What began with worries about the solvency of Greece in the face of high deficits, fake budget figures and low growth has quickly become the most severe test of the 16-nation euro zone in its 11-year history.

Anxieties about the health of the euro, which have spread from Greece to Portugal, Spain and Italy, are not simply a crisis of debts, rating agencies and volatile markets. The issue has at its heart elements of a political crisis, because it goes to the central dilemma of the European Union: the continuing grip of individual states over economic and fiscal policy, which makes it difficult for the union as a whole to exercise the political leadership needed to deal effectively with a crisis.

A policy of muddling through may be comfortable in political terms, but experts warn it can have dire economic consequences. Jean-Paul Fitoussi, professor of economics at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris, said that European leaders had “handled this crisis very badly,” feeding market speculation and greed.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Greece

(The paper to which this responds is here--KSH).

On February 2, 2010, the American Anglican Council (AAC) released an accounting of how The Episcopal Church (TEC) has spent millions of dollars in over 50 lawsuits, deposed or inhibited 12 bishops and more than 400 other clergy, and violated its own canons numerous times. The Rev. Phil Ashey, AAC Chief Operating Officer and practicing attorney, authored the paper at the request of several members of the Church of England's General Synod in preparation for their vote regarding the nature of their relationship with the Anglican Church in North America. On February 4, Mr. Simon Sarmiento, member of the Church of England and founder of the blog Thinking Anglicans, published a rebuttal of what he called “factual inaccuracies” in the AAC’s paper. Mr. Sarmiento is not an attorney and admitted to having the help of, among others, The Episcopal Church’s lead lawyer, David Booth Beers, and the Presiding Bishop’s Special Council for property litigation, Mary E. Kostel.

Read it carefully and follow the links.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009 • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Polity & Canons

Several positive trends continued in January. Firms added 52,000 temporary workers and increased hours, just as they did in December, hinting at growing if cautious optimism. Employment rose in health, education and professional services, and retail employment grew by 42,000 in January, on a seasonally adjusted basis, after declining in December. Manufacturing employment also grew, by 11,000, the first increase since the beginning of recession. Analysts point out that the adjustment of the data is tricky around the holiday season, and actual underlying employment may have grown in January.

But many economists may view this release as more disappointing than the previous month's figure. The Labour Department published the results of its annual benchmark revision of previous employment data. Through the 12 months to March 2009, the American economy lost 930,000 more jobs than had been previously estimated. It now appears that over 700,000 jobs were lost in each of the first three months of last year, a significantly worse performance than originally thought. Meanwhile, data for the last two months of 2009 were revised to show a larger increase in employment in November, but a larger decline in December, for a net drop of 5,000 jobs relative to previous reports.

And while the employment-population ratio increased slightly from December to January, and off record lows, the problem of the long-term unemployed continues to grow. Just over 41% of all unemployed workers, over 6.3m workers, have been out of work for 27 weeks or more.

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

The company’s chief executive, Steve Ballmer, has continued to deliver huge profits. They totaled well over $100 billion in the past 10 years alone and help sustain the economies of Seattle, Washington State and the nation as a whole. Its founder, Bill Gates, is not only the most generous philanthropist in history, but has also inspired thousands of his employees to give generously themselves. No one in his right mind should wish Microsoft failure.

And yet it is failing, even as it reports record earnings. As the fellow who tried (and largely failed) to make tablet PCs and e-books happen at Microsoft a decade ago, I could say this is because the company placed too much faith in people like me. But the decline is so broad and so striking that it would be presumptuous of me to take responsibility for it.

Microsoft has become a clumsy, uncompetitive innovator. Its products are lampooned, often unfairly but sometimes with good reason. Its image has never recovered from the antitrust prosecution of the 1990s. Its marketing has been inept for years; remember the 2008 ad in which Bill Gates was somehow persuaded to literally wiggle his behind at the camera?

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Science & Technology • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life

Tim Tebow may steal the Super Bowl spotlight by appearing in an antiabortion TV commercial with his mother, Pam, on Sunday night, but his faith is kept on the sidelines. Most reporters writing about the ad neglected to say that his mother's faith was the reason she did not abort him when doctors warned he could be born severely disabled in 1987. Perhaps the sportswriters assumed that most people know about the family's Christian beliefs. The former quarterback for the Florida Gators paints Bible verses under his eyes and is vocal about saving himself for marriage. Or perhaps writers, for a variety of reasons, are just uncomfortable exploring religion's impact on an athlete.

Peter King, a senior writer for Sports Illustrated, admits his own skepticism when players bring up their faith after a game. "I've seen enough examples of players who claim to be very religious and then they get divorced three times or get in trouble with the law," Mr. King said earlier this week. "I'm not sure that the public is crying out for us to discover the religious beliefs of the athletes we're writing about."

Faith is the belief in things unseen. Sportswriters are trained to write about the observable. "One of the problems that we have is determining the veracity of a person's claim that he has just won this game for his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ," Mr. King said.

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

While preparing for this Convention, and specifically for this Convention address, I felt a bit anxious by all the hydraulics of scarcity we have faced in the past year – as a culture and as a church; and how to respond to them. So I went and read from the wisdom of the two bishops who presided over this diocese during the Great Depression – Wilson Stearly, who served as Diocesan Bishop from 1927-1935; and Benjamin Washburn, who led the diocese from 1935-1958. On one level, scarcity was disarmingly real. Giving from the 158 congregations to the diocese went from $252k in 1929 to $151k in 1933 – a decrease of 40% in 4 years. Giving to the national church went from $136k in 1930 to $40k in 1936 – a 67% decline in six years. The Bishop’s Church Extension Fund (BCEF), then 25 years old, which solicits contributions from people across the diocese to meet needs identified by the bishop, was deployed almost exclusively to help churches with mortgage payments. The hydraulics of scarcity were everywhere – and they caused Bishop Stearly to reflect in his 1932 address: “there is no question about carrying on the work of church although the economic conditions may enforce upon us radical changes of organization and method such perhaps as we had not in former days thought feasible.”

There was, running through eight years of bishops’ addresses, some gentle carping about falling church attendance – and an observation that people were rather unwilling to live fully into their faith; which led to a challenge to live with greater spiritual discipline. Not to mention some advice as to how to cope with the new prayer book.

The scarcity was real, but so was the commitment to abundance – and the willingness to cast out nets again. In 1932, Bishop Stearly proposed what he called a teaching mission in each of the 158 congregations – that would run from Saturday afternoon until Tuesday evening -- “to participate in a fresh vision and new understanding of the relationship of the church to the need of the world”. Two years later, over 100 congregations had participated.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • * Christian Life / Church Life • Church History

Don't get confused by the size of the numbers at stake. Pay attention to the ratio of cumulative debt to the size of the national economy. That will tell you how easily we can manage the debt.

The debt-to-GDP ratio right now is close to 53%—still in the manageable zone. But after the boomers hit retirement, it will soar. One of the most telling figures in the president's budget document is the Congressional Budget Office's projection that by 2020 the debt-to-GDP ratio will be 77%, assuming no entitlement reforms. That's bad news. The ratio is moving in the wrong direction. At some point, the dollar could tank and interest rates explode.

--Robert Reich in today's Wall Street Journal

Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Credit Markets • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • The U.S. Government • Budget • The National Deficit • The United States Currency (Dollar etc) • Politics in General • House of Representatives • Office of the President • President Barack Obama • Senate

Could loneliness be as contagious as the H1N1 virus? Is loneliness dangerous to the public's health? Usually we think of "infection" or "contagion" only in relation to medical viruses and define lonely people as those who keep their feelings to themselves.

Yet in a ten-year study researchers have found that loneliness is contagious and that it spreads through social networks. A lonely person can affect people as many as three degrees of separation away. If someone directly connected to me is seriously lonely, for example, I am 52 percent more likely to be lonely. A second degree of separation leads to a 25 percent increase; a third degree, 15 percent. I may be affected by the emotional reactions of my co-worker's spouse's brother.

Joseph Cacioppo, one of the researchers of the study, argues in his book Loneliness that people who are lonely tend to view things as more threatening than they really are. Apparently the part of the brain that processes feelings of loneliness also processes physical pain. So those who are feeling lonely can easily convey to others feelings of fear or threat as well as feelings of pain.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Psychology • * Theology • Pastoral Theology

The Rev. Billy Graham was named by U.S. pastors as the country’s most influential living preacher, according to a recent survey by LifeWay Research.

The study, conducted last November, interviewed more than 1,000 Protestant pastors by telephone. The participants were asked to “name the top three living Christian preachers that most influence you.”

Graham was cited as most influential by 21 percent of clergy, followed by pastor and author Charles Swindoll, at 8 percent. Charles Stanley, senior pastor of First Baptist Church, Atlanta, and Rick Warren, senior pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., followed closely behind Swindoll with 7 percent of the vote each.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Ministry of the Ordained • Preaching / Homiletics • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

A Senior cleric of the Anglican Church of Canada has identified inaccuracies in Lorna Ashworth’s briefing paper for her private member’s motion, which will come before the General Synod next Wednesday. Similar concerns are coming from the Episcopal Church in the United States.

Mrs Ashworth’s motion will urge the Synod to “express the desire that the Church of England be in com­munion with the Anglican Church in North America [ACNA]”. Canon Alan Perry, a lecturer in ecclesiastical polity and former Prolocutor of the Province of Canada, rebuts allegations on clergy and property in her paper.

The Revd Brian Lewis, a Synod member from Chelmsford diocese, circulated the note to all members on Monday.

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

China has halted its military cooperation with the U.S. and threatened this week to sanction American companies involved in selling arms to Taiwan.

Beijing's sharp reaction came after Washington announced a $6.4 billion weapons deal to Taiwan. It is something of a role reversal.

Usually, it has been the U.S. sanctioning China. But now, China is pushing back on a raft of contentious issues, from Washington's efforts to seek sanctions against Iran to President Obama's plan to meet Tibet's exiled religious leader the Dalai Lama.

"Let The West Get Used To A Tough China," was the headline this week in the Global Times, a jingoistic Chinese tabloid.

Read or listen to it all.

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

Dr. Rowan Williams began his New York City tour this past week with duties related to his role as Archbishop of Canterbury, but ended it by demonstrating his academic acumen and continued interest in the Orthodox Christian faith. On Saturday, January 30, 2010, the Anglican archbishop delivered the 27th annual Father Alexander Schmemann Memorial Lecture— this year titled “Theology and the Contemplative Calling: The Image of Humanity in the Philokalia”— and received an honorary doctoral degree from St. Vladimir’s Seminary.

During his visit, Dr. Williams also attended Divine Liturgy for the Feast of the Three Hierarchs in the seminary chapel, and had a cordial and frank discussion with St. Vladimir’s theological faculty at a private brunch. After the Divine Liturgy, Metropolitan Jonah, primate of the Orthodox Church in America (OCA), and the Anglican archbishop both publically expressed their desire for a deeper personal friendship and their hope for deeper understanding and cooperation between their respective communions. Additionally, Dr. Williams thanked the seminary community for its "overwhelming warm and generous welcome," which he stated, surpassed even his first visit to St. Vladimir's in 1974, and which was all that he "had hoped and prayed for."

The Anglican archbishop received the invitation to be this year’s Schmemann Lecturer for his pioneering work in Russian Orthodox studies and his long-standing interest in Eastern Christian studies. His doctoral work at Oxford University focused on Vladimir N. Lossky, the famous mid-twentieth-century Orthodox theologian; and his first book, Wound of Knowledge, was a study of spirituality from apostolic times to the sixteenth century.

Read it carefully and read it all, noting especially the section toward the end about some audience members.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Orthodox Church • * Theology • Seminary / Theological Education

I’m transfixed, in a mind-melty sort of way, by the allegation that Cherie Booth — in her lofty judge capacity, rather than her slightly-chippy-former- PM’s-wife capacity — gave a more lenient sentence to a man convicted of assault because he was religious. Shamso Miah was on his way home from his mosque when he joined the queue at a cash dispenser. After a disagreement about who was in front of whom, he punched somebody else in the face, breaking his jaw. Judge Cherie, the story goes, suspended his sentence, on the basis that he was a religious man, and already beating himself up about it. Albeit not literally. Presumably.

Now the National Secular Society has complained to the Judicial Complaints Office that this sort of thing is unfair to atheists, on the basis that, if Miah had been one, he’d have been off to chokey. It’s got everything, this story. Creepy religious Blairs? Check. Out-of-touch judges? Check. A slightly scary Muslim? Check. They’re probably knocking out a BBC Four docudrama about it as I type. But the nub of the matter, I think, is the old chestnut about the bearing, if any, that religious belief should have on abstract morality.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Atheism

You may find information about it here.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • Archbishop of York John Sentamu • * Culture-Watch • Art • * International News & Commentary • Africa • Zimbabwe

For more than 50 years, the National Prayer Breakfast has served as a prime networking event in Washington, bringing together the president, members of Congress, foreign diplomats and thousands of religious, business and military leaders for scrambled eggs and supplication.

Usually, the annual event passes with little notice. But this year, an ethics group in Washington has asked President Obama and Congressional leaders to stay away from the breakfast, on Thursday. Religious and gay rights groups have organized competing prayer events in 17 cities, and protesters are picketing in Washington and Boston.

The objections are focused on the sponsor of the breakfast, a secretive evangelical Christian network called The Fellowship, also known as The Family, and accusations that it has ties to legislation in Uganda that calls for the imprisonment and execution of homosexuals.

The Family has always stayed intentionally in the background, according to those who have written about it. In the last year, however, it was identified as the sponsor of a residence on Capitol Hill that has served as a dormitory and meeting place for a cluster of politicians who ran into ethics problems, including Senator John Ensign, Republican of Nevada, and Gov. Mark Sanford, Republican of South Carolina, both of whom have admitted to adultery.

Read the whole article.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Spirituality/Prayer • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • House of Representatives • Office of the President • Senate

French authorities have denied citizenship to a man who forced his French wife to wear a face-covering veil, saying he had rejected national values of secularism and gender equality.

The government has been speaking out strongly against head-to-toe veils, and is moving toward banning them in public after a long public debate over French national identity in the age of globalization.

Critics call the face-covering veil a gateway to extremism, but the move to ban it has drawn fierce criticism from some of France's five million Muslims, who say such restrictions are based in fear and intolerance of Islam.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • Europe • France • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Islam

A coalition of religious leaders from a variety of faiths on Wednesday (Feb. 3) blasted the Supreme Court’s ruling that allows large corporations unlimited financial support of candidates during elections.

The group of more than 200 leaders, many affiliated with the National Council of Churches, also pledged to support legislation to limit the ruling’s impact by empowering voters, not special interest groups.

The letter was organized by Common Cause, a public-interest advocacy group whose president is Bob Edgar, a United Methodist minister and former general secretary of the NCC.

Read the whole thing.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches

With a battered economy and volatile financial markets taking their tolls on donors' pocketbooks, private giving to American colleges dropped sharply in 2009, according to findings of the annual Voluntary Support of Education survey, which were released on Wednesday. Donations were down $3.75-billion from the previous year—a decline of 11.9 percent, the steepest in the survey's 50-year history.

Colleges brought in an estimated $27.85-billion in gifts in the 2009 fiscal year, according to the survey, which included 1,027 institutions and was conducted by the Council for Aid to Education. The year before, colleges raised $31.6-billion, which was the highest total ever reported in the survey. In 2009, alumni participation dropped to a record low, and the size of the average alumni gift was down, too.

The survey's findings were grim but not unexpected. During the period of the survey—July 1, 2008, to June 30, 2009—college fund raisers had reported "hitting a wall" with donors who had either lost significant portions of their wealth or were nervous that they would.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Stewardship • * Culture-Watch • Education • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Personal Finance • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007--

The Anglican Communion should reshuffle its executive leadership, said a conservative archbishop who has resigned from the body citing its failure to challenge liberal developments in two Western national churches.

He pointed out that Western churches have been smothering opposition to their acceptance of homosexuality from churches they are financially supporting by threatening to withdraw that aid.

“The current ACC and SCAC (the executive body of the Anglican Communion) should resign,” said The Most Reverend Dr Mouneer H Anis, who leads the physically largest and most diverse Anglican province.

He said: “It is incomprehensible to think of dioceses (an administrative territorial unit administered by a bishop) or provinces (mostly national or regional churches but also city or subnational churches) that have not committed themselves to covenantal relationship to participate in the decision making processes that affect the life of those dioceses or provinces that have adopted and signed the Covenant. A new Anglican Consultative Council and SCAC, or at the very least an ad hoc Standing Committee, must be formed.”

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • - Anglican: Commentary • Anglican Provinces • The Episcopal Church of Jerusalem and the Middle East • Instruments of Unity

Now Abraham was old, well advanced in years; and the LORD had blessed Abraham in all things.

--Genesis 24:1

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Father Michael Harper, who died on January 6 aged 78, was for 30 years leader of the Charismatic movement in the Church of England, and his influence extended to many other parts of the world and to several other Churches.

He left the Anglican Church in 1995 however after its decision to ordain women priests. Received into the Antiochian Orthodox Church, he became Dean of its communities in the United Kingdom and Ireland and held the office of archpriest.

Harper embraced the Anglican evangelical tradition following an intense conversion experience while attending a service in the chapel of King's College, Cambridge during his first undergraduate year at the university. He decided to seek Holy Orders, and spent six years as a curate at All Souls, Langham Place, in London's West End; the rector there, John Stott, was leading the revival of evangelicalism in the Church of England.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • * Christian Life / Church Life • Church History • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • Ministry of the Ordained • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic

Growing fears over the health of Europe’s weakest economies rocked global markets on Thursday, sparking sharp falls in shares on the continent and a worldwide flight to the safety of the US dollar and Treasuries.

The impact of declining sentiment in Europe was compounded in the US by poor employment data, with the number of American workers claiming jobless benefits rising unexpectedly last week.

In the space of weeks, investor fears that had initially been confined to Greece have spread to Portugal and Spain, and spilled over into equity markets in the US and the UK.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Credit Markets • Stock Market • * International News & Commentary • Europe