For example, Beech-nut, PBM, First Juice and Nestle were cited for making claims on products intended for children under 2 years of age like “low sodium” and "plus vitamins & minerals." Such claims are not allowed because appropriate dietary levels have not been established for children in this age range.

Nestle was also dinged for implying that "Juicy Juice All-Natural 100% Juice Orange Tangerine" and "Juicy Juice All-Natural 100% Juice Grape" were 100% juice, when they are actually juice blends with added flavors.

Gorton’s Inc. was taken to task for boasting on the front of its package that its fish fillets have no trans fats, but failing to add a disclosure adjacent to the claim such as "See nutrition information for fat, saturated fat, and
sodium content.” (in this case, 19 g total fat, 4.5 g saturated fat, and 680 mg sodium per serving).

For a while now UCCF (the UK Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship) has been developing its Theology Network, which purports to

...equip you with top quality theological resources- both articles and audio talks. We believe that Christian theology is the most exciting thing possible since it’s simply about knowing God better.

And they do an excellent job. Don't let the fact that you're not a student stop you from mining the great resources available here.

Their latest offering is "Foundations", a ten week course for individuals or groups. I'd struggle to find a better basic overview of Christian doctrine than what is offered here. And it's all free!

Theology Network is headed up by Dr. Mike Reeves who I knew in London. He's an astounding guy and, not least, a phenomenal teacher of God's word in all its aspects.

Hie thee hence to Foundations.

When I was 6, I discovered that there was something wrong. I couldn't navigate stairways like the rest of the children in my family. My parents took me to a big children's hospital in Indianapolis, and they diagnosed me with muscular dystrophy. (The diagnosis was later changed to spinal muscular atrophy.) I was 14 years old when I went into a wheelchair. It was pretty traumatic, but I've got my parents to thank for helping me get through it all. My dad would not give up, and he wouldn't let me give up, either.

When I got out of high school, I attended college at Indiana State for a year, but I had to drop out. The difficulty in trying to navigate the campus in a standard wheelchair was pretty high. So I set out to design a battery-powered scooter. My uncles were all gearheads; they had racecars and motorcycles, and I just hung around them a lot and developed a mechanical aptitude from them. After about three or four months, I came up with my first scooter. I built it in my cousin's garage where he repaired tractor equipment.

Everyone told me it wasn't going to work. But when it comes to commonsense engineering, I'm very blessed. I think it is a God-given ability, because I feel I was sent here to help my cohorts who are disabled get mobility.

I got a job at a local automotive supply factory as a quality control technician. I was able to negotiate the factory very well in my new scooter. On the job, people would see my scooter and tell me that they knew somebody who needed one. I did this for eight or nine years, building them part time until about 1970.

My transportation back then was an old postal truck that I converted using a tailgate off of a pickup truck so that I could drive my scooter right up inside. But when they moved the factory farther away from my home, I had to find something more reliable. It just so happened that in 1970, Dodge came out with a new full-size van that had air conditioning and power steering and all this stuff. It was great.

I started to convert one of those so that I could drive it from my wheelchair. I designed the lift that is so common today on school buses and mass transit. Like the scooters, people heard about it and started saying they knew somebody who needed one of those.

Surely, however, a decade of subsi dizing renewable energy means that Ger many now produces substantial amounts of it, and has freed itself from dependence on foreign powers? No. Wind power represents about 6 percent of German electricity generation, and solar power is a mere tenth of that. Most German electricity is generated from natural gas, and Germany obtains 40 percent of its gas from Russia, a figure projected to rise to as much as 60 percent by 2020.

What about strengthening the middle class? Well, consumers have borne the cost of the policy. They paid over $100 billion to subsidize wind and solar power over the last decade, with the costs of the subsidies accounting for 7.5 percent of household electricity prices.

As for the climate effect, subsidizing green energy is an extremely expensive way of reducing emissions. The price for a permit to emit one ton of CO2 under Europe’s cap-and-trade scheme — the mar ket cost of reducing emissions — is about $20. Reducing emissions by subsidizing wind power works out to a cost of $80 a ton. For solar power, the cost is a staggering $1,050 a ton.

Finally, the policy has not even supported innovation. The study found that “claims about technological innovation benefits of Germany’s first-actor status are unsupportable: In fact, the regime appears to be counterproductive in that respect, stifling innovation by encouraging producers to lock into existing technologies.” Given that even Secretary Chu admits that we need “Nobel-level breakthroughs” in energy technology to have any hope of reducing emissions by 2050, locking in these existing technologies through green-jobs programs would in deed be counterproductive.

The story is the same in Spain, which set out to be the world leader in solar technology. A study by a team from King Juan Carlos University in Madrid led by Gabriel Calzada Alvarez found that the opportunity costs of public investment in renewable energy were very high, resulting not just in significant numbers of jobs destroyed or never created, but in unsustainable bubbles in the renewables sector...

In a regularly scheduled meeting of the Anglican Church in North America’s Executive Committee, the leaders agreed among other things, to strengthen the relationship between the Anglican Mission, the Province of Rwanda and the Anglican Church in North America currently defined by protocol. As a result, the Executive Committee will appoint a Task Force charged with continuing to carry forward all components of the existing protocol formally and canonically.

Two important changes are apparent. One is a significant drop in the percentage of seniors saying all abortions should be illegal. This fell from 32% in the earliest years of the trend to 16% in the first half of the 1990s, but has since rebounded somewhat to 21%. This long-term 11-point decline among seniors compares with a 9-point increase -- from 14% to 23% -- in support for the "illegal in all circumstances" position among 18- to 29-year-olds since the early 1990s.

As a result, 18- to 29-year-olds are now roughly tied with seniors as the most likely of all age groups to hold this position on abortion -- although all four groups are fairly close in their views. This is a sharp change from the late 1970s, when seniors were substantially more likely than younger age groups to want abortion to be illegal.

The mechanics of teaching were not always overlooked in education schools. Modern-day teacher-educators look back admiringly to Cyrus Peirce, creator of one of the first “normal” schools (as teacher training schools were called in the 1800s), who aimed to deduce “the true methods of teaching.” Another favorite model is the Cook County Normal School, run for years by John Dewey’s precursor Francis Parker. The school graduated future teachers only if they demonstrated an ability to control a classroom at an adjacent “practice school” attended by real children; faculty members, meanwhile, used the practice school as a laboratory to hone what Parker proudly called a new “science” of education. But Peirce and Parker’s ambitions were foiled by a race to prepare teachers en masse. Between 1870 and 1900, as the country’s population surged and school became compulsory, the number of public schoolteachers in America shot from 200,000 to 400,000. Normal schools had to turn out graduates quickly; teaching students how to teach was an afterthought to getting them out the door. Thirty years later, the number was almost 850,000.

In the 20th century, as normal schools were brought under the umbrella of the modern university, other imperatives took over. Measured against the glamorous fields of history, economics and psychology, classroom technique began to look downright mundane. Many education professors adopted the tools of social science and took on schools as their subject. Others flew the banner of progressivism or its contemporary cousin constructivism: a theory of learning that emphasizes the importance of students’ taking ownership of their own work above all else.

At the same time, well-educated women and racial minorities who once made up a core of teachers began to see that they had other career options, and in increasing numbers, they took them. That left the ever-growing number of teaching jobs to a cohort with weaker academic backgrounds. The labor pool was especially shallow in cities, which, abandoned by the middle class, faced perpetual teacher shortages. Nancy Slavin, the head of teacher recruitment for the Chicago public schools, described to me a phone call in 2001 that particularly alarmed her. A prospective substitute teacher wanted to know why she hadn’t been selected for an assignment. Slavin explained that her conviction for prostitution made her ineligible. “Well,” the woman replied, a bit indignant, “I’m in a teacher-training program.”

Traditionally, education schools divide their curriculums into three parts: regular academic subjects, to make sure teachers know the basics of what they are assigned to teach; “foundations” courses that give them a sense of the history and philosophy of education; and finally “methods” courses that are supposed to offer ideas for how to teach particular subjects. Many schools add a required stint as a student teacher in a more-experienced teacher’s class. Yet schools can’t always control for the quality of the experienced teacher, and education-school professors often have little contact with actual schools. A 2006 report found that 12 percent of education-school faculty members never taught in elementary or secondary schools themselves. Even some methods professors have never set foot in a classroom or have not done so recently.

Nearly 80 percent of classroom teachers received their bachelor’s degrees in education, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Yet a 2006 report written by Arthur Levine, the former president of Teachers College, the esteemed institution at Columbia University, assessed the state of teacher education this way: “Today, the teacher-education curriculum is a confusing patchwork. Academic instruction and clinical instruction are disconnected. Graduates are insufficiently prepared for the classroom.” By emphasizing broad theories of learning rather than the particular work of the teacher, methods classes and the rest of the future teacher’s coursework often become what the historian Diane Ravitch called “the contentless curriculum.”

When Doug Lemov, who is 42, set out to become a teacher of teachers, he was painfully aware of his own limitations. A large, shy man with a Doogie Howser face, he recalls how he limped through his first year in the classroom, at a private day school in Princeton, N.J. His heartfelt lesson plans — write in your journal while listening to music; analyze Beatles songs like poems — received blank stares. “I still remember thinking: Oh, my God. I still have 45 minutes left to go,” he told me recently. Things improved over time, but very slowly. At the Academy of the Pacific Rim, a Boston charter school he helped found, he was the dean of students, a job title that is school code for chief disciplinarian, and later principal. Lemov fit the bill physically — he’s 6-foot-3 and 215 pounds — but he struggled to get students to follow his directions on the first try.

After his disappointing visit to Syracuse, he decided to seek out the best teachers he could find — as defined partly by their students’ test scores — and learn from them. A self-described data geek, he went about this task methodically, collecting test-score results and demographic information from states around the country. He plotted each school’s poverty level on one axis and its performance on state tests on the other. Each chart had a few outliers blinking in the upper-right-hand corner — schools that managed to squeeze high performance out of the poorest students. He broke those schools’ scores down by grade level and subject. If a school scored especially high on, say, sixth-grade English, he would track down the people who taught sixth graders English.

He called a wedding videographer he knew through a friend and asked him if he’d like to tag along on some school visits. Their first trip to North Star Academy, a charter school in Newark, turned into a five-year project to record teachers across the country. At first, Lemov financed the trip out of his consulting budget; later, Uncommon Schools paid for it. The odyssey produced a 357-page treatise known among its hundreds of underground fans as Lemov’s Taxonomy. (The official title, attached to a book version being released in April, is “Teach Like a Champion: The 49 Techniques That Put Students on the Path to College.”)

I first encountered the taxonomy this winter in Boston at a training workshop, one of the dozens Lemov gives each year to teachers. Central to Lemov’s argument is a belief that students can’t learn unless the teacher succeeds in capturing their attention and getting them to follow instructions. Educators refer to this art, sometimes derisively, as “classroom management.” The romantic objection to emphasizing it is that a class too focused on rules and order will only replicate the power structure; a more common view is that classroom management is essential but somewhat boring and certainly less interesting than creating lesson plans. While some education schools offer courses in classroom management, they often address only abstract ideas, like the importance of writing up systems of rules, rather than the rules themselves. Other education schools do not teach the subject at all. Lemov’s view is that getting students to pay attention is not only crucial but also a skill as specialized, intricate and learnable as playing guitar.

At the Boston seminar, Lemov played a video of a class taught by one of his teaching virtuosos, a slim man named Bob Zimmerli. Lemov used it to introduce one of the 49 techniques in his taxonomy, one he calls What to Do. The clip opens at the start of class, which Zimmerli was teaching for the first time, with children — fifth graders, all of them black, mostly boys — looking everywhere but at the board. One is playing with a pair of headphones; another is slowly paging through a giant three-ring binder. Zimmerli stands at the front of the class in a neat tie. “O.K., guys, before I get started today, here’s what I need from you,” he says. “I need that piece of paper turned over and a pencil out.” Almost no one is following his directions, but he is undeterred. “So if there’s anything else on your desk right now, please put that inside your desk.” He mimics what he wants the students to do with a neat underhand pitch. A few students in the front put papers away. “Just like you’re doing, thank you very much,” Zimmerli says, pointing to one of them. Another desk emerges neat; Zimmerli targets it. “Thank you, sir.” “I appreciate it,” he says, pointing to another. By the time he points to one last student — “Nice . . . nice” — the headphones are gone, the binder has clicked shut and everyone is paying attention.

Lemov switched off the video. “Imagine if his first direction had been, ‘Please get your things out for class,’ ” he said. Zimmerli got the students to pay attention not because of some inborn charisma, Lemov explained, but simply by being direct and specific. Children often fail to follow directions because they really don’t know what they are supposed to do. There were other tricks Zimmerli used too. Lemov pointed to technique No. 43: Positive Framing, by which teachers correct misbehavior not by chiding students for what they’re doing wrong but by offering what Lemov calls “a vision of a positive outcome.” Zimmerli’s thank-yous and just-like-you’re-doings were a perfect execution of one of Positive Framing’s sub-categories, Build Momentum/Narrate the Positive.

“It’s this positive wave; you can almost see it going across the classroom from right to left,” Lemov said. He restarted the clip and asked us to watch the boy with the binder. At the start his head is down and he is paging slowly through his binder. Ten seconds in, he looks to his left, where another boy has his paper and pencil out and is staring at Zimmerli. For the first time, he looks up at the teacher. He stops paging. “He’s like, ‘O.K., what’s this?’ ” Lemov narrated. “ ‘I guess I’m going to go with it.’ ” After 30 seconds, his binder is closed, and he’s stowing it under his desk.

All Lemov’s techniques depend on his close reading of the students’ point of view, which he is constantly imagining. In Boston, he declared himself on a personal quest to eliminate the saying of “shh” in classrooms, citing what he called “the fundamental ambiguity of ‘shh.’ Are you asking the kids not to talk, or are you asking kids to talk more quietly?” A teacher’s control, he said repeatedly, should be “an exercise in purpose, not in power.” So there is Warm/Strict, technique No. 45, in which a correction comes with a smile and an explanation for its cause — “Sweetheart, we don’t do that in this classroom because it keeps us from making the most of our learning time.”

The J-Factor, No. 46, is a list of ways to inject a classroom with joy, from giving students nicknames to handing out vocabulary words in sealed envelopes to build suspense. In Cold Call, No. 22, stolen from Harvard Business School, which Lemov attended, the students don’t raise their hands — the teacher picks the one who will answer the question. Lemov’s favorite variety has the teacher ask the question first, and then say the student’s name, forcing every single student to do the work of figuring out an answer.

All the techniques are meant to be adaptable by anyone. To illustrate cold-calling in Boston, he showed clips of four very different teachers: Mr. Rector, whose seventh graders stand up next to their chairs as he paces among them, lobbing increasingly difficult geometry problems; Ms. Lofthus, who leans back in a chair, supercasual, and smiles warmly when she surprises one second grader by calling on him twice in a row; Ms. Payne, whose kindergartners jump in their seats, clap and sing along when she introduces “in-di-vid-u-al tuu-urrns, listen for your na-aame”; and Ms. Driggs, a petite blonde with a high voice who calls the process “hot calling” and tells her fifth graders that the hardest part will be that they are not allowed to raise their hands.

But perhaps the greatest master of the techniques in the taxonomy is Lemov himself. When I first met him during the lunch break at the Boston workshop, he spent most of our conversation staring at the floor. He was perched on a windowsill in a small side room, hugging his large body close to him. “I’m a huge introvert,” he told me, explaining how, at Harvard Business School, he took a Myers-Briggs personality test that labeled him more introverted than all his other classmates. “It’s strange to me that I do what I do and that I like it as much as I do,” he said.

After lunch he returned to the main room to teach, and it was as if he had left the shy Lemov on the windowsill. A different man stood up tall and square-shouldered, with a presence that made all 30 of the teachers crane their necks toward him. When he told a joke, they laughed; when he pointed to the screen, their eyes raced after his finger. One teacher at my table, Zeke Phillips, from Harlem’s Democracy Prep Charter School, raised his eyebrows at a colleague and whispered, “This stuff is good.”

When Lemov began his project, he was working in the relative obscurity of Uncommon Schools. His decision to spend half his time building the taxonomy meant he had less time to carry out the network’s main business, opening schools. But his fellow managing directors made a calculation that the time spent building a vocabulary for teachers would be worth the slower pace. They were beginning to expand beyond their handful of schools, and they needed a hiring plan. Their first schools often relied on experienced teachers like Zimmerli, plucked from other public schools. They could continue to buy the best talent away from other schools, but as more charter-school networks emerged, the competition for the obviously great teachers was growing fierce.

They decided that rather than buy talent, they would try to build it. Today, Lemov’s taxonomy is one part of a complex training regime at Uncommon Schools that starts with new hires and continues throughout their careers. Lemov began expanding the taxonomy beyond Uncommon Schools only recently, offering workshops, like the one I attended in Boston, to a wider audience. His main clients are other charter schools, but they also include Teach for America and an immersive training program in Boston called the Match Teacher Residency that uses medical school as the model for preparing educators. His methods are also used at Teacher U, a new teacher-training program in which Uncommon Schools is a partner. Lemov is interested in offering teachers what he describes as an incentive just as powerful as cash: the chance to get better. “If it’s just a big pie, then it’s just a question of who’s getting the good teachers,” Lemov told me. “The really good question is, can you get people to improve really fast and at scale?”

Second Court of Appeals sets date for hearing

The Diocese has been notified that the Texas Second Court of Appeals will hear oral arguments regarding our Petition for Writ of Mandamus at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 14. This is very encouraging news.

We will be represented in the hearing by the Hon. Scott Brister, who stepped down from the State Supreme Court last September in order to return to private practice. The court is located in Fort Worth on the ninth floor of the Tarrant County Justice Center. Bishop Iker is calling all clergy and lay people of the Diocese to a day of fasting and prayer on the hearing date.

Attorneys representing the plaintiffs have indicated that they will be seeking a postponement. If the court revises its schedule, we will announce the change.

All proceedings in the suit against us, which were under way in the 141st District Court, remain stayed until the appellate court issues a ruling. If the appellate court grants our Petition, the rival diocese and corporation will be removed as plaintiffs in the suit. Please continue to pray for our legal team, for the 141st District Court, and for its judge, the Hon. John Chupp.

Dear Sarah,

On February 9th you published an article on Stand Firm entitled "An Exercise In & a Request For Intercessory Prayer." In it, you asked the community to pray for me during a very difficult period of my life. You closed with: "I can't even promise that Edward will agree to an update. And I certainly don't know that things will "improve" for Edward either."

The responses, prayers and comments stunned me. I still shake my head and wipe my eyes when I think of them. My situation has improved and here is an update on the past 5+ months. You already are aware of a lifeline from a fellow vet and I will say no more about it here.

I have a home. It's a small cabin perfect for my dog and I. The folks who own it are good Christians and have helped me settle in. I applied for and received a veteran's grant which in essence paid for the security deposit and first month's rent and I have managed to keep up with it. I'm still looking for some kind of part time job to even out my income but my service business is doing a little better than before which was zero.

Several of the folks who posted responses suggested I get involved with VA healthcare. I have done so. In addition to primary care, I have been seeing a really top-notch psychiatrist who has stabilized my meds and worked hard with me on my depression. It's still there and it's still ugly at times but I now know what it is and can better deal with it. All my meds are stabilized and the VA found the new generic of the very, very expensive one. It works.

In April, I joined one of their programs called MOVE which promotes physical fitness and weight control. It's pretty basic stuff but I have managed to lose about 14 pounds and now can walk the dog up to a mile at a time. That's about 9/10ths of a mile more than in February. My little office is in an under-the-eves room on the second floor of the cabin. The stairs are quite steep. I now look forward to going up and down.

The best news of all is that my daughter and I are back in contact and spent most of a day together a couple of weeks ago.

I still have great difficulty in social situations, even church. I'm quite frightened of any clamor and I can't handle stress as I used to.

And I'm still alone.

Over all, I'd call that a pretty darn upbeat update.

God bless you all,

"Edward"

Dear Sarah,
It's been nine months since I sent you an update on what's going on in my life. As is typical, especially as we age, there are good things and bad. I'm grateful for the good and dealing with the bad.
I'm still in the little cabin. As long as I promptly attend to his every wish, my dog permits me to continue as his housemate. I'm still struggling to keep up with the bills but so is the rest of the world and I have managed to keep my nose above water.
My daughter and I are doing wonderfully together. I think we have passed the point where the child becomes the head of the family. The parent is happy about the situation.
I'm involved with a group working with military families and it is very satisfying.
On the not so good side, I have been diagnosed with very early stage prostate cancer. Doing watchful waiting and getting a PSA every three months. So far no changes in those results. I acquired drug-resistant E. coli late last summer, spent a while in the hospital and a lot of time trying to get my strength back. Doing better now.
Still looking for a special woman but not too much lately.
Edward

The Lemba people of Zimbabwe and South Africa may look like their compatriots, but they follow a very different set of customs and traditions.

They do not eat pork, they practise male circumcision, they ritually slaughter their animals, some of their men wear skull caps and they put the Star of David on their gravestones.

Their oral traditions claim that their ancestors were Jews who fled the Holy Land about 2,500 years ago.

It may sound like another myth of a lost tribe of Israel, but British scientists have carried out DNA tests which have confirmed their Semitic origin.

These tests back up the group's belief that a group of perhaps seven men married African women and settled on the continent. The Lemba, who number perhaps 80,000, live in central Zimbabwe and the north of South Africa.

And they also have a prized religious artefact that they say connects them to their Jewish ancestry - a replica of the Biblical Ark of the Covenant known as the ngoma lungundu, meaning "the drum that thunders".

A majority of delegates attending a special March 6 convention meeting of the Diocese of Dallas at St. Michael and All Angels Church endorsed the Anglican covenant and rejected same-gender liturgies.
Delegates approved two resolutions, including one by voice vote that the diocese "endorses, adopts and enters into the Anglican covenant and thereby affirms our full membership and participation in the Episcopal Church and the world wide Anglican Communion."

The resolution, 2010 SCR-01, urged other dioceses, along with the Executive Council and General Convention, to do likewise. It directed "the Executive Council to form an Anglican Communion Commission to promote closer relationships with churches, dioceses and congregations of the wider Anglican Communion for mutual sharing of the fellowship we have in Christ, for expanding our common mission and ministry as a worldwide communion and for promoting active participation in the Anglican Covenant."

Bishop James Stanton had called for the additional gathering during the October 15-16, 2009 regular convention meeting, at which the Anglican covenant was studied and discussed. The second gathering was planned so delegates would have a chance to consider the covenant, he said during a March 11 telephone interview from his Dallas office.

A VOICE OF REASON 3
January 17th was a Sunday morning and as usual Christians left their homes to congregate in churches to worship. That day has since become a remarkable day in history with sad memories for Christian and Muslim communities in Jos and its environs. A few days after that, leaders began to gather to see how to resolve what the perceived problems, or real problems, or even imaginary problems were. I myself became a part of a group with industrialists, businessmen and women, academics and religious leaders, both Christian and Muslim, to discuss these matters. We even spent a day at a forum listening to elders and religious leaders in Jos and spent another day listening to the youth. In all the conversations the Christians and Muslims spoke up frankly and aired their understanding of the grievances they have. We are in the process of putting together ideas as to how to move forward.
News then broke on Sunday 7th March that two other villages plus Dogo na Hauwa had been attacked by Muslim Fulani from about 3a.m. to 5a.m.. Some of these communities may never again be recognised in history because generations have been wiped out. Hundreds of corpses of men, women, children and grandchildren littered the burnt houses, roads, bush paths, farm areas and hiding places. Tears and endless wailings until voices croaked and words are no more.
Is there no other way by which matters can be resolved except through this sadistic and cruel way of making peoples’ lives miserable? For me, as a Christian, human life is so sacred that no-one, absolutely no-one, should tamper with it, no matter what religious faith you belong to. Human life is so sacred and we have to teach and train people to value it: it is a gift from God.
What bothers my heart are a few questions:
• It was curfew time when these attackers came in and carried out their heinous activities. Who are responsible for these areas? What happened to those who should enforce the curfew? The purpose of the curfew is to stop events like this.
• Failure of government to provide full security for its citizenry leaves a people with very little option but to provide for their own kind of security. History has shown that these kinds of security are bred in vengeance, retaliation, bitterness, hatred and malice. This gives birth to an almost endless cycle of senseless violence as can be seen in many nations of the world today. Where is our government in all the levels of governance? Where were they on this night? Where were they on 17th January? Shall we continue to have the ugly sight of mass burials? Are there no leaders who fear God, who will swallow their pride and choose to be humble before God for the sake of those faces of slaughtered children?
• The new dimension these attacks are assuming is revealing a system of well-trained terror groups who rights now have attacked these villages, and only God knows which community will be next. Their merciless precision and fearlessness should give any government serious concern. The earlier that these kinds of groups are rounded up, the better for everybody. I know as of fact of many Christian religious, political and community leaders who are willing and prepared peacefully to arrive at workable conditions for people to live with. I also know as of fact that there are Muslim religious, political and community leaders who are willing to find solutions.
I am convinced that the prayers of the church world-wide are ascending like a sweet smelling sacrifice to the throne of mercy. It is my firm determination to encourage all who trust in the Lord to keep praying and never give up. One day God will enthrone good over evil, truth over lies, righteousness over wickedness and justice over injustice. It may be soon; it may be later, but “My faith looks up to Thee, Thou Lamb of Calvary”. I urge believers to clean and clear their minds of any form of bitterness, resentment or even any thought of vengeance against one another from within the fellowship, and then we can see clearly how to respond in times of difficulty such as this one.
The promises of the Lord are true and the way of the Lord is just. The good news is: we do not have anywhere else to turn to. In the words of the apostle Peter, in John6:68: “To whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” These times call for a full turning of our hearts and lives to the Lord.
The Lord be with you,
+The Most Rev. Dr. B. A. Kwashi
Archbishop of Jos

It was a controversy tailor-made for the TV cameras: A lesbian couple in the liberal bastion of Boulder, Colo., had enrolled their children in a Catholic parish school, only to see those children denied re-enrollment once the parish priest learned of their home situation. When the story leaked last week, Boulder's vociferous gay-rights activists mobilized to protest the priest, the parish and the Archdiocese of Denver, brandishing signs outside the church that plaintively asked: "What would Jesus do?"

For the reporters breathlessly covering the story and many Catholics, the answer was obvious. Jesus would allow the children to stay in the school. He would tell the teachers not to worry about the conflict between their duty to teach Catholic doctrine on marriage and their desire to protect the feelings of students being raised by a couple that flouted that doctrine in a particularly obvious way. The solution, he would say, is simple: Drop the doctrine and focus on feelings.

At least, that's what the Jesus of our contemporary imagination would say. He has a habit of endorsing what we wanted to do anyway, especially when it comes to sex. And unlike that intense and unsettling figure in the Bible — the one who talked about marriage as the union of a man and a woman for life — this Jesus never talks about tough choices or objective truth. He's all about hugs, rainbows and doing what feels right — a sort of human Hallmark card in Birkenstocks.

Appealing as this Jesus may be, his do-your-own-thing dogma has its drawbacks in the context of Catholic education. For starters, it's difficult for Catholic schools to justify their existence when their organizing principle is fidelity to a milquetoast figure with such malleable teachings. And it's difficult for students at Catholic schools to understand why they should be willing to suffer ridicule for defending their faith when so many of their pastors, parents and teachers are not.

"I don't care whether it's a political biography or a daughter's memoir or a novel about baseball," she says. "I just like good writing, and the readers who share that taste have always found their way here." Always, that is, until last September.

"Starting last fall, I saw a hunted look in people's eyes," Dyer recalls. "There was a fear that went beyond being cautious or thrifty. It was as if people had lost faith in the most basic things. They were frozen. Nobody was buying at any of the neighborhood retail stores."

September bled into an equally grim October and November. Thanksgiving came and went, and the slump deepened. Now, with December performing worse than the average February, Dyer doubted she could keep her doors open through January. In the midst of this figurative storm, meanwhile, a real one now bore down on Portland: a once-every-20-years pelting of maximum winter that threatened to shut down the city, drive shoppers deeper into their devalued homes, and pound a final nail in what appeared to be Broadway Books's coffin.

"It was time," Dyer says, "to think about an exit strategy."

But first, she decided to phone Aaron Durand, her 28-year-old son, who was working for the shoe company Birkenstock USA in Novato, California. She needed to talk to Aaron about a book on music that he had asked her to find. But mostly, on that bleak winter morning, Dyer needed to hear her only child's voice.

"I can't get that title for you," she told him.

"That's OK," he said. "I'm in no rush."

"You're not listening. I can't help you. My distributors don't deal with that publisher. You're just going to have to go online, do some digging, and order the book yourself."

"Mom?" he said. "Are you OK?"

"I'm sorry, Aaron, but I can't help you with this."

The next day, he shot his father an e-mail. "What's the matter with Mom?" David Durand broke the news to his son: Broadway Books was on the ropes.

Aaron was stunned. He had been 12 when his mother went into business. She was so devoted to the store that the family jokingly referred to it as her other baby. How could she stand losing it? Aaron wondered. He opened his laptop, logged on to his Twitter page, and, barely thinking, began to type.

If you're in Portland do me a favor??? Buy a book at Broadway Books. No wait, buy 3 of em...

He usually tweeted his friends on the song that he happened to be listening to or on the results of his latest round of disc golf. But now the words came harder. Then inspiration struck.

...I'll buy you a burrito the next time I'm in town, Aaron typed.

He and his friends used burritos as code. It was cooler to say "I'll buy you a burrito" than "I owe you five bucks." He didn't know where the idea came from to connect burritos to his mother's predicament, but he liked the way it sounded. He decided to develop the connection further on his blog, everydaydude. The site was lucky to receive 20 hits a month, and half of those came from his mother, but what sharper tool lay at hand?

The madness that is the current state of affairs in our economy honestly hasn't bothered me much...My CEO has promised openly that our company will not be letting go of anyone. Thus, I've just managed to go about my business as usual. I'm not afraid to spend money on things I want...I own no stocks, don't even know how to buy em. I generally live check to check and I like it that way...Sometimes it takes a slap in the face to wake someone up...Yesterday I was on the receiving end of the wakeup call.

Aaron typed on, explaining the importance of Broadway Books, both to the Portland community and in his mother's life. He related how he had learned that the store was in crisis. He reported that he had sat at his desk near tears, but then his despair gave way to anger and finally to resolve. He announced to the blogosphere that he had hit on a scheme.

So, here's the deal. I'll be in Portland to visit January 15-19, 2009. Meet me at Cha Cha Cha on SE Hawthorne in Portland on January 16 at 6 pm with a receipt from Broadway Books for over $50, and I'm buying your kind ass a burrito. I've got about a grand left on my one credit card -- told you I was a simpleton -- which equates to roughly 166 of you spending at least 50 bucks a pop....I'd never feel better about diving into a thousand-dollar hole...Pass this along. Getcha a free burrito! Support local independent business! Get off of the internet/your ass!

Aaron paused. He was no writer; in fact, despite his book-loving parents, he wasn't all that much of a reader. But he knew that his posting needed a clincher.

Understand that the economic sting will subside, will also fade into nothingness. If that seems a long shot, consider it optimism, a virtue I learned from growing up the son of my mother.

After logging the post, Aaron scanned the links lining the right-hand margin of his webpage: Jerk Ethic, Hidden Booty, huk lab, Kamp Grizzly, Ministry of Imagery, BikePortland, Woot, Hypebeast. Why not try to leverage his plea, beam it out directly to his friends in the Portland area? Even a few more sales would give his mom a psychological boost. She and the store could at least go down swinging. He returned to Twitter to put up a link to his blog entry, and within a few minutes saw that a friend in Portland had retweeted his offer. By that afternoon, it had been retweeted 30 times.

The story quickly jumped the firewall between private and public phenomena. Over the next three days, everydaydude hosted three times as many visits as it had received in the previous two months. Friends reported to Aaron that they had received the link to his blog posting from strangers. In the Portland offices of Nike and Adidas, the posting was pasted onto companywide e-mails. At the Portland ad firm Wieden+Kennedy, Jeff Selis, a producer and longtime Broadway Books customer, received an e-mail from his son's tutor containing a link to Aaron's blog. Selis immediately forwarded it throughout the company. Aaron's loopy, heartfelt plea, in short, had gone viral. Still, his mother remained ambivalent about the venture. "I wasn't sure I approved," Dyer says. "I was touched by Aaron's thoughtfulness, but at the same time I was sensitive about the state of the store."

The U.S. Department of Education (ED) intends to purchase twenty-seven (27) REMINGTON BRAND MODEL 870 POLICE 12/14P MOD GRWC XS4 KXCS SF. RAMAC #24587 GAUGE: 12 BARREL: 14" - PARKERIZED CHOKE: MODIFIED SIGHTS: GHOST RING REAR WILSON COMBAT; FRONT - XS CONTOUR BEAD SIGHT STOCK: KNOXX REDUCE RECOIL ADJUSTABLE STOCK FORE-END: SPEEDFEED SPORT-SOLID - 14" LOP are designated as the only shotguns authorized for ED based on compatibility with ED existing shotgun inventory, certified armor and combat training and protocol, maintenance, and parts.
The required date of delivery is March 22, 2010.

Last week, Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., asked to pass a 30-day extensions bill for unemployment insurance and other federal programs. Earlier in February, those extensions were included in a broader bipartisan bill that was paid for but did not meet Sen. Reid's approval, and he nixed the deal. When I saw the Democrats in Congress were going to vote on the extensions bill without paying for it and not following their own Pay-Go rules, I said enough is enough.

Many people asked me, "Why now?" My answer is, "Why not now?" Why can't a non-controversial measure in the Senate that would help those in need be paid for? If the Senate cannot find $10 billion to pay for a measure we all support, we will never pay for anything.

America is under a mountain of debt. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said in a hearing last month that the United States' debt is unsustainable. We are on the verge of a tipping point where America's debt will bring down our economy, and more people will join the unemployment lines. That is why I used my right as a United States Senator and objected.

Alexander (R-TN)
Barrasso (R-WY)
Bennett (R-UT)
Bunning (R-KY)
Burr (R-NC)
Coburn (R-OK)
Corker (R-TN)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Crapo (R-ID)
DeMint (R-SC)
Ensign (R-NV)
Enzi (R-WY)
Gregg (R-NH)
Hatch (R-UT)
Johanns (R-NE)
McConnell (R-KY)
Risch (R-ID)
Sessions (R-AL)
Thune (R-SD)

Bond (R-MO)
Brown (R-MA)
Brownback (R-KS)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Cochran (R-MS)
Collins (R-ME)
Graham (R-SC)
Grassley (R-IA)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Isakson (R-GA)
Kyl (R-AZ)
LeMieux (R-FL)
Lugar (R-IN)
McCain (R-AZ)
Murkowski (R-AK)
Roberts (R-KS)
Shelby (R-AL)
Snowe (R-ME)
Vitter (R-LA)
Voinovich (R-OH)
Wicker (R-MS)

In a Corner post this past weekend called “Transformation,” I dissented from the heady palaver on the Right about how Democrats are headed for a November Waterloo. I think the Left has already factored in the inevitability of setbacks — perhaps heavy setbacks — in the next few election cycles. While our side swoons over the prospect, the statists coldly calculate that these losses are a price well worth paying in order to impose a transformative takeover of the economy.

It is a perfectly rational calculation for two reasons.

First, with a significantly bigger and more powerful government bureaucracy, there will be many avenues for leadership to reward Democrats who lose their seats after casting the unpopular votes necessary to enact the Left’s program. White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, who spent his post-Clinton wilderness months in a lucrative sinecure at Freddie Mac, knows well how this game works — and, under Obama’s command, the economy is becoming one big Freddie.

Second, and more important, Democrats know the electoral setbacks will only be temporary. They are banking on the assurance that Republicans merely want to win elections and have no intention of rolling back Obamacare, much less of dismantling Leviathan.

For my money (while I still have some), that’s an eminently sound bet. The Bunning battle, in which the GOP was nowhere to be found, is the proof. Bunning just wanted Congress to live within its gargantuan means. Yet, the Washington Post ridiculed him: “angry and alone, a one-man blockade against unemployment benefits, Medicare payments to doctors, satellite TV to rural Americans and paychecks to highway workers.” That’s outrageously unfair, but it is a day at the beach compared to the Armageddon that would be unleashed upon any attempt to undo Obama’s welfare state on steroids.

As it turns out, Republicans didn’t have the stomach for a fight over wealth transfers that plainly exacerbate the problem of unemployment. Why would anyone think they’d take on a far more demanding war, in which Democrats and the legacy media would relentlessly indict them for “denying health insurance to millions of Americans”?

Even if the GOP gets a majority for a couple of cycles, even if President Obama is defeated in his 2012 reelection bid, Obamacare will be forever. And once the public sees that the GOP won’t try to dismantle Obamacare, it will lose any enthusiasm for Republicans. Democrats will eventually return to power, and it will be power over a much bigger, much more intrusive government.

Health care is a loser for the Left only if the Right has the steel to undo it. The Left is banking on an absence of steel. Why is that a bad bet?

An 18-year-old student says a Mississippi school board that canceled a high school prom did so in retaliation for her request to bring a same-sex date.

The American Civil Liberties Union had demanded that the Itawamba County school district allow senior Constance McMillen to attend with her girlfriend. A school district policy requires that dates be of the opposite sex.

A school board statement Wednesday announced the district wouldn't host the April prom. The district's statement didn't mention McMillen's request but did refer to unspecified recent "distractions."

Disney shareholders on Thursday voted down a proposal put forth by an advocacy group to expand the entertainment giant's non-discrimination policy to include people who the group says are formerly gay, CNBC has learned.

A group called Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays & Gays, or PFOX, is asking the entertainment giant to expand non-discrimination practices to cover "men and women with unwanted same-sex attractions who leave homosexuality by gender affirming therapy, faith based ministries, Homosexuals Anonymous support groups, or other non-judgmental environments."

Whether a homosexual can become "ex-gay" is hotly debated, but PFOX claims the ex-gay community is "subject to an increasingly hostile environment because they live out or support a different view of homosexuality." Therefore, they're seeking specific protection from discrimination in Disney's employment policy.

One image that has been important to me is to change the idiom from “sheep” to something more too our liking in Texas, “cattle”. It is a good thing to “ride the fences” making sure that the bobwar is not cut or broken, that bad water is identified, that “loco-weed” is discovered and destroyed before it can poison the herd, to say nothing of rustlers, etc.

Such is a fairly solitary work, and is very important. However, it is *NOT* the life of the herd. That life is back where cattle are fed, cows raise their calves, sicknesses are treated by the cowboys and vets, etc.

I have a taste for fence riding. But it is not life. For those who do not have such a taste, the quality of the life “back at the ranch” is paramount. My wife is one of those, from whom I have learned much. Don’t tell her about how fine the fences are, or how pure the water is, if newcomers are not welcome, if the society is focused around clichés, or money issues, or protecting one’s private pew, or even giving thanks that we are “not like those other ranches, with broken fences”

We had not gone trying to find a church since our early years, and were appalled at much of what we encountered. In both orthodox and apostate churches.

But back to the original post, what are the Anglican distinctives (among churches that try to be true to the Gospel), and having identified them, why have they failed to keep us on course?

I’ve got my own take on that, but not to monopolize…

And they didn't get worked up about human sexuality, for some reason! (Nice of him to limit the topic to human sexuality, but isn't that a bit narrow? Oh, well, give him another 10 years or so, and who knows what "exciting times" may bring.) Not like people today. Maybe there was a reason why they weren't worked up about it. I'd say it's the same reason Bishop Chapman isn't "worked up" about the possibility of having human feces for dinner tonight. Because he doesn't consider it within the bounds of sanity or decency. But that just goes to show that he's as narrow and unimaginative as those earlier Anglicans he's so proud to have left behind. If a determined group of coprophragiasts should start loudly demanding that their exotic gastronomic tastes be included during Communion, I think Bishop Chapman would be surprised to find how quickly he'd find himself getting "worked up".

When the Diocese of South Carolina gathers for its annual convention March 26, it will consider a series of resolutions related its role as a diocese of the Episcopal Church.
Among the proposed resolutions, posted here, is one in which the convention "affirms its legal and ecclesiastical authority as a sovereign diocese within the Episcopal Church" and "declares the presiding bishop has no authority to retain attorneys in this diocese that present themselves as the legal counsel for the Episcopal Church in South Carolina." The proposed resolution also demands that Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori end any retainer her office has with such legal counsel.

Another resolution would give "explicit canonical force" to what it describes as Bishop Mark Lawrence's practice of "dealing pastorally with parishes struggling with their relationship with the diocese or province." The resolution would add a section to the diocesan canons giving the ecclesiastical authority in the diocese the power "to provide a generous pastoral response" to such parishes.

In a resolution titled "Recognition of the Heritage and a proclamation of the Identity of the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina," the convention would declare that "for more than three centuries this diocese has represented the Anglican expression of the faith once for all delivered to the saints" and that "we understand ourselves to be a gospel diocese, called to proclaim an evangelical faith, embodied in a catholic order, and empowered and transformed through the Holy Spirit."

The resolution also proposes that convention "promise under God not to swerve in our belief that above all Jesus came into the world to save the lost, that those who do not know Christ need to be brought into a personal and saving relationship with him, and that those who do know Christ need to be taught by the Holy Scriptures faithfully to follow him all the days of their lives to the Glory of God the Father."

South Carolina's convention had been scheduled for March 4-5 but Lawrence wrote to the diocese in early February saying that the convention would be delayed until March 26 in order for him, the diocesan Standing Committee and the diocese "to adequately consider a response" to what he called an "unjust intrusion into the spiritual and jurisdictional affairs of this sovereign diocese of the Episcopal Church."

Jefferts Schori told the church's Executive Council Feb. 19 that Lawrence had attributed the delay "supposedly to my incursions in South Carolina."

I have accepted The Great Commission with sincerity. It says; "Go forth into all nations" and it means exactly that: all nations. God's elect come from every nation on earth. Skin color is a non-issue. It is also noteworthy that Christianity started out as a religion of Semitic people, and by God's grace, it spread all over the world. It is not a "white man's religion", as some racists would contend.

I'm often asked, "Aren't you proud to be a white man?" No, I'm not particularly proud to be white, any more than I'm particularly proud to have a Pronounced External Occipital Protuberance (aka "Anatolian Bump") on the back of my head. That is just a product of genetics. So what? Big deal. But neither do I feel guilty or embarrassed to be white, as some liberals seem to be. Do genetic traits make any difference in my standing with God? Certainly not. Granted, many of the scientific advances of the modern age came from some very creative deceased white guys. But again, will any of the fruits of Western Civilization mean anything when I meet my maker? No. Only one thing will matter: Whether or not I've accepted Christ as my Lord and Savior. That is a distinction that I can and will share with Aborigines, Ainus, and Hottentots. I'm proud to be Christian, that just happens to be a white man.

A week ago, news began to break in San Francisco about a targeted gay-bashing crime that allegedly occurred on February 26.

Three cousins from Hayward have been charged in San Francisco with a hate crime and assault for allegedly firing a BB rifle at the face of a man they believed was gay, an attack the men videotaped, authorities said Wednesday.

Investigators believe the assailants chose the victim because he appeared to be gay. When the men were pulled over, police found a video camera that was used to film the shooting, investigators said.

Clearly, of course, this had to be a Christian right-wing, tea party, anti-government, bigoted homophobe from the South. Right?

Wrong.

The three men, Shafiq Hashemi, 21, Sayed Bassam, 21, and Mohammad Habibzada, 24, the driver, were arrested.

According to [police spokesman Officer Samson] Chan, they allegedly admitted to the crime.

“The suspects did make a confession, basically stating that they came to San Francisco to target gay people,” he said.

But what is strange about the media reports is that the identity group, nor the motives, of these three “urban youths” is never mentioned in any news accounts. San Francisco Chronicle get it right? No dice. How about the local TV stations? Get real.
...
Folks who aren’t in tune with the American gay community need to understand something fundamental. The gay liberal activists and thought leaders that make policy and advocacy decisions have long ignored the existential threat to gays and lesbians by Islamic extremism. Liberal “gay rights” groups such as the Human Rights Campaign, the Gill Foundation, and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force are far more concerned about attacking American Christians on a daily basis than facing the real threat to gays around the world.
...
The hangings of gays is routine punishment in Iran and other Islamic-ruled nations. But the American Gay Establishment is too concerned about court-forced marriage, educational indoctrination of kids and Federal funding to worry about such trivial matters as systematic killing of gays by Islamic regimes. Or the looming threat to American gays and lesbians on our shores.

One thing is clear though – this is legalised gay marriage in church by the back door and those of us who are Biblically conservative need to be very aware of what is going on. The Bill in its current form is too ambiguous and would arguably permit Church of England clergy to let Civil Partnerships be registered in churches without the permission of their Bishops.

While she genuinely enjoys home schooling her 9-year-old daughter, Samantha Kubik hopes to send her to school in the fall.

But it wouldn't be a public school or even Ross Corners Christian Academy, which Nori's elder siblings attend. Rather, the Kubiks are among a group of core families that intend to open the Southern Tier's first classical Christian school this fall.

"We desire a classical education for our children," Kubik said.

Classical education, inspired by Dorothy Sayers' essay "The Lost Tools of Learning," gears pedagogy to three learning stages, called the Trivium: grammar, logic and rhetoric.

The grammar stage, which is roughly equivalent to elementary school age, capitalizes on students' aptitude for memorization and has them memorize a wide range of facts -- in math, geography, English, the Bible and Latin.

Young teens, who often like to argue with adults, are trained in formal logic, while older students are taught to communicate persuasively through instruction in rhetoric.

To get the basics down, students need to start the classical system fairly young; after the sixth grade, it's difficult because the grammar stage establishes the foundation for the other stages.

Classical Christian schools are also based on scripture and promote a Biblical worldview. There are only two such schools in the state: one in Manhattan and the other in the Albany area, according to the Association of Classical & Christian Schools.

...more

'The need here is for tents, watercarriers with water, torches with replacement batteries, candles with matches, paracetamol, powdered milk, milk products, disposable nappies, generators, blankets, anoraks. We can buy them here without any problem. Our churches here in Santiago are mobilised to collect and send stuff and Bp Tito went South yesterday with the first van load. Another 12 metre lorry loaded with stuff left at 4 a.m. this morning and another one is being collected. We rent the lorries to take the stuff. The situation in the epicentre area is grim with little news coming out. We hear all our churchfolk have been preserved with their lives, but one we know has lost his coffee shop in the centre of Concepción…. So any help will be welcome.”

Proposed Resolution R-2 2010 Convention

Offered by: The Standing Committee

Subject: Response to Ecclesiastical Intrusions by the Presiding Bishop

RESOLVED, That this 219th Convention of the Diocese of South Carolina affirms its legal and ecclesiastical authority as a sovereign diocese within the Episcopal Church, and be it further

RESOLVED, That this Convention declares the Presiding Bishop has no authority to retain attorneys in this Diocese that present themselves as the legal counsel for the Episcopal Church in South Carolina, and be it finally

RESOLVED, That the Diocese of South Carolina demands that the Presiding Bishop drop the retainer of all such legal counsel in South Carolina as has been obtained contrary to the express will of this Diocese, which is The Episcopal Church within its borders.

Israeli archeologist Eilat Mazar has reported an exciting discovery-evidence that newly unearthed fortifications in Jerusalem were built 3,000 years ago. Based on the age of pottery shards that she found at the site, Mazar believes that the fortifications were built by Solomon, just as described in the Old Testament.

Of course that’s interesting news for Jews and Christians, but there’s a lot more to this than you might expect. As the Associated Press reported, “If the age of the wall is correct, the finding would be an indication that Jerusalem was home to a strong central government that had the resources and manpower needed to build massive fortifications in the 10th century B.C.”

That’s a direct contradiction to the views of some scholars who believe, as the AP puts it, “that David’s [and Solomon’s] monarchy was largely mythical and that there was no strong government to speak of in that era.”

No wonder that Mazar calls the wall “the most significant construction we have from First Temple days in Israel.” And if she’s right, we will have another link in the long chain of evidence that demonstrates the historical veracity of the Bible.

A Summer on the Move: Uganda, Egypt, Kenya, & Benin
Grant LeMarquand

Uganda
On June 7 I flew to Uganda, arriving the next evening. I had a wonderful two weeks teaching “African Biblical Hermeneutics” at Uganda Christian University (UCU) to our cohort of DMin students every morning. I shared the teaching with the Rev. Dr. Edison Kalengyo, one of only two members of the UCU theology faculty with a doctorate. One afternoon the class went to Kampala together to meet with some of the staff of the Uganda Bible Society.

While at UCU, I was also asked to speak at “Dean’s Hour” one morning. I spoke on “Contextual exegesis in Africa in light of the crisis in the Anglican Communion” which generated lots of energy and interesting questions. Consequently, they asked for another lecture, so I spoke the following week on “African contributions (both ancient and modern) to the Global Church.”

Possibly the most wonderful evening of my two weeks was the first-ever Trinity alumni gathering to be held outside of the U.S. Frederick Balwa and I dreamed up the idea and Rebecca Nyegenye organized it. In addition to Frederick and Rebecca and the five DMin students (one of who is already an alum: Festus Kiseu from Kenya), we had Sam Opol, Beatrice Aber, Geoffrey Byarugaba, Gideon Kwizera, Moses Rwothomio, and Alison Barfoot. We had a wonderful meal together, and everyone shared about their time at Trinity, and what they’ve been doing since. Alison talked a bit from the perspective of a Board member, and Beatrice and I talked about Trinity now. And, we spent some fervent time in prayer.

Egypt
On June 18 I spent time in four African capital cities: Kampala (on my way to the airport at Entebbe), Nairobi (to catch a connecting flight), Khartoum (where the flight refueled), and finally, Cairo. The next day I attended the Friday morning service at All Saints Cathedral (remember, it’s a Muslim country, so Friday morning and Sunday evening are the usual times for Christian worship) and then attended the last session of the diocesan synod (held every two years). One of the reports was on ecumenical and inter-faith work in the diocese. Time was spent talking about efforts to rebuild trust with Christian and Muslim leaders following the actions of Canadian and American Anglican churches on sexuality issues. I asked for permission to speak and, as a North American Anglican apologized, for the pain and difficulties that the North American churches had caused for the Diocese of Egypt and received a rather unexpectedly loud and long ovation.

My main task in Egypt was to be the speaker at the first graduation of the Alexandria School of Theology in 1500–1600 years! Graduation took place in Alexandria (this is not as obvious as it sounds – there are two campuses, one in Cairo, one in Alexandria) on June 20 at St. Mark’s Church, a recently renovated and now beautiful building in downtown Alexandria. (Happily, there is now also a thriving Arabic-speaking congregation there.) Sixteen students received the Bachelor of Theology, and six received the Diploma in Theology. I spoke on the contribution of North African Christianity to the global church. The church was packed with more than 400 people, every seat filled and overflow attendees standing at the back and in the courtyard outside.

On Sunday evening I preached at one of the other churches in Alexandria (a different All Saints Church, this one holding about 70 people—and about 70 were there!). Worship was interesting. The first third of the service consisted of the singing of indigenous Arabic songs and choruses, with a more-or-less Pentecostal feel. The next part of the service was all very Anglican: ministry of the Word, followed by ministry of the meal. I did notice, however, that quite a number of those who came up for communion went back to their pews with their hands covering their mouths, an indication that these particular worshippers were raised in the Coptic Church. The service was followed by the traditional “time of fellowship” in the church courtyard which lasted for three or four hours (things really get going after dark in Egypt…).

Back in Cairo, Bishop Mouneer asked me to give a lecture to the Cairo clergy on the state of the Anglican Communion. There were lots of questions and a sense of seriousness from the clergy. They had heard of some of actions regarding matters of sexuality but hadn’t spent as much time thinking about the theological issues involved.

Kenya
My week in Kenya was wonderful. It was a week of reunions and celebrations—but it was tinged with some pain. Africa is like that.

I stayed at the Archbishop’s official residence in Nairobi (next to State House, the official residence of the President—an interesting colonial legacy) with Eliud Wabukala, the Archbishop elect, and his wife, Caren.

As day of the enthronement drew closer, the children began to arrive in town—along with more and more relatives, friends, bishops, clergy, etc, etc. By two days before the enthronement, Eliud was beginning to worry about his retreat which we had planned to have in the house. The two of us ended up locking ourselves in the library and chapel of the house where I led his retreat. Eliud, a humble man, asked my assistance with editing his enthronement speech and dealing with reporters prior to the enthronement.

The enthronement itself began at 10 a.m. on Sunday, July 5. All Saints Cathedral in Nairobi holds about 2,000 people, but about 6,000 were expected, so the parking lots and lawns of the Cathedral cordoned off and large tents set up, equipped with closed circuit TVs. There were police and soldiers everywhere (mostly because the President and Vice President came to the service). The service was well organized, but still lasted until 4 p.m., followed by “lunch,” followed by supper at the official residence.

The days following the enthronement were filled with activity and opportunities. On one day, I had lunch with Kenyan dignitaries, including the President and Vice-President of the country. Also, while in Nairobi, I preached at Evensong at the Cathedral, and I was invited to speak at an educational day for Sudanese refugee pastors at a gathering organized by Trinity student John Chol Daau, Trinity alum Elaine Storm, and a team from St. Philip’s in Moon.

On another day I traveled to St Paul’s Limuru where I used to live and teach, and there I had lunch with the head of theology, Joseph Galgalo. I also spent a bit of time with a former student, Sammy Githuku, who teaches there and with Esther Mombo, a former Simeon lecturer at Trinity.

An opportunity arose to visit the Bible Society of Kenya, the Bible Translation and Literacy Centre (associated with Wycliffe Bible Translators), and the United Bible Societies Translation Centre for Africa. I had coffee—for three hours—with Dr. Aloo Mojola, the chief UBS translation consultant for Africa who knows everyone and everything about Bible translation in Africa. Happily, he wants to help with the Stanway project, endeavoring to find African Bibles and Prayer Books not already a part of our collection.

Benin
After a few weeks back home, I headed back to Africa for ten days, just prior to the opening of the fall semester. This time I was headed to Benin, the smallish francophone country just west of Nigeria. My destination was Le Grand Seminaire St Gall de Ouidah to attend the biennial Congress of l’Association Panafricaine des Exegetes CAtholique (APECA). In spite of being the only Protestant and the only white member present, I am always welcomed to these stimulating meetings.

The topic of the Congress was “Conflict and Reconciliation in the Bible: Exegetical Readings in the Context of the Church as the Family of God in Africa.” This association of highly trained African scholars spent the days of the meetings grappling with the Hebrew and Greek, talking, arguing, praying through biblical passages in which family conflict, ethnic violence, hatred, anger, war as well as the good news of God’s reconciliation of the world through the cross of Jesus play a major role. The state of African society, the role of the church in situations of conflict, the need to preach of and act for God’s love for a hurting world provided the context for biblical reflection. Most of the papers were presented by seminary professors from around the continent, most of them priests or members of religious orders. Papers were presented in both English and French and questions could be answered (and were expected to be answered!) in both languages. There was one interesting moment in which a francophone and an anglophone scholar were having some difficulty on a fine exegetical point—so they both just changed to Italian. Several bishops and Archbishops were also present and active in the discussions. My own paper (“Galatians 3:28: Jew/Greek, slave/free, male/female. The Limits of Paul’s Rhetoric of Reconciliation and Inclusion in the Light of the Crisis over Homosexuality in the Anglican Communion.”) received much serious and thoughtful response. Although this subject is rarely discussed in Africa (“It is usually taboo,” one of the Archbishops remarked), they are aware that they cannot ignore this issue. Travel, the internet, and television are bringing the ideas of a globalized culture across the world. They assured me that they will being praying for Anglicans and other Christians, especially in the western world, who are seeking to be faithful to the gospel.

Third, whilst Bishop Jones is correct to call for a more reasonable debate in this area, the reality on the ground is that in the places in the Anglican Church where the revisionist side has advanced its cause, the side-lining and ejecting of those with a conservative theology has always followed. Philip Ashey of the AAC last month produced a magnificent cataloguing of the way that in North America those who follow a traditional sexual theology have been persecuted (the word is not an exaggeration) by liberals in power.

In the secular arena it is very clear that groups like Stonewall are prepared to create such a situation here in the UK. Whilst it is alarmist to currently suggest, like the Bishop of Winchester has, that the changes proposed by Lord Alli’s amendment on Civil Partnerships will allow clergy right now to be sued, the trajectory of the progressives is clear in the words of Ben Summerskill of Stonewall when he says:

Right now, faiths shouldn’t be forced to hold civil partnerships, although in ten or 20 years, that may change.

Colin Coward of Changing Attitude agrees.

Is Lord Alli’s amendment a Trojan horse as some claim? I very much hope so.

And this is not simply about “alternative interpretations” of the Bible. I have sat in a meeting with one of the leading proponents in this country of the revisionist position. That person was asked, “If it could be demonstrated beyond all doubt that the Bible permitted no other sex for Christians then sex within a marriage of a man and a woman, would you change your position?” The answer was a clear, unequivocal “No”. For this person the issue had already been decided a priori to engaging with the Scriptures and no amount of Biblical theology would change their mind. So much for a conversation about what God was saying.

I commend Bishop Jones for wanting to have a graceful and compassionate conversation in this area, but the evidence is that those who are revisionist are not in this just for the mutual exploration of ethical dilemmas, they are in it to change the very face of the Church, regardless of what Conservatives think.

Fourth, Bishop Jones is simply incorrect to sweep away the scientific debate in a manner that assumes that sexuality is a fixed given. The best scientific research indicates that human sexuality is a complex interaction of nature and nurture, and thus it is probable that for each person that experiences same-sex attraction there is a unique interplay of various factors. That is why recently I have written against the imposition by some conservatives of particular development models of human sexuality on all those who self-identify as homosexual. While the “absent father” narrative is deeply insightful for some (including this author) leading to healing and orientation change, for others it is not relevant, and indeed can be damaging if one attempts reparative activities based upon its assumptions. At the same time the insistence by some revisionists that sexuality is biological in origin and therefore cannot be changed is a scientific naivety and flies in the face of good evidence that for some sexual identity and ever orientation is fluid and malleable.

Ultimately one cannot rest an ethical argument on “I was born this way, so it must be good”. We would not treat paedophilia, or alcoholism, or kleptomania or polygamy or any other number of sinful desires in that manner and therefore neither should we homosexuality.

Sweeping changes to the Anglican Church on Vancouver Island, including the closing of a number of churches in Greater Victoria, will proceed.

The changes, recommended in a report commissioned by the Diocese of British Columbia, which governs Anglican churches on Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands, were endorsed at a sitting of the church synod during the weekend.

Rev. Christopher Parsons, spokesman for the diocese on the issue, said there was enthusiastic support at the meeting for moving ahead. However, he conceded that for some, change will be difficult.

“Change is not easy. Nobody likes change. But I think the church has a call to be prophetic, and to get into reality that it needs to do things differently in order to live out what God calls us to do,” Parsons said.

The genocide that took place in Dogo Na Hauwa, Zot and Rastat during the early hours of yesterday 7th March 2010 at 3am by the Hausa/ Fulani youths most likely coming from the bordering district of Toro in Bauchi state is gross. Our reporters visited the scene yesterday to discover a total of 88 dead persons and many others who are in the Plateau Specialist Hospital receiving treatment. We are yet to verify the total number of those in the hospital.

It is clear that whoever is responsible for this hideous crime has the audacity because they have a backing of some sort. The blame should go to those who are evidently doing nothing about it. How many innocent lives must we lose before the ‘gods’ in government realize that this is beyond the political front? How do these people get their sophisticated weaponry that aides their havoc? Is there a chance that this is not unrelated to the crises?

There have been cattle raids by armed gun men in Vom, there have been murders of unarmed civilian women in sabon Gida Kanar, Riyom and Jabu bassa not to mention the most recent midnight slaughter of persons in Dogo Na Hauwa, Zot and Rastat. What more does the military and police force need to go after those murderers?

Earlier this week parliament voted to lift a ban on religious ceremonies being conducted for civil partnerships.

Because of other legislation in recent years, purporting to be about equality, this latest change will create an even more difficult environment for Christians. Clergy of the established Church will be under particular pressure to conduct services which they in conscience believe to be wrong. They may face the threat of legal action if they insist on following their conscience. Parliament has increasingly sought to interfere in religious affairs.

To date we have received more than $96,000 in donations for the Haiti Disaster Fund which will be used for immediate and intermediate needs following the January 12 earthquake. Nearly 300 families, churches, and organizations have made contributions including 22% of donors coming from outside this parish. The geographic distribution of the 22% of non-member donors is represented below . . .

Breaking news as the House of Bishops of the Anglican Church in America has formally requested to enter the Catholic Church. All 99 parishes and cathedrals!

Andrea Williams, Director of CCFON, said:

“What took place last night is nothing short of outrageous and all who care about democracy should be alarmed at the proceedings. At the end of January, Baroness Royall for the Government stated that: ‘Any change can therefore be brought only after proper and careful consideration of these issues.’

“Was this statement deliberately deceitful, or do the Government believe that last night’s debate constituted the ‘proper and careful consideration’ of the issues? The amendment was debated for less than an hour and was voted through literally at the eleventh hour, taking everybody by surprise. To have such a significant change in the law—a change to another piece of legislation no less—take place at the end of the Equality Bill’s passing, without any real debate or consultation, and at such an hour that most Peers were not even in the House, is a disgrace and a clear manipulation of the system.

“We will be calling on the Government to resist these changes, for the good of our democracy as well as for the protection of marriage.”

It is not the first time that constitutional irregularities have been used to force through law that significantly favours homosexual activists. In 2006 Lord Alli introduced amendments to the Equality Bill 2005/6 at the very last moment, which led to the creation of the Sexual Orientation Regulations 2007. These highly controversial regulations were passed through on a take it or leave it basis, with no debate at all in the House of Commons and amongst other things have led to the closing of Catholic adoption agencies.

23May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 24The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it.

International Christian Concern (ICC) has learned that yesterday, Nigerian Muslims murdered 500 Christians in village of Dogo Nahawa, near the city of Jos. Most of the victims are women and children.

The Muslims invaded the village yesterday at 2 AM local time and slaughtered the Christians with machetes. In some cases the Muslims wiped out entire families. They also burned down the homes of several Christians.

A local government official told ICC that around 380 Christians were buried in one mass burial space. He added that other victims were buried by their families and there are still bodies being collected. The official, who requested to remain anonymous, also said that police have arrested 93 people and recovered guns, knifes and other types of weapons from the suspects.

One of Pope Benedict XVI's elite ushers — already in jail over a corruption probe — has been dismissed for an alleged gay-prostitution ring, according to new reports from Italy. An elite Vatican singer also was over the sex scandal.

Angelo Balducci is a "Gentlemen of His Holiness" (Papal Gentlemen), who serve the pope on special occasions, such as when heads of state visit the Vatican. Balducci helped carry the coffin of Pope John Paul II. He is also a board member of Italy's public works department and a Vatican construction consultant.

Balducci was among four people arrested on corruption charges last month. The prostitution allegations emerged later and became public yesterday when the Italian newspaper La Repubblica published excerpts of police wiretaps of Balducci's phone.

The reality of division

But that is not the real problem. The real problem is that the, precisely on the basis of a plea for unity, the Bishop has committed his diocese to a position which will exacerbate division because it is not the adopted position of the Church of England. This is clear even within his own pronouncements. Thus he says,

I bring it to you today to say that this is where I now am, and where I believe the Diocese of Liverpool now is and where I hope that the Church of England and the Anglican Communion might also move. (emphasis added)

He is not where he once was, he believes he has positioned his Diocese where he now is, and he hopes the rest of the Church may catch up! And that position is thus:

... we do already as a Diocese accept a diversity of ethical convictions about human sexuality in the same way that the church has always allowed a diversity of ethical opinion on taking human life.

In other words, some say this, and some say that, and who is to say who is wrong? Yet this is not a recipe for unity but for disaster. Bishop Jones needs to read Richard John Neuhaus on ‘The Unhappy Fate of Optional Orthodoxy’, and to look at what the revisionist lobby is saying. The midway position on this topic is not one that can be sustained, not least because it is not one that the key protagonists wish to hold.

A divergence from Issues
Yet we should be in no doubt that Bishop Jones himself has already adopted the view that there is little if anything wrong with the sexual expression of same-sex attraction:

If on this subject of sexuality the traditionalists are ultimately right and those who advocate the acceptance of stable and faithful gay relationships are wrong what will their sin be? That in a world of such little love two people sought to express a love that no other relationship could offer them? And if those advocating the acceptance of gay relationship are right and the traditionalists are wrong what will their sin be? That in a church that has forever wrestled with interpreting and applying Scripture they missed the principle in the application of the literal text?

In this, Bishop Jones is at odds with the House of Bishops, especially as that House expressed itself in the very substantial 2003 document Some Issues in Human Sexuality: A guide to the debate. There we read this:

The teaching of Issues in Human Sexuality ... does not have legally binding authority in the Church of England [...].
However, because it reflects the current collective position of the House of Bishops, and because the Church of England is an episcopally led Church in which bishops have a particular responsibility for guiding the Church in matters of faith and morals, it should be accepted by those in the Church as possessing considerable theological and pastoral authority.

Bishop Jones clearly now regards the teaching of Issues in Human Sexuality as a matter, fundamentally, of indifference — as something on which we ought simply to agree to differ:

... I believe the day is coming when Christians who equally profoundly disagree about the consonancy of same gender love with the discipleship of Christ will in spite of their disagreement drink openly from the same cup of salvation.

He must, therefore, be somewhat out of step with the other bishops, and it will be interesting to see how they respond to his attempts to reposition the Diocese of Liverpool — not least in the international arena when he refers to,

... a partnership between an African Diocese taking a traditional stance on gay relationships and a Church of England Diocese which is moving toward embracing a range of ethical convictions on this issue and which is also in partnership with a Diocese in the Episcopal Church of America. (emphasis added)

Note again, it is clear from his language that he regards the Diocese of Liverpool as no longer being where it was (where the rest of England is), and now nearer to the position of TEC!

St. Matthew’s neither broadcast the change widely nor kept it secret, Laird said, noting that the church has posted minutes of its deliberations on its Web site. As word of the change filtered out among Episcopalians, Bishop Ted Gulick, who will be retiring later this year, issued a statement neither approving nor opposing the ceremony.

Gulick maintained he could not authorize same-sex rites because the denomination has not approved them for its foundational Book of Common Prayer. But he has left the door open to private ceremonies.

“As we pray, so we believe,” Gulick said in a written statement. “Until the ‘we’ on this issue becomes very large, it is dangerous to place such rites ‘front and center’ in our liturgical life.”

But, he added: “If the conscience of the ordained minister allows, private liturgies of blessing and support and public services of the Eucharist in thanksgiving for the covenanted, lifelong, monogamous realities of these committed relationships can be held in the churches of our diocese.”

1) The blessing was approved to occur in November, 2009 -- seven months before the new bishop of Kentucky is to be elected in June. Thus, Bishop Gulick assisted in establishing a "planned and approved fact" with which his successor must deal. Does anyone know if any other approved-by-Bishop-Gulick blessings have occurred? Or is this the first one to be approved by Bishop Gulick -- right before he departs as diocesan bishop?

2) Much of the planning for the same sex blessing, with the assistance of Bishop Gulick, occurred prior to General Convention 2009.

3) And yet, here were the comments of Bishop Gulick -- well knowing what he was undertaking back in his own diocese -- regarding the passage of Resolution C056 at General Convention 2009 from the newsletter of the Diocese of Kentucky [note as an aside the frankly and transparently propagandistic headline in this "news" [sic] publication -- "Bishop, deputies return from 76th General Convention talking about the ‘middle way’"]:

Resolution C056, he stressed, recommits the Episcopal Church’s support of the Anglican Communion while addressing the new reality that civil unions of same-sex couples are now legal in six states as they are in the Anglican provinces of Australia, Canada, Great Britain, New Zealand and South Africa, according to Gulick. “Naturally Anglicans in those jurisdictions will ask what the church is going to do to recognize that relationship in some sort of liturgical way.”

The resolution does not authorize rites of blessing same sex unions, he stressed. “It is important to understand that. We haven’t taken any action except to have theological considerations at the moment and to develop resources. We have not approved rites. … The bishops are encouraged to support clergy in pastoral generosity to persons who have chosen to marry in these states, and pastoral generosity is not defined specifically.”

The shocking thing for me is not that Episcopal bishops are engaging in heretical acts, in knowing violation of Communion and Biblical standards. The shocking thing is how sneaking, sly, hidden, and furtive they are in both speaking about and carrying out their goals.

In view of the interest generated by Bishop James Jones' controversial address to his Diocesan Synod, we post here the members of the Council of Wycliffe Hall, clearly showing he is no longer the chair – from http://www.wycliffehall.org.uk/content.asp?id=394

This response sketches Bishop James Jones’ journey over the last decade before demonstrating the flaws in his central argument that Anglicans should “accept a diversity of ethical convictions about human sexuality”. Both in what it says and in what it fails to say the address apparently marks a significant step away from the traditional biblical, evangelical and catholic understanding of sexuality and the church’s teaching and discipline in this area. The heart of his case is an appeal to differences between Christians over just war and pacifism. This argument is shown to be inadequate in various ways but most basically because an appeal to diversity on one ethical issue cannot justify diversity on a quite different ethical issue.

Given its focus and central argument, it is particularly alarming that the address offers no engagement with Scripture or Christian tradition or Anglican teaching either in relation to sexuality or in its attempt to argue that ethical diversity in this area is legitimate. Although many of the practical implications of his argument for diversity remain rather vague it is clear that he is seeking to move the Church of England and the Communion away from its current position. In so doing he also makes a number of claims in passing that raise deeper theological questions about the nature of sin and grace and the relation of church and society.

In summary, the general position advocated is one which would move the Church of England away not only from its current teaching but also from its methodology of careful, rigorous engagement with the complexities of this subject rooted in Scripture, tradition and wider ecumenical reflections. What is being advocated instead is the sort of approach taken by the North American provinces which has moved from the seemingly uncritical (and theologically undefended) acceptance of a diversity of views on sexuality within a small part of Christ’s church to the inevitable abandonment of traditional teaching and discipline within the Anglican province and then to the marginalisation and exclusion of those who seek to uphold the biblical and traditional Christian sexual ethic. It is, sadly, for that reason, that the address is of such significance and concern and merits careful analysis, critique and engagement from the wider church, including others in episcopal leadership.

The central claim and the analogy of war

The central argument that follows can be summed up as “there are other important ethical issues where we accept a diversity of ethical convictions so we should now do this on human sexuality”. His case study for this position is “the taking of human life” which is where “the most basic and fundamental” questions centre. A nod is given to this question in relation to abortion, assisted suicide and euthanasia but the focus is then turned to the question of war. This is the first highly questionable move in the argument. The focus on war is not defended and clearly the question immediately arises as to whether and in what sense the church should accept “a diversity of ethical convictions” in relation to abortion, assisted suicide and euthanasia. In many ways these would be better analogies for issues relating to marriage and homosexuality in that there is a much more consistent, uniform and negative moral stance in these areas than there is in relation to questions of just war and pacifism and yet, as with sexuality, there is a minority voice, particularly in Western churches, which is seeking to challenge that mainstream tradition. For example should there be a diversity of convictions expressed through blessing abortions and ‘mercy killings’? The worked example of war is therefore clearly selected as the easiest one to defend his desired conclusion but even here the argument leaves much to be desired and raises more questions than it answers.

The treatment of the debate, although self-confessedly “a cursory glance”, is weak. It is, for example, not at all clear there are “the famous five principles of a just war” (Aquinas who is cited lists three and the tradition has expressed its understanding in various forms with textbook summaries of principles derived from that tradition varying in the number of principles, though most have more than five). Furthermore, the central ethical debate is never really examined in the address: how, in the light of biblical texts such as Romans 13 and the Sermon on the Mount (not to mention the Old Testament where clearly the commandment was not understood to entail a total prohibition on taking life!), should the church bear witness to the limits placed on the use of coercion by secular authority in its pursuit of justice and its actions against injustice and oppression? Instead the debate is cast simply as “whether or not it is ever justified to take the life of another”. This is then described as “the most fundamental of all ethical issues”, clearly in an attempt to relativise differences on other ethical issues. There is also no acknowledgment that the 39 Articles take a clear (and the majority Christian) stance in Article 37 – “It is lawful for Christian men, at the commandment of the Magistrate, to wear weapons, and serve in the wars” - nor that the Lambeth Conference has, despite this, in the past approved more pacifist leaning resolutions, notably in 1930 and reaffirmed in subsequent conferences that “war as a method of settling international disputes is incompatible with the teaching and example of our Lord Jesus Christ”.

The analogy with war: strength but fatal flaws

Despite these limitations, clearly the central point of the argument stands that Christians and Anglicans have taken different views in relation to war without it necessarily being communion-breaking. (It must, however, be recognised that ‘diversity’ here is within a context where ‘just war’ has ‘won’ the official position and predominates; hence there are the historic peace churches such as the Mennonites for whom this has been an issue which has greater significance and that reality of church division cannot be forgotten or ignored). What is also not fully factored into the argument is that this is a process that has been wrestled with over many centuries (given the legal requirements in relation to adherence to the 39 articles, committed pacifists could not have been ordained for most of the Church of England’s history) and it relates to a question where the church has had to wrestle with divergent voices within Scripture in a way that is not found in relation to homosexuality.

Questions of war also concern how political authority (and hence citizens within political society) responds faithfully to the realities of a fallen and not yet fully redeemed world. In contrast, the major argument in relation to homosexuality is in relation to anthropology with the claim (which, as discussed below, the bishop seems to share) that same-sex sexual desire and relationships are part of God’s good and diverse creation of humans made in his image. From this it often follows that same-sex relations are thus to be viewed as marriage (or as equivalent to marriage), a divine institution and ordering of relationships which has a special even sacramental significance within Scripture and Christian theology as a type of the relationship between God and Israel, Christ and the church.

The much more fundamental problem with the appeal to diversity in another area of ethics is that simply because Christians have accepted, to some degree, ethical diversity on one issue is not a sufficient argument for doing so on another issue. Leaving aside the wider area noted above of diversity in relation to other ethical controversies about taking human life or issues in relation to economics or truth-telling or global warming, there are clearly philosophies of war that presumably should not be tolerated as part of acceptable Christian diversity (eg those which called for indiscriminate slaughter and hatred of the enemy, although both in the CofE and in other parts of the church such views have been expressed by Christians). This is the fundamental weakness and flaw in the whole argument of the address. Just because the church has, in some areas, reached a considered conclusion that it can recognise a legitimate range of ethical stances compatible with Christian discipleship, does not give any guidance as to whether it should do so or in what form it should do so in relation to other areas, including sexuality. Each case needs to be treated in its own right. What is signally lacking from this address however is any attempt to address the issues of sexuality in its own right from a biblical and theological perspective or to demonstrate why and in what ways ethical diversity on sexuality is legitimate.

Anglicans in North America reach out to support the Anglican Diocese of Chile. The Anglican Relief and Development Fund is already setting aside donations to meet needs.

March 2, 2010

On Sunday, February 28, there was a major earthquake, centered near the second largest city in Chile, Concepcion, but causing significant damage as far as 500 kilometers north in Santiago. In the aftermath of the earthquake, the Anglican Relief and Development Fund has been in contact with Bishop Hector "Tito" Zavala, bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Chile. Bishop Zavala traveled to Concepcion on March 2 to personally assess the damage there. ARDF has placed a donation button at http://www.anglicanaid.net/?/mail/page/22 for donations for Chile relief and recovery and will be working to offer concrete support for the work of the Diocese of Chile in the weeks ahead.


Anglicans in Chile are part of the Province of the Southern Cone. Bishop Zavala has traveled extensively in North America and has been a consistent friend and supporter of the Anglican Church in North America. More information about the Anglican Diocese of Chile is also available at http://www.iachcl/2010/


Checks may be sent to:

The Anglican Relief and Development Fund
PO Box 3830
Pittsburgh, PA 15230-3830

...with the word "Chile" in the memo line.

The following famous quote attributed to Dr Martin Luther, widely used by creationists, turns out not to be by him at all.

“If I profess, with the loudest voice and the clearest exposition, every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christianity. Where the battle rages the loyalty of the soldier is proved; and to be steady on all the battle-field besides is mere flight and disgrace to him if he flinches at that one point.”

...
Most of the instances of the quote on the internet, where a source is given, state it as page 81ff of Briefwechsel 3 (i.e. in full: page 81 and following of the third volume of Briefwechsel (correspondence) from D. Martin Luthers Werke, the German (Weimar) edition of Luther’s Works.)

Even though Martin Luther said many similar things, these are not his words.

However, we were able to obtain a copy of the pages of Martin Luther’s writing in question (kindly supplied by a supporter, Dr Péter Szentpétery). When I read them in the original German (my mother tongue), it was clear, even allowing for the loosest of loose translations, that this could not be the source. There were some similar sentiments, but quite differently worded.
...
The research of a Pastor Mark Henderson indicates that it comes from a 19th Century novel by Elizabeth Rundle Charles,2 called The Chronicles of the Schoenberg Cotta Family (Thomas Nelson, 1864). Its author was a pious Anglican who was also the writer of a few hymns.

The same conclusion is reached in a recent (2009) article in a Lutheran journal by a Bob Caldwell, titled, “‘If I profess:’ A Spurious, if Consistent Luther Quote?”3

The novel is set in a real historical framework of actual persons and events, but the main characters and storyline are fictional. The words of the “battle quote” in the novel are attributed to a fictional character in the book called Fritz, in a long section detailing his relationship to Luther and the Reformation.

Have you ever, in Christian circles, been blamed for your fate? Have you ever been told that your pain or your cancer would go away if you prayed with faith?

Yes, I have. No one has ever said straight out that I would be healed if my faith were stronger, and I think the comments that I am about to tell you about were all or almost all entirely well meaning. It's a different kind of phenomenon than the blaming I have found in doctors and nurses toward chronic pain patients. But the implication is the same.

I hear a lot of people talk about suffering in two ways. Suffering is the discipline of a loving Father -- or suffering exists solely so that God can be glorified as He removes it. Both imply some kind of blame on the part of the one who is suffering. If suffering is discipline, then I must have done something wrong to deserve discipline. If suffering exists so that God can remove it, then why has He not removed it? I must not be praying in the right way.

I do not think that my suffering is God's discipline. It's not that I am under the illusion that I deserve better than life has given me. I do not believe that. I have never believed that. But I don't believe the discipline story is consistent with a God who is eager to bless.

Yet those sorts of statements, that I would be healed if I prayed with sufficient faith, really cut me to the quick. They hurt, in part, because I was not praying for healing from my pain. After a while -- and not a very long while -- I simply could not bring myself to pray for healing anymore. Multiple times in the last decade, certainly when I was going in for my two surgeries, I had hoped and even expected that the pain would be taken away or at least diminished dramatically. For a few months, both times, the pain did go away. Then it came back -- and came back worse than before. The dashed hopes were almost unbearable. They were worse than if the pain had simply continued the whole time.

With the cancer, because of my experience with my back, I've never been able to bring myself to pray to be healed. I can deal with hurting all the time. I can deal with terminal cancer. What I cannot deal with is having the prospect that it will all be taken away dangling right before me. That, I think, is beyond my capacity.

There is a tendency that's especially strong in Calvinist circles to read Romans 8:28, "All things work together for the good," as though it says that "All things are good." I heard some of that, and that hurt me too. I am not blaming anyone else; I am sure this is more my fault than anyone else's. These are honest opinions, if (I think) probably misguided, and they were delivered by completely well-meaning people. But hearing repeatedly that suffering is discipline from a loving Father, and that my circumstances are all gift -- no curses, they are all blessings -- made me feel sometimes as though God were coming after me with a baseball bat.

It's impossible for me to hear and absorb those messages and then also think that the God of the universe actually loves me. I got close at some points to losing my faith, to seeing God as having declared Himself my enemy. It's hard to worship your enemy.

It was in Johannesburg, where the couple had gone to supervise the building of a new Scientology organization, that Mr. Collbran, who is 29, began to have doubts. He had spent months at church headquarters in Clearwater revising the design for the Johannesburg site to meet Mr. Miscavige’s demands.

Mr. Collbran said he saw an officer hit a subordinate, and soon found that the atmosphere of supervision through intimidation was affecting him. He acknowledges that he pushed a 17-year-old staff member against a wall and yelled at his wife, who was his deputy.

In Johannesburg, officials made the church look busy for publicity photographs by filling it with Sea Org members, the Collbrans said. To make their numbers look good for headquarters, South African parishioners took their maids and gardeners to church.

But the Ideal Orgs are supposed to be self-supporting, and the Johannesburg church was generating only enough to pay each of the Collbrans $17 a week, Mr. Collbran said.

“It was all built on lies,” Mr. Collbran said. “We’re working 16 hours a day trying to save the planet, and the church is shrinking.”

October 8, 1958
Patient Arne Larsson received the world's first implantable pacemaker in a pioneering operation at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. In 1994, St. Jude Medical acquired the Swedish company (Elema-Schönander, which became Siemens-Pacesetter) that developed Arne Larsson's implantable pacemaker. Mr. Larsson received 26 pacemakers over the course of his lifetime, which included a successful career in engineering, world travel, frequent golf games, a marriage of more than 50 years and two children. He passed away in 2001 at the age of 86 from causes unrelated to his cardiac health, having outlived both the surgeon who implanted his first pacemaker and the engineer who developed it.

Extract from a letter from Bishop Hector Zavala
Anglican Church in Chile
Victoria Subercaseaux 41 of. 301 Santiago Fono: 639 1509 obispo@iach.cl

ANNOUNCEMENT ON THE OVERALL SITUATION IN THE ANGLICAN CHURCH IN CHILE


To: Parishes and Mission groups of the Anglican Church in Chile
From: The Diocesan Bishop
Date: 1 March 2010


Beloved in Christ,

May the grace, mercy and love of Christ be with each one of you.

Apart from the VIII Region, the general situation of the church is good. There has been no loss of life, although there is some structural damage to buildings which will need to be repaired during the second stage of recovery.

The little information we have received on what is happening in Concepción, hampered by the breakdown in communications and the supply of electricity, is as follows:

The city of Concepción is still isolated; electricity supply has not been established, and due to lack of transport no food, water or petrol is getting through.

Around seventy families from our church have been affected. Our brethren are sleeping in tents in three different parts of the city: Manqimavida, San Pedro de la Paz and Las Lomas.

As the families are grouped together they can share cooking pots and maximise the few provisions they have between them.

At an emergency meeting, the Diocese decided to take help to the area. We called upon our churches, both in Chile and abroad to help carry out the following plan:

It is very important for the church to unite and mobilise, to help, first of all, our brethren in the churches in Concepción, and then the other seriously affected towns in the VII Region.

We would like to support those affected in an integrated way (body, mind and spirit)

We are asking pastors and lay leaders to create and organise prayer networks in each church, so that ultimately the Lord may be glorified in this whole situation.

Churches in the metropolitan area of Santiago are asked to help with funds, non perishable goods, nappies, bottled water and blankets. Please get in touch with this office if you need help with transport.

God willing, on Tuesday 2 March I hope to take a truck of goods to Concepción. Another truck is due to leave for the coastal area of the VII Region at the same time.

On Wednesday 3 March a lorry will depart with goods for Concepción.

In Concepción itself we will need to evaluate the situation on the ground.

Finally, we remember the words of our Lord Jesus Christ “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me. The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me'.”


In the service of Christ

Rt Revd Hector Zavala
Diocesan Bishop

"I think what I have found the most helpful as I get Johnny's emails about these lunches is to read the questions that the non-Christians are coming up with. That is what intrigues me."

Further discussion about discrepancies in the Bible
Is Christianity a theology or a plan of action?
Are spiritual matters more appropriately deduced than intuited?

Just as the church over the last 2000 years has come to allow a variety of ethical conviction about the taking of life and the application of the sixth Commandment so I believe that in this period it is also moving towards allowing a variety of ethical conviction about people of the same gender loving each other fully. Just as Christian pacifists and Christian soldiers profoundly disagree with one another yet in their disagreement continue to drink from the same cup because they share in the one body so too I believe the day is coming when Christians who equally profoundly disagree about the consonancy of same gender love with the discipleship of Christ will in spite of their disagreement drink openly from the same cup of salvation.

However, for some in the church homosexuality has become the defining issue of orthodoxy; it has become the benchmark on how you interpret Scripture and apply it authoritatively to the modern world. For others in the church, especially but not exclusively for those who are gay, homosexuality and the church’s attitude have become the touchstone of the church’s seriousness in wanting to include in the Kingdom all God’s children.

Put like that this summary of the two positions sounds perfectly reasonable and irenic. But we all know that the division of opinion has caused much bitterness and enmity and continues to aggravate the worsening relations within the Anglican Communion. The question which exercises me and which I wish to address today is whether we in the church can have a division of opinion without bitterness and a diversity of conviction without enmity.

If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved; and to be steady on all the battlefield besides, is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point.

1 Corinthians 15:1 Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, ² and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you--unless you believed in vain. ³ For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, ⁴ that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, ⁵ and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. ⁶ Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. ⁷ Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. ⁸ Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. ⁹ For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. ¹⁰ But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. ¹¹ Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed.

⁵¹ Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, ⁵² in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. ⁵³ For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. ⁵⁴ When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:

"Death is swallowed up in victory." ⁵⁵ "O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?" ⁵⁶ The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.

⁵⁷ But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. ⁵⁸ Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.

I remember a leader in our denomination who made me angry every time I even thought about him. I heard the stories of the people he had condemned and hurt; I knew about his arrogance and pride; I knew of a church he almost destroyed with his poor judgment. So when I was called to give some advice to a denominational committee on which he served, I could hardly wait. In my heart, I dared him to say anything. I planned to "speak truth to power" and the angrier I get, the better I talk.

When I appeared before that committee, he was the one sent to bring me from the hotel lobby to the meeting room. (This was shortly after my brother's death, one of the major tragedies in my life.) He led me to the door and said, "Steve, before we go in, let me say something. I'm so very sorry about your brother's death." Then to my amazement, tears welled up in his eyes. "I just want you to know," he continued, "that my wife and I have been praying for you daily that God would show you great love and comfort in this time."

Spit!!!!

The second truth is that my job description and pay level don't require that I be too conditional.

I got a wonderful gift from Fred Smith's family this week. (As you know, before his death, Fred was my friend and mentor for most of my life.) His son, Fred, sent me a handkerchief embroidered with Fred's initials. He told me that his father's great dream was to be an opera singer. In fact, he studied under some of the great teachers in New York. Not only that, he ordered some fancy handkerchiefs to put in his jacket pocket when he débuted as an opera singer. Fred saved that box of handkerchiefs for that great day.

Then one of his teachers said to Fred, "Fred, you have everything you need to be an opera singer...perseverance, discipline, tenacity, dedication. The only thing you lack is talent." That was the end of Fred's opera career, but he kept those handkerchiefs. After his death, the family decided that I would like to have one of them.

As I write this, I'm looking at that handkerchief. I think God said something similar to me: "Steve, you are mine and you have a great heart for following me, but you lack the holiness, goodness and purity to pull it off. So stay close to me and I'll love you, but be careful and remember that I love you not because you are lovable, but just because I do. It will help you in dealing with others."

The final truth is that God isn't finished with me, with you or with my enemies yet.

Someone has said that behind every great man there is a surprised mother-in-law. (I know, I know...that's sexist...but it's still funny.) I know that surprise. One of the good things about being old (and there aren't many) is that I have watched children become men and women. I can't tell you how often I've been surprised when the "evil to the bone" kid became a preacher, the most rebellious teenagers became influential leaders in the church and community, and the worst kids I knew got married and became incredible and loving parents. I've seen so much change in people's lives that it's almost (but not quite) fixed my cynicism.

But do you know who has surprised me the most?

Me.

I'm kinder when I remember that.

I'm running out of space here, but there is one other thing that I feel constrained to say. Nothing I've written above should be considered a call for us to become "Christian wimps." Walt Kelly's classic comic strip Pogo has been quoted so often that the quote has become a cliché. His character Pogo says, "We have met the enemy and he is us." That's simply not true. Sometimes we're the enemy, but sometimes it's "them." The only people who use the quote seriously are people who don't believe there is evil, that all truth is relative, and that if we're nice, others will be nice to us.

The problem is that I have only so many "bullets in my gun" and Jesus wants me to be very careful where I shoot.

Now let’s discuss risk assessment. Ignoring pre-existing conditions might sound compassionate, but it is equivalent to declaring that a fire-insurance company must charge the same amount for a modern house with smoke detectors and interior fireproofing as for a century-old, wooden-frame former stable, complete with some hay left over, and a basement full of painting supplies. Taking the analogy further, the same premium must be charged for a well-protected, unscathed house as for one that is already on fire.

The business of insurance is about determining risk and charging accordingly. It’s why insurance companies exist. If we eliminate that, medical insurers are just form-processing companies for the government. Worse, we lose a valuable economic input: that of accurate risk assessment and pricing, without which sensible management of medical expenses is impossible.

‘Don’t Ask’

The desire to help those with pre-existing conditions is laudable. The way to do this is to help. If someone needs more medical care than he or she can pay for, direct state subsidy is far more efficient than making insurance companies pretend that the patient isn’t ill or at high risk of becoming ill. We can separately debate the degree of generosity of this subsidy, but it is efficient and honest. Making insurance companies play “don’t ask, don’t tell” with health status is neither.

Though you wouldn’t know it from the headlines, our system today, and our discussion of reform, isn’t about insurance. It’s about the total provision of health care, largely by employers, with costs hidden from individuals. Furthermore, much of the proposed reform is about eliminating the main function of an insurance company: the assessment and pricing of risk.

Creating a system of real health insurance, along with honest subsidy where necessary, is the simple solution to many of our problems, and an honest first step toward tackling the rest.

“We continue to oppose any change in the law with regard to assisted suicide and we are assured by the DPP that the guidelines do not represent any such change. Assisted suicide remains a crime and, as with all crimes, there remains a presumption in favour of prosecution. These guidelines do not provide blanket immunity from prosecution, nor do they give prior permission to break the law. It is right that there is no clear line drawn which will allow anybody assisting a suicide to know in advance whether they will be prosecuted. These guidelines are intended to weigh a complex set of different factors which, of their nature, can only be assessed after the fact not before it.

“Assisted suicide, as well as being a crime, is always also a tragedy. We empathise with those who struggle with their own illness and suffering as well as with those who struggle with the illnesses and suffering of those they love most. We believe, however, that the most compassionate course is to provide love, support and the best possible medical and nursing care, not to acquiesce in requests for assisted suicide. Compassion does not always mean saying ‘yes’. Protecting the vulnerable, ensuring that every life is appreciated as being valuable and maintaining the indispensible bond of trust between health professionals and patients outweighs arguments in favour of individual choice. In a truly caring and moral society, increased autonomy for the few ought never to be pursued at the cost of placing an increased burden on the many.

“We also recognise that, in certain, restricted circumstances, prosecution may not be the most appropriate way of responding to assisted suicide. The DPP’s guidelines reflect this even though we do not agree with all of them as we made clear in our submission during the consultation process.

Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer, said whether a person acted "wholly compassionately" and not for financial reasons was important.

But he made it clear the advice does not represent a change in the law and does not cover so-called mercy killing.

Mr Starmer had already published draft advice following a Law Lords ruling.

'Informed decision'
The guidance is not about changing the law - assisted suicide is illegal and carries a jail term of up to 14 years.

However, more than 100 Britons with terminal or incurable illnesses have gone to the Swiss centre Dignitas to die and none of the relatives and friends involved in the cases have been prosecuted.

This is because the authorities have the power to use their discretion under the terms of the act.

The final guidelines cover England and Wales although similar ones have been set out in Northern Ireland.

They set out a range of factors to be taken into account when deciding whether or not to prosecute.

A recent decision to hire a non-union housekeeping services contractor at the Episcopal Church Center in New York has led to charges of hypocrisy from an influential liberal caucus group within the denomination.

“I’m very disappointed in what has happened at our national headquarters,” said Tim Yeager, a union attorney on the ordination track in the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago and a member of the Episcopal Peace Fellowship (EPF). “The reason for this change is to save money. We should not be creating more poverty in this world because we need to save a few bucks.”

The Episcopal Church Center came under heavy criticism early this year after it did not renew a housekeeping services contract with a unionized company. After a new, non-union contractor was chosen, the existing crew of nine personnel was effectively dismissed, including an employee who had cleaned the church’s headquarters for 42 years. According to Yeager, the minimum union contract was $21 an hour with healthcare coverage. The new contractor, Benjamin Enterprises, pays minimum wage and does not offer healthcare coverage to employees.

A church statement read aloud by Yeager referred to the contractor change as a normal business operation.

“When did the church of Christ become a normal business operation?” Yeager asked, declaring that “the people who have cleaned our building for 42 years are our brothers.”

“We [the denomination] look really bad as a labor movement right now,” Yeager said, noting that demonstrations had been held in front of the Church Center, with 100 protestors on February 4 alone.

Advocacy Center
Direction & Administration
Staff Cost 1,090,074
Other Costs 45,045

Direction & Administration Total 1,135,119

Social & Eco. Justice, Jubilee
Total Staff Cost 1,270,810
Total Field Office: Washington 699,846
Total Domestic Poverty & Jubilee Ministries 1,019,450
Total Economic Justice 40,950
Total Environmental Justice 111,930

Social & Eco. Justice, Jubilee Total 3,142,986

Anti-Racism, Racial Just. & Gender Equality
Total Staff Cost 593,910
Total Native American Ministries 595,200
Anti-Racism, Racial Just. & Gender Equality Total 1,189,110
Peace, Int'l Affairs, and Migration
Total Staff Cost 853,764
Total Int'l Justice & Peace Making 245,180
Total Episcopal Migration Advocacy 68,250

Peace, Int'l Affairs and Migration Total 1,167,194

Advocacy Center Total 6,634,410

The Civil Rights Movement in this country did not just address the civil rights of African Americans, but in its breadth also raised other issues such as whether civil marriage is a basic human right. The United States Supreme Court in 1923 identified marriage as an essential privilege for the "orderly pursuit of happiness," but at that time did not name it as a fundamental human right. By the end of the 1920s, as hard as it is to imagine, 42 of the 48 states banned marriage between blacks and whites, and between whites and Mongolians, Hindus, Indians, Japanese and Chinese. In 1930 Filipinos were added to the list. By 1965, most states had eliminated such prohibitions, but interracial marriage remained a crime in the South. As ludicrous as it may seem now, a Virginia judge made a theological argument to support his state’s bigoted law: "Almighty God created the races white and black, yellow, Malay and red and placed them on separate continents. The fact that he separated the races shows he did not intend for the races to mix."

As the Bishop of the Diocese of Washington it is important that I put forward guidelines for clergy of the diocese to follow now that the District’s Marriage Equality Act is law. I do so based on my interpretation of General Convention Resolution CO56, which states that "bishops, particularly in those dioceses within civil jurisdictions where same gender marriage, civil unions, or domestic partnerships are legal, may provide generous pastoral response to meet the needs of members of this Church." I hope that these pastoral guidelines will be helpful to the clergy that I serve as bishop. In the matter of how to engage or not engage in performing, witnessing and blessing same-sex marriages within the District, I respect the pastoral judgment and decisions of the clergy under my pastoral oversight.

1) No priest of this diocese, canonically resident or licensed in accordance with the canons of The Episcopal Church shall be required to act as a licensed agent of the District of Columbia in marrying persons of the same gender; neither shall they be required to bless such civil marriages.

2) Any priest from the diocese, canonically resident or licensed, who has been asked to marry same gender couples according to the Marriage Equality Act must: a) have a valid license from the District government; b) have the support of the vestry if the marriage is to occur in the congregation they serve as rector, assistant, supply priest, priest-in- charge or interim or if in another Episcopal congregation in the District of Columbia, the permission of that rector and vestry; c) notify the bishop at least 30 days prior to the marriage when and where it will take place; d) comply with all the requirements that pertain to heterosexual marriage including those relevant to previous marriages that have ended in divorce. All guidelines for Holy Matrimony currently in effect in the diocese shall be applicable to those persons contemplating civil same-gender marriage within the District. (Marriage guidelines are available at http://www.edow.org/marriage.)

3) Priests who serve congregations in the four counties of Maryland may marry persons in the District who are residents in the State of Maryland and who are active members of their congregations. They may marry within the District, provided that the couple has a valid DC marriage license and the priest is licensed in the District. All such marriages involving clergy who serve congregations in Maryland and who are entering the District must have the permission of the Bishop of Washington. If the marriage is to occur in an Episcopal congregation within the District, the rector and vestry of that church must give their permission for the use of the church.

4) Episcopal priests from outside the Diocese of Washington are not permitted to enter the diocese to perform, witness and bless same-gender marriages unless they are from a State and diocese that permits same gender marriage.

5) No priest from the Diocese of Washington will be permitted to travel outside of the diocese to perform witness and bless a same-gender marriage in another diocese where such marriage is legal without the written permission of the bishop of that diocese. Priests from the Diocese of Washington who have received permission must also notify the Bishop of Washington of their intent.

6) Persons who reside in other dioceses may not enter the Diocese of Washington to have a same-gender marriage performed, witnessed and blessed by a priest of this diocese or a priest from the diocese in which they reside unless that state legally permits same-gender marriage, and the diocese within that state also permits its clergy to perform, witness and bless same-gender marriages.

7) In the Diocese of Washington, deacons are not permitted to witness and bless marriages and are also prohibited from performing, witnessing and blessing same-gender marriages under the Marriage equality Act of the District of Columbia.

British schools are creating ‘hate registers’ to monitor boys and girls who might be accused of what used to be called schoolyard banter but is now considered “homophobic.” And the British government could soon make such lists mandatory.

Consider the case of Peter Drury. The 10-year-old was messing around with a friend and allegedly called him a “gay boy.” Peter’s mother was called to the school and was told her child would be placed on a registry and his behavior would be monitored throughout his academic career.

“He doesn’t even understand about the birds and the bees, so how can he be a homophobic?” Penny Drury told The Daily Express. “Peter is a very naïve boy who didn’t know what he was doing and is now very upset that he is in trouble.”

While a number of British school keep records of racist, homophobic or anti-disability bullying, it isn’t mandatory – but that could change later this year. The government is considering a plan to make it a “statutory duty” for all schools to register incidents and for local police to maintain a database.

A trip that might take one or two hours could take up to eight, 10 or 12 hours because the Marines made an effort to talk with the locals, Gus Biggio said.

When he arrived in the Nawa District, there was no government in place, except for a police chief. There were no public schools or health clinics open. The marketplace was pretty much desolate, with about a dozen shops out of 120 routinely opened for business.

When a Washington Post reporter interviewed Gus Biggio in July, the Marine captain said, "We'll be successful when we can walk up and down that street and most shops will be open, there will be a flow of commerce, there will be a recognizable and functioning government, there will be kids in school and doctors in the clinic."

Over the next six months, life in Nawa and the province changed. There were 50 British soldiers in the area before the Marines arrived this past summer. Gus Biggio said the British soldiers could only make it about 500 yards before being shot at.

But with the largest helicopter operation since Vietnam, the Marines came in and pushed back the Taliban, which Gus Biggio refers to as insurgents.

There were three days of decisive fighting, then it stopped, he said. The insurgents figured out the Marines were different from the British soldiers, because they wouldn't run away from a fight and they could fight effectively, he added.

Three things happened: Insurgents were killed, they fled to villages with no NATO presence or they laid down their weapons, Gus Biggio said.

As the Marines walked among the locals, talked with them and, against the advice of the medical staff, ate with them, more and more villagers began to see the Marines as good people, who were looking to make them safe and not harm them.

He and Armstrong had only been on the lunar surface for a few minutes when Aldrin made the following public statement: “This is the LM pilot. I’d like to take this opportunity to ask every person listening in, whoever and wherever they may be, to pause for a moment and contemplate the events of the past few hours and to give thanks in his or her own way.” He then ended radio communication and there, on the silent surface of the moon, 250,000 miles from home, he read a verse from the Gospel of John, and he took communion. Here is his own account of what happened:

“In the radio blackout, I opened the little plastic packages which contained the bread and the wine. I poured the wine into the chalice our church had given me. In the one-sixth gravity of the moon, the wine slowly curled and gracefully came up the side of the cup. Then I read the Scripture, ‘I am the vine, you are the branches. Whosoever abides in me will bring forth much fruit. Apart from me you can do nothing.’ I had intended to read my communion passage back to earth, but at the last minute [they] had requested that I not do this. NASA was already embroiled in a legal battle with Madelyn Murray O’Hare, the celebrated opponent of religion, over the Apollo 8 crew reading from Genesis while orbiting the moon at Christmas. I agreed reluctantly. …I ate the tiny Host and swallowed the wine. I gave thanks for the intelligence and spirit that had brought two young pilots to the Sea of Tranquility. It was interesting for me to think: the very first liquid ever poured on the moon, and the very first food eaten there, were the communion elements.”

And of course, it’s interesting to think that some of the first words spoken on the moon were the words of Jesus Christ, who made the Earth and the moon — and Who, in the immortal words of Dante, is Himself the “Love that moves the Sun and other stars.”

The Challenge of Islam

Archbishop Edmund Akanya is Bishop of Kebbi in northwest Nigeria, in a 70% Muslim, sharia-compliant state where public preaching is outlawed. In the face of persecution, the gospel is being preached and churches are being planted as Christians are challenged to pray, reach out, build bridges of friendship with hitherto very hostile communities, and live Christ-like lives that incarnate the gospel.

Christians are called to reach out to those of other faiths (or none), and we also have a responsibility to pass on the faith once received to our children and grandchildren. This legacy is being challenged in many parts of the world, including our own, by militaristic and political Islam. Baroness Caroline Cox, a member of the British House of Lords and founder of HART, The Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust providing advocacy for the persecuted, will speak on resurgent Islam and how to respond to it.

Partnering to Reach the Unreached

The Rev. S.D. Ponraj of Bihar Out-Reach Network (BORN) will share how the gospel has been spreading among youth, castes, and tribal groups as churches work together to reach the unreached and plant 10,000 churches by the end of this year in Bihar, a northern state in India.

Brothers and Sisters in Myanmar

There are 70,000 Anglican Christians in Myanmar (formerly Burma). The Most Rev. Stephen Than, Archbishop of the Province of Myanmar and Bishop of Yangon (Rangoon), will tell us about the work of the church in Myanmar.

Dear Mr. Bradley:

I appreciate your correspondence to our church regarding the "Believe Out Loud" program. I am not willing to register the Episcopal Church of the Advent because of the following reasons:

1. It is my policy to love and honor all persons, regardless of their sexuality. I welcome them into my church as I would any fellow human being, but being homosexual is not inherently commesurate with acting on homosexual tendencies.

2. In my former parish, I was a contact for Exodus International. I support those who wish to leave the gay lifestyle. I do not believe that anyone save God Himself can "convert" sexual orientations, but God, through His mercy does grant the spiritual gift of celebacy.

3. 2000 years of tradition and seven biblical injunctions prohibit homosexual sexual activity, therefore I cannot call wholesome that which God calls sinful. We are to love the sinner, but hate the sin.

4. I am not singling out homosexual, or transgendered persons, I also regard as equally sinful heterosexual sex outside of the context of marriage as well as a host of other non-sexual sins such as slander and idolatry. Sin is sin, none the greater, none the less.

In His love and light,


(The Rev'd) Robert M. Lewis
Rector
Church of the Advent

"I think what I have found the most helpful as I get Johnny's emails about these lunches is to read the questions that the non-Christians are coming up with. That is what intrigues me."

The questions on the table right now are:
Morality of the Old Testament Law (e.g., Deuteronomy 25:11, 12)
Discrepancies in the Bible
Why do some OT experts (Rabbinical) reject Christianity?

As I posted over at T19 . . .

This is honestly not surprising. The Anglican Communion doesn't seat people who aren't members of the Anglican Communion for its bodies, even if certain clergy or laity are members of a *province* of the Anglican Communion. As I've been pointing out for ages, members of the Anglican Communion get to be considered for the ACC, invited to Lambeth if they're bishops, etc, etc. And you can't be a member of the Anglican Communion if you're a member of a province while serving in the geographic territory of another province without that province's permission. Just as with bishops of the ACNA, so with clergy of the ACNA. And so with laity of the ACNA.

I'm quite confident that if Phil Ashey were serving a parish in Uganda, he'd have been seated.

I sure wish that Uganda could have nominated a clergyperson that was a member of the Anglican Communion -- as a result of this unfortunate cuteness they lost a whole vote and discovered that the Anglican Communion is going to be consistent. Now the next try on the list, I suppose, is a layperson of a parish in the US that is a part of another province?

Is there any question that if George Carey or Rowan Williams had “opposed the Episcopal Church to its face” as Paul opposed Peter (Galatians 2:11), the Communion would be in a different place, broken ecclesiastically perhaps but with its spiritual integrity intact.

The burden of this section has been to suggest that there is emerging in the Communion a new paradigm of centralization under Canterbury and his executive circle. This new paradigm corresponds with and gives rationale to certain changes in the structures of the Communion by giving an enhanced role to the Archbishop and to the ACC Secretariat and its Standing Committee, both of which are now designated “of the Anglican Communion.” This paradigm necessarily involves demotion of conciliar bodies like the Primates.

Can executive bureaucracy be an authentic form of Communion governance? Certainly: the Pope and Roman Catholic curia have functioned successfully for half a millennium. But the Vatican, unlike Lambeth, makes no pretense that its worldwide churches are autonomous or that there is no central authority in its ecclesiastical governance. Equally important, the Roman bureaucracy has resisted letting the forces of aggiornamento spin out of control. The current Lambeth bureaucracy, by contrast, has been protecting its liberal constituencies over the past decade and has done so at a high cost: alienation of a huge bloc of churches and, more importantly, undermining of its very identity as a Christian body. Finally, for all the mystery of insider Vatican politics, Rome has found a way to elect pontiffs who are non-Italian and represent genuinely global concerns, whereas the Lambeth bureaucracy is still legally politically and ideologically tied to the 21st century United Kingdom.70 I strongly suspect that Rome and the Orthodox would be much more favorable to dealing ecumenically with a Communion whose doctrine, discipline and governance are clear to all rather than the present muddle.

In my opinion, the takeover of the bishops‟ role – that of the Lambeth Conference and the Primates‟ Meeting – by the new Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion is an unacceptable development in Communion governance.119 I believe that bishops and churches of the Communion should refuse to sign on to a Covenant that enshrines a fundamental error of governance. It is not only wrong in principle, it is also fatal to the actual enforcement of discipline in the Communion, as can be seen from the ebbing of episcopal authority in the years since Lambeth 1998.

I believe the Anglican Communion Covenant is a positive development in the history of Anglicanism. In a sense the Covenant has emerged from a theological identity crisis just as the first Lambeth did. As the GAFCON Statement forcefully points out, this crisis is more
than just about church politics. It is about Gospel truth. The problem with the Covenant proposal and process, from its first appearance in the Windsor Report to the “final” draft, is that it skirts the crisis of truth in the Communion. I believe the Covenant is adequate in what it affirms – “Our inheritance of faith” – though I think that affirmation could be strengthened in a number of ways. However, the “two-track” idea is going in precisely the wrong direction, building into the governance an impossible paradox: that a portion of the Communion agrees
to abide by a certain doctrine and discipline and another portion does not. The end result of such a polity will be another decade of chaos.

There must be only one track: those who adopt the Covenant are members of the Communion; those who do not adopt it are not. Bp. Mouneer Anis is right: when a sufficient number of Provinces have adopted the Covenant, the ACC and its Standing Committee should stand down and be constituted solely from Covenant-keeping Provinces.

This paper is not intended to give a precise proposal for how these two imperatives – the restoration of episcopal governance and the consolidation of the Communion under the Covenant – be incorporated into the Covenant text. It does strike me, however, that two simple but critical amendments could be made to the latest draft to put the Covenant process on the right track:

1. Replace references to “The Standing Committee” in section 4 with “Primates of churches that have adopted the Covenant.”120

2. Change the wording of section 4.1.4 to read: “Every Church of the Anglican Communion is expected [instead of “invited”] to enter into this Covenant according to its own constitutional procedures.121

These changes are minimal but crucial. Some will say: “Sign on to the Covenant now and perfect it later.”122 I myself made such an argument after the Ridley Cambridge Draft was published.123 The utter manipulation of the ACC Meeting in Jamaica, the revelations of the
secret ACC Constitution, and the make-over of the Standing Committee have convinced me that I was wrong. Those who would buy into the Covenant hoping to change it from within, I fear, are like “the young lady from Niger, who smiled as she rode on a tiger.”124

The autonomy of the Anglican Provinces actually offers an alternative to the “sign now, change later” position. Since the Provinces of the Communion have the final say to adopt a Covenant, they also have the final authority over what text to adopt. There is nothing sacrosanct about the covenant drafting process set up by the Archbishop of Canterbury, especially given its final outworking. The “final” Covenant draft is not final. The Archbishop of Canterbury has endorsed it; the Standing Committee has endorsed it – without any independent authorization by the Primates‟ Meeting or the ACC.125 But Canterbury and the Standing Committee have no authority to command the Provinces to adopt it as it stands.

Adoption of the Covenant is necessarily a political process itself and as such may result in an amended version. There is a relevant analogy in the adoption of the U.S. Constitution. The draft of the Constitution was approved by the Convention of 1787. However, it became clear as ratification was taken to each state legislature that the Constitution would not pass without certain guarantees of personal and states‟ rights. Therefore the supporters of the new Constitution agreed to add the first ten amendments, the so-called Bill of Rights – as part of the overall adoption of the Constitution.126

I see no reason why a Province or a group of Provinces and their Primates should not exercise their autonomy by adopting an amended form of the Covenant. I think that a large number of Anglican bishops and churches would have no problem with the gist of the changes I have suggested. If enough Provinces and Primates adopted an alternative text, there is no reason it could not supplant the present version within the wider Communion. The Global South Provinces and Primates, or the FCA Provinces and Primates alone, could take the lead in this matter and render a great service in restoring the proper relationship of authorities within the Communion and the integrity and effectiveness of the Covenant.

This brings us to the second model, the executive bureaucracy, which is the most common secular regime today, from totalitarian versions in the former Soviet Union and China to soft- power versions in Europe and North America. In an executive bureaucracy, it is often difficult to discern who exercises the greater power, the chief executive or the bureaucrats, as any viewer of Yes, Prime Minister knows. In fact, when running well, the executive and the bureaucracy operate seamlessly.

In the case of the Anglican Communion, the components of the bureaucracy can be specifically named: the office of the Archbishop of Canterbury in conjunction with the "Anglican Communion Office" (ACO) and its Secretary General, who is appointed with his consent. 41 The Archbishop is ex officio member of the other three Instruments and of every commission, committee and task force of the Communion machinery.42 He "gathers" the Lambeth Conference, "gathers" or "convenes" the Primates? Meeting, is president of the Anglican Consultative Council and of the Standing Committee as well.

The Archbishop, in collaboration with the Communion Office, holds the main power of appointment over other bodies. He can determine the composition of any official committee and commission and task force, from the Lambeth Commission (Windsor Report) to the Covenant Drafting Group (Ridley Cambridge Draft and when that group?s Report was not to his liking, the Covenant Working Group) to the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity Faith and Order mentioned below. Canterbury?s appointments are not neutral. As a general rule, he puts liberals in positions of influence and pliable moderates as official heads, with a sprinkling of conservatives but never enough to actually sway the final output of these bodies.

The Secretary General holds his position through one Instrument, the Anglican Consultative Council, but he also serves the Primates? Meeting and Lambeth Conference, since they have no separate secretariats.43 As Sir Humphrey Appleby would gamely admit, "serving" and "controlling" are not diametrically opposed.44 The ACO wields immense influence as the main instrument of finance, administration and communication within the Communion.45 The Lambeth Conference and the Primates? Meetings are financed out of the ACC budget. The ACO staff helps shape the agendas beforehand and draft the Communique´s and send the follow-up communications afterward, and some of the bishops and Primates go home thinking they decided one thing only to find out that this is not what was reported.

One striking feature of the ACO is the lily-white complexion of its staff. This fact is not, in my opinion, a matter of overt racism but rather reflects the old-boy network that requires purebred bureaucrats to come from the Anglo-American stable. The preparation of agenda, the writing of reports, the control of media all require careful oversight by "professionals," who happen also to be committed to the bureaucratic status quo.

Anyone who has dealt with the Anglican media machine knows that information will be consistently spun to blunt the serious issues facing the church and to marginalize upstarts like Abp. Peter Akinola, who take on the bureaucracy head to head. 46 Take an event like GAFCON 2008. Surely the boycotting of the Lambeth Conference by over 200 bishops from Africa and elsewhere was a topic worthy of reporting and analysis. One will find next to nothing said about this event in any of the official Anglican Communion statements or news reports and only fleeting comments by the Archbishop of Canterbury himself.

One recent example of how the Lambeth bureaucracy works is the formation of the Inter- Anglican Standing Commission on Unity Faith and Order (IASCUFO), a consultative body meant to advise on the very matters of church order and identity that lie at the heart of the current Communion crisis. Indeed, this Commission has been tasked to advise the Standing Committee on how to define legitimate "churches" in the Communion. So how was IASCUFO constituted and appointed? In its pioneer meeting, it was claimed that IASCUFO was "established by the Lambeth Conference, the Primates? Meeting and the Anglican Consultative Council."47 In fact, this is not true. It was established by the then Joint Standing Committee in November 2008, and its membership was appointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, with the Primates suggesting names.48 The membership of this Commission is diverse theologically, and its Chairman is a moderate Global South Primate. It is highly unlikely that it will deal with the current crisis in a way that will rock the boat.

In addition to structures, many contemporary bureaucracies employ methods of manipulation to maintain power and achieve their ends. In the case of the Lambeth bureaucracy, the official method is called "indaba." Despite its African etymology with an aura of communal wisdom, indaba is in fact another word for the "Delphi method." The Delphi method was developed as a means to manipulate opinion in the full sense of the word. Several aspects of the Delphi method are easily spotted in the actions of the Lambeth bureaucracy: sequestering participants from any outside contact, circulating surveys in which English-speakers will predominate; enlisting facilitators to "listen" to different views and then summarize them; using "diverse" table groups to keep coalitions from forming; writing up inconclusive composite consensus statements such as the "Lambeth Indaba 1998."

Indaba, if anything, moves the Lambeth Conference closer to being a three-week tea party. It also allows "official" committees of the bureaucracy to present the party line without any real opportunity to overturn it, thus avoiding the catastrophe of Lambeth 1998 (anyone who was there can confirm that Resolution I.10 was not on the official agenda). Compare, for instance, the outcomes of GAFCON and Lambeth 2008. What did each of them say? Which one bore clear testimony to the truth of the Gospel? Politicians know that mish-mash is the handmaid of top-down control. The Role of the ACC in the Lambeth Bureaucracy It might appear that the existence of four Instruments of Communion would result in the separation of powers and checks and balances. That is not the case. In particular, one needs to look at the role of the Anglican Consultative Council in Communion governance. It has been frequently commented that the ACC and the Primates? Meeting have overlapping roles and that their terms of reference need to be clarified. In terms of power structures, they are quite different. In fact, the ACC works hand in glove with the Lambeth bureaucracy, and its Constitution and By-Laws (now called Memorandum and Articles of Association) give it a secular legal existence and hence a veneer of officialdom that the Primates lack.

It might seem that the ACC, with its greater portion of seats given to large Provinces and its openness to lower clergy and laity, would be a brake on the hierarchy of the Communion. But it is not. Why should this be so? The reason may be found in part in the founding of the ACC in 1968. It involved the merging of an advisory council (actually two) with an "Executive Officer of the Communion" who became the Secretary General of the new Council. The prime movers and funders behind the ACC being North Americans, they set it up as a constitutional body, although its constitutional authority was based on a Lambeth Conference Resolution. Soon thereafter, the ACC became a legal charity and could collect funds and pay staff. Thus, although to some the ACC and its Secretary General may appear to be advantaged over the other Instruments, ecclesiologically they are derivative.

The crisis that followed Gene Robinson?s consecration also caused a crisis in Communion governance. The Primates, it seems, were taking "enhanced authority" for the discipline of the Communion, but to do that was to call into question the entrenched power of the Lambeth bureaucracy. The battle was fought out at the ACC-13 meeting in Nottingham in 2005. Colin Podmore describes the situation this way:

Both bodies [ACC and Primates? Meeting] have important roles to play in the life of the Communion, but the lack of structural connection between them has been seen as problematic. At its 2005 meeting the ACC therefore proposed [taking up a recommendation of the 1998 Lambeth Conference] that the two bodies should be integrated, with the members of the Primates? Meeting becoming ex officio members of the ACC (bishops being excluded from election or appointment to the other places). It also suggested that the Council might vote ...by orders? in some circumstances. Whether these proposals will be adopted remains to be seen.

It might be more accurate to say that certain Primates at ACC-13 sought to gain more control by adding all the Primates to the ACC. There was even a proposal that the ACC be renamed "The Anglican Communion Council." Such a bicameral council would have reflected at a Communion level similar synodical structures in England and other Anglican Provinces.

It is instructive to see how the ecclesiastical politicians flipped this proposed reform. They felt obliged, on the one hand, to propose amending the ACC Constitution to add all the Primates to the Council (Resolution 4e), but they also proposed balancing the additional Primates with increased representation from lay and clerical orders, which would have increased the membership of ACC from 68 to more than 100. They went on to set four conditions for final approval of Resolution 4e, the most striking of which was that the Standing Committee was given veto power over final amendment, even if approved by 2/3 of the Provinces. So what happened to Resolution 4e? Canon Kearon noted to the Joint Standing Committee in November 2008 that "the issue of the Primates becoming members of the ACC was not meeting with a favourable response," though he gave no hard data and it seems unlikely that the official Provincial bodies had actually voted against including their Primates on the ACC. More likely, the idea died due to back-channel inertia.

While dooming the idea of a bicameral Communion Council, the ACC politicians proposed amending the Constitution to add five members of the Primates Standing Committee to the ACC plenary and Standing Committee (Resolution 4b and 4d). Since the ACC Standing Committee had nine members, they retained the balance of power while at the same time making this new body the executive committee of the Communion, now called "The Standing Committee of the Communion," which is now set to emerge as arbiter of the Covenant. We see here the executive bureaucracy in full battle gear. They take a proposal that was meant to increase the influence of the Primates in Communion governance and to rationalize the operation of the two Instruments, and they turn it on its head. Instead of the Primates as a body governing, or even governing alongside the ACC, an elect few are admitted to the inner circle through the new Standing Committee. If this move were purely a matter of political virtuosity, one might simply tip the hat, but I shall argue it has serious theological implications for the integrity of the Communion.

Responding to Secularism
by Justyn Terry

We have just returned from three weeks in England, our annual time with family and friends in the UK and attending the New Wine renewal conference near Bristol. It was an enjoyable and encouraging time in many ways, as well as a time of spiritual refreshment.

Secularism is still on the ascendency in England, but there are signs that church decline is slowing down and that more renewed and missionally engaged congregations are emerging. The New Wine conferences had 32,000 people attending this year, plus thousands of teenagers at their Soul Survivor camps. These numbers grow each year, partly as a result of church planting. It is one of many signs of the Spirit’s work to renew and mobilize the church there.

The church in England was slow to respond to secularism and has paid a high price for it. As secularism becomes ever more prominent in the US, what can we learn from mistakes made in England about how best to respond to it? I would say there are four main things:

1. Seek to bring less committed churchgoers to a deep commitment to Christ. As secularism rises, less committed churchgoers tend to drop away. Once they have stopped coming, it can be hard to win them back. It is much easier to engage them while they are part of the life of the church; you don’t have the challenges of connecting with them, interesting them in the faith, and encouraging them to hear the Gospel if they already attend church.

2. Be intentional about forming the children and young people of the church in the Christian life. They need to be taught the Christian faith at age-appropriate levels so that they come to understand its depth and power. That kind of serious catechesis was largely lost in England and a generation or two of young people have been lost with it.

3. Maintain Christian colleges that offer undergraduate and post-graduate education from Gospel perspective. English universities all became secular in the 19th century, and increasingly so in the 20th century, so that the graduates of any English university will have faced at least three years of education heavily biased to secularism. This has greatly weakened the Christian witness at the highest levels of scholarship and debate.

4. Take adult education seriously. As secular ideas become increasingly common currency, Christians need to be able to give good reasons for the faith that is in them. The adult education hour (a rarity in the UK) gives the opportunity to help adults develop an adult faith.

The news in brief is to see our congregations as our first mission field where we want to win people to committed faith in Christ and to make disciples who in turn can win the lost. That, I think, is the strongest response to secularism. It is what I know so many readers of Seed & Harvest are already doing, and for that, I give much thanks.

The Rev. Simons said he wants the council to understand that many theological conservatives want to remain in the Episcopal Church. He is willing to do outreach to those who are considering leaving. "I have deep and abiding friendships in those dioceses and would be willing to do whatever I can to be an agent of reconciliation and healing," he said.

Our old culture would now start to throw stones. It would “Google” the Bishop’s name and begin to collect writings and voting records, it would be mistrustful and suspicious. It would dwell on the deficits and not the benefits. Perhaps some from whom we are separated will do this.

We need to not do that. Rather, we need to trust that those who have been raised up to leadership have everyone’s best interest in mind and that this is not just a human answer to a situation but a godly one as well. We need to see this appointment as God’s way of moving us forward, to recognize it as another stone we gather in the rebuilding of our common life.”

The Director of Minority Outreach for Georgia Right to Life, Davis is taking that message to the public, along with a massive public awareness campaign that has captured national and international attention. Drivers in the metro Atlanta area are seeing billboards that demand attention -- and are changing minds.

Her argument is simple and the statistics are irrefutable. She accuses abortion providers in general, and Planned Parenthood in particular, of targeting blacks for abortion. She told The New York Times, "The impact of abortion has become so great that it has begun to impact our fertility rate."

Consider the chilling facts documented in the data. According to the Centers for Disease Control, 57.4% of the abortions performed in Georgia in 2006 were performed on African-American women, but blacks make up only 30% of Georgia's population. Nationwide, the pattern is similarly stacked against black babies -- black women have approximately 37% of all abortions each year, while blacks make up only 13% of the national population.

You can see why Catherine Davis' message demands attention. She points also to the fact that, in Georgia, every single abortion clinic is located in areas of black concentration. She argues, quite pointedly, that this amounts to an intentional effort to reduce the black population in the United States.

As she told the Los Angeles Times, "Let me put it this way . . . 18,870,000 black babies have been aborted since Roe v. Wade. If those babies had not been aborted, we would be 59 million strong -- over 19% of the population."

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REPORT FROM Dr. Dean Lorich – now available on CNN online
Forwarded to FPA by Dr. Brett Miller, orthopaedic surgeon

I believe we went in with a reasonably comprehensive service we wanted to provide acute trauma care in an orthopedic disaster. Our plan was to be at a hospital where we could utilize our abilities as trauma surgeons treat the acute injuries involved in an orthopedic disaster. We expected many amputations however came with a philosophy that would reasonably start limb salvage in what we thought was a salvageable limb.

David Helfet put a team together which included:
2 orthopedic trauma surgeons
3 orthopedic trauma fellows
2 highly skilled anesthesiologists
1 general surgery trauma surgeon
2 synthes reps who were also scrub techs
1 trauma nurse practitioner to do triage
2 OR nurses

Our equipment including a huge amount of anesth medications and equipment, ability to construct 150 ex fix both small and large, OR equipment including scalpels etc, OR soft goods, splint material, OR prep material.

We also had a plan of physician and equipment replacement that was dynamic where w/i 24hrs we could bring in what was necessary on the Synthes private jet.

We thought the plan was a good one.

We were incredibly naïve.

Disaster management on the ground was nonexistent. The difficulties in getting in despite the intelligence we had from people on the ground and David Helfet's high political connections with Partner's in Health as well as the Clintons only portended the difficulties we would have once we arrived.

We started out Friday morning, got a slot to get in Friday that was eventually cancelled when we were on the runway to be rescheduled the next day. We diverted to the DR and planned on arriving in P OP Saturday.

Once on the ground the hospital we had intelligence that was up and running with 2 OR's General Hospital was included severely in the earthquake and not capable of running functioning OR's as there was no running water and only a limited electrical supply on generator.

We quickly took our second option, Community Hospital of Haiti. We found approx 750 pt in the hospital upon our initial eval, the hospital had running water, electricity and 2 functional OR's
Our naiveté did not expect that the 2 anesth machines would not work, there would be 1 cautery for the hospital, autoclave that fit instruments the size of a cigar box, no sterile saline, no functioning fluoro and no local staff -- only a ragtag group of voluntary health providers who, like us, had made it there on their own.

To summarize: we had no clue the medical infrastructure of the country was so poor.

As we got up and running in the OR and organized the patients for surgery, we communicated our new needs back to Synthes and more supplies were loaded for a second trip. These included battery operated pulse lavage, a huge supply of saline, soft goods in the OR. This plane landed as planned Sunday pm, equipment was loaded on a truck and subsequently hijacked between the airport and the hospital.

At the hospital we had zero security despite promises form NYPD and NYFD to provide that to us.

Our philosophy was to work like this was a marathon run: the OR's around the clock with the idea that we would have a defined extraction time of 11pm Tuesday. The plane that extracted us would come in with a new medical staff compliment to replace us. Equipment included urgent things to maximize issues that were nonexistent in the hospital that would enable us to provide better and more efficient care:
2 portable anesth machines
2 electrocautery
2 portable monitors for the pacu
2 autoclaves
Replacement exfix
Things that didn't arrive with the previous flight

That planes slot was cancelled by the military at 6am Tues.
We also previously had seen daylight in the remaining patients Monday night having completed approx 100 surgeries. However on Tues morning we found a huge # of new patients. The hospital was forced to undergo lockdown, closing its gates to the outside and the outside crowd becoming angry.

We also noted Tuesday morning that many of the patients we were operating on were becoming septic.
We finished operating at noon Tuesday. The last surgery was our group assisting an obstetrician on a caesarian and resuscitating a baby that was not breathing.

We decided as a group the situation for us at the hospital was untenable. Supplies were running out, team was exhausted, safety a huge concern, and no extraction plan with re-supply. We decided to make our way to the airport thru the help of a hospital benefactor. Jamaican soldiers with M-16s were necessary to escort us out with our luggage as the crowd outside saw us abandoning the hospital.

We made it to airport on back of a pickup track, got onto the tarmac, hailed a commercial plane that carried cargo to Montréal and had a private jet pick us up there.

The issues we were unprepared for and witnessed were
1. The amount of human devastation
2. The complete lack of a medical infrastructure in the country
3. The lack of support of the Haitian medical community
4. The complete lack of any organization on the ground. No one was in charge. We had the first functional up and running hospital in the P OP area, yet no one, and I mean NO ONE, came to the hospital to assess what we were doing, what we were capable of doing and what we would need, to be more efficient. The fact that the military could not or would not protect the re-supply equipment on Sunday or let the Tuesday flight come in says it all.
5. Lack of any security at all at the hospital

I would take away that disasters like this need organization on a much higher level than we had and with the clear involvement and approval of the military from the beginning.

Currently there is no one obviously running the show and care is chaotic at best. MD's are coming in country with no plan of what they are going to do. Surgeons that expect to just show up and operate are delusional as to what their role would be. Without a complement of support staff and supplies they would be of limited or no value.

I hope this helps. We all felt as though we abandoned these patients and that country and feel terrible. Our role now being back in NY is to expose the inadequacies of the system to the media in the hopes of effecting a change in this system immediately. We feel that the only way to really help now is an urgent programmatic change and organization in the support of the medical staff on the ground and what is critically needed to expeditiously bring in.

Cheerios on the tarmac are not getting it done on these patients which clearly would be savable if good care could urgently be provided.

Please share this email with everyone and anyone you find might help.

Good luck
Dean

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/01/AR2010030103345.html, Catholic Charities will not offer benefits to spouses of new employees or to spouses of current employees who are not already enrolled in the plan. A letter describing the change in health benefits was e-mailed to employees Monday, two days before same-sex marriage will become legal in the District.

"We looked at all the options and implications," said the charity's president, Edward J. Orzechowski. "This allows us to continue providing services, comply with the city's new requirements and remain faithful to the church's teaching."

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We ask that President Obama and Congressional Democrats join with Republican leaders to start over on health insurance reform.

We ask that they help craft sensible reforms designed to lower costs and expand access without violating individual rights or the integrity of the market.

We ask that they enact medical liability reform and put an end to frivolous lawsuits that drive up the cost of medicine.

We ask that they allow individuals and small businesses to pool together to purchase high-quality affordable health care coverage.

We ask that they allow Americans to shop for health care coverage from coast to coast and purchase insurance policies across state lines.

We ask that they create new incentives to save for current and future health care needs by allowing people to use their health savings accounts funds to pay premiums for high deductible health plans.

The American Anglican Council is pleased to release "Communion Governance: The Role and Future of the Historic Episcopate and the Anglican Communion Covenant,"(PDF) by the Rev. Dr. Stephen Noll, Vice-Chancellor of Uganda Christian University. His essay is characterized by meticulous research into the history of Communion Governance, the history of the role of bishops meeting in council together at Lambeth and through the Primates' Meetings, the history of other Instruments of governance (such as the Anglican Consultative Council), and the relative merits of three different models of governance: pure autonomy, executive bureaucracy (with an enhanced role for the See of Canterbury), and the conciliar authority of bishops. Noll reaches the following conclusions with regard to the Anglican Communion Covenant:

* The conclusion of this essay is that the one matter of principle that cannot be abandoned without abandoning our particular catholic and Anglican heritage is the responsibility of the ordained and bishops in council in particular, to rule and adjudicate matters of Communion doctrine and discipline.

*If this is true, then the Lambeth Conference and the Primates' Meeting (with the Archbishop of Canterbury presiding as primus inter pares) must be seen as the primary organs to deal with articulation of the faith, as happened at Lambeth 1998, and with breaches of the faith, as has not happened since then.

* There must be only one track: those who adopt the Covenant are members of the Communion; those who do not adopt it are not. Bp. Mouneer Anis is right: when a sufficient number of Provinces have adopted the Covenant, the ACC and its Standing Committee should stand down and be constituted solely from Covenant-keeping Provinces. (pp. 48-49)

As Dr. Noll observes, the crisis in the Anglican Communion is above all a crisis of truth-the truth of the gospel and the open denial of that truth...

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A DISTRICT Court judge says he is "astonished" an Anglican Church breakaway allowed a priest jailed for sexually abusing three altar boys to re-enter the ministry and commit "strikingly similar" offences.

Judge Sydney Tilmouth today said he found it remarkable that Wilfred Edwin Dennis was left in a position to commit the abuse, after being found guilty of molesting three altar boys in the early 1970s, AdelaideNow reports.

"I must say, whether he volunteered or the church, in effect, was going to do that, its astonishing that he went back to a ministry having (already) gone to jail for abusing altar boys," Judge Tilmouth said.

"He (Dennis) was back in the position where he could prey on young boys again, he was given a ministry and there were altar boys."

Dennis, 74, of Vale Park, has been found guilty of carnal knowledge against a separate altar boy, aged 15-16, between 1975 and 1977.

Outside court, his sister said the Traditional Anglican Communion - a splinter group from the Anglican church- had allowed Dennis back into the ministry because they had trusted him.

A request therefore to allow Civil Partnerships to be held in churches is an attempt to create an equality in doctrinal stance. For the Church of England at least (which is still the established church) it is clear that Civil Partnerships do not equate to marriage. Furthermore, the stance of the Church of England, clarified in 1989, is that all sex outside of marriage is sinful, even that conducted within “permanent, stable, faithful” same-sex unions. If same-sex unions (for that is what Civil Partnerships are) are to be blessed within churches (for there is no other reason to register a Civil Partnership in a church other than to bless it, for that is the key distinction between a civil and religious marriage), then would those doing the blessing not be legally entitled to bless the sexual component of the same-sex union? If there is no legal barrier to blessing such unions (and in particular their sexual component) then such ceremonies can only be seen as “gay marriage” and the institutions (including the State in this instance) will be seen as advocating the position that same-sex unions and other-sex unions are identical in all respects.

If however the advocates of such ceremonies in churches agree that there should be no blessing of or reference to sexual union (in order not to change the doctrinal stance of the religious body involved), why did this month the supporters of equalising pension provision in the Church of England for surviving civil partners reject an amendment which would have extended pension provision to any named next of kin, regardless of the existence (or not) of a sexual relationship between the deceased and the next of kin? To reject such an amendment was to support the idea that Civil Partnerships are de facto sexual unions (which of course familial connections can never be) and so it would be disingenuous of proponents of this latest move to now argue that Civil Partnerships are not de facto sexual unions.

Of course one course of action would be to permit religious denominations as a body to allow Civil Partnerships if they chose so to do, but not to obligate them to do so if they did not wish to. There are two issues with this. Firstly, such an action would clearly see the Government equating marriage with civil partnership since there would be no difference in where the two ceremonies could take place. This is indeed then the “slippery slope” which the letter claims is not so, for in the initial debate over Civil Partnerships the Government made it clear that Civil Partnerships were not synonymous with marriage. Allowing for an equality in the place where the ceremonies could take place would destroy any last vestige of a pretence that the two were not synonymous.

I have gone from asking two people, last September, to get together with me to choose the hymns for Sunday morning, although I could have insisted on choosing them all myself, to being unemployed and unsalaried in a couple of months time. In fact, I received my notice of dismissal, in writing, from the bishop, yesterday. Along the way I saw my greatest dream, to be vicar of the parish I have loved and served for the last ten years, completely dashed on the rocks. The bishop told me not to get involved directly with sorting the mess out but to leave everything up to the church wardens. The archdeacon told me not to talk to any of you about what was going on. My hands were tied. All I could do was watch my personal Jerusalem heading towards me. There was nothing I could do about it.

The diocese told me it was nothing to do with his MadPriest blog.

I am fairly certain also his dismissal is not linked with being named among the most 50 influential Anglicans in the worldwide church by The Daily Telegraph.

But there are unanswered questions here.

This is all the Newcastle diocese will say officially: 'Jonathan was originally licensed to his curacy in 2002 for two years, it was extended in 2004 for a further two years. We have managed to extend it still further until now. Jonathan has been encouraged to apply for other posts both within and outside the Diocese over the last four years, but so far has been unsuccessful. Jonathan has been told that his ministry in the parish will end at the end of May, that he will continue to receive his stipend until the end of August during a 3 month sabbatical, and that he can continue in his present house – rent, council tax and water-rate all being paid for by the Diocese until 28.02.11. Bishop Martin [Wharton] isn’t prepared to say anything further about Jonathan, as it is a matter between a priest and his Bishop.'

Born Free Orlando

The Born Free seminar is just around the corner. Don't miss this opportunity to register today for Born Free on Saturday, March 6th, 8am-6pm at Willow Creek Church in Winter Springs, FL.

If you've tried and tried to be obedient to Christ, and you're just not getting any better, or if you're losing hope that you'll ever live in the freedom Jesus promised, the Born Free seminar could really change your life!

The Born Free seminar is intensive training for Christians who want the Biblical doctrine of freedom to become a reality in their lives. It's a combination of stimulating Bible teaching, inspiring music, and thought-provoking drama designed to release Christians from spiritual, institutional, and emotional prisons...prisons which bind believers and prevent them from living the abundant life offered by Christ.

Washington, DC—The Episcopal Church’s Washington National Cathedral will host a Christian-Muslim Summit featuring an Iranian Ayatollah March 1-3 "for a candid discussion of matters affecting Christian-Muslim relations and peacemaking efforts worldwide." Institute on Religion and Democracy Religious Liberty Director Faith McDonnell is expressing concerns that the summit will be an exercise in capitulation and appeasement to Islamists.

Beginning March 1 with private meetings, the summit ends on Wednesday with a public dialogue between participants. Moderated by Washington Post associate editor David Ignatius, the dialogue is only open to invited guests and to selected members of the media. There are four "Principals," including two Muslims, a Sunni, Professor Dr. Ahmad Mohamed El Tayeb, president of Al-Azhar University in Cairo and a Shi’a, Ayatollah Dr. Seyyed Mostafa Mohaghegh Damad Ahmadabadi, professor of law at Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran. His Eminence Jean-Louis Cardinal Tauran, president of the Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue, and Bishop John Bryson Chane of the Episcopal diocese of Washington are the Christian “Principals” in the summit.

IRD Religious Liberty Director Faith J.H. McDonnell commented:

“We do not know what will be included in the 'candid discussion of matters' at the Christian-Muslim Summit, but we do know what should be on the agenda. Peacemaking efforts would be furthered if both Sunni and Shi’a would denounce the global jihad against infidels that has been responsible for the death of millions around the world.

"In many Christian-Muslim dialogues, Christians avoid anything contentious, but they have a moral obligation to those oppressed by Islam to talk about everything that is contentious.

"The two countries represented by the Muslim Principals, Egypt and Iran, commit egregious human rights violations against Christians, converts from Islam, outspoken democracy and free speech advocates, women, and gays.

"Will Bishop Chane speak up for Egypt's beleaguered Copts and other Christians? Will he ask the participants from Al-Azhar University to denounce the gunning down of Coptic Christians as they came out of church on Christmas Eve or the Fatwa issued at Al-Azhar condoning the death of apostates? Will he and the other Christian participants challenge them to speak out for the oppressed and persecuted in Iran?

"Nearby sidewalk demonstrations will be a ‘summit’ for those who have experienced that other side of Christian-Muslim relations, the martyrdom side. It will be a sight far more candid than what goes on inside the cathedral.”

Your excellent February 26, 2010, report on the history of how government officials chose the different methods that Medicare has used over the years to determine doctors’ pay is frightening because…

… in your report, Joe Califano, a chief architect of Medicare, admits that the first method of determining doctors’ pay was chosen for political reasons, namely, to buy doctors’ support for Medicare.

… you report that Mr. Califano, LBJ, and Congress were genuinely surprised by the rapid cost increases sparked by this first method.

… you reveal that much of the treatment that Medicare paid for was previously provided free by physicians; that is, Medicare crowded out a sizable chunk of private-sector philanthropy.

The real crisis today is the accelerating collapse of blue government. It’s a colossal, multi-dimensional meltdown that affects our lives and our politics in many ways. Today there are three elements of the blue government meltdown in particular worth mentioning.

The first is the government’s role in providing the benefits associated with the blue system. When we talk about ‘runaway entitlement programs’ today we are talking about commitments by the government to provide retirement and other social benefits that originated as part of the blue system social contract. Workers could retire as early as 62 with a combination of Social Security, private pensions and, as of the 1960s, Medicare coverage. These costs are now exploding and it is clear that the government can’t pay them into the future.

The second crisis is that the government is now the last true-blue employer in the country. Federal, state and local governments are often staffed by lifetime civil servants, whose jobs are protected by law and by some of the last truly powerful unions in the country. That means it is incredibly expensive for governments to do anything at all, and they are poorly equipped to respond nimbly to the fast-changing conditions of America today. The cost problem is aggravated because quasi-governmental sectors of the economy (like the health and university industries) are also by and large pretty blue: high wages, stable employment, cumbersome procedures — and powerful unions. Government is simply too unproductive, too unresponsive and too expensive to do what needs to be done at a reasonable cost. (Government also still has the anti-consumer mentality of the old blue monopolies: if you don’t like the crappy services government provides — move.) Public schools are increasingly expensive to run, and yet they do not provide improved services to match those exploding costs.

Finally, culturally and intellectually, bureaucrats and politicians often remain blue. That is, they think instinctively in the old ways, come up with blue solutions to non-blue problems, and often fail to grasp either the constraints or the opportunities of the new era.

As long as the federal government can print money and find lenders to buy its bonds, it can bleed slowly. It can gradually watch its fiscal position erode, it can gradually become less effective and less popular. But state and local governments increasingly need vast transfers of cash from the federal government to keep their blue noses above the rising tide. California and New York are headed over the cliff without federal bailouts, and others follow close behind. Already, a substantial share of the ’stimulus’ spending is targeted less at New Deal-style infrastructure projects than at simply keeping unsustainable state bureaucracies and systems afloat for a few months or years longer. The stock market declines wiped out huge chunks of the wealth that state pension systems needed to have a hope of paying the pensions promised to government retirees under terms more generous than virtually any private employers now provide.

The Blues Ahead

There are several ugly truths that the country (and especially the states whose governments are bigger and bluer than the rest) will be facing in the next ten years.

First, voters simply will not be taxed to cover the costs of blue government. Voters with insecure job tenure and, at best, defined-contribution rather than defined-benefit pensions will simply not pay higher taxes so that bureaucrats can enjoy lifetime tenure and secure pensions.

Second, voters will not accept the shoddy services that blue government provides. Government is going to have to respond to growing ‘consumer’ demand for more user-friendly, customer-oriented approaches. The arrogant lifetime bureaucrat at the Department of Motor Vehicles is going to have to turn into the Starbucks barista offering service with a smile.

Third, government must reconcile itself to its declining ability to regulate a post-blue economy with regulatory models and instincts rooted in the past.

The collapse of a social model is a complicated, drawn out and often painful affair. The blue model has been declining for thirty years already, and it is not yet finished with its decline and fall. But decline and fall it will, and as the remaining supports of the system erode, the slow decline and decay is increasingly likely to bring on a crash.

As I continue blogging about the American future, one of the subjects that will come up again and again will be the blue crack up–we are all going to be singing the blues as the process moves on.