Leaders of all but two Anglican provinces in Africa have pledged to work with both Communion Partners and the Anglican Church in North America.
That commitment came in a communiqué issued by the Primates of the Council of Anglican Provinces in Africa (CAPA) at the conclusion of the All-Africa Bishops’ Conference. The conference met Aug. 23-29 in Entebbe, Uganda.
“We are committed to network with orthodox Anglicans around the world, including Communion Partners in the USA and the Anglican Church in North America, in holistic mission and evangelism,” the primates wrote. “Our aim is to advance the Kingdom of God especially in unreached areas.”
In the same communiqué, the primates pledged their commitment to live by the standards of the Windsor Report.
Read it all.
Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • - Anglican: Latest News • - Anglican: Primary Source • -- Reports & Communiques • Anglican Provinces • Church of Uganda • * International News & Commentary • Africa
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(I was finally able to get a verified copy of this document. Note that the spellings are English english (!) (i.e. organise) and I have edited it for format and accuracy. Please also observe that this is not the same as the other document released from the CAPA Primates--KSH).
Preamble
The second All Africa Bishops Conference, organised by the Council of Anglican Provinces of Africa (CAPA), met in Entebbe, Uganda, from 23rd to 29th August 2010. Participants included 398 bishops representing the following Provinces: Burundi, Central Africa, Democratic Republic of Congo, Indian Ocean, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sudan, Southern Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, West Africa and the Diocese of Egypt. Also in attendance were some invited partners and guests.
The Anglican Provinces of Africa would like to express their heartfelt gratitude to Our Lord God for His mercy and guidance during this conference; our host Archbishop Henry Orombi and the members of the Church of the Province Uganda for their kind hospitality and warm welcome; to the President of Uganda His Excellency Yoweri Museveni and the Right Honourable Professor Apollo Nsibambi Prime Minister of Uganda, and the Government and people of Uganda; the leadership of CAPA especially the Chairman the Most Rev Ian Ernest supported by the Secretariat.
The first conference, with the theme ‘Africa Has Come of Age’, was held in Lagos, Nigeria in October 2004. The theme for our second conference in Uganda was ‘Securing our Future: Unlocking our Potential’ (Hebrews 12:1-2). Its aim was to mobilise bishops to overcome obstacles to their ministry and mission and provide them with the information, skills and tools to accomplish their ministry.
Our meeting was honoured with the presence of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the head of the Anglican Communion, The Most Rev. and Rt. Hon. Dr. Rowan Williams; the Chairman of the Global South, the Most Reverend Dr John Chew (Primate of South East Asia) and the Most Rev Bob Duncan, Archbishop of the Anglican Church in North America.
Our conference was rooted in the context of daily Eucharistic service, and challenging Bible reflections on the Beatitudes and on the formation and development of New Testament churches.
Presentations on the theme included:
1. Nurturing Family Life and Building Healthy Populations.
2. Nurturing Harmonious and Dignified Communities.
3. Securing Our Economic Future.
4. Empowering the Vulnerable.
5. Making Leadership work to secure our Future and unlock our Potential.
Commitments
1. The Anglican Churches in Africa have continued to witness growth so that the centre of gravity of Christianity today appears to be shifting to the continent. Nonetheless, the church’s relevance and impact on global mission and to social, economic and political transformation of the continent remains a challenge.
2. The Anglican Churches in Africa will maintain its stand on the protection of Anglican orthodoxy and authority of Scripture as a rule of developing a Christ-centred life to uplift human lives and dignity.
3. The Anglican Churches in Africa recognises its historic contributions to the growth of Christianity right from its inception and propagation of the gospel throughout the continent and, in particular, the role of the African Church fathers and martyrs. We also recall its immense contributions during the missionary era to the provision of social facilities such as education, healthcare and the production of the African elite. Based on this, the Church mobilises its resources and takes its responsibility in shaping the Christian minds of the church worldwide in the third millennium.
4. We affirm the Biblical standard of the family as having marriage between a man and a woman as its foundation. One of the purposes of marriage is procreation of children some of whom grow to become the leaders of tomorrow.
5. Whereas we accept the rationale for an Anglican Covenant, we realise the need for further improvement of the Covenant in order to be an effective tool for unity and mutual accountability.
6. There is a more urgent need today for bishops to listen to their flock if they are to make this the African century of the Christian Church in terms of energy, growth and vision. To this end, lay participation in the ministry of the church is to be vigorously enhanced.
7. While we will always be prepared to listen to voices from other parts of the global Communion, it is pertinent that the rest of the world listens to the unique voice of the Churches in Africa. In this context, the Anglican Churches in Africa commit itself to a renewed engagement in global mission, recognising that in the 21st Century mission goes from ‘everywhere to anywhere.’
8. The African continent continues to grapple with the problem of religious intolerance which, in many cases, negatively affects the rights, the ministry and the welfare of the church. While the conference calls upon Christians in Africa and elsewhere to be tolerant of other faiths, we must stand for the defence of the human and constitutional rights of Christians and churches in various countries. We will not compromise the commitment of the church to global mission.
9. After a long period of African underdevelopment and misconceptions of African identity, it has become increasingly pertinent for Africans to take their destiny into their own hands. By setting and achieving their own strategic goals, based on the Biblical model of Christ’s mission, African Christians can define their own identity, recover their self-esteem and reach their potential under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
10. We must be actively involved in working with partners at all levels to ensure equal access to medical care, food security and promoting good health practices to prevent the major causes of death on the continent, with particular attention to primary health care for African families, especially mothers, children and elderly.
11. We call for and actively work to bring about an end to all forms of abuse and forms of slavery. We demand the protection of our people, particularly our women and children, from human trafficking, sexual immorality, abuse and violence, and structural, cultural and domestic violence.
12. The successful hosting of the World Cup by South Africa, and other achievements in the continent, demonstrated how Africa’s potential can be unleashed. This should inspire and motivate the Church as well as political leaders to proactively promote and contribute to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.
13. The Anglican Churches in Africa must join the global movement that refuses to stay silent about the current socio-economic and political state of affairs. We should stop agonising over the deplorable state of African underdevelopment and start organising towards a proactive, pragmatic engagement with good governance and infra-structural development.
14. The prevalence of poverty and underdevelopment on the continent is due mainly to mismanagement of resources and lack of effective leadership across the continent. For Africa to take its proper place among the continents of the world, our political leaders are urged to have a hard look at the style of leadership that has so far engendered corruption, poverty, insecurity and underdevelopment, and endeavour to exhibit the charismatic, visionary, and patriotic style of leadership. We encourage the leaders who are already making efforts in this direction.
15. We will build on our previous commitment to respond to HIV and AIDS realities by reducing stigma, shame, denial, discrimination, inaction and ‘mis-action’, and by promoting moral practices such as abstinence and marital faithfulness as well as access and availability of treatment, voluntary testing and empowerment of communities, in addition to other public health measures.
16. The children and the youth are the embodiment of the future and the church seeks to unlock the inherent potential in this generation. Therefore, the Church in Africa commits itself to providing biblical upbringing of children and youth and give a special attention to their needs and rights.
17. Africa is also suffering the devastating impacts of climate change: rivers and lakes are shrinking, animals are dying in large numbers, crops are failing, major flooding and an increase in killer diseases. With its reach and influence the Anglican Church in Africa, in collaboration with its partners, will use its resources and energy to mitigate this major threat to our people. It will promote existing successful environmental conservation initiatives including tree planting and bio gas schemes, particularly through establishing ‘knowledge centres’ at the community level.
18. The Church has a crucial role to play to develop a theology for the total transformation of African communities. The existing inherited model of theological formation and education has been identified to be inadequate in addressing the emerging socio-cultural realities of the African Church. To this end, the church will develop theological curricula that will empower her leaders to be more relevant to the practical and spiritual needs of contemporary society.
19. The Anglican Church in Africa, guided by the Holy Spirit, will continue to work for unity among ourselves by growing actively in prayer and home fellowships in order to be able to reach out to the unreached and to work for unity with our ecumenical partners. In that manner, we can bear a visible presence of hope and healing among communities.
20. The Anglican Church in Africa is committed to a transforming servant- compassionate leadership that is determined to work tirelessly and diligently to reduce suffering on our continent by challenging all abusive structures and relationships.
21. The Anglican Church in Africa is grateful for the assistance it has received from its partners worldwide. We encourage the Church at all levels to make efforts to explore the various investment opportunities available so as to be financially self-sustaining in order that it can carry out its holistic mission successfully.
22. We express deep concern that the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in Sudan could be undermined by unfulfilled commitments. We therefore call upon the international communities, particularly Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), the African Union and the United Nations to put more pressure on the National Congress Party and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement to hold a free, fair and peaceful referendum on the 9th of January and to respect the decision of the people of Southern Sudan as stipulated in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. We also call upon the various rebel factions in Darfur and the Government of Sudan to return to the negotiating table to agree a peaceful solution to the conflict.
23. The Anglican Church in Africa is deeply concerned about the last bomb attack in Kampala, Uganda, that killed many innocent people. We take this opportunity to present our condolences and sympathy to the Government and the people of Uganda and especially to the families of the victims. We condemn in strong terms such criminal acts and will passionately pray against future acts of violence.
24. The Anglican Church in Africa expresses deep concern over the continued sexual violence against women and children by armed groups operating in the Eastern Congo. We call upon UN forces to do more in protecting civilians and assist the Government in stabilising the region.
25. We are concerned about the problem of insecurity, lack of democracy and freedom in Madagascar and appeal to the international community to support the ongoing peace process undertaken by the Malagasy actors.
26. Recognising the loss of life and great pains in Kenya associated with the post-election violence after the 2007 elections, we commend the recent peaceful referendum and the promulgation of the new constitution.
Appreciation
We give thanks to God for the ministry of our retired or retiring fathers Most Rev Bernard Malango – Province Central Africa, Most Rev Peter Akinola - Province of Nigeria, Most Rev Njonkulu Ndugane – Province of Southern Africa, Most Rev Bernard Mtetemela – Province of Tanzania, Most Rev Remi Rabenirina – Province of Indian Ocean, Most Rev Fidele Dirokpa Balufuga – Province of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Most Rev Robert Okine – West Africa, Most Rev Benjamin Nzimbi – Province of Kenya and Most Rev Emmanuel Musaba Kolini – Province of Rwanda. We pray for their continued good health and ministry.
We also honour the memory of the late Most Rev Joseph Marona – Province of Sudan.
We also want to express our profound appreciation of the Chairman of CAPA the Most Reverend Ian Ernest, CAPA’s Secretariat and the Organising Committee, and all delegates, facilitators, rapporteurs and other guests.
“Now when he saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, and he began to teach them, saying:
“Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called sons of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
“Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you."
(Matthew 5:1-12, NIV)
The document is then signed “On behalf of the CAPA Primates”
by
(The Most Rev.) Ian Ernest , CAPA Chairman, and (The Most Rev.) Emmanuel Kolini, CAPA Vice-Chairman
Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • - Anglican: Primary Source • Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams • Anglican Provinces • Church of Uganda • * International News & Commentary • Africa
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This coming Monday marks the second Labor Day of the Obama administration, and the American work force has little to show for it other than higher unemployment, stagnant wages, last year's $1.4 trillion federal deficit, this year's $1.3 trillion deficit, and next year's anticipated $1 trillion-plus deficit. Oh, and a slew of new federal regulations and programs—like ObamaCare—that will make it even more expensive for businesses to retain current workers, much less create new jobs.
No wonder American confidence in the future is evaporating. And when confidence crumbles, consumers won't spend, lenders won't lend, investors won't invest, and businesses won't hire.
Today we see businesses husbanding cash rather than hiring. Nonfinancial S&P 500 companies are sitting on a record $837 billion. Personal savings are increasing dramatically, to over 6% of income today compared to barely 1% in 2005. Those small businesses still willing to take on more debt to expand are having tremendous difficulty finding credit.
Read it all.
Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • The U.S. Government • Federal Reserve • Politics in General • House of Representatives • Office of the President • President Barack Obama • Senate
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Frank Kirkpatrick, professor of religion at Trinity College, wrote in a survey article in 2008 that "there were, as of December [2007], 55 [Episcopal Church] property disputes in one state or another of resolution around the country." (You may find a listing of those lawsuits in this post from August 2008, and see also the latest report from the American Anglican Council.) Of those fifty-five lawsuits, I estimate that ECUSA itself was a party to about half of them. Thus from the five lawsuits to which it was a party as Bishop Griswold ended his term in November 2006 (the Pawley's Island case in South Carolina, the three Los Angeles lawsuits, and a case involving St. James Church in Elmhurst, in the Diocese of Long Island), the number increased by five times in the first full year of Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori's term.
Under Bishop Jefferts Schori, ECUSA did not just passively stand by as the property disputes emerged, and allow the diocese involved to carry the laboring oar. It aggressively prosecuted the cases in both California and Virginia, joined in filings in Connecticut, Georgia and New York (where it intervened as the DFMS against St. Andrew's, in Syracuse, and filed an amicus brief in this case in New York's highest court), became enmeshed in additional litigation in San Diego and Colorado, and threatened litigation against the dioceses of San Joaquin, Fort Worth and Quincy if they dared to withdraw from the Church. (The latter two threats were issued by the Presiding Bishop's Chancellor on his own initiative, as discussed in this earlier post.)
There are no records in the minutes of the Executive Council during this period to show that it was ever consulted before any of these multiple filings in the name of the Church took place; as quoted in the previous post, the Presiding Bishop held the view that only she personally, and neither the Council, nor even General Convention, had any authority over litigation. Thus she simply gave her Chancellor free rein -- and ECUSA's legal bills began to mount exponentially.
Read it all (and please note it is part of a series all parts of which need to be perused).
Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori • TEC Bishops • TEC Conflicts • TEC Conflicts-Quincy • TEC Conflicts: Fort Worth • TEC Conflicts: Pittsburgh • TEC Conflicts: San Joaquin • TEC Departing Parishes • TEC Data • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Stewardship • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology • Pastoral Theology
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From here:
Bishop Lawrence has called for a meeting of all parochial clergy of the diocese who have seat, voice and vote at the Convention for Thursday, September 2, 2010. The meeting will begin at 10:30 a.m. at St. Paul's in Summerville. In preparation for the meeting clergy are asked to review a copy of the Title IV canon changes passed at the last General Convention. This will be central to tomorrow's discussions. View the document. Clergy are encouraged to bring a printed copy of the document with them to the meeting.
Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • General Convention 2009 • TEC Bishops • TEC Parishes • TEC Polity & Canons • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Ministry of the Ordained • * South Carolina
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It appears after a brief introductory letter. Please read it all.
Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Conflicts • TEC Parishes • * South Carolina • * Theology • Pastoral Theology
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The bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Upper South Carolina cleared the way Wednesday for Trinity Episcopal Cathedral to dissolve its 11-year relationship with the Very Rev. Philip C. Linder, the dean who was suspended in July.
Bishop W. Andrew Waldo lifted the original suspension — for violating a pastoral directive not to speak to members about a growing leadership conflict — and indicated he would not file formal disciplinary charges against Linder.
But Waldo insisted Linder remain “constrained” from ministry at the city’s oldest and most prominent Episcopal congregation. The Rev. Charles M. Davis Jr. remains acting dean.
Read it all.
Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Conflicts • TEC Parishes • TEC Polity & Canons • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • * Theology • Pastoral Theology
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Glenn Manjorin, a Ringwood resident, hosts one of the many groups that take place around the New York/New Jersey metro area, and invited Suburban Trends to the Christ Episcopal Church in Suffern, N.Y. to take a look at how the other side of the recession is coping with what the media labels as "the new normal."
Manjorin, who previously was a computer disaster recovery specialist and business continuity planner at IBM, is no stranger to how the recession is making people adjust their habits.
He explained that the group helps members out with what they labeled as the "elevator speech," which emphasizes saying your name at the beginning and end of the speech, as well as keeping your work details within a 30-second timeframe to pitch to potential employers.
Read it all.
Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • --Social Networking • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Housing/Real Estate Market • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • Personal Finance • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007--
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Filed under: * General Interest • Humor / Trivia • * South Carolina
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The Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin has filed its ninth and final lawsuit against self-incorporated parishes that turned their backs on the national church in 2007.
This one, filed Monday, is against St. John the Evangelist church in Stockton, which is insured for $7.5 million.
St. John was one of about 40 parishes in the San Joaquin Diocese that left the Episcopal Church over issues of scriptural interpretation, such as whether Jesus is the only way to God, and whether gays should be ordained as priests and bishops.
Read it all.
Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Conflicts • TEC Conflicts: San Joaquin • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues
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Almighty God, we remember before thee this day the blessed martyrs of New Guinea, who, following the example of their Savior, laid down their lives for their friends; and we pray thee that we, who honor their memory, may imitate their loyalty and faith; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Church History • Spirituality/Prayer
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Glory be to God in the highest, the Creator and Lord of heaven and earth, the preserver of all things, the Father of mercies, who so loved mankind as to send his only begotten Son into the world, to redeem us from sin and misery, and to obtain for us everlasting life. Accept, O gracious God, our praise and thanksgiving for thine infinite mercies towards us; and teach us to love thee more and to serve thee better; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
--Gavin Hamilton
Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Spirituality/Prayer
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Jesus answered, "It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be made manifest in him. We must work the works of him who sent me, while it is day; night comes, when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world."
John 9:3-5
Filed under: * Theology • Theology: Scripture
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2) Payroll tax cut is not a bad idea for stimulus, but U.S. has longer-term job and growth problem that needs to be addressed.
3) Payroll tax cut for $400 billion in early 2009 would have been better than Obama’s $862 billion plan.
4) Any short-term tax cut should be coupled with long-term deficit reduction plan.
Read it all.
Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Housing/Real Estate Market • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • Taxes • The U.S. Government • Politics in General • Office of the President • President Barack Obama
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...the most effective tax cut for putting people back to work quickly is one that businesses and households get only if they spend money. Last year’s cash-for-clunkers program was an example. So was a recent bipartisan tax credit for businesses that hired workers who had been unemployed for months. Perhaps the broadest example is a temporary cut in the payroll tax for businesses, which reduces the cost of employing people.
Any of these steps would increase the budget deficit, obviously. But relative to the multitrillion-dollar, Medicare-driven, long-term deficit, a temporary tax cut costing a couple of hundred billion dollars isn’t significant. The more pressing problem today, by far, is the weak economy.
The great historical lesson of financial crises is that governments are usually not aggressive enough in responding. That was Japan’s mistake in 1990s, Herbert Hoover’s in the early 1930s and even Franklin Roosevelt’s in the mid-1930s.
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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Housing/Real Estate Market • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • Personal Finance • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • The U.S. Government • Politics in General • House of Representatives • Office of the President • President Barack Obama • Senate
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The Obama administration is considering a range of new measures to boost economic growth, including tax cuts and a new nationwide infrastructure program, according to people familiar with the discussions.
The president's economic team has met frequently in recent days to list ways to bolster the struggling recovery, according to government officials.
On the list of possible actions: additional tax cuts for small businesses beyond those included in a $30 billion small-business lending bill before the Senate. It's not clear what those tax breaks would target or how much they might cost in lost revenue to the government.
Journal Community
Also in the mix: a possible payroll tax cut for businesses and individuals, as well as other business tax breaks, according to people familiar with the discussions. Currently, income taxes are scheduled to rise with the expiration of Bush-era tax cuts at the end of this year.
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The 260 officers and men on the Kirk did even grander things than that. When they returned to Vietnam to rescue the South Vietnamese navy, they found 30 ships, dozens of fishing boats and a few cargo ships with them. The ships were crowded with refugees, some 20,000 to 30,000 in all.
But it has been an untold history. It just wasn't something people wanted to talk about 35 years ago. Jan Herman, a historian with the U.S. Navy Medical Department, says people wanted to forget the Vietnam War.
"It was a time to forget a very unhappy war and to move on. And so the story of the Kirk, as good as it was, was kind of left in the dust. No one really looked at it," he says.
Read or listen to it all.
Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • * International News & Commentary • Asia
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Protestant and Catholic women in the United States have grown unhappier since stores have stayed open on Sundays, according to a study by economists from Israel’s Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and Chicago’s DePaul University.
The study found that the repeal of “blue law” restrictions on Sunday shopping has corresponded with lower church attendance for white women. Meanwhile, the probability of women becoming unhappy increased by 17 percent.
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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • Women
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The 160-year-old Church of St. John the Evangelist in downtown Stockton is at the center of a lawsuit filed Tuesday in San Joaquin County Superior Court, the latest among several similar legal disputes over parishes that voted in recent years to leave the Episcopal Church USA.
To the Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin, the lawsuit represents an effort to reclaim assets that were wrongly taken when nearly 50 congregations voted in 2007 to secede, largely in protest over the ordination of women and gays.
But members and leaders of St. John's - which now is aligned with the more conservative Anglican Church in North America - call the lawsuit a malicious attempt to decimate a congregation and to steal what never belonged to the Episcopal Church in the first place.
Read it all.
Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Conflicts • TEC Conflicts: San Joaquin
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Since the marriage rate among Japan's shrinking population is falling and with many of the country's remaining lovebirds heading for Hawaii or Australia's Gold Coast, Atami had to do something. It is trying to attract single men—and their handheld devices.
In the first month of the city's promotional campaign launched July 10, more than 1,500 male fans of the Japanese dating-simulation game LovePlus+ have flocked to Atami for a romantic date with their videogame character girlfriends.
The men are real. The girls are cartoon characters on a screen. The trips are actual, can be expensive and aim to re-create the virtual weekend outing featured in the game, a product of Konami Corp. played on Nintendo Co.'s DS videogame system.
Read it all.
Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • Men • Women • * International News & Commentary • Asia • Japan
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The Enlightenment-derived worldview that gave rise to the great murder ideologies of the last century remains very much alive. Its language is softer, its intentions seem kinder, and its face is friendlier. But its underlying impulse hasn’t changed -- i.e., the dream of building a society apart from God; a world where men and women might live wholly sufficient unto themselves, satisfying their needs and desires through their own ingenuity.
This vision presumes a frankly “post-Christian” world ruled by rationality, technology and good social engineering. Religion has a place in this worldview, but only as an individual lifestyle accessory. People are free to worship and believe whatever they want, so long as they keep their beliefs to themselves and do not presume to intrude their religious idiosyncrasies on the workings of government, the economy, or culture.
Now, at first hearing, this might sound like a reasonable way to organize a modern society that includes a wide range of ethnic, religious and cultural traditions, different philosophies of life and approaches to living.
But we’re immediately struck by two unpleasant details....
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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Philosophy • Religion & Culture • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic
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[New Bishop to be] Mark Lattime has been the rector of St. Michael's Church in Geneseo, N.Y., since 2000 and has served as chaplain at Canterbury Fellowship and as associate rector of R.E. Lee Memorial Church in Lexington, Va.
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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops
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How good is one teacher compared with another?
A growing number of school districts have adopted a system called value-added modeling to answer that question, provoking battles from Washington to Los Angeles — with some saying it is an effective method for increasing teacher accountability, and others arguing that it can give an inaccurate picture of teachers’ work.
The system calculates the value teachers add to their students’ achievement, based on changes in test scores from year to year and how the students perform compared with others in their grade.
People who analyze the data, making a few statistical assumptions, can produce a list ranking teachers from best to worst.
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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Education
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Libyan leader Col. Moammar Gadhafi, who holds increasing sway in the Italian economy, upset some Italians by urging conversion to Islam during a three-day visit to the predominantly Roman Catholic country.
Col. Gadhafi held a series of private meetings on Sunday and Monday with some 800 Italian women and a small group of young men organized by a hostess agency and paid for by the Libyan government.
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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • Africa • Libya • Europe • Italy • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Islam
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The "compassionate release" of a convicted PanAm bomber in 2009 was an affront to justice and to the families of the 270 people who died in Lockerbie, Scotland, on Dec. 21, 1988. It looks even worse given the perspective that the following year has provided....
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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • * Economics, Politics • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • Terrorism • * International News & Commentary • Africa • Libya • America/U.S.A. • England / UK • --Scotland
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In the past, most patients placed their entire trust in the hands of their physician. Your doc said you needed a certain medical test, you got it.
Not so much anymore.
Jeff Chappell of Montgomery, Ala., recalls a visit a couple of years ago to a Charlotte emergency room, near where the family used to live, with his wife, Jacqueline, who has adrenal failure.
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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine
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In one of the two new developments, Rice researchers are reporting in Nano Letters, a journal of the American Chemical Society, that they have succeeded in building reliable small digital switches — an essential part of computer memory — that could shrink to a significantly smaller scale than is possible using conventional methods.
More important, the advance is based on silicon oxide, one of the basic building blocks of today’s chip industry, thus easing a move toward commercialization. The scientists said that PrivaTran, a Texas startup company, has made experimental chips using the technique that can store and retrieve information.
These chips store only 1,000 bits of data, but if the new technology fulfills the promise its inventors see, single chips that store as much as today’s highest capacity disk drives could be possible in five years. The new method involves filaments as thin as five nanometers in width — thinner than what the industry hopes to achieve by the end of the decade using standard techniques. The initial discovery was made by Jun Yao, a graduate researcher at Rice. Mr. Yao said he stumbled on the switch by accident.
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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Science & Technology
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O God of unsearchable wisdom and infinite mercy, who didst choose a captive warrior, David Oakerhater, to be thy servant, and didst send him to be a missionary to his own people and to execute the office of a deacon among them: Liberate us, who commemorate him today, from bondage to self, and empower us for service to thee and to the neighbors thou hast given us; through Jesus Christ, the captain of our salvation; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever.
Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Church History • Spirituality/Prayer
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O Thou in whom all things live, who commandest us to seek thee, and art ever ready to be found: To know thee is life, to serve thee is freedom, to praise thee is our souls’ joy. We bless thee and adore thee, we worship thee and magnify thee, we give thanks to thee for thy great glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
--St. Augustine
Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Spirituality/Prayer
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On an appointed day Herod put on his royal robes, took his seat upon the throne, and made an oration to them. And the people shouted, "The voice of a god, and not of man!" Immediately an angel of the Lord smote him, because he did not give God the glory; and he was eaten by worms and died.
--Acts 12:21-23
Filed under: * Theology • Theology: Scripture
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The Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin has filed a lawsuit against the former members of St. John the Evangelist, Stockton. It’s the ninth such lawsuit the diocese has filed against its former congregations that split from the national church to align with a more conservative Anglican order.
Read it all.
Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Conflicts • TEC Conflicts: San Joaquin • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues
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Using a two-sides-of-the-coin approach — traditional liturgy and social outreach — St. Thomas the Apostle Church, Hollywood, has found success in a transitory neighborhood and an often anti-religious culture. In the process, it has become a model for catechetical training, new-member retention and fundraising.
“If you want snobby ‘privileged at prayer’ go to Beverly Hills,” said longtime parishioner Michael Ensign. “We’re a funny little outpost at Hollywood and Gardner; a real ship of fools. But we’re clear about who we are. We’re messy and very human, but in messiness is God.”
Ensign has been at the church for 22 years. He is a career actor and veteran of too many movies and television series to list (including Big Love, CSI, and Boston Legal).
Read it all.
Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Parishes • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Evangelism and Church Growth • Pastoral Care
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After being out of work for more than a year, Donna Ings, 47, finally landed a job in February as a home health aide, earning about $10 an hour, with a company in Lexington, Mass.
Chelsea Nelson, 21, started two weeks ago as a waitress at a truck stop in Mountainburg, Ark., making around $7 or $8 an hour, depending on tips, ending a lengthy job search that took her young family to California and back.
Both are ostensibly economic success stories, people who were able to find work in a difficult labor market. Ms. Ing’s employer, Home Instead Senior Care, a company with franchises across the country, has been aggressively expanding. Ms. Nelson’s restaurant, Silver Bridge Truck Stop, recently reopened and hired about 20 people last month in an area thirsty for jobs.
Both women, however, took large pay cuts from their old jobs — Ms. Ing worked in the office of a wholesale tuxedo distributor; Ms. Nelson used to be a secretary. And both remain worried about how they will make ends meet in the long run.
Read it all.
Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007--
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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Sports
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Iraq ranks fourth in the Middle East on the Index of Political Freedom from The Economist’s Intelligence Unit — behind Israel, Lebanon and Morocco, but ahead of Jordan, Egypt, Qatar and Tunisia. Nearly two-thirds of Iraqis say they want a democracy, while only 19 percent want an Islamic state.
In short, there has been substantial progress on the things development efforts can touch most directly: economic growth, basic security, and political and legal institutions. After the disaster of the first few years, nation building, much derided, has been a success. When President Obama speaks to the country on Iraq, he’ll be able to point to a large national project that has contributed to measurable, positive results.
Of course, to be honest, he’ll also have to say how fragile and incomplete this success is. Iraqi material conditions are better, but the Iraqi mind has not caught up with the Iraqi opportunity.
Read it all.
Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Foreign Relations • Iraq War • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Asia • Afghanistan • Middle East • Iraq
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For decades, the intellectual descendants of Darwin have pored over ancient bones and bits of fossils, trying to piece together how fish evolved into man, theorizing about the evolutionary advantage conferred by each physical change. And over the past 10 years, a small group of academics have begun to look at religion in the same way: they've started to look at God and the supernatural through the lens of evolution.
In the history of the world, every culture in every location at every point in time has developed some supernatural belief system. And when a human behavior is so universal, scientists often argue that it must be an evolutionary adaptation along the lines of standing upright. That is, something so helpful that the people who had it thrived, and the people who didn't slowly died out until we were all left with the trait. But what could be the evolutionary advantage of believing in God?
[Jesse] Bering is one of the academics who are trying to figure that out. In the years since his mother's death, Bering has done experiments in his lab at Queens University, Belfast, in an attempt to understand how belief in the supernatural might have conferred some advantage and made us into the species we are today.
Read or listen to it all.
Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Psychology • Religion & Culture • Science & Technology • * Theology • Anthropology
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Following the formal announcement and a press conference with the local media, Bishop Stephen spent the day touring the Diocese visiting some of his future colleagues and parishioners.
After meeting Diocesan Office staff and others he visited a farm in Ramsey. He then went to Hampton, the site of a new church, for lunch with others from the Diocese. In the afternoon he met with a headteacher from one of our church schools, and visited a small innovative hi-tech business and one of the Universities in Cambridge. His day concluded at Ely Cathedral where he joined worshippers for Evening Prayer.
Read it all and enjoy the pictures.
Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • CoE Bishops
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You may find some information on this here--read it all.
Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of Rwanda
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It is one part of a very full fall.
Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Ministry of the Ordained • * South Carolina
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Iraq's prime minister has said the country is "independent" as the US formally ends combat operations.
Nouri Maliki said the country's security forces would now deal with all threats, domestic or other.
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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Foreign Relations • Iraq War • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • Middle East
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The size of the congregation more than met expectations. Some in attendance were visitors whose homes are not in Abbotsford. The service ended at 8:45am. At this initial service of renewed diocesan worship at St. Matthew’s a post service coffee time in the parish hall had not been planned, but members of the ANiC congregation which use the St. Matthew’s church building had thoughtfully set-up tables for a post service coffee time and had made the kitchen available. 17 of those in attendance at the service did go for breakfast/coffee at a nearby restaurant. Organizing and on-site “Coffee Time” will happen in the near future.
The ANiC leaders representing their community were cordial and cooperative and did an outstanding job of setting up the Parish Hall for worship. The ACoC congregation were not required to replace chairs or re-organize the space. Arrangements for future Sundays may differ. The ANiC leadership agreed to the use of the piano to add a musical component to the worship and that may come to pass in future weeks.
Read it all.
Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • Anglican Provinces • Anglican Church of Canada • Sexuality Debate (in Anglican Communion) • Same-sex blessings • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry
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Vicars in Greater Manchester are to be coached on how to spot bogus marriages.
The UK Border Agency is issuing guidance to clergy across the north west after a spate of fake weddings were exposed during immigration raids.
In recent months, immigration teams have swooped on a number of suspected sham ceremonies in local register offices following tip-offs that brides and grooms did not even speak the same language.
Read it all.
Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • * Christian Life / Church Life • Liturgy, Music, Worship • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Marriage & Family • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology • Pastoral Theology
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A Presbyterian court on Friday (Aug. 27) found a retired California pastor guilty of violating church rules and her ordination vows by performing same-sex marriages while it was briefly legal in the state in 2008.
The Rev. Jane Spahr, 68, did not deny presiding at as many as 16 ceremonies, even though her denomination, the Presbyterian Church (USA), prohibits ministers from stating, implying or representing same-sex unions as marriages.
The Napa, Calif.-based Permanent Judicial Commission of the Presbytery of the Redwoods found Spahr guilty by a 4-2 vote, concluding she persisted in a "pattern or practice of disobedience."
Read it all.
Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Liturgy, Music, Worship • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Marriage & Family • Sexuality • Civil Unions & Partnerships • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Presbyterian • Sexuality Debate (Other denominations and faiths) • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology • Pastoral Theology
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Pope John Paul II was seen as the great communicating pontiff, a man who went out from the Vatican to engage with the world. The message was clear and the symbolism spot on: remember him kneeling to kiss the ground when he came to the UK during the Falklands war in 1982? The present pope, Benedict XVI, could not be more different. A scholarly man who made his way as the previous pope's enforcer in the Vatican, he is not a natural communicator.
Benedict XVI's regime has seen several PR disasters: the Regensburg address in 2006, which was widely interpreted as an attack on Muslims, then the suggestion that saving humanity from homosexuality was as important as saving the rainforest, and the decision to pardon Richard Williamson, the Holocaust-denying British bishop.
Read it all.
Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Media • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • Pope Benedict XVI
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Everliving God, who didst call thy servants Aidan and Cuthbert to proclaim the Gospel in northern England and endued them with loving hearts and gentle spirits: Grant us grace to live as they did, in simplicity, humility and love for the poor; through Jesus Christ, who came among us as one who serves, and who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Church History • Spirituality/Prayer
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Everliving God, who didst call thy servants Aidan and Cuthbert to proclaim the Gospel in northern England and endued them with loving hearts and gentle spirits: Grant us grace to live as they did, in simplicity, humility and love for the poor; through Jesus Christ, who came among us as one who serves, and who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Church History • Spirituality/Prayer
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O LORD, I love the habitation of thy house, and the place where thy glory dwells.
--Psalm 26:8
Filed under: * Theology • Theology: Scripture
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(Via email--KSH).
An Open Letter to the People of the Episcopal Church, the People of the Diocese of Pennsylvania, Bishop Charles E. Bennison, and the Congregation of the Church of the Good Samaritan
August 30, 2010
Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ,
With sadness and concern we learned of Bishop Bennison’s decision to return as Bishop of the Diocese of Pennsylvania. We mourn with any young or vulnerable person; we mourn the fear and anxiety in our own diocese; we mourn damage to the proclamation of the good news; we mourn for those whose faith is shaken and for those who may not arrive at faith. We mourn that his actions, past and current, and decisions in this case bring scandal to the Church and hinder the proclamation of the good news of Christ crucified and resurrected.
Within the examination of all who are to be ordained to the priesthood, the ordinand vows to “do your best to pattern your life (and that of your family, or household, or community) in accordance with the teachings of Christ, so that you may be a wholesome example to your people.” (Book of Common Prayer 532) As bishop, each is required to vow to “defend those who have no helper” (BCP 518) and to be a guardian (BCP 519, 521) to all in a diocese. Among other qualifications, the bishop must be above reproach (I Tim 3:2-7, Titus 1:6-9). Our Lord warned against scandalizing the young (Mt 18:6, Lk 17:2, Mk 9:42-50). The Apostle Paul likewise speaks on the dangers of sexual sin and forbids sheltering any who scandalize the church with such action (1Cor. 5:1-13). Christ’s call is for us to turn away from sin: “… the kingdom of God is near; repent and believe in the good news” (Mk 1:15, Mt 4:17). Holy Scripture proclaims the gravity of the office.
Many have asked Bishop Bennison to step down for the good of the diocese, the wider church and for himself. We join their request and call him to repent of the harm done to individuals and to the witness of the church. A public sign of this repentance would be resignation.
Further, we call ourselves to repent and proclaim the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ. We urge all members of the congregation of the Church of the Good Samaritan, the diocese, and the Episcopal Church to join us in repentance for our individual sins and for any negligence inside the Church in protecting the vulnerable, scandalizing the young, damaging the witness of the church, and neglecting to proclaim the good news of Christ’s atoning work.
We will celebrate a service for prayer for the state of the church at the Church of the Good Samaritan on Wednesday, September 8, 2010 at 7 p.m. All are welcome, and if you are not joining us in person, we invite you to join us in prayer at that time.
In faithfulness and prayer,
Vestry, Church of the Good Samaritan
Bob Anewalt, Tom Connett, Rich Englander, Charlene Fitzwater, Joanne Gillespie, Chuck Gregan, Andrew
Krider, Peter Niedland, Steve Ross, John Searle, Brenda Shantz, R.J. Snell, Mark Stockwell, Ronnie Tousignant
Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • TEC Conflicts • TEC Conflicts-Pennsylvania
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"They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old"—we are all familiar with Laurence Binyon's lament for the fallen of World War I. "The Great Silence" is the less-known story of the aftermath of that war: of those who were left and who did grow old. It complements Juliet Nicolson's earlier account, in "The Perfect Summer," of the golden period prefacing the outbreak of hostilities, an interlude of prosperity that only served to throw the horror of the conflict and the social disintegration that followed into sharper relief.
Of the five million British servicemen who went out to fight in the European trenches, 1.5 million came back with permanent injuries and disfigurements; others were traumatized in less immediately obvious ways. Taking stock, the Illustrated London News wrote at the time that the war had "destroyed millions of men, broken millions of lives, ruined great cities and hamlets"; it had left "a belt of earth ravaged, crowded the world with maimed men, blind, mad, sick men, flinging empires into anarchy." Those who did return, anticipating the "land fit for heroes" promised by the British Prime Minister Lloyd George, found that neither glory nor reward were forthcoming. The economy had collapsed, jobs were scarce and housing was in short supply. Once the euphoria following the Armistice had run its course, the silence that descended when the guns finally stopped was largely one of stunned bewilderment.
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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • Books • History • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • * International News & Commentary • England / UK
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Read it carefully and it all (17 page pdf of a journal article from Cultural Encounters).
Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • Religion & Culture • * Theology
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Read it all.
Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • - Anglican: Commentary • Anglican Provinces • Church of Uganda • * International News & Commentary • Africa
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The week-long All Africa Bishops Conference closed yesterday, with the prelates condemning corruption.
“Our political leaders are urged to have a hard look at the style of leadership that has so far engendered corruption, poverty, insecurity and underdevelopment,” the prelates said in a five-page resolution.
The communiqué was read to journalists by the chairperson of the Coalition of African Prelates Association, Ian Ernest, at a briefing attended by other archbishops at the Kampala Serena Conference Centre.
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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of Uganda • * International News & Commentary • Africa
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The independent state MP Clover Moore has moved to shore up support for her same-sex adoption bill by giving church adoption agencies the right to refuse services to gay and lesbian couples without breaching anti-discrimination laws.
Ms Moore wrote to MPs on Friday announcing she would amend the bill and reintroduce it to Parliament on Thursday.
She told the Herald she was amending the bill "in line with requests" from church adoption agencies to help ensure its passage through Parliament.
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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Anglican Church of Australia • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • Australia / NZ • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches
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In the late 19th century, the forces of religious division in America targeted Catholics. Josiah Strong's book Our Country: Its Possible Future and Present Crisis referred to Catholics as "the alien Romanist" who swore allegiance to the pope instead of the country and rejected core American values such as freedom of the press and religious liberty. The book remained in print for decades and sold nearly 200,000 copies.
In the early 20th century, the forces of religious division in America targeted Jews. Harvard scholar Diana Eck writes, "In the 1930s and early 1940s, hate organizations grew and conspiracy theories about Jewish influence spread like wildfire." In 1939, Father Charles Coughlin's Christian Front filled Madison Square Garden with 20,000 people at a vitriolic anti-Semitic event complete with banners that read: "Stop Jewish Domination of America."
Today, the forces of religious division demonize Muslims....
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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.
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Bob Lane believes people are searching for more than traditional answers to their spiritual needs.
Canadians are more often looking away from traditional western religions to fulfill those needs.
Lane understands why events like Saturday's Pagan Pride Day are attracting more and more people every year and why a growing number of young people are not attending traditional churches.
Rev. Brian Evans of St. Paul's Anglican Church can't put his finger on why, but agrees a growing number of people in British Columbia are looking elsewhere for spiritual fulfilment.
"All the indicators tell us that we (B.C.) have the highest percentage of people in North America who do not participate in traditional Christian Church practices," Evans said.
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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • Canada
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I am interested in the following: where was it offered, who taught it, what aids did you use if any (book, video), how long did it last (both the classes themselves as well as the overall course), and, most especially, WHY did it have such a big impact on you? Any other details are of course welcome. Many thanks--KSH.
Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Adult Education • * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • Religion & Culture
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It was a celebration of how people of different faiths can work together for the common good. An interfaith sunrise worship service at Trinity Episcopal Church in Pass Christian recognized the impact that many religious groups have had in hurricane recovery.
Jews, Christians. Muslims and Hare Krishnas were at the sunrise worship service. All believers were welcome.
"That we all serve an awesome God," said Alice Graham, Mississippi Coast Interfaith Disaster Task Force. "We come to that service of God from different faith traditions. We're unified in that we serve a God that calls us all into community."
Read it all
Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Parishes • * Culture-Watch • Hurricane Katrina • * Religion News & Commentary • Inter-Faith Relations
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Mosques have commemoratively been established upon the ruins or in the shells of the sacred buildings of other religions—most notably but not exclusively in Cordoba, Jerusalem, Istanbul, and India. When sited in this fashion they are monuments to victory, and the chief objection to this one is not to its existence but that it would be near the site of atrocities—not just one—closely associated with mosques because they were planned and at times celebrated in them.
Building close to Ground Zero disregards the passions, grief and preferences not only of most of the families of September 11th but, because we are all the families of September 11th, those of the American people as well, even if not the whole of the American people. If the project is to promote moderate Islam, why have its sponsors so relentlessly, without the slightest compromise, insisted upon such a sensitive and inflammatory setting? That is not moderate. It is aggressively militant.
Disregarding pleas to build it at a sufficient remove so as not to be linked to an abomination committed, widely praised, and throughout the world seldom condemned in the name of Islam, the militant proponents of the World Trade Center mosque are guilty of a poorly concealed provocation. They dare Americans to appear anti-Islamic and intolerant or just to roll over.
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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • City Government • Terrorism • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Islam
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Every seat in the Clarendon County unemployment office is taken on a typical weekday afternoon, and many of these people won't find new jobs any time soon. That's just the way it is here along South Carolina's poor and rural Interstate 95 corridor.
So far this year, only one job opens for every three people sitting in the seats at the satellite office where folks travel for miles to file unemployment claims and apply for new work.
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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • * South Carolina
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The American economy could experience painfully slow growth and stubbornly high unemployment for a decade or longer as a result of the 2007 collapse of the housing market and the economic turmoil that followed, according to an authority on the history of financial crises.
That finding, contained in a new paper by Carmen M. Reinhart, an economist at the University of Maryland, generated considerable debate during an annual policy symposium here, organized by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, which concluded on Saturday.
Read it all.
Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Housing/Real Estate Market • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • Personal Finance • The Banking System/Sector • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • The U.S. Government • Politics in General
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While reporting my recent series on Aging At Home, I came across a special suit at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology AgeLab. It's meant to help 20-something engineers feel the aches and limitations of an average 75-year-old so they can design better products for them. Think of it as working like those outfits Superheroes put on, only backward. Of course, I couldn't resist.
Now, I'm 40-something — no spring chicken. But if the crosswalk light is blinking, I can still dash across the street, no problem. Until, that is, MIT researcher Rozanne Puleo starts strapping me into what she calls her Age Gain Now Empathy System.
I pull a harness around my waist and Puleo starts attaching things to it. First, stretchy rubber bands connect from my waist to the bottom of my feet.
"It will limit your hip flexion," Puleo explains.
Read or listen to it all and make sure to look at the enlarged version of the picture.
Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Science & Technology
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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Education • * General Interest • Humor / Trivia
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You want me to tell you why God is to be loved and how much. I answer, the reason for loving God is God Himself; and the measure of love due to Him is immeasurable love.
--Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153)
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News of this came to the ears of the church in Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch. When he came and saw the grace of God, he was glad; and he exhorted them all to remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast purpose; for he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith. And a large company was added to the Lord.
--Acts 11:22-24
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It increasingly seems as if the policy makers attending like physicians to the American economy are peering into their medical kits and coming up empty, their arsenal of pharmaceuticals largely exhausted and the few that remain deemed too experimental or laden with risky side effects. The patient — who started in critical care — was showing signs of improvement in the convalescent ward earlier this year, but has since deteriorated. The doctors cannot agree on a diagnosis, let alone administer an antidote with confidence.
This is where the Great Recession has taken the world’s largest economy, to a Great Ambiguity over what lies ahead, and what can be done now. Economists debate the benefits of previous policy prescriptions, but in the political realm a rare consensus has emerged: The future is now so colored in red ink that running up the debt seems politically risky in the months before the Congressional elections, even in the name of creating jobs and generating economic growth. The result is that Democrats and Republicans have foresworn virtually any course that involves spending serious money.
The growing impression of a weakening economy combined with a dearth of policy options has reinvigorated concerns that the United States risks sinking into the sort of economic stagnation that captured Japan during its so-called Lost Decade in the 1990s.
Read it all.
Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • Credit Markets • Housing/Real Estate Market • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • Stock Market • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • The U.S. Government • Budget • Federal Reserve • The National Deficit • The United States Currency (Dollar etc) • Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner • Politics in General • House of Representatives • Office of the President • President Barack Obama • Senate
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I was perilously close to becoming an agnostic—at least about certain statistics. Specifically, I really didn't know the data on Christians in China, and for a while I was not sure if anyone did. Only now, perhaps, do we have the glimmerings of an answer to one of the most pressing questions in global religion: just how many Chinese Christians are there?
This question matters enormously because of China's vast population—now over 1.3 billion—and its emerging role as a global superpower. If Christians make up even a sizable minority within that country, that could be a political fact of huge significance.
Some years ago, veteran journalist David Aikman suggested that China's Christian population was reaching critical mass and that Christianity would achieve cultural and political hegemony by 2030 or so. Writing in First Things last year, Catholic China-watcher Francesco Sisci agreed that "we are near a Constantinian moment for the Chinese Empire." If we could say confidently that China today had, say, 100 or 150 million Christian believers, that would also make the country one of the largest centers of the faith worldwide, with the potential of a still greater role in years to come.
But what can we actually say with confidence when honest and reliable authorities differ so widely on the basic numbers?
Read it all.
Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches
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The second All African Bishops conference ended yesterday with the primates calling on Africans to stick to their culture and reject Western ways tearing the church a part.
While addressing a press conference yesterday, the clergy men, led by Archbishop Henry Luke Orombi, said Western cultures like homosexuality should be shunned. He said they will not change their stand on homosexuality, saying the practice is against the scriptures.
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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of Uganda • * International News & Commentary • Africa • * Theology • Pastoral Theology
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The outgoing commander of American forces in Iraq, Gen. Ray Odierno, said Sunday that a new Iraqi government could still be two months away and warned that a stalemate beyond that could create demands for a new election to break the deadlock that has lasted since March.
While General Odierno said he believed negotiations had picked up and would prove successful, he predicted politicians still required “four to six to eight weeks.”
“That’s a guess,” he said in an interview at his headquarters, whose plaster roof is still engraved with the initials of Saddam Hussein. “If it goes beyond 1 October, what does that mean? Could there be a call for another election? I worry about that a little bit.”
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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Foreign Relations • Iraq War • * International News & Commentary • Middle East • Iraq
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...“The Corrections” towered out of the rubble [of 9/11], at once a monument to a world destroyed and a beacon lighting the way for a new kind of novel that might break the suffocating grip of postmodernism, whose most adept practitioners were busily creating, as James Wood objected at the time, “curiously arrested books that know a thousand different things — the recipe for the best Indonesian fish curry! the sonics of the trombone! the drug market in Detroit! the history of strip cartoons! — but do not know a single human being.”
“The Corrections” did not so much repudiate all this as surgically “correct” it. Franzen cracked open the opaque shell of postmodernism, tweezed out its tangled circuitry and inserted in its place the warm, beating heart of an authentic humanism. His fictional canvas teemed with information — about equity finance, railroad engineering, currency manipulation in Eastern Europe, the neurochemistry of clinical depression. But the data flowed through the arteries of narrative, just as it had done in the novels of Dickens and Tolstoy, Bellow and Mann. Like those giants, Franzen attended to the quiet drama of the interior life and also recorded its fraught transactions with the public world. Even as his contemporaries had diminished the place of the “single human being,” Franzen, miraculously, had enlarged it.
“Freedom” is a still richer and deeper work — less glittering on its surface but more confident in its method. This time the social history has been pushed forward, from the Clinton to the Bush years — and the generational clock has been wound forward, too. There is, again, a nuclear family, though the hopeful aspirants are not children but parents. They are the Berglunds, “young pioneers” who renovate a Victorian in Ramsey Hill, a neighborhood of decayed mansions in St. Paul (Franzen assuredly knows that F. Scott Fitzgerald grew up there, on Summit Avenue; the street is mentioned in the opening paragraph) and then float upward on drafts of unassailable virtue. Patty is a “sunny carrier of sociological pollen, an affable bee” buzzing at the back door “with a plate of cookies or a card or some lilies of the valleys in a little thrift-store vase that she told you not to bother returning”; her husband, Walter, is a lawyer of such adamant decency that his employer, 3M, has parked him in “outreach and philanthropy, a corporate cul-de-sac where niceness was an asset” and where, commuting by bicycle each day, he nurtures his commitment to the environmentalist causes he will eventually pursue with messianic, and mis begotten, fervor.
Read it all.
Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Books • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.
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Google’s YouTube video site is in negotiations with Hollywood’s leading movie studios to launch a global pay-per-view video service by the end of 2010, putting it head-to-head with Apple in the race to dominate the digital distribution of film and television content.
Google has been pitching to the studios on the international appeal of a streaming, on-demand movie service pegged to the world’s most popular search engine and YouTube, according to several people with knowledge of the situation.
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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Movies & Television • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life
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Read it all.
Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Sexuality Debate (in Anglican Communion) • Same-sex blessings • * International News & Commentary • Africa
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The question of homosexuality reared its head for the umpteenth time this week at the all African Anglican Church conference that is taking place in Entebbe. Despite pressure from the western world, African bishops have renewed their condemnation of the practice of homosexuality in the church.
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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of Uganda • Sexuality Debate (in Anglican Communion) • Same-sex blessings • * International News & Commentary • Africa
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Via email:
1. In a spirit of unity and trust, and in an atmosphere of love the Primates of the Council of Anglican Provinces in Africa (CAPA) as well as Archbishop John Chew, the Chairman of the Global South, which represents the majority of the active orthodox membership in the entire Anglican Communion, met during the 2nd All Africa Bishop’s Conference in Entebbe, Uganda. We enjoyed the fellowship and the sense of unity as we heard the Word of God and gathered around the Lord’s Table.
2. We gave thanks to God for the leadership of the Most. Rev. Ian Ernest, Archbishop of the Indian Ocean and Chairman of CAPA and for the abundant hospitality provided by the Most Rev. Henry Orombi, Archbishop of Uganda and the entire Church of Uganda.
3. We were honored by the presence of the His Excellency General Yoweri K. Museveni, President of the Republic of Uganda, for his official welcome to Uganda and for hosting an official state reception for the AABCH. We are very grateful to him for his support of the work of the Anglican Church in Uganda and for his call to stand against the alien intrusions and cultural arrogance which undermines the moral fiber of our societies. We recall his admonishment to live out the words and deeds of the Good Samaritan. We are also grateful to the Rt. Hon. Prime Minister of Uganda for his presence and words of encouragement to us.
4. We were very happy and appreciated that the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Dr. Rowan Williams, accepted our invitation to attend the 2nd All Africa Bishop’s Conference. We were encouraged by his word to us. We also appreciated the opportunity to engage face-to-face with him in an atmosphere of love and respect. We shared our hearts openly and with transparency, and we have come to understand the difficulties and the pressures he is facing. He also came to understand our position and how our mission is threatened by actions which have continued in certain provinces in the Communion. We therefore commit ourselves to continuously support and pray for him and for the future of our beloved Communion.
5. We were very saddened with the recent actions of The Episcopal Church in America who went ahead and consecrated Mary Glasspool last May 2010, in spite of the call for a moratorium (1) and all the warnings from the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion and the 4th Encounter of the Global South.
This was a clear departure from the standard teaching of the Anglican Communion as stated in Lambeth Resolution 1.10. We are also concerned about similar progressive developments in Canada and in the U.K.
6. Being aware of the reluctance of those Instruments of Communion to follow through the recommendations of the Windsor Report (2) and taken by the Primates Meetings in Dromantine (3) and Dar es Salaam (4) we see the way ahead as follows:
A. In order to keep the ethos and tradition of the Anglican Communion in a credible way, it is obligatory of all Provinces to observe the agreed decisions and recommendations of the Windsor Report and the various communiqués of the past three Primates Meetings, especially Dar es Salaam in 2007. We as Primates of CAPA and the Global South are committed to honor such recommendations.
B. We are committed to meet more regularly as Global South Primates and take our responsibilities in regard to issues of Faith and Order. (5)
C. We will give special attention to sound theological education as we want to ensure that the future generations stand firm on the Word of God and faithfully follow our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
D. We are committed to network with orthodox Anglicans around the world, including Communion Partners in the USA and the Anglican Church in North America, in holistic mission and evangelism. Our aim is to advance the Kingdom of God especially in unreached areas.
E. We are committee to work for unity with our ecumenical partners and to promote interfaith dialogue with other faiths in order to promote a peaceful co-existence and to resolve conflicts.
F. We are committed to work for the welfare of our countries. This will involve alleviating poverty, achieving financial and economic empowerment, fighting diseases, and promoting education.
7. Finally, we are very aware of our own inadequacy and weaknesses hence we depend fully on the grace of God to achieve his purpose in the life of his church and our beloved Anglican Communion.
Footnotes:
1. The Windsor Report Section 134.1 The Episcopal church (USA) be invited to express its regret that the proper constraints of the bonds of affection were breached in the events surrounding the election and consecration of a bishop for the See of New Hampshire, and for the consequences which followed and that such an expression of regret would represent the desire of the Episcopal Church (USA) to remain within the Communion (2) the Episcopal church (USA) be invited to effect a moratorium on the election and consent to the consecration of any candidate to the episcopate who is living in a same gender union until some new consensus in the Anglican Communion energies.
The Windsor Report Section 144.3 We call for a moratorium on all such public Rites, and recommend that bishops who have authorized such rites in the US and Canada be invited to express regret that the proper constraints of the bonds of affection were breached by such authorizations.
2. Windsor Report. Section D. 157 There remains a very real danger that we will not choose to walk together. Should the call to halt and find ways of continuing in our present communion not be heeded, then we shall have to begin to learn to walk apart.
3. The Communiqué of the Primates Meeting in Dromantine (2005) Section 14. Within the ambit of the issues discussed in the Windsor Report and in roder to recognize the integrity of all parties, we request that the Episcopal Church (USA) and the Anglican Church of Canada voluntarily withdraw their members from the Anglican Consultative Council for the period leading up to the next Lambeth Conference.
4. The Communiqué of the Primates Meeting in Dar es Salaam in 2007. If the reassurances requested of the House of Bishops cannot in good conscience be given, the relationship between The Episcopal Church and the Anglican communion as a whole remains damaged at best, and this has consequences for the full participation of the Church in the life of the Communion.
5. Lambeth 1988 Resolution 18.2(a) Urges the encouragement be given to a developing collegial rule for the Primates Meeting under the presidency of the Archbishop of Canterbury, so that the Primates Meeting is able to exercise an enhanced responsibility in offering guidance on doctrinal, moral and pastoral matters.
Lambeth 1998 Resolution III.6 (a) reaffirms the Resolution 18.2(a) Of Lambeth 1988 which “urges that encouragement be given to a developing collegial role for the Primates’ Meeting under the presidency of the Archbishop of Canterbury, so that the Primates’ Meeting is able to exercise an enhanced responsibility in offering guidance on doctrinal, moral and pastoral matters”.
Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Primates • Anglican Provinces • Church of Uganda • Global South Churches & Primates • Sexuality Debate (in Anglican Communion) • Same-sex blessings • * International News & Commentary • Africa
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President Yoweri Museveni on Wednesday evening hosted the visiting African and foreign Bishops to a dinner at State House Entebbe. The prelates are here for the second All Africa Bishops Conference in Entebbe at Imperial Resort Beach Hotel which ends tomorrow.
As they arrived atop the hill at snail pace in three minibuses, many were awe struck by the breath taking beauty of the palatial structure, imposing majestically over Entebbe town. They ate and drank, with the President who called on them to champion social economic transformation.
“It is very important that the church leaders, political leaders and traditional leaders understand that social-economic transformation is the main problem in Africa”, the President said.
Read it all
Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of Uganda • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Africa
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Nobody keeps track of how many black Orthodox Jews are in New York or across the nation, and surely it is a tiny fraction of both populations. Indeed, even the number of black Jews over all is elusive, though a 2005 book about Jewish diversity, “In Every Tongue,” cited studies suggesting that some 435,000 American Jews, or 7 percent, were black, Hispanic, Asian or American Indian.
“Everyone agrees that the numbers have grown, and they should be noticed,” said Jonathan D. Sarna of Brandeis University, a pre-eminent historian of American Jewry. “Once, there was a sense that ‘so-and-so looked Jewish.’ Today, because of conversion and intermarriage and patrilineal descent, that’s less and less true. The average synagogue looks more like America.
“Even in an Orthodox synagogue, there’s likely to be a few people who look different,” Professor Sarna said, “and everybody assumes that will grow.”
Through the Internet, younger black Orthodox Jews are coming together in ways they never could before.
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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • Race/Race Relations • Religion & Culture • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism
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Until recently, homeownership was celebrated as a hallmark of upward social mobility. Today, many millions of people who owe more than their homes are worth feel it's become quite the opposite. It prevents many people from being able to seek a better job. And in many cases, it's taking a harsh emotional toll on families who find themselves stuck.
Among those frozen in place is Kelly Christensen, who was set to marry her longtime love, Joel Nerenberg. They bought a house in Burnsville, Minn., three years ago. They had wedding invitations printed. Then they broke up.
Two years later, they still own their home. Christensen's wedding dress now hangs in her ex-fiance's closet. He lives across the hall.
Read or listen to it all.
Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Marriage & Family • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Housing/Real Estate Market • Personal Finance
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Fierce fighting among some Lutherans culminated in Friday's formation of the North American Lutheran Church, the nation's newest church body. The church has strong ties to a little-known ministry in the Twin Cities and a new seminary in Brookings.
The battles have included scorching accusations of blasphemy, "devilish" behavior and the leader of a reform group declaring that last year's vote on gay clergy amounted to the biblical sign of the beast: 666.
It's not the sort of thing typically seen among Lutherans, the low-key Christians that Garrison Keillor jokes about on his radio show. They prefer to sit in back pews and project an image of grace and peace.
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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Lutheran • Sexuality Debate (Other denominations and faiths)
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Grandma is posting a photo on Facebook.
Grandpa is looking for former colleagues on LinkedIn.
And more and more people ages 50 and older are joining social networks, according to a new report by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project. The study found that social networking has almost doubled among this population — growing from 22 percent to 42 percent over the past year.
According to comScore, a digital measurement company, 27.4 million people age 55 and over engaged in social networking in July, up from 16 million one year ago.
Read or listen to it all.
Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Blogging & the Internet • --Social Networking • Science & Technology
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Katherine Marshall, 63, a senior fellow at Georgetown’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs, spent more than three decades with the World Bank, working in part to create space for faith in discussions about development. She sat down with The Washington Examiner to share her beliefs, and why due respect for religion can make all the difference....
Do you consider yourself to be of a specific faith?
I was raised an Episcopalian, and spent part of my childhood in England, where there was an intensely Anglican focus to my school. As students, we attended chapel, and regularly studied the Bible as a subject, and performed church music and dramas. Through that I came to appreciate the cultural heritage, and also to a degree the intellectual grounding of the faith. I still consider myself an Episcopalian, and I admire and support the global focus of the Episcopal Church, and its integral concern for issues of social justice and combating poverty.
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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • * Culture-Watch • Globalization • History • Religion & Culture
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If you're the parent of a Christian teenager, Kenda Creasy Dean has this warning:
Your child is following a "mutant" form of Christianity, and you may be responsible.
Dean says more American teenagers are embracing what she calls "moralistic therapeutic deism." Translation: It's a watered-down faith that portrays God as a "divine therapist" whose chief goal is to boost people's self-esteem.
Dean is a minister, a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary and the author of "Almost Christian," a new book that argues that many parents and pastors are unwittingly passing on this self-serving strain of Christianity.
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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Youth Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • Teens / Youth • * Theology
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Increasingly, the doctor is not in when it comes to delivering primary care. But the nurse practitioner or physician assistant is often taking the doctor's place.
"We are ideally suited for it. And it's so cost-effective compared to any other form of medical provider," says Jim Love, a physician assistant from rural Pittsfield, Maine. "We need to be educating a lot more of us."
Michael McDonald, the primary care physician who supervises Love from 25 miles up the road in Dexter, Maine, agrees.
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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market
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Here is one:
Right after Katrina I tried to go back home and back to normal life but found that i was angry all the time and crying at a drop a hat later I found out that I might have Post traumatic stress from it. I have my good days but there are days when all I want to do is cry.
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KIM LAWTON, correspondent: About 20 minutes outside New Orleans, worshippers gather at First Baptist Church in Chalmette, the largest city in St. Bernard Parish. It’s a pretty typical Southern Baptist Sunday morning service.
REV JOHN DEE JEFFRIES (Preaching at First Baptist Church, Chalmette, Louisiana): Lord, what’s going on? Lord, why?
LAWTON: But that belies the incredible journey this congregation has made since Hurricane Katrina. More than half of the churches in St. Bernard Parish still haven’t come back, and most of them probably never will. First Baptist is not only back, but reinventing itself to help a community still struggling to recover.
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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Pastoral Care • * Culture-Watch • Hurricane Katrina • Religion & Culture • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Baptists
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Fire departments around the nation are cutting jobs, closing firehouses and increasingly resorting to “rolling brownouts” in which they shut different fire companies on different days as the economic downturn forces many cities and towns to make deep cuts that are slowing their responses to fires and other emergencies.
Philadelphia began rolling brownouts this month, joining cities from Baltimore to Sacramento that now shut some units every day. San Jose, Calif., laid off 49 firefighters last month. And Lawrence, Mass., north of Boston, has laid off firefighters and shut down half of its six firehouses, forcing the city to rely on help from neighboring departments each time a fire goes to a second alarm.
Fire chiefs and union officials alike say it is the first time they have seen such deep cuts in so many parts of the country. “I’ve never seen it so widespread,” said Harold A. Schaitberger, the general president of the International Association of Fire Fighters.
Read it all from the front page of yesterday's NY Times.
Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • Politics in General • City Government
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Vacations have become a luxury for many Americans trying to make ends meet in this economic downturn, but there are signs that people are slowly, even timidly, on the move again.
Families who postponed trips last year are making modest vacation plans, travel agents say. And business owners or executives who felt it was insensitive to travel as they cut costs and laid off workers are again making plans to get away, leisure industry experts added.
Stacy H. Small, president of Elite Travel International, said at least half of her clients who were business owners cut back last year. “I had a lot of clients say ‘I just don’t feel right,’ ” she said. This year, nearly all have returned.
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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Travel • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Personal Finance • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007--
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Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf has long worked to bridge divisions, be they fissures between interfaith husbands and wives or political chasms separating the United States and the Muslim world.
The 61-year-old clergyman is now in the midst of a polarizing political, religious and cultural debate over plans for a multistory Islamic center that will feature a mosque, health club and theater about two blocks north of ground zero. He is one of the leaders of the Park51 project, but has largely been absent from the national debate over the implications of building a Muslim house of worship so close to where terrorists killed more than 2,700 people.
Though Rauf has said the center, which could cost more than $100 million, would serve as a space for interfaith dialogue, moderate Muslim practice and peaceful prayer, critics say it will create a base for radical, anti-American Islam. Some critics have also asked where the funding for the center might originate and whether it may come from sources linked to Muslim extremists.
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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • City Government • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Islam
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Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
As far as I am concerned, Tulane University President Scott Cowen is a national hero--someone needs to give the man a medal--KSH.
Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Education • Hurricane Katrina • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • City Government
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An open alternative to Facebook will be launched on 15 September, the developers of the project have said.
Diaspora describes itself as a "privacy-aware, personally-controlled" social network.
The open-source project made headlines earlier this year when Facebook was forced to simplify its privacy settings, after they were criticised for being overly complex and confusing.
The project, developed by four US students, raised $200,000 (£140,000).
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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • --Social Networking • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life
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Christ Church uses remarkably simple equipment to take prayer to the people in southeast Schenectady, New York.
I arrived at the church at 9 a.m. with Torre Bissell and we set up a 4-by-4 folding table with five chairs.
“Put it here,” Torre said, pointing to the crack in the sidewalk that must have been the property line. “That way no one can say we’re on the sidewalk. And point chairs this way, facing out. That way people don’t feel trapped.”
And that was it. A laminated sign reading “Prayer Table” flapped from the front. Torre pulled out a pen and paper and jotted down my name and his and the day’s date. Then he pulled out a bag of wooden crosses and laid out a few along with a thin paperback English Standard Version New Testament.
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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Parishes • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Pastoral Care • Spirituality/Prayer
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(Via email):
(Church of Uganda) In a 27th August letter to Archbishop Henry Luke Orombi, Archbishop of the Church of Uganda, the Most Rev. Ian Earnest, Chairman of CAPA (Council of Anglican Provinces of Africa), apologized for “embarrassing” the Church of Uganda when CAPA received a $25,000 grant from Trinity Grants (USA) for the All Africa Bishops Conference taking place in Uganda. (Letter is attached.)
In 2003, the Church of Uganda broke communion with the Episcopal Church (TEC) over their unbiblical theology and immoral actions that violated historic and Biblical Anglicanism and tore the fabric of the Communion at its deepest level. At the same time, the Church of Uganda resolved to not receive any funds from TEC.
The 2nd All Africa Bishops Conference was hosted by the Church of Uganda, but the programme and speakers were chosen by CAPA. The Church of Uganda received no outside funding for its role in hosting the 400 Bishops and other participants in the week-long conference. All funds were raised locally within Uganda.
Archbishop Henry thanked Archbishop Ian for acknowledging the awkward position CAPA had put the Church of Uganda in and appreciated his humility and generous spirit in writing.
Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of Uganda • * International News & Commentary • Africa
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The Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth was formed in 1982 by an organizing convention of clergy and lay delegates. The diocese then voted to affiliate with the General Convention of the Episcopal Church. General Convention does not establish dioceses; rather, dioceses join the General Convention voluntarily.
Diocesan conventions in 2007 and 2008 voted by 80 percent to withdraw from the General Convention. As an unincorporated association, the diocese simply exercised its right to withdraw. Nothing in the constitution or canons of TEC says a diocese may not leave. The litigation against us is an attempt to deny this legal right.
Read it all.
(Please note that the letter to which Ms Gill is responding may be found here [starts at the bottom of the page and continues on the following page at the top]).
Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Conflicts • TEC Conflicts: Fort Worth
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My friends who grew up with dogs tell me how when they were teenagers and trusted no one in the world, they could tell their dog all their secrets. It was the one friend who would not gossip or betray, could be solemn or silly or silent as needed, could provide in the middle of the night the soft, unbegrudging comfort and peace that adolescence conspires to disrupt. An age that is all about growth and risk needs some anchors and weights, a model of steadfastness when all else is in flux. Sometimes I think Twist's abiding devotion keeps my girls on a benevolent leash, one that hangs quietly at their side as they trot along but occasionally yanks them back to safety and solid ground.
We've weighed so many decisions so carefully in raising our daughters--what school to send them to and what church to attend, whether to let them drop soccer or piano at the risk of teaching them irresponsibility, when to give them cell phones and with what precautions. But when it comes to what really shapes their character and binds our family, I never would have thought we would owe so much to its smallest member.
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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • * General Interest • Animals • * Theology • Pastoral Theology
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The number of women giving birth in the U.S. declined for the second year in a row as more women delayed motherhood during the worst recession since the 1930s.
The number of births dropped 2.6 percent to 4.14 million in 2009, even as the U.S. population rose slightly, according to the annual report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. The national birthrate declined to 13.5 for every 1,000 people, from 14.3 in 2007, when the collapse of subprime loans led to falling home prices and the loss of more than 8 million jobs.
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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • * Economics, Politics • Economy • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007--
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Is hearing or the failure to hear a matter of responsibility and culpability, or is it not? Maybe another family story will help sort this out. Eight years ago, I suffered an ear infection that led to a puncturing of the eardrum. A doctor wanted to test how much damage had been done, so I was ushered into a sound-proof booth and administered a number of tests. When we were finished, I asked the technician about the results. She replied that, for a 45-year-old man, my hearing was slightly above average.
"Well, isn't that interesting," I said. "Now I have medico-scientific proof that my wife and daughter are wrong. They think I'm getting hard of hearing." The technician didn't miss a beat. "There is a difference between hearing and listening," she said.
So there you have it: there is a distinction between hearing and listening. We may have functioning hearing organs and still fail to listen to what others are saying. Put differently, hearing is a matter of physical endowment, but listening is a skill at which we can work to become better, more adept.
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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Spirituality/Prayer • * Theology • Pastoral Theology
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"Vainly does the preacher utter the Word of God exteriorly unless he listens to it interiorly."
--Saint Augustine, Sermon 179, I
Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Church History • Parish Ministry • Preaching / Homiletics • * Theology • Theology: Scripture
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© 2010 Kendall S. Harmon. All rights reserved.
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O Lord God, who art the light of the minds that know thee, the life of the souls that love thee, and the strength of the hearts that serve thee: Help us, following the example of thy servant Augustine of Hippo, so to know thee that we may truly love thee, and so to love thee that we may fully serve thee, whom to serve is perfect freedom; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Church History • Spirituality/Prayer • * International News & Commentary • Africa
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© 2010 Kendall S. Harmon. All rights reserved.
For original material from Titusonenine (such as articles and commentary by Dr. Harmon) permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com
Some boast of chariots, and some of horses; but we boast of the name of the LORD our God. They will collapse and fall; but we shall rise and stand upright. Give victory to the king, O LORD; answer us when we call.
--Psalm 20:7-9
Filed under: * Theology • Theology: Scripture
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© 2010 Kendall S. Harmon. All rights reserved.
For original material from Titusonenine (such as articles and commentary by Dr. Harmon) permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com
Herewith the BBC lead in write up:
The retiring Bishop of Durham, Dr Tom Wright, has called for a renewed focus on social mobility in the light of "the long failure of the enlightenment project". Speaking to James Naughtie, he said that in an "increasingly religious age" we needed to find new ways of dealing with the way "human beings mess things up".
Listen to it all (about 6 3/4 minutes).
Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • CoE Bishops • * Culture-Watch • History • Philosophy • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • Europe
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© 2010 Kendall S. Harmon. All rights reserved.
For original material from Titusonenine (such as articles and commentary by Dr. Harmon) permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com
It is conventionally assumed that Greene’s faith, after flaming sky-high in The End of the Affair (a novel in which God Himself figures as an adulterous third party), burned lower in later life. In the 1968 BBC interview, Greene says that he no longer communicates or takes confession.
[Michael] Brennan modifies this received view. He teases out a persistent, subtle and often contrarian engagement with Catholicism in Greene’s thinking, even before the conversion. Greene was, he argues, idiosyncratically Manichean in his early life and was later drawn to a Liberation theology which fused his theological and Marxist impulses. Hell, Greene once said, “doesn’t make sense to me” – yet he was forever looking for it in the Congo (A Burnt-Out Case), Haiti (The Comedians) and, closer to home, the English seaside (Brighton Rock).
Catholicism, Brennan argues, supplied not so much a doctrine as the “intellectual scepticism” that drives Greene and his fiction. It manifests itself as a fascination with theological paradox – for example, that without Judas, the traitor, there would be no crucifixion and no salvation. Is he not, then, the best of the disciples?
Read it all.
Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Books • Religion & Culture • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic
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© 2010 Kendall S. Harmon. All rights reserved.
For original material from Titusonenine (such as articles and commentary by Dr. Harmon) permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com
Certainly Catholic theologians have not been shy about addressing the questions that evolution raises for doctrines like original sin and the immateriality of the soul. In the 1960s, Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner re-interpreted Genesis in light of evolution, arguing that the story of Adam and Eve needed to be read metaphorically.
John Haught at Georgetown writes that the new cosmology of the expanding universe and the evolution of life require a more dynamic sense of God's role in a world that is still not complete, a work in progress. Father Denis Edwards at Flinders University in Australia treats the second person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, as a more active partner in the development of the evolving cosmos.
Whether the arguments of the theologians will move a future pope to broaden the Catholic Church's acceptance of evolution remains to be seen. So far, Pope Benedict XVI has not shown the same interest in evolution as his predecessor.
But on this 60th anniversary of "Humani Generis", Pius XII deserves credit for having the foresight to openly address the science when so many other denominations were either in deep denial or not interested in the challenge evolution poses for Christianity.
Read it all.
Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Church History • * Culture-Watch • History • Religion & Culture • Science & Technology • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic
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© 2010 Kendall S. Harmon. All rights reserved.
For original material from Titusonenine (such as articles and commentary by Dr. Harmon) permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com