“It’s hard finding love,” Rippy said, noting that his wife of 30 years was somewhere nearby. “I’d hate to be single again. It’s scary, dead set.”

But that’s why the balls matter, he added. Along with the awkward singles, the free-flowing beer and the backfiring pickup trucks, or “utes,” turned on and off to create fiery explosions called key bangs, there are people who connected at balls and come back to socialize.

“Who here is a couple?” Rippy yelled, meandering through the crowd.

Within a minute, Jess and Matt Chown emerged. He works on sheep farms; she works at an aged-care home for veterans.

“We met at a ball in 2011,” Ms. Chown said. “I laid eyes on him and it was love at first sight.”

“You know why I come? To do things I can’t do in church,” Mr. Chown said. Standing at least 6-foot-3 and wider than a tree cut for timber, he kicked a trash bin, making a loud clang.

Everyone laughed, including his wife.

Read it all.

“You know why I come? To do things I can’t do in church.” Australia’s Bachelor and Spinster balls bring together single people across the country’s vast distances. https://t.co/ml0oTxW6ds

— New York Times World (@nytimesworld) November 19, 2019

Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby says Jesus would not have got a UK visa under the points-based system being proposed by the government.

The clergyman, who has been outspoken about social justice, said there would have to be a “shortage of carpenters” in Britain for Jesus to be granted entry during an event at the CBI conference in London.

He said: “Our founder Jesus Christ was of course not white, middle class and British – he certainly wouldn’t have got a visa – unless we’re particularly short of carpenters.”

The Archbishop was talking as part in a discussion on social inequality chaired by the BBC Business Editor Faisal Islam who shared a clip on his Twitter feed.

Read it all.

Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby says Jesus would not have got a UK visahttps://t.co/ZMJyhSvCF8 pic.twitter.com/cMa4OlMCnz

— Mirror Politics (@MirrorPolitics) November 18, 2019

The first black woman to become a Church of England bishop will be consecrated during a ceremony at St Paul’s Cathedral.

In June it was announced chaplain to the speaker of the house, The Rev Dr Rose Hudson-Wilkin, will be the new Bishop of Dover.

She said she feels a “bit like a bride” ahead of Tuesday’s consecration.

Read it all.

Today’s the big day! We’re at St Paul’s Cathedral for the consceration of Reverend Rose Hudson-Wilkin – the first black female bishop of Dover #blackexcellence pic.twitter.com/Aaerynbmbh

— The Voice Newspaper (@TheVoiceNews) November 19, 2019

Almighty God, who didst give to thy servants Mechthilde and Gertrude special gifts of grace to understand and teach the truth as it is in Christ Jesus: Grant, we beseech thee, that by their teachings we may know thee, the one true God, and Jesus Christ thy Son, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

O Lord Jesus Christ, Who knowest the Father, even as Thou art known of Him, lead us onward evermore in the knowledge of Thee Who art the truth, till at last we see Thy face, and know Thee as we are known of Thee; Who with the Father and the Holy Ghost livest and reignest, one God for ever and ever.

–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 Lord reigns; let the earth rejoice; let the many coastlands be glad! Clouds and thick darkness are round about him; righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne. Fire goes before him, and burns up his adversaries round about. His lightnings lighten the world; the earth sees and trembles. The mountains melt like wax before the LORD, before the Lord of all the earth. The heavens proclaim his righteousness; and all the peoples behold his glory.

–Psalm 97:1-6

In a television event unlike anything “Jeopardy!” has staged before, three of the game show’s record-breaking players — James Holzhauer, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter — will compete against each other for the sweeping title of “greatest of all time.”

The show’s announcement on Monday came shortly after Holzhauer, the most recent player to become a household name, won the Tournament of Champions after facing Emma Boettcher, the contestant who ended his 32-game streak earlier this year. Holzhauer’s dominant strategy and high-value bets made him into a national celebrity and set the stage for a matchup of this magnitude. “Jeopardy!” is milking the combined stardom for all it’s worth.

All three players hold records on the game show’s hall of fame. Jennings captivated “Jeopardy!” fans with a 74-game winning streak in 2004 during which he made $2.52 million, which remains the highest total winnings during regular-season play.

Read it all.

The top three contestants in JEOPARDY! history will face off in an epic primetime special event: “JEOPARDY! The Greatest of All Time,” starting January 7 at 8|7c on ABC. #JeopardyGOAT pic.twitter.com/7PJUi57206

— ABC (@ABCNetwork) November 18, 2019

Fr. Botros Roshdy, a priest who serves there, tucks an iPhone into his black cassock. He has a social media presence and is known across the country. He is more willing than most to discuss the persecution faced by the zabbaleen and Egypt’s other Christians. “Neither the church leaders you have met, nor those you are going to meet, are speaking freely,” he says after we sit down. “If they could speak freely, they would discuss the discriminatory laws, the infiltration of the judicial system by the Muslim Brotherhood.”

Roshdy notes that little has changed for the Copts over the last decade, despite the hollow promises of freedom that came with the Arab Spring and current president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s self-presentation as a defender of Christians. “We are still being used as a playing card in political games. When the government wants to win the support of Copts during the elections, they offer to let us build a church.” But these overtures have not changed the landscape. “Take the blasphemy law,” ­Roshdy says. “It has been applied only against Christians.”

Roshdy mentions some typical incidents of persecution. One involved an elderly Coptic woman in Minya who was attacked, stripped naked, and dragged through the streets. “Everyone knows who did this crime, but there has been no punishment.” A group of Coptic students in Bani ­Mazar filmed a video in which they mocked ISIS. “People in their town accused them of blasphemy for mocking Islam. So these young children were arrested and jailed. . . . They were finally freed and received asylum in ­Europe.”

Despite the persecution, Egypt’s Christians are winning converts. The number and names of converts must be carefully guarded, however, because conversion from Islam carries a high price. “Some of them are kicked out of their houses, some of them are fired, some of them have their kids taken away,” Roshdy says. “But they consider all of these troubles nothing for the sake of Christ. Their faith is so strong, they see him.” Cast out by their families, these men and women are adopted into the household of God.

Read it all.

In 2015, ISIS beheaded 21 Christians on a beach in Libya. Last month I met their families. It was inspiring to see how they—along with all Egypt’s Christians—seek to bring good out of evil amid suffering.https://t.co/K8WauAxNHI

— Matthew Schmitz (@matthewschmitz) November 11, 2019

Cuban Communist Party official Caridad Diego comes to the U.S. regularly to shop and visit relatives. When she returns to Cuba, she resumes her 9-to-5 job as director of Havana’s Office of Religious Affairs. The title sounds bland, but Ms. Diego oversees the repression of independent Cuban religious leaders. Like many bureaucrats in corrupt regimes, Ms. Diego arbitrarily enforces the law against her political enemies while flouting the same rules as she pleases.

Officials like this operate around the world, often in relative anonymity. But a small U.S. government organization, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, helps change that. When a Cuban Methodist pastor was detained in Havana last month, USCIRF called on the U.S. Embassy in Havana to ban Ms. Diego from visiting the U.S. until Cuban religious leaders can travel abroad to attend conferences. Pastors on the island tell me she was so rattled by USCIRF’s call for a visa ban that change may soon come.

This kind of direct action has been at the core of USCIRF’s mission since its creation in 1998. Its architects knew that the enemies of religious freedom aren’t only tyrants. They include simple bureaucrats who share their rulers’ desire for control. Believing that a bureaucracy can’t be defeated by creating another bureaucracy, Congress ensured the nine USCIRF commissioners were unpaid, independent volunteer voices selected from both political parties. They were to answer to no one, apart from the American people whose principles of liberty they represent abroad. This is part of why I accepted House Speaker Paul Ryan’s appointment to the commission in 2016.

But now USCIRF may be changing. In September the Senate introduced a bill that would shift its stated purpose and burden commissioners with new bureaucratic hurdles. The bill was introduced by Sens. Marco Rubio, Bob Menendez, Cory Gardner, Dick Durbin and Chris Coons, who say the reforms are necessary for transparency and accountability. Whatever their intentions, the damage would be real.

Read it all.

Foodbank demand has rocketed by 3,772% under a decade of Tory rule, the Mirror can reveal.

Bombshell figures show a surge in need from hungry families after nine years of gruelling austerity.

Britain’s biggest foodbank network had 57 outlets open in the final year of the Labour government in 2009/10.

They provided 40,898 aid packages – the equivalent of 368,082 meals. Of those parcels, 13,959 went to children.

By the end of March the network had 425 foodbanks – a 646% increase.

Their volunteers gave away 1,583,668 packages – 14,253,012 meals – in 2018/19. Some 577,618 parcels went to children.

Read it all.

Today, he’s sitting in the Drawing Room at Bishopthorpe Palace, the Archbishop of York’s official residence, to discuss his new book – Wake Up to Advent! It’s the first time he’s written his own Advent book having endorsed others previously. “I reached the stage where I said ‘this is going to be my last advent’ (as archbishop) and thought it’s high time I put pen to paper,” he says.

The book is characterised by readings and personal stories from his own remarkable life. “Whether someone is a churchgoer or not I hope there is still a message that they need to wake up to the world as we’ve got it. There’s a lot of mess, not only in the world but in our own lives, and there’s a possibility to feed on things that will help us to be truly human. We need to grow our friendships and relationships and our inter-dependence, so the message of the book I hope is for everybody.”

And Dr Sentamu believes this message still has relevance in the modern world. “When we see tragedies happening all over the world the first thing people do, particularly in this country, is go to church and light a candle. And I love that statement that it is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.”

For the archbishop, the chief role of religion is to be “a signpost to the love of God”. “If you saw every person as your brother or your sister you would treat them very differently. It’s treating people as totally different that causes all the trouble we bring into our world.”

Read it all.

Archbishop of York Dr John Sentamu on faith, Advent and his love for the people of Yorkshire https://t.co/fkNTD740rX

— The Yorkshire Post (@yorkshirepost) November 17, 2019

You can listen directly there and download the mp3 there.

#NG365 Duccio’s “The Healing of the Man Born Blind” @NationalGallery #art #twitart pic.twitter.com/wmq7ntOcqC

— Paul Wadey (@pwadey) June 14, 2015

In the same general period in which Stalin was starving millions, the Rev. Hewlett Johnson, Dean of Canterbury, described him as “leading his people down new and unfamiliar avenues of democracy.”

.–Paul Johnson, Modern Times: The World from the Twenties to the Eighties, (New York: Harper and Row, 1983), p.276, used yesterday in the sermon as an illustration of blindness

O God of peace, by whose grace the abbess Hilda was endowed with gifts of justice, prudence, and strength to rule as a wise mother over the nuns and monks of her household, and to become a trusted and reconciling friend to leaders of the Church: Give us the grace to respect and love our fellow Christians with whom we disagree, that our common life may be enriched and thy gracious will be done, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

Nov 17: Feast of Hilda (†680), abbess of Streanæshalch (Whitby). Served as abbess of Herterpol (Hartlepool) before founding, or refounding, Whitby, a double monastery like Gaulish examples. Championed the Irish dating of Easter at the synod there in 664. ©Chris Kirk pic.twitter.com/5qNxyiU0aw

— North Ages (@NorthAges) November 17, 2019

Grant, O Lord, that as thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ prayed for his enemies on the cross, so we may have grace to forgive those that wrongfully or scornfully use us; that we ourselves may be able to receive thy forgiveness; though the same Jesus Christ our Lord.

And after six days Jesus took with him Peter and James and John his brother, and led them up a high mountain apart. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his garments became white as light. And behold, there appeared to them Moses and Eli′jah, talking with him. And Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is well that we are here; if you wish, I will make three booths here, one for you and one for Moses and one for Eli′jah.” He was still speaking, when lo, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.” When the disciples heard this, they fell on their faces, and were filled with awe. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Rise, and have no fear.” And when they lifted up their eyes, they saw no one but Jesus only.

And as they were coming down the mountain, Jesus commanded them, “Tell no one the vision, until the Son of man is raised from the dead.” And the disciples asked him, “Then why do the scribes say that first Eli′jah must come?” He replied, “Eli′jah does come, and he is to restore all things; but I tell you that Eli′jah has already come, and they did not know him, but did to him whatever they pleased. So also the Son of man will suffer at their hands.” Then the disciples understood that he was speaking to them of John the Baptist.

–Matthew 17:1-13

With all the advocacy and educational work that you do on mental health issues, why was doing a retreat for moms a priority?

After Matthew died, I talked to hundreds of parents who have kids with mental illness. And it slowly began to dawn on me that not only did parents not have enough support, they didn’t have good community.

There are a lot of reasons for that. There’s stigma and discrimination against people living with mental illness. In the Christian community, there’s a standard that we feel like we have to measure up to—you know, perfect marriages, perfect families, always “things are good, things are good.” And when your life isn’t good, you end up hiding how difficult your life really is.

When there is serious mental illness, there can be extreme chaos, violence, or threats of violence. There is extreme dysfunction. There can be homelessness, substance abuse, and a sense of helplessness. And so parents don’t have a place where they can really say, “This is what my life is like.” And I just kept thinking, what can I do, what can I do? How can I help make a place for others, particularly moms, where they can be real, where they can tell their story, where they can find community?

Then a really good friend—you!—said early this year, “Have you ever thought about doing a retreat for moms?” And my response was “Uh, no, but I will.” It became crystal clear to me that that was exactly what I was supposed to do.

Read it all.

The interview I got to do with @KayWarren1 for Christianity Today @CTmagazine is a must read. You’ll see how God is using the anguish of her son’s life & death w/mental illness to help other moms facing similar suffering. She’s rich, deep, faith building. https://t.co/mQkAKcUBQ9

— Kelly Rosati (@KellyMRosati) November 12, 2019

Under law, our insurance premiums are not due until 14 days after we have received notice of the new premiums. As of this date we have not officially received notice. However the following applies:

• Our current premiums for ISR work out at about 15 cents for every $100 insured compared to a national average of around 30 cents for every $100 insured; a reasonable insurance rate would therefore be about double our current premiums.

• Our new premiums for ISR are likely to be around $900,000 which represents 72 cents in the $100. This represents an increase of about 4.5 times our previous premiums. It also comes with an increased excess.

• It is not possible for individual ministry units to take out policies; only an incorporated body having ownership of the property can take out insurance. This means that only the schools, the aged care facilities, Anglicare NQ and the Corporation of the Diocesan Synod of North Queensland can take out property insurance.

• Heritage buildings must be repaired if damaged, but if substantially or totally destroyed they can be demolished rather than replaced.

• Properties that are leased by the Diocese usually require property insurance as part of the Tenancy contract: currently we lease out approximately 25 houses, one church hall and the offices, shop and house at St Johns Cairns which are leased to Anglicare NQ.

• The two stores (Kowanyama and Pompuraaw) need to be insured as ongoing businesses.

• Removal of debris only insurance is not going to be made available to us.

• We are legally and morally obliged to insure people and other people’s property, but we are not legally obliged to insure our own property.

It is also absolutely clear that we cannot pay insurance of $900,000; and that ministry units are not in a position to increase their insurance premiums by over four times. In the end we are here to carry out the Great Commission and the Great Commandments: we are not here to maintain buildings. Yearly premiums of $900,000 would lead to the effective end of financial support for any ministry.

Read it all.

O Lord and Father, to whom alone the debtors in ten thousand talents can come with hope of mercy: Have mercy upon us, O Lord, who have aught to repay; forgive us all the debt, forgive us all our sins, and make us merciful to others; for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord.

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

Today the Church remembers Lancelot Andrewes, chaplain to Archbishop Whitgift, Bishop of Winchester, and designated by the King as the chief of the Westminster Translators of the King James Bible [Prints 010/001, published 1632] pic.twitter.com/EmZ0MPALOw

— LambethPalaceLibrary (@lampallib) September 25, 2019

Blessed be God,
because he has not rejected my prayer
or removed his steadfast love from me!

–Psalm 66:20

[Noreen] Duncan told the group, “I know you invited [me] here to do these little nice reflections, and I didn’t do that. I’m not apologizing; it’s what I’m seeing. If we are to staunch the bleeding of the denomination, the numbers, we’re going to have to look to the new…Anglicans among us. That’s where we’re going to work. That’s where we’re going to grow.” Referencing a conversation that was brought up the previous day during a racial justice exercise, she said, “As we pointed out yesterday…it’s not just a question of wondering when are the African, Asian and Caribbean members of the congregation going to volunteer. You have to point them out. Bring them out for a tea…and ask them, please help us.”

When she first read the statistical report prepared by Rev. Neil Elliot (discussed at CoGS the evening of Nov. 9) she felt disheartened, Duncan said. But after spending time at the meeting, she said, she was convinced that “as a denomination, as a church, we’re not dying. And that’s not to say that I distrust statistics and numbers—I don’t. But we have to know we are not dying. We have to stop, however, and assess who we are and how we’re going to continue.”

In a report following Duncan’s reflection, General Secretary of General Synod Archdeacon Michael Thompson thanked the Episcopal Church’s representative for her words.

“Your truth in our midst is disturbing, and at the same time welcome,” said Thompson.

Read it all.

Canon (lay) Noreen Duncan, @iamepiscopalian‘s representative to CoGS, praised the council for its work on reconciliation and held it to task for a lack of diversity. “CoGS, you have to look in the mirror.” https://t.co/6yxTNzExcU

— anglicanjournal (@anglicanjournal) November 13, 2019

“In the United States at this time,” Lionel Trilling wrote in 1949, “liberalism is not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition.” These words are strange to read today. One cannot imagine someone writing them now and, in retrospect, they suggest a dangerous hubris. And yet it is not clear that, applied either to Trilling’s time or to ours, they are wrong.

Since the global political unraveling in 2016, liberalism has lost its voice. From the “basket of deplorables” to the “#resistance” pins to the eat-pray-love liberalism of “a thousand small sanities,” public defenses of the West’s regnant political ideology ring hollow and desperate. Read the Times or the Post, listen to politicians, sit for a second and catch the mood in the airport: the absence is in the air, not just in our language. Max Weber called twentieth-century governance the “slow boring of hard boards”: they have been bored, and so are we.

To literary critics and political theorists—those whose job it is to front-run the zeitgeist—liberalism now seems not so much an opponent to battle as a corpse to put to rest. It is something to be, at most, anatomized, if not simply buried and forgotten. The new right tends toward the former: Patrick Deneen’s Why Liberalism Failed, published in 2018 and blurbed by everyone from David Brooks to Cornel West, blames the very idea of America, with its manic commitment to a radical and spiritually empty freedom. For millennial socialists and fully automated luxury communists, liberalism is, instead, a kind of dad joke, a boomer blooper: faintly embarrassing and best ignored. Maybe we grew up believing in Obama, but that’s all over; now we’ve grown up and moved out.

Wake up! critics seem to say; Get Real. Liberalism is dead. All you have to do is look around: the world we live in is one our old categories can’t explain. Liberalism envisions the tools of reason—science, public debate, law—liberating individuals, tempering passions and leading, however slowly and unevenly, to a world felicitously governed, in harmony with itself. It is very hard to square such a vision with the present world, in which governments have been captured by grifters and demagogues, algorithms move markets and ambient anxiety reigns.

Read it all.

Interesting essay on the liberal predicament. Bad Infinity | The Point Magazine https://t.co/KWBg8TEebw

— Frank Furedi (@Furedibyte) November 11, 2019

O God, who didst call thy servant Margaret to an earthly throne that she might advance thy heavenly kingdom, and didst give her zeal for thy church and love for thy people: Mercifully grant that we who commemorate her this day may be fruitful in good works, and attain to the glorious crown of thy saints; though Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

St Margaret of Scotland
Malcolm greeting Margaret at her arrival in Scotland; detail of a mural by Victorian artist William Hole – photographed by uploader, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://t.co/YHG4qUBLFW pic.twitter.com/YLVXeezewF

— Michael Demers (@m1demers) November 16, 2019

O God of Love, we yield thee thanks for whatsoever thou hast given us richly to enjoy, for health and vigor, for the love and care of home, for joys of friendship, and for every good gift of happiness and strength. We praise thee for all thy servants who by their example and encouragement have helped us on our way, and for every vision of thyself which thou hast ever given us in sacrament or prayer; and we humbly beseech thee that all these thy benefits we may use in thy service and to the glory of thy Holy Name; through Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord.

–Robert W. Rodenmayer, ed., The Pastor’s Prayerbook: Selected and arranged for various occasions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1960)

On the holy mount stands the city he founded; the LORD loves the gates of Zion more than all the dwelling places of Jacob. Glorious things are spoken of you, O city of God.

–Psalm 87:1-3

Watch it all.

On November 11, 2019 the Episcopal Church in South Carolina filed yet another petition (41 page pdf) in Federal Court this time objecting to the Diocese’s use of the name The Anglican Diocese of South Carolina, as well as references found on the diocesan website pertaining to its history.

Our legal team, in conjunction with the Standing Committee are formulating a response.

Sadness is a major theme in Parton’s music. On WNYC host Jad Abumrad’s podcast, “Dolly Parton’s America,” she revealed that she went through a rough time in her 30s when she dealt with weight gain and “some family things.” Parton said she even contemplated writing a last letter during her struggle with depression.

“I don’t think people can live in this world without going through times like that,” Parton said. “People always look at me, they always say, ‘Oh, you just always seem to be so happy.’ I said, ‘that’s the Botox.’ No, but seriously, I’m a very sensitive person. I feel everything to the core.”

It was during that time in the 1980s, she told Roberts, that she’d had “a complete breakdown.”

“I could totally relate to how people do get on drugs or alcohol, how people do commit suicide, because when you’re a tender, loving, caring, sensitive person, you feel like you can only stand so much heartache and sorrow,” Parton added.

Read it all.

Dolly Parton opens up about song inspirations, being “Aunt Dolly” to female country artists—and those tattoos. https://t.co/rPGZhyvxwN

— ABC News (@ABC) November 12, 2019

The fastest-growing population on the American religious landscape today is “Nones”—people who don’t identify with any religion. Recent data from the American Family Survey indicates that their numbers increased from 16% in 2007 to 35% in 2018. Over the same period, there has been a dramatic decline in the share of the population who identify as Christian, from 78% of Americans in 2007 to 65% in 2018-19, according to a report by the Pew Research Center released this month. The rise of Nones is even more dramatic among younger people: 44% of Americans aged 18 to 29 are Nones.

What’s going on? A big part of the answer is that there is less social pressure to identify as religious, especially among young adults. In fact, a young adult today is more likely to feel social pressure to justify being religious than being None. Another factor is the rise of families in which the parents identify with different religions: Children in such families are often raised with exposure to both identities and left to decide for themselves which to adopt. In many cases, they eventually choose neither.

And part of the answer is that many of the personal and social functions traditionally performed by religious institutions are now being served by new communities that we might call “alt-religious.” Harvard Divinity School’s “How We Gather” initiative has drawn attention, for example, to the rapidly growing numbers of millennials who skip church or synagogue for their particular brand of “fitness cult,” such as SoulCycle, which grew from one studio in 2006 to 88 in 2018, with more than 10,000 riders a day. In these movements, as in a church, myth (in the form of the company’s origin story and mission statement) and rituals (a carefully regulated order of actions for leader and congregants) work together to create a sacred or “set apart” time and space.

Read it all.

Can Religion Still Speak to Younger Americans? https://t.co/hkjZQTlNiI via @WSJ

— Christina@ThatcherPR (@CGThatcherPR) November 14, 2019