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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • - Anglican: Commentary • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • CoE Bishops

Mr Obama’s budget reduces the projected deficits between now and 2020 by just over $2 trillion, mainly through reductions in planned spending on overseas military operations and proposed tax changes. The concern is that many of the recommended tax changes may not stick. Mr Obama’s Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee (the so-called bank tax) will probably survive, but other items, including reform of the international tax system and repeal of fossil-fuel subsidies, were proposed last year and failed to make it through Congress. Measures boosting taxes on upper-income households (those earning above $250,000 a year) should fare better, but the decision to sustain George Bush’s tax cuts for everyone else is short-sighted.

If Congress balks, as expected, at some tax provisions, then deficits will prove larger than budgeted for. But even the president’s proposals fail to cut deficits to the 3% target. To make up the difference, Mr Obama will create a deficit commission by executive order, charged with making recommendations for long-run budget sustainability. Yet Congress had earlier failed to pass its own proposal to create a bipartisan deficit commission, which would at least have been able to force a yes-or-no vote on its recommendations. Republicans who had praised the idea cynically reversed themselves when the president signalled his support. And even before its defeat, the Senate voted 97-0 to shield Social Security from the commission’s purview.

The aversion of Congress to hard decisions is no small obstacle for the president. But Mr Obama has done himself no favours by fudging the hard budget choices which must ultimately be made. It could be a costly failure. The American government has room to continue supporting the weak economy, but only for as long as markets believe that the United States will eventually make good on its obligations. In this budget proposal, Mr Obama has not done anything to reassure them.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • The U.S. Government • Budget • The National Deficit • Politics in General • House of Representatives • Senate

In a subchapter entitled "A 'Special' Act for a Special Evening?" the authors note that "some teens talk about prom night as the night they might have sex for the first time because the night feels special and significant." Without making any ruling as to the wisdom of such a practice, they invite young people to consider whether to bed their dates by asking themselves: "Will I be able to look this person in the eye the next morning and talk about the experience? If we break up afterward anyway, how will I feel?" The authors conclude: "Sex is the most intimate act between two people, so you should take the time to consider all these questions and answer them coolly and honestly."

It seems startlingly passive advice, even in an era in which, as a newly retired school principal ruefully told me, "Girls save themselves not for marriage but for the prom."

Well, of course sex is intimate. It's also profoundly consequential and, you'd think, something the heirs of Emily Post would be unafraid to tell young people to delay. ("Don't allow anyone to paw you!") Alas, no more.

"We're not prudish by any stretch; we're more realists than anything else," Peggy Post explained by phone. "We really made a conscious decision not to try to lecture teens or tell them what to do, but instead give them the tools, questions for them to ask themselves, so that they don't feel pressure."

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Sexuality • Teens / Youth • Violence • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

A half-dozen men with ball caps and beer cans hovered around Kemper Dickinson as he unloaded a steaming mass of brats onto a kitchen table already brimming with pig and cow products.

The grill outside Dickinson's West Ashley home sizzled and popped with still more sausages, their casings sweating under the heat of the fiery coals. The closest thing on hand to a vegetable was a tray of jalapeno peppers swaddled in bacon.

Welcome to a Man Cave gathering.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Men • * South Carolina

The discovery of three American soldiers among the dead in a suicide bombing at the opening of a girls’ school in the northwestern Pakistan town of Dir last week reignited the fears of many Pakistanis that Washington was set on invading their country.

Barack Obama has banned the Bush-era term “war on terror” and dithered about sending extra troops to Afghanistan, but across the border in Pakistan, the US president has dramatically stepped up the covert war against Islamic extremists.

US airstrikes in Pakistan, launched from unmanned drones, are now averaging three a week, triple the number last year. “We're quietly seeing a geographical shift,” an intelligence officer said.

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

Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, ordered the nation’s atomic energy agency on Sunday to begin producing a special form of uranium that can be used to power a medical reactor in Tehran, but that could also move the country much closer to possessing fuel usable in nuclear weapons.

The announcement Sunday came after several days of conflicting signals from Mr. Ahmadinejad and other Iranian officials about whether they were ready to reopen negotiations about giving up much of their country’s fuel in exchange for enriched uranium from another country. The exchange would allow Iran to meet some of its energy needs, but would ease fears in the West because the fuel sent to Tehran would be in a form that would be very difficult to use in a bomb.

The deal fell apart when it was rejected by the leadership in Tehran.

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

It’s easy to wonder how world leaders, journalists, religious figures and ordinary citizens looked the other way while six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust. And it’s even easier to assume that we’d do better.

But so far the brutal war here in eastern Congo has not only lasted longer than the Holocaust but also appears to have claimed more lives. A peer- reviewed study put the Congo war’s death toll at 5.4 million as of April 2007 and rising at 45,000 a month. That would leave the total today, after a dozen years, at 6.9 million.

What those numbers don’t capture is the way Congo has become the world capital of rape, torture and mutilation, in ways that sear survivors like Jeanne Mukuninwa, a beautiful, cheerful young woman of 19 who somehow musters the courage to giggle. Her parents disappeared in the fighting when she had just turned 14 — perhaps they were massacred, but their bodies never turned up — so she moved in with her uncle.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Violence • Women • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • * International News & Commentary • Africa • Republic of Congo

After practice one late-summer day in 1986, Alan Veingrad strode into the Green Bay Packers’ locker room, feeling both spent and satisfied.

An undrafted player from an obscure college, he had made the team and then some. On the next Sunday, opening day of the N.F.L. season, he would be starting at offensive tackle.

In his locker, Mr. Veingrad found the usual stuff, his street clothes and sweat suit and playbook. On a small bench, though, lay a note from the Packers’ receptionist. It carried a name that Mr. Veingrad did not recognize, Lou Weinstein, and a local phone number.

Alone in a new town, too naïve to be wary, Mr. Veingrad called. This Lou Weinstein, it turned out, ran a shoe store in Green Bay, Wis. He had just read an article in the paper about a Jewish player on the Packers, and he wanted to meet and welcome that rarity.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • Sports • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

The meeting with [Rowan] Williams, leader of the world Anglican Communion, was the first major meeting for the ELCA delegation.
Williams greeted the ELCA delegation briefly after meeting with Hanson.

[Mark S.] Hanson told the ELCA News Service that the discussion of strengthening Anglican Communion relationships focused on existing full communion agreements -- in Canada, Europe and the United States. "We talked not only about how this time of 'reception' can strengthen the ministries and mission we share, but provide new opportunities for us to be engaged in ways we haven't even imagined," Hanson said.

The two world church leaders discussed how both communions can focus on "the pressing issues of the world in which God has placed us," said Hanson. He said the two agreed there is an urgent need for the United Nations and the U.S. and British governments to find a solution to the conflict in Sudan. The two also discussed commitment and concern for Palestinian Christians, and support for the Council for Religious Institutions in the Holy Land, for Lutheran and Anglican churches in the region and for dialogue with religious leaders in Israel.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams • * Religion News & Commentary • Ecumenical Relations • Other Churches • Lutheran

No one has any difficulty in perceiving that the Anglican Consultative Council is a deliberative, but not a hierarchical, body. Then why does the fog descend upon them when they argue that General Convention is "hierarchical"? Because of its authority to enact canons, which are supposedly "binding" on each diocese?

Oh, yes: certainly Canon I.17.7 ("No unbaptized person shall be eligible to receive Holy Communion in this Church") is an example of the binding authority of the Church's canons on the many dioceses which allow communion for the unbaptized. And certainly Canon IV.9, which requires that a bishop be first inhibited with the consent of the Church's three most senior bishops before he can be deposed, is binding on the Presiding Bishop and the House of Bishops -- just look at the votes to depose Bishop Cox and Bishop Duncan.

The plain truth is that General Convention can enact canons, but it cannot enforce them. The reason is obvious: each General Convention, such as it is, exists for only ten days out of every 1095 (or 1096, when there is a leap year), and so it is incapable of enforcing any of its so-called "binding" canons. No, the reality is that the canons require bishops, standing committees and ecclesiastical courts to enforce them. (The recent changes in Title IV made by GC 2009 are but another example of its making changes which are left up to the several dioceses to implement.)

And has General Convention -- this "highest authority" of the Episcopal Church (USA) -- ever reigned in a Presiding Bishop, or called him or her to account for spending money it did not authorize, or for commencing unwarranted litigation in the name of the Church? Pray tell, when did that ever happen?

The hierarchical buzzword is just a shibboleth, invoked by those who want to get away with something which -- if the Church were truly hierarchical -- they could not do.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Conflicts • TEC Polity & Canons

According to Professor Mullin, there is this abstraction, which he calls "General Convention", which does everything in the Church, from drafting the Church's own Constitution, to selecting bishops and instructing on education, clerical responsibilities and rules for ordination. But just what is this "General Convention? It is made up of the delegations and bishops from individual member dioceses. It is no "supreme executive", having a continuous existence and single mind that remains coherent and uniform over time, like an individual person. Instead, General Convention completely reconstitutes itself every three years -- for a period of just ten days at most. The General Convention of the moment is not bound by any prior Convention, and cannot itself bind any future Convention.

Because General Convention can act only through its deputies and bishops, it is, correctly speaking, simply a collection of individuals. It "acts" or "decides" by taking votes. Usually they are simple voice votes, but on more important matters they are roll call votes by each order in each diocese. (Only the House of Bishops acts at all times by majority vote of its members, who constitute a single order in the Church.) Nevertheless, even when voting by orders, the overall concept of General Convention is that a concurrence by the majority of the member dioceses is necessary for any action or decision to be taken.

Professor Mullin's analysis, by way of contrast, replaces the members of an unincorporated group with an abstract, impersonal entity that is supposedly superior to the group itself, and that supposedly exercises supreme powers over that group. But as we have just seen, this "entity" is nothing other than what you and I would call a "majority."

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

Everything I know about Mary Glasspool assures me that she is an experienced, faithful priest with extensive diocesan experience and strong leadership skills. I believe she would make a wonderful bishop and that she is an excellent match for the Diocese of
Los Angeles. Her election there was logical and appropriate.

Nevertheless, it is clear to me that the ordination of an openly Gay woman to the episcopate will - at this time - have a serious negative impact on our relationship with the wider Anglican Communion, and that it may very well strain - to the breaking point - those bonds of affection which we have come to value with others, even with those who may agree with us. This, in turn, would limit or damage our future ability to offer leadership to the wider church around matters of sexuality and social justice, as well as limit our participation in shared programs for mission.


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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • 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

Leaders of a new religious body affiliated with the Anglican Communion are scheduled to speak next weekend at Christ Church on Johnson Square.

The Most Rev. Robert William Duncan Jr., Archbishop of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), will deliver the sermon at the 8 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. services Feb. 14. The church is located at 28 Bull St.

The Rt. Rev. Charles Bernard Obaikol, recently retired Bishop of Soroti, Uganda, will teach a 9 a.m. Sunday school class.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009 • Anglican Provinces • Church of Uganda • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Conflicts • TEC Conflicts: Georgia

"The church's parliament" it may be, but the General Synod's house of laity is democratic in the pure ­Athenian sense that only a tiny proportion of the ­punters get a vote. A while ago I questioned this aspect of the setup, but gilded ones who sit in the tearoom and make our futures told me that, even using the internet, it would self-evidently be ludicrously costly and ­bothersome to have ordinary Anglicans voting. So there.

It's an imperfect system, but alter­natives could be even worse. It would not suit the English to govern the church entirely by clergy, or a clique of senior clergy, or, perish the thought, a Divine Right Supremo. Not this side of 1688. Not only do I cherish liberty, as do all of us who live in the County of John Milton, but it strikes me as exactly what Jesus assiduously told his followers not to do....

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE)

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

Omar Hammami had every right to flash his magnetic smile. He had just been elected president of his sophomore class. He was dating a luminous blonde, one of the most sought-after girls in school. He was a star in the gifted-student program, with visions of becoming a surgeon. For a 15-year-old, he had remarkable charisma.

Despite the name he acquired from his father, an immigrant from Syria, Hammami was every bit as Alabaman as his mother, a warm, plain-spoken woman who sprinkles her conversation with blandishments like “sugar” and “darlin’.” Brought up a Southern Baptist, Omar went to Bible camp as a boy and sang “Away in a Manger” on Christmas Eve. As a teenager, his passions veered between Shakespeare and Kurt Cobain, soccer and Nintendo. In the thick of his adolescence, he was fearless, raucously funny, rebellious, contrarian. “It felt cool just to be with him,” his best friend at the time, Trey Gunter, said recently. “You knew he was going to be a leader.”

A decade later, Hammami has fulfilled that promise in the most unimaginable way. Some 8,500 miles from Alabama, on the eastern edge of Africa, he has become a key figure in one of the world’s most ruthless Islamist insurgencies. That guerrilla army, known as the Shabab, is fighting to overthrow the fragile American-backed Somali government. The rebels are known for beheading political enemies, chopping off the hands of thieves and stoning women accused of adultery. With help from Al Qaeda, they have managed to turn Somalia into an ever more popular destination for jihadis from around the world.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Marriage & Family • Religion & Culture • Teens / Youth • Violence • * International News & Commentary • Africa • Somalia • America/U.S.A. • Middle East • Egypt • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Baptists • Other Faiths • Islam