We have learned today from Bishop Mouneer Anis that he has submitted his resignation from the former joint standing committee. Following so closely the release in December of the final text of the Anglican Communion Covenant, this resignation underscores the extent to which the Anglican Communion is at a major crossroads. At this decisive moment, however, substantial doubts have been expressed both publicly by Bishop Mouneer and privately by others as to whether this committee, now the standing committee of the Anglican Consultative Council, is the appropriate body to coordinate the implementation of the Covenant. These concerns point to the steps that we believe are necessary to restore the Communion so badly damaged by actions in North America over the last decade. In what follows, we seek first to outline the current structural challenges to the Covenant’s initial implementation. This will involve some important, if technical, analysis. Only then, however, can we make clear what, in our mind, these necessary steps for implementation are.

In summary, and on the basis of our continued conviction that the Covenant itself as currently formulated is a positive, faithful, and necessary basis for the renewal of the Anglican Communion and its member churches, we argue that:

1. The final Covenant text envisions a Communion of responsibly coordinated Instruments, ordered episcopally, that the current ACC-led standing committee is in fact undermining;
2. The current ACC standing committee is not necessarily the “Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion” indicated by the Covenant text, and cannot therefore automatically claim the authority it seems to be assuming;
3. The current ACC standing committee has little credibility in the eyes of a large part of the Communion and ought not to be claiming the authority it seems to be assuming;
4. Those Churches of the Communion who move fully and decisively to adopt the Covenant must work with a provisional and representative standing committee, continuous in membership with the other Instruments, that will direct the implementation of the Covenant in a way that can eventually permit a Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion to be formed as envisioned by the Covenant text.

read it carefully and read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • - Anglican: Analysis • Anglican Covenant • Instruments of Unity • Windsor Report / Process

...I have come to the sad realization that there is no desire within the ACC and the SCAC to follow through on the recommendations that have been taken by the other Instruments of Communion to sort out the problems which face the Anglican Communion and which are tearing its fabric apart. Moreover, the SCAC, formerly known as the join Standing Committee (JSC), has continually questioned the authority of the other Instruments of Communion, especially the Primates Meeting and the Lambeth Conference.
...
Some may say that the provinces within the Anglican Communion are autonomous, and each province is free to make its own resolutions. While I agree and accept the autonomous nature of each province, I believe that the participation in the decision making process that affects the life of the Anglican Communion should be for those who show respect in word and deed to the whole Communion - not those who turn their backs to every appeal and warning.

Read it carefully and read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • - Anglican: Primary Source • -- Statements & Letters: Primates • Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams • Anglican Covenant • Anglican Provinces • The Episcopal Church of Jerusalem and the Middle East • Episcopal Church (TEC) • Global South Churches & Primates • Instruments of Unity • Sexuality Debate (in Anglican Communion) • Same-sex blessings • Windsor Report / Process

[The] Rev. Asman, of Santa Barbara’s Trinity Episcopal Church, and Rabbi Gross-Schaefer, of the Community Shul of Montecito and Santa Barbara, annunciated their support for women’s rights and asserted that being religious and being pro-choice are not always mutually exclusive.

Declaring himself a “progressive religious activist,” Asman critiqued the health care bill’s anti-abortion amendment. “God is grieved by this amendment,” he said. Asman went on to say that he feared the “tragic consequences of a pre-Roe world.”

Gross-Schaefer—who for 28 years has been a law professor at Loyola Marymount University, a Catholic institution—was equally supportive of a woman’s right to choose, declaring that abortion was “not a concept of murder whatsoever” given that the “fetus not a separate human being—not until a head emerges.” He said that as “a very religious person, I have to be pro-choice.”

Read the whole thing.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Parishes • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Ministry of the Ordained • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Life Ethics • Religion & Culture • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches

A joint prayer service for Christian unity will be held at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 2, at the Roman Catholic Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception.

Bishop Richard Malone, head of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland, and Bishop Brian Marsh, spiritual leader of the Traditional Anglican Church in America, Diocese of the Northeast, will preside at the service.

The service is an outgrowth of talks between the Vatican and the Worldwide Traditional Anglican Church.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • * Religion News & Commentary • Ecumenical Relations • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • Pope Benedict XVI

With their high-priority issues prominent on national agendas, members of the clergy have been unusually active in politics. Catholic bishops in New Jersey and elsewhere have been especially vocal on matters such as same-sex marriage, national health care and illegal immigration.

Yet polls show that when Catholic bishops press their positions with politicians on such issues, they often do so without the support of large segments of the lay people in their dioceses.

Regarding same-sex marriage — which the bishops oppose and which the New Jersey Legislature rejected this month after intense debate — American Catholics are divided, polls have shown. On health care reform, a majority appear to disagree with the bishops’ position that no health care bill is acceptable if federal money can be used to pay for abortions. On immigration reform, a third disagree with bishops’ call to give illegal immigrants a path to citizenship, according to a Zogby poll released last month.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • Law & Legal Issues • Marriage & Family • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • State Government • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic

All our faith traditions share a fundamental belief that human beings are made in the image and likeness of God and that we must treat every person with dignity, for “the strangers who sojourn with you shall be to you as the natives among you, and you shall love them as yourself” (Leviticus 19:33-34). The interfaith statement includes seven principles that are rooted in our holy Scriptures, our faith traditions and our sense of American democratic values, which include:

• • upholding family unity;

• • creating a legalization process for undocumented immigrants;

• • protecting workers;

• • facilitating immigrant integration;

• • restoring due process and just detention protections;

• • aligning enforcement with humanitarian values;

• • immigration as a matter of human rights.

Immigration reform would make us safer as a nation because it would make immigrants register with the government so that we would know who is here and give us the ability to identify those few immigrants who have committed crimes. Giving immigrants a reason to come out of the shadows would also allow them to feel comfortable cooperating with law enforcement to help identify those who are a danger or a threat.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • State Government

A measure being considered by the Kansas Senate Judiciary Committee to repeal the state’s death penalty picked up eight supporters on Friday.

In a letter to the Kansas Legislature, eight bishops of the Episcopal Church, Roman Catholic Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church and United Methodist Church in Kansas signed a letter asking for reconsideration and repeal of the Kansas death penalty.

Signing the letter, dated Jan. 28, were Bishops James M. Adams Jr., Episcopal Diocese of Western Kansas; Paul S. Coakley, Catholic Diocese of Salina; Ronald M. Gilmore, Catholic Diocese of Dodge City; Michael O. Jackels, Catholic Diocese of Wichita; Scott J. Jones, Kansas Area United Methodist Church; Gerald L. Mansholt, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America; Joseph F. Naumann, Catholic Archdiocese of Kansas City; and Dean Wolfe, Episcopal Diocese of Kansas.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • * Culture-Watch • Capital Punishment • Law & Legal Issues • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • State Government • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.

--Galatians 5:22-25

Filed under: * Theology • Theology: Scripture

John Pipkin is a retired pilot. He's held many jobs, most recently working for Netjets International, flying celebrities around.

These days, he flies relief workers, medical teams and humanitarian aid from airstrip to airstrip in Haiti.

His wife, Joyce, is the volunteer coordinator of the Haitian ministry at their church, St. Mary's Episcopal in Columbia, which sponsors a parish and its school in Les Cayes, a town in the southwest section of the country.

The Pipkins travel together at least three times a year helping the needy, coordinating mission work, assisting the international community of aid workers and supporting local clergy. They visited Charleston Southern University on Wednesday to share their story.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • * Christian Life / Church Life • Missions • * International News & Commentary • Caribbean • Haiti • * South Carolina

It is important to maintain two contradictory attitudes at once in many areas of Christian theology, and this is one of those areas. These are the two clashing points of view in this case:

Point of view #1: The creation does declare the glory of God, and the "Thunderstorm Psalm" (#29: "The Lord breaks the cedars of Lebanon") proclaims that message magnificently. God is not only the Creator but also the One who rules over the cosmos. The theophany in the book of Job (chs. 38-41) is the preeminent biblical passage treating of this subject, and the phrase "the doors of the sea" is derived from 38:8. Many people have experienced a sort of theophany--a manifestation of the power of God--even in the midst of destruction; people have testified to this even when they have had to face the dire consequences of a natural catastrophe (there are examples of this in Isaac's Storm, the book about the hurricane that destroyed Galveston, and in David McCullough's account of the Johnstown Flood). So the wild, untamed aspect of nature can be either comforting or exhilarating or both, depending on one's point of view.

Point of view #2: At the same time, nature is not benign. Nature is "red in tooth and claw." Nature, like the human race, is fallen and is subject to the powers of the evil one who continues to occupy this sphere. Flannery O'Connor wrote that her work was about the action of grace in territory held largely by the devil; we should not fail to realize that "nature" is part of that occupied territory. Nature is often hostile, as Annie Dillard has so powerfully shown us, and the nature-worshippers among us fail to acknowledge this hostility in their pantheistic enthusiasm. Only by action of the Creator will the peaceable kingdom arrive, where the lion lies down with the lamb (isn't it suggestive that "Lion of Judah" and "Lamb of God" are both titles of our Lord?)

The conflict between these two realities cannot be resolved in this life. Does the Creator of all that is have the power to say to those tectonic plates, "Be still!" Of course. Then why doesn't he? Why does he permit earthquakes in the poorest country in the hemisphere?

We do not know.

Read the whole thing.

Filed under: * International News & Commentary • Caribbean • Haiti • * Theology • Pastoral Theology • Theodicy

[BOB] ABERNETHY: When people come to you and say where was God in what happened in Haiti, what do you tell them?

[RABBI JACK] MOLINE: The glib answer is to just say God was there. But I was walking through the synagogue the other day and a couple of kids were horsing around. One of them bumped her head and started to cry. Her friend immediately apologized, and I walked over and gave her a hug. I wasn’t able to stop the pain, but I was able to share it with her a little bit, as was her friend. I think that’s where God is—sharing that pain.

ABERNETHY: With the people who are suffering, suffering with them?

MOLINE: With the people who are suffering. Absolutely.

Read or watch it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • Caribbean • Haiti • * Theology • Pastoral Theology • Theodicy

Most mornings, after the gavel is struck in the Senate chamber on Capitol Hill, a prayer is offered in that most secular body — a practice that goes back to the founding fathers at the Continental Congress in 1774.

Chaplain Barry C. Black delivers the prayer, offering up some of the first words heard each day in the chamber.

Black works from an office in the Capitol building, a well-appointed room with high, arched ceilings and wall-to-wall mahogany bookcases. Compared with the number of people working for senators, the chaplain's staff is downright humble. He has an executive assistant, a director of communications and a chief of staff.

But from this third-floor perch in the Capitol building, Black enjoys one of the best views of the National Mall's mosaic of cherry trees, museums and monuments.

Read or listen to it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • Senate

Retired Command Sgt. Maj. Samuel Rhodes keeps pictures of the dead in his pockets.

They're the faces of young soldiers whose eyes stare out resolutely from photocopied pages worn and creased by the ritual of unfolding them, smoothing them flat and refolding them.

They're the faces of men who, haunted by problems at home or memories of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — the dead children, the fallen comrades and the lingering smell of burnt flesh — pressed guns to their heads and pulled the triggers or tied ropes with military precision and hanged themselves.

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

Will an 82-year-old veteran central banker be the man who finally stops the music for the bankers of Wall Street?

A Congressional hearing in Washington on Tuesday may well provide the answer.

A week ago, US President Barack Obama, appeared to be telling America that the ideas of Economic Recovery Advisory Board chairman Paul Volcker would be the centrepiece of his plan to make the global financial system safer, announcing that the "Volcker rule" would determine the future of the world's banks.

But since then, there has been complete confusion as to exactly what the President and Mr Volcker have in mind.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • * Economics, Politics • Economy • The Banking System/Sector • The U.S. Government • Politics in General • Office of the President • President Barack Obama

"How can I help you this morning?"

"I'm not satisfied with the way I presented my case, so I thought I'd go straight to the horse's mouth. That's you."

I considered neighing, but thought better of it.

"Could I just lay out my argument step by step?" she asked. "As soon as you spot a problem, you can say 'Stop' and I'll stop."

I smiled. "Just what I was about to suggest."

Read it carefully and ponder it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Marriage & Family • Philosophy • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

"A bit of a rant" he calls it. Read it all and notice carefully where the argument really lies.

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

When it comes to Facebook, Jesse Rice sees an immensely popular social networking site that's great for sharing photos and keeping in touch with friends.

He also sees something that encourages attitudes and behaviors that don't work as well in real life.

Rice, 37, is the author of "The Church of Facebook: How the Hyperconnected Are Redefining Community." A former worship leader an evangelical megachurch in California, he has degrees in organizational communication and counseling/psychology and -- just as important to his readers -- a sense of humor.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • --Social Networking • Psychology • Religion & Culture • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Evangelicals

Virginity is a hot topic at the moment, prompted by comments from the Leader of the Opposition. He may have copped a lot of flak but Tony Abbott's advice makes a lot of sense and there's nothing alarming in it. Besides, being a parent gives him a right to express his views publicly.

I am not embarrassed to admit that my ''gift'' remains unwrapped - at least for the time being. Losing your virginity or ''V-plates'' (as some of us like to call it) has always been a preoccupation of adolescents. Where to do it? When to do it? Who to do it with? Parents advise us to put it off, young men argue that right now would be the best time and some religions insist we must wait until marriage.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Sexuality • Teens / Youth • * International News & Commentary • Australia / NZ • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Check it out.

Filed under: * General Interest • Weather • * South Carolina

Speaking to about 325 attendees at the annual diocesan convention at the Washington Cathedral, Bishop Chane, 65, admitted he was stepping down during a time of flagging growth and stagnant giving in the 42,000-member diocese.

"Parochial reports filed by the parishes of our diocese for the most part tell a story of no real measurable growth in membership within the last 12 years," he said. "Financial giving has been stagnant."

The budget that supports the missionary work of the diocese to its congregations, schools and our mission outreach beyond our borders has been stagnant as well. Any financial growth has come primarily through the bishops annual appeal and from the generosity of individuals, some who are not even Episcopalians.

Read it all. I salute Bishop Chane for being open and naming the numbers, unlike too many other TEC leaders--KSH.

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

Read it all also.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams • Episcopal Church (TEC) • Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori • * Culture-Watch • Globalization • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General

The Archbishop said:

"The Church in Sudan is completely committed to peace and development and will work with all agencies, governmental and non-governmental, committed to the same goals. Its infrastructure is at the service of the community, the government and international agencies".

Earlier in the day the Archbishop met the UN Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict Ms Radhika Coomaraswamy. The rehabilitation of children who had become caught up in conflict was a key role for churches, so too was protecting children from the vortex of abuse and violence including trafficking and abduction.

"The nurture of children is the touchstone of our mature care of humanity" said Dr Williams.

Read it all and enjoy the picture.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams • * Culture-Watch • Children • Globalization • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Africa • Sudan

Things are calmer these days in the Episcopal Diocese of Central Florida.

Following the 2003 election of openly gay priest Gene Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire, the largely conservative diocese was in turmoil, contemplating whether to join other dioceses in leaving the Episcopal Church to create a new, traditionalist Anglican church in America.

Under the leadership of Bishop John Howe, the diocese decided not to split from the Episcopal Church, as at least two other dioceses have done, and those in the Central Florida diocese who were advocating for the split mostly have gone. Both clergy and laypersons say the diocese is healthy and moving forward

The diocese will hold its annual convention Saturday at The Lakeland Center, and in an interview earlier this week, Howe predicted the meeting would be calm.

Read it all.

Please note: A list of resolutions to come before the Convention is here.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • General Convention 2009 • TEC Bishops • TEC Diocesan Conventions • Sexuality Debate (in Anglican Communion) • Same-sex blessings

China vaulted past competitors in Denmark, Germany, Spain and the United States last year to become the world’s largest maker of wind turbines, and is poised to expand even further this year.

China has also leapfrogged the West in the last two years to emerge as the world’s largest manufacturer of solar panels. And the country is pushing equally hard to build nuclear reactors and the most efficient types of coal power plants.

These efforts to dominate the global manufacture of renewable energy technologies raise the prospect that the West may someday trade its dependence on oil from the Mideast for a reliance on solar panels, wind turbines and other gear manufactured in China.

“Most of the energy equipment will carry a brass plate, ‘Made in China,’ ” said K. K. Chan, the chief executive of Nature Elements Capital, a private equity fund in Beijing that focuses on renewable energy.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • Energy, Natural Resources • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China

Four married men with years of clergy experience have been nominated as finalists to be the next bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Kentucky, succeeding the retiring Bishop Ted Gulick.

The four men — including the pastors of cathedrals in Pennsylvania, Arizona and Missouri and a former Kentucky pastor now leading a Texas church — will visit the diocese to meet with parishioners and answer their questions. An election convention is scheduled for June 5, with the new bishop’s consecration on Sept. 25.

The list of finalists is notable for its lack of gay or lesbian candidates — given the ongoing controversy involving the Episcopal Church and its global partners in the Anglican Communion over the role of gays in ministry — and for its lack of women.

Read the whole thing.

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

The choice of the theme of this year's Week of Prayer for Christian Unity the invitation, that is, to a common witness of the Risen Christ in accordance with the mandate he entrusted to his disciples is linked to the memory of the 100th anniversary of the Edinburgh Missionary Conference, in Scotland, widely considered a crucial event in the birth of the modern ecumenical movement.

In the summer of 1910, in the Scottish capital, over 1,000 missionaries from diverse branches of Protestantism and Anglicanism, who were joined by one Orthodox guest, met to reflect together on the necessity of achieving unity in order to be credible in preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In fact, it is precisely this desire to proclaim Christ to others and to carry his message of reconciliation throughout the world that makes one realize the contradiction posed by division among Christians.

Indeed, how can non-believers accept the Gospel proclamation if Christians even if they all call on the same Christ are divided among themselves? Moreover, as we know, the same Teacher, at the end of the Last Supper, had prayed to the Father for his disciples: "That they may all be one... so that the world may believe" (Jn 17: 21). The communion and unity of Christ's disciples is therefore a particularly important condition to enhance the credibility and efficacy of their witness.

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Filed under: * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • Pope Benedict XVI • * Theology • Ecclesiology

On Saturday, though, Williams will receive an honorary doctorate from St. Vladimir's that will recognize his lesser-known contributions to the study of Orthodox Christian theology. And he will speak not about sexual politics, but about the "Philokalia," a collection of writings about monastic life that date from the 4th to 15th centuries and are revered by Orthodox Christians.

The 12:30 p.m. lecture is free and open to the public.

"We chose to honor him because of the contributions he has made toward increasing knowledge of Eastern Orthodoxy in the West," said the Very Rev. John Behr, dean of St. Vladimir's. "Through his work, he has also asked (the) Eastern Orthodox to continue our own thinking through of our tradition ."

Read it all and you may find a Seminary press release on the event there.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams • * Religion News & Commentary • Ecumenical Relations • Other Churches • Orthodox Church • * Theology • Seminary / Theological Education

"Our immersion in the details of crises that have arisen over the past eight centuries and in data on them has led us to conclude that the most commonly repeated and most expensive investment advice ever given in the boom just before a financial crisis stems from the perception that 'this time is different.' That advice, that the old rules of valuation no longer apply, is usually followed up with vigor. Financial professionals and, all too often, government leaders explain that we are doing things better than before, we are smarter, and we have learned from past mistakes. Each time, society convinces itself that the current boom, unlike the many booms that preceded catastrophic collapses in the past, is built on sound fundamentals, structural reforms, technological innovation, and good policy."

- This Time is Different (Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff)

When does a potential crisis become an actual crisis, and how and why does it happen? Why did most everyone believe there were no problems in the US (or Japanese or European or British) economies in 2006? Yet now we are mired in a very difficult situation. "The subprime problem will be contained," said now controversially confirmed Fed Chairman Bernanke, just months before the implosion and significant Fed intervention. I have just returned from Europe, and the discussion often turned to the potential of a crisis in the Eurozone if Greece defaults....

Read more...

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • * Economics, Politics • Economy • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • The U.S. Government • Budget • The National Deficit • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Greece

(Please note the the document quoted has already been posted earlier this week--KSH)

Anglicanism is a tradition that makes decisions on the basis of practice rather than confession. We are a church that determines membership and status by behavior rather than by belief.

--The Rev. Canon Gary R. Hall in God's Call and Our Response

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

[John] Chane, 65, made the announcement at the diocese's annual convention at Washington National Cathedral, where he received a standing ovation. He told the delegates he is not "burned out or bored," but believes it's time for someone younger to take over.

"I love what I do and I deeply love this diocese," Chane said in the annual bishop's address. "When the time actually comes to turn over the crosier to another, it will be a very emotional time for me."

Chane's exit from the diocese, which includes 89 congregations in the District and suburban Maryland, follows that of his counterpart in Northern Virginia, Peter James Lee, who retired in October as bishop of the diocese that includes eastern Virginia.

While Lee was known as a moderate on the social issues that have embroiled the Episcopal Church -- as well as mainline Protestantism -- Chane was an unabashed liberal on the right of gay men and lesbians to marry. He allows clergy in the diocese to bless same-sex relationships and blesses such relationships himself. He made outreach to the Muslim world a priority and extended a controversial invitation in 2006 to former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami to speak at the cathedral. It's likely he will focus on Muslim-Christian dialogue after his retirement.

Read the whole thing.

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

When he moved back home here 12 years ago, the Rev. Moses Berry wanted to settle down to small-town life with his wife and two children. He did not intend to become a one-man racial reconciliation committee.

But some residents of this nearly all-white, rural town of 1,400 people 15 miles west of Springfield say that he has done just that.

By founding a black history museum here, cleaning up his family’s cemetery and telling his family’s sometimes controversial story, beginning with its roots in slavery, Father Moses, as everyone calls him — an African-American, Orthodox Christian priest in a flowing black cassock — has tried to remind people of a part of the region’s often-forgotten past, and to open up hearts and minds along the way.

“He brings peace to people. I’ve seen it,” said Gail Emrie, 56, a local history buff who helped get the Berry family’s 135-year-old cemetery — one of the region’s few black cemeteries not located on a plantation — listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2004. “It is reconciliation, and it is his mission, reconciliation of our history between the races.”

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Race/Race Relations • Religion & Culture

The Obama administration announced the sale Friday of $6 billion worth of Patriot anti-missile systems, helicopters, mine-sweeping ships and communications equipment to Taiwan in a long-expected move that sparked an angry protest from China.

In a strongly worded statement on Saturday, China's Defense Ministry suspended military exchanges with the United States and summoned the U.S. defense attache to lodge a "solemn protest" over the sale, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

"Considering the severe harm and odious effect of U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, the Chinese side has decided to suspend planned mutual military visits," Xinhua quoted the ministry as saying. The Foreign Ministry said China also would put sanctions on U.S. companies supplying the equipment.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Foreign Relations • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Asia • China • Taiwan

...it should not be impossible for a president who pledged to change Washington’s culture to introduce a note of competence and sobriety in his justifiable fight against banks.

Not that the financial industry has done much to deserve a more adult debate. Wall Street’s normally loquacious titans have so far been deafeningly silent. Their contributions to a battle that could shape their industry for years have been limited to private rants and a misguided attempt at suing the government. (Only bankers could think that hiring lawyers would increase their popularity.)

Here is a novel idea for banking chiefs: get down from your ivory towers and propose (not lobby for, propose) a plan to reduce reckless risk-taking without harming the financial system or the economy. A nation awaits.

Read the whole piece.

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

On the very day this week when the Congressional Budget Office warned that the succession of previously unimaginable trillion-dollar-plus budget deficits could inflict ruin on the United States, the Senate faced a moment of truth.

For the first time, a truly bipartisan proposal aimed at averting such a calamity came to a vote. By 53 to 46, the senators approved the measure officially described as a bill for "responsible fiscal action, to assure the long-term fiscal stability and economic security of the federal government of the United States, and to expand future prosperity and growth for all Americans."

Of course, this being the 21st-century Senate, it meant defeat because of a failure to command the 60-vote supermajority the opposition now always requires.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • The U.S. Government • Budget • Politics in General • Senate

In a surprising departure from protocol, the Queen has sent the Lord Chamberlain, the most senior official of the Royal Household, to see Archbishop Vincent Nichols, leader of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, to discuss Pope Benedict XVI’s offer to Anglicans wanting to convert to Rome en masse.

My source says Her Majesty – who is expected to meet the Pope when he visits Britain this autumn – was “unhappy” about aspects of the scheme as she understood it. So, late last year, she dispatched Lord Peel with a list of questions for the Archbishop. The nature of the questions has not been revealed, but Archbishop’s House confirms that the meeting took place and was “mutually beneficial”.

The Queen – a somewhat “Low Church” Anglican who feels it is her solemn duty to preserve the Protestant identity of the Church of England – appears to have been alarmed by press reports of Pope Benedict’s Apostolic Constitution, Anglicanorum coetibus.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • * Religion News & Commentary • Ecumenical Relations • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • Pope Benedict XVI

From here:

Item 14 Anglican Church in North America (GS 1764A and 1764B)

The Rt Revd Mike Hill, Bishop of Bristol, is to move as an amendment:

Leave out everything after “That this Synod” and insert:

“(a) recognise and affirm the desire of those who have formed the Anglican Church in North America to remain within the Anglican family;

(b) acknowledge that this aspiration, in respect both of relations with the Church of England and membership of the Anglican Communion, raises issues which the relevant authorities of each need to explore further; and

(c) invite the Archbishops to report further to the Synod in 2011”.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE)

Check them out. Note that there is a slideshow option if you prefer that.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • * South Carolina • * Theology

What really knocked readers out about “The Catcher in the Rye” was the wonderfully immediate voice that J. D. Salinger fashioned for Holden Caulfield — a voice that enabled him to channel an alienated 16-year-old’s thoughts and anxieties and frustrations, a voice that skeptically appraised the world and denounced its phonies and hypocrites and bores.

Mr. Salinger had such unerring radar for the feelings of teenage angst and vulnerability and anger that “Catcher,” published in 1951, remains one of the books that adolescents first fall in love with — a book that intimately articulates what it is to be young and sensitive and precociously existential, a book that first awakens them to the possibilities of literature.

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

As its title implies, "Judaism as a Civilization: Toward a Reconstruction of American-Jewish Life" reflects Kaplan's effort to redefine how modern American Jewry thinks of itself. Judaism is not only a religion, Kaplan stated; it is a people with its own history, identity, culture and civilization. Moreover, like any civilization, to remain vital it must continue to evolve to meet and adapt to the challenges and needs of each new generation. It must be reconstructed, so to speak—or else risk losing its purpose.

Kaplan practiced what he preached at Sabbath and holiday services at his synagogue, SAJ (where I am an active member and am teaching a course on Kaplan's thought this winter). Seeking to reinvest traditional ritual and liturgy with relevance to contemporary Jews, he emphasized modern interpretations while also revising or discarding prayers (like the traditional prayer for rain) he thought incompatible with the progressive, rational-minded, science-oriented world of 20th-century America.

A believer in gender equality long before the term political correctness became a cliché, Kapan in 1922 "invented" the modern-day bat mitzvah—in which 12-year-old girls (like their male counterparts, 13-year-old boys, at their bar mitzvahs) symbolically accept the religious responsibilities of adulthood—when, at Sabbath services one Saturday morning, he called his oldest daughter to the pulpit and had her read from the Torah scroll. Since then, of course, this then-unheard-of custom has become an accepted, even expected rite-of-passage among Jews in all but the Orthodox branch of the faith.

Indeed, Kaplan held the goals and ethics of democracy and equality so high that he declared anachronistic the idea of Jews being the Chosen people—and changed or deleted the wording of traditional prayers that implied that belief from his 1945 Sabbath Prayer Book.

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

The whole world, and not just Britain, is broken, with continents such as Africa feeling forgotten and uncared for, the Archbishop of Canterbury said in the heart of New York’s financial district yesterday.

Any money men who might have happened in to Trinity Wall Street to shelter from the snow would have found a different sort of chill as Dr Rowan Williams delivered his lesson.

Standing at the lectern of the famously wealthy US Episcopal church, which lies at the head of Wall Street, the leader of the Anglican Communion condemned the “straw man” of self-interest.

His theme was that financiers, wordsmiths — in fact anyone in the Western world connected in any way with economic reality — should look at themselves in the mirror and repent.

Read it all and there is more information on this here.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Parishes • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • Stock Market • The Banking System/Sector • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology