The mystery surrounding the burial of the body of Tamerlan Tsarnaev has come to an end. The Boston Marathon bombing suspect was buried this week at a small Muslim cemetery in Doswell, Va.

According to his completed death certificate, which was released on Friday, Mr. Tsarnaev was buried on Thursday at Al-Barzakh Cemetery, about half an hour north of Richmond. Officials in Massachusetts had said the body was moved to a burial site out of state. But they had refused to disclose where.

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Cemeteries and even some mosques have refused to take his body. His city, Cambridge, has urged family members to bury him elsewhere. Republican U.S. Senate candidate Gabriel Gomez and local talk radio host Dan Rae want him dumped in the ocean, like Osama bin Laden. Clergy have largely kept mum.

“The only signs of people who are showing some sort of moral conscience are those few who stand with a card near the funeral home saying (burial) is a corporal work of mercy,” said James Keenan, a moral theologian at Boston College. “To say, ‘we won’t bury him’ makes us barbaric. It takes away mercy, the trademark of Christians. … I’m talking about this because somebody should.”

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BOB ABERNETHY, host:....The president referred to self-radicalizing. What—how does that work, and what can the Muslim community do to prevent it?

HARIS TARIN (Muslim Public Affairs Council): Well, the phenomenon of self-radicalization is where individuals who do not find a place in mainstream Muslim institutions, places like mosques and organizations, they don’t find a place for their fiery rhetoric, for their violent, extremist rhetoric, so they go online, and they listen to sermons, and they listen to individuals like Anwar al-Awlaki or Adam Gadahn or other folks who misinterpret the religion to give it a violent, violent ideology, and they fall prey to these individuals who are basically online predators, and they get influenced by these individuals to address their grievances through violence....

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he surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings told F.B.I. interrogators that he and his brother considered suicide attacks and striking on the Fourth of July as they plotted their deadly assault, according to two law enforcement officials.

But the suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, told investigators that he and his brother, Tamerlan, 26, who was killed in a shootout with the police, ultimately decided to use pressure-cooker bombs and other homemade explosive devices, the officials said.

The brothers finished building the bombs in Tamerlan’s apartment in Cambridge, Mass., faster than they had anticipated, and so decided to accelerate their attack to the Boston Marathon on April 15, Patriots’ Day in Massachusetts, according to the account that Dzhokhar provided to authorities.

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[KIM] LAWTON: On Thursday May 2nd, “The Children’s March” began. Students left their classrooms mid-day and gathered in Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. They came out marching and singing, row after row after row of them, some as young as six years old. Waiting police arrested them for parading without a permit, but the kids kept coming, and when the paddy wagons were full, the police had to get a school bus to take them all away. Nearly a thousand children had signed up to march, and more than 600 were taken into custody on that day.

LAWTON: As hundreds and hundreds more children showed up to demonstrate and face possible arrest, Bull Connor was anxious to restore order. He instructed his forces to bring out the fire hoses and the dogs.

Some of the most shocking confrontations happened in Kelly Ingram Park, across from the church, where monuments to the marchers now stand. Officials aimed the water hoses full blast at the marching children. McKinstry was among those hit.

[CAROLYN] MCKINSTRY: The water came out with such tremendous pressure and, uh, it’s a very painful experience, if you’ve never been hit by a fire hose and I thought, whoa.

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The community of Roxbury had high hopes for its newest public school back in 2003. There were art studios, a dance room, even a theater equipped with cushy seating.

A pilot school for grades K-8, Orchard Gardens was built on grand expectations.

But the dream of a school founded in the arts, a school that would give back to the community as it bettered its children, never materialized.

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[Neil] Diamond flew his private jet to Boston. He showed up unannounced to Fenway about 30 minutes before start time, called the control room and asked if he could sing.

When the eighth inning came, Neil walked out in a Red Sox cap and the 35,000-strong crowd cheered. ''What an honour it is for me to be here today!'' Diamond told them. ''I bring love from the whole country.''

Then they sang along, out of sync to the backing track but that hardly mattered. Neither did the fact the Red Sox beat the Royals something to something else.

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In ways both big and small, both fleeting and transformational, this time simply felt different.

On the lawn of the First Baptist Church in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston, Eve Nagler stood at a prayer vigil two days after terrorists attempted to shred the joy of Boston's biggest day with nails and BB's and bits of hurtling metal.

This, she knew, was not 9/11 – the scale, the shock, the fear were nothing like people had felt 12 years ago. Yet something else had shifted, too – something perhaps less easily definable but no less palpable to many of those at the vigil and across the suburbs that bound themselves together as "Boston Strong."

There was a calm, not only in the streets but in raw and wounded hearts.

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The Loma Prieta earthquake tore through northern California in 1989, shaking the ground for 10 to 15 seconds, killing 63 people and doing extensive damage to bridges, roads and buildings. Much of the worst damage was in built-up areas around San Francisco Bay, including Oakland.

This could be sounding like a familiar story by now. One of the casualties was a 96-year-old Gothic brick church, the Catholic diocese of Oakland's Cathedral of St Francis De Sales. Rather than simply rebuild, the diocese opted to be even more radical: it built a new cathedral on an entirely new site. In 2008, the Cathedral of Christ the Light opened on the shores of Oakland's Lake Merritt and it is already regarded as one of the greatest of contemporary church buildings.

It has been called the first cathedral to be built in the 21st century, and that has become a symbolic value as well as a chronological fact. It says to others that this is the future of church buildings.

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The Rev. John Wykes, director of the St. Francis Chapel at Boston's soaring Prudential Center, and the Rev. Tom Carzon, rector of Our Lady of Grace Seminary, were among the priests who were turned away right after the bombings. It was jarring for Father Wykes, who, as a hospital chaplain in Illinois a decade ago, was never denied access to crime or accident scenes.

"I was allowed to go anywhere. In Boston, I don't have that access," he says.

But Father Wykes says he has noticed a shift in the societal role of clergy over the past few decades: "In the Bing Crosby era—in the '40s, '50s, '60s—a priest with a collar could get in anywhere. That's changed. Priests are no longer considered to be emergency responders."

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There has never been any doubt that Trinity Church is wealthy. But the extent of its wealth has long been a mystery; guessed at by many, known by few.

Now, however, after a lawsuit filed by a disenchanted parishioner, the church has offered an estimate of the value of its assets: more than $2 billion.

The Episcopal parish, known as Trinity Wall Street, traces its holdings to a gift of 215 acres of prime Manhattan farmland donated in 1705 by Queen Anne of England. Since then, the church has parlayed that gift into a rich portfolio of office buildings, stock investments and, soon, mixed-use residential development.

Read it all from today's New York Times.

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The CIA pushed to have one of the suspected Boston Marathon bombers placed on a U.S. counterterrorism watch list more than a year before the attacks, U.S. officials said Wednesday.

Russian authorities contacted the CIA in the fall of 2011 and raised concerns that Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was killed last week in a confrontation with police, was seen as an increasingly radical Islamist who could be planning to travel overseas.

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In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings that left three dead and more than 260 injured, perhaps none face more significant adjustments or a longer road ahead than the 14 amputees who lost a limb.

For these victims, the path forward involves relearning almost everything, from getting out of bed to getting in a car. Whether they go on to lead satisfying lives depends largely on how they handle the spiritual challenges at hand, according to amputees and researchers.

Losing a limb is like losing a family member: It involves grief and mourning, according to Jack Richmond, a Chattanooga, Tenn., amputee who leads education efforts for the Manassas, Va.-based Amputee Coalition. When one’s body and abilities are radically changed, questions of meaning are suddenly urgent: Why did this happen? Why am I here?

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The security planning for last week's Boston Marathon, where two bombs went off killing three people and wounding 264, included preparation for such an emergency, a top Massachusetts public safety official said on Wednesday.

"We spend months planning for the marathon. We did a tabletop exercise the week before that included a bombing scenario in it," Kurt Schwartz, the state's undersecretary for homeland security, told a panel at Harvard University.

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U.S. Pastor Saeed Abedini, who is currently suffering from internal bleeding in Iranian prison, said that he is praying for America in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings that killed three people and left over 200 injured last week.

"Pastor Saeed told family members he had heard about the terrorist bombings in Boston on the prison radio, expressed his concern, and told them he is praying for the victims and their families during this very challenging time for our nation," the American Center for Law and Justice revealed on Monday.

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The Anglican diocese will tomorrow release detailed information on how it arrived at cost estimates for three design options for the Christ Church Cathedral.

Gavin Holley, of the Church Property Trustees, told last night's Press-hosted public forum on the proposals for the city's Gothic landmark that he hoped to have the information up on its website by late tomorrow afternoon.

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After two troubling outbursts at a local mosque, leaders there told Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev he would no longer be welcome if he continued disrupting services.

Leaders at the Islamic Society of Boston's mosque in Cambridge say Tsarnaev, 26, who died early Friday (April 19) after a shootout with police, "disagreed with the moderate American-Islamic theology" of the mosque, but they never had "any hint" the brothers might be violent.

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The 19-year-old suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings has told interrogators that the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan motivated him and his brother to carry out the attack, according to U.S. officials familiar with the interviews.

From his hospital bed, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has acknowledged his role in planting the explosives near the marathon finish line on April 15, the officials said. The first successful large-scale bombing in the post-Sept. 11, 2001, era, the Boston attack killed three people and wounded more than 250 others.

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Listen here if you wish.

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Friday morning, four Pakistani-American doctors dressed in business suits and medical scrubs sat in one of this city’s most popular breakfast spots and fretted. At an adjacent table, a middle-aged woman grew visibly nervous when their native land was mentioned. One of the doctors, a 47-year-old cardiologist, was despondent.

“We were all praying this wouldn’t happen,” he told me. “No matter what you do in your community, that’s the label that is attached.”

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For five years we have heard, principally from those who wield executive power, of a claimed need to make fundamental changes in this country, to change the world's—particularly the Muslim world's—perception of us, to press "reset" buttons. We have heard not a word from those sources suggesting any need to understand and confront a totalitarian ideology that has existed since at least the founding of the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1920s.

The ideology has regarded the United States as its principal adversary since the late 1940s, when a Brotherhood principal, Sayid Qutb, visited this country and was aghast at what he saw as its decadence. The first World Trade Center bombing, in 1993, al Qaeda attacks on American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, on the USS Cole in 2000, the 9/11 attacks, and those in the dozen years since—all were fueled by Islamist hatred for the U.S. and its values.

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"The city that started the American Revolution is proving its strength by simply moving forward; NBC’s Katie Tur reports."

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[...An] important strand of the British effort is what the UK government calls the “Prevent” strategy. This involves the police and local authorities working with Muslim organisations and communities to ensure that British nationals who become radicalised are identified and encouraged to channel their anger before they resort to violence.

Professor Michael Clarke, an expert on counter-terrorism at the Royal United Services Institute, a think-tank, says the strategy has had some success. “It is about getting the Muslim community to accept responsibility for people in their midst, helping to identify those who are radicalised and working with the police and local authorities to stop them before they plan attacks,” he says....like a number of UK experts, he argues that the US has been slow to tackle “homegrown” jihadism pre-emptively. “The Americans find it hard to accept that jihadism can arise from within their own society. They still feel the phenomenon is pushed into the US by outside forces or foreign actors.”

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A close examination of the Tsarnaev family shows that, over the past five years or so, the personal lives of the family members slipped into turmoil, according to interviews with the parents, relatives and friends. The upheaval in the household was driven, at least in part, by a growing interest in religion by both Tamerlan and his mother.

Once known as a quiet teenager who aspired to be a boxer, Tamerlan Tsarnaev delved deeply into religion in recent years at the urging of his mother, who feared he was slipping into a life of marijuana, girls and alcohol. Tamerlan quit drinking and smoking, gave up boxing because he thought it was in opposition to his religion, and began pushing the rest of his family to pursue stricter ways, his mother recalled.

"You know how Islam has changed me," his mother, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal in Makhachkala, Dagestan, says he told her.

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Four glowing white pillar candles illuminated photographs of the people killed in bombing-connected violence in the Boston area last week as the city sought comfort in religious services on the first Sunday after the blasts plunged the community into days of chaos.

The photographs showing the faces of 8-year-old Martin Richard, 23-year-old Lu Lingzi, 29-year-old Krystle Campbell and 26-year-old Sean Collier, a police officer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, were propped up on the altar at Boston's Cathedral of the Holy Cross, where Roman Catholic Cardinal Sean Patrick O'Malley spoke about the city's pain and looked ahead to its spiritual recovery.

"Everyone has been profoundly affected by this wanton violence and destruction inflicted upon our community by two young men unknown to all of us," said O'Malley, speaking to a crowd of mourners that included Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis, who sat in the front row of the cavernous cathedral with other elected officials. "It's very difficult to understand what was going on in their heads. What demons were operating, what ideologies or politics, or the perversions of their religion."

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CHAPLAIN MARY LOU VON EUEW (Tufts Medical Center): She said “the hardest thing about this is that some human beings can treat other human beings like this. I just don’t understand it.”

[KIM] LAWTON: Indeed, Von Euew says, after a tragedy like the bombing, clergy often hear age old questions about the nature of good and evil, suffering and the existence of a loving God.

VON EUEW: You know most of the time people deep down inside aren’t asking for an answer. They’re asking for you to fight and wrestle with the questions with them. We truly believe that God is with us when it happens, so we’re not suffering alone, that we have someone with us who loves us beyond all measure.

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While police in and around Boston hunt for celebrate the capture of 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the suspected Boston Marathon bombers, information gathered from various social media outlets indicate that he and his brother, 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev, harbored radical Islamic beliefs.

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This week, on Patriot’s Day, a day that celebrates the beginning of our country’s journey toward freedom, a horrific tragedy occurred.

The Boston Marathon bombing has left us all with a heavy heart and we pray for the victims and their families.

However, while the perpetrators of this act of terror hoped that they could shake the confidence of a city, they have instead only strengthened the resolve of our nation....

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On Monday, an act of terror wounded dozens and killed three innocent people at the Boston Marathon.

But in the days since, the world has witnessed one sure and steadfast truth: Americans refuse to be terrorized.

Ultimately, that’s what we’ll remember from this week. That’s what will remain. Stories of heroism and kindness; resolve and resilience; generosity and love....

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Just how many Copts have fled to the United States no one can say with certainty, since immigration statistics do not include religious affiliation. But the number of Egyptians seeking asylum has jumped since the revolution; in 2011, 1,028 Egyptians were given asylum — 4.1 percent of all of those granted asylum — up from 531 in 2010, according to the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Immigration Statistics. With that increase, Egypt ranked fourth on the list of countries whose citizens were given asylum in the United States....

For Copts in Egypt, church is more than just a place to go on Sunday mornings; it is the center of their social life outside the family. For Copts newly outside Egypt, the church is a familiar oasis in a strange country.

“It is our church everywhere,” said Gameel Girgis, a 36-year-old pharmacist who came to the United States in October to seek asylum with his wife and two children after his father-in-law, a priest in the central Egyptian city of Asyut, was stabbed to death. When he searched for a place to live, “my first consideration was distance from the church,” Mr. Girgis said, adding, “I want to raise my kids in the church.”

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Numerous Muslim organizations across the United States have condemned the heinous bombing attacks that took place on Monday at the Boston Marathon, and they expressed their sympathy for the victims and their families. The attacks left three people dead and at least 140 injured.

Many Muslim organizations have called upon Muslims to pray for the victims and donate blood for those who were wounded.

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Profiled in the Lowell Sun in 2004, Tamerlan [Tsarnaev] said he liked the USA.

“America has a lot of jobs. That’s something Russia doesn’t have,” he told the newspaper. “You have a chance to make money here if you are willing to work.”

He later said, in a photo essay about his boxing exploits, that he hoped to be selected for the US Olympic team, and that he dreamed of becoming a naturalized citizen. But he also lamented his alienation, saying, “I don’t have a single American friend. I don’t understand them.’’

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Whatever struck you, provoked you, moved you; whatever part of it which you believe is most significant or worthy of further consideration. Remember the more specific you are, the more other blog reads can participate in what you say--KSH.

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Although terrorists from the Caucasus have struck in Moscow and other parts of Russia, the conflict in the region has never led to attacks in other countries. One possible explanation for the Boston bombings, said Aslan Doukaev, an expert on the Caucasus who works for Radio Liberty in Prague, is that the brothers were motivated by radical jihadism, not Chechen separatism.

As the war in Chechnya wound down after Russian forces withdrew — they left formally in 2009 — violence has spilled into neighboring republics such as Dagestan, where the Tsarnaev family once found shelter and where the brothers’ parents now live. That conflict is increasingly marked by radical Islamic terrorism in an often vicious cycle of attack and reprisal between insurgents and Russian security forces. Tamerlan visited Dagestan last year, according to an official with knowledge of his travels.

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The Federal Bureau of Investigation interviewed suspected marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011 at the request of the Russian government, but didn't find evidence of suspicious activity and closed the case, an FBI official said Friday.

The fact that the FBI spoke with Mr. Tsarnaev, who was killed Friday morning in a firefight with authorities, is likely to become a focal point of the post mortem into how the attack was able to be carried out at the Boston Marathon. It also speaks to the challenge faced by authorities as terrorism morphs to some extent from the complex international plots of a decade ago to small-scale attacks carried out by individuals located within U.S.

U.S. counterterrorism policy has since 2001 focused largely on killing terrorists overseas or preventing them from getting into the U.S. But the Boston bombings show how the diffusion of terrorist tactics easily transcends borders. Countering small groups of individuals inside the U.S. can be a bedeviling assignment.

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In the waning moments of daylight, police descended Friday on a shrouded boat in a Watertown backyard to capture the suspected terrorist who had eluded their enormous dragnet for a tumultuous day, ending a dark week in Boston that began with the bombing of the world’s most prestigious road race.

The arrest of 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev of Cambridge ended an unprecedented daylong siege of Greater Boston, after a frantic night of violence that left one MIT police officer dead, an MBTA Transit Police officer wounded, and an embattled public — rattled again by the touch of terrorism — huddled inside homes....

“It’s a proud day to be a Boston police officer,” Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis told his force over the radio moments after the arrest. “Thank you all.”

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Quite a photo.

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Thank you--KSH.

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The desperate 19-year-old suspect in the Boston Marathon terror bombings ran over his own wounded brother as he fled police, officials said. Considered armed and dangerous and possibly wearing a suicide vest, he remains on the loose, sought by legions of heavily armed police as nearly a million residents of Boston hunker down behind locked doors, in an unprecedented security measure.

The search for Dzhokhor A. Tsarnaev of Cambridge comes after a chaotic, violent night in which his brother died in a firefight with police, and one police officer was killed and another was seriously wounded.

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The search for one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects -- the man seen wearing a white baseball cap -- this morning led to the sudden shutdown of the MBTA’s entire network of commuter rail, bus, and subway services.

State authorities also asked people who live in Watertown, Waltham, Newton, Belmont, Cambridge, and Allston-Brighton to stay home and for businesses in those cities and towns to stay closed.

“We are asking you to stay indoors, to stay in your homes for the time being,’’ Kurt Schwartz, who leads the state’s homeland security department, said at a 6 a.m. press conference today. “We are asking business in those areas to cooperate and not open today until we can provide further guidance.’’

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The FBI today released photos and video of two suspects in the deadly Boston Marathon terror bombings case, appealing to the public to help law enforcement officials find them.

“Somebody out there knows these individuals,” said Richard DesLauriers, special agent in charge of the Boston FBI office. He said the two men are considered “armed and dangerous.”

DesLauriers described the two men as Suspect No. 1 and Suspect No. 2. Suspect No. 1 was wearing a dark hat. Suspect No. 2 was wearing a white hat.

DesLauriers said Suspect No. 2 was observed planting a bomb, leaving it in place shortly before it went off.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • --Social Networking • Law & Legal Issues • Police/Fire • Science & Technology • Urban/City Life and Issues • Violence • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Economy • The U.S. Government • Terrorism

...one of the most striking and certainly the most moving images coming out of Boston was of people rushing forward toward the sites of the explosions to help the injured.

The Archbishop of Boston, Sean O’Malley, spoke for many of us when he said that “the citizens of the City of Boston and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts are blessed by the bravery and heroism of many, particularly the men and women of the police and fire departments and emergency services who responded within moments of these tragic events.”

But it wasn’t only those in uniform. Carlos Arredondo, a peace activist whose son was killed in Iraq, became a national hero when he jumped over the security fence and started helping the injured. And he wasn’t the only civilian who ran towards the chaos when common sense dictated running away from it.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Urban/City Life and Issues • Violence • * Economics, Politics • Terrorism • * Theology • Anthropology • Christology

Deeply moving--take the time to watch and listen to it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Sports • Urban/City Life and Issues • * Economics, Politics • Terrorism • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

...I do love this city. I love its atrocious accent, its inferiority complex in terms of New York, its nut-job drivers, the insane logic of its street system. I get a perverse pleasure every time I take the T in the winter and the air-conditioning is on in the subway car, or when I take it in the summer and the heat is blasting. Bostonians don’t love easy things, they love hard things — blizzards, the bleachers in Fenway Park, a good brawl over a contested parking space. Two different friends texted me the identical message yesterday: They messed with the wrong city. This wasn’t a macho sentiment. It wasn’t “Bring it on” or a similarly insipid bit of posturing. The point wasn’t how we were going to mass in the coffee shops of the South End to figure out how to retaliate. Law enforcement will take care of that, thank you. No, what a Bostonian means when he or she says “They messed with the wrong city” is “You don’t think this changes anything, do you?”

Trust me, we won’t be giving up any civil liberties to keep ourselves safe because of this. We won’t cancel next year’s marathon. We won’t drive to New Hampshire and stockpile weapons. When the authorities find the weak and terminally maladjusted culprit or culprits, we’ll roll our eyes at whatever backward ideology they embrace and move on with our lives.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Psychology • Urban/City Life and Issues • Violence • * Economics, Politics • Terrorism • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

Shaken Bostonians and visitors in town for the marathon sought solace side-by-side Tuesday at the downtown Episcopal Cathedral Church of St. Paul, where priests and a bishop led them in a vigil for victims, for healing and for peace.

More than 100 worshipers attended the hastily planned midday service. Following a burial rite, they prayed for the three killed in Monday's bombings, sang hymns and received Communion.

Bishop Suffragan Gayle Harris, who presided at the service, said they wanted to respond with "some sense of hope and light." She told those gathered, "We need to run another race to address the violence in our society, the hatred and the anger."

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Spirituality/Prayer • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • Urban/City Life and Issues • Violence • * Economics, Politics • Terrorism

A prayer service with Holy Eucharist is being planned for Tuesday, April 16 at 12:15 p.m. at the Cathedral Church of St. Paul (138 Tremont Street) in Boston, with Bishop Gayle E. Harris presiding (assuming downtown conditions and transit have regularized). All are welcome.

Downtown church personnel reached so far report chaos in the Back Bay area and limited mobility.

Trinity Church in Copley Square was closed today for the Marathon; Marathon runners on Trinity Church's charity team are reported safe....

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Spirituality/Prayer • * Culture-Watch • Urban/City Life and Issues • Violence • * Economics, Politics • Terrorism

Pope Francis has sent his “sympathy and closeness in prayer” to the people of Boston in a telegram sent on his behalf.
The telegram reads “In the aftermath of this senseless tragedy, His Holiness invokes God’s peace upon the dead, his consolation upon the suffering and his strength upon all those engaged in the continuing work of relief and response. At this time of mourning the Holy Father prays that all Bostonians will be united in a resolve not to be overcome by evil, but to combat evil with good (cf. Rom 12:21), working together to build an ever more just, free and secure society for generations yet to come.”

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • Urban/City Life and Issues • Violence • * Economics, Politics • Terrorism • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • Pope Benedict XVI

From the FBI to local police departments, law enforcement agencies have dramatically shifted their emphasis to counterterrorism over the past decade, gathering intelligence on both domestic and foreign extremist groups. The George W. Bush and Obama administrations have created an enormous global apparatus designed to track and target terrorists.

But officials have always warned that the United States cannot prevent every attempted strike on U.S. soil. In some recent plots, authorities have benefited as much from luck as investigative skill.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Urban/City Life and Issues • Violence • * Economics, Politics • Terrorism

The powerful blasts at the Boston Marathon finish line Monday underscore why the Federal Bureau of Investigation has spent years refining its "tripwire'' system for catching would-be bomb makers before they can build a deadly device.

For years, federal agents have asked businesses that sell materials useful in making bombs to alert authorities to any suspicious orders. The types of tripwires in place have shifted over the years. In the 1990s, law enforcement worried mostly about fertilizer-based bombs after such devices were used in the Oklahoma City attacks of April 1995. In the past decade, chemical-based bombs have come into focus as authorities adapt to the changing threat.

"The tripwires have certainly been successful in the past,'' said Don Borelli, a former counterterrorism official at the FBI who now works for Soufan Group.

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“I’d never imagined in my wildest dreams this would ­ever happen,” Norden said, sitting on a bench outside the Beth Israel Deaconess emergency room Monday night.

As she looked at her feet, with socks mismatched ­because she had dressed so quickly to leave the house, tears fell to the sidewalk.

“I feel sick,” she said. “I think I could pass out.”

She had yet to see either son, because doctors had not authorized visitors. Both are graduates of Stoneham High School and had been laid off recently from their jobs as roofers. The oldest, age 33, still lives in Stoneham, the younger in Wakefield. Both are avid fishermen.

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If you can stomach it, there are photos that are (warning--contains some graphic images including one which requires you to click on it to see {I didn't do so]) collected there.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Urban/City Life and Issues • Violence • * Economics, Politics • Terrorism

We are truly saddened by the news that just came regarding the explosions near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. Along with you I grieve for those that lost their lives and their families, and for those injured in this tragic event. In moments like this, we do not know what to say or how to say it, but will you join me in the prayer of the psalmist, “God is our refuge and our strength, a very present help in times of trouble.” (Ps.46:1).

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Spirituality/Prayer • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • Urban/City Life and Issues • Violence

If all the hopes and hype are warranted, a nondescript third-floor loft in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan offers a glimpse of the future, for New York City and for Cornell University. In truth, it doesn’t look like much — just cubicles and meeting rooms in space donated by Google. But looks deceive; here, with little fanfare, Cornell’s new graduate school of applied sciences is being rolled out.

The sparkling, sprawling new campus on Roosevelt Island filled with gee-whiz technology — still just ink on paper. The thousands of students and staff, the transformative effect on the city’s economy, the integration with the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology — those all remain in the future, too.

But just 13 months after being awarded the prize in Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s contest to create a new science school, Cornell NYC Tech got up and running. Eight students enrolled in January in what is being called the beta class, a one-year master’s program in computer science. And Cornell has made it clear that, in many ways, this is not the usual university program.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Education • Science & Technology • Urban/City Life and Issues

St. Luke’s parishioners are renovating their old stone and brick church to reduce energy consumption and maximize their use of the space after an energy audit discovered they were practically throwing money out the front door.

“It was a wake up call more to realize that of course this is a serious issue,” said the minister at St. Luke’s Anglican Church, Rev. Gregor Sneddon. “Churches these days, which were at one time almost the fabric of culture and society, are now struggling for their existence and how they’re relevant and meaningful in a secular Western society. So the free lunch is kind of over and we’re wrestling with how do we be efficient and lean in our costs and how we operate.”

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Anglican Church of Canada • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • Urban/City Life and Issues • * Economics, Politics • Energy, Natural Resources • * International News & Commentary • Canada

Rick Benisasia, who’s in the after-death business, is looking to build an empire.

Mr. Benisasia runs a South Asian-focused funeral home on Derry Road in Malton and wants to open a crematorium beside it. The land, money and demand is there, he says.

For more than three years, he’s waited for his rezoning application to be approved by the City of Mississauga. But a new Mississauga bylaw passed in March says new crematoriums must be a minimum of 300 metres from residential properties, due to concerns over the health effects from their emissions.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Religion & Culture • Urban/City Life and Issues • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • * International News & Commentary • Canada

According to figures released by the Diocese of London attendance at City churches has risen by a almost a quarter since the start of the financial crisis in 2008. The most recent figures show 3,566 people as registered members of City churches in 2011, an increase of 24 per cent on the figures for 2007. In the rest of the Church of England membership figures were stable or showed only a slight decline in the same period. One City clergyman, the Ven Peter Delaney, who is the priest in charge of St Stephen Walbrook and a former Archdeacon of London told the ‘Financial Times’ that stress and anxiety were causing financial workers to seek comfort in the Christian faith. James Gerry, a churchwarden at St Mary Woolnoth, who works in the insurance industry, told the same newspaper that “People are facing more pressures, fuses are short, there is tension in the workplace, and people are struggling to cope”.

He said that some people are also seeking moral guidance.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • Urban/City Life and Issues • * International News & Commentary • England / UK

When Leonard Williams attends the Easter service today at Shepherd's Heart Fellowship, an Anglican church for the homeless in Uptown, like Christians everywhere he will be celebrating the resurrection of Christ from the tomb.

But Mr. Williams, 53, and others who attend Shepherd's Heart also will be celebrating the new life that has been breathed into their church after a recent significant agreement between Pittsburgh's Episcopal and Anglican dioceses. A long-running conflict in the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh resulted in a 2008 split, with many of the churches leaving and creating the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh, linked to the theologically conservative Anglican Church in North America.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Poverty • Urban/City Life and Issues • * Theology • Pastoral Theology

Religious affiliation may be on the wane in America, a recent Pew study asserts, but you wouldn’t know it walking into the storefront near the corner of West 63rd Street and South Fairfield Avenue.

Inside a former bank in a neighborhood afflicted with gang violence, failed businesses and empty lots, a team of volunteers drawn by their religious faith is working to make life better for Chicago’s poorest residents.

The free medical clinic has expanded its hours; 20-something college graduates are clamoring to get into its internship program; rap stars swing by its alcohol-free poetry slams; and the budget has increased tenfold in the past decade.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • Urban/City Life and Issues • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Islam

It’s official: We can now call Justin Portal Welby the Archbishop of Canterbury. On Monday St. Paul’s Cathedral in London was the scene of a confirmation ritual begun in the fourth century. Welby is the 105th Archbishop of Canterbury.

When George L. Carey was confirmed in office in 1991 the venue was the crypt of St. Mary le Bow in Eastcheap in the City of London. Apart from members of the church court comprising a handful of bishops, the Dean of Canterbury plus lawyers, attending were immediate family and a handful of observers.

In 2002 Rowan Williams rang changes. He moved the event to St. Paul’s where the court was located at the high altar. To see the action clearly people sitting under the famous St. Paul’s dome would have needed opera glasses. To improve viewing this time round the proceedings were located further forward around the nave altar.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury • --Justin Welby • * Christian Life / Church Life • Church History • Liturgy, Music, Worship • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • Urban/City Life and Issues • * International News & Commentary • England / UK

...attentiveness has a complicated relationship with memory. While the brain can’t store all of the city’s potential information at the level of instant accessibility, we realize as we navigate neighbourhoods that we’ve held onto knowledge we didn’t realize we had – the location of a dry cleaner en route to work, the eerie feeling that a certain street is coming up on the right.

“There are arguments in cognitive literature that we encode sequence information virtually for free – that it’s almost automatic even if it’s of no immediate use to you,” says [University of Waterloo] Prof. [Colin] MacLeod.

In this sense, our brains are hungry for what a city provides. “Humans enjoy being engaged,” says Prof. Pratt. “We don’t like living in sparse environments.”

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Psychology • Science & Technology • Urban/City Life and Issues

For more than 160 years, St. Brigid’s Roman Catholic Church has borne witness as transformation after transformation has cascaded through the Lower East Side.

Yet conflict, drama and wrenching change occurred within its walls, too: In the church founded by Irish immigrants who fled the famine of the 1840s, the pews were in turn occupied by Poles, Ukrainians and Puerto Ricans. The church played a role in the clashes in nearby Tompkins Square Park in the late 1980s and in this century was nearly demolished itself before a mystery donor stepped forward with millions of dollars to rescue it.

On Sunday, worshipers, including descendants of some of the original Irish parishioners, gathered as Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan consecrated and dedicated the newly renovated building. After 12 years and nearly $15 million, the church, on Avenue B and Eighth Street, was once again a parish church.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • History • Urban/City Life and Issues • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic

The Greek philosopher Socrates famously said that "the unexamined life is not worth living." Taking this as a starting point, Eric Metaxas thought it would be valuable to create a forum that might encourage busy and successful professionals in thinking about the bigger questions in life. Thus Socrates In The City: Conversations on the Examined Life was born.

Every month or so Socrates In The City sponsors an event in which people can begin a dialogue on "Life, God, and other small topics" by hearing a notable thinker and writer such as Dr. Francis Collins, Sir John Polkinghorne, Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks, N.T. Wright, Os Guinness, Peter Kreeft, or George Weigel. Topics have included "Making Sense Out of Suffering," "The Concept of Evil after 9-11," and "Can a Scientist Pray?" No question is too big—in fact, the bigger the better. These events are meant to be both thought-provoking and entertaining, because nowhere is it written that finding answers to life's biggest questions shouldn't be exciting and even, perhaps, fun.

Check it out.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Philosophy • Religion & Culture • Urban/City Life and Issues • * Theology • Apologetics

Since 2001, [Iman] Bashir has traveled from Senegal to Harlem to spend nine months of every year teaching the Quran to members of New York’s Senegalese community. He said his students include some adults but are mostly children.

Muslim parents find that New York City life disrupts their children’s religious upbringing. For one, their children are required by law to attend schools five days a week starting at the age of 6. Almost all attend public school which don’t offer Quran study as an option. Also, since the adults are in over their heads with work, they have little time of their own to teach their children about their faith.

In sum, the Senegalese community has very little time for memorizing Quran verses.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • Urban/City Life and Issues • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

Allahpundit is obviously right about the ceremonial deism part. And I’ll be the first to admit that this strange American habit is bad for church and state alike.

But it’s absurd to suggest that the National Cathedral is only “nominally Episcopal.” It’s the seat of the Bishop of Washington, who leads a large diocese. It’s the seat of the presiding bishop as well. A whole lot of people worship there each week, at services that would be hard to mistake for blandly nondenominational....

...the construction of the cathedral was a joint effort between the Episcopalians and civil authorities. It’s an institution that has long had both a sectarian function and a secular one.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Parishes • * Christian Life / Church Life • Church History • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • History • Religion & Culture • Urban/City Life and Issues • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • * Theology

I look back on the events of last week through the prism of her Christian life. On Monday and Tuesday the House of Bishops struggled to find the thread which would lead us through the Synodical Labyrinth. A committee of sixty, seated “cabaret-style” around tables, able — as one bishop remarked — to speak about once in every hour and a half is perhaps not the ideal forum in which to make decisions. The synodical work has to be done efficiently, but there was a reiterated sense that the Church at the national level needs a profound culture change.

I am proud to be a part of a church which I believe to be massively credible locally in our Diocese, through the work of saints like Sister Capel and those who have been recognised by Stuart Lipton’s report on Tottenham for their contribution to creating community in the borough. There are so many examples and, at a national level, it seems to me that the story this Christmas should be that the Church has recognised the plight of the thousands of children who need foster care, and is moving heaven and earth to meet their need. This is not an idea plucked out of thin air. A host of Christians are already involved, and I am aware of three clergy families who have recently volunteered themselves for this kind of front-line service. Kris Kandia of the Evangelical Alliance is also working on a wider initiative. The pressures of fostering are very great, so the potential of Christian communities in supporting families who decide to foster could be significant.

What would it take for this to be the story of our Church this Christmas? We should have to look and act more like a campaigning charity like Save the Children and less like a department of State.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • CoE Bishops • * Christian Life / Church Life • Church Year / Liturgical Seasons • Advent • Christmas • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • Urban/City Life and Issues • * International News & Commentary • England / UK

Almost three years after an earthquake toppled the Roman Catholic and Episcopal cathedrals in Haiti's capital, visions for their resurrection have started to take shape as officials from both churches begin considering proposals to rebuild them.

A six-member panel led by the dean of the University of Miami's School of Architecture met this week in South Florida to choose the winner of a design competition that sought ideas for rebuilding the Notre Dame de l'Assomption Cathedral.

Meanwhile, Episcopal Church officials have selected a Virginia-based architectural firm to design a new Holy Trinity Cathedral.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • * Christian Life / Church Life • Liturgy, Music, Worship • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • Urban/City Life and Issues • * General Interest • Natural Disasters: Earthquakes, Tornadoes, Hurricanes, etc. • * International News & Commentary • Caribbean • Haiti • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic

A Muslim taxicab driver is suing the city of St. Louis, the Metropolitan Taxicab Commission and a private security company, saying he has been harassed and arrested because he insists on wearing religious garb.

Raja Awais Naeem, who works for Harris Cab and manages a shuttle service called A-1 Shuttle, says his religious beliefs require him to wear modest, loose-fitting clothing and a hat called a kufi. But that garb has run afoul of the taxicab commission’s dress code for cabbies, Naeem claims in the suit filed Thursday morning in St. Louis Circuit Court.

Naeem, originally from Pakistan but now a U.S. citizen living in St. Louis County, said he has been told he must adhere to the commission’s rules requiring a white shirt, black pants and no kufi. Baseball caps are allowed, as long as they have no logo other than the taxi certificate holder.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Religion & Culture • Urban/City Life and Issues • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Islam

Over the years [when asked this question about using marijuana], my default answer has been Romans 13:1–7, which basically says that believers must submit to the laws of government as long as there is no conflict with the higher laws of God in Scripture. This was a simple way to say “no” to recreational pot smoking. But now that recreational marijuana use is no longer illegal (according to my state laws, at least), the guiding question is now twofold:

Is using marijuana sinful, or is it wise?

Some things are neither illegal (forbidden by government in laws) nor sinful (forbidden by God in Scripture), but they are unwise. For example, eating a cereal box instead of the food it contains is not illegal or sinful—it’s just foolish. This explains why the Bible speaks not only of sin, but also folly, particularly in places such as the book of Proverbs. There are innumerable things that won’t get you arrested or brought under church discipline, but they are just foolish and unwise—the kinds of things people often refer to by saying, “That’s just stupid.”

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Ministry of the Ordained • * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Law & Legal Issues • Men • Urban/City Life and Issues • Young Adults • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Evangelicals • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology • Pastoral Theology

Ottawa’s homeless community has a brand new “living room” in the revamped basement of St. Alban’s Anglican Church at 454 King Edward Ave.

Centre 454, which provides a safe space for people in Ottawa who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless, started its life in that basement in 1976, but moved to 216 Murray St. in 2000.

Now, after 12 years and more than a million dollars in renovations, the centre — and all its services — will again be located in St. Alban’s Anglican Church, Ottawa’s oldest surviving church, which was built in 1867 and attended by Sir John A. Macdonald.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Anglican Church of Canada • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Pastoral Care • * Culture-Watch • Poverty • Urban/City Life and Issues

We’re more affluent than we were in the 1950s (if you don’t think so, try doing without your air conditioning, microwaves, smartphones, and Internet connections). And we have used this affluence to seal ourselves off in the America of our choosing while trying to ignore the other America.

We tend to choose the America that is culturally congenial. Most people in the San Francisco Bay area wouldn’t consider living in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, even for much better money. Most metroplexers would never relocate to the Bay Area....

One America tends to be traditionally religious, personally charitable, appreciative of entrepreneurs, and suspicious of government. The other tends to be secular or only mildly religious, less charitable, skeptical of business, and supportive of government as an instrument to advance liberal causes.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Psychology • Religion & Culture • Rural/Town Life • Sociology • Urban/City Life and Issues • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • US Presidential Election 2012

Caught this over the weekend, really worth the time. If you do not know the story, you need to--KSH.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • Children • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Education • History • Marriage & Family • Men • Teens / Youth • Urban/City Life and Issues • Violence

Speaking after a bus tour of the city's red zone, the Archbishop says it was important for him to see the remains of the Christ Church Cathedral.

"It's different when you see a great building, historic building, very much loved, in ruins like that. You can read stuff on a page, you can even see pictures, (but) it does feel very different...."

"The only thing I've seen like this really is when I was in Beirut a few years ago. But somebody was saying to me just now, 'there are no bomb craters, there's no enemy. You can't hate somebody out there, it's just something that's happened'. And in some ways that's even harder to come to terms with I think."

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury • Anglican Provinces • Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia • * Christian Life / Church Life • Church History • Liturgy, Music, Worship • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • Urban/City Life and Issues • * General Interest • Natural Disasters: Earthquakes, Tornadoes, Hurricanes, etc. • * International News & Commentary • Australia / NZ

As we’ve all heard by now, there is a big storm brewing on the East Coast. Looking at the latest weather models, that may be a bit of an understatement.

The National Weather Service has labelled the hybrid gyre that may result from the merging of Hurricane Sandy and a Midwest snowstorm a “Frankenstorm.” When it hits, the storm could have truly scary implications befitting the Halloween holiday it will coincide with....

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Urban/City Life and Issues • * General Interest • Natural Disasters: Earthquakes, Tornadoes, Hurricanes, etc.

A British-born, life-long Anglican, [Leslie] Buck came to St. Paul’s in 1993 when he and his wife moved here from Ottawa.

“We do things now that would have appalled people 50 years ago,” says Buck citing the ordination of women and same-sex marriage. He also cites shifts in the teaching.

“There was a time when the message was primarily keep your nose clean and don’t worry too much about what you do at work the rest of the week. Nowadays more is made of the social gospel, issues like homelessness and poverty. Which is not to say that one’s individual relationship with God or one’s behavior is not an issue, but the church is also responding to the world.”

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Anglican Church of Canada • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Spirituality/Prayer • * Culture-Watch • Urban/City Life and Issues • * Theology

DE SAM LAZARO: Over the years, Father Cullens’s People’s Recovery, Empowerment and Development—or PREDA Foundation—has sheltered and rehabilitated thousands of young women rescued from the sex trade.

[FATHER SHAY] CULLEN: Many of the girls are underage and young and available. On these clubs and bars, this is only the outer, the more legitimate looking trafficking of human beings, no, but the trafficking of minors, younger girls is secret, and it operates on a different system. It’s all done by cell phone, without any direct contact between the supplier, the trafficker, and the customer. They have go-betweens.

DE SAM LAZARO: Their stories have common threads: physical or sexual abuse in childhood and families in various forms of dysfunction and separation. In all cases, abject poverty underlies their child labor and prostitution....

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When Bishop-elect Dorsey McConnell was chosen to lead an Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh still deeply wounded from a 2008 schism, he prepared to face anger, resentment and grief. He wasn't prepared for the drivers.

"I had to get used to driving here because people are so polite," said the bishop-elect, who hails from Boston. "I've been unnerved by the kindness of people in traffic. They let you turn left in front of them. I love this city."

The question is whether the diocese will turn left. Pittsburgh has been among the most theologically conservative dioceses in an increasingly liberal denomination. That culminated in a 2008 split in which its last tenured bishop led a majority of parishes and clergy out of the Episcopal Church in a dispute over biblical theology and gay ordination. But some conservatives believed schism was wrong and remain in the Episcopal diocese, which is still fairly conservative by Episcopal standards. It has 9,000 members in 33 parishes.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • TEC Conflicts • TEC Conflicts: Pittsburgh • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Urban/City Life and Issues

The FBI on Wednesday arrested a Bangladeshi man in a sting operation on charges he attempted to blow up the New York Federal Reserve Bank with what he believed was a 1,000-pound (450-kg) bomb, federal authorities said.

Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis, 21, faces charges of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction and attempting to provide material support to al Qaeda, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement. If convicted, he faces life in prison.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Urban/City Life and Issues • Violence • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Economy • The U.S. Government • Federal Reserve • Terrorism

Two factions that divided the Episcopal church in Pittsburgh four years ago as part of a national schism have agreed to work together to support a ministry for homeless veterans and others in need.

An accord between the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh and the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh clears the way for Shepherd’s Heart Fellowship to take title to all property at its Uptown location and to seek a more favorable financing of its debt.

The Episcopal Diocese considers the ministry of paramount importance, spokesman Rich Creehan said.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • TEC Conflicts • TEC Conflicts: Pittsburgh • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Poverty • Urban/City Life and Issues • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military

We do not wish to distress you Only to appeal to you.

Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

We stand here as Occupiers, as women, Queers, disabled, grandmas, young, old, as women of all faiths and none in solidarity with all other groups who are marginalised by economic injustice.

Even when times are good women, along with our children, are usually those who suffer the most. In times of economic crisis our inequality is amplified but we refuse to be victims.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Religion & Culture • Urban/City Life and Issues • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • Stock Market • The Banking System/Sector • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Four women who chained themselves to the pulpit of St Paul's cathedral cut through the bolts after six hours on the advice of police, avoiding arrest...

he women wrapped chains around their waists after a prayer that Church officials had invited them to give. One, Josie Reid, chained herself to her wheelchair.

The action came on the anniversary of the Occupy protest last year when protesters took over the square outside.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Religion & Culture • Urban/City Life and Issues • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • Stock Market • The Banking System/Sector • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

(Please note you may find more about this ministry here and there--KSH).

The agreement builds on a long-standing support of the Shepherd’s Heart ministry by many parishes of the Episcopal Diocese, who, along with individual parishioners, regularly donate, prepare and serve meals to the Shepherd’s Heart congregation. This has continued in spite of differences over whether Shepherd’s Heart Fellowship validly withdrew from the Episcopal Church in October 2008 and is now part of the Anglican Church in North America. The agreement sets this issue aside in favor of mutually serving the homeless, the poor, and the addicted. Both parties recognize the new relationship between the Episcopal Diocese and Shepherd’s Heart Fellowship is not of an ecclesiastical nature, such as would normally exist between a diocese and a parish, but one of cooperation and collaboration in a specialized ministry. Because of this unique use of the Shepherd’s Heart property, the parties have agreed that this agreement should not be interpreted as a model for resolving other property disputes.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Conflicts • TEC Conflicts: Pittsburgh • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Poverty • Urban/City Life and Issues • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Economy • Housing/Real Estate Market

JUDY VALENTE, correspondent: Community activist Nat Turner is surveying a site people rarely see in the battered Ninth Ward of New Orleans. His community garden provides fruits and vegetables to people hard pressed to find fresh produce in these parts.

[NAT] TURNER: Anybody in the neighborhood can come by and some time this morning somebody’s going to stop by and say, “You got any okra? You got any Creole tomatoes? You got some bell peppers? You got whatever?” And some people just come by the garden and if they want to pick it themselves, they can pick it themselves.

VALENTE: New Orleans’ Ninth Ward is what the U.S. Department of Agriculture calls a “food desert.” Food deserts are communities with little or no access to healthy food. For the urban poor, here and elsewhere, grocery shopping is often limited to places like this: higher-priced local convenience stores that are short on fresh healthy food and long on snacks and liquor. The problem extends well beyond New Orleans.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Dieting/Food/Nutrition • Poverty • Religion & Culture • Urban/City Life and Issues

As all children and many adults know, there’s something deeply enticing about playing on the road.

But a growing number of international cities have leveraged the allure of that normally prohibited behaviour to create hugely popular festivals that allow tens of thousands of residents to literally take to the streets with their bikes, blades, boards, wheelchairs and strollers.

During a trip last winter to Guadalajara, Mexico, which played host to the 2011 PanAm Games, downtown councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam found herself swept up in one such event – the Via RecreActiva – that involves closing more than 60 kilometres of roads to vehicular traffic on Sunday mornings, when traffic in the city of 4.3 million is light.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Travel • Urban/City Life and Issues • * International News & Commentary • Canada

It's rare to find a pastor who is attuned to how "place" informs human experience and community. But a discerning pastor can know more about this than most city planners, if they are attentive to the particular shape of the lives of their congregants and their community. Enter Eric O. Jacobsen (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary), a pastor of 14 years, the last 5 as senior pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Tacoma. "I am not a trained architect or urban planner, but an ordinary pastor who has always lived within walking distance of my church," he says.

Jacobsen's 2003 "break-out" book, Sidewalks in the Kingdom (Brazos Press), used the tenets of New Urbanism to help Christians recognize the value of local churches in local neighborhoods. Jacobsen calls his newest book, The Space Between: A Christian Engagement with the Built Environment (Baker Academic), a "more mature reflection" on the subject.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • Rural/Town Life • Urban/City Life and Issues • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Housing/Real Estate Market • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology • Pastoral Theology

The cavernous space of the cathedral – the largest in the UK – was starting to return to its regular level of daily activity. Instead of the world’s media, there were hordes of foreign tourists pointing cameras and being led around in organised groups.

So does Dr Wilcox think he is prepared for the unique demands, pressures and high visibility of his new role after the comparatively relaxed surroundings of his previous appointment in the Staffordshire market town of Lichfield?

He said: “Although I’ve spent the past six years on the staff of Lichfield Cathedral, I’ve also been in the urban parishes of Gateshead, Walsall and Teesside. Liverpool is much more the kind of place I’ve been used to living in....

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Ministry of the Ordained • * Culture-Watch • Urban/City Life and Issues

I come this morning very grateful for the chance to promote an initiative I consider crucial and promising for this city and state I am now proud to call my earthly home;

I come with deep admiration for the prophetic leadership of Chief Judge Lippman, encouraged by other esteemed jurists like Judge Gail Prudenti and Mr. Thomas More; as well as our own Catholic Lawyers Guild.

I come, hardly as a legal expert or politician…but only as a pastor, to heartily support an endeavor that I’m convinced will bring justice to people who, simply put, have nowhere else to go but to the courts, which enflesh the assurance of this great country that there is, indeed, “equal protection under the law.”

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Poverty • Religion & Culture • Urban/City Life and Issues • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • City Government • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic

The atmosphere on Capitol Hill's brick sidewalks stays frosty year round as the power-walking professionals rush along in suits of wool-blend armor, their earphones in place, smartphones loaded and eyes focused dead ahead.

But things change at the corner of Second Street and Massachusetts Avenue NE. That's where streams of pedestrians converge near Union Station, U.S. Senate office buildings, the Federal Judiciary Center, the Heritage Foundation and other buildings packed with prestige and power.

For the past decade, this was where the late Peter Bis kept his office, sitting on a blue plastic crate under an oak tree, sharing cigarettes, coffee and conspiracy theories with whoever passed by, greeting most of them by name. He was the friendly homeless man with his own website, business cards and a life story that — even when warped by schizophrenia — touched thousands.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Poverty • Religion & Culture • Urban/City Life and Issues • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General

Watch it all (just over one minute).

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Men • Movies & Television • Sports • Urban/City Life and Issues

They walked with heads held high, harboring dreams imagined in black and gold, marching to the peculiar orders of the times.

A movement was beginning. That day, 50,000 people passed through the doors of Three Rivers Stadium, the massive concrete structure looming just west of the infamous Bridge to Nowhere, this time hoping that the Steelers, after 40 irrelevant seasons, were finally taking them somewhere worth going.

Each person in the stadium had his or her own dramas outside of it. There was the war that seemingly would not end, the intensifying of racial tensions across the city and, for those who were paying close enough attention, the fear that those hulking mills that lined the rivers were not going to be needed forever. But, the Steelers were host to the Oakland Raiders in the first round of the NFL playoffs, and such pressing matters could be thrust to the back burner for the good of Pittsburgh.

An absolute must read article for oh-so-many reasons, but perhaps above all for what it teaches about American history. Take the time to peruse it all--KSH.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • History • Marriage & Family • Men • Psychology • Race/Race Relations • Sports • Urban/City Life and Issues • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market

A federal judge has temporarily blocked enforcement of a New Orleans law recently used to arrest Christian evangelists preaching on Bourbon Street during Southern Decadence, the annual celebration of gay culture in the French Quarter. Part of the city's recently enacted "aggressive solicitation" ordinance orders people not to "loiter or congregate on Bourbon Street for the purpose of disseminating any social, political or religious message between the hours of sunset and sunrise."

"That's no longer in effect," ACLU lawyer Justin Harrison said.

Harrison sought a temporary restraining order from U.S. District Judge Eldon Fallon.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Religion & Culture • Urban/City Life and Issues

Columbia leaders are trying to prepare the Midlands for an economy based on a leaner federal government and more white-collar jobs in the private sector.

“Everyone is rather bullish on the economy here in the Midlands, but I think nationally we’re seeing people come out of this Great Recession and focus on getting people back to work,” Mayor Steve Benjamin said. “We are aggressively seeking to attract more corporate headquarters, more white-collar jobs and make sure people are prepared for these jobs in the new economy.”

Columbia is projected to lose 16 percent of its federal jobs over the next 10 years as the overextended federal government trims down, according to a new report from IHS Global Insight, prepared for the U.S. Conference of Mayors, which is holding a meeting on workforce skills this week in Dallas.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Urban/City Life and Issues • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • The U.S. Government • * South Carolina

The bishop who chaired the panel responsible for exposing the devastating truth about the Hillsborough disaster has called for a national debate to establish accountability and to allow those in positions of authority to win back trust.

As Liverpool play a highly-charged game at Anfield against Manchester United this weekend, the Bishop of Liverpool, the Right Rev James Jones, said that society was at a “crossroads”. His report, published last week, finally disclosed the extent of the cover-ups and lies told as authorities attempted to deflect blame for the 96 deaths.

He called for discussion that would help to restore accountability and trust to the police and other authorities. “It is timely for us to reconsider how people in positions of power, whoever they may be, behave in a transparent and accountable manner because to do so will then win back the trust which is so vulnerable at the moment in our society,” said the Bishop....

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • CoE Bishops • * Culture-Watch • History • Law & Legal Issues • Police/Fire • Urban/City Life and Issues • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • Stock Market • The Banking System/Sector • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

At Brooklyn's Old First Reformed Church, one of New York City's oldest churches, the sky is falling.

Last year, on the eve of a Jewish high-holiday service—the church has in the past provided a temporary home to nearby Congregation Beth Elohim—a chunk of plaster broke off from the church's ornate ceiling and tumbled to the pews.

A parishioner called the Rev. Daniel Meeter, who was having dinner in the neighborhood, and he rushed to the scene. Services were canceled, and after more plaster shook loose the following day from the area around the church's massive, 60-foot-high chandelier, the church closed.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Stewardship • * Culture-Watch • History • Religion & Culture • Urban/City Life and Issues • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology • Pastoral Theology

Jay Wortham found it under the cabinet below the kitchen sink after his mother died in August — a blue bottle of insect repellent.

His mother, Margorie Wortham, 91, died of West Nile virus, the mosquito-borne illness that has spread across this city and other parts of the country, killing 118 people and sickening nearly 3,000 others nationwide.

Mr. Wortham believes that his mother was bitten by an infected mosquito one hot day in July while she sat on an old wooden bench under a pecan tree in her backyard. Though she had often used the bug repellent, she was not wearing any that day.

Here in Dallas County, the West Nile outbreak’s hardest-hit county in the United States, a few missed pumps of bug spray can haunt the relatives of those who die from the virus.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • Urban/City Life and Issues

Over 200 people from the UK’s leading businesses met in London this morning to search for a new blueprint for doing better business in Great Britain. They were seeking to unite corporate purpose with personal values so that businesses better serve society. The conference explored the themes of the business need for change, the inevitability of a conflict between profit maximisation and developing common good, and the distinctive practical contribution of a faith based ethical framework to personal and corporate responsibility.

The conference was facilitated by the Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols.

“I think one of the most vivid images that we had this morning was that a duty of business is to contribute to the adhesiveness of a society – to its ‘glue’ is the phrase that we used – because if a society doesn’t have some glue, then it’s bad for business,” Archbishop Nichols said. “Because it’s difficult to understand that society. It’s difficult to get to appreciate what its needs are and what therefore what business can creatively respond to.”

Listen to it all (a little over 9 minutes).

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • Urban/City Life and Issues • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • Stock Market • The Banking System/Sector • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

It is important that you take the time to listen to this--it starts 36 minutes and 20 seconds in (click on the arrow above the "45 mins" to the left of the picture in the box).

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • CoE Bishops • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • History • Law & Legal Issues • Police/Fire • Sports • Urban/City Life and Issues • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Christians in Nigeria are coming under siege as terrorist group Boko Haram attacks churches to try to drive out Christians and destabilise the country. The Archbishop of Jos, the Most Rev Dr Benjamin Kwashi, describes the situation in Jos, Plateau State, to Release's Andrew Boyd.

Listen to it all (from earlier this month, but still relevant and useful for our awareness and prayers--KSH)..

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of Nigeria • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Police/Fire • Religion & Culture • Urban/City Life and Issues • Violence • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • Terrorism • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Islam • Muslim-Christian relations

The comedian Stephen Colbert and Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York bantered onstage Friday night before 3,000 cheering, stomping, chanting students at Fordham University, in what might have been the most successful Roman Catholic youth evangelization event since Pope John Paul II last appeared at World Youth Day.

The evening was billed as an opportunity to hear two Catholic celebrities discuss how joy and humor infuse their spiritual lives. They both delivered, with surprises and zingers that began the moment the two walked onstage. Mr. Colbert went to shake Cardinal Dolan’s hand, but the cardinal took Mr. Colbert’s hand and kissed it — a disarming role reversal for a big prelate with a big job and a big ring.

Cardinal Dolan was introduced as a man who might one day be elected pope, to which he said, “If I am elected pope, which is probably the greatest gag all evening, I’ll be Stephen III.”

The event would not have happened without its moderator, the Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest and prolific author who has made it his mission to remind Catholics that there is no contradiction between faithful and funny. His latest book is “Between Heaven and Mirth: Why Joy, Humor and Laughter Are at the Heart of the Spiritual Life.”

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Education • Religion & Culture • Urban/City Life and Issues • Young Adults • * General Interest • Humor / Trivia • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic

It was a beautiful day, that’s what everyone remembers. So clear, so crisp, so bright. It sparkled as I walked my 14-year-old son out to go to the subway that would take him to his new high school, in Brooklyn. He was now a commuter: a walk to the 86th Street subway station and then the 4 or 5 train downtown near the towers and over the river. That was about 7:30 in the morning. It was beautiful at noon when I went to mass at St. Thomas More church on 89th Street. And between those two events, his departure and the mass, the world had changed, changed utterly. After mass, at the rise of 86th Street, the day was so clear you could see all the way downtown to the towering debris cloud.

But it was beautiful. That was one of the heartbreaking elements....

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • History • Marriage & Family • Teens / Youth • Urban/City Life and Issues • * Economics, Politics • Terrorism

The host city for the Democratic National Convention is not a particularly political place. Charlotte, N.C., is known for three things: banking, NASCAR and religion.

And when it comes to religion, Billy Graham’s spirit looms large....

“Religion still drives the town, though not as much as it used to,” said Ken Garfield, former religion editor of The Charlotte Observer and now communications director for the city's Myers Park United Methodist Church.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • Urban/City Life and Issues • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • Office of the President

[DEBORAH] POTTER: Twenty million dollars to repair a building is a lot of money. Is it worth it? Is there a real value to having cathedrals in the 21st century?

[FRANK] WADE: Cathedrals are part of where our culture restores its spiritual values and its sense of mystery. That’s really important. We need places like that, and the Washington National Cathedral plays that role in a peculiar way, in a particular way on the national scene—a great church for national purposes. So I think it’s very, very important. We would lose a great deal if we had no place to turn at key moments in our life when we want to remember God, remember mystery in the larger context of life.

POTTER: The Cathedral has always been a place where dialogue happens, and most recently, you’ve opened up the pages of your magazine to a dialogue, or at least a Q and A with the two presidential candidates about their faith. Why was that important?

WADE: It’s important because there’s no—while we separate church and state, there is no separation of faith and state. Faith is how you figure out life. It’s how you set priorities. The faith of our leaders is a very, very important part of the conversation. It’s how they will approach their job. So it’s a legitimate part of what goes on.

Read or watch it all and please note the link to the Cathedral Age issue which asks each of the parties' prospective presidential nominees questions about their faith.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Parishes • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Ministry of the Ordained • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • Urban/City Life and Issues • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.