A Syracuse church and the local Episcopal diocese are legally splitting up - and, as with court-approved divorces, much of the settlement involves the division of property.

The Episcopal Diocese of Central New York retains ownership of St. Andrew's Church, but members of the breakaway parish will get to use the building rent-free for up to a year, according to the settlement.

The settlement - accepted [last] Tuesday by state Supreme Court Justice James Murphy - will result in the court-ordered dissolution of St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, 5013 S. Salina St., at the end of the year.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Conflicts • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues

If you go to your family doctor complaining you're depressed, your treatment could be influenced by the religious beliefs of your doctor.

That's the thrust of a paper published today in the journal Psychiatric Services. The paper reports the results of a national survey of physicians taken in 2003.

The doctors were given this question:

"A patient presents to you with continued deep grieving two months after the death of his wife. If you were to refer the patient, to which of the following would you prefer to refer first? A psychiatrist or psychologist, a clergy member or religious counselor, a health care chaplain, or other."

A bit more than half the doctors chose the first option and about a third chose one of the two faith-linked counseling options. But the choices varied significantly depending on the faith and degree of religiosity of the doctor.

Protestants were more likely to choose one of the religious options than any other religious group. The more religiously observant the doctor said he or she was, the more likely that doctor's first inclination would be to choose one of the religious options. And the less religious the doctor, the more likely the choice would be a psychiatrist or psychologist.

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

The number of American children and adolescents treated for bipolar disorder increased 40-fold from 1994 to 2003, researchers report today in the most comprehensive study of the controversial diagnosis.

Experts say the number has almost certainly risen further since 2003.

Many experts theorize that the jump reflects that doctors are more aggressively applying the diagnosis to children, and not that the incidence of the disorder has increased.

But the magnitude of the increase surprises many psychiatrists. They say it is likely to intensify the debate over the validity of the diagnosis, which has shaken child psychiatry.

Bipolar disorder is characterized by extreme mood swings. Until relatively recently, it was thought to emerge almost exclusively in adulthood. But in the 1990s, psychiatrists began looking more closely for symptoms in younger patients.

Some experts say greater awareness, reflected in the increasing diagnoses, is letting youngsters with the disorder obtain the treatment they need.

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

Science is confirming what most women know: When given the choice for a mate, men go for good looks.

And guys won't be surprised to learn that women are much choosier about partners than they are.

"Just because people say they're looking for a particular set of characteristics in a mate, someone like themselves, doesn't mean that is what they'll end up choosing," Peter M. Todd, of the cognitive science program at Indiana University, Bloomington, said in a telephone interview.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch

The rapid growth of political blogs and Web sites has attracted the attention of state elections officials, who are considering what, if any, new regulations should be imposed on the Internet.

The go-slow approach by the state Public Disclosure Commission (PDC), which collects candidates' financial information and enforces elections laws, is applauded by most bloggers and campaign experts, though some say policing the Internet is unnecessary and all but impossible.

As early as this month, the PDC may consider new political communication regulations, with much of the discussion likely to focus on whether to extend federal rules governing the Internet to local races.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • * Economics, Politics

Let's see here. [Tracey] Lind at minimum foresaw the possibility of, and arguably advocated for, people leaving the Anglican Communion if the Communion ultimately proved rejecting of the Episcopal Church's stance in favor of "full inclusion."

That leads me to a question: How is Lind's view concerning leaving the Anglican Communion substantially different from the view concerning leaving the Episcopal Church allegedly held by Mark Lawrence at the time of his first election as Bishop of South Carolina -- the view that lead to the smear campaign against Lawrence?

Because at worst, progressives could claim that Lawrence at minimum foresaw the possibility of, and arguably advocated for, people leaving the Episcopal Church if TEC rejected the orthodoxy of the Anglican Communion.

Lawrence, to whom consent was not granted this last spring and who has now been elected by South Carolina a second time, was pilloried for, among other reasons, the supposed threat of leading that diocese out of the Episcopal Church. His greatest "sin," to Episcopal progressives, seemingly consisted of statements like this one: "I shall commit myself to work at least as hard at keeping the Diocese of South Carolina in The Episcopal Church, as my sister and brother bishops work at keeping The Episcopal Church in covenanted relationship with the worldwide Anglican Communion."

Is that any more radical a statement of potential leave-taking than what Lind said? Of course not, particularly when your consider that Lawrence said the following just one paragraph prior: "I would ask you to consider the fact that many of us want to remain in the Anglican Communion as well as The Episcopal Church."

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

During last week's bonfire of Katrina navel-gazing, there was virtually no mention of the hyperventilating and inaccurate media reports, even though this newspaper and the Times-Picayune (among others) received accolades for debunking the hysteria less than a month after the hurricane. Yet last week's saturation coverage contained little or no mention of the media's malpractice. It's as if it never happened.

Why? I think the answer is complex, but three factors are surely involved. One, the media are often good watchdogs of government but rarely of themselves. While recycling old complaints about government is permissible, dwelling on your colleagues' failures -- or your own -- just isn't done.

Two, the media have convinced themselves that they did a wonderful job covering Katrina. Dan Rather spoke for his colleagues when he said "everybody across the board did such a good job." It was one of the "quintessential great moments in television news . . . right there with the Nixon-Kennedy debates, the Kennedy assassination, Watergate coverage, you name it."

And, lastly, journalists are invested in the dominant narratives of Katrina, and they'll be damned if they'll let go, particularly if it comes at the expense of their own credibility, or make Bush's mistakes seem a little less horrendous.

No, it would be better, and much easier, to print the legend.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Hurricane Katrina • Media

An Anglican bishop in Zimbabwe, who asked not to be identified, said homosexuality is a “sin” and urged gay and lesbian people to “repent”. Pressed for comment, the right reverend of the Anglican Church in Lusaka, Derek Kamukwamba, said the church was engaged in “dialogue” to come up with a position on the issue.

He then described American Anglicans, who ordained Gene Robinson as the first openly gay bishop in 2003, as “stubborn and arrogant”. Kamukwamba said stubbornness was “pushing people like Nzimbi” to consecrate anti-gay bishops. “We will not receive any gay priest in Zambia,” he pointed out.

Bernard Malango, the Anglican bishop for Zambia, Malawi, Zimbabwe and Botswana, described the consecration of Robinson as bringing “darkness, disappointment, sadness and grief” to the parishioners in his province.

Trevor Mwamba, the Anglican bishop of Botswana, when asked whether more US clerics would be coming to Southern Africa to be consecrated, said, “I hope not”.

Mwamba recalled the positions reached at the Lambeth Conference of 1998, which recognised that there are people “who experience themselves as having a homosexual orientation”. This conference decreed that the church commit itself to “listen to the experience of homosexual persons”.

While it rejected “homosexual practice as incompatible with Scripture”, it called “on all our people to minister pastorally and sensitively to all irrespective of sexual orientation and to condemn irrational fear of homosexuals”.

The conference, though, could not “advise the legitimising or blessing of same sex unions nor ordain those involved in same-gender unions”.

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

Hatred of Jews has reached new heights in Europe and many points south and east of the old continent. Last year I chaired a blue-ribbon committee of British parliamentarians, including former ministers and a party leader, that examined the problem of anti-Semitism in Britain. None of us are Jewish or active in the unending debates on the Israeli-Palestinian question.

Our report showed a pattern of fear among a small number of British citizens -- there are around 300,000 Jews in Britain, of whom about a third are observant -- that is not acceptable in a modern democracy. Synagogues attacked. Jewish schoolboys jostled on public transportation. Rabbis punched and knifed. British Jews feeling compelled to raise millions to provide private security for their weddings and community events. On campuses, militant anti-Jewish students fueled by Islamist or far-left hate seeking to prevent Jewish students from expressing their opinions.

More worrisome was what we described as anti-Jewish discourse, a mood and tone whenever Jews are discussed, whether in the media, at universities, among the liberal media elite or at dinner parties of modish London. To express any support for Israel or any feeling for the right of a Jewish state to exist produces denunciation, even contempt.

Our report sent a shock wave through the British government. Tony Blair called us in and told his staff to fan out throughout government departments and produce answers to the problems we outlined. To Britain's credit, the Blair administration produced a formal government response setting out tough new guidelines for the police to investigate anti-Semitic attacks and for universities to stop anti-Jewish ideology from taking root on campuses. Britain's Foreign Office has been told to protest to Arab states that allow anti-Jewish broadcasts.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • * International News & Commentary • Europe • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

Religious denominations have learned that rewriting their prayer books can result in rebellions from their worshipers, both those wedded to tradition and those hoping for dramatic change.

Now the nation’s largest Jewish movement, Reform Judaism, is preparing to adopt a new prayer book that was intended to offer something for everyone — traditionalists, progressives and everyone else — even those who do not believe in God.

The changes reveal a movement that is growing in different directions simultaneously, absorbing non-Jewish spouses and Jews with little formal religious education while also trying to appeal to Jews seeking a return to tradition.

Traditional touches coexist with a text that sometimes departs from tradition by omitting or modifying some prayers and by using language that is gender-neutral. References to God as “He” have been removed, and whenever Jewish patriarchs are named — like Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, so are the matriarchs — like Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah. The prayer book took more than 20 years to develop and was tested in about 300 congregations. Its release has been delayed for a year because the initial printed product was shoddy, said people involved with the project. But the book is expected to be released in about a month — too late, however, for the High Holy Days, which begin Sept. 13.

“It reflects a recognition of diversity within our community,” said Rabbi Elyse D. Frishman, the editor of the prayer book. “We have interfaith families. We have so many visitors at b’nai mitzvah ceremonies that I could have a service on Shabbat morning where a majority of people there aren’t Jewish,” she said, referring to bar and bat mitzvah ceremonies on Saturday mornings.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Liturgy, Music, Worship • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

--Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Plans to allow British scientists to create human-animal embryos are expected to be approved tomorrow by the government's fertility regulator. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority published its long-awaited public consultation on the controversial research yesterday, revealing that a majority of people were "at ease" with scientists creating the hybrid embryos.

Researchers want to create hybrid embryos by merging human cells with animal eggs, in the hope they will be able to extract valuable embryonic stem cells from them. The cells form the basic building blocks of the body and are expected to pave the way for revolutionary therapies for diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and even spinal cord injuries.

The consultation papers were released ahead of the authority's final decision on the matter, which will mark the end of almost a year of intense lobbying by scientists and a fervent campaign by organisations opposed to research involving embryonic stem cells.

Using animal eggs will allow researchers to push ahead unhindered by the shortage of human eggs. Under existing laws, the embryos must be destroyed after 14 days when they are no bigger than a pinhead, and cannot be implanted into the womb.

Opponents of the research and some religious groups say the work blurs the distinction between humans and animals, and creates embryos that are destined to be destroyed when stem cells are extracted from them.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Life Ethics • Science & Technology • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

The Archbishop of Canterbury and the little old lady might use a different vocabulary to try to explain why they believe, but it comes to the same thing in the end. They believe because they believe. This is not about intellect or learning: it’s more basic than that. It is both more profound and more simple.

I suspect that on the most primitive level it is not all that different from the little scrap of blanket that so many small children rely on. They need it whenever they get tired or life looks a bit threatening.

I invite you to imagine the impossibly grand figure of the Archbishop of Canterbury sitting on the steps of his cathedral with his thumb stuck in his mouth, stroking his bearded cheek with the little bit of satin at the edge of his comfort blanket.

This image may not do a great deal for the dignity of the primate’s office, but the comfort blanket is not a million miles away from what religion offers at its most simplistic. Strip from Christianity the notion of proof, evidence and historical events (or nonevents) and what drives belief has little to do with the head and a great deal to do with the heart.

Many atheists, as my list suggests, say that people believe because of the way they were brought up: children are credulous and accept what they are told. As they grow older they get rid of their comfort blankets and often the beliefs with which they were inculcated. But not everyone does that – and even those who do may return to belief, in one form or another, in later life.

There remains what the atheist philosopher AC Grayling calls “the lingering splinter in the mind . . . a sense of yearning for the absolute”. There is a profound longing for something that will stimulate and satisfy emotionally and spiritually.

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

The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence. More than that, it is cooperation in violence.

--Thomas Merton

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Spirituality/Prayer • * Culture-Watch • Violence • * General Interest • Notable & Quotable

After a spate of shootings, and with a rising murder rate, the police here are saying gangsta rap is contributing to the violence, luring gang members and criminal activity to nightclubs. The police publicly condemned the music in a news release after a killing in July and are warning nightclub owners that their places might not be safe if they play gangsta rap.

“We don’t want to broad-brush hip-hop music altogether,” said Lt. Skip Arms, a police spokesman, “but we’re looking at a subcomponent that typically glorifies, promotes criminal behavior and demeans women.”

The actions of the police have angered the hip-hop community here, mostly blacks and Latinos, many of whom live in this city because of ties to the Army and Air Force bases here.

“If we were talking about a rock bar or a country bar here, none of this would be happening,” said James Baldrick, who runs a local hip-hop promotions company, Dirty Limelight.

“This city wants to shut down hip-hop,” said Mike Cross, 26, who was outside Eden Nite Club, a popular downtown venue that plays hip-hop, with a group of friends on a recent night. “They don’t want it to survive.”

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Music • Violence

THE Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians’ military capability in three days, according to a national security expert.

Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center, said last week that US military planners were not preparing for “pinprick strikes” against Iran’s nuclear facilities. “They’re about taking out the entire Iranian military,” he said.

Debat was speaking at a meeting organised by The National Interest, a conservative foreign policy journal. He told The Sunday Times that the US military had concluded: “Whether you go for pinprick strikes or all-out military action, the reaction from the Iranians will be the same.” It was, he added, a “very legitimate strategic calculus”.

President George Bush intensified the rhetoric against Iran last week, accusing Tehran of putting the Middle East “under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust”. He warned that the US and its allies would confront Iran “before it is too late”.

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Things have been looking a bit brighter in Iraq this summer. Commanders and some independent observers report that the "surge" of 30,000 more U.S. troops has tamped down the violence, particularly in Baghdad. Some tribal Sunni sheiks have turned against al-Qaeda, particularly in volatile Anbar province. Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has said that his Mahdi Army militia is suspending fighting for six months. No wonder U.S. opinion polls show greater optimism, or at least less pessimism, about the Iraq war.

President Bush has been out making speeches capitalizing on the sunnier mood and playing down the Iraqi failure to meet most political benchmarks (even though he earlier vowed to hold Iraqi leaders to them). In mid-September, the U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, and the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, are expected to report to Congress that the military effort has been succeeding, despite lagging political progress. Then the White House is expected to seek extra time and money to extend the surge through next spring.

Any reduction in violence in Iraq, and any setbacks for al-Qaeda, are to be celebrated and encouraged. But, like a discordant strain intruding on a piece of music, two new reports provide an important reality check on any perceptions that victory might finally be just around the corner.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Iraq War

Rob Bell is the founding pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church. He has some very stimulating video resources available through his Nooma series. You may want to consider checking them out (especially those of you involved in Adult education). We did the one on discipleship at the parish in which I serve on Sunday and had a ball--KSH.

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

A rock 'n' roll bar with a neon "Pabst Blue Ribbon" sign in its window and truck-driver kitsch seems an unlikely setting for a room full of devout Christians gathered for prayer.

But on a recent Sunday evening, a small crowd gathered in the back room of Trash Bar in Brooklyn's Williamsburg neighborhood as a band warmed up onstage. Friends greeted each other with handshakes and hugs by the bar; some sat in the ripped-out car seats that line the bordello-red walls to chat.

By the time the band began to play "Glory to God," about 40 people had assembled. Some were clean-cut, casually dressed young professionals; others sported tattoos, T-shirts, and sneakers. Many closed their eyes and lifted their hands while they sang along with the band. Some knelt to the floor or sat with their heads in their hands as they prayed.

A small crop of evangelical groups like the Church at Trash Bar have begun gathering in informal locations throughout Williamsburg over the past year, holding services in bars and cafes and promising an open environment for those who have given up on traditional churches but remain interested in worshipping in casual settings.

The Church at Trash Bar is one of a handful of New York congregations affiliated with the Vineyard Church, a looseknit Pentecostal denomination of about 1,500 churches worldwide.

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

The Orthodox Anglican Communion has churches in 12 nations and nearly one million members. By October, because of requests from 2,000 parishes in India to join the denomination, the church will boast 2 to 3 million members, said David Bessinger, the archdiocese director of communications.

Christ Anglican Church is the denomination's only congregation in Davidson County. The denomination's headquarters has been here since 2004 and is on East Second Avenue.

On his trip to Africa, McLaughlin arrived in Accru, Ghana, after a 10-hour flight and then headed to Secondi via motorcade. When he arrived, more than 2,000 people were there to greet him, many wearing bright, yellow T-shirts with his photo on the front.

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Filed under: * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Anglican Continuum

Take the time to read it all. Make sure to check this out as well (especially page 7 and following).

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • TEC Diocesan Conventions/Diocesan Councils • TEC Parishes

Three American priests who left the Episcopal Church after it appointed an openly gay bishop in 2003 have been consecrated as bishops in Africa. They're returning to minister to American congregations, but will report to conservative churches in Africa.

Listen to it all. In the piece, Bill Atwood is wrongly identified as being from Massachusetts; he is from Texas and it is Bill Murdoch who is in Massachusetts. Jan Nunley tries her tired this-is-no-big-deal-the numbers-of-parishes-involved-are-so-small line, which continues to fail mightily not only with the secular media as well as a number of our sister denominations which see us as an example of how not to proceed, but also with the reality in the church on the ground. When you consider the number of people who have departed as individuals, as well as the number of parishes springing up of people who wish to be Anglicans but do not wish to be associated with TEC, along with the number of parishes and dioceses still in TEC who wish no part of the national leadership's new theology (think Windsor Bishops, Network Dioceses, numerous groups of organized reasserting clergy and lay people, and many others), you have a quite significant problem.

Indeed, even one national church study (not to mention the statistics) makes this clear:

Only 20% [fully] endorse the actions of General Convention [2003].

Now, ask any priest out there, Jan, how they would feel if only 20% of their vestry was fully behind their capital campaign in terms of whether the capital campaign would work? As they say denial is not a river in Egypt. You cannot judge the degree of opposition to the terrible and mistaken choices made in 2003 with the number of parishes which, as nearly entire parishes, left, because in our polity it is quite difficult to achieve the degree of support and unity necessary for a whole parish (or diocese) to make such a choice, AND, those opposed have differing discernments about how best to proceed at the present time.

Oh and I have a question which I bet has occurred to some of you. Now that it is September 2007, where in the world are the statistics for calendar year 2006?--KSH

Update: The thoughts of Alan Guelzo are worth recalling as well.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Conflicts • TEC Departing Parishes • TEC Data • * By Kendall

Clergymen struggling to comfort the afflicted in New Orleans are finding they, too, need someone to listen to their troubles.

The sight of misery all around them -- and the combined burden of helping others put their lives back together while repairing their own homes and places of worship -- are taking a spiritual and psychological toll on the city's ministers, priests and rabbis, many of whom are in counseling two years after Hurricane Katrina.

Almost every local Episcopal minister is in counseling, including Bishop Charles Jenkins himself, who has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Jenkins, whose home in suburban Slidell was so badly damaged by Katrina that it was 10 months before he and his wife could move back in, said he has suffered from depression, faulty short-term memory, and difficulty concentrating or sleeping.

Low-flying helicopters sometimes cause flashbacks to the near-despair -- the "dark night of the soul" -- into which he was once plunged, he said. He said the experience felt "like the absence of God" -- a lonely and frightening sensation.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Hurricane Katrina

Make me to know thy ways, O LORD; teach me thy paths. Lead me in thy truth, and teach me, for thou art the God of my salvation; for thee I wait all the day long.

--Psalm 25:4,5

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Inquiring minds will want to read further on this.

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

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College of Charleston business professor Bing Pan thinks people might trust the Internet search engine Google a little too much.

Pan and his colleagues conducted research, published in the April issue of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, on how college students make their selections using the popular search engine. The researchers looked at where students' eyes traveled on a Google results page and which links they clicked on.

Pan conducted the research while he was in a post- doctoral program at Cornell University. The research was partially funded by Google.

Pan said he found that when making a selection, users consider both the content of the site, which they get from reading the abstract on the results page, and the position it holds on the page.

"But position influences people more," he said.

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

Blessings arrive in unexpected packages—in my case, cancer.

Those of us with potentially fatal diseases—and there are millions in America today—find ourselves in the odd position of coping with our mortality while trying to fathom God's will. Although it would be the height of presumption to declare with confidence What It All Means, Scripture provides powerful hints and consolations.

The first is that we shouldn't spend too much time trying to answer the why questions: Why me? Why must people suffer? Why can't someone else get sick? We can't answer such things, and the questions themselves often are designed more to express our anguish than to solicit an answer.

I don't know why I have cancer, and I don't much care. It is what it is—a plain and indisputable fact. Yet even while staring into a mirror darkly, great and stunning truths begin to take shape. Our maladies define a central feature of our existence: We are fallen. We are imperfect. Our bodies give out.

But despite this—because of it—God offers the possibility of salvation and grace. We don't know how the narrative of our lives will end, but we get to choose how to use the interval between now and the moment we meet our Creator face-to-face.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • * Theology • Pastoral Theology

[John] Guernsey, who has been the Vicar of All Saint's Church in the parish of Woodbridge, Virginia, will return to the US and lead the 33 parishes that have recognised the Church of Uganda's authority.

"As I assume this responsibility of providing episcopal oversight and care for the church of Uganda congregations in the US, I am excited about helping these churches catch the fire of mission which the Church of Ugada so passionately demonstrates", Guernsey said.

"In America, we must recapture the priority of evangelism, the urgency of outreach into our communities and the need to reach young people and raise leaders of the next generations. I pray that the spirit of revival comes to us where so many are lost."

Guernsey's consecration came just three days after Kenya's Archbishop Benjamin Nzimbi consecrated two American priests as bishops.

The 77 million-strong Anglican Communion has been split since its 2.4 million-member US branch consecrated Gene Robinson as the first gay bishop four years ago.

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

As for those who feel that a family man and a conservative senator would be unlikely to engage in such acts, Mr. Humphreys’s research says otherwise. As a former Episcopal priest and closeted gay man himself, he was surprised when he interviewed his subjects to learn that most of them were married; their houses were just a little bit nicer than most, their yards better kept. They were well educated, worked longer hours, tended to be active in the church and the community but, unexpectedly, were usually politically and socially conservative, and quite vocal about it.

In other words, not only did these men have nice families, they had nice families who seemed to believe what the fathers loudly preached about the sanctity of marriage. Mr. Humphreys called this paradox “the breastplate of righteousness.” The more a man had to lose by having a secret life, the more he acquired the trappings of respectability: “His armor has a particularly shiny quality, a refulgence, which tends to blind the audience to certain of his practices. To others in his everyday world, he is not only normal but righteous — an exemplar of good behavior and right thinking.”

Mr. Humphreys even anticipated the vehement denials of men who are outed: “The secret offender may well believe he is more righteous than the next man, hence his shock and outrage, his disbelieving indignation, when he is discovered and discredited.”

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Sexuality

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Obstacles to achieving our real goal of reducing the size of government and limiting its ability to interfere in our lives must be torn down. Gays shouldn't expect government to foist acceptance of their lifestyle on others; religious conservatives shouldn't expect gays to abandon an integral part of their being.

Barry Goldwater once remarked that government cannot pass laws to "make people like each other." His words still ring true today. Labeling people "homophobes" or "bigots" if they refuse to accept the entire gay agenda creates political fractures that work against individual liberties and serve to keep gay voters in the Democratic Party's political ghetto.

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The segment starts about 32 1/2 minutes in.

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“My family background in Pakistan is Christian. I was a member of St Andrew’s Church in Lahore which had an evangelical ministry under Sidney Iggulden. He focused on young people. He led us to the Lord and discipled us. Members of our youth fellowship from that time are now giving leadership as General Secretary of the Pakistan Bible Society and former heads of Scripture Union and of the Pakistan Fellowship of Evangelical Students. Everyone in that group the Lord has called into ministry.

“The fellowship started a sending ministry but we were determined not to be dependent on outside help. We raised money and were the first sending organization from a Moslem country recorded in Operation World. I was the first to be sent by the group and came with a student minisrtryto Iran in 1976. Iran was the first country I ever visited outside Pakistan. I used to sell Christian books here in Tehran.

“I then went to do theological training at Romsey House Theological Training College in Cambridge and returned to St Andrew’s Lahore since they had been supporting me and I had covenanted to come back. With their blessing I started teaching and training sessions for the clergy. This led to ordination in the Church of Pakistan and appointment as the Priest of St Andrews for 6 years. It is still our family church as our daughter was married there at the beginning of this year.

In 1994, Bishop John Brown of Cyprus and the Gulf and the Moderator of the Church of Pakistan agreed that I be consecrated as Bishop in the Gulf for the Pakistan Urdu-speaking parishes.. I worked as associate bishop of the Province who then appointed me in 2004 as Episcopal Vicar-General of the Church of Iran.”

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • * International News & Commentary • Asia • Middle East • Iran

(Originally La Tourneuse De Pages, therefore in French with subtitles) If you get a chance, try it on DVD-- well crafted and acted, we thought--KSH.

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This is definitely something to program the VCR or DVR for.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Movies & Television

Orombi spokeswoman Alison Barfoot said the archbishop had called Guernsey to lead 33 congregations in the United States that will recognise the Church of Uganda's authority.

"He's an ecclesiastical refugee," she told Reuters by telephone from the ceremony, referring to Guernsey.

"We thought the crisis in the Anglican Church would be resolved by now. We expected the Episcopal Church to repent ... but they have prolonged the crisis."

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

British Columbians, arguably Canada’s most morally permissive population, are discovering that tolerance has its limits.

At issue is the polygamous behavior of the breakaway Mormons of Bountiful, a community of about 700, tucked away in the mountainous southeast corner of the province close to the American border.

British Columbia Attorney General Wally Oppal repeatedly has stated his desire to prosecute the handful of middle-aged men with multiple partners like Bountiful’s unofficial leader, Winston Blackmore, who has reportedly fathered 100 children by 20 wives.

But Oppal’s own legal advisers have warned him that Canada’s century-old anti-polygamy law would probably be overturned by the protection of religious freedom enshrined in the 1982 Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

And the legal fate of the obscure border community could have international ramifications: According to some observers, other countries that follow Canada’s lead and legalize same-sex “marriage” may be forced to sanction polygamous unions, as well.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Marriage & Family • Sexuality • --Civil Unions & Partnerships • * International News & Commentary • Canada

Two Orlando theaters Saturday offered stages for a prep-school production of La Cage aux Folles that was halted after an Episcopal bishop complained about the show's themes.

Both the Orlando Shakespeare Theater and the Orlando Repertory Theatre -- a group for youngsters -- offered Saturday to provide a venue next weekend for Trinity Preparatory School's performances.

"We do it with enthusiasm," said Jim Helsinger, artistic director of the Orlando Shakespeare Theater.

Trinity Prep's fine-arts director, Janine Papin, who directs the show, said Saturday that she would keep her promise to let the school's board of directors decide this week whether to let students resume performances at the school's auditorium.

"I do believe things will turn out well," she said. "I am an optimist, and I believe there is a learning lesson in all of this for us."

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • Theatre/Drama/Plays

It is not hard to see why the Summer of Love has been romanticised in popular culture. It was when the young “seemed to be deserting their scripts”, according to Todd Gitlin’s sweeping history of the 1960s. That summer represented the high point of the decade. The Beatles sang a tune about love that was beamed across the world in an experiment for satellite television. A growing sense of optimism that the world could be changed with the application of a little love hit its peak before it all started to go wrong in 1968. More than two-thirds of respondents to a PBS online poll earlier this year said they would liked to have gone to San Francisco in that carefree summer of 1967.

The decade still reverberates in the American psyche. The reaction to George Bush’s recent comparison of the Iraq conflict to the Vietnam war is just the latest example. Some are quick to point to the similarities between then and now: a Texan in the White House, an unpopular war, an actor in charge of California. But the differences are just as stark.

In 1967, segregationist governors were still in power in the South. Race riots convulsed America, killing dozens in Detroit and Newark. The federal budget deficit, at the high point of big-government liberalism, accounted for a smaller percentage of GDP than the rough estimate of $200 billion for 2007. America’s involvement in Iraq is more unpopular now than the Vietnam war was in 1967. In early August, 57% of Americans said that sending troops to Iraq was a mistake, compared with 41% who thought in July 1967 that it was a mistake to send troops to Vietnam.

Attitudes have certainly changed.

Read it all. I found this article surprisingly unbalanced from the Economist. There is no question there have been changes for the better, but unfortunately there were other changes as well--and these are not mentioned. Sexual freedom led to, alas, sexual promiscuity, and a raft of unwanted pregnancies and the issue of abortion, for example, or the War on Poverty led, alas, to a subculture of dependency with all sorts of sad implications, and one could go on and on. The legacy is much more mixed than the picture painted here--KSH.

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Answer the questions and see.

Filed under: * General Interest

One of the miracles to emerge from the history of slavery was evident on the banks of the River during that service of Holy Communion. There, hundreds of years later, drinking from the same cup of blood-red-wine were both white and black. The fact that the slaves came to share the Christian faith of those who'd enslaved them is extraordinary. That borrowed faith sustained them as they laboured in the cotton fields singing their spirituals, longing for freedom.

Somehow the slaves were able to see through the hypocrisy of the white religion that oppressed them, to see that the God of the whites didn't thirst for their tears, but shed his own at their misery. Somehow they came to find in Jesus a kindred spirit, one who himself had been 'sold down the river'.

Standing on the banks of the James River I began to see an unnoticed fact of history. I see it here in Liverpool whenever black and white gather together to worship God. It was the Christian faith of black slaves that rescued and redeemed the Christian religion.

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