Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle reacted swiftly to the news that the Pentagon’s estimated number of sexual assaults jumped 35 percent, with several introducing legislation in the House and Senate to protect victims and improve response following report of an incident.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., chairwoman of the Senate Armed Services personnel panel, plans to introduce legislation next week that would eliminate a commander’s authority to overturn rulings in cases of sexual assault.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Men • Sexuality • Violence • Women • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Economy • The U.S. Government • Politics in General • House of Representatives • Senate

The problem of sexual assault in the military leapt to the forefront in Washington on Tuesday as the Pentagon released a survey estimating that 26,000 people in the armed forces were sexually assaulted last year, up from 19,000 in 2010, and an angry President Obama and Congress demanded action.

The study, based on a confidential survey sent to 108,000 active-duty service members, was released two days after the officer in charge of sexual assault prevention programs for the Air Force was arrested and charged with sexual battery for grabbing a woman’s breasts and buttocks in an Arlington, Va., parking lot.

At a White House news conference, Mr. Obama expressed exasperation with the Pentagon’s attempts to bring sexual assault under control.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Men • Sexuality • Violence • Women • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

There are still relatively few women in tech. Maria Klawe wants to change that. As president of Harvey Mudd College, a science and engineering school in Southern California, she's had stunning success getting more women involved in computing.

Klawe isn't concerned about filling quotas or being nice to women. Rather, she's deeply troubled that half the population is grossly underrepresented in this all-important field. Women aren't setting the agenda and designing products and services that are shaping our lives. They're getting only about 18 percent of the bachelor's degrees in computer science, and in the workplace their numbers aren't much higher.

Seated in her modest office on the Claremont, Calif., campus, Klawe, 61, reflects on the stereotype of computer scientists as anti-social nerds, saying it's out of date. But she is quick to add that women often face barriers spoken and unspoken that discourage them from entering the field.

Read or listen to it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Education • Science & Technology • Women • Young Adults

To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking, in conjunction with other Governments, to document the scale and nature of the alleged use of sexual violence as an instrument of war by the Government of Syria and other parties involved in the conflict in Syria....

To ask Her Majesty's Government what is their assessment of the extent of the use of sexual violence as an instrument of war in Syria....

To ask Her Majesty's Government what resources they are providing, either unilaterally or as part of international action, to ensure that victims of sexual violence in Syria are provided with the necessary medical and trauma support.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • CoE Bishops • * Culture-Watch • Sexuality • Violence • Women • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • Middle East • Syria • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

It’s hardly a new prediction—we’ve been hearing it for years. Gay marriage is a slippery slope! A gateway drug! If we legalize it, then what’s next? Legalized polygamy?

We can only hope.

Yes, really. While the Supreme Court and the rest of us are all focused on the human right of marriage equality, let’s not forget that the fight doesn’t end with same-sex marriage. We need to legalize polygamy, too. Legalized polygamy in the United States is the constitutional, feminist, and sex-positive choice. More importantly, it would actually help protect, empower, and strengthen women, children, and families.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • History • Law & Legal Issues • Marriage & Family • Psychology • Sexuality • --Civil Unions & Partnerships • Women • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

We have piles of evidence to show that people overtrust their judgment and overestimate their goodness. Also, there is no easy correlation between self-esteem and actual performance....

This leads to my final question: In society generally, are more problems caused by overconfidence or underconfidence? The financial crisis and the tenor of our political debates suggest that overconfidence and self-idolatry are by far the larger problems. If that’s true, how do you combine the self-critical ability to recognize your limitations with the majestic confidence required to struggle against them?

I guess I’m asking how to marry self-criticism and self-assertion, a blend our society is inarticulate about. I guess I’m wondering, as we make this blend, whether most of us need more of the stereotypically female trait of self-doubt or the stereotypically male trait of self-promotion.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Men • Psychology • Women • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market

The daughter of the Archbishop of Canterbury has called on the church to do more to eradicate the stigma of mental illness, revealing that she sometimes suffers from “unbearable” depression.

Katharine Welby, the 26-year old daughter of Archbishop Justin Welby who took up his new post last month, says she sometimes feels “very low”, with a “black veil of nothing hanging in front of me”....

Read it all (requires subscription) and please take the time to read Katharine Welby's blog post also.

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In her autobiography, The Tapestry, Edith emerges as a woman overflowing with beauty, energy, creativity, and love, a woman whose every encounter seems to have been "charg'd with the grandeur of God." In a time when evangelicals were suspicious of all things worldly, Edith reveled in music and dance, in her neat little figure and in beautiful clothes: "I was 5-foot-2 and weighed 102 pounds and wore clothes that looked like they had come out of the best shops" she tells us, breathlessly, as an example of why she didn't measure up to the standards of Christian womanhood at that time, which, apparently, included dowdiness as well as a rejection of culture. She was intelligent and full of conviction. She had a lot to say.

Despite not measuring up in some ways, Edith epitomized, and perhaps helped to establish, standards of Christian womanhood: resourcefulness, self-denial, femininity. She worked tirelessly as a seamstress in their Philadelphia apartment while her husband Francis Schaeffer studied in seminary, thoughtfully packing identical lunches for them as a way of being "together when apart," so that they could taste the same flavors and feel the same "degree of hunger" by dinnertime.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Church History • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • Women • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Evangelicals

Watch it all (a little over 13 1/2 minutes) or if you need to (second best) read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Children • Marriage & Family • Movies & Television • Theatre/Drama/Plays • Women • * International News & Commentary • England / UK

Elizabeth and I finally got to this and it was simply lovely in every sense. Touching, moving, well acted and produced--it has all the hallmarks of a true story, based as it is on the diaries of one who worked as a midwife as it is--KSH.

Filed under: * By Kendall • * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • History • Movies & Television • Women • * International News & Commentary • England / UK

In our supposedly "secular" culture, the Church of England seems to have succumbed to the idea that theological ideas do not matter very much, and this may bespeak a deeper malaise even than the current crisis itself. Young people are turning back to the Church, longing for spiritual and intellectual bread; by and large stones await them, even despite a most promising new generation of young priest-scholars (women and men) who are beginning to rise through the ecclesial ranks. Perhaps in a generation things will be different.

But for the moment the Church has in effect signed its own theological death warrant. At the end of this summer, amid a new storm of fury about a confused conservative amendment to the Measure (astonishingly backed by both Archbishops to placate the defectors), I was invited to address the House of Bishops on "the theology of women bishops." I made the following three points, and stand by them:

we cannot compromise on the historic theology of the bishop as locus of unity;
we must return afresh to our distinctively Anglican notions of reason and tradition to solve this crisis, not lapse into rational incoherence; and
we must resist in the Church the supervenience of bureaucratic thinking (with all its busy political pragmatism) over theological and spiritual seriousness.

I offer here just a brief further expansion on each of these points.

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

Bishop in Jerusalem, Bp Suheil Dawani has spoken out against sexual violence affecting women and children escaping Syria and criticised "archaic attitudes" to women that dominate the region.

In a piece written for ACNS, the Bishop says the crisis in Syria "requires urgent action" and noted that Christians "cannot be silent [witnesses] to the brutal treatment of women and children".

He wrote: "The UN has reported that 2.5 million people have fled their homes. Many are women and children who are fleeing in fear from the ongoing sexual violence against them. The International Rescue Committee reports that those who finally make it into the refugee camps are also victimized.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • The Episcopal Church of Jerusalem and the Middle East • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • Sexuality • Violence • Women • * International News & Commentary • Middle East • Israel

Critics say the show takes reality TV one step too far, exposing personal, intimate and sometimes unflattering details about pastors' wives. But Domonique Scott, former first lady of The Good Life Ministry church, tells NPR's David Greene that The Sisterhood was somewhat of a calling for her. "We definitely believe that God told us to do it," Scott says. "Individually, and together as a group."

"I think for us, the assignment was to step out," adds Christina Murray, the first lady of Oasis Family Life Church. "We knew it would probably be a little controversial, but we don't do anything just for people to understand and give us our approval; we do everything for what God is trying to lead us to do." But, Murray says, appearing on The Sisterhood was not a decision any of the women made lightly. "Basically, you're putting your life out there with the control of somebody else."

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Ministry of the Ordained • * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Movies & Television • Race/Race Relations • Women

I looked it up and found that, according to the Centers for Disease Control, learning problems, attention-deficit disorders, autism and related disorders, and developmental delays increased about 17 percent between 1997 and 2008. One in six American children was reported as having a developmental disability between 2006 and 2008. That’s about 1.8 million more children than a decade earlier.

Soon, I learned that medical researchers, sociologists, and demographers were more worried about the proliferation of older parents than my friends and I were. They talked to me at length about a vicious cycle of declining fertility, especially in the industrialized world, and also about the damage caused by assisted-reproductive technologies (ART) that are commonly used on people past their peak childbearing years. This past May, an article in the New England Journal of Medicine found that 8.3 percent of children born with the help of ART had defects, whereas, of those born without it, only 5.8 percent had defects.

A phrase I heard repeatedly during these conversations was “natural experiment.” As in, we’re conducting a vast empirical study upon an unthinkably large population...

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Children • Health & Medicine • Marriage & Family • Men • Science & Technology • Women • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

...for much of adulthood, I formed aspirational crushes. It wasn't ever deliberate, yet somehow I usually fell for men whose esteem or rejection came to influence my self-worth. In a phrase Tim Keller often uses (probably quoting Lewis or Tolkien), I longed for "the praise of the praiseworthy."

With this mindset, even little tastes of intimacy or access to a crush acquired a disproportionate sense of value, and every exchange mattered far more than it should have. Yet in the end, any intimacy I found in via Google search … or even electronic communication with the crush proved largely false.

It took me a long time to figure out why. Then one Sunday morning in a church class on dating, I heard this formula: Intimacy = talk + time + togetherness. As John Van Epp explains in his book How to Avoid Marrying a Jerk (on which the class was based), Internet-based relationships are often rich in talk, but can transpire very rapidly and may develop across great distance.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • --Social Networking • Men • Psychology • Sexuality • Women • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology • Pastoral Theology

US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta has decided to lift the military's ban on women serving in combat, a senior Pentagon official has said.

The move could open hundreds of thousands of front-line positions and elite commando jobs to women.

It overturns a 1994 rule prohibiting women from being assigned to small ground-combat units.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Women • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Politics in General

Maybe it was because they had met on OkCupid. But when the dark-eyed musician with artfully disheveled hair asked Shani Silver, a social media and blog manager in Philadelphia, out on a “date” Friday night, she was expecting at least a drink, one on one.

“At 10 p.m., I hadn’t heard from him,” said Ms. Silver, 30, who wore her favorite skinny black jeans. Finally, at 10:30, he sent a text message. “Hey, I’m at Pub & Kitchen, want to meet up for a drink or whatever?” he wrote, before adding, “I’m here with a bunch of friends from college.”

Turned off, she fired back a text message, politely declining. But in retrospect, she might have adjusted her expectations. “The word ‘date’ should almost be stricken from the dictionary,” Ms. Silver said. “Dating culture has evolved to a cycle of text messages, each one requiring the code-breaking skills of a cold war spy to interpret.”

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • --Social Networking • History • Marriage & Family • Men • Psychology • Science & Technology • Women • Young Adults

Sarah Osborn represents...[a} glaring omission in the literature on American evangelicalism, one now addressed by Catherine Brekus’s remarkable Sarah Osborn’s World: The Rise of Evangelical Christianity in Early America. Osborn was one of the most influential evangelicals in 18th-century America, and she left a vast body of sources, including a memoir, ten volumes of diaries, and scores of letters. (Sadly, only 2,000 of an estimated 15,000 manuscript pages of her writings survive, the others somehow lost over the centuries since her death.) Yet aside from some scholarly articles, Osborn has languished in obscurity until now. (Brekus, associate professor in religions and the history of Christianity at the University of Chicago Divinity School is also preparing to publish an edition of Osborn’s writings.) Brekus not only introduces us to Osborn’s personal story but also deftly places it in a frame of 18th-century history, showing how Osborn interacted with slavery, the Enlightenment, emerging capitalism, and other developments associated with “modernity.”

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Church History • * Culture-Watch • Books • Women • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Evangelicals

In their 10 years of marriage, there had been warning signs, but nothing to prepare her for this bloody struggle. The verbal abuse had finally led to their separation in December. Still, he had never hit her.

Not long after, though, things took a troubling, sinister turn when he told her something that made her afraid.

“He was going to kill himself and take somebody with him,” she said.

He said it looking straight at her. She feared she was the someone he meant.

(Please note: the full content here may not be suitable for all blog readers). Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Marriage & Family • Men • Psychology • Violence • Women • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology • Pastoral Theology

Responding to the debate, Dr Giddings said that he had "no choice" about when he spoke in the women-bishops debate. His words had not been intended to undermine or personally criticise Bishop Welby, but, in any case, he had offered "an apology for any offence my words may have caused him".

Bishop Welby's reply was quoted to the Synod, with permission: "It never crossed my mind that you were in the slightest being offensive, discourteous, impolite, [or disrespectful]. . . I did think you were wrong! You thought I was, but we really need to be able to disagree, as I am sure you do agree."

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury • --Justin Welby • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • CoE Bishops • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Ministry of the Laity • * Culture-Watch • Women

More bishops, fewer dioceses and the future of women clergy were amongst the main topics of debate at the Anglican Church of North America’s College of Bishops meeting this week in Orlando.

Bishops from the conservative province in waiting in North America in the Anglican Communion approved the election of two additional bishops for the PEAR-USA Network. The Rev. Quigg Lawrence will lead the Atlantic Regional Network and the Rev. Ken Ross the Western Regional Network, while the Very Rev. Clark Lowenfield was elected bishop of the Diocese of the Western Gulf Coast – a diocese in formation.

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At a time when Indians are re-examining their society in the light of a single, horrific incident of gang rape, South Africa seems numb - unable to muster much more than a collective shrug in the face of almost unbelievably grim statistics - seemingly far worse than India's.

Here almost 60,000 rapes are reported to the police each year - more than double the number in India, in a far smaller country.

Experts believe the true figure is at least 10 times that - 600,000 attacks....

Read it all or watch the video report (recommended).

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Marriage & Family • Men • Sexuality • Violence • Women • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Africa • South Africa • Asia • India • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology

A troubling year lies ahead for church and state relations. All the signs are that Members of Parliament are flexing their muscles over the General Synod vote on women bishops.

They would like nothing less than to bounce the Church of England into an early decision, and some are actively seeking to interfere with a decision-making process that uniquely ties the Church and State together. Many supporters of women bishops will welcome this support from Parliament for their cause. Many of us agree that the Church of England must act quickly to resolve a question that has already been settled, not least by the overwhelming support of diocesan Synods. But threats from Parliament are unhelpful for many reasons.

In particular, dispersed power and the separation of British institutions are fundamental to our constitution. If any British institution seeks greater powers over another the balance of the British state is upset. We should expect Members of Parliament to exercise great restraint when it comes to their power. An over-mighty Parliament is as much a danger as an over-mighty Church. Both have their own respective responsibilities and rights and to overstep these is to upset a balance that has been worked out over centuries.

Religious freedom is threatened by a state that seeks to impose its own thinking on the Church. This is why the government’s pretence that it can outlaw the Church of England and the Church in Wales from ‘opting-in’ to same-sex marriage is such a curious claim. It misunderstands the nature of marriage itself, which cannot be divided into civil and religious marriage. It forgets that canon law is also the law of the land. And it is an overreaching of government power.

The fourth element of the so-called quadruple lock is merely a recognition of the status quo, that only the churches can initiate change to their own canon law. Any move to compel the Church in one direction or another is completely unacceptable.

--Church of England Newspaper, January 6, 2013 edition

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

During an emotional debate in July 2008, however, every one of those proposals was in turn rejected by the Synod in favour of a simple Code of Practice, as supporters of women bishops expressed fears that the proposals for greater accommodation, enshrined in legislation, would result in women becoming “second-class” bishops, and assured the Synod that legislative provision should not be required if only we would all “trust the bishops.”

The Rt. Rev. Stephen Venner, then Bishop of Dover, a supporter of women as bishops, and generally regarded as a liberal, was in tears as he said that

for the first time in my life I feel ashamed. We have talked for hours about wanting to give an honourable place to those who disagree; we have been given opportunities for both views to flourish; we have turned down almost every realistic opportunity for the views of those who are opposed to flourish; ... and we still talk the talk of being inclusive and generous.

Both archbishops were clearly dismayed; at the end of the debate, the Archbishop of Canterbury abstained on the motion to proceed to the next stage.

In July 2010, the archbishops attempted to salvage the situation by bringing forward an amendment to introduce “coordinate jurisdiction.” Whilst an overall majority of Synod members supported the amendment, it fell in the House of Clergy by just five votes.

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

At the beginning of the New Year, 2013, a law is being proposed in the General Assembly to change the legal definition of marriage in Illinois to accommodate those of the same sex who wish to “marry” one another. In this discussion, the Church will be portrayed as “anti-gay,” which is a difficult position to be in, particularly when families and the Church herself love those of their members who are same-sex oriented. What’s at stake in this legislative proposal and in the Church’s teaching on marriage?

Basically, the nature of marriage is not a religious question. Marriage comes to us from nature. Christ sanctifies marriage as a sacrament for the baptized, giving it significance beyond its natural reality; the State protects marriage because it is essential to family and to the common good of society. But neither Church nor State invented marriage, and neither can change its nature.

Nature and Nature’s God, to use the expression in the Declaration of Independence of our country, give the human species two mutually complementary sexes, able to transmit life through what the law has hitherto recognized as a marital union. Consummated sexual relations between a man and a woman are ideally based on mutual love and must always be based on mutual consent, if they are genuinely human actions. But no matter how strong a friendship or deep a love between persons of the same sex might be, it is physically impossible for two men, or two women, to consummate a marital union. Even in civil law, non-consummation of a marriage is reason for annulment.

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Rowan Williams has attended his last service as the archbishop of Canterbury at the city's cathedral, before he leaves office as leader of the Church of England and spiritual head of the 77 million-strong Anglican communion.

More than 700 people turned out to bid farewell to 62-year-old Williams before he officially departs as the 104th archbishop of Canterbury on Monday, following a 10-year tenure.

He will go on to take up the posts of master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, and chairman of the board of trustees of Christian Aid, the international development agency.

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The Church of England body responsible for the defeat of legislation to allow women bishops is to hold an emergency meeting to debate a motion of no confidence in its chairman.
The House of Laity is to meet next month to vote on a motion tabled by Canon Stephen Barney of Leicester that “this House has no confidence in Dr Philip Giddings as chair of this House”.
Canon Barney said he believed Dr Giddings was partly responsible for the “disbelief and ridicule” voiced against the Church of England after the vote against women bishops. He said he believed the vote had badly damaged the “mission” of the Church.

Read it all (requires subscription).

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

An anniversary slipped by this year that cannot - and must not - go unremarked. It is a decade since Virginia Haussegger's pivotal ''The sins of our feminist mothers'' was published on this page. Haussegger's opinion piece articulated the anger and frustration of a generation of women left childless as a result of their feminist mothers promoting the myth of ''having it all'': the career, the husband and the babies. The article hit a collective nerve. A book followed recording Haussegger's personal account of feminism, career, relationships, health, and, ultimately biological childlessness.

The messages resonated with women of Haussegger's generation and with mine. Wonder Woman: The Myth of Having It All was the talk of every woman in town.

Thanks to brave women like Haussegger, my generation received the message loud and clear to look after their reproductive health; to not delay pregnancy too long. We have been successfully reprogrammed to hear the biological clock ticking. Unfortunately, this is not a gentle while-away-the-hours-type ticking. Rather, it is a nuclear-bomb-is-about-to-explode-so-PANIC-NOW-style ticking. I sometimes wonder if this has done more harm than good; if, in fact, it would be better not to know.

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You have said you are an enthusiastic supporter of marriage and that you do not want "gay people to be excluded from a great institution." Yet I wish respectfully to point out that behind what you say lurks a basic philosophical misconception about the nature of 'equality.' Equality can never be an absolute value, only a derivative and relative value. After all, a man cannot be a mother nor a woman a father, and so men and women can never be absolutely equal, only relatively equal, since they are biologically different. So too with marriage. Marriage, ever since the dawn of human history, is a union for life and love between a man and a woman. It is a complementary relationship between two people of the opposite sex, the man and the woman not being the same, but different. They are not, in other words, absolutely equal but relatively equal. This is why gay couples, two men or two women, are not being ‘excluded’ from marriage; they simply cannot enter marriage.

By enabling gays to 'marry' and by equating the union of gay people with marriage, however well-intentioned, you are not only redefining what we mean by marriage but actually undermining the very nature, meaning and purpose of marriage. Marriage, and the home, children and family life it generates, is the foundation and basic building block of our society. If you proceed with your plans, you will gravely damage the value of the family, with catastrophic consequences for the well-being and behaviour of future generations. The 2011 Census shows the parlous state of the institution of marriage which you claim to believe in so strongly, and of family life in general, with one in two teenagers no longer living with their birth parents and over 50% of adults living outside of marriage.

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New legislation to enable women to become bishops will be presented to the General Synod in July, the House of Bishops announced on Tuesday, after a two-day meeting at Lambeth Palace.

The Archbishops will set up a working group, drawn from all three Houses of Synod, its membership to be announced before Christmas. This group will arrange "facilitated discussion with a wide range of people with a variety of views" in the week of 4 February, when the General Synod was to have met.

Immediately after these discussions, the House of Bishops will meet and the elements of a new legislative package are expected to be decided at its meeting in May, in readiness for the July sessions.

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

Loving God, who for the salvation of all didst give Jesus Christ as light to a world in darkness: Illumine us, with thy daughter Lucy, with the light of Christ, that by the merits of his passion we may be led to eternal life; through the same Jesus Christ, who with thee and the Holy Spirit livest and reignest, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Church History • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • Spirituality/Prayer • * Culture-Watch • Women

It is worth noting that at no stage of the proceedings has there been a two-thirds majority in the House of Laity in favour of the proposals. After traditionalists repeatedly told the Synod that the proposed Code of Practice simply was not an adequate response to the substance of their theological objections to women bishops, it should have come as no surprise that the legislation was defeated. Advocates of women bishops should have realised that, much as they might have wished it otherwise, the Synodical process did what it was designed to do: ensure that major changes cannot be made without consensus, and that the majority cannot exercise tyranny over a substantial minority.

Instead, those of us who in good conscience voted against the measure have been collectively subjected to an outpouring of vitriol, bile, misrepresentation, and contempt, including (I am sorry to say) in some cases from other members of General Synod, through the media and social networks. Suddenly, there are cries that the House of Laity is unrepresentative of the laity at large, that the system is “broken,” and even that Parliament should intervene to impose women bishops on the church. Opponents of the measure are told that we have damaged the Church of England; we are caricatured as “extremists” and worse. We are threatened with a “single-clause measure” next time around, without even a Code of Practice to provide for those who cannot accept women as bishops. If ever there was a question whether legislative provision was really necessary — whether what was required was, after all, just more generous mutual trust — such an aspiration seems hopelessly naïve now.

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

“The Love and Fidelity Network opposes Harvard University's formal recognition and funding of a group that seeks to associate human sexuality with violence, oppression, and humiliation,” Director of Programs Caitlin Seery said. “Universities should foster an environment where the dignity and beauty of sexuality is honored and affirmed – and where reasoned debate is welcomed among those of goodwill who disagree over what constitutes the true dignity and beauty of human sexuality. Groups like Munch, however, do not seek to participate in that important debate. Rather, BDSM groups dishonor and degrade human sexuality precisely by associating it with violence and humiliation.”

“Our opposition isn’t about banning groups with whom we disagree or censoring private behavior. We support the recognition of many groups with whom we disagree precisely because we think an honest debate about how best to honor the dignity and beauty of sexuality is needed. It is about whether Harvard University should subsidize the promotion of violent and abusive behavior, which endangers all students, particularly women, both psychologically and physically.

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The following letter to the House of Bishops of the Church of England has been sent jointly by four organisations, Inclusive Church, Modern Church, Progressive Christianity Network and the Centre for Radical Christianity.....

We, the undersigned, deeply regret that the House of Laity of the General Synod of the Church of England failed to reach the two-thirds majority required to pass legislation enabling women to be ordained Bishop. This was a huge disappointment delivering a devastating blow to the Church of England and undermining its credibility among the people of the nation it seeks to serve. It is a missed opportunity to see women and men sharing fully in the mission, ministry and leadership of the Church of England. Other Anglican provinces have found a way of doing so and been enriched by the ministry of both male and female bishops as a consequence.

There is overwhelming support for women bishops in both the church and throughout the country. We have been discussing this issue for a generation and working on the details of this compromise legislation for over ten years. Almost 73% of General Synod members voted in favour of women bishops, challenging the legitimacy of a voting process that is able to frustrate the mandate of forty-two out of forty-four Diocesan Synods. This decision may be legally binding, but it carries no moral authority, undermining the process of representation the Synodical system is supposed to enshrine....

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Campaigners who want to see a fresh Measure to admit women to the episcopate at the General Synod next July may be disappointed, two bishops have suggested....

On Tuesday... the Bishop of Dover, the Rt Revd Trevor Willmott, suggested that the House "ought to be able to share with people a process" at the Synod in July. "That will lead in due course to fresh legislative proposals."

Also this week, the Bishop of Chester, Dr Peter Forster, called for a "concentrated period of reflection". There were "good reasons" why the legislative group and Synod had not pursued a single-clause Measure or "stronger safeguards", and "the greatest problem would be if we started the process quickly and ended up with another mess."

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After the General Synod failed to give Final Approval to the draft legislation on the ordination of women to the episcopate, I had hoped for a period of calm, prayer and reflection all round; and perhaps some sense of regret, on the part of the proponents of the Measure, that they had not got the legislation right. Of course, as we now know, this was very far from the case: instead, a media furore, and a sense from some quarters that those who had voted against the Measure need to be punished in the future for daring to step out of line.

We need to say very clearly, that we understand, and deeply regret, the pain, hurt and anger felt on the part of many women clergy and their supporters; that we value the huge contribution of ordained women to the life of the Church of England; and that we recognise the gifts which God has given in and through their ministries.

However, we also need to challenge some errors and misunderstandings which have been widespread since the vote was taken....

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This book is a teaser. It's an appetizer. It's meant to propose to Jews in Israel, in America and everywhere, and it means to propose to non-Jews, to relate to a wonderful line of texts full of wisdom, full of humor. And we are trying to seduce people - Jews and non-Jews alike - to seduce people to this wonderful heritage.

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The parliamentary reaction to this week’s synod vote tells a powerful tale. Wearing his Garrick Club tie, the Second Church Estates Commissioner answered questions from MP's, all of whom expressed amazement and moral repugnance about the official and institutionalised sexism of the Established Church. (note to overseas readers — The Garrick Club is an exclusive Gentleman's club in the West End).

The Garrick Club Tie Gaffe (if such it was) underlined an important aspect of the problem: the Church claims to be far more than a private organisation like a golf club, masonic lodge, or Gentleman's London hang-out. It claims to be good news for everyone, and the fury of our legislators when they see it acting as though it were a private club, disconnected from society, was unmistakable....

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Members of the Church of England’s ‘parliament’ are attempting to oust one of its most senior figures following the defeat of legislation to allow women bishops.

In a dramatic move, members of the General Synod’s House of Laity have secretly called an emergency meeting so they can hold a vote of no confidence in their Chair, Dr Philip Giddings, who spoke forcefully against the reform.

They believe that, if Dr Giddings is forced out, the move could help Church leaders get around the rules and bring back the legislation before a new Synod is elected in three years’ time.

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[Crystal] Thompson made $18 an hour as a senior account executive at Daniel Island giftware manufacturer Davis & Small until March, and the 36-year-old single mother hasn’t been able to find suitable replacement work since.

She said she would simply work two jobs if she didn’t have children, but since she has to support her girls, she figures she needs to be paid at least $14 an hour.

“There’s so many people who are unemployed that they’re all going for the same jobs,” she said.

Thompson already moved in with her mother to save money, even though “it’s not emotionally healthy for me and my children.” And if no one hires her this month, it’s about to get rougher.

Thompson is one of 29,000 South Carolinians who will lose their federal unemployment benefits at the end of the year.

After several extensions of the federal Emergency Unemployment Compensation program to help out-of-work Americans ride out the recession the past few years, it’s over. Congress passed the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2012 in February, which cut off the benefits by Jan. 3, 2013.

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In the fallout [over the recent vote on Women Bishops], the former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey, in an interview with this newspaper, urged Justin Welby, the incoming archbishop, to push through reform regardless, and there were mutterings in the Shadow Cabinet of changing the law so the Church would no longer be immune to charges of sexual discrimination. Hitchiner, though, “shocked” and “sad” as she was, and critical as she is of the overrepresentation in General Synod of people “on the more conservative end of the spectrum”, and the disproportionate amount of airtime they were given “to go back to discussions that were being held 20 years ago about why they felt uncomfortable with the idea of women priests”, says that she is wary of tampering with the system: “I think we stuck to the system and nothing went wrong. That’s the most frustrating thing. I would be happier in the long run without changing the system, without making special arrangements.”

The appointment of women bishops is, she thinks, an “unstoppable train. It is bound to happen.” She feels torn, she says. “As a feminist I believe that women shouldn’t be held back from anything. Women have worked very hard, whether they’re religious or not, to make sure that is the case. But having said that, I also think that if the Church is dictated to by society or the State it ceases to be a church.”

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Prebendary [Rod] Thomas said on Monday that Reform would like the talks to be chaired by the Archbishop-designate, the Bishop of Durham, the Rt Revd Justin Welby. "We feel very much that Justin Welby has been put by God in this place with a unique set of gifts to help us resolve this problem; he has our complete trust in seeking to move forward."

Campaigners for women bishops who are angry at the outcome of last week's vote have, however, indicated that they will press for a single-clause Measure, without provision for traditionalists enshrined in it.

The Rt Revd John Gladwin, a former Bishop of Chelmsford and the honorary vice-president of WATCH, said that opponents of the Measure had "blown up the bridge to any compromise solution". The "only . . . route" that could now be taken, he said, "is the route which removes all discriminatory provisions from the life and ministry of the Church".

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...I kind of understand the eagerness to stake out this sort of “middle of the road” position on sexual ethics. It’s the sort of “respectable” social conservatism that allows for everything sophisticated readers of The Atlantic might want–seriousness and purpose without the backwardness of chastity.

Or at least the appearance of seriousness, anyway. It also presupposes the sort of “make your own meaning” approach to sex that stands beneath the sexual malaise in our culture. Consider this as a good rule of thumb: if you have to resort to describing your sex as “meaningful,” then maybe that’s because functionally its not. Meaning isn’t made: it’s discovered, lived out, revealed to us over the course of our lives. No writer sets out to write a “meaningful novel,” or no very good writer does anyway. Because the meaning of things aren’t determined by fiat. They inhere in things and we respond to them.

Of course, to say that drives one into the possibility that maybe sex has a meaning in our lives that we don’t get to decide. What that meaning is, of course, might be in question. The traditional Christian answer, I think, has been to tie sex to marriage, and marriage to babies. We’re clearly losing the stomach for that one, though, both inside and outside the church. Still, the advantage of the traditional Christian sexual ethic is that it offers us sex without qualifications: sex in itself, the meaning given not made, in all its distinctive glory and freedom.

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The Church of England is to rush through legislation to consecrate women bishops after the defeat last week at the General Synod in London.
The Archbishops’ Council, the executive of the established Church, met behind closed doors this week to discuss the crisis. In a statement at the end of the two-day meeting, it said: “Many council members commented on the deep degree of sadness and shock that they had felt as a result of the vote and also of the need to affirm all women serving the Church — both lay and ordained — in their ministries.
“The council decided that a process to admit women to the episcopate needed to be restarted at the next meeting of the General Synod in July 2013 ... The council therefore recommended that the House of Bishops, during its meeting in a fortnight’s time, put in place a clear process for discussions in the new year with a view to bringing legislative proposals before the synod in July.”

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When the Church of England scuttled plans to allow women bishops on Nov. 20, incoming Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby called it “a very grim day for women and their supporters.”

Now, that grim day is turning into a church-state nightmare for Britain's established church.

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West Pointers are human beings, even those with names such as David Petraeus and Paula Broadwell. I think I have the standing to make this declaration, because I’m a fellow graduate. West Point is long on molding military officers, but a bit short on humanity. Its mission statement stresses the intent to commit every graduate to a career of professional excellence and service, embodying the values of “duty, honor and country.” How does West Point do that?

Here’s how: Rules! Hundreds upon hundreds of rules that govern every facet of human conduct imaginable, including my favorite: no sex in the barracks....[Yet] whether it’s because love (or lust) conquers all, or because ambitious Type-A’s stop at nothing in the face of adversity, cadets soon become experts at evading the no-sex rule....

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The Church of England is facing a “major constitutional crisis” as a result of the fiasco last week over women bishops, according to an internal document written for the archbishops by one of their most senior staff.
The Established Church must take steps in July next year to consecrate women bishops and vote them through by 2015, otherwise it risks the matter being taken out of its hands by Parliament, the secret memo says. It is to be debated behind closed doors this week by the Archbishops’ Council.
The memo, a hard copy of which has been handed to The Times, is intended for the Archbishops of Canterbury and York and the council members.

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Lord Carey, who first opened the priesthood to women, spoke of his “anger” and “distress” at the General Synod’s failure to allow women into the episcopate despite overwhelming support.
And he voiced support for an overhaul of Synod structures after a bloc of opponents in the House of Laity succeeded in killing off the measure after a tortuous 12-year process.
He was commenting after the Church of England’s representative in Parliament, Sir Tony Baldry, warned that it was in danger of being seen as a “sect” and claimed that it had hamstrung its own attempts to resist the plans for gay marriage.

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The Venerable Norman Russell said the vote against the draft women bishops’ measure in the Church of England house of laity should not have come as a surprise.

He said: “In key votes in Synod over several years, the House of Laity, many of whose members are keen to honour the breadth of the Church of England, has consistently resisted giving a two-thirds majority to proposals which would not give traditional Anglo-Catholic and conservative evangelical clergy and congregations a secure future in the Church of England.

“Many of those who voted against these particular proposals are, like myself, in favour of women bishops, but not at any price....

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Herein lies the rub, I think. The legislation before Synod on Tuesday was already a “compromise”, in the original sense of that word. That is to say, it was a co-promise: an agreement that together we would move forward mutually, not severally.

It was this that the Synod had set its mind to. That the Church lost sight, so early, of a simple one-clause measure, is a real tragedy. And it was this failure of leadership, ultimately, that led the Church inexorably and slowly to Tuesday’s result.

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Persuading the Archbishops and prolocutors to permit the re-introduction of legislation will be the easy part. More difficult, as we have said before, will be the task of lighting on a formula that has a greater chance of success. Tuesday's debate was full optimistic assurances that this could be done. History suggests otherwise. There are no new arguments to be found. What must change is the habit of demanding that concessions are made solely by the other side. The one straw at which to grasp is the pledge heard in the Synod from those opposed to women bishops that they will engage in discussions more willingly. There are also signs of this outside: for example, when someone emailed "Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia" to her contacts, a recipient, another opponent, gently upbraided her: "I honestly do not take any joy in what some will call a 'victory'. . . Somehow, out of this mess - for that is what it is - there could well be a chance for both traditions to sit round a table and find some sort of agreement." This must be the urgent prayer of all.

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Although it was carried in the House of Bishops by 44 to 3, with two abstentions, and in the House of Clergy by 148 to 45, with no abstentions, it was lost in the House of Laity. Here, there were 132 votes in favour, 74 against, with no abstentions; the Measure thus fell by six votes. Across all three Houses, 72.6 per cent of Synod members voted in favour of the legislation.

This result came despite strong support for the Measure from the Archbishop of Canterbury and his designated successor, the Bishop of Durham, the Rt Revd Justin Welby.

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David Cameron today urged the Church of England to “get with the programme” over women bishops.
The Prime Minister told MPs that as a personal supporter of women bishops he had been saddened by last night’s synod vote to maintain its ban on women priests serving in the upper echelons of the Church establishment.
Speaking at Prime Minister’s Questions, Mr Cameron noted that the Church had its own processes and that MPs should respect them, even if they disagreed.
Mr Cameron said the Church needed a “sharp prod”. “They need to get on with it and get with the programme,” he added.

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The next Archbishop of Canterbury has called the rejection of women bishops a "very grim day", as bishops prepare for an emergency meeting on the issue.

The ordination of women bishops in the Church of England was narrowly rejected by its ruling general synod on Tuesday.

The Rt Rev Justin Welby, who takes over the Church's top role next year, said the lost vote was hard "most of all for women priests and supporters".

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A clear majority of General Synod members wants women bishops. So does an overwhelming majority of diocesan Synod members (42 of 44 Synods voted in favour on Tuesday). Rank and file church people on the whole agree. Most members of the broader British public think it’s a no-brainer.

Despite all this, the drawn-out search for a legislative formula to allow women bishops today failed to win the needed General Synod majority in favour. The Synod’s procedures require a two-thirds majority in each of the three Houses. In total 324 members voted to approve the legislation and 122 voted to reject it. A handful of votes in the House of Laity meant the proposed legislation failed.

Normally the Church of England would have to wait until 2015, after the next General Synod elections, before it can reconsider defeated legislation, but a statement issued by the General Synod office held out the possibility that a procedure could be invoked to bring the matter back to Synod earlier.

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The General Synod of the Church of England has voted to reject the draft legislation to allow women to become bishops.

Under the requirements of the Synod the legislation required a two-thirds majority in each of the three voting houses for final draft approval. Whilst more than two thirds voted for the legislation in both the House of Bishops (44-03) and the House of Clergy (148-45), the vote in favour of the legislation in the House of Laity was less than two-thirds (132-74). The vote in the House of Laity fell short of approval by six votes.

In total 324 members of the General Synod voted to approve the legislation and 122 voted to reject it.

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The votes were 44 for and three against with two abstentions in the House of Bishops, 148 for and 45 against in the House of Clergy, and 132 for and 74 against in the House of Laity.

The vote in the House of Laity, at 64%, was just short of the required majority.

A handful more of "yes" votes would have tipped it over the two-thirds mark.

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Update: BBC Live--Church of England General Synod rejects women bishops.

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MPs, who must approve any Synod decision before it receives Royal Assent, warned that a failure to approve the proposal could undermine the Church of England’s position as the established Church. Chris Bryant, the Labour MP and a former Anglican priest, said the legislation would face a “rough ride” in Parliament if there were any further concessions to traditionalists. “If the legislation leans too far towards the traditionalist that won’t please the Commons and the legislation would have trouble,” he said.
“There are quite a few of us who think that the way this is leaning is entrenching forever a religious apartheid within the Church of England.”
He added that a rejection would “undoubtedly undermine” support for aspects of establishment, including bishops in the Lords and the role of Parliament approving Church laws.

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The Church of England is facing its most momentous challenge for 20 years as it prepares to decide whether women can become bishops.

The public standing of the Church of England is on the line as the General Synod, its deeply divided governing body, votes tomorrow on legislation to allow women to be consecrated bishops. The vote is finely balanced and could go either way.

Campaigners on both sides have been battling online as Westminster Abbey ruled that there would be no repeat of the events of 1992, when campaigners chanted and protested with placards outside the neighbouring Church House when the vote to ordain women priests was passed narrowly.

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Women currently account for one third of the Anglican clergy and around half of those in training as priests, but the question of female bishops stirs passionate debate among Anglicans, almost one fourth of them in Africa, along with other issues such as the church’s attitude to same-sex marriage and homosexuality.

The vote is also a test of the authority of both the outgoing Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, and his successor, Justin Welby, the Bishop of Durham. Dr. Williams is set to retire at the end of this year. Both he and Bishop Welby have said they will vote in favor of the compromise....

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When [Rowan] Williams began his term in office in 2003, the Anglican communion was reeling from a bitter if recently resolved war over female priests. Williams had supported that step and cautiously supported the next—the ordination of female bishops. But he insisted on concessions to the “conscience” of congregations that disagreed. The latest version of that legislation, on which the church’s General Synod is scheduled to vote on Nov. 20, promises that requests for alternative male bishops will be treated with “respect.” Williams campaigned for the new language, warning of “intensified internal conflict” if it failed.

Williams’s centrist approach doesn’t suit all of his parishioners. Critics to his left have called his desire for unity his “Obama syndrome”—a fanciful belief that the conservative side will come around if given enough time.

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A vigil in Westminster Abbey tomorrow morning will mark the start of three days that could change the Anglican church for ever. As the General Synod – the ruling body of the Church of England – meets in London tomorrow ahead of a crucial vote on Tuesday to decide whether women can be consecrated as bishops, the well-wishers in Westminster Abbey will be clasping their hands together in the hope of a smooth and harmonious vote.

But, with Synod insiders already predicting trouble, the prayers are likely to be in vain. Since the announcement of Justin Welby as the future Archbishop of Canterbury – and his use of his maiden speech in the job to throw his support behind women reaching the most senior positions in the church – many are cautiously optimistic that the measure will finally be voted through. But, if it is, it is unlikely to be without a fight. Online and email campaigns have been building grassroots support for a "yes" vote at a rapid rate. A website called Yes2womenbishops, which was set up only two weeks ago, has already had more than 11,000 visitors, and nearly 2,000 parishioners have used it to email their Synod representative.

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It has been quite a year for Mormonism in America. Outside the faith, the presidential candidacy of Mitt Romney sparked unprecedented levels of interest and attention. Meanwhile, church leaders have transformed how young Mormons start their adulthood, affecting everything from education to dating and marriage.

Though you might not know it from Broadway's "The Book of Mormon," 12% of Mormon missionaries are women—a number that is about to skyrocket thanks to an unexpected change in official Latter-day Saint policy. The church announced last month that Mormon women are now eligible to begin serving missions at age 19 instead of 21, and that Mormon men may serve at 18 instead of 19.

The response was immediate. Within two weeks, the number of missionary applications jumped an astonishing 471%, from the usual 700 per week to more than 4,000. Slightly more than half of these applicants were women.

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The Synod vote had been due to take place in July, but was postponed after a last-minute row over wording.

A compromise was later agreed, granting traditionalists — who believe that female leadership in the Church goes against the Bible’s teaching — the right to have an alternative male bishop chosen “in a manner which respects” their theological convictions.

However, a small but well-organised coalition of traditionalist Anglo-Catholics and evangelicals has joined forces, claiming that the compromise is “not fit for purpose” because it still does not provide enough assurances for them. They believe they could have secured enough votes in at least one part of the Synod to deny the measure the full two thirds approval it requires to be passed.

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Anglicans who are struggling at the front line in the battle to turn back gender-based and family violence can take comfort.

As of this morning, they know they have absolute, unequivocal support from their leaders in the Anglican Communion.

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Continuing a 12-year decline, the U.S. birth rate has dropped to the lowest level since national data have been available, according to statistics just released by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). The rate of births among teenagers also fell to a new record low, continuing a decline that began in 1991.

The birth rate fell to 13.9 per 1,000 persons in 2002, down from 14.1 per 1,000 in 2001 and down a full 17 percent from the recent peak in 1990 (16.7 per 1,000), according to a new CDC report, "Births: Preliminary Data for 2002." CDC analysts say the birth rate is dropping as the increasing life span of Americans results in a smaller proportion of women of child childbearing age.

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From here:

Fulcrum fully supports women bishops and hopes that the Measure passes through the General Synod in November. We believe that this is the view of most evangelicals in the Church of England. We agree with CEEC that all members of General Synod must prayerfully consider the good of the whole church and vote with a clear conscience. We hope that all those who want women bishops will vote for the Measure. We further hope that those who are against will be able in good conscience to abstain, recognising that it is clearly the will of the Church to proceed, and then work with the provision, which is unlikely to be strengthened should the legislation fall this time.

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A Winchester church is hosting the launch of a local breakaway group from the Church of England over plans for women bishops.

The General Synod – the Church of England’s ruling body – is due to vote on the ordination of women bishops next month (Nov).

Just days before the crunch-vote, Holy Trinity Church in Upper Brook Street is setting-up a Winchester diocesan branch of the “Mission Society of St Wilfred and St Hilda” on Saturday November 16 with the blessing of the Bishop of Richborough.

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CEEC Chairman, the Venerable Michael Lawson has added a comment on the background to the Statement:

Many evangelicals, both supporters and non-supporters of the ordination of women to the episcopate, are deeply concerned about provision for those who in good conscience cannot accept women bishops. We believe it is a matter not just of justice but of godliness to treat well this minority of those with whom God has joined us together in fellowship and mission. In all this we have to remember we are God’s people, and behave as such, and not slip into the ungodliness of warring political factions’

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Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the leading cleric in the Worldwide Anglican Communion, is trying to persuade members of the Church of England’s upcoming General Synod to support the ordination of women as Anglican bishops.

In an article published in the Anglican newspaper The Church Times, Archbishop Williams said the church legislation “will shape the future of the Church of England for generations.” He contended that a vote against the proposal “risks committing us to a period of continued and perhaps intensified internal conflict with no clearly guaranteed outcome.”

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury • --Rowan Williams • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • CoE Bishops • * Culture-Watch • Women

A German-American nun will become a saint Sunday, nearly a century after her death. Mother Marianne Cope is the second person to be honored in this way for caring for people in Hawaii with leprosy, now known as Hansen's disease.

During a tragic era in Hawaiian history, more than 8,000 people with leprosy were banished to Kalaupapa, a remote peninsula on the island of Molokai. Back then, there was no cure. The patients were treated as outcasts until a Belgian priest, Father Damien, came to care for them in 1873. Eventually he contracted the disease himself and died. He was canonized by the pope in 2009.

Just five months before Damien's death, Cope arrived in Kalaupapa. She worked in Hawaii in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Sister Alicia Damien Lau says Cope risked her life to care for people with leprosy.

Read or listen to it all and do not miss the picture.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • History • Poverty • Religion & Culture • Women • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • Pope Benedict XVI

...even though survey accuracy is difficult to achieve and experts are by no means unanimous, it would appear that women are, indeed, catching up. In my own work as a psychologist and in my social circle, I see more women not only having affairs but actively seeking them out. Their reasons are familiar: validation of their attractiveness, emotional connection, appreciation, ego—not to mention the thrill of a shiny new relationship, unburdened by the long slog through the realities of coupledom.

Researchers also point to other factors that might be leading women to stray more. One is what might be called "infidelity overload." Scan the plots on any given week in television, and there seems to be more extramarital sex than marital sex. (Few spouses stay put in "Mad Men.") With women portrayed as eager participants and aggressive instigators, there may be a feeling that infidelity has become more acceptable.

And then there is the opportunity factor—more travel, more late nights on the job and more interaction with men mean that the chances and temptations to stray have multiplied for the new generation of working women....

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Marriage & Family • Psychology • Women • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

The Archbishop of Canterbury has begun a campaign to persuade General Synod members to back the new women-bishops legislation when it returns to debate it next month.

Writing in the Church Times this week, he addresses waverers, those who find the legislation "not quite good enough, or not quite simple enough". To vote against the legislation, which he admits is "not perfect", would be to risk "committing us to a period of continued and perhaps intensified internal conflict, with no clearly guaranteed outcome . . . a period of publicly embarrassing and internally draining indecision".

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury • --Rowan Williams • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • CoE Bishops • * Culture-Watch • Women

Like many things, Five Talents started in a very small way. It began its life at the Lambeth Conference in 1998 when Martin Mimms came to tell me about Five Talents. I was immediately smitten by the idea and made a donation towards. It has gone on to become a firmly established NGO in both the USA and UK – with professional staff and committed supporters. And I do want to say how much I admire the leadership of Tom Sanderson whose vision and drive is behind the success of Five Talents.

The organisation has grown quickly – raising several millions (c.£5m) in its lifetime to help support 15 Microfinance programmes around the world. I recall the setting up of the Mama Bahati project some years ago which an organization led by Brian Griffiths raised several thousands of pounds – including donations from Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. This was taken over by Five Talents and it is thrilling to read from Five Talents on the Web that it is now serving 3,139 women in Tanzania.

But what is micro finance? The term ‘micro-finance’ means providing very poor families with very small loans to help them engage in productive activities, or small businesses, to help them out of poverty. It is of no surprise to those of us who have visited Africa and India that it is women who have gained so much from this initiative. The former UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, described it as ’a critical anti-poverty tool for the poorest, especially women’. Indeed, women have emerged as credit worthy clients, offering reliable and conscientious commitment and, in turn, micro-finance initiatives have strengthened social and human capacity of women in the family and community. I read recently that the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh offers loans to 7,000 people, 97% of whom are women. Women are transforming their own life chances and are emerging from poverty as a result.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • * Culture-Watch • Globalization • Poverty • Women • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Personal Finance

Katie [Stagliano] said the most important things she learned at the CGI meeting were about other causes she did not know about and “how good we have it here in the U.S.”

To Katie, age is not something that should hinder youths from doing extraordinary things. “Follow your heart. If there are causes you believe in, you should work towards it no matter how old you are. You can make an impact,” she recommends to other youths interested in making a difference.

Katie’s mother agreed and said that parents cannot push their children to do these types of things — they should only provide support.

“I never would have imagined that this is where we’d be today. God led her down this path, and she has walked through with open arms,” Stagliano said. “Sometimes people underestimate the power of youth. When given the opportunity, they can do amazing things.”

Read it all (emphasis mine).

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Teens / Youth • Women • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • * South Carolina

Maria Miller told the Telegraph it was "common sense" to lower the legal limit at which a pregnancy can be terminated in order to "reflect the way science has moved on".

Thanks to advances in care for children born very prematurely, it is now possible for doctors in some cases to save the lives of babies born before 24 weeks.

The medical advance raises the moral dilemma of whether it is right to end pregnancies which could result in a healthy child, or to lower the window and rob some women of the right to make their own choice.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Health & Medicine • Law & Legal Issues • Life Ethics • Women • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

One has to wonder: Where are the fathers? According to the Pew Research Center, the number of children living apart from their fathers jumped from 11% in 1960 to 27% in 2010. What's more, there are plenty of fathers who are physically present but not involved.

Too often, it seems to be by design. Last month, the ACLU succeeded in getting a Rhode Island school district to end the practice of father-daughter dances, as if such traditions are the threat to American girlhood. The ACLU victory news release announced: "In the 21st century, public schools have no business fostering the notion that girls prefer to go to formal dances while boys prefer baseball games. This type of gender stereotyping only perpetuates outdated notions of 'girl' and 'boy' activities and is contrary to federal law."

The point of father-daughter dances was never to keep girls in dresses and off athletic fields. These events symbolize a more important old-fashioned goal: to protect girls. And in an era when many teens attend post prom "P&H" (pimp and ho) parties in which girls shed prom dresses to prance around in lingerie, girls can probably use all the protection they can get.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Men • Women

....personal observation and a smattering of data belie the current reality and in the time since Ms. [Hanna] Rosin’s essay and the release this month of her book The End of Men: And The Rise of Women, I can’t help but wonder if about this claim of victory by authors such as Ms. Rosin and others is premature.

Women hold only 10 per cent of seats on boards of directors in Canada, and 16 per cent in the United States, according to a recent report by Catalyst. The number of female lead directors of Fortune 500 companies fell in 2011, even as Ms. Rosin was busy writing her book. How can women claim victory when the European Union is struggling with legislation to ensure 40 per cent of non-executive board seats are filled with women by 2020?

Social upheaval doesn’t occur overnight. of course, but I caution against believing that a matriarchy is definitively in the cards and that it’s just a matter of time before the power flip.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Books • Men • Women • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • * International News & Commentary • Canada

When Jeanne Majors, 63, took an early retirement in December 2005, she assumed that she would pick up a part-time job and be in good financial shape. She didn't know that her future would quickly fall apart.

Majors, who is single and lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., learned the hard way about the retirement obstacles that most women face today. When the economy slid into the recession, she lost her part-time job and could not find another.

"They wanted somebody young," Majors says. "Or if I was a man, somebody would have hired me at my age. I'm not sorry that I retired, but things didn't turn out the way I wanted it to. Everything went bust."

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Women • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Personal Finance • Pensions • Stock Market • The Banking System/Sector • The U.S. Government • Medicare • Social Security

The reason given by Christiane Taubira, France’s justice minister: ”Who is to say that a heterosexual couple will bring a child up better than a homosexual couple, that they will guarantee the best conditions for the child's development?” She then reassured critics of the proposed law, “What is certain is that the interest of the child is a major preoccupation for the government.”

If the law goes through, then all references to “mother” and “father” will be erased from the civil code and replaced with the more abstract, cover-all, cover-anything term “parents.”

Let’s focus on that shift to abstraction. It’s more important than you might think, because, as France is now demonstrating, he (or she) who controls the language controls the fundamentally human ability to speak about reality.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Marriage & Family • Men • Philosophy • Psychology • Religion & Culture • Women • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Europe • France • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • Other Faiths • Secularism • * Theology • Anthropology

...while many Americans might think of sex trafficking as an international problem, it often starts in the United States. Prosecutor Lindsey Roberson has seen it happen.

One of her first cases involved a 17-year-old girl who met a guy at a downtown club. He wooed her, and then “took her out of town on a trip, and let her know what she would have to do to pay her way,” Roberson said.

“She had no ID, no cell phone; no way to contact her mother. And the guy ended up advertising her for sex on Backpage.com and trafficking her all the way out to California and back to Virginia.”

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Globalization • Law & Legal Issues • Police/Fire • Religion & Culture • Sexuality • Teens / Youth • Women • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Pornography. Casual sex. Crude jokes about sex. Hooking up with no strings attached.

Hanna Rosin’s most recent Atlantic article, “Boys on the Side,” describes highly intelligent, career-oriented women engaging in all of these behaviors with a mere shrug of the shoulders. In the minds of many driven young women on college campuses across the country, sexual promiscuity doesn’t harm anyone. Hooking up has become the new sexual norm for young adults, and according to this norm, students shy away from committed relationships and instead enjoy one-time sexual encounters with no expectation of further intimacy. And, Rosin argues, the sexual liberation of the 1960s that led to the more recent “hookup culture” on college campuses is good for women—it allows women to enjoy casual sex without being “tied down” by serious commitment.

Rosin initially substantiates this claim through interviews with her subjects. Most women who are engaging in the hookup culture report that they don’t want to return to the days of chastity belts or even more traditional dating, and Rosin takes these positive reports as evidence that the hookup culture is not only here to stay but is also good for the women involved. She provides no evidence, however, that women who hookup a lot during their early 20s go on to lead fulfilling lives, and she doesn’t offer a counterpoint of women who have opted out of hooking up.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • Men • Psychology • Sexuality • Women • Young Adults • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology • Pastoral Theology

Purity peddlers construct a false universe where there are pure virgins who wait until marriage, and then there are slutty whores who are going home with different men every night of the week. The truth is that most adults will have a great many important relationships in their lives – some of those relationships will be romantic, and some of those will be sexual. That's a good thing: our relationships with other people, sexual or not, are how we grow, evolve and learn about ourselves. They're how we figure out what love is, what we like physically and emotionally, and how to negotiate our own needs with someone else's. Despite the claims of the wait-till-marriage camp, waiting to have sex won't protect you from heartache, frustration or love lost. But a variety of fulfilling relationships, sexual and not, will make you a more well-rounded, compassionate and self-assured person.

My point isn't that everyone should have sex before marriage – people should determine for themselves when they are ready to have sex. For the vast majority of people, that's going to be before they're married. Making that choice isn't a moral failing. On the contrary, it's often a great, healthy, overwhelmingly positive choice. Whenever you choose to have sex, the cultural message that waiting until marriage is the best choice is simply wrong. And it's wrong for almost everyone.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • Marriage & Family • Men • Psychology • Sexuality • Women • Young Adults • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

As a goodbye present, the team recently gave Sundhage a guitar that was signed by all the players in — surprise, surprise — the color of gold.

“It’s the best present I ever got,” she said.

They gave her quite a few memories along the way, too.

Sundhage’s most poignant? That’s easy: When the team roared back against Brazil in the quarterfinals of the 2011 World Cup. Wambach tied it at 2-2 with a magnificent, leaping header in the 122nd minute. The United States eventually captured the match, 5-3, on penalty kicks.

Read it all and do not miss the fabulous picture.

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

What would Jesus advise if call-in Christian talk shows were around in his day? Say a viewer wrote in, distraught that his wife did not respect him as the head of household, hurled insults at him and even raised her hand as if to threaten violence.

Should he beat his wife? Stand up to her? Show her what it means to obey? Those were among televangelist Pat Robertson’s implications last week on his show, “The 700 Club,” which drew angry protests and renewed debate over what it means to be a Christian husband — or wife.

Some 2,000 years after the Resurrection, the outcry highlights how intensely society still grapples with these roles.

But those who use Scripture to argue that wives are somehow lesser than husbands are missing Christ’s larger message, according to an array of local ministers, from traditional to progressive.

Read it all from the local paper Faith and Values section.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Marriage & Family • Religion & Culture • Women • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * South Carolina • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology • Pastoral Theology • Theology: Scripture

The conundrum we face has to do with how to get the General Synod to agree on the admission of women to the episcopate (enable them to become bishops). As I have said before, we are being asked to square a circle and no outcome is guaranteed to succeed. In fact, every option before us might either work or not.

What is clear to me, however, is that if women are to be admitted to the episcopate, they must be fully bishops on the same basis as male bishops. A bishop is a bishop is a bishop. How to get there is the problem. At least, how to get there while providing opponents with security within the church.

The arguments have been well rehearsed, so I am not going to go into them again here. However, the bishops are wrestling with this with integrity and great seriousness....

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

In an audio recording, the Archbishop of Canterbury gives his thoughts on Wednesday's vote at the House of Bishops.

Follow the link and listen to it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury • --Rowan Williams • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • CoE Bishops • * Culture-Watch • Women

The House of Bishops has today by an overwhelming majority settled the text of the legislation to enable women to become bishops in the Church of England.

The House of Bishops made clear its desire for the draft legislation to be passed into law when it goes forward for final approval to the Church of England's General Synod in November.

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

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Health & Medicine • Life Ethics • Movies & Television • Philosophy • Religion & Culture • Women

The House of Bishops will meet next Wednesday to discuss the next step in the legislation to allow women bishops. The response to a con­sultation in August suggests that opinion remains polarised.

The legisation, as it stands, con­tains Clause 5(1)(c), inserted by the Bishops before the July sessions of the General Synod in order to cater for traditionalist parishes. It stipulates that the Code of Practice should cover "the selection of male bishops or male priests the exercise of ministry by whom is consistent with the theological convictions as to the consecration or ordination of wo­men" of the PCC. The clause was so divisive that a vote on final approval of the legislation was post­poned until November.....

The steering committee proposed seven possible options in relation to the contentious clause.... A total of 120 submissions were received, it was announced on Wednesday. A third (41) were for simply deleting it; just under a third (35) were in favour of retaining it.

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

The Anglican Church in Melbourne said today it welcomed the announcement by the Victorian government that it will increase its funding to tackle family violence by $16 million.

Bishop Philip Huggins, Chair of the Melbourne Anglican Social Responsibilities Committee, said: “This is a timely and compassionate response to the evidence of a growing need for services to tackle the problem. This week’s release of new statistics demonstrates that the crime rate is rising. Police are reported to attribute this largely to a rise in family violence-related crime which climbed by 39.9%!

“Tragically, more than 100,000 women in Australia experience violence by a partner or ex-partner. At least 60% of these cases are witnessed by children. We must do all we can to prevent such suffering.”

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Anglican Church of Australia • * Culture-Watch • Children • Religion & Culture • Violence • Women • * International News & Commentary • Australia / NZ

Both victims have been described by family members as straight-laced women and diligent employees. [Dana] Woods, of Alvin, was a delivery driver for Papa John’s. [June] Guerry, an Alvin resident, was a stock clerk at Walmart and the mother of a 2-year-old daughter.

Read it all. Also, there has recently been an arrest in the case.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Rural/Town Life • Violence • Women • Young Adults • * South Carolina

Even at a glance, anyone could see that the unlimited and easy availability of contraceptives in Africa would surely increase infidelity and sexual promiscuity, as sex is presented by this multi-billion dollar project as a casual pleasure sport that can indeed come with no strings – or babies – attached. Think of the exponential spread of HIV and other STDs as men and women with abundant access to contraceptives take up multiple, concurrent sex partners.

And of course there are bound to be inconsistencies and failures in the use of these drugs and devices, so health complications could result; one of which is unintended abortion. Add also other health risks such as cancer, blood clots, etc. Where Europe and America have their well-oiled health care system, a woman in Africa with a contraception-induced blood clot does not have access to 911 or an ambulance or a paramedic. No, she dies.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Men • Sexuality • Women • * International News & Commentary • Africa • Nigeria • America/U.S.A.

Ok, take a look at this.



That is but one photo of 9000 women from around greater Charleston and beyond at the North Charleston Coliseum this past weekend who came to hear Bible teacher Beth Moore.

Now explain something to me. How is this not a major story? Would you not want, say, to interview Beth Moore? To talk to some of the participants (who came from every Christian tradition imaginable)? To find out why people came and stood in line for hours just to get inside? To ask them what they learned? To talk to the (quite talented and influential) music team? To find out why the wife of a local Episcopal Church minister (yes, you read that correctly) was the local area coordinator for the event? My questions could go and on.

Instead we get three perfunctory announcements and that is all, like this--on August 18th. Not one story, no features, no interviews, no local angles--and all this in a city where faith is a major part of common life.

Anyone else think this is outrageous and sad? I do--KSH.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • * By Kendall • * Culture-Watch • Media • Religion & Culture • Women • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Evangelicals • * South Carolina • * Theology • Theology: Scripture

There is bad news for boys in North America: They are being blown out of the water by girls in academic achievement; and psychologists say young men are becoming more socially awkward, making relationships with young women difficult.

Sidney Gale, a medical doctor and author of Unto the Breach, an outdoor adventures book for boys, is concerned..."We need to get boys out of their solitary bedrooms and into the sun," Gale says. "It's also a good idea to get them reading something other than tweets, texts and the like. They have intellect, and we should encourage them to use it."

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Youth Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Children • Education • Marriage & Family • Men • Psychology • Teens / Youth • Women • Young Adults

Midway down a narrow second floor hallway at the Winship Cancer Institute, away from the hum of nurses ushering cancer patients into exam rooms, Dr. William Wood talks about the great need far beyond these walls and how his boyhood faith gave him a heart big enough to care.

It began, he said, as he listened to the medical missionaries who visited the church in which he grew up in suburban Chicago. He soaked up their every word, allowing them to transport him to that time when Jesus sent his disciples out to do what he did: preach the gospel and heal the sick.

At 72, the retired Emory surgeon, a mild-mannered doctor known for his contributions to cancer therapy, is still fulfilling that mission as he crisscrosses the globe lecturing about surgical oncology and teaching young doctors how to care for breast cancer patients in sub-Saharan Africa.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Missions • * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • Religion & Culture • Women • * International News & Commentary • Africa

In middle age, many women discover they’re downsizing and moving into a brand-new neighborhood, so to speak. Midlife strips us of the things that formed our network of relationships back in the old neighborhood of our 20s and 30s: children’s activities or the drive to find meaning in a career. This new life location can be lonely. No one I know is riding in a red convertible with her empty-nester Gal Pals, singing along to oldies while heading together to a beach house weekend. Most of us aren’t looking for Gal Pals, anyway. We’re simply looking for a few friends in our new neighborhood. Studies confirm what we intuitively know: loneliness is a serious issue with far-reaching consequences as we get older.

The standard friend-making advice offers motivational action steps: take a class, join a group, serve those in need in your community. In addition, Christians are encouraged to find fellowship at church, though they may discover that there aren’t always as many age peers attending as they might hope.

The suggestions are useful, but without first doing what Jesus asks of us, our efforts will not be grounded in kingdom reality. We can not befriend others if we are not willing to first befriend our midlife selves. Relying on the identity that seemed to fit like a glove at age 25 to build new relationships when we are 47 won’t net us the kind of authentic relationships we’re longing for in our second adulthood, nor does it honor the process of God’s transforming, maturing work in our lives.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Middle Age • Psychology • Women • * Theology • Pastoral Theology

Simple and to the point--watch it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Dieting/Food/Nutrition • Globalization • Health & Medicine • Women