Roger Federer was all class as he made history by becoming the first man to reach seven consecutive Wimbledon finals.

The five-times champion produced some immaculate tennis against a brave but outclassed Tommy Haas to win 7-6 (7/3) 7-5 6-3 and maintain his 100% record in Wimbledon semi-finals.

I got a chance to watch this morning while hacking away at some projects--Federer just played superbly. Read it all--KSH.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Sports

A senior Iranian cleric said today that several employees of the British Embassy in Tehran arrested in recent days would be put on trial for unspecified charges of acting against Iran's national security, potentially escalating a confrontation with the West over last month's disputed presidential election.

Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, head of the conservative Guardian Council, said in a Friday prayer sermon that the employees, all of them Iranian nationals, "will definitely be tried" for taking part or promoting weeks of unrest surrounding the June 12 election, which was marred by opposition allegations of massive vote-rigging.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Foreign Relations • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • Middle East • Iran

Unsurprisingly, it is where there is a continuing practice of spirituality that the church has flourished. Where there has been prayer, fasting, pilgrimage, meditation, social responsibility and almsgiving the Church of England has thrived. It has also thrived where there has been disciplined, holy, fearless leadership. To see the marks of the Church's history and to hear the stories has been to encounter this deep vein of spirituality and to feel again the influence of her sainted leaders. Where this rich seam is refound, as on Iona and in Mother Julian's cell, the 21st Century church has risen, seemingly invincible, from the ashes. It is this, the great treasure of our church, that I have glimpsed, and which I know to be the only hope of my own diocese and of the Anglican Church of Aotearoa/New Zealand.

I was raised a Methodist and chose to be an Anglican. After this month in England, I choose still to be an Anglican, but I know that much of what occupies our church and seems so important in our councils is froth and bubble: the detritus rising to the surface from the ongoing struggle with our wider culture. I choose to be an Anglican, but know that the only way for my own faith and my own parish to be viable is if I try to dive deeper and find the cool streams beneath. This seeking the depths must be what forms my ministry in this, the last decade of my life as a stipended Anglican priest. Which brings me to reflect on the third thread of my own journey: that inward one of my own soul.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia • Church of England (CoE) • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Spirituality/Prayer

U.S. missile defenses are prepared to try to knock down the last stage of a Taepodong-2 missile that North Korea is expected soon to launch if sensors detect the weapon threatens U.S. territory, the commander of the U.S. Northern Command told The Washington Times.

"The nation has a very, very credible ballistic-missile defense capability. Our ground-based interceptors in Alaska and California, I'm very comfortable, give me a capability that if we really are threatened by a long-range ICBM that I've got high confidence that I could interdict that flight before it caused huge damage to any U.S. territory," said Air Force Gen. Victor E. "Gene" Renuart, Northcom commander.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • * International News & Commentary • Asia • North Korea

Job losses accelerated more quickly than expected last month and the unemployment rate rose to 9.5%, casting doubt on prospects for the U.S. economy to soon rebound.

U.S. employment fell by a seasonally adjusted 467,000 jobs in June, after declining by 322,000 the month before, the Labor Department said Thursday. The report is at odds with such signs of recent economic improvement as growing home sales and increased business investment.

"I think we're past the period of free fall in the economy but it would be premature to say that we've reached the bottom, or might, within the next couple of months," said Jeffrey Frankel, an economics professor at Harvard University. "I'm expecting the recovery to be a slow one."

This one is splashed across the front page of this morning's Wall Street Journal. Read it all.

Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007--

The small group of dissidents called a congregational meeting. They went to court to try to stop the installation of Mr. Braxton in April. The truth is that they did not get much traction until they mentioned to the Daily News the $600,000 compensation package -- which included salary, a housing allowance, retirement benefits and tuition for Mr. Braxton's 4-year-old daughter. It became front-page news with Mr. Braxton identified as the "600K Pastor."

From then on, there was no putting the wafer back in the sacristy. Everyone picked up the story. Anonymous emails circulated around the congregation attacking the pastor and his style. Mr. Braxton told me that he realized he had become the embodiment of a conflict within the church and had to leave so that healing could take place.

Jean Schmidt, the chairwoman of the church council and a supporter of Mr. Braxton, expressed the hope that Riverside will learn a lesson from this period of adversity. This is a time, she said, for "deep soul-searching" that will ultimately "allow us to move forward as a stronger and more unified congregation."

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Ministry of the Ordained

Later that day, in a glorious stroke of irony, the newspaper engaged in a little peeping and trespassing of its own, splaying the South Carolina governor's personal emails across the Internet, and, in the process, making perpetrators out of us all.

We spied on Mr. Sanford (a public figure) and his paramour (not), just as we peered in the ambulance as Michael Jackson died, just as we thumbed through his autopsy records, just as we look up our neighbors' home prices on Zillow.

Forget swine flu; we have a Peeping Tom pandemic.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Media • Sexuality

In any crisis, people tend to panic and forget basic facts. This meltdown is no exception. First and foremost, marital breakdown is not rampant across the land. It is concentrated among low-income and black couples. Americans seem to have a lot of trouble grasping this fact, probably because so much public space is taken up by politicians, celebrities and journalists with marriages on the skids. But in actuality, the divorce rate for college-educated women has been declining since 1980. Out-of-wedlock childbearing among the educated class remains rare. The bottom line is that higher-income, college-educated couples are far more likely to get married and stay married than their less-educated and lower-income peers. We shouldn't go so far as to call Ms. Loh and Mr. Sanford, if he decides to return to the heart he left in Buenos Aires, outliers. But they do nothing to clarify a key problem facing the country, which remains the apartheid state of marriage.

The seemingly reasonable notion that marriage is crashing because we're likely to live till 80 also doesn't hold up. The typical divorce is not of a midlife couple bored with finishing each other's sentences; it's of a twosome who have just written the last thank-you note for wedding gifts. More than one-fifth of marriages break up within five years. The median age at first divorce is 30.5 for males and 29 for females. The risk of break-up goes up after one year of marriage and peaks at 4½ years. That's right. A lot of Americans barely wait till the paint is dry in the new family room before setting out for more promising territory.

Read it all.

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

The Episcopal Church's Executive Council has asked General Convention deputations and their bishops to study and comment on the latest draft of a proposed Anglican covenant.

In May, the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) postponed an expected request that the Anglican Communion's 38 provinces consider adopting the Ridley Cambridge draft. The council said instead that it wanted the draft's Section 4, which contains a dispute-resolution process, to get more scrutiny and possibly be revised.

The Archbishop of Canterbury appointed a small working group to do that work. The members, all of whom served on the original Covenant Design Group, have solicited provincial responses by November 13, 2009. The working group will meet November 20-21 in London and report to the Standing Committee meeting December 15-18. The Standing Committee is a group of elected representatives of the ACC and the Primates Meeting.

Read it all.

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

(ACNS) The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Secretary General of the Anglican Communion have announced the membership of an important new commission, following extensive consultation with the Provinces of the Communion around the world. The Chair is the Most Revd Bernard Ntahoturi, Primate of the Anglican Church of Burundi.

IASCUFO will oversee the ecumenical life of the Anglican Communion, and will:

* promote the deepening of Communion between the Anglican Communion and other Christian Churches and traditions;
* advise the Provinces, the Primates, the Anglican Consultative Council, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, on all questions of ecumenical engagement, as well as on questions of Anglican Faith and Order;
* review developments in the areas of Faith, Order and Unity in the Anglican Communion and among ecumenical partners, and give advice upon them to the Churches of the Anglican Communion and to the Instruments of Communion;
* assist any Province with the assessment of new proposals in the areas of Unity, Faith and Order as requested.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • - Anglican: Primary Source • -- Reports & Communiques • Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams • * Theology • Ecclesiology

Lay People at the General Con­vention of the Episcopal Church in the United States will have some hard questions for the Archbishop of Canterbury when he visits, says the president of the House of Depu­ties, Bonnie Anderson.

The triennial convention meets next week in Anaheim, California. Eyes from all around the Anglican Communion will be on its business, notably whether it will vote to re­peal Resolution BO33, which in 2006 urged a halt to ordaining any more gay bishops for the time being.

To repeal it would require the consent of both the House of Bishops and the House of Deputies. Bishops have no collective authority to exercise power in the Church, where laity and clergy have an equal voice, and the former have historically exercised strong influ­ence. They elect bishops in a demo­cratic operation — something that is out of the experience of many pro­v-inces in the Anglican Communion, Mrs Anderson says.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • General Convention 2009 • House of Deputies President Bonnie Anderson

Over 900 Anglicans have already registered for ‘Be Faithful’. They will consider the situation of the global Communion, and express their solidarity and support for Anglicans under pressure and persecution, both in North America and in the Sudan. They will address challenges to maintaining biblically faithful witness and ministry in the Church of England today.

The FCA is not another organization. It is not seeking to create another church. It is a spiritual movement and fellowship for renewal, reformation and mission – uniquely bringing together those whose key shaping and commitment, but not exclusive identity, has been through the Anglo-Catholic, conservative evangelical, and charismatic expressions of Anglicanism.

The FCA movement can do this because it is defined by its centre in the Christian faith as currently embraced in the Jerusalem Declaration and Statement. Vinay Samuel, a speaker on July 6 writes: “Gafcon is defined by its centre and not by any boundaries. It is a fellowship of people who affirm the centre of orthodox faith as expressed in the Jerusalem Statement. Some who are uncertain whether they are in or out might be finding boundaries which were never intended by those who have taken the initiative to launch this fellowship.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Evangelicals

Just in time for the mad rush of travelers headed out for the 4th of July weekend, a computer problem made it so United Airlines flights could not leave O'Hare International Airport for much of Thursday morning.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Travel

A single mega-colony of ants has colonised much of the world, scientists have discovered.

Argentine ants living in vast numbers across Europe, the US and Japan belong to the same inter-related colony, and will refuse to fight one another.

The colony may be the largest of its type ever known for any insect species, and could rival humans in the scale of its world domination.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Science & Technology • * General Interest • Animals

If, as expected, 363,000 jobs were eliminated last month, it will mean 131.8 million people are working in the U.S.--the same as May of 2000. If another million jobs disappear by the end of the year--likely, without unexpected improvement--an entire decade of employment gains will have been wiped out. In January of 2000, there were 130.8 million jobs in the country. "It's not that those jobs weren't needed. The labor force has grown by nearly 13 million people," says Heidi Shierholz, an economist for the Economic Policy Institute.

--Forbes Magazine.

Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007--

In January, the committee of New York lawyers that reviews applications for admission to the bar interviewed Mr. Bowman, studied his history and the debt he had amassed, and called his persistence remarkable. It recommended his approval.

But a group of five state appellate judges decided this spring that his student loans were too big and his efforts to repay them too meager for him to be a lawyer.

“Applicant has not made any substantial payments on the loans,” the judges wrote in a terse decision and an unusual rejection of the committee’s recommendation. “Applicant has not presently established the character and general fitness requisite for an attorney and counselor-at-law.”

Read it all from the front page of today's New York Times. 400,000 in loans--symbolic of this recent era, alas.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Personal Finance • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007--

Gov. Mark Sanford's latest expanded explanation about his love life has increased calls for his resignation among the Legislature and is being followed up with an investigation to determine if any state funds were misspent.

It also offered up more embarrassment to South Carolinians who were just getting over the shock of his rambling, emotional press conference of last week. The governor related the latest chapter of his personal soap opera to an Associated Press reporter during a three-hour interview.

One of his most reasonable comments in the published account was the observation that he is dealing with his "own political funeral." The governor appears to be under some inner compulsion to get to the graveyard in a hurry.

Read it all.

Filed under: * South Carolina

In concrete terms, the difference between the situation that the Obama advisers predicted and the one that has come to pass is about 2.5 million jobs. It’s as if every worker in the city of Los Angeles received an unexpected layoff notice.

Read it carefully and read it all.

Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Housing Market • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • Personal Finance • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • The Fiscal Stimulus Package of 2009 • The U.S. Government • Federal Reserve • Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner • Politics in General • Office of the President • President Barack Obama

Because of this high failure rate, DOC's budget has crept up to $2 billion as Florida's prison population has approached 100,000. Ironically, though, we now know — and can quantify — key factors that reduce recidivism. Among them:

•A belief in something outside of themselves, such as God. Prisoners, like other humans, tend to behave differently in the face of the transcendent.

•Substance-abuse treatment. For many offenders, substance abuse has been a major problem. Treatment substantially reduces recidivism.

•Education. DOC data show a 4 percent reduction in recidivism for each grade-level increase in reading skills. Literacy should be required for release.

•Age. It's statistically odd but true that turning 28 makes a difference. Marriage also helps.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Prison/Prison Ministry

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009 • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Conflicts • TEC Conflicts: San Joaquin

"We're trying to be servants," Katherine Martin, a cleric from Auburn, Ala., told me. "I'm not being welcomed to consecrate [Communion] in Quincy [Illinois] or Fort Worth [Texas]," which are two dioceses that don't ordain women, "but both the bishops of those dioceses couldn't be more kind."

I wondered if the men would take a similar position, agreeing to be "servants" while limitations were placed on them.

"I'd be lying if I'd say I wasn't disappointed," said Canon Mary Hayes of the Pittsburgh Diocese. "I've been a priest 25 years. I'm delighted to be in a body of people who have different views. It's not about getting my way."

Read the whole thing.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009 • * Culture-Watch • Women

Although the decision has been appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, Anglican leaders in Petaluma decided to settle rather than engage in a costly legal battle, said their lawyer, the Rev. Lu T. Nguyen.

“My clients felt as though it just wasn’t worth the long-term fight,” Nguyen said. “This is a church. It’s purpose is not material gain but spiritual matters.”

Petaluma Episcopalians appeared happy Wednesday to have a place of their own.

After a majority of the congregation voted to split from the Episcopal Church in December 2006, the remaining Episcopal members re-formed under the Rev. Norman Cram, and held services first in a parishioner’s living room and later at Elim Lutheran Church.

The congregation now has about 50 members.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Conflicts • TEC Conflicts: San Joaquin • TEC Departing Parishes • TEC Parishes

The Rt. Rev. Robert .O. Miller, Ninth Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Alabama, died Monday evening June 30, 2009, at Trinity Medical Center in Birmingham. Bishop Miller served as spiritual head of the more than 30,000 member diocese for almost a decade from 1989 until his retirement in 1998. His ordained ministry spanned almost half a century.

"Bishop Miller was a much beloved bishop in our diocese. He was a devoted pastor to many, a champion of the church's ministry among the poor and persons in special need, and a leader in expanding the ministry of the Episcopal Church in Alabama. He will be greatly missed," said the Rt. Rev. Henry N. Parsley Jr., Bishop of the Diocese of Alabama.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals

The 3,600-square-foot church, which faces Lyndon Lane across from Westport Village Shopping Center, is also intended to serve people in the immediate neighborhood. About 400 people were invited to the consecration service, which also was open to the public.

"Let the doors be opened," the Rev. Edwin F. Gulick Jr., Episcopal bishop of the Diocese of Kentucky intoned at the service, before leading a procession into the church sanctuary. The congregation sang "The Church's One Foundation."

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry

He discusses the Obama administration's fiscal policy, the U.S. government's debt and proposed changes to the financial regulatory system.

I happened to catch this yesterday morning. Note especially the concern about the mounting national debt and the mention of the historical parallels with the 1930's (he sees significant discontinuities there). Watch it all (a little over 10 1/2 minutes).

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Credit Markets • The U.S. Government • Federal Reserve • The National Deficit • Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner • Politics in General • Office of the President • President Barack Obama

The Vatican is quietly conducting two sweeping investigations of American nuns, a development that has startled and dismayed nuns who fear they are the targets of a doctrinal inquisition.

Nuns were the often-unsung workers who helped build the Roman Catholic Church in this country, planting schools and hospitals and keeping parishes humming. But for the last three decades, their numbers have been declining — to 60,000 today from 180,000 in 1965.

While some nuns say they are grateful that the Vatican is finally paying attention to their dwindling communities, many fear that the real motivation is to reel in American nuns who have reinterpreted their calling for the modern world.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Spirituality/Prayer • * Culture-Watch • Women • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • Pope Benedict XVI

Almost 4,000 United States Marines, backed by helicopter gunships, pushed into the volatile Helmand River valley in southwestern Afghanistan early Thursday morning to try to take back the region from Taliban fighters whose control of poppy harvests and opium smuggling in Helmand provides major financing for the Afghan insurgency.

The Marine Expeditionary Brigade leading the operation represents a large number of the 21,000 additional troops that President Obama ordered to Afghanistan earlier this year amid rising violence and the Taliban’s increasing domination in much of the country. The operation is described as the first major push in southern Afghanistan by the newly bolstered American force.

Helmand is one of the deadliest provinces in Afghanistan, where Taliban fighters have practiced sleek, hit-and-run guerrilla warfare against the British forces based there.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Military / Armed Forces • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • War in Afghanistan

Eight members of the Episcopal Church's House of Deputies are scheduled meet privately with Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams at General Convention in a session that is intended in part to address lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) issues in the church.

General Convention meets July 8-17 in Anaheim, California, and Williams will be present July 7-9.

The session is not an official convention meeting and thus there has been no announcement of the plans. However, when contacted by Episcopal News Service, the Rev. Canon Michael Barlowe of the Diocese of California confirmed the details.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams • Episcopal Church (TEC) • General Convention 2009 • TEC Parishes • Sexuality Debate (in Anglican Communion) • Same-sex blessings • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry

When it comes to controversial issues, like homosexuality, Jefferts Schori says she begins with studying the Scriptures.

That includes looking at the messy human families found in the Bible.

"In the Old Testament, there are lots of examples of what holy and blessed marriage looks like, and what unholy marriage looks like," she said, "including polygamy and concubines being normal."

In the New Testament, she said, Jesus never married and was celibate. Paul wasn't married either.

"He said don't get married — unless you have to — because Jesus was coming back soon," she said.

Read the whole thing.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori • Sexuality Debate (in Anglican Communion) • Same-sex blessings • * Culture-Watch • Marriage & Family • * Theology • Theology: Scripture

Crime in South Africa is commonly portrayed as an onslaught against the wealthy, but it is the poor who are most vulnerable: poor people conveniently accessible to poor criminals. Diepsloot, an impoverished settlement on the northern edge of Johannesburg, has an estimated population of 150,000, and the closest police station is 10 miles away.

To spend time in Diepsloot over three weeks is to observe the unrelenting fear so common among the urban poor. Experts point to the particularly brutal nature of crime in this country: the unusually high number of rapes, hijackings and armed robberies. The murder rate, while declining, is about eight times higher than in the United States.

In Diepsloot, people usually bear their losses in silence, their misfortune unreported and their offenders unknown. If a suspect is identified, victims usually inform quasi-legal vigilante groups or hire their own thugs to recover their property.

This ran on the front page of Tuesday's New York Times. It is a sobering account of just some of the plight of the urban poor globally. Read it all--KSH.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Poverty • * International News & Commentary • Africa • South Africa

Perhaps it is partly out of a desire to avoid being labelled frauds when they stray from absolute fidelity that Australian politicians, unlike their American counterparts, have worn their religious beliefs lightly, eschewing ostentatious displays of faith or the use of religious precepts to justify or shape policy positions. While religion has not been entirely absent from Australian political debate (it did cause a split in the ALP), by and large politicians have preferred to justify their values and decisions by reference to their political philosophies. Australians seem wary of appeals to religious authority; research shows they are increasingly unlikely to claim Christian religious affiliation or to engage in religious practices.

A study by the Melbourne political scientist Anna Crabb provides some confirmation that this deliberate separation of religion and politics may be dissolving - at least among MPs. Her analysis of parliamentary speeches of prominent federal politicians from 2002 to 2006 showed MPs were increasingly likely to appeal to religious beliefs to explain their positions. Conservatives were most likely to make such references but Labor MPs, including Kevin Rudd, came close to matching them.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Australia / NZ • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Check them out.

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

How do you find a new search engine if all you know is Google? Typing “search engine” into the usual box might lead you to Microsoft’s newly launched Bing, the combined search at Dogpile, or the former king of search, Altavista.

But for those willing to dig around, searching for search engines can reveal a treasure trove: The net is rich with specialized search services, all trying to find a way to get their slice of the billions of dollars Google makes every year answering queries.

For this article, we surveyed some 50 specialty search services and picked out our favorites. What follows is not a systematic ranking or review, but a general guide to a very vibrant world that few have bothered to explore in depth.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • Science & Technology

For the moment I will leave aside the many problems that attach to TEC’s press for a polycentric communion. It is enough to say that their argument will work only if communion excludes common belief and practice but focuses instead on cooperation in good works and mutual aid. (Though even here, because of conflicting theological commitments, “good works” can be construed quite differently) Of more immediate importance is the logic of inclusive justice. The logic of inclusion employed by progressive Episcopalians excludes meaningful opposition from the start.

This exclusion is of such importance that it must not go unchallenged. It is a matter that concerns all Episcopalians. Exclusion of meaningful opposition in respect to the matters now before The Episcopal Church in the end will produce a niche church rather than a catholic church. Progressive claims to inclusivity are in fact false. The logic of their position drives relentlessly toward an increasingly constricted identity. The question progressive Episcopalians must answer is why members of the Episcopal Church that do not share their views ought to think otherwise. To put the issue more directly, progressive Episcopalians need to show the membership of their church and the rest of the Anglican Communion why their position does not end in an exclusive form of church life rather than a diverse one. This observation leads to a direct question. The question is what reason can be given from the point of view of progressive Episcopalians to a traditional Anglican for being a member of The Episcopal Church. I certainly have my own reasons and have stated them on many occasions. But progressive Episcopalians have claimed something that both their words and actions belie, and it seems only right for them to confront and explain this inconsistency to the rest of us.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Consultative Council • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Conflicts • TEC Polity & Canons • Instruments of Unity

Until President Obama and his family settle on a local church to attend, their fill-in pastor will be a former All-American offensive lineman who is now a Navy lieutenant who served in Iraq, and a distant relation of Johnny Cash.

Navy Lt. Carey H. Cash, 39, a Memphis, Tenn. native, is pastor of the chapel at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland's Catoctin mountains. A Southern Baptist, Cash began his three-year tour of duty there in January.

The Evergreen Chapel serves the roughly 400 people who live and work on the remote compound, along with the first family when they flee the White House for the peace of the mountain forest.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Military / Armed Forces • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • Office of the President • President Barack Obama

The Bishop of Honduras has written to the House of Bishops, asking their prayers for his country after Sunday’s ouster of President Mel Zelaya.

“So far, the entire clergy, lay leadership and our families are all well,” the Rt. Rev. Lloyd Allen wrote on June 29 in an e-mail to the House of Bishops.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • * International News & Commentary • Central America • --Honduras

Among the [ACNA] founders was the Rev. Neil Lebhar, a Jacksonville priest and a leader of the regional movement of theological conservatives out of the denomination after an openly gay bishop was elected in New Hampshire in 2003.

With its archbishop and church laws now established, the new group represents a clean break with the past for former Episcopalians, Lebhar said.

"For the average person in the pew, I'd say the major thing it means is that our denominational battles are over and we can get on with the ministry and mission of the church," said Lebhar, rector at the (Anglican) Church of the Redeemer on the Southside.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Conflicts • TEC Conflicts: Florida • TEC Departing Parishes

Greetings in the wonderful name of the Lord Jesus Christ. I am writing to you celebrating the official launch of the Anglican Church in North America. You are to be congratulated for your faithfulness in the Gospel and in your cooperation with the organization of the new Province. It is likely that it will take some time before the institutional structures catch up to the realities of the present day situation in the Communion. Until that time, you can be sure of your dual status with us in the Southern Cone. This is true not only for Bishop Iker, but also all of the priests and deacons who received licenses through him under my authority when your diocese came to us.

Read it all.

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

The Bishop of Kentucky has no ecclesiastical authority to act within the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth, first and foremost because the Diocese has realigned with another Anglican Province in communion with the See of Canterbury, upholding and propagating the historic Faith and Order as set forth in the Book of Common Prayer. We assume that he is seeking to exercise some authority in Fort Worth based upon Canon 13 of the Canons of PECUSA. Setting aside the obvious argument that the Diocese is no longer a part of the PECUSA because of realignment and Canon 13 is inconsistent with Article II, Section 3, of the Constitution of PECUSA, and is therefore null and void, his reliance upon Canon 13 for his authority is misplaced. The meeting that was held in Fort Worth on February 7, 2009, by some clergy and laypersons of the Diocese was not a duly-constituted meeting of the Convention. Neither the Bishop nor the Standing Committee of the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth issued a call for a special meeting of the Convention, as required by Article IV of the Constitution of the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth. Moreover, there was no quorum present at the February 7, 2009, meeting, because less than one-third of all clergy and lay delegates of the Diocese entitled to seat was present for the meeting. Consequently, the individuals in attendance at the February 7, 2009, meeting lacked any legitimate power or authority to perform any official act, including but not limited to the placement of the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth under Bishop Gulick’s “provisional charge” pursuant to PECUSA Canon 13. All actions purportedly taken at the meeting clearly were null and void.

Read it all.

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

Health insurance is supposed to offer protection — both medically and financially. But as it turns out, an estimated three-quarters of people who are pushed into personal bankruptcy by medical problems actually had insurance when they got sick or were injured.

And so, even as Washington tries to cover the tens of millions of Americans without medical insurance, many health policy experts say simply giving everyone an insurance card will not be enough to fix what is wrong with the system.

Too many other people already have coverage so meager that a medical crisis means financial calamity.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Life Ethics • Religion & Culture • Teens / Youth

Pope Benedict XVI signed his latest encyclical Monday, a text on ways to make globalization more attentive to meeting the needs of the poor amid the worldwide financial crisis.

The document, entitled "Charity in Truth," is expected to be published soon.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • Poverty • * Economics, Politics • Economy • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • Pope Benedict XVI

Though [the Rev. Brad Braxton was] chosen last September out of 200 applicants to be Riverside's sixth senior minister, the former Rhodes scholar saw strife from day one. In April, four church members unsuccessfully sued to block his installation, alleging violations of church bylaws relating to his compensation package.

The soaring church, built by tycoon John D. Rockefeller Jr., on Manhattan's Upper West Side in 1927, has become renowned for its interracial and interdenominational brand of preaching and social justice.

The parish of my father's parents, in which his father played a huge early role--sad to read this.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches

Moreover as for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the LORD by ceasing to pray for you; and I will instruct you in the good and the right way.

Only fear the LORD, and serve him faithfully with all your heart; for consider what great things he has done for you.

--1 Samuel 12: 23-24

Filed under: * Theology • Theology: Scripture

A good piece on the huge sacrifice involved. May God bless them and their families.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Marriage & Family • Military / Armed Forces • * Economics, Politics • War in Afghanistan

The White House on Monday (June 29) denied a report that President Obama has decided to make the Camp David presidential retreat his church home.

“The President and First Family continue to look for a church home,” a White House spokesman said Monday. “They have enjoyed worshiping at Camp David and several other congregations over the months, and will choose a church at the time that is best for their family.”

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • Office of the President • President Barack Obama

A professionally trained musician who has performed extensively as a pianist, oboist, and conductor, Jeremy Begbie considers himself first a scholar and professor of theology.

“I’m basically a theologian who frequently works in the arts, not an artist who dabbles in theology,” says Begbie, who joined the Divinity School in January as the inaugural Thomas A. Langford research professor of theology.

A native of Great Britain, Begbie will maintain his ties with Cambridge University, where he is a senior member of Wolfson College and an affiliated lecturer in the faculty of divinity and the faculty of music. Among his priorities as director of Duke Initiatives in Theology and the Arts is developing collaborative programs between the two institutions.

Begbie is the author of Voicing Creation’s Praise: Towards a Theology of the Arts (T & T Clark); Theology, Music and Time (CUP), and most recently, Resounding Truth: Christian Wisdom in the World of Music (Baker/SPCK), which won the Christianity Today 2008 Book Award in the theology/ethics category.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Art • Music • Religion & Culture • * Theology • Seminary / Theological Education

About 20 members of Columbia Hope Episcopal Church met Sunday afternoon to discuss racism within the denomination as well as hopes to diversify the church.

Chester Hines, Jr., chairman of the Commission on Dismantling Racism for the Episcopal diocese of Missouri, traveled from St. Louis to address the congregation and facilitate discussion. Hines gave a brief version of the presentation that usually lasts two days.

The presentation focused on a history of racism within the Episcopal Church, the church’s vision, mission and goals regarding racial interactions, and the definitions of power, racism and white privilege. Hines said the purpose of raising awareness about racism was to make a change.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Parishes • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Race/Race Relations

Only five months after Inauguration Day, the focus of Washington's economic and domestic policy is already shifting. This reflects the emergence of much larger budget deficits than anyone expected. Indeed, federal deficits may average a stunning $1 trillion annually over the next 10 years. This worsened outlook is stirring unease on Main Street and beginning to reorder priorities for President Barack Obama and the Democratic congressional leadership. By 2010, reducing the deficit will become their primary focus.

Why has the deficit outlook changed? Two main reasons: The burst of spending in recent years and the growing likelihood of a weak economic recovery. The latter would mean considerably lower federal revenues, the compiling of more interest on our growing debt, and thus higher deficits. Yes, the President's Council of Economic Advisors is still forecasting a traditional cyclical recovery -- i.e., real growth of 3.2% next year and 4% in 2011. But the latest data suggests that we're on a much slower path. Probably along the lines of the most recent Goldman Sachs and International Monetary Fund forecasts, whose growth rates average about 2% for 2010-2011.

A speedy recovery is highly unlikely given the financial condition of American households, whose spending represents 70% of GDP.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Taxes • The U.S. Government • Budget • The National Deficit • Politics in General • House of Representatives • Senate

The last time Indiana missed its deadline for passing a budget and had to shut down the government was during the Civil War.

But on Monday, as lawmakers raced to hammer out an agreement over school funding, state agencies began preparing 31,000 workers to be temporarily out of a job. Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels has warned residents that most of the state's services -- including its parks, the Bureau of Motor Vehicles and state-regulated casinos -- would be shuttered unless a budget is passed today.

Indiana is one of five states -- along with Arizona, California, Mississippi and Pennsylvania -- bracing for possible shutdowns this week as time runs out for lawmakers to close billion-dollar gaps in their fiscal 2010 budgets.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • Politics in General • State Government

The House of Deputies will be asked to consider meeting in two unusual sessions early in the 76th meeting of the General Convention to discuss Resolution B033 passed by the last convention.

"The purpose of this discussion will be to exchange information and viewpoints among the deputies, and to inform Legislative Committee #8 World Mission, to which committee all the resolutions relative to B033 have been assigned," House of Deputies President Bonnie Anderson wrote in a June 29 letter to deputies and first alternate deputies.

Anderson wrote that she believes the House of Deputies "will benefit by having an opportunity to discuss B033 apart from the context of legislative procedure" and noted that "many deputies have indicated their longing to discuss B033 together as a house."

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • General Convention 2009 • Sexuality Debate (in Anglican Communion) • Same-sex blessings • Windsor Report / Process

Most states have child abuse laws allowing some religious exemptions for parents who shun medicine for their sick children, but a few recent cases highlight thorny legal issues for parents following less-recognized faiths.

Existing laws have gradually accounted for more well-known and established faiths, such as Pentecostalism, Christian Science and Jehovah's Witnesses.

But recent cases in the news have judges and child care advocates dealing with parents who claim adherence to lesser-known faiths, such as the Minnesota family following an Internet-based group's American Indian beliefs, and an independent Oregon church that has been investigated in the past for the deaths of members' sick children.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • Religion & Culture

President Obama has bet the economy on his program to grow the government and finance it with a more progressive tax system. It's hard to miss the irony that he's pitching this change in Washington even as the same governance model is imploding in three of the largest American states where it has been dominant for years -- California, New Jersey and New York.

A decade ago all three states were among America's most prosperous. California was the unrivaled technology center of the globe. New York was its financial capital. New Jersey is the third wealthiest state in the nation after Connecticut and Massachusetts. All three are now suffering from devastating budget deficits as the bills for years of tax-and-spend governance come due.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Taxes • The U.S. Government • Budget • The National Deficit • Politics in General • Office of the President • President Barack Obama • State Government

The sense of the Committee is that our work is not yet complete and that we have not had sufficient time to discuss all of these matters as fully as we would like. We offer this document to the House of Bishops and the larger General Convention as an initial reflection. In this document we try to reflect some of the issues around which our discussions have coalesced, though often without resolution. We also raise several issues and questions regarding the practice of “open communion.” These are issues that have either come up in our face to face discussions or from our examination of essays written on this topic or from conversations at various levels in our own dioceses. There may be need in the future to produce a more substantial document after further discussion and consultation with the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music and after receiving responses to this paper.

Read it carefully and read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • General Convention 2009 • * Theology • Sacramental Theology • Eucharist

Some have suggested that the choice is between polar extremes: either we submit to an authoritarian international hierarchy, or we describe ourselves as some kind of autonomous American "denomination" affiliated on an ad hoc basis with some of the other churches around the world sharing similar historical backgrounds.

My view is that the covenant offers a third possibility--one more authentically aligned with our identity as a church that has from its beginning understood itself as simultaneously independent and interdependent - independent in terms of polity and governance, to be sure, but profoundly interdependent in character and spiritual identity.

The covenant is at its heart about recovering and renewing within our Anglican family of churches the spirit of Christian life reflected in Paul's word, "the eye cannot say to the hand, 'I have no need of you'" (I Corinthians 12:21). The covenant says that it is from within the Anglican Communion that we of the Episcopal Church will continue the long process of learning what it means to be one in Christ Jesus.

Read it all.

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

Arguably the Episcopal and Methodist Churches have been America's historically most influential. Numerous American elites, including many of the Founders, were and are Episcopalian, making it often the de facto "established" church. And Methodism became America's largest church in the 19th century, creating the evangelical populist ethos that robustly survives today, if now mostly among other denominations.


Like other Mainline denominations, Episcopal and Methodist seminaries succumbed to theological liberalism early in the 20th century, reaching radical crescendos in the 1960s, when both churches began numerically to decline, a decline that continues until this day.

But the two denominations now seem set on different trajectories, as vividly illustrated by very recent events. Last week, the newly formed Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) convened its first provincial assembly, bringing into one denomination an estimated 100,000 regular worshipers and 700 congregations. Most of these Anglicans have left the Episcopal Church since 2003, when Gene Robinson became the first openly homosexual Episcopal bishop.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Methodist • Sexuality Debate (Other denominations and faiths)

The great paradox of the age is that Barack Obama, the most riveting of recent presidents, is leading us into an era of Congressional dominance. And Congressional governance is a haven for special interest pleading and venal logrolling.

When the executive branch is dominant you often get coherent proposals that may not pass. When Congress is dominant, as now, you get politically viable mishmashes that don’t necessarily make sense.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • Law & Legal Issues • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • House of Representatives • Office of the President • President Barack Obama • Senate

This is Kendall Harmon and Temah.

Filed under: * By Kendall • Harmon Family • * General Interest • Animals

A well-respected scholar and theologian is the Anglican Church of Canada's Bishop of the Diocese of Algoma.

An overflowing congregation in Sault Ste. Marie welcomed Stephen Gregory Weed Andrews as its 10th bishop Monday at a ceremony at St. Luke's Cathedral.

In addition to 11 of Ontario's bishops and more from across Canada, the head, or primate, of the church, Fred Hiltz, attended and spoke of Bishop Andrews' many assets.

"He has a very keen academic mind, and is a very skilled writer and speaker, particularly in the area of New Testament," said Hiltz at a post-ceremony gathering at the Canadian Bushplane Heritage Centre.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Anglican Church of Canada

Amid a whirlwind of public criticism, a good dose of humility and lots of soul-searching over his affair with an Argentine woman, Gov. Mark Sanford on Monday said that one of the key reasons he has decided to stay in office is to avoid influencing the 2010 gubernatorial primary.

If Sanford would step down, Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer would become South Carolina's 116th chief executive. Many see that as giving Bauer a leg up over other Republican candidates in next spring's gubernatorial primary.

Bauer would have the spotlight, and the 18 months left in Sanford's second term for a trial run to win over voters. That possibility has political insiders angling behind the scenes and dictating, in part, how Sanford's fall from grace plays out.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • State Government • * South Carolina

A Song of Ascents. I lift up my eyes to the hills. From whence does my help come? My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth. He will not let your foot be moved, he who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. The LORD is your keeper; the LORD is your shade on your right hand. The sun shall not smite you by day, nor the moon by night. The LORD will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life. The LORD will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and for evermore.

--Psalm 121

Filed under: * Theology • Theology: Scripture

St. Paul is an example of a priest who was completely identified with his ministry -- just as the holy Curé d'Ars would also be -- conscious of possessing a priceless treasure, that is, the message of salvation, but in an "earthen vessel" (cf. 2 Corinthians 4:7); thus he is at the same time strong and humble, intimately persuaded that everything is God’s doing, everything is grace.

"The love of Christ possesses us," the Apostle writes. This could well be the motto of every priest -- that the Spirit compels (cf. Acts 20:22) him to be a faithful steward of the mysteries of God (cf. 1 Corinthians 4:1-2). The priest must belong totally to Christ and totally to the Church; to the latter he is called to dedicate himself with an undivided love, like a faithful husband to his bride.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Ministry of the Ordained • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • Pope Benedict XVI • * Theology • Theology: Scripture

The culture wars may not have ended, but on some fronts the combat has gotten rather quiet. For instance, family values.

True, David Letterman’s awkward joke about a daughter of Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska prompted denunciations of the “media elite” (though it also boosted Mr. Letterman’s ratings).

But the admissions of extramarital adventures by two Republican stalwarts, Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina on Wednesday and Senator John Ensign of Nevada the week before, did not help their party’s cause and stood in dim contrast to President Obama’s recent success in co-opting parts of the conservatives’ cultural agenda — whether voicing his opposition to gay marriage, or delivering Father’s Day homilies on parenting.

Still another instance of what may be an emerging politics of accommodation, with both parties seeing the benefits of the center, came earlier this month when Mr. Obama announced his selection of Jim Leach, a former congressman, to head the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Church/State Matters • Life Ethics • Marriage & Family • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Wedding attendants are going to the dogs.

Pet-loving couples are increasingly including their dogs (and other pets, to a much lesser degree) in the wedding parties of some very formal weddings -- decking them out in silk and satin and including them in the receiving line, on the program and in the portraits.

"Many people think of their pets as family members, and they wouldn't think of having a special day like this without that member," says Celina Bojorquez, co-owner of Beverly Hills Mutt Club, purveyor of upscale accessories like doggie tuxedos ($70 and up) and couture dresses ($170 to $500).

Read the whole article.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Liturgy, Music, Worship • Parish Ministry • * General Interest • Animals

Bishop Gene Robinson, an openly homosexual man living openly with a partner, whose 2003 consecration as bishop of the diocese of New Hampshire created a backlash among traditional believers within the U.S., church, told Ecumenical News International he does not believe the new Anglican grouping has long-term viability.

"A church that does not ordain women or openly gay people - I don't see a future for that," Robinson told ENI after delivering a sermon on 28 June at the First Presbyterian Church in New York City during the city's annual gay pride festivities.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009 • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Conflicts • Sexuality Debate (in Anglican Communion) • Same-sex blessings

A commenter in response to the news story, I think, hit the nail, on the head, "the internet is not the disease but the symptom."

If a marriage is good, one will want to spend more time with their spouse, and perhaps if strained, will try to escape in various ways, which might include going online. Or, in my case, both spouses could spend a lot of time online and then use it to make their marriage better. Glenn and I discuss stuff online all the time and always have something fun to talk about. I have never laughed as hard at some of the things I read or had to think so much in response to some of them. So, I guess, like any hobby or vice (take your pick), it depends on how one uses it as to whether it is positive or negative.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • Marriage & Family

Up to a point, some retrenchment of the financial sector is healthy. It absorbed too much of America's talent while pursuing strategies that, in hindsight, misallocated the nation's investment capital. But there are perils to overregulation. It could dampen the normal risk-taking required for solid economic expansion.

However the debate concludes, regulation isn't a panacea against future crises. The idea of "enlightened regulators" who are vastly more perceptive than the bankers, traders and money managers they regulate is a fiction. Even in early 2007, when the problems of subprime mortgages had emerged, few regulators or economists foresaw a wider financial meltdown. They didn't see the impending chain reaction. The problem wasn't a lack of regulation; it was a lack of imagination.

So the next crisis could come from anywhere -- perhaps the follies of government, not finance. Between now and 2019, the U.S. federal debt could rise to $11 trillion , projects the Congressional Budget Office. U.S. Treasury bonds are the bedrock of the global financial system; they're considered safe and reliable. What if a glut of bonds causes investors to lose faith? What are the implications? Good questions. The seeds of the next crisis almost certainly won't be found in the debris of the last.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • * Economics, Politics • Economy • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • The U.S. Government • Politics in General

The letter is signed by

The Most Rev Rowan Williams
Archbishop of Canterbury

The Most Rev Vincent Nichols
Archbishop of Westminster

Sir Jonathan Sacks
Chief Rabbi

It reads in part:

Now, by way of an amendment to the Coroners and Justice Bill, the legality of assisting people to end their own lives is again to be debated. The amendment seeks to protect from prosecution those who help friends or relatives to go abroad to commit suicide in one of the few countries where the practice is legal.

This would surely put vulnerable people at serious risk, especially sick people who are anxious about the burden their illness may be placing on others. Moreover, our hospice movement, an almost unique gift of this country to wider humankind, is the profound and tangible sign of another and better way to cope with the challenges faced by those who are terminally ill.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams • * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • Law & Legal Issues • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

President Barack Obama says the weekend ouster of Honduran leader Manuel Zelaya was a "not legal" coup and that he remains the country's president.

Obama spoke to reporters in the Oval Office on Monday after meetings with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe. Obama said he wanted to be very clear that President Zelaya is the democratically elected president.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • Office of the President • President Barack Obama • * International News & Commentary • Central America • --Honduras

The controversy over the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center in Roxbury Crossing has posed one of the biggest challenges to interfaith relations in Boston in years, and the tension was readily on display during the Friday morning opening ceremonies for the new mosque.

Inside the Reggie Lewis Track and Athletic Center at Roxbury Community College, mosque backers hosted an interfaith breakfast whose honorary cochairmen included an Episcopal bishop, a Catholic priest, and the heads of the Black Ministerial Alliance, the Unitarian Universalist Association, and the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization.

Critics have accused the mosque’s backers of being extremists and radicals, but much of the mainstream Christian leadership, as well as the political leadership, in Boston appears to have rejected the allegations. On the way in to the breakfast, I encountered Bishop M. Thomas Shaw, the Episcopal bishop of Massachusetts and asked him why he was there. He noted that about 400 Muslims who work downtown regularly worship in St. Paul’s Cathedral, and said he wanted “to honor them,’’ he also called the new mosque “much needed for interfaith dialogue.’’

Read it all

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • * Religion News & Commentary • Inter-Faith Relations • Other Faiths • Islam • Muslim-Christian relations

The first scientific tests on what are believed to be the remains of the Apostle Paul, the Roman Catholic saint, “seem to conclude” that they belong to him, Pope Benedict XVI said Sunday.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Church History • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • Pope Benedict XVI • * Theology • Theology: Scripture

Ken Pagano, the pastor of the New Bethel Church here, is passionate about gun rights. He shoots regularly at the local firing range, and his sermon two weeks ago was on “God, Guns, Gospel and Geometry.” And on Saturday night, he is inviting his congregation of 150 and others to wear or carry their firearms into the sanctuary to “celebrate our rights as Americans!” as a promotional flier for the “open carry celebration” puts it.

“God and guns were part of the foundation of this country,” Mr. Pagano, 49, said Wednesday in the small brick Assembly of God church, where a large wooden cross hung over the altar and two American flags jutted from side walls. “I don’t see any contradiction in this. Not every Christian denomination is pacifist.”

The bring-your-gun-to-church day, which will include a $1 raffle of a handgun, firearms safety lessons and a picnic, is another sign that the gun culture in the United States is thriving despite, or perhaps because of, President Obama’s election in November.

Read it all.

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

A federal judge sentenced Bernard L. Madoff to 150 years in prison on Monday for operating a huge Ponzi scheme that devastated thousands of people, calling his crimes “extraordinarily evil.”

In pronouncing the sentence — the maximum he could have handed down — Judge Denny Chin turned aside Mr. Madoff’s own assertions of remorse and rejected the suggestion from Mr. Madoff’s lawyers that there was a sense of “mob vengeance” surrounding calls for a long prison term.

“Objectively speaking, the fraud here was staggering,” the judge said. “It spanned more than 20 years.”

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Stock Market • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

We should be taking advantage. Now is when we should be stapling a green card to the diploma of any foreign student who earns an advanced degree at any U.S. university, and we should be ending all H-1B visa restrictions on knowledge workers who want to come here. They would invent many more jobs than they would supplant. The world’s best brains are on sale. Let’s buy more!

Barrett argues that we should also use this crisis to: 1) require every state to benchmark their education standards against the best in the world, not the state next door; 2) double the budgets for basic scientific research at the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy and the National Institute of Standards and Technology; 3) lower the corporate tax rate; 4) revamp Sarbanes-Oxley so that it is easier to start a small business; 5) find a cost-effective way to extend health care to every American.

We need to do all we can now to get more brains connected to more capital to spawn more new companies faster. As Jeff Immelt, the chief of General Electric, put it in a speech on Friday, this moment is “an opportunity to turn financial adversity into national advantage, to launch innovations of lasting value to our country.”

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Education • Science & Technology • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • Energy, Natural Resources

Inflation is as dead as the Wicked Witch of the West in a waterfall. The consumer price index has actually fallen 1.3% in the past 12 months. So why is everyone so worried about soaring prices?

In a word: debt. The government owes the world $11.4 trillion — $37,000 for every person in the U.S. In the next fiscal year, the government will add $1.8 trillion to the deficit.

The government could simply print more dollars to pay off our debts with cheap currency — a tempting but inflationary solution. Politicians wouldn't have to ask citizens to pay for the government's services, and citizens wouldn't have to think about the actual cost of what they demand — until, of course, the currency collapses, interest rates soar and the economy craters. Some on Wall Street are betting on just that scenario. Universa Investments — linked to Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of Wall Street's biggest book, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable— is adding strategies that will soar if inflation takes off. Respected hedge fund adviser 36 South Investment Managers is raising $100 million for a fund that will bet on soaring price increases. And Marc Faber, editor of the Gloom Boom & Doom Report, a newsletter, predicts that U.S. inflation will someday match Zimbabwe's — that would be 236 million percent a year.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • The U.S. Government • Budget • The National Deficit

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: As President Obama pushed health care reform a coalition of religious leaders joined the effort with a rally and interfaith prayer service in Washington. The event brought together Hindus, Muslims, Christians, and others who called for universal and affordable health care. The group said health care is a moral issue and called the nation’s current situation too immoral to tolerate. One of the participants in that interfaith coalition is Sister Simone Campbell, executive director of NETWORK, a national Catholic social justice lobby. Her order is the Sisters of Social Service. She is also a lawyer. Sister, welcome.

Sister SIMONE CAMPBELL (Executive Director, NETWORK): Thank you.

ABERNETHY: In that coalition, your number one priority is expanding health care for everyone. Talk about that.

Sr. CAMPBELL: It’s a shocking outrage in our country. It’s a moral outrage that we have almost 50 million people without coverage, without access to a doctor, and we have even hundreds of thousands more that can’t even use the coverage that they have. That’s wrong. We have to change it.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • Religion & Culture

Let me tell you a little about our Anglican Church here in France. I should begin by saying that it is a privilege to have such a Church, as of course France is a Roman Catholic country and does not need to permit other religions to have a base here. However, the Anglican Church has good relationships with the Catholic church, and we are always aware of our standing in the country.

Our church comes under the Diocese of Europe, overseen by the Bishop of Gibraltar, as do all other Anglican churches in Europe.

Ten years ago an English vicar and his wife felt called to come to Brittany to start a centre for worship. All the legalities complied with , they opened their own home, with a group of half a dozen people , for Sunday worship. Contacts were made during the next year with a Catholic teaching monastery , who kindly offered a set of rooms to be used on a Sunday. Set in their beautiful gardens, it was a wonderful place to worship at the weekly services....

Read it all.

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

Some Republican state lawmakers are privately saying they want Republican Gov. Mark Sanford to step down — of his own volition — this week.

Meanwhile, Sanford has spent portions of the last few days phoning key lawmakers and Republican Party activists, apologizing for his affair with an Argentinian woman that left him out of touch with his staff and other state leaders for the better part of a week.

On another note, a source close to Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer said Sunday that Bauer has approached members of the Senate to discuss the possibility that, if Sanford resigns, Bauer would only serve the remainder of the governor’s term, focusing on job creation, and would not run for governor in 2010 as Bauer had originally intended.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • State Government • * South Carolina

An Archdeacon in the Church of England is calling for a "new parish model" which would engage with what he sees as "the need for non-geographical ministries".

Such a structure need not lose sight of the "best of local, incarnational ministry," argues the Ven Paul Slater, Archdeacon of Craven, diocese of Bradford.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry

US Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori has deposed two more retired American bishops, announcing on June 12 that she had accepted the voluntary renunciation of ministry of the retired Bishop of Quincy the Rt Rev Edward MacBurney and the retired Bishop of Southern Virginia the Rt Rev David Bane.

However, the two bishops have stated they have not renounced their orders, but were being accepted into the House of Bishops of the Province of the Southern Cone under Presiding Bishop Gregory Venables.

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

As the Episcopal Church prepares to hold its triennial convention in Anaheim next month, most of the media focus has been on continuing divisions over the role of gays and lesbians in the church.

Delegates are expected to vote whether to develop formal marriage rites or blessings for same-sex couples, and on reversing a 2006 moratorium on the consecration of bishops who are in same-sex relationships.

Yet, in most Episcopal parishes throughout the Inland area, the divisions over homosexuality rarely come up in conversation, priests and parishioners said. Theologically conservative and liberal members worship and volunteer side by side, disagreeing on issues such as gay bishops but united by the combination of a Catholic liturgical tradition and a Protestant belief in letting non-clergy interpret the Bible.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • Sexuality Debate (in Anglican Communion) • Same-sex blessings

Recently, it was celebration galore at the Gospel Anglican Church, Ajagbadi, Lagos. The occasion was the ordination service for new ministers of the church. The new clerics were resplendent in their white robes which, according to them, stood for purity.

The ordination service commenced at 9.am when the bishop and other ministers walked in amid songs of praise by the choristers and the entire congregation.

The church wore a solemn look as the candidates to be ordained were presented at the altar by the Gospel Anglican Bishop of Lagos, Rt. Rev. Chukwuereka Iheanachor. The man of God prayed for the glory of God to overwhelm the new ministers of the gospel and for them to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of Nigeria

The creation of a second Anglican church in America for conservative Episcopalians angered by the liberal drift of their denomination has drawn high praise from the members of a Vero Beach church who attended the new denomination’s founding convocation in Texas this week.

“I’ve been waiting 30 years for this moment,” said Judy Stull of Christ Church in Vero Beach, one of ten members of the church’s delegation to the Anglican Church in North America founding convocation held June 22-25 at St. Vincent’s Cathedral in Bedford, Texas.

Formed in 2007 after the clergy and a majority of the members of Trinity Episcopal Church in Vero Beach withdrew from the Diocese of Central Florida, the new church meets in the former Indian River County Tax Assessor’s Office in Majestic Plaza off U.S. 1 in Vero Beach. The 500-member church is one of 700 congregations comprising 100,000 former Episcopalians in the U.S. and Canada that make up the ACNA.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009

The rest of the world does not care if Anglicans cannot play nicely with others who like to identify themselves as fellow Anglicans. What the world around us cares about is whether or not we care about the world around us.

The proposed covenant does pay lip service to rightful concern for the needs of the wider world. But it is preoccupied with encouraging, then enforcing, uniformity. It's time we refuse to be distracted with this covenant nonsense. The Church of England seems constitutionally incapable of leading on this edge; but the Episcopal Church can and should set the pace and lead the way back to mission.

The Episcopal Church, as well as the Anglican Church of Canada, is capable of leading the communion back to its roots, its "Anglican roots" if you must: a collegial fellowship of independent churches, working and praying interdependently to bring Christ to the wider world around us, and to find Christ there waiting for us.

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

In a Texas cathedral where the liturgical nuances of Anglo-Catholicism mingled with the joyous shouts of Pentecostalism, Archbishop-elect Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh called together a body representing 100,000 people who had left the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada.

Yesterday they adopted the constitution of the new Anglican Church in North America, which they hope will eventually be recognized as a province of the 80 million-member global Anglican Communion. The 2.1 million-member Episcopal Church is the U.S. province of the communion.

"There is a great reformation of the Christian Church under way. We North American Anglicans are in the midst of it," their new archbishop told a standing-room only crowd gathered in St. Vincent Cathedral in Bedford, Texas. It was the cathedral of the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth which, like the Diocese of Pittsburgh, had broken with the Episcopal Church, taking the majority of its parishes with it.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009

With nearly half of all marriages in the U.S. ending in divorce, why do we still insist on tying the knot? As she ends her 20-year marriage, The Atlantic contributor Sandra Tsing Loh posits that the idea of lifelong wedded bliss has become obsolete....

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Marriage & Family

If recent trends are any guide, many Church of England parishes will have been cheered by higher attendances at Easter services. The last published statistics for 2006/7 show rises of 7 and 5 per cent in church going at Christmas and Easter.

But these figures are just about the only signs of hope for the church and certainly not the first green shoots of a revival. Other statistics make for gloomy reading.

Annual decline in Sunday attendance is running at around 1 per cent. At this rate it is hard to see the church surviving for more than 30 years though few of its leaders are prepared to face that possibility.

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

Anglican Primate Dr Rowan Williams led a service of the Eucharist at a special Songs of Praise outside the city's cathedral on Saturday evening.

He said that a number of events over the weekend were "hugely encouraging" and showed a strong church community.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams

"It started on a very casual basis -- run things by each other," he said.
He felt as if he had found a confidant.
"When you live in the zone of politics, you can't ever let your guard down. You can't ever say, 'What do you think, what do you think?' There was this zone of protectiveness. She lived thousands of miles away, and I was up here, and you could throw an idea out and vise versa.
"We developed a remarkable friendship over those eight years. About a year ago, it sparked into something more than that."

--South Carolina's Governor this week in his explanation of the affair.This was also quoted in this morning's sermon by yours truly--KSH.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Marriage & Family • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • State Government • * South Carolina

Listen to them both. In the second one we learn that the Episcopal Church has "long held" a belief in the three legs [which itself is wrong] of Scripture, tradition and "continuing revelation"(!) [More Adult Education needed anyone?].

Why is NPR using the wrong nomenclature of Episcopals? Ugh--KSH.

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

The Rev. Bob Deshaies never dated while growing up in Waterbury, Conn. He went to a Catholic high school seminary, then a Catholic college, then a major seminary. "You'd be giving up your ministry for a cheap piece of fluff," his spiritual director told him.

Then he met Deborah Cabral, a youth worker at a parish in Worcester, Mass. He got to know her first as a co-worker, then as a friend, then as a girlfriend. That meeting in 1985, and the relationship that followed, led into marriage, then out of the Catholic priesthood and into the Episcopal Church within two years, preceding Alberto Cutié by two decades.

"When you meet a woman who opens up your heart and soul, it's mind-shattering," says Deshaies, now rector at St. Benedict's Episcopal Church in Plantation. "It got me to rethink everything."

Cutié's exit from Catholic ranks, and his wedding at an Episcopal church this past Friday, have highlighted the issue of priests who are involved with women — relationships kept in the shadows by the requirement of celibacy.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • * Culture-Watch • Marriage & Family • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic

To be or not to be? More pertinently: is it a decision for the individual or the state? While suicide is legal in Britain, helping someone to die is not. In the past seven years, 115 Britons have travelled with the help of relatives and friends to the Swiss euthanasia clinic Dignitas to end their lives. Most were suffering from terminal conditions such as cancer and motor neurone disease, but last week it was revealed a small number had chronic but non-life-threatening conditions, including rheumatoid arthritis. Yet no one has ever been prosecuted.

The House of Lords debates an amendment to the Coroners and Justice Bill this week which seeks to set out the circumstances in which it would be legal to help someone to end their lives.

Debbie Purdy supports the amendment. A multiple sclerosis sufferer, she wants clarification of the circumstances under which her husband, and others like him, would be prosecuted if he helps her to end her life. Michael Wenham, who suffers from motor neurone disease, opposes it. The Independent on Sunday asked them to debate the issue via email....

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • Law & Legal Issues • * International News & Commentary • England / UK

Sitting inside the Church of the Holy Cross, the smell of the Episcopal church’s history hangs in the air above the 140-year-old pews. Light pours in through the stained glass windows, illuminating the sanctuary. While the church is filled with history and church relics more than a century old, it is the memories of loyal congregants that truly bring the spirit of the church to life.

Sunday, nearly 140 years after the church was built and consecrated in 1870, Holy Cross will hold its final service. Church vestry voted on May 17 to terminate its status as a parish. Though the decision was difficult for many of the vestry members to make, they deemed it necessary due to the 60-member congregation’s dwindling budget.

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

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford considered resigning from office after his extramarital affair came to light, the Republican revealed Sunday in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press.

But Sanford, who hasn't spoken publicly since Friday, said he spoke with close spiritual and political associates who advised him to fight to restore the public's — and his family's — trust in him.

"Resigning would be the easiest thing to do," he said.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • State Government • * South Carolina

Wow. Amazing.

Update:Brazil wins 3-2. Brazil had too much speed and skill and the U.S. still lacks sufficient depth, but at least we are improving--KSH.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Sports

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009

Doctors are demanding that NHS staff be given a right to discuss spiritual issues with patients as well as being allowed to offer to pray for them.

Medics will tell the British Medical Association conference this week that staff should not be disciplined as long as they handle the issue sensitively.

The doctors said recent cases where health workers had got into trouble were making people fearful.

But atheists said it was wrong to mix religion and health care.

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

The Fuzzy math behind the Massachusetts universal healthcare law is starting to add up - just as Washington studies the law as a possible model for the nation.

Because of a recession-related drop in state revenues and a surge in enrollment by the recently unemployed, the truth is emerging at an inconvenient time. Massachusetts doesn’t have enough money to pay for the coverage envisioned by the law.

In June, state officials announced they are cutting $100 million from Commonwealth Care, which subsidizes premiums for needy residents. The poorest residents, along with the newest - legal immigrants - will take the hit.

This outcome is not surprising, but it is instructive as President Obama pushes for a national healthcare plan.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • Law & Legal Issues • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Taxes • The U.S. Government • Budget • The National Deficit • Politics in General • House of Representatives • Office of the President • President Barack Obama • Senate • State Government

The figure then being projected for this year was above the $1,000bn mark for the first time. But in the few short months since, the number has rocketed much further – to $1,800bn (£1,106bn, €1,291bn) or 13 per cent of gross domestic product.

The Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan watchdog, forecasts that the US will post deficits in excess of a trillion dollars in each of the next 10 years. Even on its relatively optimistic assumptions for economic growth, moreover, the CBO predicts national debt will double to 82 per cent of GDP in the next decade – a level not seen since the second world war.

This would push the US close to the chronic debt levels seen in Japan and Italy. “People used to talk about America’s long-term fiscal crisis,” says Douglas Elmendorf, head of the CBO. “That crisis is now.”

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Taxes • The U.S. Government • Budget • The National Deficit

President Barack Obama's drive to overhaul the U.S. healthcare system may be back on track thanks to Senate efforts to cut the price tag to $1 trillion, but a bipartisan deal on the sweeping proposal still is far from certain.

Obama wants changes that rein in the escalating costs of healthcare in the United States and bring insurance to most of the 46 million Americans who currently lack it.

He also wants a bill that the Democrats who control Congress and the Republican minority can support to give a bipartisan stamp of approval to his top legislative priority.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • Law & Legal Issues • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • House of Representatives • Office of the President • President Barack Obama

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