Congressional lawmakers seem to agree on two things: College student loan debt is out of control and something should be done about it.

Where they disagree is how to solve the problem. Currently they are looking at one piece of this puzzle: how to keep a lower interest rate on federally subsidized undergraduate student loans for low- and middle-income students which is set to double to 6.8 percent this June.

Isaiah Toney, a senior at George Washington University in Washington, said he is “extraordinarily happy” this issue is being raised, but he thinks the discussion has been too narrow.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Education • Young Adults • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Personal Finance • Politics in General • House of Representatives • Office of the President • Senate

Kelsey Griffith graduates on Sunday from Ohio Northern University. To start paying off her $120,000 in student debt, she is already working two restaurant jobs and will soon give up her apartment here to live with her parents. Her mother, who co-signed on the loans, is taking out a life insurance policy on her daughter.

“If anything ever happened, God forbid, that is my debt also,” said Ms. Griffith’s mother, Marlene Griffith.

Ms. Griffith, 23, wouldn’t seem a perfect financial fit for a college that costs nearly $50,000 a year. Her father, a paramedic, and mother, a preschool teacher, have modest incomes, and she has four sisters. But when she visited Ohio Northern, she was won over by faculty and admissions staff members who urge students to pursue their dreams rather than obsess on the sticker price.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Education • Young Adults • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Personal Finance

In 2006, The Falls Church and six sister congregations in Northern Virginia voted (overwhelmingly) to pull out of the Episcopal Church because, in our view, it had drifted so far from orthodox Christianity that we could not remain in good conscience.

Reasons for the division have been mainly theological, particularly focused on how we interpret the Bible, and what doctrines of the Christian faith are essential for leaders to maintain. The doctrinal divides have been widening for several decades, and in 2003 when a practicing homosexual was consecrated as Episcopal bishop, many realized that the divisions in the church were unresolvable.

We will stay in the Anglican Communion under the Archbishop of Canterbury, but through a different branch.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Conflicts • TEC Conflicts: Virginia • TEC Departing Parishes • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Theology • Pastoral Theology

Christopher Wright is a great Old Testament scholar. His work on Old Testament ethics for the people of God has been foundational in my understanding of the character of God through the laws he laid down.

So to have him admit that there are difficult parts of Scripture, for which pat answers will not suffice, is… spirit warming. Some evangelical writers are so adamant in their writing that they leave no room for doubt, no room for mystery, no room for limits in human understanding!

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Books • * International News & Commentary • Australia / NZ • * Theology • Theodicy • Theology: Scripture

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Media • * South Carolina

...nowhere is this question more fraught than in African-American churches, says Tony Evans. He pastors the 9,000-member Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas. One reason, he says, is cultural.

"The breakdown of the family is the single greatest challenge that we face today," he says....

"The Bible is clear on...sexual relationships are to be between men and women within the context of marriage," Evans says. "That's not only related to the issue of homosexuality, but adultery, or fornication or bestiality. All of that is proscribed in the Bible."

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Ministry of the Ordained • * Culture-Watch • Marriage & Family • Sexuality • --Civil Unions & Partnerships • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology • Theology: Scripture

[Graham said marriage] “should not be defined by presidents or polls, governors or the media. The definition was set long ago and changing legislation or policy will never change God’s definition.”

The Rev. Murdoch Smith, pastor of St. Martin’s Episcopal Church in Charlotte, challenged Graham’s view, saying “I am always suspect when someone says that they know the mind of God.”

“President Obama stated that his position was evolving because he was open to what all sides had to say on marriage equality,” Smith said Thursday. “That openness … brought him to the conclusion that God blesses all who commit to one another in his presence.”

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Ministry of the Ordained • * Culture-Watch • Marriage & Family • Religion & Culture • Sexuality • --Civil Unions & Partnerships

Faiza N. Ali paced across the plaza outside City Hall in Lower Manhattan, consulting a to-do list and juggling the messages on two BlackBerries. How was the turnout? Were the speakers prepped? One minister had already alerted Ms. Ali that he was running late. Another of her colleagues had gone to Borough Hall in Brooklyn by mistake.

On this blustery morning two weeks ago, Ms. Ali was undergoing one of the first tests of her new job as a community organizer, helping to run a rally in support of proposed legislation encouraging more local investment by banks. And by the time the hundred participants had assembled on the City Hall steps, Ms. Ali, a petite figure in a hijab, was standing beside a Catholic priest, holding the edge of a banner from Brooklyn Congregations United.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • Women • * Religion News & Commentary • Inter-Faith Relations • Other Faiths • Islam

The chief danger is not for Greece. It is for the rest of the eurozone. If the German political establishment is unwise enough to force Greece out of EMU on the assumption that the country is a special case, it will be disabused of this illusion very quickly.

Total debt levels are 100pc of GDP higher in Portugal, and the country has roughly the same current account deficit. The only difference is that Portugal began its austerity death cure later and has not yet had time to enter into the full vortex of debt-deflation and collapse. Give it a few more months.

Spain and Italy are 20pc overvalued against northern Europe....

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Credit Markets • Currency Markets • Euro • European Central Bank • The Banking System/Sector • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Europe • --European Sovereign Debt Crisis of 2010 • Germany • Greece

That the losses would only dent the quarterly profits at one of the world’s largest banks, and that they were revealed by the bank’s own management, did not diminish the chorus on Capitol Hill for tighter controls. The charismatic and often outspoken Dimon, who has argued rigorously against strict financial regulations, fielded calls Friday from several lawmakers and regulators at the bank’s Midtown Manhattan headquarters.

The biggest blow-up between Wall Street and Washington since 2010, when Congress passed the Dodd-Frank Act to tighten oversight of the financial industry, comes just as regulators are drafting new rules governing banks. A signature feature of the law is the Volcker Rule, a prohibition on banks engaging in speculative bets. The authors of the act say the measure might have prevented JPMorgan’s bad trades had it been in effect.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • Stock Market • The Banking System/Sector • Politics in General • House of Representatives • Office of the President • President Barack Obama • Senate

J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. told traders several months ago to make bets aimed at shielding the bank from the market fallout of Europe's deepening mess. But instead of shrinking the risk, their complicated bets backfired into losses of as much as $200 million a day in late April and early May, people familiar with the situation said.

Regulators in the U.S. and U.K. are examining what went wrong, who is responsible and whether J.P. Morgan should have told investors about the losses sooner, according to people familiar with the matter.

While attention has focused on large positions taken by a trader nicknamed "the London whale," he and other traders were carrying out instructions from a bank executive, these people said.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • Credit Markets • Stock Market • The Banking System/Sector • * International News & Commentary • Europe • --European Sovereign Debt Crisis of 2010 • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Some parents are not content to help pay the bills. They're going to great lengths to help Junior get a job.

According to Adecco, nearly a third of parents are helping their kids find work, and nearly one in ten are taking them to job interviews.

But that's not all.

Three percent of recent college grads say their parents have actually sat in with them during interviews, and one percent claim Mom or Dad wrote their thank you notes afterwards.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market

“There are certainly members of the church and members of the diocese who believe it is a justice issue, but we have as many who believe that it is a theological issue,” [Upper South Carolina Episcopal Bishop Andrew] Waldo said. “The stand that I’ve taken for a long time is that when Jesus called the disciples to love one another, he also called the disciples to give themselves up for each other.

“The question that I’m asking is, ‘What are we willing to give up for the sake of each other?’”

At the national convention of the Episcopal Church in July, Waldo and other bishops will take up the issue of the blessing of same-sex unions, although Waldo said “there is not going to be a vote that says here is what the church is going to do. It will be for experimentation and contemplation.”

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • Sexuality Debate (in Anglican Communion) • Same-sex blessings • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Marriage & Family • Religion & Culture • Sexuality • --Civil Unions & Partnerships • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • Office of the President • President Barack Obama • * South Carolina

Hold the chocolate and flowers. Hold the brunch reservations. What mom may really want for Mother's Day is for the whole gang to go to church first.

A new survey of 1,000 Protestant pastors finds Mother's Day ranks right after Easter and Christmas in peak church attendance.

Father's Day, however, is near the bottom of the poll although both holidays were founded as church events more than a century ago.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Liturgy, Music, Worship • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Religion & Culture • Women • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

We beseech thee, O Lord, to give us more love to thee, more joy in our worship, more peace at all times, more longsuffering, more kindness of heart and manner. Grant us the grace of meekness and the power of self-control. May we know something of what it is to be filled with the Holy Ghost; for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord.

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

Finally, brethren, pray for us, that the word of the Lord may speed on and triumph, as it did among you, and that we may be delivered from wicked and evil men; for not all have faith. But the Lord is faithful; he will strengthen you and guard you from evil. And we have confidence in the Lord about you, that you are doing and will do the things which we command. May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ.

--2 Thessalonians 3:1-5

Filed under: * Theology • Theology: Scripture