There were many remarkable aspects to Pope Benedict XVI’s recent trip to America. Among those not remarked upon, however, were two that stand out:

1) the degree to which Benedict’s message matched Pope John Paul II’s message in the latter’s profound 1993 encyclical Veritatis Splendor (The Splendor of Truth), and

2) the degree to which that message continues to resonate with so many Americans struggling to find and bring truth to our post-modern culture, including non-Catholic Americans.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • Pope Benedict XVI

Campaigners are staging a demonstration outside Rochester Cathedral today against the Bishop of Rochester’s stance on gay rights.

The protest has been planned to coincide with International Day Against Homophobia (Idaho) and will see members of the county’s gay community gather at the cathedral from noon.

Ray Duff, one of the organisers, said: “Dr Michael Nazir-Ali has regularly opposed gay rights measures; for example, adoption by gay and lesbian partnerships.

“He has himself received threats because of his conversion from Islam to Christianity. Lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender (LGBT) people fully condemn such threats unreservedly.

“Thus, we, the LGBT community in Kent and the UK, will urge the bishop to now extend his support and sympathy to the LGBT community, who have suffered for centuries because of Church homophobia.”

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • CoE Bishops • Sexuality Debate (in Anglican Communion) • Same-sex blessings • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • England / UK

Note: please be cautioned that this may not be appropriate for certain blog readers.

Group readings of Dolly Doctor at high school are an Australian rite of passage. Most teenagers know exactly how to flip from the cover of the magazine straight to the sex and body advice column at the back. In schoolyards across the country, girls, and sometimes boys, can be found nervously giggling at the questions but eagerly awaiting the answers. "Is my period normal?", "What's a wet dream?" and "Can I get pregnant the first time?"

But now it is adults who are gasping at what they read. Dolly Doctor and its counterpart in Girlfriend magazine came under scrutiny last month at the Senate's inquiry into the sexualisation of children in the contemporary media environment. The inquiry was set up to address parents' growing concerns about their children's exposure to sexual material via advertising, pop culture and the internet, and the rendering of them into sexual objects.

But in focusing on these magazine Q&A columns, the inquiry has taken a strange turn. Several senators, particularly the Tasmanian Liberal Stephen Parry, argued they were not appropriate reading material for younger teens. In particular, sexual questions were cause for alarm.

Read it all.

I will consider posting comments on this article submitted first by email to Kendall’s E-mail: KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • Children • Sexuality • Teens / Youth • * International News & Commentary • Australia / NZ

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The parishioners were lined up for Holy Communion on Sunday when the riot police stormed the stately St. Francis Anglican Church in Harare, Zimbabwe's capital. Helmeted, black-booted officers banged on the pews with their batons as terrified members of the congregation stampeded for the doors, witnesses said.

A policeman swung his stick in vicious arcs, striking matrons, a girl and a grandmother who had bent over to pick up a Bible dropped in the melee. A lone housewife began singing from a hymn in Shona, "We will keep worshiping no matter the trials!" Hundreds of women, many dressed in the Anglican Mothers' Union uniform of black skirt, white shirt and blue headdress, lifted their voices to join hers.

Beneath their defiance, though, lay raw fear as the country's ruling party stepped up its campaign of intimidation ahead of a presidential runoff. In a conflict that has penetrated ever deeper into Zimbabwe's social fabric, the party has focused on a growing roster of groups that elude its direct control — a list that includes the Anglican diocese of Harare, as well as charitable and civic organizations, trade unions, teachers, independent election monitors and the political opposition.

Anglican leaders and parishioners said in interviews that the church was not concerned with politics and that it counted people from both the ruling party and the opposition in its congregations.

Read the whole article.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • - Anglican: Latest News • * International News & Commentary • Africa • Zimbabwe

One of the most important and disputed pieces of recent legislation is being debated in the House of Commons. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill is hugely complex, reflecting the newest developments in embryology but some of the oldest questions, such as "when does human life begin?" and "does every child need a father?". The different faith organisations in this country all have concerns about this bill, but also disagree among themselves. Dr Lee Rayfield, Anglican Bishop of Swindon and immunologist, and Dr Usama Hasan, an Imam who is also a scientist, talked to Sunday.

Listen to it all (a little over seven and one half minutes).

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • CoE Bishops • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Life Ethics • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • England / UK

McGill University has bought the Anglican Diocesan Theological College for an undisclosed amount.

"The sale price is between us and McGill University," college principal John Simons said yesterday. "But all things shall one day be revealed."

The college says it can no longer afford to maintain the century-old neo-Gothic building on University St. north of Sherbrooke St.

It will however, lease the north wing of the building, known as the Principal's Lodge, from the university, convert it into a seminary and continue to use St. Luke's chapel in the building's south wing, which it will share with McGill as a multi-purpose teaching facility.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Anglican Church of Canada • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • Canada • * Theology • Seminary / Theological Education

There are photographs hanging on the walls of my dressing room in the Staatsoper Berlin, photographs that remind me of what I see when I look out the windows of my house in Jerusalem. They are slightly faded, and here and there the paper is crumbling, but one can easily recognize the views. The Old City, the Dome of the Rock with its shining cupola, the walls, the gates.

Sometimes I sit in this room before a performance, looking at these pictures and thinking of Jerusalem, of Israel, my home. Before 1989, this room was supposedly a refuge of the East German Stasi, the state police; if I happened to be a sentimental person, that fact would surely help me to become unsentimental, but I am not a sentimental person. The situation in the Middle East is much too close to me, much too personal to be able to be sentimental about it.

Since 1952 I have owned an Israeli passport. Since I was 15 years old, I have traveled the world as a musician. I have lived in London and in Paris and I commuted for years between Chicago and Berlin. Before I had an Israeli passport, I had an Argentinean one; later I acquired a Spanish one. And in 2007, I became the only Israeli in the world who can also show a Palestinian passport at an Israeli border crossing.

I am, so to speak, living evidence of the fact that only a pragmatic two-state solution (or better yet, absurd as it sounds, a federation of three states: Israel, Palestine and Jordan) can bring peace to the region.

Read the whole article.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Music • * International News & Commentary • Middle East • Israel

Widely celebrated for its coffee and long-distance runners, but notorious for its extreme poverty, Ethiopia is the only sub-Saharan nation with a Christian culture dating to the earliest days of the church – a little known fact that it shares with Eritrea, its former province and northern neighbor. About 50 percent of Ethiopia’s estimated 77 million people belong to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, a dominant force that, with Ethiopia’s monarchy, had defined this ancient land and its people for more than 16 centuries.

But the entrenched church is losing ground to a burgeoning Sunni Muslim population in the country’s south and southwest – who now account for almost half of the nation’s people – and to successful proselytizing efforts among the Orthodox by evangelical Christians from the West.

Some 500 years ago Ethiopia’s distinctive Orthodox Christian community faced the Counter Reformation zeal of the Jesuits, who worked to restore full communion between the Roman Catholic and Ethiopian Orthodox churches. The Jesuits failed and Ethiopia slipped into civil war. Once the dust settled, hundreds of Catholic missionaries were expelled or put to death. Europeans were forbidden to enter this “African Zion,” which, more than any other factor, preserved Ethiopia’s independence during Europe’s empire-building land grab centuries later.

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Filed under: * International News & Commentary • Africa • Ethiopia • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic

Asserting that "all peoples have a right to be given equal opportunities to flourish," Pope Benedict XVI on Monday voiced concern for Israel's dwindling Christian minority, and called for a relaxation of travel restrictions on the country's Palestinians.

The pope made his remarks on in a meeting with Mordechay Lewy, the new Israeli ambassador to the Holy See.

Benedict also called for a "positive and expeditious resolution" of longstanding tax and legal disputes between Israel and the Vatican.

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Filed under: * International News & Commentary • Middle East • Israel • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • Pope Benedict XVI

For some people, of course, these events raise questions about whether there can be a God, or if there is a God could he is good. For them it is inconceivable that there could be a God who permits suffering. But nowhere in the Bible; and nowhere in the Christian tradition is it suggested that God is a sort of heavenly puppet master; the sort of god who treats us like robots, who is two steps ahead of us sorting out our lives in front of us.

Faith doesn’t promise us that. Think back to the psalm: ‘When you travel through the valley of the shadow of death I’ll be with you’. Not ‘if’, ‘when’ is what the scripture says.

John Polkinghorne, priest, author and former Professor of Mathematical Physics at Cambridge University puts it like this: God does not bring about everything that happens in the world. Because God is a God of love, he allows creatures to be themselves. That sort of valuable, worthwhile, independent creation has a cost. We see that in the terrible cruel choices of humankind. We also see it in the physical history of the world. Exactly the same bio-chemical processes that enable some cells to mutate and produce new forms of life - the very engine that has driven the amazingly fruitful history of life on earth – will also allow other cells to mutate and to become malignant. You just cannot have one without the other. The tragic fact that there is cancer in the world is not because God did not bother – it is a necessity in a world allowed to make itself.

The freedom that enables me to choose to give generously at the moment to Myanmar, the freedom which enables someone to give their love to someone, to go the extra mile to care; is precisely the same freedom which those rulers in Myanmar are using to stop aid coming in. It is part of the way the world is set up. It’s both a wonderful freedom but a terrible responsibility.

The Christian gospel never says that there will not be suffering or evil. And it does not promise us that we will not go through it. And those of you being confirmed today, this isn’t some sort of talisman which will stop you ever experiencing evil. You and I will experience the same suffering that is the common lot of humanity.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • CoE Bishops • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Preaching / Homiletics • * International News & Commentary • Asia

Monstrous to some, but representing a ray of hope in the fight against debilitating diseases to others, stem cell research has been steeped in controversy for over a decade.

While scientists, doctors, patient groups and medical charities welcome the ground-breaking advances it could bring, the Roman Catholic Church and several other faiths are vehemently opposed to stem cell research on the grounds that it compromises the sanctity of human life. Central to the religious objectors' argument is that using stem cells amounts to deriving benefit from the destruction of human embryos - fertilized eggs in the early stages of development - and is therefore tantamount to murder, and certainly little better than abortion.

Yet supporters of the revolutionary research techniques are thrilled that stem cells taken from embryos can be made to grow into any cell in the human body, providing an extraordinary resource in the fight against Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Motor Neurone Disease, diabetes and other conditions.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Life Ethics • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

What drives this essay emotionally is not disdain for and disgust with dim-bulb students. X says he really identifies with his students and their struggles in life, and wants to help them along. "I could not be aloof even if I wanted to be," he writes. But he can't compromise academic standards out of pity or solidarity.

What it all boils down to, he says, is that a cruel hoax is being played on these students. "America, ever-idealistic, seems wary of the vocational-education track. We are not comfortable limiting someone's options," he writes. And he sympathizes with this ideal -- but he's the one who has to see how little it has to do with reality. His students aren't college material. They don't read (some of them can't really read). They don't share even the rudiments of a common intellectual culture on which to build. He says he tries to explain the basics of narrative to them in terms of movies, but they haven't all seen the same movies. They are more or less well-mannered, hard-working barbarians. The only thing they all share is a sense that they are good people for being in college, and that they can be anything they want to be.

Prof. X says the whole system, premised on a false egalitarianism, is to blame here. One key question this excellent essay raises by implication is this: if quite a lot of Americans are incapable of doing college work, what does that do to the Thomas Friedmanesque understanding that in order to compete in a flattened, globalized world, US laborers are simply going to have to get retrained and better educated? What if there are natural limits to their ability to expand their cognitive skills? What then?

I mean, look, what if things were flipped, and the Friedmans of the world were telling the "knowledge workers," for lack of a better term, that staying competitive in this globalizing world economy meant having a stronger back. Ergo, nerdling, you're just going to have to start spending a lot more time at the gym to develop a longshoreman's body, or get left behind. We'd laugh at this, because we have no problem grasping that nature has not endowed all of us equally well in terms of physical strength and capabilities. The nerdling would be able to improve his strength to a certain degree, but to tell him his physical limits are defined only by his desires and will to succeed is to play a cruel hoax on him.

Are we not doing that with some of the people who are in college now?

Read it all and make sure to check out the comments as well.

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

Here is one:

Sir, It is the statisticians who produced Religious Trends who should be on their knees (“Churchgoing on its knees as Christianity falls out of favour”, May 8). The methodology of the publication is so flawed that it is dangerously misleading to draw any predictions from it.


A few examples highlight the problems. Christian Research does not compare like with like. It takes the number of Muslims at the 2001 Census and assumes that half are active worshippers. Using the same assumption would give 20 million active Christians, yet it limits, for example, active Church of England membership to only average Sunday congregations. That ignores actual head counts showing the average million Sunday congregation is only part of the 1.7 million individual worshippers in any given month, recorded year on year since 2001.

It ignores the rapid growth in Back to Church Sunday initiatives that brought more than 20,000 people back to church last year. Being based purely on numbers in church buildings on Sundays, it ignores the thousands joining the Church through more than 5,000 fresh expressions initiatives meeting in other places, on other days.

The Right Rev Nick Baines
Bishop of Croydon

The Rev Lynda Barley
Head of Research and Statistics, Archbishops’ Council

Read them all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • England / UK

An underground nuclear submarine base on China's Hainan Island is drawing scrutiny from the United States and India.

According to satellite imagery on the Web sites of Jane's Intelligence Review and the Federation of American Scientists, the base has a sea entrance wide enough to allow submarines to enter the underground facilities. The photograph reveals what appears to be a ballistic missile submarine moored to one of the piers outside.

Rumors of a nuclear submarine base had been swirling for a few years. Kurt Campbell, with the Center for a New American Security, says the satellite photographs confirm those suspicions and stoke anxiety in the region about China's strategic capabilities — and its intentions.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Military / Armed Forces • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China

Listen to it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Spirituality/Prayer • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • England / UK

Chinese companies will be encouraged to buy farmland abroad, particularly in Africa and South America, to help guarantee food security under a plan being considered by Beijing.

A proposal drafted by the Ministry of Agriculture would make supporting offshore land acquisition by domestic agricultural companies a central government policy. Beijing already has similar policies to boost offshore investment by state-owned banks, manufacturers and oil companies, but offshore agricultural investment has so far been limited to a few small projects.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Dieting/Food/Nutrition • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China

Boris Johnson, the new mayor of London, has claimed that evangelical faith communities are being shunned in modern society.

In an interview with ReligiousIntelligence.com, he said that the good work done by many Christian and evangelical groups is often just ignored and derided. “I think there is a culture now in our society where if something is even vaguely Christian, if there is a whiff of evangelical fervour about it then it’s almost somehow verboten to fund it,” he told the paper at a hustings event in the lead-up to the election.

He continued: “I think that’s quite wrong because if you look at the good that these groups do and you look at the way we’re going to transform society and undo the breakdown that we’ve seen in family life, the growing-up of kids without boundaries and all the rest of the things we’ve been talking about in this campaign, the Christian groups are essential.”

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Evangelicals

Church attendance in Britain is declining so fast that the number of regular churchgoers will be fewer than those attending mosques within a generation, research published today suggests.

The fall - from the four million people who attend church at least once a month today - means that the Church of England, Catholicism and other denominations will become financially unviable. A lack of funds from the collection plate to support the Christian infrastructure, including church upkeep and ministers’ pay and pensions, will force church closures as ageing congregations die.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • England / UK

In his new book, “The Post-American World,” Mr. Zakaria writes that America remains a politico-military superpower, but “in every other dimension — industrial, financial, educational, social, cultural — the distribution of power is shifting, moving away from American dominance.” With the rise of China, India and other emerging markets, with economic growth sweeping much of the planet, and the world becoming increasingly decentralized and interconnected, he contends, “we are moving into a post-American world, one defined and directed from many places and by many people.”

For that matter, Mr. Zakaria argues that we are now in the midst of the third great tectonic power shift to occur over the last 500 years: the first was the rise of the West, which produced “modernity as we know it: science and technology, commerce and capitalism, the agricultural and industrial revolutions”; the second was the rise of the United States in the 20th century; and the third is what he calls “the rise of the rest,” with China and India “becoming bigger players in their neighborhoods and beyond,” Russia becoming more aggressive, and Europe acting with “immense strength and purpose” on matters of trade and economics.

Many of this volume’s more acute arguments echo those that have been made by other analysts and writers, most notably, the New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman on globalization, and Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, on America’s growing isolation in an increasingly adversarial world. But Mr. Zakaria uses his wide-ranging fluency in economics, foreign policy and cultural politics to give the lay reader a lucid picture of a globalized world (and America’s role in it) that is changing at light speed, even as he provides a host of historical analogies to examine the possible fallout of these changes.

The irony of the “rise of the rest,” Mr. Zakaria notes, is that it is largely a result of American ideas and actions: “For 60 years, American politicians and diplomats have traveled around the world pushing countries to open their markets, free up their politics, and embrace trade and technology. We have urged peoples in distant lands to take up the challenge of competing in the global economy, freeing up their currencies, and developing new industries. We counseled them to be unafraid of change and learn the secrets of our success. And it worked: the natives have gotten good at capitalism.”

Read it all.

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

Sitting cross-legged in the dirt beneath a canopy of jungle vegetation, Nasruddin Anshory, with his Koran open in front of him, was telling a group of visitors about their ordained responsibility to protect the environment.

"As a Muslim," he said, "you have to do something."

His visitors were a mix of people from universities and mosques all over the island of Java, seeking to broaden their understanding of Islam. Off to the side were several students from Gajah Mada University nearby, eagerly taking notes in preparation for their dissertations, all of which will focus on promoting conservation through Islam.

Nasruddin founded Ilmu Giri, an Islamic school devoted to environmentalism, five years ago. But in the past couple of years, as global awareness of climate change and related problems has increased, interest in the school has swelled.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Energy, Natural Resources • * International News & Commentary • Asia • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Islam

I was walking through Ashfield shopping centre at 10 o'clock last Sunday morning. Every shop was open. It could have been any day of the week.

If I had been on the west coast it would have been different. In Western Australia a referendum to deregulate Sunday trading was soundly defeated in 2005. Countries such as Belgium and Germany restrict Sunday trading, and others impose strict limits on hours and regulate the types of businesses that can open.

But the extraordinary thing is that children in most Australian cities must now be left without parental supervision for so much of the time. A Bureau of Statistics report this year on how Australians use their time confirms we are spending less time playing, sleeping, and eating and drinking, but longer working.

We can feel it and see it all around us. Hairdressers are often open into the night, international banks are conducting business on combined southern and northern hemisphere time, emails and text messages find us day and night, seven days a week.

Read the whole article.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • * International News & Commentary • Australia / NZ

THE Anglican Church of Kenya (ACK) has demanded tough action against the outlawed Mungiki sect that has recently terrorized the country.

The Church accused politicians supporting the group of promoting anarchy. Anglican Archbishop Benjamin Nzimbi said the Government should crack down on sect members, as they were engaged in crime.

"The Government has the machinery to crack down on this illegal group yet nothing is happening," the prelate said.

Archbishop Nzimbi was speaking in Kericho on Thursday May 1, 2008 during the consecration and enthronement of the Rt Rev Jackson Nasoore ole Sapit as bishop of the Kericho Anglican Diocese.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Anglican Church of Kenya • * International News & Commentary • Africa • Kenya

We are not as powerful as we used to be because over the past three decades, the Asian values of our parents’ generation — work hard, study, save, invest, live within your means — have given way to subprime values: “You can have the American dream — a house — with no money down and no payments for two years.”

That’s why Donald Rumsfeld’s infamous defense of why he did not originally send more troops to Iraq is the mantra of our times: “You go to war with the army you have.” Hey, you march into the future with the country you have — not the one that you need, not the one you want, not the best you could have.

A few weeks ago, my wife and I flew from New York’s Kennedy Airport to Singapore. In J.F.K.’s waiting lounge we could barely find a place to sit. Eighteen hours later, we landed at Singapore’s ultramodern airport, with free Internet portals and children’s play zones throughout. We felt, as we have before, like we had just flown from the Flintstones to the Jetsons. If all Americans could compare Berlin’s luxurious central train station today with the grimy, decrepit Penn Station in New York City, they would swear we were the ones who lost World War II.

How could this be? We are a great power. How could we be borrowing money from Singapore? Maybe it’s because Singapore is investing billions of dollars, from its own savings, into infrastructure and scientific research to attract the world’s best talent — including Americans.

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

Facing a standing-room-only crowd of film students and faculty [at USC], four IBM researchers laid out some of the radical changes that technology could bring to the world four decades from now. The ideas veered between breathtaking and chilling, with some mind-bending notions about what it will mean to be human. Yet the common theme was that the world would be a better place, albeit a more artificial one.

Sharon Nunes, head of IBM's energy and environment business, foresaw a biological revolution that would satisfy the energy and water needs of all 9 billion people on Earth by 2050. Solar cells will convert sunlight to energy the way plants do, algae will be converted to fuel, and organisms will turn water from polluted to potable.

Similar advances in human cell mechanics will enable us to regenerate lost or diseased body parts, predicted Ajay Royyuru, head of IBM Research's computational biology team. Nanotechnologist Don Eigler described how technology would be embedded into our bodies and powered by the physical energy we generate. For example, "parallel processing" implants could enable our minds to focus on two things at once.

A note of caution came from IBM distinguished engineer Jeff Jonas, an expert in security, who said the spread of electronic sensors will generate enormous amounts of data about us and store it online. "Collective intelligence will locate what you need, and it will tell you" without being asked, he said. "When it serves you and your doctor, you are going to love this. When it serves the police, you're going to hate this."

Read it all.

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

Note that we covered this important book on an earlier thread (on which no one chose to comment)--KSH

Americans are glum at the moment. No, I mean really glum. In April, a new poll revealed that 81 percent of the American people believe that the country is on the "wrong track." In the 25 years that pollsters have asked this question, last month's response was by far the most negative. Other polls, asking similar questions, found levels of gloom that were even more alarming, often at 30- and 40-year highs. There are reasons to be pessimistic—a financial panic and looming recession, a seemingly endless war in Iraq, and the ongoing threat of terrorism. But the facts on the ground—unemployment numbers, foreclosure rates, deaths from terror attacks—are simply not dire enough to explain the present atmosphere of malaise.

American anxiety springs from something much deeper, a sense that large and disruptive forces are coursing through the world. In almost every industry, in every aspect of life, it feels like the patterns of the past are being scrambled. "Whirl is king, having driven out Zeus," wrote Aristophanes 2,400 years ago. And—for the first time in living memory—the United States does not seem to be leading the charge. Americans see that a new world is coming into being, but fear it is one being shaped in distant lands and by foreign people.

Look around. The world's tallest building is in Taipei, and will soon be in Dubai. Its largest publicly traded company is in Beijing. Its biggest refinery is being constructed in India. Its largest passenger airplane is built in Europe. The largest investment fund on the planet is in Abu Dhabi; the biggest movie industry is Bollywood, not Hollywood. Once quintessentially American icons have been usurped by the natives. The largest Ferris wheel is in Singapore. The largest casino is in Macao, which overtook Las Vegas in gambling revenues last year. America no longer dominates even its favorite sport, shopping. The Mall of America in Minnesota once boasted that it was the largest shopping mall in the world. Today it wouldn't make the top ten. In the most recent rankings, only two of the world's ten richest people are American. These lists are arbitrary and a bit silly, but consider that only ten years ago, the United States would have serenely topped almost every one of these categories.

Read it carefully and read it all.

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

China is in a frightening mood. The sight of thousands of Chinese people waving xenophobic fists suggests that a country on its way to becoming a superpower may turn out to be a more dangerous force than optimists had hoped. But it isn't just foreigners who should be worried by these scenes: the Chinese government, which has encouraged this outburst of nationalism, should also be afraid.

For three decades, having shed communism in all but the name of its ruling party, China's government has justified its monopolistic hold on power through economic advance. Many Chinese enjoy a prosperity undreamt of by their forefathers. For them, though, it is no longer enough to be reminded of the grim austerity of their parents' childhoods. They need new aspirations.

The government's solution is to promise them that China will be restored to its rightful place at the centre of world affairs. Hence the pride at winning the Olympics, and the fury at the embarrassing protests during the torch relay. But the appeal to nationalism is a double-edged sword: while it provides a useful outlet for domestic discontents, it could easily turn on the government itself.

Read it all.

Filed under: * International News & Commentary • Asia • China

Some years ago I read a book, written by an Israeli, about the relationships between Jews, Muslims and Christians in the Holy Land. It contained a fascinating remark made by a nun, Sister Maria Teresa: “I watch the [Jewish] families who visit here on weekends; how the parents behave toward their children, speaking to them with patience and encouraging them to ask intelligent questions. It's an example for the whole world. The strength of this people is the love of parents for their children.” I see a very similar devotion to children among the Sikhs I've been privileged to know.

Sister Maria's remark touches on another feature of Judaism: the idea that Jewish parents must teach their children to ask questions. We do not believe that faith is blind or unquestioning. Nor do we believe that education is a process in which adults speak and children listen, adults command and children obey. That is the sign of an authoritarian culture, not a free society.

In the Hebrew Bible, people ask questions of God, and the greater the person, the deeper the question.

Read it all.

Filed under: * International News & Commentary • England / UK • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

For example [a numbers of years ago]..., American stores were never open 24-7 and few women were doctors, lawyers or ministers. The birth-control pill had not been invented and American society was generally intolerant of casual sex or births outside of marriage. Nudity and profanity were forbidden in movies -- even married couples were portrayed in twin beds. Americans were generally respectful of authority and tended to trust what they were told by people who should have known.

Catholics thought of themselves at the time as a minority in a generally Protestant country. Although they paid taxes to support public schools, they were likely to send their children to parochial schools to develop a better sense of Catholic teaching and practice, especially since the public sense of "religion" was largely a watered-down version of liberal Protestantism.

All of which changed, sometimes dramatically, sometimes incrementally, in the next 50 years. Pope Benedict now faces an American Catholic Church different from the traditional minority church of Francis Cardinal Spellman and Elizabeth Ann Seton. Roman Catholics have become, in every sense of the term, American insiders. There is no reason for them to feel insecure about their social or political status, and they generally do not.

The downside of full inclusion in American society is that there is no American problem that is not a Catholic problem: drugs, crime, teenage pregnancy, divorce, loss of members, or the alienation of youth from the church. In short, whatever troubles their non-Catholic neighbors troubles them.

Moreover, there has been a steady attrition of native-born Catholics, whose places in the local parish have been taken by Hispanic immigrants. The Pew Foundation discovered that one in 10 Americans now considers himself or herself an ex-Catholic.

Some of the losses may be due to Catholic failures...

Read it all.

Filed under: * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic