Once again, we see a phenomenon that I have written about many times here at GetReligion.

This kind of international story, in the context of America’s niche-media realities, is now seen as a merely religious, Catholic or even “conservative” story. Click here to see a Google News file illustrating this, in the case of the murder of this particular priest. There are the major, trend-defining newsrooms in this picture? That is, of course, the question.

But you can find more details (#DUH) in Catholic media. What you will read at The Pillar — “Nigerian priest killed in Sunday attack; another in critical condition” — shows that this bloody, fiery dark-of-night attack isn’t all that unusual.

The second priest, Fr. Collins Omeh, is the parish’s parochial vicar. He was shot several times as he tried to escape the scene, and is now hospitalized. From the hospital, Omeh has described the violence to priests in the Diocese of Minna, in messages shared with The Pillar.

According to Omeh: “The bandits, who were about 15 in number, came fully armed and shooting sporadically in the air shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ [God is great].”

Read it all.

Why Is the Biden Administration Ignoring Religious Persecution in Nigeria? https://t.co/uPasIiQXSo

— Newsweek Opinion (@NewsweekOpinion) January 23, 2023

“If we go any further [than blessings], it’s three years of legislative fighting, and quite possibly a defeat at the end of it. . . The Bishops together want to do something that avoids that — and the discussion continues.”

About 50 people attended the candlelit vigil, which was organised by Jayne Ozanne, an LGBTQ+ campaigner and member of the General Synod. It was timed to coincide with the arrival of about 90 parliamentarians for a Candlemas service in the chapel at Lambeth Palace.

Protesters sang hymns and prayed together, and held posters and placards calling for same-sex marriage to be permitted within the Church of England. “We just want to know that we’re the same as everybody else,” Ms Ozanne told Archbishop Welby.

The Labour MP for Exeter, Ben Bradshaw, joined the protest before going to the service, and was among several who challenged the Archbishop to show leadership on the issue.

“I have been very instrumental carrying it as far as I could, to get things to where we are today. I don’t have the votes to go further,” Archbishop Welby replied.

Read it all.

“Let’s do what we can now, and see what happens. To get something through for equal marriage would require legislation. And legislation has to carry by two-thirds in each house of Synod.” https://t.co/QxLHXmsoZq

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) January 24, 2023

About 4,500 Protestant churches closed in 2019, the last year data is available, with about 3,000 new churches opening, according to Lifeway Research. It was the first time the number of churches in the US hadn’t grown since the evangelical firm started studying the topic. With the pandemic speeding up a broader trend of Americans turning away from Christianity, researchers say the closures will only have accelerated.

“The closures, even for a temporary period of time, impacted a lot of churches. People breaking that habit of attending church means a lot of churches had to work hard to get people back to attending again,” said Scott McConnell, executive director at Lifeway Research.

“In the last three years, all signs are pointing to a continued pace of closures probably similar to 2019 or possibly higher, as there’s been a really rapid rise in American individuals who say they’re not religious.”

Protestant pastors reported that typical church attendance is only 85% of pre-pandemic levels, McConnell said, while research by the Survey Center on American Life and the University of Chicago found that in spring 2022 67% of Americans reported attending church at least once a year, compared with 75% before the pandemic.

But while Covid-19 may have accelerated the decline, there is a broader, long-running trend of people moving away from religion. In 2017 Lifeway surveyed young adults aged between 18 and 22 who had attended church regularly, for at least a year during high school. The firm found that seven out of 10 had stopped attending church regularly.

Read it all.

Losing their religion: why US churches are on the decline https://t.co/D4ex0ilSIy

— The Guardian (@guardian) January 22, 2023

The FBI’s purpose, according to Herbert N. Foerstel in his book “Surveillance in the Stacks,” was to demand details about library use by people from countries “hostile to the United States, such as the Soviet Union.” Agents tended to approach whoever was at the reference desk — often a student assistant or paraprofessional — and ask for names and other details of people who used the library to locate technical and scientific materials, such as engineering journals and publications of the National Technical Information Service. At the University of Wisconsin, according to Foerstel, agents watched a Soviet national reading the Russian newspaper “Pravda” and then asked a librarian if that copy “had been marked up.”

The rise in book bans, explained
The public was largely ignorant of these encounters until the case of Gennady Zakharov, a Russian-born United Nations aide who was indicted in 1986 for trying to transmit “unclassified information about [American] robotics and computer technology” to the Soviets. His source turned out to be a Guyanese college student who stole publicly available microfiche from several New York-area libraries and sold it to Zakharov.

The next year, the New York Times reported for the first time on the existence of the Library Awareness Program, calling it part of a national counterintelligence effort.

The FBI immediately tried to downplay the program’s significance. “Hostile intelligence has had some success working the campuses and libraries,” said James Fox, deputy assistant director of the New York FBI office, “and we’re just going around telling people what to be alert for.”

This explanation didn’t satisfy librarians. “We’re extremely concerned,” said Betsy Pinover, public relations director of the New York Public Library, “about intellectual freedom and the reader’s right to privacy, and are committed to protecting the privacy of our readers.” The New York Library Association and American Library Association issued similar statements. Rep. Major R. Owens (D-N.Y.), a former librarian, called it “a new low for the anti-intellectualism of the Reagan administration.” Cartoonists took aim; humorists made hay.

Read it all.

When the FBI Was Secretly Spying on People's Library Habits | @washingtonpost https://t.co/0jLhLJEkO9

— Publishers Weekly (@PublishersWkly) January 24, 2023

The corporate cafeteria can be an especially lonely place these days.

“You used to walk in at 12 o’clock on a Tuesday and stand in line to get something,” said Casey Allen, 46, who works for a division of the agricultural chemical company BASF in Raleigh, N.C. “Now, you walk in and you’re usually first in line.”

A paternalistic fixture of white-collar life born of the Industrial Revolution, the office dining room survived the midcentury move to sprawling suburban office parks. It weathered the rise and fall of cubicle culture and power lunches, and more recently, the lavish excess of the Silicon Valley office lunch.

But as the American office emerges from its pandemic slumber, can the cafeteria survive layoffs, a workweek that sometimes requires only a few days in the mother ship and a new, more demanding generation of employees?

Read it all.

Employees, especially younger ones, are demanding more culturally authentic meals and climate-friendly kitchen protocols, like reducing waste.

The Corporate Cafeteria Is Broken. So How to Feed Workers? https://t.co/CSz9fBWlSR

— Sean Graf (@seangraf) January 24, 2023

O God, who art the God of peace, mercifully grant that, as much as lieth in us, we may live at peace with all men; and if our outward peace be broken, yet do thou preserve peace in our hearts; through him who is the Prince of peace, Jesus Christ our Lord.

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

Then after fourteen years I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus along with me. I went up by revelation; and I laid before them (but privately before those who were of repute) the gospel which I preach among the Gentiles, lest somehow I should be running or had run in vain. But even Titus, who was with me, was not compelled to be circumcised, though he was a Greek. But because of false brethren secretly brought in, who slipped in to spy out our freedom which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might bring us into bondage— to them we did not yield submission even for a moment, that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you. And from those who were reputed to be something (what they were makes no difference to me; God shows no partiality)—those, I say, who were of repute added nothing to me; but on the contrary, when they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel to the circumcised (for he who worked through Peter for the mission to the circumcised worked through me also for the Gentiles), and when they perceived the grace that was given to me, James and Cephas and John, who were reputed to be pillars, gave to me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship, that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised; only they would have us remember the poor, which very thing I was eager to do.

–Galatians 2:1-10

On a recent visit to Salt Lake City, Alexander Dyck ordered Chinese takeout and received a branded fortune cookie wishing him wealth and promoting FTX, presumably packaged before the crypto empire’s epic collapse. “I should have saved it,” he said regretfully.

Mr. Dyck is a professor of finance at the University of Toronto, who just published a provocative new study on the pervasiveness of corporate fraud. The study has been passed around in the world of academia in recent weeks, and has become a fascination among general counsels, corporate leaders and investors.

It suggests that only about a third of frauds in public companies actually come to light, and that fraud is disturbingly common. Mr. Dyck and his co-authors estimate that about 40 percent of companies are committing accounting violations and that 10 percent are committing what is considered securities fraud, destroying 1.6 percent of equity value each year — about $830 billion in 2021.

“What people don’t get is how widespread the problem of corporate fraud is,” Dyck said about his study, which was published in the Review of Accounting Studies this month.

Read it all.

Just How Common Is Corporate Fraud? New research by Prof. Alexander Dyck and colleagues via @el72champs @dealbook “What people don’t get is how widespread the problem of corporate fraud is.” https://t.co/pKIrdc3D9r

— Rotman School (@rotmanschool) January 14, 2023

The farm labor history of California has often been told through the plight of agricultural laborers during the Depression era and the efforts, beginning in the early 1960s, of the United Farm Workers to improve working conditions of Mexicans in the fields.

But to Lloyd Barba, a professor of religion at Amherst College, this history isn’t complete without factoring in religion, particularly the stories of California’s Mexican farmworkers who embraced Pentecostalism, a Christian movement generally seen at the time as a “distasteful new sect” with “cultish and fanatical tendencies.”

“I think about how often Latino history is told as labor history, and that makes sense … but where are the laborers going?” Barba said. “If we’re going to get a more balanced and accurate Latino history, we have to look at Latino religious life.”

In his recently released book, Sowing the Sacred: Mexican Pentecostal Farmworkers in California, Barba writes about the Mexican and Mexican American Pentecostal agricultural workers who built houses of worship in the state’s agricultural towns, who turned to “divine healing” for injuries they sustained working in the fields and whose worship style inspired civil rights leader Cesar Chavez to incorporate music and singing in his union organizing.

Read it all.

Pentecostal laborers built houses of worship, turned to “divine healing” for injuries, and inspired Cesar Chavez to incorporate music into his organizing.https://t.co/ZkaDRVxOPB

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) January 23, 2023

In 1904, 180 Americans were trapped by fire in a Pennsylvania coal mine. Two heroes went in to save them, but the rescuers and all but one of the miners perished. Still, that act of heroism touched one of the richest Americans, a man whose steel mills were fired by coal. Andrew Carnegie donated more than $100 million, in today’s money, to recognize heroes in the U.S. and Canada. As we first reported in 2021 — a good deal has changed in 118 years; thousands have been awarded the Carnegie Hero Medal and advances in neuroscience are revealing why some of us may be heroic. We’ll get to the science, but first, meet some of the Carnegie Heroes, including Terryann Thomas.

Terryann Thomas: I remember thinking just almost instantly, “I am not gonna let somebody die.”

Terryann Thomas was a civilian overseeing confiscated property at the headquarters of the Topeka Police Department. In 2015, an agitated man came into the basement property room to demand his bicycle. Thomas turned to find it.

Terryann Thomas: As soon as I turned around and started to walk off, I heard a scream.

Read or watch it it all.

Republicans, who have newly taken control of the House of Representatives, say that they cannot abide runaway spending and must rein it in. This deep concern appears episodic. When Donald Trump was president, the debt ceiling was increased three times with Republican support, and the national debt rose by $8trn over his term ($3.2trn of which came before covid-induced spending began in 2020). Those increases were not particularly contentious, and the White House wishes the same for this one. “Raising the debt ceiling is not a negotiation; it is an obligation of this country and its leaders to avoid economic chaos,” Mr Biden’s press secretary said in a statement released on January 20th.

But it may not be so simple. Republicans are unlikely to let their leverage over Mr Biden lapse. Kevin McCarthy squeaked into his position of Republican speaker of the House by promising many concessions to hardliners, including pledging extreme brinkmanship over the debt ceiling. Mr McCarthy has vowed to secure spending cuts in exchange for raising the debt limit, and pledged to put the country on the path to a balanced budget in a decade. As part of his bargain to attain power, the beleaguered speaker also had to allow a parliamentary manoeuvre that would make his own removal easier. Mr McCarthy may not be able to keep his promises, in which case his own party could end his speakership in its first year.

This is forcing financiers, lawyers and officials to focus on the unthinkable. The starting point of such contingency planning is that a sovereign default would be cataclysmic: in all likelihood stocks would plunge, borrowing costs would soar, growth would suffer and the dollar’s status as the world’s dominant currency would be shaken. Any way to avoid this series of disasters merits attention. The problem, unfortunately, is that each proposed workaround has severe—and quite possibly unworkable—drawbacks.

Read it all (registration or subscription).

Most games of chicken do not have trillion-dollar stakes. But such a spectacle is common in America https://t.co/18TkzGkAnt

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) January 23, 2023

O everlasting God, who didst reveal truth to thy servant Phillips Brooks, and didst so form and mold his mind and heart that he was able to mediate that truth with grace and power: Grant, we pray, that all whom thou dost call to preach the Gospel may steep themselves in thy word, and conform their lives to thy will; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

O Lord God, suffer us not to lean to our own wisdom, nor to believe as blind flesh fancieth, nor to seek salvation where superstition dreameth; but let our faith only be grounded on Thy Word, and give us grace truly to believe in Thee, with all our heart to put our trust in Thee, to look for all good things of Thee, to call upon Thy blessed Name in adversity, and with joyful voices and more merry hearts to praise and magnify it in prosperity.

–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)

Paul an apostle–not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead–and all the brethren who are with me, To the churches of Galatia: Grace to you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father; to whom be the glory for ever and ever. Amen. I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and turning to a different gospel–not that there is another gospel, but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ.

–Galatians 1:1-7

Almighty God,
whose Son revealed in signs and miracles
the wonder of your saving presence:
renew your people with your heavenly grace,
and in all our weakness
sustain us by your mighty power;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.

View of the Almsee lake #landscape #naturephotography #Almsee #Salzkammergut #Almtal #Grünau #Austria #SonyAlpha 🤍 pic.twitter.com/3s8Yx2lehW

— CloudWalker 📸 (@Angelika13913) January 22, 2023

Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Hebrew called Beth-za’tha, which has five porticoes. In these lay a multitude of invalids, blind, lame, paralyzed. One man was there, who had been ill for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him and knew that he had been lying there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be healed?” The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is troubled, and while I am going another steps down before me.” Jesus said to him, “Rise, take up your pallet, and walk.” And at once the man was healed, and he took up his pallet and walked. Now that day was the sabbath. So the Jews said to the man who was cured, “It is the sabbath, it is not lawful for you to carry your pallet.” But he answered them, “The man who healed me said to me, ‘Take up your pallet, and walk.'” They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Take up your pallet, and walk’?” Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn, as there was a crowd in the place. Afterward, Jesus found him in the temple, and said to him, “See, you are well! Sin no more, that nothing worse befall you.” The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him.

–John 5:2-15

Morning everyone hope you are well. Views across the River Brathay and Elterwater towards the Langdales. Have a great day.#LakeDistrict @keswickbootco @ShowcaseCumbria pic.twitter.com/grZqYGxoFv

— Rod Hutchinson (@lakesrhino) January 22, 2023

Almighty and everlasting God, who dost choose those whom the world deemeth powerless to put the powerful to shame: Grant us so to cherish the memory of thy youthful martyrs Agnes and Cecilia, that we might share their pure and steadfast faith in thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God for ever and ever. Amen.

Together with St. Cecilia, St. Lucia and St. Agnes one of the oldest saints (same order) pic.twitter.com/h76CUTkwFv

— Stained Glass Zealot (@glass_zealot) February 5, 2021

Almighty God, Whose glory the heavens are telling, the earth Thy power, and the sea Thy might, and Whose greatness all Thy creatures that think and feel everywhere proclaim: to Thee belong all glory, honour, might, greatness, and splendour, now and for ever, world without end.

Hello Saturday! ⁦@chswx⁩ ⁦@CapitalJeff⁩
Seabrook Island SC pic.twitter.com/VDDaoc7Y2x

— Glen 🇺🇸🇺🇦 (@GQCOP45) January 21, 2023

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the equipment of the gospel of peace; besides all these, taking the shield of faith, with which you can quench all the flaming darts of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. Pray at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication.

–Ephesians 6:10-18a

A very beautiful start of the day in The Fens, Ely 🧡#sunrise #misty #loveukweather pic.twitter.com/XHpbNR7neT

— Veronica in the Fens 🧚🏼‍♀️ (@VeronicaJoPo) January 21, 2023

New technological tools often enable fresh scientific discoveries. Take the case of Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, the 17th-century Dutch amateur scientist and pioneer microscopist, who built at least 25 single-lens microscopes with which he studied fleas, weevils, red blood cells, bacteria and his own spermatozoa, among other things.

In hundreds of letters to the Royal Society and other scientific institutions, van Leeuwenhoek meticulously recorded his observations and discoveries, not always for a receptive readership. But he has since been recognised as the father of microbiology, having helped us understand and fight all manner of diseases.

Centuries later, new technological tools are enabling a global community of biologists and amateur scientists to explore the natural world of sound in richer detail and at greater scale than ever before. Just as microscopes helped humans observe things not visible to the naked eye, so ubiquitous microphones and machine learning models enable us to listen to sounds we cannot otherwise hear. We can eavesdrop on an astonishing soundscape of planetary “conversations” among bats, whales, honey bees, elephants, plants and coral reefs. “Sonics is the new optics,” Karen Bakker, a professor at the University of British Columbia, tells me.

Billions of dollars are pouring into so-called generative artificial intelligence, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, with scores of start-ups being launched to commercialise these foundation models. But in one sense, generative AI is something of a misnomer: these models are mostly used to rehash existing human knowledge in novel combinations rather than to generate anything genuinely new.

What may have a bigger scientific and societal impact is “additive AI”, using machine learning to explore specific, newly created data sets — derived, for example, from satellite imagery, genome sequencing, quantum sensing or bio-acoustic recordings — and extend the frontiers of human knowledge. When it comes to sonic data, Bakker even raises the tantalising possibility over the next two decades of interspecies communication as humans use machines to translate and replicate animal sounds, creating a kind of Google Translate for the zoo. “We do not yet possess a dictionary of Sperm Whalish, but we now have the raw ingredients to create one,” Bakker writes in her book The Sounds of Life.

Read it all (registration or subscription).

A sonic revolution triggered by advances in hardware and software lets us eavesdrop on planetary conversations #artificalintelligence

Google Translate for the zoo? How humans might talk to animals https://t.co/jNzwbgcK8a

— Leo Cremonezi (@leocremonezi) January 19, 2023

I write to you with a heavy heart as we are hearing of the continued Crisis of Leadership and Faith coming out of the Church of England. Once again, our Western Anglican Provinces continue to ‘go their own way’ on matters of faith and practice without consultation or concern for the majority of Anglicans around the Global Communion. Their actions not only deny holy practice, but reject the authority of Scripture, the teaching of the historic church, and the consensus of the Body of Christ from every tribe, tongue, people and nation alive today.

The release of the recent statement “Bishops propose prayers of thanksgiving, dedication and for God’s blessing of same-sex couples”…is a clear rejection of Lambeth 1998, I:10, and cannot help but ask the question: “What is next?” We continue to find ourselves disillusioned with the incredible audacity of major unilateral decisions (e.g. changing the nature of what it means to be ‘male and female’ in his image (Genesis 1:27) that run counter to ‘the faith once delivered’ (Jude 3).

What makes this current (and continued) Crisis of Leadership and Faith in the Church of England especially troubling is the clear and willful decision by the bishops to blatantly ignore the global Anglican consensus (as well as many more other Christian traditions) and ‘bless’ in the Name of Christ and the Church what God clearly calls sin. God does not bless sin regardless of the stamp of endorsement by church leaders, clergy, and bishops.

Read it all.

“Their actions not only deny holy practice, but reject the authority of Scripture, the teaching of the historic church, and the consensus of the Body of Christ from every tribe, tongue, people and nation alive today.”https://t.co/TYaboH6Ocg

— Clayton Hutchins (@claytonhutchins) January 19, 2023

On the other side of the debate, representatives of liberal and progressive theology and practice in the Church of England were even harsher in their critique.

One of its most prominent voices, member of the General Synod’s Laity House and LGBT campaigner Jayne Ozanne, said the measures announced were an “utterly despicable outcome”.

“We have had countless apologies over the years but no action to stop the harmful discrimination”, she added on Twitter. “It’s insulting to all who trusted the process”….

A harder tone had the advocacy group Christian Concern, whose cief executive Andrea Williams described the move as a “capitulation by the Church of England. The bishops have lost the courage and conviction to state clearly the beauty of God’s vision for marriage between one man and one woman”. The Anglican Church in the country would be “making way for the celebration of ‘same-sex marriage’ in all but name (…) This is a landmark moment and will go down in history as a turning point in the decline and fall of the Church of England – unless these proposals can be decisively resisted by the faithful in Synod”.

Read it all.

The draft texts, proposed by the bishops of the Church of England, will be considered by General Synod next month alongside other proposals in response to a six-year process of listening, learning and discernment on questions of identity, sexuality, relationships and marriage known as Living in Love and Faith.

The bishops have also made a direct public apology to LGBTQI+ people for the way in which the Church has rejected or excluded them, admitting: “We have not loved you as God loves you, and that is profoundly wrong.”

The apology is set out in a pastoral letter from the bishops of the Church of England which also recognises that they disagree over same-sex marriage and proposes a way forward which could be put in action within months.

A report – Living in Love and Faith: A response from the Bishops of the Church of England about identity, sexuality, relationships and marriage – sets out the bishops’ proposals and recommends areas for further work.

There is also a book of draft worship resources – Prayers of Love and Faith. It is a range of prayers and readings which could be used in a church service, such as a Service of the Word or a Service within a Celebration of Holy Communion.

Read it all. Make sure to read the whole pdf on the ‘Living in Love and Faith’ from the bishops there.

Almighty God, who didst call Fabian to be a faithful pastor and servant of thy people, and to lay down his life in witness to thy Son: Grant that we, strengthened by his example and aided by his prayers, may in times of trial and persecution remain steadfast in faith and endurance, for the sake of him who laid down his life for us all, Jesus Christ our Savior; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Today the Episcopal Church commemorates Fabian, Bishop & Martyr of Rome, 250 https://t.co/KPkUsrWdh2

Image: Saints Fabian & Sebastian by Giovanni di Paolo, c1475, in @NationalGallery (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0); Fabian is often depicted with Sebastian as they share a feast day, 20 January pic.twitter.com/X6FkpO5tVR

— The Anglican Church in St Petersburg (@anglicanspb) January 20, 2023

[O] Thou Who sendest forth the light, createst the morning, makest the sun to rise on the good and on the evil: enlighten the blindness of our minds with the knowledge of the truth: lift Thou up the light of Thy countenance upon us: that in Thy light we may see light, and, at the last, in the light of grace the light of glory.

–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)

Nature is essential to the health, well-being and prosperity of every family and community in America.

Learn more about the “America the Beautiful” initiative and our efforts to conserve at least 30% of lands and waters by 2030. https://t.co/Tb1ksqeDdw

Photo by Donna Fullerton pic.twitter.com/lC8901MHpz

— US Department of the Interior (@Interior) January 18, 2023

“Turn to me and be saved,
    all the ends of the earth!
    For I am God, and there is no other.

By myself I have sworn,
    from my mouth has gone forth in righteousness
    a word that shall not return:
‘To me every knee shall bow,
    every tongue shall swear.’

 
“Only in the Lord, it shall be said of me,
    are righteousness and strength;
to him shall come and be ashamed,
    all who were incensed against him.

In the Lord all the offspring of Israel
    shall triumph and glory.”

–Isaiah 45:22-25

Morning has broken @UniofOxford pic.twitter.com/1JAJ1Jtu93

— Dr. Jennifer Cassidy (@OxfordDiplomat) January 20, 2023

As our denomination’s slow-motion separation accelerates, we hear all kinds of nice-sounding, extraordinarily vague rhetoric from various United Methodist leaders that, even as the United Methodist Church liberalizes on marriage, it will still tolerate and even welcome conservatives and liberals who choose the post-separation United Methodist Church (psUMC). Such rhetoric usually lacks anything binding or specific, and is often accompanied by dismissing concerns as “fear-mongering” or “misinformation.”

However, such promised United Methodist tolerance is impossible, for three basic reasons:

United Methodist promises of tolerance are logically and pragmatically unsustainable.
Leaders of the new United Methodist Church already refuse to extend basic tolerance to conservative believers.
Liberal United Methodist leaders have already made clear their extreme “alienation of affection” from traditionalists.
Whatever changes on other issues, it is universally agreed that the denomination is on track to liberalize its official standards on sexual morality. So before too long, the United Methodist Church will be a denomination that officially affirms same-sex weddings and non-celibate gay clergy. In American United Methodism, this is now already the officially supported ethos of the leadership of every region and the de facto reality in all but a shrinking number of annual conferences.

In this context, these three factors make the end of tolerance for United Methodist traditionalists not just likely, but inevitable.

1. United Methodist promises of tolerance for conservatives are logically and pragmatically unsustainable.

Others have broadly explained the logical necessity and observed reality of Neuhaus’s Law: “Where orthodoxy is optional, orthodoxy will sooner or later be proscribed.”

Read it all.

Promised United Methodist tolerance for conservatives and liberals who choose the post-separation United Methodist Church is impossible, for three basic reasons. #umc https://t.co/4c79JCG5pm

— IRD (@TheIRD) January 18, 2023

There is also more there.

Today's pick: Caravaggio: St John the Baptist (1604) https://t.co/4GpRchR5GI pic.twitter.com/n9obXdpmzL

— Art and the Bible (@artbible) May 7, 2021

Washington is gearing up for another big fight over whether to raise or suspend the nation’s debt limit, with Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen telling Congress on Thursday that the United States had reached its existing borrowing cap of $31.4 trillion.

The United States borrows huge sums of money by selling Treasury bonds to investors across the globe and uses those funds to pay existing financial obligations, including military salaries, safety net benefits and interest on the national debt. Once the United States hits the cap, Treasury begins using “extraordinary measures” — suspending some investments and exchanging different types of debt — to try to stay beneath the cap for as long as possible. But eventually, the United States will need to either borrow more money to pay its bills or stop making good on its financial obligations, including possibly defaulting on its debt.

Responsibility for lifting or suspending the borrowing cap falls to Congress, which must get a simple majority in both the House and Senate to vote for any change to the debt limit. Raising the debt limit has become a perennial fight, with Republican lawmakers using it as leverage to try to force spending cuts.

This year is shaping up to be the messiest fight in at least a decade. Republicans now control the House and they have adopted new rules that make it more difficult to raise the debt limit and strengthen Republicans’ ability to demand that any increase be accompanied by spending cuts. Senate Republicans have also insisted that increases to the debt limit should be tied to “structural spending reform.”

Read it all.

The U.S. Will Hit Its Debt Limit Today. How Bad Will It Be? – The New York Times https://t.co/Dw7I3uRvAx

— Louisette Lanteigne 🌎✌️⚖️♥️ (@lulex) January 19, 2023