Titus One Nine

Scripture’s task is to tell people, at the risk of their displeasure, the mystery of God and the secrets of their own hearts—to speak out and make a clean breast. There are many ways to say and write these truths: in oracles, in poems, in novels, in sermons, in satire, in journalism, in drama. Honestly written and courageously presented words reveal reality and expose our selfish attempts to violate beauty, manipulate goodness and dominate people, all the while defying God. Most of us most of the time, whether consciously or not, live this way. Honest writing shows us how badly we are living and how good life is. Enlightenment is not without pain. But the pain, accepted and endured is not a maiming but a purging. “Every significant utterance is a wound” but ‘faithful are the wounds of a friend.’”

--Eugene Peterson, Run With Horses (Downer's Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1983), p.128

In a ruling written by Justice Ming W. Chin, the state high court said the property of St. James Episcopal Church in Newport Beach is owned by the national church, not the congregation. The congregation split away after the national church ordained a gay man, V. Gene Robinson, as bishop of New Hampshire, in 2003.

"When it disaffiliated from the general church, the local church did not have the right to take the church property with it," Chin wrote for the court.

The bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles applauded the ruling even as he held out an olive branch to St. James and other parishes sued by his office.

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The 38 page pdf is here.

How weird a year was it?

Here's how weird:

• O.J. actually got convicted of something.

• Gasoline hit $4 a gallon -- and those were the good times.

• On several occasions, Saturday Night Live was funny.

• There were a few days there in October when you could not completely rule out the possibility that the next Treasury Secretary would be Joe the Plumber.

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“We are identifying teen dating abuse and violence more than ever,” said Dr. Elizabeth Miller, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the School of Medicine at the University of California, Davis, who began doing research on abuse in teenage dating relationships nearly a decade ago.

Dr. Miller cited a survey last year of children ages 11 to 14 by Liz Claiborne Inc., a clothing retailer that finances teenage dating research, in which a quarter of the 1,000 respondents said they had been called names, harassed or ridiculed by their romantic partner by phone call or text message, often between midnight and 5 a.m., when their parents are sleeping.

Such behavior often falls under the radar of parents, teachers and counselors because adolescents are too embarrassed to admit they are being mistreated.

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You may never have heard of E. A. Adeboye, but the pastor of The Redeemed Christian Church of God is one of the most successful preachers in the world. He boasts that his church has outposts in 110 countries. He has 14,000 branches—claiming 5 million members—in his home country of Nigeria alone. There are 360 RCCG churches in Britain, and about the same number in U.S. cities like Chicago, Dallas, and Tallahassee, Fla. Adeboye says he has sent missionaries to China and such Islamic countries as Pakistan and Malaysia. His aspirations are outsize. He wants to save souls, and he wants to do so by planting churches the way Starbucks used to build coffee shops: everywhere.

"In the developing world we say we want churches to be within five minutes' walk of every person," he tells NEWSWEEK. "In the developed world, we say five minutes of driving." Such a goal may seem outlandish, but Adeboye is a Pentecostal preacher: he believes in miracles. And Pentecostalism is the biggest, fastest-growing Christian movement since the Reformation.

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After years of bitter wrangling over the issue, a report was published last week that advocated creating a new class of clergy to cater for traditionalists who refuse to accept women's ordination.

However, 41 per cent of respondents said they would not back such a solution, and a further eight per cent said they were undecided.

Figures on both sides of the debate argued that providing "complementary" or "flying" bishops for opponents of female bishops was unacceptable.

While traditionalists said that this did not represent a satisfactory safeguard, supporters of women bishops claimed it is too great a concession.

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In the straw poll of members of the General Synod, the Church's parliament, an overwhelming majority of those questioned said that the bishops were right to speak out.

The survey also uncovered serious concerns over the state of British society and Labour's lack of support for the family.

This newspaper questioned 71 members of the 467-strong Synod, one in seven of the total. Of those questioned, 86 per cent said the bishops had been "right to criticise the Government at this particular time".

Nearly half, 48 per cent, said it was time for a change of government, while 45 per cent agreed with David Cameron's claim that Britain is a "broken" society.

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We need to open a second conversation concerning the role or usefulness of religion. We note from the press that shortly bill boards will appear from London to Washington saying ‘There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life’. Another humanist group in America are mounting a similar campaign which states: ‘Why believe in a god? Just be good, for goodness sake’. The inference is that all religions are bad for human flourishing; they are diseased and atrophied vestiges of human life. They make us miserable and do little good. For Dawkins, Roman Catholicism is a virulent virus that should be eradicated as doing great harm to young people, and even Anglicanism, from which he emerged, is but a milder form of the same disease. Hitchens, as we have seen, has a more aggressive approach to religion which ranges from the very crude to the most opinionated. I have to say that the polemical language of such people remind me of the Chinese saying: ‘Do not use a hatchet to remove a fly from your friend's forehead!’

So a reasonable and careful conversation is needed for us to overcome the infantile and trivial way matters of ethical behavior are being discussed these days. To those who believe that religion is regressive, the question has to be put: ‘then why is religion so active socially in the world and in society and why is it that its contribution to social capital is so highly regarded?’ Roy Hattersley, former Deputy Prime Minister wrote in a Guardian article a few years ago that his view is that ‘most believers are better human beings than atheists’. Reluctantly he acknowledges that unbelievers are less likely to care for the poor and spend time with outcasts of society. He writes: ‘Good works, John Wesley insisted, are no guarantee of a place in heaven. But they are most likely to be performed by people who believe that heaven exists’.

This candid admission is remarkable and should not detract from the fact that a large number of humanists, agnostics and atheists are also good people who seek to create a better world. My argument is not polemical – it is to say that those who wish to eradicate the world of faiths have to perceive them as they are, and to recognize the tremendous contribution they make to our world.

But does religion make a personal difference to people? Prof Keith Ward in his book ‘Is Religion Dangerous?’ emphatically says that it does. He cites a survey carried out in the States by the Pew Foundation that shows that ‘spiritually committed’ people are twice as likely to be ‘very happy’ than the ‘least religiously committed people.’

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Rob has struggled with his ministry within The Episcopal Church for some years now. From my own perspective, in observing his struggle and the instigating factors of that struggle, the decisions -- and not merely the most obvious one -- of the General Conventions of 2003 and 2006 indicated a departure from the Christian view of the primacy of Holy Scripture and the person of Christ for the majority of the leadership at the highest national levels of The Episcopal Church. This was deeply troubling to Rob.

Beyond his struggle with his ministry in The Episcopal Church, there was his belief that the diocese of Upper South Carolina had not stood sufficiently or publicly against the new direction of the national leadership of The Episcopal Church. The lack of a diocese with a clear and strong identity to counter the stances of The Episcopal Church at the national level was also deeply troubling to Rob.

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Here's a system Willie Sutton would have loved. Under the federal government's banking regime, those being regulated — the banks and savings and loans — get to pick who regulates them.

That's a sweet deal, made even sweeter by this: The two major regulatory agencies get almost all their income from assessments on the very institutions they oversee, so they have an incentive to keep the bankers happy. The largest banks and S&Ls — including some that engaged in the riskiest behavior — are big catches for the agency that can hook them.

That's not exactly a prescription for strict enforcement.

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The Rev. Ed Dobson has spent most of his life following Jesus. But only now does he realize how hard it is to live like him.

The retired megachurch pastor and one-time architect of the religious right has spent the last year trying to eat, pray, talk and even vote as Jesus would. His revelation: Being Jesus is tough.

"I've concluded that I am a follower, but I'm not a very good one," Dobson said. "If you get serious about the Bible, it will really mess you up."

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Americans enter the New Year in a strange new role: financial lunatics. We've been viewed by the wider world with mistrust and suspicion on other matters, but on the subject of money even our harshest critics had been inclined to believe that we knew what we were doing. They watched our investment bankers and emulated them: For a long time now half the planet's college graduates seemed to want nothing more out of life than a job on Wall Street.

This is one reason the collapse of our financial system has inspired not merely a national but a global crisis of confidence.

Good God, the world seems to be saying, if they don't know what they are doing with money, who does?" Incredibly, intelligent people the world over remain willing to lend us money and even listen to our advice; they appear not to have realized the full extent of our madness. We have at least a brief chance to cure ourselves. But first we need to ask: of what?

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In recent days, as European Union and UN officials have called urgently for a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip, the Bush administration has squarely blamed the rocket attacks of the Palestinian militant group Hamas for Israel's assault, maintaining to the end its eight-year record of stalwart support for Israel.

President George W. Bush said in his weekly radio address over the weekend that the United States did not want a "one-way cease-fire" that allowed Hamas to keep up its rocket fire, and Vice President Dick Cheney echoed the point, declaring that only a "sustainable, durable" peace would be acceptable.

Many Middle East experts say that Israel timed its move against Hamas, which began with airstrikes on Dec. 27, 24 days before Bush leaves office, with the expectation of such backing in Washington. Israeli officials cannot be certain that Barack Obama, despite past statements of sympathy for Israel's right of self-defense, will match the Bush administration's unconditional endorsement when he becomes president Jan. 20.

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The African Children's Choir goes to the neediest places — those hardest hit by disease, war or poverty. The children are brought to a training academy for about four months, Victor says, and then they join the choir. The children tour for 12 to 15 months, and when they go home, they go to a Music for Life center to get an education. Victor himself was chosen from an orphanage to join the choir: Music for Life paid for his schooling up to the university level, and when he graduated, he came back to the choir to volunteer.

Listen to it all from NPR.

President-elect Barack Obama and congressional Democrats are crafting a plan to offer about $300 billion in tax cuts to individuals and businesses, a move aimed at attracting Republican support for an economic-stimulus package and prodding companies to create jobs.

The size of the proposed tax cuts -- which would account for about 40% of a stimulus package that could reach $775 billion over two years -- is greater than many on both sides of the aisle in Congress had anticipated, and may make it easier to win over Republicans who have stressed that any initiative should rely relatively heavily on tax cuts rather than spending.

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But Father Rob Hartley who resigned Sunday as vicar of the church says the issue of homosexuality was not his main concern.

“I found it an error because it was contrary to scripture and I don't think it was any deeper than that,” Hartley said.

He says his issues with the Episcopal Church started long before 2003.

“Early 80's probably,” Hartley said.

That is when he said he started to see a shift in the theologies and teachings of the church.

“The Episcopal church really wants to make Christianity relevant they really want to make the truth of the gospel easier to ingest for the modern mind. I think the truth is the truth and changing it to make it digestible isn't exactly what the apostles learned from Jesus,” Hartley said.

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Update: The parish website is here.

The theme of Lambeth was “Equipping Bishops for Leadership in Mission and Strengthening Anglican Identity”. Each day began with a celebration of the Eucharist followed by a study of the “I Am” sayings in the Gospel according to John. Much of our time was spent in “Indaba”. Indaba is an African word meaning a meeting for purposeful conversations among equals. In those circles we discussed a wide range of topics including evangelism, the authority of scripture, sexuality, a covenant for the Anglican Communion, ecumenism, and social justice.

The matter of blessing same-sex unions was very much a part of discussions in the conference. In the Reflections report produced by the conference it was noted that a strong majority of bishops present agreed that moratoria on same-sex blessings and cross-provincial interventions were necessary. In a letter following the conference, the Archbishop of Canterbury acknowledged that while the majority of bishops had spoken that way, “they were aware of the conscientious difficulties this posed for some and that there needs to be greater clarity about the exact expectations and what can be realistically implemented. How far the intensified sense of belonging together will help mutual restraint remains to be seen”.

At the fall meeting of the Canadian House of Bishops we had a full discussion of the call for moratoria and issued a statement in which we said, “a large majority of the House can affirm the following:

“A continued commitment to the greatest extent possible to the three moratoria – on the blessing of same-sex unions, on the ordination to the episcopate of people in same-sex relationships and on cross-border interventions – until General Synod 2010. Members of this House, while recognizing the difficulty that this commitment represents for dioceses that in conscience have made decisions on these matters, commit themselves to continue walking together and to hold each other in prayer…

“We ask for your continuing prayers as we steadfastly seek to discern the mind and heart of Christ for the wholesome care of all members of his Body, the Church. We share a deep hope that though we may never come to consensus over this matter of the blessing of same-sex unions, we will live with differences in a manner that is marked by grace and generosity of spirit, one toward another.”

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"About 2,000 babies are born every day in sub-Saharan Africa to HIV-positive mothers," [Bill] Rankin said, "and we thought we could save a lot of the children by getting that medication out into the villages where the people are."

Rankin and Wilson started the alliance with donations from friends but have since secured a $1 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and a $360,000 grant from the Elizabeth Taylor Aids Foundation.

Contacts with African religious groups that Rankin made during his career as a priest came in handy.

"We knew that the best pathway to get to the villages and reach the people was to go through the religious organizations," Rankin said, "because in very poor countries the religious groups are the only stable infrastructure in place."

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