If boomers were always looking to shock, millennials are eager to share.

But they are also unconventionally conventional. They are, for example, the least officially religious of any modern generation, and fully 1 in 4 has no religious affiliation at all. On the other hand, they are just as spiritual, just as likely to believe in miracles and hell and angels as earlier generations were. They pray about as much as their elders did when they were young--all of which suggests that they have not lost faith in God, only in the institutions that claim to speak for him.

The greatest divide of all has to do with hope and heart. In any age, young folk tend to be more cheerful than old folk, but the hope gap has never been greater than it is now. Despite two wars and a nasty recession that has hit young people hardest, the Pew survey found that 41% of millennials are satisfied with how things are going, compared with 26% of older people. Less than a third of those with jobs earn enough to lead the kind of life they want--but 88% are confident that they will one day.

"Youth is easily deceived," Aristotle said, "because it is quick to hope." But I'd rather think that the millennials know something we don't about the inventions that will emerge from their networked brains, the solutions that might arise from a generation so determined to bridge gaps and work as a team. In that event, their vision would be vindicated, not only for themselves but for those of us who will one day follow their lead.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Psychology • Young Adults • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

Like more than 100 churches nationwide, Christ Church broke with TEC over its well-documented liberalized faith ("Other Abrahamic faiths have access to God the Father without consciously going through Jesus," presiding bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori has said). The church's vestry voted unanimously to disaffiliate over "departure from doctrine" and to place the church under the Anglican Province of Uganda. The congregation approved, with 87 percent voting in favor out of over 300 ballots cast.

Division "happened over time," rector Marc Robertson told me, and 30-40 disaffected members set up a congregation downriver calling itself "Christ Church Episcopal." Last May TEC filed legal action against Robertson and the vestry, seeking to acquire the property on Johnson Square in Savannah's historic district. TEC has filed similar actions against churches in Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Texas. This case turns on state trust laws and laws of incorporation, and is complex given that Christ Church predates the existence of the state of Georgia. TEC asserts that church property should be subject to denominational "discipline," which Christ Church forfeited when it quit the denomination, it says.

Funny things happen when a church takes a stand for the gospel. Sunday attendance at Christ Church is up and it accepted 28 new families—a record—for membership this past year. "We have a corporate sense of galvanization," said Robertson, "and are doing well spiritually. Our biblical literacy has increased because we are driven back to understanding why we believe what we believe."

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • Anglican Provinces • Church of Uganda • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Conflicts • TEC Conflicts: Georgia • TEC Departing Parishes • Sexuality Debate (in Anglican Communion) • Same-sex blessings • * Theology • Christology

Filed under: * General Interest • Animals

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Education • Science & Technology • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

One fast-growing American industry has become a conspicuous beneficiary of the recession: for-profit colleges and trade schools.

At institutions that train students for careers in areas like health care, computers and food service, enrollments are soaring as people anxious about weak job prospects borrow aggressively to pay tuition that can exceed $30,000 a year.

But the profits have come at substantial taxpayer expense while often delivering dubious benefits to students, according to academics and advocates for greater oversight of financial aid. Critics say many schools exaggerate the value of their degree programs, selling young people on dreams of middle-class wages while setting them up for default on untenable debts, low-wage work and a struggle to avoid poverty. And the schools are harvesting growing federal student aid dollars, including Pell grants awarded to low-income students.

“If these programs keep growing, you’re going to wind up with more and more students who are graduating and can’t find meaningful employment,” said Rafael I. Pardo, a professor at Seattle University School of Law and an expert on educational finance. “They can’t generate income needed to pay back their loans, and they’re going to end up in financial distress.”

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Education • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • Personal Finance • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007--

U.S. forces have recovered a huge cache of weapons that was given to Afghan security forces but wound up in the hands of the Taliban, a U.S. military review has found.

The Afghan army and national police have lost 13,000 weapons, 200,000 rounds of ammunition, 80 vehicles and one pair of night vision goggles, members of a U.S. task force told USA TODAY.

All the gear was bought for the Afghans by Americans, part of $330 million in weapons purchases.

Most of the weapons have been seized from the Taliban or other insurgent forces.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • War in Afghanistan

Each Sunday morning, members of White Stone Church spread photos of the girls' grinning, impish faces across a folding table in the lobby, then prayed for the day they might join them.

When the churchgoers closed their eyes and bowed their heads, it no longer mattered that 1,400 miles separated them from the girls or that they lived in a Haitian village whose dirt floors and lack of running water were unthinkable in north Knoxville's quilt of neatly tended subdivisions and fast-food drive-thrus.

They are "Our Girls," the worshippers told one another.

Over six years, the girls of Coq Chante had come to feel like family. Now, after trips by dozens to Haiti, thousands of dollars raised and spent, and countless hours poring over adoption paperwork, the bond with 19 children from another world felt unbreakable.

Until a Tuesday night in January.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Children • * International News & Commentary • Caribbean • Haiti • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches

OVER the past few years, a growing number of America’s parentless children have found homes. In 2008 there were 463,000 children in foster care, a system where the government places orphans and children with parents who are abusive or unable to take care of them in the care of guardians. That is 11% down since 2002, and great news. But experts worry the trend might now go into reverse.

Some welfare advocates fear that the bad economy may cause parents with frayed nerves to abuse and neglect their children, and even cause some to abandon them. Already, several hospitals across the country have reported an increase in the frequency and severity of injuries from child abuse.

The most recent national data on child welfare available dates from September 2008, before the recession was in full throttle; data from 2009 won’t be reported until later this year. But there is some question about whether the data, when reported, will even be accurate. Many states and counties, in an attempt to cope with their fiscal straits, are considering cutting down on child-welfare services, such as benefits for foster parents and the number of social workers they employ.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • * Economics, Politics • Economy • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • The U.S. Government • Politics in General • City Government • State Government • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

The United States, Germany and other major economies could see their top-notch credit rating come under pressure if the recovery in the global economy stalls, Moody’s Investors Service warned Monday in a report.

The ratings of the Aaa governments — which also include Britain, France, Spain and “the less fiscally challenged Denmark, Norway, Finland and Sweden” — “are currently well positioned despite their stretched finances,” Moody’s said in its quarter Sovereign Monitor report.

But the agency noted that “the recovery that has taken hold across the global economy remains fragile in several of the large advanced economies, most of which have also implemented the most aggressively expansionary fiscal and monetary policies.”

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Credit Markets • The U.S. Government • Budget • The National Deficit • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Europe • Germany

Premier Wen Jiabao aimed sharp words at Washington on Sunday, ceding little ground on China's currency policy and suggesting that U.S. efforts to boost its exports by weakening the dollar amounted to "a kind of trade protectionism."

In his once-yearly news conference, Mr. Wen blamed the recent deterioration in what he called China's most important foreign relationship on U.S. weapons sales to Taiwan and President Barack Obama's meeting with Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama.

"These moves have violated China's territorial integrity," Mr. Wen said. "The responsibility does not lie with the Chinese side but with the United States." Mr. Wen said a good China-U.S. relationship "makes both sides winners while a confrontational one makes both sides losers."

Because Mr. Wen comments so rarely in public, his annual press conferences have a magnified importance. This year's comments were a rare opportunity to hear candidly, and in unusual depth, a Chinese leader's perspective on the U.S.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • The U.S. Government • The United States Currency (Dollar etc) • Foreign Relations • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China

And taking him aside from the multitude privately, he put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue; and looking up to heaven, he sighed, and said to him, "Eph'phatha," that is, "Be opened." And his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly.

--Mark 7:33-35

Filed under: * Theology • Theology: Scripture

O Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, who art thyself the bread of life, and hast promised that he who comes to thee shall never hunger: Grant us faith truly to partake of thee through Word and Sacrament, that we may find refreshment of spirit and be strengthened for thy service; who livest and reignest with the Father, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Church Year / Liturgical Seasons • Lent • Spirituality/Prayer

Charleston is a place of firsts.

It was the first permanent settlement in one of the New World's first Colonies. It fostered the earliest cohesive Jewish community in the South. It was home to two of the four South Carolina men who signed the Declaration of Independence. It was the place where the first shots of the Civil War rang out. It was the American city where Reform Judaism first took root, in 1824.

And this July, Charleston's Reform synagogue, Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim, will welcome the city's first female rabbi: Stephanie Alexander.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • Women • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism • * South Carolina

Residents eager to get their state tax refunds may have a long wait this year: The recession has tied up cash and caused officials in half a dozen states to consider freezing refunds, in one case for as long as five months.

States from New York to Hawaii that have been hard-hit by the economic downturn say they have either delayed refunds or are considering doing so because of budget shortfalls.

"It's an indicator of how bad it is," says Scott Pattison, executive director of the National Association of State Budget Officers. "You know things are bad when you have to do that."

New York, hit with a $9 billion deficit, may delay $500 million in refunds to keep the state from running out of cash, says Gov. David Paterson.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • Politics in General • State Government

Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, had a little political advice last week for President Obama and the Democrats: Don’t pass the president’s health care legislation because you would risk losing in the midterm elections.

Mr. Obama laughed about it afterward. “I generally wouldn’t take advice about what’s good for Democrats” from Mr. McConnell, he told an audience in Pennsylvania. But he conceded that “that’s what members of Congress are hearing right now on the cable shows and in sort of the gossip columns in Washington.” He went on to argue that the issue should be what’s right, not the politics.

But this is Washington and politics are never far from the surface, especially at a decisive moment like this. If the schedule being mapped last week holds – and Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, David Axelrod, said on Sunday that it would — the fate of the president’s health care plan should be decided within the week. “I believe we will have” the votes, Mr. Axelrod said on ABC’s “This Week,” though Republicans and even some Democrats have questioned whether the votes are there now.

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There is a chance to introduce a tax that will recognise both the massive expansion of the financial services industry in recent years and the fact that taxation has never kept up with this – but also a tax that will generate really substantial resources to deal with the urgent global needs that can't wait for some miraculous turnaround in the economy. If we are serious about wanting to tackle real poverty at home or abroad, would we prefer to see an increased burden on domestic taxpayers or an innovative approach that looks for help to the enormous revenues of the financial world? There certainly is a profound connection between poverty and the banking crisis – we all know the new pressures on jobs and the poor at home – and the World Bank has estimated that two million more children could die as a result of the downturn.

The plan is to tax certain transactions between financial institutions – not burdening the High Street banks or the private currency transactions of holidaymakers, but targeting the hundreds of billions that flow between the big players in the financial industry. A tax of an average of 0.05% on these transactions – 50p in every £1000 – could generate something like £250 billion per annum.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Stock Market • Taxes • The Banking System/Sector

We need to demand an immediate release of the e-mails, phone records, and meeting notes from the NY Fed and key Lehman principals regarding the NY Fed’s review of Lehman’s solvency. If, as things appear now, Lehman was allowed by the Fed’s inaction to remain in business, when the Fed should have insisted on a wind-down (and the failed Barclay’s said this was not infeasible: even an orderly bankruptcy would have been preferrable, as Harvey Miller, who handled the Lehman BK filing has made clear; a good bank/bad bank structure, with a Fed backstop of the bad bank, would have been an option if the Fed’s justification for inaction was systemic risk), the NY Fed at a minimum helped perpetuate a fraud on investors and counterparties.

This pattern further suggests the Fed, which by its charter is tasked to promote the safety and soundness of the banking system, instead, via its collusion with Lehman management, operated to protect particular actors to the detriment of the public at large.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Stock Market • The Banking System/Sector • The U.S. Government • Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner

Eslewhere in the world, Europe is widely regarded as a continent whose economy is rigid and sclerotic, whose people are work-shy and welfare-dependent, and whose industrial base is antiquated and declining—the broken cogs and levers that condemn the old world to a gloomy future. As with most clichés, there is some truth in it. Yet as our special report in this week’s issue shows, the achievements of Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, tell a rather different story.

A decade ago Germany was the sick man of Europe, plagued by slow growth and high unemployment, with big manufacturers moving out in a desperate search for lower costs. Now, despite the recession, unemployment is lower than it was five years ago. Although Germany recently ceded its place as the world’s biggest exporter to China, its exporting prowess remains undimmed. As a share of GDP, its current-account surplus this year will be bigger than China’s.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Germany

DR. PHILIP HAWLEY (Grant Medical Center). We have people who are terminal on aggressive life support measures. Clearly they are not going to survive. We are spending all this time and money taking care of them. They are suffering, and it’s completely inappropriate.

DR. GORDON: What people need to do is talk about this with their family, with their physician, in advance. If they get a life-threatening illness, a lot of times they won’t be able to. Maybe they won’t be coherent, or they’ll be on a life-support machine. They can’t express their wishes, then they put their family in a bind, so they feel guilty, they don’t know for sure, and then what often happens is the sort of default is, well, let’s do everything, as much as possible.

ROLLIN: And sometimes families disagree about what to do. It’s hard for some to let go, which complicates things further.

DR. HAWLEY: If we could get families to deal with this we would not have this problem. We feel we as physicians should be able to step in and say we’ve got to stop the madness.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • Life Ethics

It seemed like a good idea at the time. Diabetics are at an unusually high risk of heart disease, heart attacks and strokes, so treating them intensively to sharply reduce blood pressure, cholesterol levels and sugar levels should be highly beneficial. But a decade of studies in thousands of patients show that is not the case.

Two new reports from a major nationwide trial called ACCORD released Sunday show that lowering either blood pressure or cholesterol levels below current guidelines do not provide additional benefit and, in fact, increase the risk of side effects. A third arm of the study, released two years ago, shows that lowering blood sugar levels excessively actually increases the risk of heart disease.

The results are very disappointing, researchers say, because they suggest that clinicians may have reached the limit for what they can do for diabetic patients without the development of totally new therapeutic approaches.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • Science & Technology

The Archbishop of Canterbury has condemned evangelist "bulies" who attempt to convert people of other faiths to Christianity.

Dr Rowan Williams said it was right to be suspicious of proselytism that involves "bullying, insensitive approaches" to other faiths.

In a speech at Guildford cathedral, Dr Williams criticised those who believed they had all the answers amd treated non-Christians as if their traditions of reflection and imagination were of no interest to anyone. "God save us form that kind of approach," he said.

But he added: "God save us also from the nervousness about our own conviction that doesn’t allow us to say we speak about Jesus because we believe he matters, we believe he matters, because we believe that in him human beings find their peace, their destinies converge, and their dignities are fully honoured."

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams • * Religion News & Commentary • Inter-Faith Relations • * Theology • Christology

Ms. [Janet] Marshall gave a brief history of FWMC's work on human sexuality this past triennium. She reminded COGS that they had already stated their preference for a dialogue-focused General Synod that upheld the value of local, national, and international relationships.

Ms. Marshall then walked COGS through FWMC's proposed process for discussing issues of human sexuality at General Synod. In the proposed format, General Synod would begin by "faithful reporting" of FWMC's work in plenary, then break out into smaller discussion groups. Feedback from these groups would be collated and shared in plenary. The smaller groups would meet again for the same process of synthesis and shared plenary feedback. Finally a resolution would be shaped out of this feedback, and General Synod would vote on it.

COGS members discussed the proposed process. Some responded very positively. Others asked for clarification on who would draft the final resolution and whether there would be enough time for this process on the General Synod agenda.

One council member proposed that a motion-affirming the local option for dioceses to approve same-sex blessings-be brought to General Synod. COGS discussed this motion, but ultimately decided not to forward it to General Synod.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Anglican Church of Canada

The Rev. Alistair Begg's theological interpretation of the Gospel of John, (Messages of faith, Saturday) has been sadly all too pervasive in Christianity for centuries. To continue to read this Gospel, or any of the Biblical canon, in such a superficial manner that it leads the reader to believe that "those who claim to know and honor God, but deny the truth of the deity of Christ, are deluded and dangerous" is to perpetuate a serious untruth about the essential nature of Jesus and his message. This untruth has resulted in a host of egregious behaviors by Christians toward others, including virulent anti-Semitism over the last two millennia.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Parishes • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Ministry of the Ordained • * Theology • Christology

As long as the U.S. national debt is entirely denominated in dollars, there is no risk that we will run into the sort of financial crisis that small countries often run into. What gets them into trouble isn't the debt per se, but an inability to acquire sufficient foreign exchange with their own currency to service it. While the U.S. Treasury has never issued bonds denominated in foreign currencies, it is conceivable that it could be forced to do so if the dollar falls sharply and foreign demand for U.S. bonds wanes. That will be the point at which our debt problem becomes more than theoretical and we are really on the road to national bankruptcy.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Credit Markets • The U.S. Government • The National Deficit • Foreign Relations • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Asia • China

When it comes to religion, people of faith are passionate about their beliefs, and at times, that passion can lead to conflicts with others of different religions.

However, sometimes with understanding can come peace.

With that idea in mind, the Solo Flight Singles Group of New Covenant United Methodist Church decided to host an event that would promote peace and understanding between faiths.

The group gathered together representatives from five different faiths — Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Jewish and Christian — for an interfaith panel discussion at the church Tuesday evening.

“I think it’s important that we try to understand everyone,” said Bev Diaz, coordinator of the event. “We’re all coming to realize the world is getting smaller. We’re coming into contact with more faiths, and to have more peace, we need to understand and tolerate each other.”

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Adult Education • * Religion News & Commentary • Inter-Faith Relations • Other Churches • Methodist

Fr. Federico Lombardi, director of the Holy See's Press Office, released a statement on Saturday morning in which he made three "observations" regarding sexual abuse by people and in institutions of the Catholic Church. He also addressed dismissed as unfounded attempts to link the Pope to a decision to transfer a priest found to have committed sexual abuse when Benedict XVI was Archbishop of Munich.

The first of the three "observations" made by Fr. Lombardi was to point out that the "line taken" by the German Bishops' Conference has been confirmed as the correct path to confront the problem in its different aspects.

Fr. Lombardi included some elements of the statement made by Archbishop Robert Zollitsch at a Friday press conference following his audience with the Pope. The Vatican spokesman highlighted the approach established by the German bishops to respond to the possible abuses: "recognizing the truth and helping the victims, reinforcing the preventions and collaborating constructively with the authorities - including those of the state judiciaries - for the common good of society."

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Filed under: * International News & Commentary • Europe • Germany • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • Pope Benedict XVI

The plan, which will be submitted to Congress on Tuesday, is likely to generate debate in Washington and a lobbying battle among the telecommunication giants, which over time may face new competition for customers. Already, the broadcast television industry is resisting a proposal to give back spectrum the government wants to use for future mobile service.

The blueprint reflects the government’s view that broadband Internet is becoming the common medium of the United States, gradually displacing the telephone and broadcast television industries. It also signals a shift at the F.C.C., which under the administration of President George W. Bush gained more attention for policing indecency on the television airwaves than for promoting Internet access.

According to F.C.C. officials briefed on the plan, the commission’s recommendations will include a subsidy for Internet providers to wire rural parts of the country now without access, a controversial auction of some broadcast spectrum to free up space for wireless devices, and the development of a new universal set-top box that connects to the Internet and cable service.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • Science & Technology • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • The U.S. Government

A test of true character, perhaps, is the extent to which one is prepared to blame oneself. As such, the Western world's response to this self-made "credit-crunch" has highlighted the hypocrisy of our so-called leaders, their refusal to face reality and, above all, their lack of character.

When sub-prime first hit, Hank Paulson, then US Treasury Secretary, said "this financial crisis was caused to a large extent by a failure to address the rise of the emerging markets and the resulting global imbalances". Last autumn, European Central Bank boss, Jean-Claude Trichet, argued that "imbalances have been the root of present difficulties".

Even Barack "Change We Can Believe In" Obama has stooped to play the blame game. "We cannot follow the same policies," the President said on a recent trip to Asia, "that have led to global imbalances."

The implication is that sub-prime, and the deepest Western recession in generations, wasn't our fault. It was entirely unrelated to widespread financial fraud, political myopia and lax regulation. Central banks kept interest rates too low for too long, Western consumers went on a debt-binge and our governments spent like crazy – but all that was nothing to do with us....

You probably find this analysis deeply suspect – illogical and even crass. That's because it is.....

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • The Banking System/Sector • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • Politics in General • Office of the President • President Barack Obama • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Asia • China • Europe

So, 'uniqueness' and 'finality': we believe as Christians that because of Jesus Christ a new phase in human history – not just the history of the Middle East or of Europe – has opened. There is now a community representing on earth the new creation, a restored humanity. There is now on earth a community which proclaims God's will for universal reconciliation and God's presence in and among us leading us towards full humanity. That is something which happens as a result of the life and death and resurrection of Jesus. Uniqueness, yes, in the sense that this 'turning of a historical epoch', this induction of a new historical moment, can only happen because of the one event and the narratives around it. And finality? Christians have claimed and will still claim that when you have realized God calls you simply as human being, into that relationship of intimacy which is enjoyed by Jesus and which in Jesus reflects the eternal intimacy of the different moments and persons in the being of God, then you understand something about God which cannot be replaced or supplemented. The finality lies in the recognition that now there is something you cannot forget about God and humanity, and that you cannot correct as if it were simply an interesting theory about God and humanity.

We claim that there is a basic dignity and a basic destiny for all human beings, and we claim that in relationship with Jesus the Word made flesh becomes fully real. Expressed in those terms it is I believe possible to answer some of the moral, political and philosophical questions. And as I've indicated, to say any less than that leaves us with what I believe to be equally serious moral, political and philosophical questions. If we realize that not saying what we have said about Jesus involves us in saying there might be different destinies and different levels of dignity for different sorts of human beings, then, in short, to affirm the uniqueness and the finality of Jesus Christ is actually to affirm something about the universal reconcilability of human beings: the possibility of a universal fellowship.

Does this then create problems for dialogue and learning? Does it make us intolerant? Does it commit us to saying, '...and everybody else is going to hell'? First, in true dialogue with people of different faiths or convictions we expect to learn something: we expect to be different as a result of the encounter. We don't as a rule expect to change our minds. We come with conviction and gratitude and confidence, but it's the confidence that I believe allows us to embark on these encounters hoping that we may learn. That is not to change our conviction, but to learn. And I think it works a bit like this. When we sit alongside the Jew, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, we expect to see in their humanity something that challenges and enlarges ours. We expect to receive something from their humanity as a gift to ours. It's a famous and much-quoted statement in the Qur'an that God did not elect to make everybody the same. God has made us to learn in dialogue. And to say that I have learned from a Buddhist or a Muslim about God or humanity is not to compromise where I began. Because the infinite truth that is in the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit is not a matter which can be exhausted by one set of formulae or one set of practices. I may emerge from my dialogue as confident as I have ever been about the Trinitarian nature of God and the finality of Jesus, and yet say that I've learned something I never dreamed of, and that my discipleship is enriched in gratitude and respect.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams • * Religion News & Commentary • Inter-Faith Relations • Other Faiths • * Theology • Christology • The Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit

How does your ministry work?

We have a healing service once a week on Tuesdays and a soaking prayer service on Wednesday where we pray over those who need healing. We also have a prayer team of 37 people who pray for those who need healing.

How did you come to the healing ministry?

My sister had dystonia, which is a very unusual disease. Her body was crippled and stuck in the fetal position, but eight times a day, all her muscles would spasm. She was expected to die, but a man prayed for her and she got better almost immediately. Witnessing that miracle changed my life.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Ministry of the Ordained • * Theology • Pastoral Theology

It is ironic indeed that Nick Zeigler would invoke the specter of Fort Sumter in a book published just before the current Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church sent her attorneys and investigators into the Diocese of South Carolina. One would think that she would be highly grateful to Bishop Lawrence for managing to hold his Diocese together after the fractures caused by the rift with All Saints Waccamaw, and the loss of the use of the Dennis Canon as a tool for intimidating the faithful in South Carolina. The parishioners of the Diocese have no sooner put that matter behind them, however, than the Presiding Bishop lets herself be seen further stirring up old divisions and strongly-felt emotions, with no evident clue as to her utter folly in doing so.

Alas, when it comes to the leadership at 815, one can but lament: what else is new? They must want it this way, and they will reap what they sow.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori • TEC Bishops • Sept07 HoB Meeting • TEC Conflicts • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • * South Carolina

Too much cancer screening, too many heart tests, too many cesarean sections. A spate of recent reports suggests that many Americans are being overtreated. Maybe even President Barack Obama, champion of an overhaul and cost-cutting of the health care system.

Is it doctors practicing defensive medicine? Or are patients so accustomed to a culture of medical technology that they insist on extensive tests and treatments?

A combination of both is at work, but new evidence and updated guidelines are recommending a step back and more thorough doctor-patient talks about risks and benefits of screening tests.

Americans, including the commander in chief, need to realize that "more care is not necessarily better care," wrote cardiologist Rita Redberg, editor of Archives of Internal Medicine. She was commenting on Obama's recent physical.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • House of Representatives • Office of the President • President Barack Obama • Senate

Last Easter, Jamie Paulin-Ramirez, a 31-year-old mom with a $30,000-a-year job as a medical assistant, announced to her family that she had converted to Islam. A few months later, she began posting to Facebook forums whose headings included "STOP caLLing MUSLIMS TERRORISTS!"

On Sept. 11, she suddenly left Leadville, Colo., a small town in the Rocky Mountains, for Denver, then for New York, to meet and marry a Muslim man she connected with online, her family says. Ms. Paulin-Ramirez, who is 5-foot-11 and blonde, phoned her mother and stepfather in Leadville, providing them with an address in Waterford, Ireland, they say.

Now, she is in the custody of the Irish police, along with six other individuals, arrested as part of an investigation into a conspiracy to commit murder, according to officials familiar with the case. The nature of the authorities' suspicions about Ms. Paulin-Ramirez couldn't be determined on Friday.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • Violence • Women • * Economics, Politics • Terrorism • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • England / UK • --Ireland • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Islam

In a tense, 43-minute phone call on Friday morning, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Israel’s plan for new housing units for Jews in East Jerusalem sent a “deeply negative signal” about Israeli-American relations, and not just because it spoiled a visit by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Mr. Biden, in Israel this week to declare American support for its security, had already condemned the move as undermining the peace process. But Mrs. Clinton went a good deal further in her conversation with Mr. Netanyahu, saying it had harmed “the bilateral relationship,” according to the State Department spokesman, Philip J. Crowley.

Such blunt language toward Israel is very rare from an American administration, and several officials said Mrs. Clinton was relaying the anger of President Obama at the announcement, which was made by Israel’s Interior Ministry and which Mr. Netanyahu said caught him off guard.

The Israeli leader repeated his surprise about the plan to Mrs. Clinton, a senior official said, and apologized again for the timing. But that did not appear to mollify Mrs. Clinton, who said she “could not understand how this happened, particularly in light of the United States’ strong commitment to Israel’s security,” Mr. Crowley said.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Foreign Relations • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Middle East • Israel

As accusations of clerical sexual abuse continue to emerge, most recently in Ireland, Germany, Austria and the Netherlands, a conversation I had recently with a Vatican official offered a timely reminder not to forget what is often overlooked: the well-being of priests in all of this.

He pointed out that while each case must, of course, be treated with the utmost seriousness and justice be done, often innocent priests are the ones who have to bear most of the fallout. The perpetrators also receive precious little help or compassion from the Church.

“There has been such an overreaction that most priests are now warned not to even touch a child,” he said. “And I’ve not seen the slightest compassion shown by anybody to a priest caught up in this stuff.”

Stressing that while the crime is deplorable, he said a very small minority of priests are guilty of the crime. Furthermore, he reminded that the perpetrator is “a priest and a Christian and deserves some kind of help and respect – they’ve almost been treated like dogs and it’s horrible.”

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Ministry of the Ordained • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Psychology • Sexuality • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • --Ireland • Europe • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic

On Feb. 3, Ergun Caner, president of the Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary, in Lynchburg, Va., focused attention on a Southern Baptist controversy when he called Jerry Rankin, the president of the denomination’s International Mission Board, a liar. Dr. Caner has since apologized for his language, but he still maintains that the “Camel Method,” a strategy Dr. Rankin endorses for preaching Christianity to Muslims, is deceitful.

Instead of talking about the Jesus of the New Testament, missionaries using the Camel Method point Muslims to the Koran, where in the third chapter, or sura, an infant named Isa — Arabic for Jesus — is born. Missionaries have found that by starting with the Koran’s Jesus story, they can make inroads with Muslims who reject the Bible out of hand. But according to Dr. Caner, whose attack on Dr. Rankin came in a weekly Southern Baptist podcast, the idea that the Koran can contain the seeds of Christian faith is “an absolute, fundamental deception.”

David Garrison, a missionary who edited a book on the Camel Method by Kevin Greeson, the method’s developer, defends the use of the Koran as a path to Jesus. “You aren’t criticizing Muhammad or any other prophets,” Dr. Garrison said, “just raising Jesus up.”

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Missions • Parish Ministry • Evangelism and Church Growth • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • Asia • Malaysia • * Religion News & Commentary • Inter-Faith Relations • Other Churches • Baptists • Other Faiths • Islam • Muslim-Christian relations

A widening child sexual abuse inquiry in Europe has landed at the doorstep of Pope Benedict XVI, as a senior church official acknowledged Friday that a German archdiocese made “serious mistakes” in handling an abuse case while the pope served as its archbishop.

The archdiocese said that a priest accused of molesting boys was given therapy in 1980 and later allowed to resume pastoral duties, before committing further abuses and being prosecuted. Pope Benedict, who at the time headed the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising, approved the priest’s transfer for therapy. A subordinate took full responsibility for allowing the priest to later resume pastoral work, the archdiocese said in a statement.

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said he had no comment beyond the statement by the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising, which he said showed the “nonresponsibility” of the pope in the matter.

The expanding abuse inquiry had come ever closer to Benedict as new accusations in Germany surfaced almost daily since the first reports in January. On Friday the pope met with the chief bishop of Germany, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, the head of the German Bishops Conference, to discuss the church investigations and media reports.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Ministry of the Ordained • * Culture-Watch • Children • Law & Legal Issues • Religion & Culture • Sexuality • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Germany • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • Pope Benedict XVI

As policymakers in Washington, D.C., debate overhauling health care, several evangelical Christian groups have found a way of getting around the high cost of health insurance. Instead of paying premiums, they simply agree to pay each other's medical bills.

The groups are not regulated because unlike insurance there's no guarantee an individual's bills will be paid. That's something members take on faith.

James Lansberry, the vice president of Samaritan Ministries, says the concept is simple. First there's a $170 annual fee to cover Samaritan's administrative costs. His nonprofit group then compiles members' health care bills and tells its 14,000 households where to send their monthly checks.

"The money doesn't get received at our central office — it goes directly from one family to another," Lansberry says. "So each month I send my monthly share of $285 directly to another family."

Read or listen it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Health & Medicine • Marriage & Family • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Personal Finance

Rabbi Harold Kushner.... tells NPR's Renee Montagne. "There's always a fresh supply of grieving people asking, 'Where was God when I needed him most?' "

That's a question Kushner himself confronted as a young father when his first-born child died, leading him to rethink his view of an omnipotent God.

"It just seemed so terribly unfair and it forced me to reconsider everything I'd been taught in seminary about God's role in the world," Kushner says. "It was shattering."

He says people from a more traditional perspective have asked him whether he thought his son's death was part of God's plan. He says they said that going through the tragedy of a child's loss prompted him to write his first book. But Kushner rejects that idea.

"If that were God's plan, it's a bad bargain," Kushner says. "I don't want to have to deal with a God like that."

Read or listen to it all (audio strongly recommended, just a little over 7 3/4 minutes)--KSH.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism • * Theology • Pastoral Theology • Theodicy

Read it carefully and read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • * South Carolina

Nigerians this week buried the victims of a massacre near the central city of Jos. Many of the pre­dominantly Christian villagers who were killed were women and children.

Mechanical excavators were used to prepare mass graves for those who had been killed in three villages in the small hours of Sunday morning. Reported numbers of dead varied between 100 and 500.

Residents of the village of Dogo Nahawa, about 15 km south of Jos, say that herders from hills near by had attacked their village, shooting into the air before using machetes to cut down those who came out of their homes, one report said.

The Archbishop of Jos, the Most Revd Benjamin Kwashi, wrote in a pastoral letter that the attacks showed a new dimension, “revealing a system of well-trained terror groups. . . God knows which com­mun­ity will be next. Their merciless precision and fearlessness should give any government serious con­cern.”

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of Nigeria • * Culture-Watch • Violence • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Islam • Muslim-Christian relations

(ACNS) Some 35 members of the Anglican Peace and Justice Network (APJN) will meet in Geneva, Switzerland, from 13 - 20 March, 2010. Representing over 20 countries and all the world’s continents, participants will learn more about making their voices heard within the UN system in Geneva. In parallel, they will be introduced to UN policies and programmes to inform their own work on peace and justice worldwide.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • - Anglican: Latest News • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Switzerland

In this city so crowded with religious symbols, where houses of worship vie with one another to render the religious past visible, no synagogue bears more symbolic weight than the one called the Hurva, in the heart of the Jewish Quarter.

Just days ahead of its March 15 rededication ceremony, finishing touches still were being applied to the synagogue, once Jerusalem's grandest, which had remained in ruins for six decades. The rebuilt Hurva, made of the white stone that is Jerusalem's vernacular material, had already assumed its former prominence in the city's crowded skyline. Only interior details remained to be done.

Early this month, as the Israeli architect Nahum Meltzer looked on, a whorled woodwork crown covered in gold leaf was hoisted to its perch atop a two-story holy ark. The ark, which stands beneath the building's gleaming 82-feet-high dome, is a nearly exact replica of the original that stood on the spot more than 150 years earlier, encapsulating the basic principle that guided Mr. Meltzer's reconstruction: not innovation, but historical accuracy.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Liturgy, Music, Worship • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • Middle East • Israel • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

When they heard I was going to report in Haiti after the massive earthquake, fifth-graders from Amylynn Robinson's class asked if I could deliver some messages to any children I'd meet. Their letters included drawings of flowers, hearts and rainbows. And they began simply:

"Hello Haiti, nice to meet you."

"Dear Buddy ... "

"Hi there, I'm a child as well."

"Dear friend, I am your friend. I wrote this letter to tell you I care about you."

The children wrote about their school, Balboa Magnet Elementary, a public school in Northridge, Calif., in Northern Los Angeles County, which was the epicenter of a magnitude 6.7 earthquake in 1994. Although these 10-year-olds were not alive then, many say they've heard stories about the damage in California. So they were sympathetic to kids coping with the magnitude 7.0 earthquake in Haiti.....

This is just a fantastic piece that I caught on the morning run. You really need to do the audio as it is far superior when you hear the children's voices (about 7 1/3 minutes). And check out which song one of the Haitian children chose to send back to the children in California! Listen to it all--KSH.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Education • * International News & Commentary • Caribbean • Haiti

...often the wicked so devote themselves to the practice of sin that they succeed in doing more wickedness than they would have been able to learn from the bad example of reprobate sinners. For this reason the torment of greater punishment is inflicted on them, in that they, by their own initiative, sought out greater ways of sinning, for which they are to be punished. Consequently it is well said: "According to the multitude of his devices, so shall he suffer [a citation from Job 20:18]. For he would not find out new ways of sinning unless he sought them out, and he would not seek out such things unless he were anxious to do them deliberately. Therefore, in his punishment, this excess in devising wickedness is taken into account, and he receives proportionate punishment and retribution. And even though the suffering of the damned is infinite, nevertheless they receive greater punishments who, by their own desires, sought out many new ways of sinning.

--Gregory the Great (540-604), Book of Morals 15.18.22

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Church History • * Theology • Eschatology

According to the U.S. Census Bureau's figures, Montana has grown in population from 902,195 in 2000 to 974,989 in 2009. This represents a population growth of approximately 8.07%.

According to Episcopal Church statistics, the Diocese of Montana went from Average Sunday Attendance (or ASA) of 2,273 in 1998 to 1,827 in 2008. This represents an ASA decline of about 20% over this ten year period.

In order to generate a pictorial chart of some Montana diocesan statistics, please go here and enter "Montana" in the second line down under "Diocese" and then click on "View Diocese Chart" under the third line to the left.

The Diocese of Montana's website may be found here.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • TEC Data

A panel of educators convened by the nation’s governors and state school superintendents proposed a uniform set of academic standards on Wednesday, laying out their vision for what all the nation’s public school children should learn in math and English, year by year, from kindergarten to high school graduation.

The new proposals could transform American education, replacing the patchwork of standards ranging from mediocre to world-class that have been written by local educators in every state.

Under the proposed standards for English, for example, fifth graders would be expected to explain the differences between drama and prose, and to identify elements of drama like characters, dialogue and stage directions. Seventh graders would study, among other math concepts, proportional relationships, operations with rational numbers and solutions for linear equations.

The new standards are likely to touch off a vast effort to rewrite textbooks, train teachers and produce appropriate tests, if a critical mass of states adopts them in coming months, as seems likely. But there could be opposition in some states, like Massachusetts, which already has high standards that advocates may want to keep.

“I’d say this is one of the most important events of the last several years in American education,” said Chester E. Finn Jr., a former assistant secretary of education who has been an advocate for national standards for nearly two decades. “Now we have the possibility that for the first time, states could come together around new standards and high school graduation requirements that are ambitious and coherent. This is a big deal.”

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Education • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

Watch it all. Caught this one yesterday on the morning run. That Alaskan water looks really cold--KSH!.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Military / Armed Forces

A majority of dioceses in the Episcopal Church have confirmed the election of an open lesbian as a bishop in Los Angeles, bringing Bishop-elect Mary Glasspool one step closer to consecration.

The Diocese of Los Angeles, where Glasspool was elected as an assistant bishop last December, announced confirmations from 61 of the denomination’s 110 dioceses on Wednesday (March 10).

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • TEC Conflicts • TEC Conflicts: Los Angeles • Sexuality Debate (in Anglican Communion) • Same-sex blessings

Anglican parish communities in Chile, hit by a serious earthquake — the fifth-largest on record — that devastated the city of Concepción last Saturday, are sheltering together in tents for safety and to share food and water, says their Bishop, the Rt Revd Héctor Zavala.

Bishop Zavala was expected to arrive in Concepción on Wednesday after travelling for at least ten hours across broken roads. On Tuesday, he asked his colleague Ricardo Tucas to send the following report:

“[The Bishop] is now travelling to the devastated region of Con­cepción, which holds three of his urban churches, and was near three other rural congregations in the High Mountains of Bio-Bio. Four days following the massive earth­quake in Chile, many towns are still completely isolated . . .

“Andy Bowman, until recently a USPG Mission Companion in Concepción, said: ‘From the com­munications we have had with people in Santiago in the north, the situation in Concepción seems desperate. Half a million people in Concepción are isolated, without water, electricity, shelter, and food. Shops have been looted and civil unrest appears to be widespread. Seven thousand Chilean troops have been sent to the area to maintain order.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • - Anglican: Latest News • Anglican Provinces • Southern Cone • * International News & Commentary • South America • Chile

South Carolina's unemployment rate hit another record high in January as the level of jobless residents rose in all 46 counties.

Employers cut 27,700 positions throughout the month, including seasonal jobs in tourism and retail, as the jobless rate reached 12.6 percent, the state Employment Security Commission said Wednesday.

South Carolina's unemployed population -- a total of 273,455 residents -- is the biggest on record.

Compare that number with the data recorded several years ago and a grim picture emerges. That figure, for example, never topped 100,000 people in 2000. Throughout 2005, the number averaged 140,000.

"It gives us a sense of how many jobs the economy needs to create in order

to put a majority of people back to work," said economist Don Schunk of Coastal Carolina University. "More so than the unemployment rate, (that number) tells us how far we have to go before we return to some sense of normalcy."

Read it all from the front page of yesterday's local paper.

Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • * South Carolina

Sunday’s killings were an especially vicious expression of long-running hostilities between Christians and Muslims in this divided nation. Jos and the region around it are on the fault line where the volatile and poor Muslim north and the Christian south meet. In the past decade, some 3,000 people have been killed in interethnic, interreligious violence in this fraught zone. The pattern is familiar and was seen as recently as January: uneasy coexistence suddenly explodes into killing, amplified for days by retaliation.

Mr. Adamu, a Muslim herder, said he went to Dogo Na Hawa, a village of Christians living in mud-brick houses on dirt streets, to avenge the killings of Muslims and their cattle in January.

The operation had been planned at least several days before by a local group called Thank Allah, said one of Mr. Adamu’s fellow detainees, Ibrahim Harouna, who was shackled on the floor next to him. The men spoke in Hausa through an interpreter.

“They killed a lot of our Fulanis in January,” Mr. Adamu said, referring to his ethnic group. “So I knew that this time, we would take revenge.”

His victims were sleeping when he arrived, he said, and he set their house on fire. Sure enough, they ran out.

“I killed three people,” Mr. Adamu said calmly.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Violence • * International News & Commentary • Africa • Nigeria • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Islam • Muslim-Christian relations

Bishops in the nation's largest Lutheran denomination have approved preliminary steps to welcome a group of openly gay and lesbian ministers as official clergy with new liturgical rites.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's Conference of Bishops approved a draft proposal on Monday (March 8) for the new rites, which include prayers and the laying on of hands by the local bishop, according to the denomination's news service.

The proposal only applies to 17 pastors who had followed normal ELCA procedures for education and ordination, but remained barred from the denomination's official clergy roster because of their sexuality. The clergy are all members of Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries, a group devoted to gay rights in the ELCA.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Ministry of the Ordained • * Culture-Watch • Sexuality • Civil Unions & Partnerships • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Lutheran • Sexuality Debate (Other denominations and faiths)

Liberal Judaism, Quakers in Britain and the Unitarians are the only religious denominations to have voiced support for the Equality Bill amendment but only the Quakers, in calling for full marriage equality, have done what is right. All religious faiths should follow their lead and ask the Government to finally introduce full equality.

It isn't very complicated. We're all human beings. Our needs are very simple: somewhere to live, something to eat, someone to love. There's no gay conspiracy. In asking for full equality we are not asking for much. It's beyond me how my joy in love can diminish anyone else's, and even less how it can bring them pain. I wonder how many lives those who oppose equality imagine they have, that they are prepared to lose both sleep and integrity obsessing over who is loving whom and how.

Read it all.

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

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Psychology • Religion & Culture • Sexuality • Civil Unions & Partnerships • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • * Theology • Pastoral Theology

Comments are closed.

Check it out--there are many subsections to examine via the links.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops

Almighty and merciful God, who didst raise up Gregory of Rome to be a servant of the servants of God, and didst inspire him to send missionaries to preach the Gospel to the English people: Preserve in thy Church the catholic and apostolic faith they taught, that thy people, being fruitful in every good work, may receive the crown of glory that fadeth not away; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Church History • Spirituality/Prayer

O come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the LORD, our Maker! For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. O that today you would hearken to his voice!

--Psalm 95:6,7

Filed under: * Theology • Theology: Scripture

The sour economy is producing a bumper crop of cash-strapped consumers, business owners and shady agents who're fueling a wave of insurance fraud that's keeping regulators and law enforcement officials busy from coast to coast.

Whether it's worthless health plans peddled by fax, staged auto accidents, arson or slip-and-fall accidents at the local mall, insurance fraud of all kinds is booming in the recession and consumers are paying the price in higher premiums.

To keep it in perspective, roughly 48 million insurance claims are made each year in the U.S. and less than one-quarter of 1 percent are referred to the nonprofit National Insurance Crime Bureau for investigation of possible fraud.

Last year, that amounted to just more than 85,000 questionable claims. That was up 14 percent from nearly 75,000 in 2008, however.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Personal Finance • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Machines that decode your thoughts aren't limited to the realm of science fiction anymore.

A computer program that analyzes brain scans was able to tell which of three short films people were thinking about, according to a study in the journal Current Biology.

"We were able to predict just from their brain activity which of those memories they were recalling," says Eleanor A. Maguire, one of the study's authors and a professor of cognitive neuroscience at University College London.

This is a major step forward, Maguire says. But it falls short of what most people would call mind reading. "We can't put somebody in a brain scanner and immediately know what thoughts they are having," she says.

Read or listen to it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Psychology • Science & Technology • * Theology • Anthropology

In the latest sign of the nation’s shifting racial and ethnic composition, births to Asian, black and Hispanic women in the United States are on the verge of surpassing births to non-Hispanic whites.

Minorities accounted for 48 percent of all births in the nation in the 12 months that ended in July 2008. While it will most likely take years for health statisticians to confirm precisely when the 50 percent benchmark will have been reached, demographers said it could occur this year. Depending on variables like the recession, which has depressed birth rates, it will almost certainly happen within a year or two, they said.

“It looks like ‘majority’ births would drop below 50 percent around 2012,” said Carl Haub, senior demographer for the Population Reference Bureau.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

Many governments have used the internet to curtail freedom of expression at home, the US state department says in its latest annual human rights report.

In many cases new forms of electronic communications are restricted to control domestic dissent, it says.

The wide-ranging report also highlights continuing human rights violations in China against the Uighurs and extra-judicial killings in North Korea.

Iran, Sri Lanka, Burma and Switzerland also come in for criticism.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • Globalization • Law & Legal Issues • Science & Technology • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

The Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin today filed a lawsuit against St. Columba’s, a Fresno parish that in 2007 joined Bishop John-David Schofield and 39 other churches in seceding from the national Episcopal Church.

Already, the Episcopal diocese has filed similar lawsuits against St. Francis Anglican Church in Turlock and St. Michael’s Anglican Church in Ridgecrest, a high-desert community in far eastern Kern County. Those parishes also were part of the secession.

The lawsuits against the individual parishes are part of a larger legal battle pitting the Episcopal Church against the breakaway Diocese of San Joaquin, which joined the Anglican Church of the Southern Cone of South America, and now also the newly formed Anglican Church in North America.

Read the whole thing.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Conflicts • TEC Conflicts: San Joaquin • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues

The Federal Reserve's Flow of Funds report reveals more deleveraging, with U.S. debt growing at the slowest pace on record and nearly offsetting the huge rise in federal debt. Nonfinancial debt increased at just 1.6% annually, to $34.7Trillion.

Moneyquote:

Household debt contracted at an annual rate of 1¼ percent in the fourth quarter, its seventh consecutivequarter of decline.

You can check the full document out here (pdf and a long one).

Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • The September 2008 Proposed Henry Paulson 700 Billion Bailout Package

For a little over a year, five Canadian and six African dioceses have engaged in diocese-to-diocese theological dialogue on matters relating to human sexuality and to mission. With one exception, each diocese has established a theological working group to prepare papers and responses which were shared with their partner diocese on the opposite continent (see below for list of participants). Ontario and Botswana exchanged documents related to sustainability in the context of mission. These dialogues have emerged from, and are a deepening of, relationships established during the Indaba and Bible Study processes at the Lambeth Conference of 2008.

From February 24 to 26, the bishops of these dioceses met at the Anglican Communion Office, St. Andrew's House in London, England. In a context grounded by common prayer and eucharistic celebration we reflected together on our local experiences of mission and the challenges facing the Church in our diverse contexts. Though the initial exchange of papers had been related in most cases to matters of human sexuality and homosexuality in particular, our face to face theological conversation necessarily deepened to explore the relationships between the Gospel and the many particular cultural realities in which the Church is called to mission.

Read it all

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • - Anglican: Primary Source • -- Reports & Communiques • Anglican Provinces • Anglican Church of Canada • * International News & Commentary • Africa

In the era of apartheid, Archbishop Desmond Tutu railed against the injustice and inhumanity of South Africa's government, and his passionate advocacy helped make the change that came to that country in the 1990s.

Now 78, in a magenta habit with a crucifix around his neck, he is the picture of a holy man. But looking back on his boyhood in one of South Africa's black townships, Tutu remembers an urchin with a fondness for marbles and comic books. And even in church, "we had fun," the archbishop tells NPR's Renee Montagne.

The memories linger even now. There's joy in Tutu's voice as he recalls a song he sang as a child: "If God be for us, who can be against us?" the verse asked.

"It was a fantastic thing to have much, much later," Tutu says — "to remember, 'Yes, if God be for us in our struggle against injustice and oppression, who can be against us?' "

Read or listen to it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of South Africa • * Culture-Watch • History • Race/Race Relations • * Theology • Pastoral Theology • Theology: Scripture

China's government considers public corruption a serious problem because it could threaten Communist Party rule if left unchecked.

"We will give high priority to fighting corruption and encouraging integrity," China Premier Wen Jiabao said Friday in his annual State of the Union-style address. "This has a direct bearing on the firmness of our grip on political power."

Li Tangtang joins at least 14 other ministerial- or provincial-level officials sacked for corruption last year, a record high for the past 30 years, according to the Global Times newspaper. In 2009, the number of officials caught embezzling more than 1 million Chinese yuan ($146,000) soared by 19% over 2008, the discipline committee said.

China ranked 79 out of 180 countries in 2009 on Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index, which bases its findings on 13 independent surveys. That's worse than the previous year (72) and below bribe-infested Cuba. New Zealand is No. 1 in transparency, the United States No. 19.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

According to the U.S. Census Bureau's figures, Rhode Island has grown in population from 1,048,319 in 2000 to 1,053,209 in 2009. This represents a population growth of approximately 0.47%.

According to Episcopal Church statistics, the Diocese of Rhode Island went from Average Sunday Attendance (or ASA) of 8,174 in 1998 to 6,078 in 2008. This represents an ASA decline of about 26% over this ten year period.

In order to generate a pictorial chart of some Rhode Island diocesan statistics, please go here and enter "Rhode Island" in the second line down under "Diocese" and then click on "View Diocese Chart" under the third line to the left.

The Diocese of Rhode Island's website may be found here.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • TEC Data • TEC Parishes • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry

The case of Colleen R. LaRose – also known as “Jihad Jane” and “Fatima Rose” – raises troubling questions about the ability of Al Qaeda to attract US-born women to terrorism....

US counterterrorism officials long have been concerned about the possibility of Islamic radicalization of US natives. But generally speaking, they have focused on potential terrorist recruits that are males.

“The issue of US converts [to radical Islam] is not new,” says Juan Carlos Zarate, senior adviser in the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “What is new is that in this case, the convert may be a middle-aged female.”

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Women • * Economics, Politics • Terrorism • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Islam

In support of Bishop Lawrence, members of the West Charleston Deanery have issued “A Call to Prayer,” inviting members of their Deanery to join in a time of fasting and prayer for Bishop Lawrence March 16-18 prior to the House of Bishop’s Meeting (March 19-24). The Deanery has scheduled a gathering of prayer and worship for Thursday, March 18 at 7:00 p.m. at Saint James, James Island. Following that gathering, churches from the deanery have signed up to pray for the Bishop every day of the House of Bishops’ meeting through and including our Diocesan Convention, March 26. As Craige Borrett, Dean of the West Charleston Deanery noted, “We need to remember that, ‘Prayer isn’t preparation for the battle. It is the battle.’” View the related Bulletin Insert.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • TEC Conflicts • * Christian Life / Church Life • Spirituality/Prayer • * South Carolina

Another resolution proposed by the standing committee would add a diocesan canon that says the bishop — or, in a bishop’s absence, the standing committee — is “the sole and final authority with respect to any dispute concerning the interpretation of the Constitution and Canons of this Diocese.”

A canonical revision, also proposed by the standing committee, grants the diocese’s bishop (or standing committee) the authority to “provide a generous pastoral response to parishes in conflict with the Diocese or Province, as the Ecclesiastical Authority judges necessary, to preserve the unity and integrity of the Diocese.”

An explanatory note on that resolution says: “We’ve experienced now as a diocese, in the All Saints, Pawleys Island litigation, the destructive force of such litigation; how it has created animosities and divisions that are not easily healed. It has failed as a positive cohesive force for maintaining the unity of the church and has in fact had precisely the opposite effect. Christians are suing Christians (1 Cor. 6:1-8); the reputation of the church is marred, and vital resources are diverted from essential Kingdom work. None of this is honoring to our Savior.”

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori • TEC Bishops • TEC Conflicts • TEC Diocesan Conventions • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • * South Carolina

Religious freedom advocates were encouraged by the President's stated views and allowed themselves to hope that America's international religious freedom policy, long isolated at the State Department, would be strengthened under the new administration.

Their hopes are fading.

Almost 14 months into the Obama presidency, the ambassador at large for international religious freedom -- a position mandated by the International Religious Freedom Act -- has not been named, even though other positions of less weight and importance to our national interests have long been filled.

The leading candidate for the religious freedom job is said to be a highly intelligent and charismatic pastor, an author and a thoroughly good person who has the friendship of Secretary Hillary Clinton. Those are important attributes. Indeed, having the trust of the Secretary is vital. But more is needed. To be successful, this ambassador at large needs foreign policy experience. Without it, it will be extremely difficult to succeed within Foggy Bottom's notoriously thorny bureaucracy, let alone deal with foreign officials who believe (as many do) that U.S. international religious freedom policy is a vehicle of cultural imperialism.

Worse, it appears that the new ambassador will be demoted before she is even nominated. Like her predecessors under Presidents Clinton and Bush, she will not be treated as an ambassador at large at all, but will report to a lower ranking official - the assistant secretary for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. Her placement alone will signal to American diplomats and foreign governments that they need not take U.S. religious freedom policy seriously.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • Law & Legal Issues • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • Office of the President • President Barack Obama

When the “American Idol” judge Simon Cowell recently predicted the departure of the contestant Jermaine Sellers, the young singer shook his head in disagreement. “I know God,’’ he replied, pointing upward.

Two days later, when Mr. Sellers failed to make the cut, he still had faith. “What God has for me is for me,’’ he said. “In God there is no failure.’’

Mr. Sellers is not alone in his belief that God pays attention to reality television contests. New research shows that most Americans believe God is directly involved in their personal affairs, and that the good or bad things that happen are “part of God’s plan,’’ according to a report in the March issue of the journal Sociology of Religion.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Movies & Television • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

The Dalai Lama lashed out at China on Wednesday, accusing it of trying to "annihilate Buddhism" in Tibet and rebuffing all his efforts to reach a compromise over the disputed Himalayan region.

China shot back, accusing the Tibetan spiritual leader of using deceptions and lies to distort its policy in the region. The passionate back-and-forth highlighted the distrust, anger and frustration that separates the two sides and leaves little hope for success in recently resumed talks.

Beijing has demonized the Dalai Lama and accused him of wanting independence for Tibet, which China says is part of its territory. The Dalai Lama says he only wants some form of autonomy for Tibet within China that would allow Tibetan culture, language and religion to thrive.

The Dalai Lama spoke Wednesday in an address marking the anniversaries of two failed uprisings against China, one 51 years ago that sent him into exile in India and the other two years ago that was quashed by a government crackdown that is still continuing.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China • India • Tibet • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Buddhism

A civil rights film, “Blood Done Sign My Name,” is one of 14 winners of the 2010 Wilbur Award that recognize excellence in coverage of religion in the secular media.

The Wilburs are awarded annually by the Religion Communicators Council; winners receive a trophy and $250. This year’s awards will be presented April 9 at the Religion Communication Congress in Chicago.

Read it all and see how many of the articles you have seen.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Media • Religion & Culture

Churches have joined together to protest against plans for a mosque that would tower over the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, with one minister describing it as a “supremacist statement” for Islam.

A collective comprising every church in Camberley, Surrey, has lambasted plans for the giant mosque, warning that will create only “division and discord” in the town.

The proposal has already caused security concerns in military circles as the mosque includes 30m (100ft) minarets that would overlook Sandhurst.

The planned mosque lies just 360m from the academy, where hundreds of newly commissioned Army officers take to the parade ground each year for their passing out ceremony. The event attracts senior members of the Royal Family as well as important military figures.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Other Faiths • Islam • Muslim-Christian relations

The experience reinforced for me the reality of terror in the sky. Sitting in an aircraft, 37,000ft over the Atlantic, there is nowhere to go, no escape and, confronted by passengers behaving suspiciously, a total sense of helplessness.

The nonchalant manner with which the male passenger was allowed to walk through the plane and enter the toilet during the landing approach, and to remain out of sight and control for around five minutes, was simply incredible and extraordinarily alarming.

Afterwards, I complained to the United Airlines desk. I was informed that an armed air marshal was probably on board the flight, as is most likely the case on high-risk routes between the United States and the UK.

However, I wondered what difference the marshal's presence would have made had the passenger beside me turned out to be a suicide-bomber. Would he - could he - have shot the suspect through the toilet door and saved our lives?

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Travel • * Economics, Politics • Terrorism • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • --Ireland

The second meeting of the Anglican-Methodist International Commission for Unity in Mission (AMICUM) has taken place near Bath, England, 19-26 February 2010, hosted by the World Methodist Council, at the Ammerdown Centre. The Commission benefited greatly from the opportunity to visit and celebrate Holy Communion in the New Room in Bristol, and to see some of the historical memorabilia held in Wesley College, Bristol.

The Commission is pursuing the common purpose of both world communions to be united according to the will of God, for the glory of God, and the well-being of God’s church, and for the effectiveness of God’s mission in the world.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • - Anglican: Primary Source • -- Reports & Communiques • Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • * Religion News & Commentary • Ecumenical Relations • Other Churches • Methodist

The diocese of British Columbia may be the next in Canada to ask its bishop to allow the blessing of married gay or lesbian couples.

A motion asking that priests be allowed to conduct blessings of gay of lesbian couples has been submitted to the biennial synod meeting Mar. 6-7 by the parish of St. John the Divine, Victoria.

The synod, primarily concerned with a restructuring of the diocese, failed to finish its business but will resume at the call of the Bishop James Cowan later this spring when the motion regarding same sex blessings may come to the floor.

Bishop Cowan will make the final decision as to whether same sex blessings should take place in parishes of the diocese, which covers Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands. At General Synod 2007, the bishop voted against extension of the blessing.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Anglican Church of Canada • Sexuality Debate (in Anglican Communion) • Same-sex blessings

As a hart longs for flowing streams, so longs my soul for thee, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God?

--Psalm 42:1-2

Filed under: * Theology • Theology: Scripture

Lord Christ, almighty Saviour, we cry to thee for aid against our strong enemy. O thou who art the Stronger than the strong, deliver us, we pray thee, from the evil one, and take sole possession of our hearts and minds; that filled with thy Spirit we may henceforth devote our lives to thy service, and therein find our perfect freedom; for the honour of thy great name.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Church Year / Liturgical Seasons • Lent • Spirituality/Prayer

Sex abuse scandals in the Roman Catholic Church are proof that that "the Devil is at work inside the Vatican", according to the Holy See's chief exorcist.

Father Gabriele Amorth, 85, who has been the Vatican's chief exorcist for 25 years and says he has dealt with 70,000 cases of demonic possession, said that the consequences of satanic infiltration included power struggles at the Vatican as well as "cardinals who do not believe in Jesus, and bishops who are linked to the Demon".

He added: "When one speaks of 'the smoke of Satan' [a phrase coined by Pope Paul VI in 1972] in the holy rooms, it is all true – including these latest stories of violence and paedophilia."

In lieu of comments, I am asking you to pray for those involved. Read it all--KSH.

Filed under: * International News & Commentary • Europe • Italy • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • Pope Benedict XVI

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While President Obama's push to raise federal income taxes for the wealthy gets lots of attention, the continuing upward creep in the sales tax rates imposed by state and local governments has gotten less notice.

But Vertex Inc., which calculates sales tax for Internet sellers, reports that the average general sales tax rate nationwide reached 8.629% at the end of 2009, the highest since the Berwyn, Pa., company started tracking data in 1982. That was up a nickel on a taxable $100 purchase from a year earlier and up nearly 40 cents for the decade. The highest sales tax rate in the country now stands at 12%.

During 2009 seven states and the District of Columbia raised sales tax rates, with one jurisdiction -- North Carolina -- actually doing it twice. Only four states hiked rates in 2008 and only one in 2007. Given state budget problems, the 2009 state sales tax increases aren't surprising. States have also been raising income tax rates on the wealthy and on corporations and boosting excise taxes on alcohol and tobacco. With states now facing record budget shortfalls, more tax increases seem likely.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Taxes • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • Politics in General • City Government • State Government

See what you make of it.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Identity • Episcopal Church (TEC) • Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori • TEC Conflicts • TEC Diocesan Conventions • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • * South Carolina

Diocese of Los Angeles Bishop-elect Mary Douglas Glasspool has received the required number of consents from diocesan standing committees to her ordination and consecration, pending verification by the presiding bishop's office.

The Diocese of Los Angeles announced March 10 that Glasspool had received 61 standing committee consents, in an unofficial tally. A majority of consents, or 56, were required from standing committees in the Episcopal Church's 109 dioceses.

"I give thanks for the standing commitees' prompt action, and for the consents to the elections of my sisters," Los Angeles Bishop Diocesan J. Jon Bruno said on March 10, referring to both Glasspool and Bishop-elect Diane Jardine Bruce.

"I look forward to the final few consents to come in from the bishops in the next few days, and I give thanks for the fact that we as a church have taken a bold step for just action."

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori's office has yet to verify the official number of bishops with jurisdiction who have consented to Glasspool's ordination and consecration.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • TEC Conflicts • TEC Conflicts: Los Angeles • Instruments of Unity • Sexuality Debate (in Anglican Communion) • Same-sex blessings • Windsor Report / Process

However, unlike the case in San Joaquin, there is now a date that has been set for oral argument in the Court of Appeal -- and it will occur in the same week that oral arguments have been set in the Supreme Court of Virginia on the litigation between ECUSA, the Diocese of Virginia, and the Anglican District of Virginia. (The latter Court has not yet published a specific date and time for argument, but has announced only that arguments will occur sometime during its session meeting from April 12 to 16.)

The Court of Appeals for the Second District of Texas, which hears appeals from Fort Worth, has announced that it will hear oral argument on the writ sought by the Episcopal Diocese and Bishop Jack Iker on Wednesday, April 14, beginning at 1:30 p.m.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Conflicts • TEC Conflicts: Fort Worth • TEC Conflicts: San Joaquin • TEC Conflicts: Virginia • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues

James Gray once saw himself as a drug warrior, a former federal prosecutor and county judge who sent people to prison for dealing pot and other drug offenses. Gradually, though, he became convinced that the ban on marijuana was making it more accessible to young people, not less.

"I ask kids all the time, and they'll tell you it is easier to get marijuana than a six-pack of beer because that is controlled by the government," he said, noting that drug dealers don't ask for IDs or honor minimum age requirements.

So Gray — who spent two decades as a superior court judge in Orange County, Calif., and once ran for Congress as a Republican — switched sides in the war on drugs, becoming an advocate for legalizing marijuana.

"Let's face reality," he says. "Taxing and regulating marijuana will make it less available to children than it is today."

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Law & Legal Issues • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • State Government

The Democrats have not been completely irresponsible. It’s just that as the health fight has gone on, their passion for coverage has swamped their less visceral commitment to reducing debt. The result is a bill that is fundamentally imbalanced.

This past year, we’ve seen how hard it is to even pass legislation that expands benefits. To actually reduce benefits and raise taxes, we’re going to need legislators who wake up in the morning passionate about fiscal sanity. The ones we have now are just making things worse.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • Psychology • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Taxes • The U.S. Government • Budget • The National Deficit • Politics in General • House of Representatives • Office of the President • President Barack Obama • Senate

Faced with declining enrolment and revenue that will force it to shutter churches on Vancouver Island, the Anglican Church is turning to the social medium where millions of followers already flock: Twitter.

The Anglican Diocese of British Columbia last weekend voted to close seven churches outright and move those congregations to "hub churches." The meeting, during which several members tweeted updates to followers, came on the heels of an ominous recent report that predicted that the once powerful church was headed for extinction unless dramatic changes occur.

In addition to recommending that churches close, the report described Canada as a post-Christian society and urged a change in attitude to attract new members, including embracing modern forms of evangelism.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Anglican Church of Canada • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Evangelism and Church Growth • * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • --Social Networking

According to the U.S. Census Bureau's figures, New Jersey has grown in population from 8,414,350 in 2000 to 8,707,739 in 2009. This represents a population growth of approximately 3.48%.

According to Episcopal Church statistics, the Diocese of New Jersey went from Average Sunday Attendance (or ASA) of 19,221 in 1998 to 15,412 in 2008. This represents an ASA decline of about 20% over this ten year period.

In order to generate a pictorial chart of some New Jersey diocesan statistics, please go here and enter "New Jersey" in the second line down under "Diocese" and then click on "View Diocese Chart" under the third line to the left.

The Diocese of New Jersey's website may be found here.

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Fascinating food for thought here--follow the entires and the links.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Books • Religion & Culture

The euro is under attack like never before, as the promises on which it was based turn out to be lies. Hedge funds are speculating against Greek debt, while euro-zone politicians work behind the scenes to cobble together rescue packages. But fundamental flaws in the monetary union need to be fixed if Europe's common currency is to survive.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Credit Markets • The Banking System/Sector • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Europe • France • Germany • Greece • Spain

Ehrenreich is most effective when she writes journalistically with an eye for the telling detail, such as in this description of Joel Osteen and his wife, Victoria: "In one way, the two of them seem perfectly matched, or at least symmetrical: his mouth is locked into the inverted triangle of his trademark smile, while her heavy dark brows stamp her face with angry tension, even when the mouth is smiling."

Pastors who serve in quite different settings from the Osteens' and who interpret the gospel differently than they do may take some delight in seeing them skewered so skillfully. But pastors might not want Ehrenreich to train her eye on their own churches. Increasingly, I encounter churches that have done away with corporate prayers of confession in worship because they are "too negative." Funerals are now often approached as "celebrations of life," where death is spoken of only in euphemisms. I have heard far too many sermons recently that substitute a glib positive message for the gospel.

Ehrenreich insists that the alternative to positive thinking is not despair; it is realism. Although she does not make this a theological argument, I think she would appreciate the distinction between positive thinking and the gospel. Positive thinking can be a lulling mixture of illusion and denial. By contrast, the gospel is based on hard realities, like sin and death, but can remain ultimately hopeful because it is also based on the reality of a God who triumphs over both. It seems to me, then, that any attempt to dismantle the shallow optimism that Ehrenreich critiques relentlessly—and, at times, effectively—is in service to the gospel.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Books • Health & Medicine • Psychology • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

The decisions of the recent Synod of the Church of England to permit the ordination of women bishops and the refusal to authorize continued episcopal oversight have made the problem for this minority of Anglicans even more acute. For its part, the Catholic Church has clearly articulated its position on the ordination of women. In 1975, Pope Paul VI issued a formal appeal to the then-Archbishop of Canterbury, Fredrick Donald Coggan, to avoid taking a step which would have a serious negative impact on ecumenical relations. Just to say, parenthetically, that an appeal to the Archbishop of Canterbury, though, is probably frustrating for him, because unlike the Catholic Church, there is no central authority in the Anglican Communion and, thus, the various provinces—some 39, I believe—have made their own decisions about such questions of practice and even doctrine.

In 1976, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued its declaration Inter insigniores, stating that the Church does not consider herself authorized to ordain women, not on account of socio-cultural reasons, but rather because of the “unbroken tradition throughout the history of the Church, universal in the East and in the West”, which must be “considered to conform to God’s plan for his Church.” (I’m quoting there from the document.) This position was reiterated in 1992 in the Catechism of the Catholic Church and again in 1994 with the Apostolic Letter of Pope John Paul II, Ordinatio sacerdotalis. In October of 1995, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a response affirming that the doctrine stating that the Church has no power to confer sacred orders on women is definitive tenenda—it must be held definitively and is to be considered part of the infallible, ordinary and universal Magisterium of the Church. For Catholics, the issue of the reservation of priestly ordination to men is not merely a matter of praxis, or discipline, but is, rather, doctrinal in nature and touches the heart of the doctrine of the Eucharist itself and the sacramental nature, or constitution, of the Church. It is therefore a question which cannot be relegated to the periphery of ecumenical conversations, but needs to be engaged directly in honesty and charity by dialogue partners who desire Christian unity, which, by its very nature, is Eucharistic.

Cardinal Walter Kasper, current President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, addressed this point in an intervention given in June 2006 to the House of Bishops of the Church of England during its discussions on the ordination of women to the episcopate. In his talk he said this: “Because the Episcopal office is a ministry of unity, the decision you face would immediately impact on the question of the unity of the Church and with it the goal of ecumenical dialogue. It would be a decision against the common goal we have until now pursued in our dialogue: full ecclesial communion, which cannot exist without full communion in the episcopal office.”

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • * Religion News & Commentary • Ecumenical Relations • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • Pope Benedict XVI

States and companies have started investing very differently when it comes to the billions of dollars they are safeguarding for workers’ retirement.

Companies are quietly and gradually moving their pension funds out of stocks. They want to reduce their investment risk and are buying more long-term bonds.

But states and other bodies of government are seeking higher returns for their pension funds, to make up for ground lost in the last couple of years and to pay all the benefits promised to present and future retirees. Higher returns come with more risk.

“In effect, they’re going to Las Vegas,” said Frederick E. Rowe, a Dallas investor and the former chairman of the Texas Pension Review Board, which oversees public plans in that state. “Double up to catch up.”

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • Stock Market • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • Politics in General • State Government

Anglican Mainstream, whilst acknowledging that Bishop Jones reflects a way of thinking which is gaining ground amongst some English evangelicals, considers it deeply flawed in terms of both teaching and practice. In terms of practice, such teaching fails to recognise that the deep logic of the gay/lesbian movement is the abolition of the Judaeo-Christian understanding of human identity, towards which acceptance of gay ‘marriage’ is a key step. Faced with the uncomfortable prospect of having constantly to challenge quietly established ‘facts on the ground’ which gay activists have been openly following for years, the temptation to re-frame the question as a pastoral problem – one of ‘go along and get along’ -becomes almost overwhelming. That is a fundamental error, the second deep flaw in this way of thinking. As the GAFCON Jerusalem Statement has said, and the comments attached to this Statement indicate, the issue here is one of false teaching. False teaching is not to be colluded with, but to be challenged - and overcome by patient and thorough exposition of biblical truth. The unity to which the Church is called is oneness in Christ, faithful to the Scriptures which authoritatively reveal Him. That is the unity which must underpin our calling to share the Good News of Jesus Christ with a needy and broken world.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • CoE Bishops • Sexuality Debate (in Anglican Communion) • Same-sex blessings

The Supreme Court agreed to decide whether the father of a fallen Marine can collect damages from a religious sect that picketed his son's funeral with vulgar placards celebrating the death of American soldiers.

The court also accepted two other cases on Monday, one testing whether vaccine makers are immune from lawsuits under state law and another that challenges government background checks on federal contractors as an invasion of privacy. The cases are likely to be heard in the fall.

The funeral case, Snyder v. Phelps, tests the limits of First Amendment protection for demonstrators who aim obnoxious and hurtful speech at the most sympathetic of victims. It centers on the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan., founded in 1955. Most of the church's 70-odd members are children, grandchildren or in-laws of its founder and sole pastor, Fred W. Phelps Sr., according to a lower court opinion.

The Westboro Church searches the Internet for notices of military funerals it can picket to get attention for its message of hostility to homosexuality and the Roman Catholic Church, and its claim that battlefield casualties represent divine retribution for what it views as America's sins.

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

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Religion & Culture

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One of the more effective evangelical tools right now does just that — it goes into the places where people spend time, at work and at leisure, and it gathers people who want to ask significant spiritual questions. Asking questions is actually something that sets Episcopalians apart from a lot of other traditions, particularly the ones who say there’s only one right answer and doubt is a sin. Remember that bumper sticker, "Question Authority"? I’ve never been sure whether it’s a description of somebody who’s good at asking questions or a challenge to keep asking difficult questions of the powers that be. But asking questions is a central part of our tradition. We don’t insist that doubt is a sin; we see doubt as necessary to growth.

Young people are hard-wired to ask questions — why? is the most characteristic word out of the mouth of a healthy developing child. ‘Why should I do that, why is the stove hot, why aren’t girls and boys always treated the same, why are some people poor, why has your generation left the world in such a mess, how can we bring peace to the world?’ When we stop asking questions like that we begin to die — spiritually, intellectually, emotionally, and probably physically.

Building communities where young people can ask the really big questions is one of the most important kinds of evangelism we can do — and the other important kinds of evangelism are about building communities where others can do the same thing. Theology on tap is a prime example — it offers welcome and hospitality, including a brew (caffeinated or spirited), conversation, and community. It is happening in bars. It is happening in coffeehouses. It is happening where people gather. There are ways to gather questioners, a number of them focused on faith in the workplace. We have always gathered to ask questions. The women’s guilds and men’s guilds in the church did similar work, but they expected people to show up in the church building to gather. We need to leave home and go out there to provide hospitable places for questioners!

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori • TEC Diocesan Conventions

Oh, how I love thy law! It is my meditation all the day....Thy word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.

--Psalm 119:97, 105

Filed under: * Theology • Theology: Scripture

The Anglican Church announced it would close seven churches on Vancouver Island due to declining attendance and revenues, but one reverend says there's still a light at the end of the tunnel.

Over the next 18 months, the churches will be sold or leased and their parishioners relocated to four newly created "hub" churches designed to serve a wider community. The dramatic decision was made using a set of recommendations put forward by the Diocese of British Columbia earlier this year.

Rev. Christopher Parsons is the rector for two of the parishes being closed, St. Columba and St. Martin, but the 34-year-old said he is nothing but pleased with the church's decision.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Anglican Church of Canada

In her new book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System, Ravitch blasts No Child Left Behind, which she says promotes "a cramped, mechanistic, profoundly anti-intellectual definition of education" — as well as virtually every other recent reform effort that has sought to inject more free-market competition and accountability into education. She finds much to dislike: charter schools, high-stakes tests, corporate-style school management teams and the rising influence of foundation-funded reforms.

Over several decades, Ravitch says, American schools have essentially lost their way, forgetting to focus on giving students a solid curriculum and strong teachers. Instead, she says, we've bumbled through a series of crises that have left us with "vague and meaningless standards," an odd, antagonistic public-private competition and an "obsession" with test scores.

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