian psychoanalysis as a method for understanding the dynamics of artistic creation. In essence, he argued that one could trace a common process whereby young poets rebel against the literary forbearers that simultaneously and paradoxically shape and nourish their artistic sensibilities, in order to carve out a space for their own originality and yearning for greatness.

Read it all.

A Recalcitrant Influence

Matthew Creighton, a PhD Candidate in Religion and Literature at the Divinity School, considers the legacy of the late Harold Bloom, who died last week at the age of 89.https://t.co/vFmhp59lJs pic.twitter.com/n1iHaZa6xv

— Sightings: Religion in Public Life (@DivSightings) October 24, 2019

None of the largest Churches in Northern Ireland have said they are prepared to carry out same-sex marriages.

The Church of Ireland, Methodist Church of Ireland and Presbyterian Church in Ireland all stated that they will only celebrate marriages between a man and a woman.

The Catholic Church expressed its concerns at the “redefinition” of marriage, but did not comment directly on whether it would hold same-sex wedding ceremonies on its properties.

The Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster did not reply when approached for comment, although it has previously expressed its opposition to same-sex marriage.

However, All Souls Church, a non-subscribing Presbyterian Church based in south Belfast, confirmed it will provide the opportunity for same-sex couples to have their marriage solemnised.

Read it all.

We sat with one young mother of three, in her small flat in one of the blocks near the shell of Grenfell Tower. She lives in what is euphemistically called ‘temporary accommodation’ (some in her block had been in such a state for twenty years or more). The block had been without hot water for many weeks. When it was finally fixed, within a week she was then told to move her family to another flat in the block as the owners wanted it back. If she refused, the only options were a flat in Essex miles away from her children’s schools or homelessness. The lock on the door to the ground floor balcony did not work, making the apartment vulnerable to intruders. Doors were hanging loose from kitchen cabinets making them unusable, and mouse droppings were scattered across the floor despite her putting down traps. Because the flat was offered by the Council yet administered by a Housing Association, it was hard to know who to complain to. As a result, repeated calls to the landlord had yielded little change. Talking to tenants in the block, the repeated claim was that they would say ‘we will get back to you’ and never did. Similar stories are found all over north Kensington, people reluctant to complain in case they are branded troublemakers, echoing the story of Chloe Williams, who faced eviction from her one bedroom council flat in Kensington after complaining about rats, mice, cockroaches and bedbugs in her home.

All this is happening in one of the wealthiest boroughs of the country. Many feel our drastically reduced social housing stock has become in the words of one resident a ‘dumping ground of the most vulnerable in our society’. It comes so low down on our list of priorities, that the people who live in it, including many of the most vulnerable, feel abandoned. If a society can be judged on how it treats it poorest and most defenceless people, we are not doing well. The people we met repeatedly feel fobbed off, uncared for, and that the very people who are responsible for their housing don’t seem to care enough to pick up the phone or arrange repairs.

Which brings us back to Grenfell United. The kinds of change GU have been campaigning for – stronger regulation and a change of culture around health & safety standards (including the removal of unsafe cladding) and a proper tenant voice – should not be hard to establish. The financial crash led to tighter regulation of financial institutions so that if a bank mis-sells there are clear penalties. If a school is not run properly there is an inspection system to label it as ‘needs improvement’. Yet tenants with landlords who fail to maintain their property, rendering it unsafe, have no effective remedy, other than repeated attempts to get landlords to listen. And that didn’t stop Grenfell happening.

Two years on since Grenfell, nothing much has changed….

Read it all.

Some thoughts on Grenfell, on the eve of the publication of the Report on Phase 1 of the Public Inquiryhttps://t.co/se5Q0XsjIc

— Graham Tomlin (@gtomlin) October 28, 2019

The incarnation of God in Christ is God’s confirmation that the bodies of all people are holy. As Paul wrote, they are temples. Our congregation seeks to minister to people in a holistic way, in body, mind, and soul, by providing food and clothes as well as through community organizing, worship, and faith formation.

The challenge for all of us in this ministry comes in taking seriously Jesus’ model of reaching out to people we might fear to touch. People who are addicted to drugs certainly fit the category of modern lepers. It did give me pause during my training to learn that rescue breathing was part of the emergency response, and that if I did not use a rescue breathing mask or barrier mask, I would be at risk of absorbing some of the residue of the drugs.

Our Sunday morning worship services include people who live on the street. Our members are divided about whether or not that is a good thing. For various security reasons, police have recommended that we restrict entrance to people known to be part of the congregation. I can’t imagine doing that. It would be giving in to fear and effectively profiling those who come and worship with us. We choose not to lock our doors to keep anyone out.

Am I afraid that someone might come in and harm us? I’d be lying if I said I was not. We’ve seen people become belligerent at our Sunday dinners, often under the influence of drugs. News reports regularly remind us that the worship hour of any faith is not guaranteed to be sanctuary. Our goal is to be as prepared as we can be, and at the same time as emotionally, spiritually, and physically open as we can be—for all our neighbors. Christ calls us to operate more out of preposterous love than destructive fear. Jim or someone like him will come back one of these nights. We want to be ready to help.

Read it all.

The 6-2 victory capped the most unlikely of World Series. The road team won all seven games. That had never happened before. Only the baseball gods can understand how this stuff plays out sometimes. The team that started 19-31 is the World Series champion — for the first time in franchise history, going back to its birth in 1969 as the Montreal Expos, and the first time for a Washington baseball team since the Senators in the halcyon days of 1924.

The Nationals trailed 3-1 in the eighth inning of the wild-card game. They trailed 3-1 in the eighth inning of the final game of the division series against the Dodgers. This time they decided not to wait that long. Manager Dave Martinez likes to say, “Let’s go 1-0 today.” The Nats went 1-0 in the biggest game of the season.

“You know what? This is — I mean, honestly, all these years, all this hard work, this year, the struggles early — I mean, this is what it’s about right here,” Kendrick told Buster Olney in the immediate aftermath of the on-field celebration as Max Scherzer gave him a big hug. “This is what it’s about. I mean, words can’t even describe this feeling. It’s phenomenal. This group of guys that we got here, we fought all year. This makes it sweet. This is so sweet right now.”

Read it all.

“It was fitting that the Washington Nationals’ first World Series title required all 7 games,” writes @TylerKepner. It was “the greatest victory in the history of a luckless franchise in a city that had waited nearly a century for a night like this.” https://t.co/C0n6Iidg8F

— The New York Times (@nytimes) October 31, 2019

Tell us briefly the vision and story of Dinner Church.

As an 85-year-old church in the heart of Seattle, doing poorly month after month, we needed a new way to stay in the rescue mission. Otherwise we would have to move out of the city like so many others. This vision—a restoration of an ancient way of doing church that resonated with cosmopolitan Seattle—came at a time when we really needed it. When we first began Dinner Church, we were surprised how quickly it started to fill up with sinners and strangers and seculars—people whose lives, quite frankly, were not going all that well, though we would never see that in a Sunday morning gathering.

Where do you see biblical impetus for this way of doing church?

Dinner Church is about restoring the Jesus dinner table theology that was practiced during the apostolic era of the early church. It’s tough to find a mention in the Bible of Christians gathering without a table and food involved. Many of us haven’t taken into account how different it is to talk about Christ around a table as opposed to a traditional teaching environment. They assumed Christ would be there in the room. They had a sense of divine presence every time they gathered.

Why is a good meal so attractive to people?

It’s the best metaphor for the gospel we’ve found. We put out quality, abundant food because we’d rather show the gospel than have to just explain it. People walk through the line and see more food than they can possibly eat—all the colors and carved meats—and they realize Jesus paid for this. They’re not being billed for it. Then we build on this imagery throughout the evening. The food provides a critical, immediate sense of abundance of generosity and divine care for people.

Read it all.

#GodGotIt : RT derekhiebert: I did this interview piece for CT_Pastors on the Dinner Church movement, originally for a guide on church models. It’s now fully accessible.
I still think its a great strategy for churches and the mission of the gospel, espe… https://t.co/RYM3RNwfNy

— Joseph Jerry Rhule (@JerryRhule) October 30, 2019

O Thou, Who fillest heaven and earth, ever acting, ever at rest, Who art everywhere and everywhere art wholly present, Who art not absent even when far off, Who with Thy whole being fillest yet transcendest all things, Who teachest the hearts of the faithful without the din of words; teach us, we pray Thee, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

–Frederick B. Macnutt, The prayer manual for private devotions or public use on divers occasions: Compiled from all sources ancient, medieval, and modern (A.R. Mowbray, 1951)

The words of Nehemi’ah the son of Hacali’ah. Now it happened in the month of Chislev, in the twentieth year, as I was in Susa the capital, that Hana’ni, one of my brethren, came with certain men out of Judah; and I asked them concerning the Jews that survived, who had escaped exile, and concerning Jerusalem. And they said to me, “The survivors there in the province who escaped exile are in great trouble and shame; the wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates are destroyed by fire.” When I heard these words I sat down and wept, and mourned for days; and I continued fasting and praying before the God of heaven. And I said, “O LORD God of heaven, the great and terrible God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments; let thy ear be attentive, and thy eyes open, to hear the prayer of thy servant which I now pray before thee day and night for the people of Israel thy servants, confessing the sins of the people of Israel, which we have sinned against thee. Yea, I and my father’s house have sinned. We have acted very corruptly against thee, and have not kept the commandments, the statutes, and the ordinances which thou didst command thy servant Moses. Remember the word which thou didst command thy servant Moses, saying, ‘If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the peoples; but if you return to me and keep my commandments and do them, though your dispersed be under the farthest skies, I will gather them thence and bring them to the place which I have chosen, to make my name dwell there.’ They are thy servants and thy people, whom thou hast redeemed by thy great power and by thy strong hand. O Lord, let thy ear be attentive to the prayer of thy servant, and to the prayer of thy servants who delight to fear thy name; and give success to thy servant today, and grant him mercy in the sight of this man.” Now I was cupbearer to the king.

–Nehemiah 1:1-11

UM News: What do you make of the responses to the special General Conference both in the U.S. and the central conferences?

Carter: I preached in three successive churches the next three weeks in Florida — Ft. Myers, Clearwater, Jupiter. And I found increasingly that many people felt like they needed to create a counternarrative, to say, but that’s not who I am, or that’s not who our church is in the U.S.

Now many people were in favor of the outcome. Many traditionalists were. I found that they needed a great deal of, at times, pastoral care. They just felt like they were the object of this response, this emotionally intensive response.

And then many LGBTQ persons and some who talked to me were wondering: Do I have a future in the church? Can I go through the candidacy process for ministry?

UM News: I’ve heard from a number of Africans who feel like they’re being blamed for what happened. But of course, Africans are about a third of the voters. What are you hearing?

Carter: So some of the African leaders have talked to me about a couple of things. One, just that their experience is that the U.S. church at times exports its divisions into the African context. The second thing they sometimes say is that they are more than one-issue people. The connection is important in Africa because, for many African leaders and people, mission is not ideological. It’s life and death.

It’s whether you have water or a hospital or access to education for a girl or child. And so that conversation is maturing. I would say the strength of the African relationship to the United States (and I wrote about this in the summer) is the incredible missional partnerships that exist between annual conferences of the U.S. and Africa, and they’re mutual.

Read it all.

The National Center for Health Statistics’ latest annual report dropped Wednesday morning. And like reports from the last few years, the takeaway from this year’s batch of numbers is this: American men are in trouble.

Another drop in life expectancy for that demographic has brought the average life expectancy for American men to 76.1 years in 2017, the year for which the data have been finalized and released. That’s compared with 76.5 in 2014, according to the data – a not-insignificant drop.

Once they reach age 65, men are projected to live another 18.1 years, compared with 20.6 years for women, according to Bloomberg, which cited data from the study.

Read it all.

Slide In Life Expectancy For American Men Continues Amid Spike In “Deaths Of Despair” https://t.co/iq2qRLOy12

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) October 30, 2019

The downward trend in attendance at Church of England services continued in 2018 despite ‘A Church Near You’, the Church’s local church-finder website, receiving more than 38.5 million page views in the last year.

The recently released 2018 Ministry Statistics showed that most key measures of attendance fell by between 10 per cent and 20 per cent from 2008 to 2018.

However, the report explains that the overall pattern of gradual decline in attendance masks differences in experience in individual parishes over the past decade. In 10 per cent of parishes Usual Sunday Attendance has actually increased, while in 40 per cent of parishes attendance has decreased.

In the largest group, 50 per cent of parishes, there is insufficient evidence to form a clear conclusion about the trend.

A digital report for 2019 shows that the Church of England increased Advent and Christmas social media reach by 1.14 million from 2017, to 7.94 million, however Christmas attendance, which includes Christmas Day and Christmas Eve, fell in 2018, having risen steadily since 2013.

Read it all.

“The work of the Spirit can be compared to mining. The Spirit’s work is to blast to pieces the sinner’s hardness of heart and his frivolous opposition to God. The period of the awakening can be likened to the time when the blasts are fired. The time between the awakenings corresponds, on the other hand, to the time when the deep holes are being bored with great effort into the hard rock.

To bore these holes is hard and difficult and a task which tries one’s patience. To light the fuse and fire the shot is not only easy but also very interesting work. One sees “results” from such work. It creates interest, too; shots resound, and pieces fly in every direction! It takes trained workmen to do the boring. Anybody can light a fuse.

…the Spirit calls us to do the quiet, difficult, trying work of boring holy explosive materials into the souls of people by daily and unceasing prayer. This is the real preparatory work for the next awakening. The reason why such a long period of time elapses between awakenings is simply that the Spirit cannot find believers who are willing to do the heavy part of the mining work. Everybody desires awakenings; but we prefer to let other do the boring into the hard rock.”

–Ole Hallesby, Prayer (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortess, 1994 printing of the 1931 original), [Book Three] pp.77-78

[…] En rekke kirke- og organisasjonsledere gir sin fulle tilslutning til en erklæring utarbeidet på forhånd av professor Ole Hallesby (bildet), rektor Hans Høeg og Berggrav. (25.10.1940) #Okkupasjonen pic.twitter.com/nbbdTn0lUX

— Okkupasjonen live: 1941 (@okkupasjonen) October 25, 2018

There does appear to be an inconsistency here. Bishop Stuart rightly notes that only an ordinance that has received assent can be referred to the tribunal. But in his pastoral letter he told us that “I have communicated with the Primate and he has indicated that he will refer the Ordinance to the Appellate Tribunal.” Yet how can the Primate refer the Ordinance and have an opinion on it issued if Bishop Stuart has not yet given assent? Make up your mind, please.

So where to from here? Newcastle now has an ordinance in limbo that effectively states that marriage between a homosexual couple is perfectly ok. It is, by any assessment, an attempt to introduce a de facto change in the doctrine of marriage without having the courage to just say “we’re changing the doctrine of marriage” or having provided anything like the necessary theological justification. Given the deep debate over this topic in the recent years (not to mention the repeated motions in General Synod affirming what the church’s doctrine of marriage – not least that it is between a man and a woman), those that claim this is not a change in the doctrine of marriage can only be understood to be disingenuous. Or utterly ignorant of the current debate. The latter is simply impossible. But the bishop is is signalling that he won’t give it assent and so the Appellate Tribunal cannot consider it, even though that’s just what Bishop Stuart wants them to do in order to provide him cover to give assent.

And so Newcastle, led by its bishop, has pushed us further to the cliff edge.

What will the Appellate Tribunal say? Will they even ever meet? Will the Primate publicly back the position of General Synod and call on revisionist bishops to cease their deeply damaging actions? What will happen when the bishops meet in Melbourne next month?

Read it all.

We welcome the Synod of the Diocese of Newcastle to the Cathedral over these next two days. Bishop Peter delivers his Charge to the Synod, speaking of contemplative action and silence, stillness, and solitude. pic.twitter.com/tXGEa4tlO8

— Christ Church Cathedral Newcastle NSW (@newycathedral) October 25, 2019

Among elite U.S. universities, Harvard, Yale, Brown, and Georgetown have all admitted in recent years that at one time they benefited financially from the slave trade. But two Protestant seminaries have now gone a step further, saying that in recognition of their own connections to racism they have a Christian duty to pay reparations.

Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Va., the flagship institution of the U.S. Episcopal Church, announced in September that it has set aside $1.7 million for a reparations fund, given that enslaved persons once worked on its campus and that the school participated in racial segregation even after slavery ended.

Earlier this month, Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, N.J., followed suit with an announcement of a $27 million endowed fund for reparations, from which $1.1 million would be dispersed annually.

“As a theology school, we use the language of confession to acknowledge our complicity with slavery,” says M. Craig Barnes, the Princeton seminary president. In its announcement, the seminary said a historical audit, while showing that the school never itself owned slaves, nonetheless made clear that it “benefited from the slave economy, both through investments in Southern banks … and from donors who profited from slavery.”

Read it all.

Two Protestant seminaries — Virginia Theological Seminary and Princeton Theological Seminary — say that in recognition of their own historical connections to slavery and systemic racism, they have a Christian duty to pay reparations.https://t.co/DXx2f0PBzy

— NPR (@NPR) October 29, 2019

The Renewal and Reform programme has attracted controversy, in part because it has begun to spend the church’s huge investment fund – not just the return it generates – in order to establish new evangelical churches, often in the heart of cities. More than 100 new churches were announced last year in coastal areas, market towns and urban housing estates – a serious attempt to expand Anglicanism, while about 25 churches are closed each year.

Some, like St Peter’s in Brighton, have modernised the music, decor and ethos of old churches. Others have occupied secular buildings. For a time, the Harbour church in Portsmouth could be found in an old department store. In Swindon, plans are under way to turn a former Great Western Railway building into a large new place of worship. The Fountains in Bradford will soon take over an old nightclub complex, once home to less godly venues called Revolution, Tequila and Vibe. Gas Street is technically “St Luke’s”, but churchy names are falling out of fashion too.

The plan is to attract young people, in part by going to the city centres, where young people can be found. The next round of grants from the church’s Strategic Development Fund, part of the Renewal and Reform programme, will be explicitly devoted to projects that “are targeted on promoting church growth within the largest urban areas; and one or both of younger generations and poorer communities”. In effect, though everyone insists that the church has not forgotten the countryside, it means a focus for the future on the UK’s 75 largest cities and towns.

There are about 150 students at Gas Street on the night I visit. Worship starts at 8pm, before which they socialise over plates of paella from a giant pan. It is early in the term and some of them may be taking their first steps into the church, so the organisers asked me not to talk to people at random. Instead I am introduced to several regulars, including Crystal, who is certainly a fine example of how they can help some young people in need. Right now the church’s own needs are nearly as great, however. If they do not ignite an Anglican revival among young people in the next couple of decades, then these new city-centre ventures will be the last stand of the Church of England.

Read it all.

Churches in nightclubs and Anglican gyms: can the C of E win back city dwellers? https://t.co/pqDeP3EqCs

— The Guardian (@guardian) October 30, 2019

O God, whose justice continually challenges thy Church to live according to its calling: Grant us who now remember the work of John Wyclif contrition for the wounds which our sins inflict on thy Church, and such love for Christ that we may seek to heal the divisions which afflict his Body; through the same Jesus Christ, who livest and reignest with thee in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

#WeLoveUKBecause of John Wyclif (Come and visit him at the Reformation Memorial in Worms 🙂 pic.twitter.com/OAp2NECtmX

— JNJ (@JNJ) July 3, 2016

O Thou, Who sendest forth light and createst the dawn, making Thy sun to shine upon the evil and on the good: enlighten the blindness of our hearts by the knowledge of Thy truth, and lift up the light of Thy countenance upon us; that in Thy light we may see light and behold at length in the light of grace that light of glory everlasting; and save us, good Lord.

–Frederick B. Macnutt, The prayer manual for private devotions or public use on divers occasions: Compiled from all sources ancient, medieval, and modern (A.R. Mowbray, 1951)

And I saw in the right hand of him who was seated on the throne a scroll written within and on the back, sealed with seven seals; and I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, “Who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals?” And no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look into it, and I wept much that no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look into it. Then one of the elders said to me, “Weep not; lo, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.”

And between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders, I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, with seven horns and with seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth; and he went and took the scroll from the right hand of him who was seated on the throne. And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and with golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints; and they sang a new song, saying,

“Worthy art thou to take the scroll and to open its seals,
for thou wast slain and by thy blood didst ransom men for God
from every tribe and tongue and people and nation,
and hast made them a kingdom and priests to our God,
and they shall reign on earth.”

–Revelation 5:1-10

At least 100 journalists, human rights activists and political dissidents had their smartphones attacked by spyware that exploited a vulnerability in WhatsApp, according to the Facebook-owned messaging service.

The victims of the attack, which was first revealed by the Financial Times in May, were contacted by WhatsApp on Tuesday.

Their phones were targeted through WhatsApp’s call function by customers of the Israel-based NSO Group, which makes Pegasus, a spyware program. Once installed, Pegasus is designed to take over all of a phone’s functions.

Read it all.

A vulnerability in WhatsApp – the messaging app used by 1.5bn people globally – was used to target at least 100 journalists, human rights activists and political dissidents with an Israeli firm’s spyware that was designed to take over smartphones https://t.co/pCkmOUV9z5

— Financial Times (@FinancialTimes) October 29, 2019

Read it all (note: content may not be suitable for all blog readers). Also, please note that the idea that non-monogamy is growing is strongly open to question.

“It’s a more libertarian approach to sexuality, in which people can negotiate custom relationships, like contracts between firms or treaties between countries, while still retaining some sexual sovereignty and freedom of mate choice.”https://t.co/HNBDgJdCa1

— Quillette (@Quillette) October 29, 2019

I will take comments on this submitted by email only to KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

“We oppose any form of euthanasia – that is the direct, deliberate and intentional act of taking life – as well as physician-assisted suicide – that is the direct, deliberate and intentional support of committing suicide – because they fundamentally contradict the inalienable value of human life, and therefore are inherently and consequentially morally and religiously wrong, and should be forbidden without exceptions.”

Representatives of the Abrahamic religions made the statement in a position paper that they signed and released in the Vatican on Monday regarding end-of-life issues, such as euthanasia, assisted suicide and palliative care.

The term, Abrahamic monotheistic religions, derives from the Old Testament biblical figure Abraham who is recognized by Jews, Christians, Muslims and others.

They categorically condemned any pressure upon dying patients to end their lives by active and deliberate actions.

Read it all.

Leaders from three of the world’s major religions have joined forces against assisted suicide and euthanasia, in a declaration issued at the Vatican.https://t.co/tOw08ASiwp

— Al Arabiya English (@AlArabiya_Eng) October 28, 2019

The Iron Curtain that once divided Europe may be long gone, but the continent today is split by stark differences in public attitudes toward religion, minorities and social issues such as gay marriage and legal abortion. Compared with Western Europeans, fewer Central and Eastern Europeans would welcome Muslims or Jews into their families or neighborhoods, extend the right of marriage to gay or lesbian couples or broaden the definition of national identity to include people born outside their country.

These differences emerge from a series of surveys conducted by Pew Research Center between 2015 and 2017 among nearly 56,000 adults (ages 18 and older) in 34 Western, Central and Eastern European countries, and they continue to divide the continent more than a decade after the European Union began to expand well beyond its Western European roots to include, among others, the Central European countries of Poland and Hungary, and the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

Read it all.

MAPS: Eastern and Western Europeans differ on importance of religion, views of minorities and key social issues https://t.co/FlnLWKL3nz pic.twitter.com/Ityj9mFmRl

— Pew Research Center (@pewresearch) May 23, 2019

‘If prayer is, as we have seen, the central function of the new life of faith, the very heart-beat of our life in God, it is obvious that our prayer life must become the target against which Satan directs his best and most numerous darts’

–Ole Hallesby Prayer (Augsburg, 1931), Book Four

[…] En rekke kirke- og organisasjonsledere gir sin fulle tilslutning til en erklæring utarbeidet på forhånd av professor Ole Hallesby (bildet), rektor Hans Høeg og Berggrav. (25.10.1940) #Okkupasjonen pic.twitter.com/nbbdTn0lUX

— Okkupasjonen live: 1941 (@okkupasjonen) October 25, 2018

Abortion, pornography, drugs, homosexual relationships – these are some of the issues which most British people no longer consider to be “immoral”.

Kings’ College in London compared figures of 1989 with opinion polls conducted this year on a range of moral issues. In the last 30 years later, there has been a significant fall in the number of people who see gay relationships as morally wrong, down from 40% then to 13% today. The percentage of citizens who believe having children outside marriage is not moral is now 13%, down from 24% in 1989. On the issue of pornography, adult sex magazines were seen as immoral by 38% of the population 30 years ago, a figure that falls down to 22% (the biggest shift happening in the female population).

The number of people who perceive taking soft drugs such as cannabis as morally wrong has also collapsed. In 1989, it was 60%, now it is 29%. Even the consumption of heroin is now seen as acceptable by 33% of the population.

Read it all.

LIFE & TECH: Only infidelity has not suffered a change in attitudes compared to 30 years ago, shows research conducted by King’s College London on a range of issues.
https://t.co/LaDWPSX4Lg

— Evangelical Focus (@Evan_Focus) October 28, 2019

The Pew survey shows a definite decline in weekly churchgoing, alongside the growing disaffiliation of people who once would have been loosely attached to churches and denominations — cultural Catholics, Christmas-and-Easter Methodists, Jack Mormons and the like. But recent Gallup numbers indicate that reported weekly and almost-weekly church attendance has only “edged down” lately, falling to 38 percent in 2017 from 42 percent in 2008 — a smaller drop than the big decline in affiliation reported by Pew. And long-term Gallup data suggest that any recent dip in churchgoing is milder than the steep decline in the 1960s — and that today’s churchgoing rate isn’t that different from the rate in the 1930s and 1940s, before the postwar religious boom.

The relatively stability of the Gallup data fits with analysis offered by the sociologists Landon Schnabel and Sean Bock in a 2017 paper, “The Persistent and Exceptional Intensity of American Religion.” Drawing on the General Social Survey, they argued that the recent decline of institutional religion is entirely a function of the formerly weakly affiliated ceasing to identify with religious bodies entirely; for the strongly affiliated (just over a third of the American population), the trend between 1990 and the present is a flat line, their numbers neither growing nor collapsing but holding steady across an era of supposedly dramatic religious change.

That resilience should not be entirely comforting for Christian churches, since both their everyday work and their cultural influence depends on reaching beyond their core adherents, and inspiring a mix of sympathy and interest among people who aren’t at worship every week. Indeed, combining an enduring core of belief with a general falling-away could make the Christian position permanently embattled, tempting the pious to paranoia and misguided alliances while the wider culture becomes more anticlerical, more like 19th-century secular liberalism in its desire to batter down the redoubts of traditional belief.

But for now that resilience also puts some limits on how successfully anti-Christian policies can be pursued, how easily religious conservatism can be marginalized within the conservative coalition (not easily) and how completely the liberal coalition can be secularized — not completely at all, so long as its base remains heavily African-American and Hispanic.

Read it all.

Always a nice surprise to see where a simple tweet can end up. @DouthatNYT makes a good point here – the collapse of American Christianity is much more complex than the rise of the “nones.” It has to do with birth cohorts and the life cycle effect, too. https://t.co/b7q6GhjT8s

— Ryan Burge 📊 (@ryanburge) October 29, 2019

Precious in thy sight, O Lord, is the death of thy saints, whose faithful witness, by thy providence, hath its great reward: We give thee thanks for thy martyrs James Hannington and his companions, who purchased with their blood a road unto Uganda for the proclamation of the Gospel; and we pray that with them we also may obtain the crown of righteousness which is laid up for all who love the appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Today we remember James Hannington, the son of a prosperous 19th century businessman who was martyred in Eastern Equatorial Africa on this day in 1884 https://t.co/XanG7vsJr8 pic.twitter.com/0bZ8rrcqc7

— Peterborough Cathedral (@pborocathedral) October 29, 2019

We heartily beseech Thee of Thy goodness, O Lord, to deliver us from adversity to the body and from all noxious things which tempt and beset the soul: and as Thou dost mercifully ordain that we may dwell in outward tranquility, so grant to us also Thine inward peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

–Frederick B. Macnutt, The prayer manual for private devotions or public use on divers occasions: Compiled from all sources ancient, medieval, and modern (A.R. Mowbray, 1951)

After this I looked, and lo, in heaven an open door! And the first voice, which I had heard speaking to me like a trumpet, said, “Come up hither, and I will show you what must take place after this.” At once I was in the Spirit, and lo, a throne stood in heaven, with one seated on the throne! And he who sat there appeared like jasper and carnelian, and round the throne was a rainbow that looked like an emerald. Round the throne were twenty-four thrones, and seated on the thrones were twenty-four elders, clad in white garments, with golden crowns upon their heads. From the throne issue flashes of lightning, and voices and peals of thunder, and before the throne burn seven torches of fire, which are the seven spirits of God; and before the throne there is as it were a sea of glass, like crystal. And round the throne, on each side of the throne, are four living creatures, full of eyes in front and behind: the first living creature like a lion, the second living creature like an ox, the third living creature with the face of a man, and the fourth living creature like a flying eagle. And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all round and within, and day and night they never cease to sing, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!”

–Revelation 4:1-8