In The Once and Future Worker, Cass turns high ideals into concrete proposals to actually heal the fractures splintering the American workforce.

The most compelling is the “wage subsidy.” Rather than luring large corporations to town with big tax breaks (like the Amazon HQ2 hysteria of 2017) or levying payroll taxes on low-income workers and then redistributing the money through entitlements, why not “pay for jobs” directly? What if a worker saw a “Federal Work Bonus” on her next paycheck, adding three extra dollars for every hour she had worked?

Cass also advocates building an educational system better suited to the four-fifths of students who do not complete the high-school-to-college-to-career path. Around two-thirds of Americans don’t have a four-year college degree. To better ensure that more of them can get good jobs and contribute to their communities, Cass proposes reinvesting in vocational training and shifting toward a more “tracked” form of schooling—similar to systems found in Europe—where students are grouped according to educational ability rather than lumped together in the same classroom.

Yet there’s one area that government policy can’t do much about: our cultural views about the value of lower-wage workers.

“Waiters, truck drivers, retail clerks, plumbers, secretaries, and others all spend their days helping the people around them and fulfilling roles crucial to the community,” writes Cass. “They do hard, unglamorous work for limited pay to support themselves and their families.” Why shouldn’t we admire those who do harder jobs for lower wages on a broad scale? We’re capable of doing this with police officers, teachers, and firefighters. Why shouldn’t the work done by trash collectors, housekeepers, and janitors deserve the same degree of respect?

For that, we need not just policy reform but a different story about work altogether.

Read it all.

If churches account for 50% of American civic life, as Robert Putnam famously pointed out, do they not also have a central role in reviving the fortunes of American workers, many of whom experience the pangs of meaninglessness and loneliness? https://t.co/vHgPmDLRnB

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) July 26, 2019

The Anglican bishop for the Metro Vancouver region has approved same-sex marriages in her diocese, beginning Thursday.

Bishop Melissa Skelton made the decision despite delegates of the national Anglican Church narrowly defeating the proposal during a July 12 vote at their general synod in Vancouver.

In the latest move in a worldwide Anglican conflict that has gone on for decades, Skelton seized on a compromise that the national church’s bishops offered a few days after the defeated vote, which would allow individual dioceses to adopt a “local option” on same-sex marriage rites.

Many of the country’s Anglicans had been bitterly disappointed when the motion to allow same-sex marriages lost by the slimmest of margins earlier this month.

Read it all.

Vancouver-area bishop approves same-sex marriages, despite national vote

In a statement Skelton also emphasized “no priest will be compelled to officiate at the marriage of a same-sex couple.”https://t.co/GnDjyja32L

— Edmonton Journal (@edmontonjournal) July 30, 2019

Senior Chinese officials made the surprising announcement on Tuesday that the authorities had released most detainees held in the government’s mass internment program for ethnic minority Muslims in China’s far west, but provided no firm numbers or specific details to support their assertion.

Alken Tuniaz, vice chairman of the government of the region of Xinjiang, said 90 percent of people held in what the government calls vocational training centers had been returned to society. It was a contention that would be nearly impossible to independently verify in the tightly controlled region and flew in the face of accounts of disappearances and detentions that have been compiled by relatives abroad and human rights groups.

Detainees who have been released from the camps say they were subjected to a high-pressure indoctrination program with the goal of removing any devotion to Islam and encouraging loyalty to China and its ruling Communist Party.

Read it all.

Uighur activists are skeptical of Chinese officials’ announcement that most detainees in Xinjiang have been released. “Uighurs abroad continue to be unable to reach their relatives in the region. No phone calls, no internet communications,” one said. https://t.co/HhhhEUPh9r

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

Christian book publishers and some Charleston-area faith leaders fear that a proposed tariff on Chinese imports could lead to a shortage of Bibles in the United States.

Millions of Bibles are produced in China annually and a 25 percent tariff recently proposed by President Donald Trump would make it more expensive to print the religious text, according to Mark Schoenwald, CEO of HarperCollins Christian Publishing. That cost increase likely would be passed on to consumers, who would pay more for the world’s best-selling book.

If the 25 percent increase is reflected in the sticker price, a Bible that costs $15 today would cost $18.50 after the tariff takes effect.

Read it all.

If the 25 percent increase is reflected in the sticker price, a Bible that costs $15 today would cost $18.50 after the tariff takes effect.https://t.co/7HXZPcmof1

— The Post and Courier (@postandcourier) July 27, 2019

[The] Rev. Phillips said she hopes that these events will lead to more people hearing about Jesus’s message.

“We hope that we’ll reach more people with the message the good news that Christians have to bring that Jesus came to bring peace,” she said.

“He said, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers that people might find ways to build bridges in their own life.'”

The Church of England recently announced that Cathedral attendance is bucking the national trend with 37,000 people attending every week.

Anglican leaders have planned a number of ‘seeker-friendly’ initiatives across the country, including a fifty-foot tall helter skelter inside Norwich Cathedral and a gin and prosecco festival at Peterborough.

Read it all.

In her descriptive winning sermon, Dr Masters, who has been preaching in her village church in Kent for ten years, reflects on Luke 8.40, in which a synagogue leader, Jairus, asks Jesus to heal his dying daughter. On the way to the house, Jesus heals a woman who had been “bleeding for 12 years” when she touches his cloak. He then raises Jairus’s child from the dead.

“If this was a television episode of Casualty,” Dr Masters begins, “the episode would have opened with a 999 call-handler: ‘Nearest unit divert to Church Lane, paediatric emergency at the vicarage: 12-year-old girl unconscious, breathing irregular. Hello? Are you still there Mr Jairus? Stay on the line, please, there is an ambulance on the way to your daughter.’”

Jairus would wait nervously on the drive for the ambulance, she said, only to see it flagged further down the road by a “pale and unkempt” homeless woman. This woman, an outcast, has spent all her money on unsuccessful gynaecological treatment, Dr Masters says — a detail from St Mark’s Gospel omitted from St Luke’s Gospel. “For 12 years, she has lived on the edges of society.”

Read it all (registration).

An amazing talk about love.

‘Incredible storyteller’ wins Sermon of the Year https://t.co/9VSRcVEw56 from @churchtimes

— Matt Stoney 💙💛 (@mattstoney35) July 24, 2019

From there:

Following reports of a judicial review granted by the High Court, the Church of England’s Chief Education Officer, Nigel Genders writes:
“We live at a time when children feel besieged by social media, weighed down by pressure and report poor mental health. Collective worship offers ten minutes in a day for children to pause and explore the big existential questions such as ‘Who am I?’ ‘Why am I here?’ and ‘How then should I live?”
“Offering this in the context of authentic Christian worship is not ‘religious indoctrination’ but a simple chance for children of all faiths and none to develop spiritually and gain perspective in an otherwise crowded day.

“There is much evidence of the value of collective worship to children and young people which is why thousands of community schools also have strong partnerships with local churches and faith groups. What happens in schools must be evidence-based and should not be in response to secular pressure group campaigns.”

(From a letter to The Times, 30/7/19)

Let thy continual mercy, O Lord, enkindle in thy Church the never-failing gift of love, that, following the example of thy servant William Wilberforce, we may have grace to defend the poor, and maintain the cause of those who have no helper; for the sake of him who gave his life for us, thy Son our Savior Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Giving thanks for Wilberforce who with Biblical conviction & persistence challenged vested power and sinful culture. pic.twitter.com/ZA8pVxyF0H

— Martyn Taylor (@StamfordVic) July 30, 2016

O God, who hast called us out of the bondage of sin into the perfect freedom of thy children: Grant us grace that we may yield ourselves unto thee as alive from the dead, and our bodily members as servants of righteousness; that we may have our fruit unto holiness, and in the end everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Hear my cry, O God, listen to my prayer; from the end of the earth I call to thee, when my heart is faint. Lead thou me to the rock that is higher than I; for thou art my refuge, a strong tower against the enemy. Let me dwell in thy tent for ever! Oh to be safe under the shelter of thy wings!

–Psalm 61:1-4