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Forthcoming events at the Cathedral

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Thursday, September 2

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First They Came for the Communists – Center for American Progress
 

Jerry Falwell, head of the Moral Majority, and other religious right leaders deliberately determined that gays would be the new "enemy" after the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. Could Muslims be the religious right's new target?

Bishop Gene Robinson writes: What is most disturbing about recent attacks by the political and religious right on Muslim Americans and their religion, Islam, is that it feels so depressingly familiar.

Christian and American conservative politicians and the religious right needed a new enemy that would mobilize their base in the 1990s when they were faced with the fall of the Soviet Union and the loss of “godless Communists” as the enemy of everything civilized. Televangelists needed a new “evil” to rail against—a threat dire enough to convince Social Security pensioners to send in their $5 and $10 checks and keep them on the air.

So gays became the new communists.

Now, however, it appears that gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people’s success in achieving equal rights in this country is impending and virtually assured. It makes me wonder, then, if a new “enemy” is now being chosen—Muslim Americans and Islam.

First, they came for the communists, then the gays—now the Muslims?

The search for scapegoats is as old as humankind. The word “scapegoat” itself comes from the ancient Hebrew practice of symbolically placing the sins of people onto a goat, and then sending that goat and its attendant sins into the wilderness on Yom Kippur, presumably to perish. Such a practice is always easier than taking responsibility for the sins that belong at home and making the behavioral changes necessary to undo them.

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Nova Scotia priest plans to bless the faithful's cellphones – Globe & Mail
 

Anglican church to offer ‘grace for gadgets’ service as a way of staying relevant in high-tech times

Halifax-area Anglican Rev. Lisa Vaughn, eager to keep her parish relevant in the face of declining church attendance nationwide, is asking users of mobile phones and other technological gadgets to bring them in this weekend for a special blessing.

“It’s not just about please don’t let my cellphone drop calls today,” says the pastor of the Anglican parish of St. Timothy, on the road to Peggy’s Cove. “It’s about, you know, help me to be the best Christian, the best person I can be in my conversations, in my communication.”

Ms. Vaughn doesn’t claim she’ll be able to exorcise the demons from your computer. But, she’d be just fine if a bunch of atheists with technical problems turned up this weekend. “Bring ’em on, baby,” she laughs.

Attracting the attention of non-believers is a crucial mission in a church that is bleeding members. A report prepared for the Anglican Diocese of British Columbia that was published in February said the church was declining faster than any other denomination. The report also repeated a five-year-old analysis that indicated that the present rate of decline – 13,000 members per year – would leave a single Anglican in Canada by 2061.

Ms. Vaughn is keenly aware of this crisis and wants to experiment with different ways to spread the word, dismissing critics who might find her irreverent.

At her modest church, the first clue to her attitude is a poster that adapts the iconic ad for the Apple iPod, using the tag iPray. Then there’s the mock Rolling Stone cover. Among its headlines is one confirming that Jesus is bigger than the Beatles. And a band of parishioners performs at the weekly “Jesus & Jeans” worship service.

The pastor matches the vibe. A youthful woman with short hair and a past career in journalism, she says her motto is “don’t be boring.”

“The gospel message is as relevant as it gets,” Ms. Vaughn says. “How do we package it is the question. This message of Christ is the most important thing but the packaging needs to change.”

Her approach fits with moves the national church has made to be more savvy about modern technology. The faithful and curious can come together on Facebook and follow Twitter updates. And while not all nonbelievers will be swayed by material such as the recent communiqué from the All Africa Bishops Conference that condemns the consecration of an openly lesbian bishop, at least the channels are open.

Ms. Vaughn hit on the idea for this weekend’s “grace for gadgets” service when reading about an ancient English tradition in which agricultural workers brought equipment to church for prayers. A modern equivalent for her bedroom community congregation, she realized, was the laptops, mobile phones and electronic readers that have become ubiquitous.

“There may be people who say this is silly, blessing a phone,” she acknowledges. “But we’re really blessing the person. It’s reminding people that God is with them in their work, in their play. And [they] need to be mindful of that. It’s not just once a week or only on Christmas.”

Ms. Vaughn believes this is the first time such a service has been held in this country.

The idea was equally new to Sam Carriere, the Toronto-based director of communications for the Anglican Church of Canada.

“I have never heard of it being done,” he says, adding that he couldn’t be sure without contacting all 1,800 parishes in the country. “It’s the first I’ve heard of it.”

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Children from Gaza colour together in summer program organized by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

Focus on human aspect of Holy Land conflict, says churches' leader – Anglican Journal Politicians need to focus on the human face of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and not discard it in favour of their own political agendas, the head of the World Council of Churches has said in the Middle East. "Politicians need to act and prevent this human tragedy," WCC general secretary, the Rev. Olav Fykse Tveit, told ENInews after a visit to Palestinian families who have been evicted by Israelis from their homes in the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheik Jarrah.

He said that although there are many holy sites in the Holy Land, the people who live on the land are also holy. "This is not about political principles, this is about human beings. It is a shame that politicians are interested more in their own political interests than in bringing basic human rights," said Tveit, a Norwegian Lutheran theologian.

It is Tveit's first visit to the Holy Land as WCC general secretary, although he visited the region several times before taking up his post at the Geneva-headquartered church grouping in January.

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Where Christianity and Islam Collide – ReligionDispatches Journalist Eliza Grizwold traverses the jagged borders where two global faiths meet and finds both bloody conflict and surprising reconciliation. In The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam, acclaimed investigative journalist and poet Eliza Griswold treads the geographical and ideological middle ground where the world’s largest faiths meet. But as Griswold reports, many places along the latitude seven hundred miles north of the equator are less a middle ground than a battlefield, where global political forces and trends are pushing Muslims and Christians towards increasingly extreme versions of their faiths.

Aftermath of Muslim-Christian clash in Nigeria, July 2010.

But this is not another Clash of Civilizations. Griswold describes in grim detail the perils of life in this contested zone—from the Muslim-Christian massacres days before September 11, 2001 in Jos, Nigeria to Jemaah Islamiyah’s deadly brand of Islamist terrorism in Indonesia. But she renders these stories compassionately through personal anecdotes and the stories of believers “whose religious convictions were emphatic and elusive,” whose relationship to their faith “slipped out of [her] easy distinctions.” In doing so, Griswold delves into the gray areas of both faiths and explores not only the conflicts between Islam and Christianity but the ways and places in which they coexist. She quotes a Nigerian pastor who has chosen to join forces with an imam—“his former mortal enemy” from the city of Kaduna, a frequent site of religiously motivated bloodshed in recent decades: “We have to find the space for coexistence.”

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Germany: New Guides for Reporting Clergy Sex Abuse – NY Times

New guidelines issued Tuesday by Germany’s Roman Catholic Church require prosecutors to be informed of any suspected cases of sexual abuse by members of the clergy. The guidelines are in response to hundreds of allegations of such abuse that earlier this year rocked the church in Germany, Pope Benedict XVI’s homeland. Earlier guidelines only “advised” priests to contact prosecutors in “proven cases” of abuse. Critics said the new guidelines do not go far enough, fail to clarify issues of financial compensation for victims and allow offending clergy members to continue to serve within the church.

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Not so easy.

The Amish and the Myth of the Simple Life – ReligionDispatches Or, why "living simple" is so hard. I know I’m going to come to regret confessing to this in public, but I kind of love Real Simple, the glossy lifestyle magazine that’s not actually glossy, but rather beautifully matte and spare. Real Simple is like 'O' magazine, but without the socio-lurid psychic grandeur that is Oprah; Martha Stewart Living minus performance anxiety; or Everyday with Rachel Ray (which I swear I have never opened) evacuated of the amped-up terror that spunky efficiency might consume every day of your life. Real Simple slides comfortably into the in between of all that with a serene absence of celebrity and modest photography of perfectly ordinary women in white cotton shirts and elegant-but-sensible shoes laughing with sophisticated girlfriends on generous beach house sofas.

But there’s much more, which is perhaps ironic for a magazine one might assume to be focused on less. To be fair, the masthead promises only “life made easier,” not rendered any less laden with consumerist hoarding. “Simplicity” in this light has little to do with little, while having everything to do with organizing objects, time, and relationships more efficiently.

Americans have had an enduring fascination with the Amish, and lately they seem to be popping up everywhere. A recent article on the Huffington Post, for instance, reported on new research showing something of a population boom among the Amish, accompanied by a small but notable migration West to establish communities on less expensive real estate. Right on the heels of that, USA Today updated a Wall Street Journal story from last fall by way of covering the new crop of “bonnet rippers”—“Amish inspirational” romance novels that highlight a version of the simple practices and conservative faith (minus much of the radical pacifism that might be distasteful to the prime audience of conservative evangelicals who tend to favor the books) that characterizes life among Plain Folk in the American imagination. What’s up with our renewed interest?

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Wednesday, September 1

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Supporters of the Fox Hole strip club have been picketing outside the church for three months

Ohio strippers stage picket outside church services – BBC Several Ohio strippers are protesting outside a church whose members want to put their strip club out of business. The bikini-clad dancers are picketing a congregation that has photographed customers' number plates and asked if their wives know where they are. The Fox Hole club's owner has told the pastor he will call off his protest if the church ceases its demonstrations. But the pastor has refused, saying, "as a Christian community, we cannot share territory with the devil".

"Light and darkness cannot exist together," Pastor Bill Dunfee told the Associated Press news agency, "so the Fox Hole has got to go."

The strippers have been sitting in deckchairs outside New Beginnings Ministries church in Warsaw, Ohio, during Sunday services.

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Does Obama's religion matter? – Washington Post

In the wake of his weekend rally, Glenn Beck kept up the drumbeat of criticism about President Obama's religion, calling it a "perversion" and saying that America "isn't recognizing his version of Christianity," which Beck characterized as "liberation theology."

 

Despite critique of Obama's Christianity, a recent poll showed that nearly 20% of Americans believe falsely that the president is Muslim.

 

Why is there so much attention on Obama's religion? Does it matter what religion the president is?
 

Obama's religion matters to us if it matters to him

An honest and accurate discussion about values and choices is important and can uplift the nation – posted by Nathan Diament

Voters may apply "religious test"

Our Constitution states in Article VI that, "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." This does not mean that voters are acting un-American for inquiring into the leader of the free world's faith or lack thereof – posted by Jordan Sekulow (6 COMMENTS)

Its unconstitutional!

Does Mr. Beck's God awaken only when America is about to go to the polls? posted by Arun Gandhi (1 COMMENT)

Obama's religion matters to him

I hesitate to criticize Beck's faith, but his belief that Christianity is about "individual salvation" is actually counter to the faith of millions of Christians who see the Church as the "ark of salvation" and that "personal salvation" is itself a perversion of the Christianity of Acts 2 and the earliest years of Christianity. Ask any Amish person – posted by Max Carter

The president's religion is his business, not ours

By feeding the lie that he is Muslim Mr. Obama's opponents are offending against the truth in two ways, both by accusing Mr. Obama of being less than honest and by implying that there is something wrong with being Muslim. Neither of those things are true – posted by Steven Wernick (3 COMMENTS)

Why the president's faith matters

Obama is just more of a realist than the liberation theologians. He has a more critical view of human nature and its possibilities, both for good and for ill. He is, in a startling way, very much a Niebuhrian Christian realist. It matters that we know that about Barack Obama – posted by Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite (10 COMMENTS)

Theological "perversions"

I think exploration of the whole notion of theological "perversions" is in order, especially with reference to the bigoted stereotypes applied to Glenn Beck's own denomination: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints – posted by Mathew N. Schmalz (4 COMMENTS)

Liberation theology claim really a claim of Marxism

It is because of Beck and others like him that people are confused – posted by J. Brent Walker (2 COMMENTS)

Obama's religious commitment: the Constitution

The president took an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution. That's the only religious commitment our Founding Fathers demanded, and until people learn to trust their wisdom on this matter, it's disingenuous to pretend to represent any of their other values – posted by Jack Moline

Thank God for liberation theology

As an African American woman, I rejoice that there is liberation theology. History shows us that the oppressors have done much harm to many people, making sure that they've been kept in their place so that the oppressors could not only maintain their power but gain more, at the expense of "the least of these." – posted by Susan K. Smith (7 COMMENTS)

I have a dream, too

We should judge our candidates on their political positions, not on their professed religious beliefs. But that may be a dream of mine more difficult to achieve than the dreams of Martin Luther King and Glenn Beck – posted by Herb Silverman (14 COMMENTS)

Beck has his own theological perversions

It is passing strange for Glenn Beck to describe President Obama's theological views as a "perversion of the gospel" given his conversion to Mormonism. Mormon theology is irreconcilably at odds with orthodox Christian theology at several crucial points – posted by Jason Poling (17 COMMENTS)

Focus on Obama unfortunate and unproductive

The focus on the President's religion is unfortunate and unproductive – posted by David Wolpe (2 COMMENTS)

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Tuesday, August 31

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An end to the myth of a monolithic Africa – Episcopal Cafe

A report about a letter from some bishops of the provinces of Central Africa and South Africa to the other bishops who attended the Council of Anglican Provinces in Africa meeting has been floating around the internet for a few days. We haven't published it previously because we were unable to verify it, but now, courtesy of Anglican Information, we have. Their version follows, but first two sentences about the significance of this document: it ends the myth that a monolithic Africa has turned against the Episcopal Church and embraced the Anglican Church in North America, and it makes clear that some African bishops are irritated by the way in which schismatic North Americans have inserted themselves into the affairs of Anglican Africa.

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The sounds of science – The Immanent Frame As previous posts about The New Metaphysicals have illustrated, Courtney Bender’s spiritual but not religious subjects pose a number of definitional problems for theories of secularization. On one hand, her interlocutors describe spiritual experiences in languages that we tend to call religious, even while the new metaphysicals might resist the label (although some do use the word religion). Thus, Cambridge spiritual seekers might demonstrate the persistence of religious belief. On the other hand, their disinclination to recognize legitimate religious institutions or identify themselves as members of binding moral communities might demonstrate trends that confirm theories of secularization. While Bender stresses that spiritual experiences are produced and interpreted within social and cultural networks, these networks do not seem to wield the institutional or social authority that would debunk a Durkheimian assessment that her book is evidence of American religious privatization.

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Mexico's Catholic Church fans flames of gay rights row – BBC Politics, religion and the law can be a potent mixture, but throw in the issue of gay rights and the mixture can become explosive. That is what has happened in Mexico where a row between Catholic Church leaders and Mexico City's mayor over gay rights legislation has also embroiled the Supreme Court. "Would any of you want to be adopted by a couple of lesbians or queers," said Cardinal Juan Sandoval Iniguez, the Archbishop of Guadalajara, at a recent news conference.

Protesters have picketed the cathedral after the cardinal's comments

He was reacting to a ruling by the Supreme Court that legislation passed in Mexico City granting equal rights to same-sex couples, including the right to adopt, was constitutional.

Cardinal Sandoval Iniguez's next comments then proceded to fan the flames of the dispute further.

He alleged that Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard had bribed the Supreme Court judges to hand down a ruling that supported gay rights.

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Monday, August 30

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African Anglican bishops in Uganda draw a line in the sand in their final conference statement – ACNS

Four hundred bishops from Africa announced today that 'business as usual' was no longer an option for the Anglican Church there and that Africans should "take their destiny into their own hands".

On the sixth and final day of the All Africa Bishops Conference in Uganda, the bishops issued a communiqué filled with commitments contesting the status quo in areas including politics, poverty reduction, violence against women, theological education and conflict.

The five-page statement was a clear challenge from the Anglican bishops of Africa to the Church, the continent and the rest of the Anglican Communion, and it pulled few punches: "While we will always be prepared to listen to voices from other parts of the global Communion, it is pertinent that the rest of the world listens to the unique voice of the Church in Africa," wrote the bishops.

"The Anglican Church in Africa has continued to witness growth so that the centre of gravity of Christianity today appears to be shifting to the continent. Nonetheless, the Church's relevance and impact on global mission and to social, economic and political transformation of the continent remains a challenge."

Read the report here.

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Glenn Beck vs. Christ the Liberator – Huffington Post

After his colossal "Restoring Honor" rally in Washington, D.C., Glenn Beck took aim at one of his favorite targets, Barack Obama, but in a novel way. Beck regrets saying a few months ago that President Obama was a "racist." What he should have said, he now realizes, was that he didn't agree with Obama's "theology." And what is Obama's theology, according to Beck? Liberation theology.

Here's Beck's definition of the arcane area of study known as liberation theology:

I think that it is much more of a theological question that he is a guy who understands the world through liberation theology, which is oppressor and victim....That is a direct opposite of what the gospel is talking about...It's Marxism disguised as religion

As Ronald Reagan used to say, "There you go again." A few months ago, Beck decided to demolish the idea of "social justice," by telling Christians that if their priests, pastors or ministers use that buzz word on Sundays they should leave their churches. As he may or may not have known, the tenets of "social justice" encourage one not only to help the poor, but also address the conditions that keep them poor. He called that "communist."

That approach didn't work out that well for Beck since so many Christian denominations these days, particularly the Catholic Church, espouse social justice explicitly. So he backed off. But liberation theology? Really?

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Mother Teresa's centenary Mass held – BBC Hundreds of Catholic nuns and slum dwellers in the Indian city of Calcutta have marked the 100th anniversary of the birth of Mother Teresa. A special Mass was held at the headquarters of the Missionaries of Charity - the order of nuns which Mother Teresa founded 60 years ago. Mother Teresa, an ethnic Albanian, was born in Skopje, now part of Macedonia, on 26 August 1910. Her work in the Calcutta slums earned her a Nobel peace prize in 1979.

Mother Teresa was known as the 'Saint of the Gutters' for her work among the poor of Calcutta

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Belgian Cardinal: I Was 'Naive' to Meet Victim – NY Times

The former head of Belgium's Roman Catholic Church has acknowledged that he should not have held a meeting with a victim of serial sexual abuse and suggested a cover up until the offending bishop retired.

The April 8 meeting that retired Cardinal Godfried Danneels held was secretly taped by the victim and the conversation was published in two newspapers over the weekend.

Belgian cardinal: I was 'naive' to meet victim – Washington Post

Belgian Church Leader Urged Victim to Be Silent – NY Times

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Sunday, August 29

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America Is Better Than This – NY Times America is better than Glenn Beck. For all of his celebrity, Mr. Beck is an ignorant, divisive, pathetic figure. On the anniversary of the great 1963 March on Washington he will stand in the shadows of giants — Abraham Lincoln and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Who do you think is more representative of this nation? Consider a brief sampling of their rhetoric. Lincoln: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” King: “Never succumb to the temptation of becoming bitter.” Beck: “I think the president is a racist.” Beck makes you want to take a shower.

Bob Herbert

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Saturday, August 28

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Karen McIntryre

Retreating towards God – Guardian What happens if you take a weekend off every month to go on a Christian retreat? I had long been curious about the UKs Christian retreats, many of which seemed fairly tucked away, particularly the old monasteries and convents, yet seemed to offer so much to modern-day, busy people by way of sanctuary, reflective space and personal growth.

On a personal level, I was becoming increasingly aware that in amidst my hectic London lifestyle, God's voice in my life had somehow got squeezed out. I went to a church regularly, and while this helped to a degree, I was still finding it very difficult to have the necessary space and silence to cultivate a deeper spirituality. There was too much noise, too many distractions. Even carving out an hour on a weekend for silence and contemplation seemed impossible.

I also found the evangelical tradition that I had been brought up in restrictive. I wanted to branch out with my faith, to explore more ancient forms of Christian spirituality and felt very drawn to Christian contemplative tradition.

So on a cold, wet weekend in January I found knocking on the large wooden doors of a Poor Clares convent in West Sussex – an austere start to my year of retreats. Being an enclosed convent, the sisters naturally kept to themselves, living separately from the guests on retreat and only venturing out of the convent when absolutely necessary. While a life of such total separation from the world isn't for me, what I encountered here was the silence and stillness that I lacked in my life.

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The pope's heaven isn't a place on earth (or anywhere else) – Guardian Benedict has rejected the rich Catholic tradition of interpreting heaven in terms of the most intense human experiences To mark the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin last week, Pope Benedict gave a homily at Castel Gandolfo reflecting on the dogma of the Assumption (the idea that the Virgin Mary was bodily taken up into heaven at her death) and seeking to explain what exactly "heaven" is.

Sophia Deboick

Somewhat dismissively, he suggested that it is not anything so vulgar as a physical "place in the universe … a star or something similar", and asserted instead that heaven is a place in God (and if you aren't hearing Belinda Carlisle by now, you need to brush up on your knowledge of 80s pop).

Any concept of meeting Saint Peter at the pearly gates has long been rejected by the church, in fact. More than 700 years ago Thomas Aquinas said that heaven should not be thought of in such terms, and the Pope's abstract assertion that God's love is "what we call 'heaven'" is as far from this idea as is conceivable. But in a recent book about the history of heaven as a cultural concept, Lisa Miller revealed that 51% of British people believe in heaven, and of those 71% believe that it is a real place. There is a long tradition in Catholic culture of viewing heaven in this way (indeed, the idea of the Assumption suggest that heaven is a place where the Virgin physically exists, although this was glossed over by the pope in his homily), and this has been accompanied by a parallel tradition of experiencing heaven physically on earth.

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Stephen Hough is a concert pianist by night; his daytime interests include theology, art, hats and puddings

Some assumptions about the Assumption – Telegraph Last Sunday, with groans, stiff joints, and a sour stomach, I hauled myself out of bed to go to the 7.30 AM Mass in Aspen, despite having a morning dress rehearsal followed by an afternoon concert at the Music Festival. It was the Feast of the Assumption and the priest turned out to be someone immersed and marinated in the sort of Catholicism which was unquestioned until the 1960s. He spent a lot of the sermon quoting Pope Pius XII who, in 1950, defined the doctrine which the Feast was commemorating. The Pontiff’s ominous declaration that those who willfully refused to believe it were no longer in a state of grace (and thus on the way to Hell) did not provide me with a good feeling, despite the early morning sun streaming through the quaint windows of St. Mary’s church. Believe ‘IT‘ – what? The problem with this doctrine is that it is so nebulous and vague that one might wonder what sort of denial would actually be the cause of such a loss of grace. Pius declined to declare whether Mary died or not before she was assumed body and soul into heaven; and no theologian has fully been able to define what the body means in post-earthly, eternal terms … so it left me thinking that the defining of this dogma in 1950 was all about power: the power of the Papacy in a difficult moment of world history (spread of communism, nuclear bombs, rebellious youth) to be obeyed, even if we were not told what we were meant to be obeying. We were asked to affirm the messenger rather than his message. Too often the Catholic Church has taken fluid devotional ideas and customs and tried to bake them into dogmas or doctrines. Limbo was one of these and it was eventually cast aside as an indigestible cake – one wonders if purgatory (another loose and undefined idea almost found in Scripture) might not be far behind? The Orthodox Churches speak of Mary’s ‘dormition’ – her going to sleep – and they wisely refrain from further comment. But pigeon holes are beloved in the Vatican, and, if the birds remain quiet, they are well fed and looked after.

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The Book of Common Prayer, part 1: An English ragbag – Guardian The Book of Common Prayer has shaped English spirituality for nearly 450 years. What are its enduring qualities? Steven Sample, the recently departed president of the University of Southern California, used to play a mean trick on his graduate students. He restricted MBA class reading to books that been in print for at least 250 years. Anything that had remained in constant use for that long, he argued, must have something about it. Thus airport bookstall how-to paperbacks yielded to Shakespeare, Milton and Machiavelli, all of whom students had heard of, but seldom read. For many today, including Church of England clergy, the Book of Common Prayer (BCP) occupies a similar niche in their consciousness.

Alan Wilson

Supplemented by newer liturgical compilations, the BCP remains the normative liturgy of the Church of England. It has been translated into over 150 languages. Its words have resonated through almost 450 years of English life and culture. Now it has been placed online, in its entirety, by the Church of England.

The BCP was a bold attempt, on a national level, to bring together a whole community around what was then a new concept of uniformity. This powerful notion was enacted for the Latin church 21 years later when the Council of Trent delivered the Missal of Pius V. The BCP allowed for celebrations in Latin (indeed there is one termly in Oxford to this day), but required that worship should normally be conducted "in a language understanded of the people". Vernacular liturgy was a reform for which Roman Catholics had to wait another 400 years.

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The solar physicist and man behind skepticalscience.com, John Cook, says his faith is what drives him.

Why would a solar physicist embrace the non-rationality of religion? – Guardian John Cook, who runs skepticalscience.com, says his faith drives him. But what does religion give him that science doesn't? Writing about climate change can be dispiriting, to say the least. Even George Monbiot admits to occasional bouts of despair: "There is no point in denying it: we're losing ..." he opined in a Guardian article at the end of last year. What can one man achieve in a world dominated by governments whose contradictory policies are often the product of their venal self-interest, by vast media empires sporting a host of vicious and deceitful pundits, and contrarians stuffing endless blogs with their bilious disaffection?

But isn't self pity this the way we disenfranchise ourselves? For an alternative, consider a man who single-handedly (at least at first), has severely dented the credibility of climate change scepticism. His name is John Cook, and he runs the definitive sceptic argument rebuttal website, skepticalscience.com (plus a free iPhone app).

The site is based on a simple premise: take each sceptical argument, and rebut it with actual science. Each rebuttal is carefully explained, and every assertion is backed up with a reference to the peer-reviewed primary science. It becomes clear in a matter of minutes that what you are reading is a digest of the research, not opinion stated as fact – unlike most sceptic arguments, I regret to say.

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Dave Walker's Guide to the Anglican Church
 

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Friday, August 27

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Anglican and Lutheran youth join hands to help abroad – Anglican Journal Anglican and Lutheran youth, who gathered from across the country for the first Canadian Lutheran Anglican Youth (CLAY) in London, Ont. from Aug. 19 to 22, were challenged to help make the vision of “12 for 12: Developing Full Communities” a reality by 2012 through work in their home parishes. The premise for the project is that is takes an estimated $5,000 to equip a community with the various resources needed to begin sustainable development. The goal for the Anglican and Lutheran youth before they meet again for their next gathering in 2012 is to raise and donate $60,000 to help 12 communities with their development needs.

A woman in a Bangladesh community sponsored by PWRDF gathers her radishes.

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Religious Studies results show increase in popularity – Church Times
 

Brainboxes: students at Church High School, an independent school in Newcastle, celebrate their GCSE grades

THE number of students taking GCSE Religious Studies rose this summer for the 12th year in succession. A total of 188,704 candidates sat the examinations — a 3.5% increase on last year — taking RS into the top ten most popular GCSE subjects, supplanting French. It is also one of the five fastest growing subjects.

Religious Studies is a subject in which candidates do well. At GCSE, more than 73 per cent achieved A*-C grades, a higher proportion than the average. Nearly one third, ten per cent above the average, were awarded A*and A.

Religion now among top 10 exam subjects in Britain – Anglican Journal

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Climate change will kill more than malaria and HIV, bishops told – Ekklhsia

The continent of Africa is facing a future in which climate change will kill more people than traditional causes such as malaria and HIV, according to a Ugandan environmental expert.

Dr Rose Mwebaza has warned Anglican bishops from Africa who are meeting in Entebbe, that lakes across the continent are shrinking and drying up, crops are failing, deforestation is leading to terrible flooding and, as a result, people are fighting and killing each other over resources.

“Africa is facing several [environmental] challenges,” said Dr Mwebaza, a senior legal advisor on environmental security at Nairobi’s Institute of Security Studies. These include increased droughts and reduced availability of water; desertification - one factor in major flooding - and increased incidents of diseases in previously unaffected areas.

“Lake Chad in 1973 covered several countries,” she said. “It is reduced to a shadow of its former self. It is vanishing from the continent right in front of our eyes.”

The same was true of Mount Kilimanjaro, she said. Once covered with plenty of snow, experts predict that, within 2 to 5 years’ time, there will be none left on that mountain. “These are the things that are happening right in front of our eyes.”

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Letters to the Church Times

• Eucharistic presidency in Sydney diocese
• Anglicanism in relation to Rome and the orders of the Church Catholic (6)

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That was the week that was. It’s over – let it go

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The Brandon diocesan website is a pro bono site. It neither captures nor stores any information about those browsing it. Not a lot happens in this diocese. The purpose of this main page is to provide a worldwide snapshot of matters judged to be of Christian concern, useful for sermon and intercession material and culled from responsible sources. The very contradictory nature of some of the articles should make it plain that it reflects neither diocesan nor any other policy.

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“God writes in two books. One is the Bible; the other is daily events.
In both, God’s hand is richly in evidence. In neither, normally, is God unequivocally clear.”

God’s world on the day commemorating Martyrs of New Guinea (1942)