Virtually every major religious group in the United States has renounced the use of torture. Surprisingly, however, the American public still shows strong support for the use of torture as a tactic in fighting terror. Perhaps even more surprisingly, once other factors are taken into account, one's religious beliefs and frequency of worship appear to have quite modest effects on views about torture.

John G. Green, a professor of political science at the University of Akron and Senior Fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, has an article (PDF) in the Review of Faith & International Affairs that discusses a Pew Research Center for the People and the Press survey on torture and faith. Pew surveyed public opinion on torture and terrorism in 2004, 2005, and 2006, for the entire public and for six large religious groups: white Evangelical Protestants, white Roman Catholics, white Mainline Protestants, Black Protestants, all other religious communities, and the religiously unaffiliated.

The study found evidence of only a modest effect of religious denomination, particulary when political affiliation--a much more important factor--was taken into account:

Overall this survey found that 17.7 percent of the American public said that torture was “often justified” against suspected terrorists and another 27.8 percent said it was “sometimes justified.” Hence, 45.5 percent had what might be called “permissive” views on torture under these circumstances. Meanwhile, 18.8 percent said that torture was “rarely justified” and 32.8 percent said it was “never justified.” Thus, 51.6 percent of Americans held what might be called “restrictive” views on torture as a tactic in security policy. The results from the fall of 2006 survey were very similar to 2004 and 2005.

Moreover, there was only modest variation in opinion among the religious communities. White Evangelical Protestants were the most permissive of the use of torture, at just over one-half (51.6 percent), and White Catholics were almost evenly divided—47.5 percent accepting and 46.3 percent opposed. Black Protestants (52.8 percent) and white Mainline Protestants (53.2 percent) had a slim majority in opposition, while solid majorities of the composite All Others category (56.4 percent) and the unaffiliated (55.9 percent) held restrictive views.

Frequency of worship attendance was modestly associated with restrictive views on torture as well. Note that for the entire public weekly worship attenders were more likely to oppose torture by a few percentage points than the country as a whole.

The largest influence on views of torture was not religion, but political views:

Not surprisingly, party identification was strongly associated with views on torture. For example, 66.8 percent of Republicans held permissive views on torture, while 66.4 percent of Democrats had restrictive views. The independents were arranged in-between, but with a solid majority of the “pure” independents holding restrictive views. A similar pattern held for ideology: 59.0 percent of respondents who said they were “very conservative” reported permissive views, and 66.4 percent of those who said they were “very liberal” had the opposite position on torture. Here, too, a majority of moderates had restrictive views

Once the effects of political attitudes were taken into account, being a weekly attending Evangelical was associated with more restrictive views on torture, while being a less observant Evangelical had no impact on torture attitudes (due to a lack of statistical significance). A similar pattern held for Mainline Protestants, Catholics, and the composite group of all other religious groups. These findings are a bit counter-intuitive because weekly worship attenders tend to be more Republican, conservative, and supportive of the Bush administration than their co-religionists. However, it is precisely the impact of such political attitudes on torture attitudes that the statistical model has take into account.

What explains these patterns for weekly attenders? One possibility is that other demographic
characteristics of regular worship attenders are at work behind these figures. And there is some evidence for this possibility: women and older people tend to have more restrictive views of torture, overall and in each religious category. Of course, women and older people are also more likely to be religiously observant compared to men and younger people, so the order of causality is not entirely clear. However, including gender and age in the statistical analysis does not change the basic patterns . . . . very much.

Another possibility is that the flow of information within denominations and congregations encourages a restrictive view of torture. After all, people who attend worship regularly are much more likely to hear messages from denominational leaders and the parish clergy, and it could be that the leader’s statements against torture have reached receptive ears in many religious communities. A final possibility is that the weekly attenders are more familiar with religious teachings that may raise doubts about the morality of torture. While the specific beliefs may well differ from tradition to tradition, an emphasis in the dignity of human beings is common to many faiths.

Read the entire study here.

Is it surprising the religon plays such a small role in influencing views on a moral issue such as torture? Why is this not true of other issues such as abortion and stem cell research?

Much has been written about the success of recent books by Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens. David C. Steinmetz, the Amos Ragan Kearns Professor of the History of Christianity at the Duke University Divinity School, offers a useful guide to two of the most prominent "New Atheists."

Probably the best-known of the so-called new atheists are the journalist Christopher Hitchens of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker and the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins of Oxford University.

Hitchens was born in Portsmouth, England, and, like Dawkins, educated at Balliol College, Oxford. His book, God Is Not Great, makes it clear that he regards religion as an enemy of civilization, an entirely toxic enterprise that ruins anything it touches.

Religion has its origin in what Hitchens regards as the perfectly understandable human fear of death (since humans are the only animals who know in advance they are going to die) and in the hope, completely unfounded, that there is some way to avoid this grim, but inescapable, fate.

Ever the pugnacious contrarian, Hitchens is witty, combative, sarcastic, intelligent and generally outrageous. He loves to rip out the shirttails of the pious (whatever their religion) and set fire to them.

Dawkins is a somewhat different animal. He was raised as a rather conventional Anglican, but abandoned his faith at 16, when he was persuaded that evolution, and not divine providence, accounted for the rich diversity of the natural world. If purely natural processes provided satisfying explanations for the world as it is, then belief in God became for Dawkins a redundant luxury.

In his book The God Delusion, Dawkins spells out his conviction that reason embraces conclusions based on evidence alone, while faith believes assertions based on no evidence whatever. Worse yet, faith often contradicts evidence that undercuts what it wants to believe.

The Oxford theologian Alister McGrath -- himself an adult convert to Christianity from atheism -- challenged Dawkins' view of faith as irrational. McGrath was convinced that Christianity provided him with a richer, more coherent and therefore more intellectually satisfying account of reality than atheism had ever offered. He conceded that his starting point was not reason alone but felt that his position was nevertheless thoroughly rational.

McGrath echoes the argument of St. Augustine that reason needs to be oriented toward the truth so that it can function properly. Faith is not about swallowing as many groundless propositions as possible. It is about an essential alignment with the way things really are. Otherwise, reason is clueless about things that genuinely matter.

Read the entire article here.

The "New Atheism" is not limited to the literary set. A group of enterprising atheists have presented a video "Blasphemy Challenge" on You Tube, urging atheists to show their confidence by denouncing the Holy Spirit. Over one thousand videos have been posted on You Tube in response to this challenge.

One response well worth viewing is that of Father Mathew Moretzs of St. Pauls Episcopal Church in Yonkers, New York. His response can be found here.

Professor Michael Behe of the Lehigh University Biological Sciences Department is the intellect behind the Intelligent Design movement, and he has a new book defending his view that Darwinian evolution is incomplete, and that there is evidence of an intelligent designer. Since Intelligent Design is attractive to Christians that believe in a Creator God, we thought that it would be useful to hear from Jerry Coyne, a University of Chicago professor who has a thorough review of Behe's new book in the New Republic.

Professor Coyne begins by summarizing Behe's new argument--as well as Behe's concessions to evolution:

For a start, let us be clear about what Behe now accepts about evolutionary theory. He has no problem with a 4.5-billion-year-old Earth, nor with evolutionary change over time, nor apparently with its ample documentation through the fossil record--the geographical distribution of organisms, the existence of vestigial traits testifying to ancient ancestry, and the finding of fossil "missing links" that show common ancestry among major groups of organisms. Behe admits that most evolution is caused by natural selection, and that all species share common ancestors. He even accepts the one fact that most other IDers would rather die than admit: that humans shared a common ancestor with chimpanzees and other apes.

Why does Behe come clean about all this? The reason is plain. There is simply too much evidence for any scientist to deny these facts without losing all credibility. "Intelligent design" is desperate for scientific respectability, and you do not get that by fighting facts about which everybody agrees. But with most of evolutionary biology accepted, what's left for a good IDer to contest? Behe finds his bugbear in evolutionary theory's view that "random mutation" provides the raw material for evolutionary change.

The first problem is that Behe's "scientific" ideas are offered to the public in a trade book, and have never gone through the usual process of vetting in peer-reviewed scientific journals. This was also the case with Darwin's Black Box. In fact, Behe has never published a paper supporting intelligent design in any scientific journal, despite his assertion in Darwin's Black Box that his own discovery of biochemical design "must be ranked as one of the greatest achievements in the history of science," rivaling "those of Newton and Einstein, Lavoisier and Schrödinger, Pasteur, and Darwin." Surely such an important theory deserves a place in the scientific literature! But the reason for the lack of peer review is obvious: Behe's ideas would never pass muster among scientists, despite the fact that anybody who really could disprove Darwinism would win great renown.

So let us put some empirical questions to Behe, since his theory is supposedly scientific. Which features of life were designed, as opposed to evolved? How exactly did the mutations responsible for design come about? Who was the Designer? To what end did the Designer work? If the goal was perfection, why are some features of life (such as our appendix or prostate gland) palpably imperfect?

. . .

Is Behe's theory testable? Well, not really, since it consists not of positive assertions, but of criticisms of evolutionary theory and solemn declarations that it is powerless to explain complexity. And it is certainly true that scientists will never be able to give Darwinian explanations for the evolution of everything. The origins of many features, such as the bony plates on the back of the Stegosaurus, are lost in the irrecoverable past. But neither can archaeology unearth everything about ancient history. We do not maintain on these grounds that archaeology is not a science.

Behe waffles when confronted with the testability problem of ID and turns it back on evolutionists, saying that "coming from Darwinists, both objections [the lack of predictions and the untestability of ID] are instances of the pot calling the kettle black." He then waffles even more when implying that ID does not even need to be testable: "Both additional demands--for hard-and-fast predictions or for direct evidence of a theory's fundamental principle--are disingenuous. Philosophers have long known that no simple criterion, including prediction, automatically qualifies or disqualifies something as science, and fundamental entities invoked by a theory can remain mysterious for centuries, or indefinitely."

But who is being disingenuous here? Evolution has been tested, and confirmed, many times over. Every time we find an early human fossil dating back several million years, it confirms evolution. Every time a new transitional fossil is found, such as the recently discovered "missing links" between land animals and whales, it confirms evolution. Each time a bacterial strain becomes resistant to an antibiotic, it confirms evolution. And evolutionary biology makes predictions. Here is one that Darwin himself made: that the earliest human ancestors will be found in Africa. (That prediction was confirmed, of course.) Another was made by Neil Shubin at the University of Chicago: that transitional forms between fish and amphibians would be found in 370-million-year-old rocks. Sure enough, he discovered that there were rocks of that age in Canada, went and looked at them, and found the right fossils. Intelligent design, in contrast, makes no predictions. It is infinitely malleable in the face of counterevidence, cannot be refuted, and is therefore not science.

Behe's book can be found here.

The Economist has an interesting analysis of the changing nature of the GLBT community in America. The subtitle says it all: "As tolerance spreads, gay life is becoming more suburban, contented and even dull." Here are some highlights:

Perhaps it is no surprise that gays find a hip city like New York hospitable. But two sets of data suggest that America as a whole is becoming steadily more tolerant. First, opinion polls show that homophobia has receded almost as far as Homer Simpson's hairline. As recently as 1982, only 34% of Americans thought homosexuality should be considered an acceptable alternative lifestyle. Now, 57% do. Since young Americans are far more relaxed about homosexuality than their elders—three-quarters of 18-34-year-olds think it is OK to be gay, whereas half of those over 55 think it is not—this trend is likely to continue. This year was also the first since Gallup started asking the question that a majority of Americans have not said that homosexual relations are morally wrong. And a hefty 89% think that gays should have equal rights in terms of job opportunities. If that strikes you as no big deal, recall that a total ban on gays working for the federal government was repealed only in 1975.

Second, and more subtly, one can look at demography. Gary Gates, a Californian academic, has been mining census data to determine where gays live in America. He observes several trends. First, the number of openly gay households is growing five times faster than the population as a whole. The last full census, in 2000, counted nearly 600,000 same-sex couples. Five years later, the American Community Survey (in which the Census Bureau quizzes a statistically representative sample of 1.4m households) estimated that that number had increased by 30%, to 777,000. Mr Gates reckons the bulk of the increase is because as tolerance spreads, more gay couples are willing to be counted.

The increase was most pronounced in the Midwest, with Wisconsin showing an 81% jump in the number of same-sex couples and Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, Ohio, Iowa, Missouri and Indiana also among the ten fastest-growing states in this respect. What this means, perhaps, is that gay America is becoming more like Middle America. “Much of the stereotype around gays is a stereotype of urban white gay men,” says Mr Gates. “The gay community is becoming less like that, and more like the population in general.” Gay couples are still more likely than straight ones to live in cities, but the gap is smaller than popularly believed, and closing. In 1990, 92% of gay couples but only 77% of American households were in what the Census Bureau calls “urban clusters”. By 2000, the gay figure had fallen to 84% while the proportion for households in general had risen to 80%, a striking convergence.

The article then observes that the greater acceptance is leading many GLBT couples to move to the suburbs:

But if you want to settle down with a partner, the suburbs and the heartland beckon. Gays who have children—and a quarter of gay couples do—gravitate towards them for the same reasons that straight parents do: better schools, bigger gardens, peace and quiet. Mark Strasser, for example, lives with his male partner and their two children in Columbus, Ohio. He says they encounter no hostility eating out as a gay couple or picking up the children from their private school. He has to rack his memory for the last time anyone called him anything nasty for being gay. “That would have been in the late 1980s, I think,” he says. His employer, a private university, offers the same health insurance to employees' gay partners as to spouses (as did most Fortune 500 companies, for the first time, last year).

Mr Strasser has worries, of course. Ohio is one of 26 states with a recent constitutional amendment barring same-sex marriage. Mr Strasser wonders whether a public school would recognise that his children have two fathers, or if a hospital would allow both of them to visit if one of their children fell ill. This is a serious matter. Only Massachusetts allows same-sex marriage, although six other states have allowed civil unions that are marriages in all but name, and a law allowing full marriage rights passed through the lower house of New York's state legislature on June 19th. Most Americans are still uncomfortable about letting gays tie the knot, but support for the idea has risen from 27% in 1996 to 46% this year.

Read it all here.

Attitudes are clearly changing and there may well be a "virtuous cycle"--as attitudes change, more GLBT people come out and there is a resulting improvement in the attitudes of friends and relatives. The Pew Research Center issued a study that found that 4 our of 10 Americans say they have a friend or relative who is gay or lesbian, and not surprisingly, this group has very different attitudes about issues such as gay marriage than those who claim to have no such friend or relative:

Overall, those who say they have a family member or close friend who is gay are more than twice as likely to support gay marriage as those who don't -- 55% to 25%. A similar relationship between knowing gays and favoring gay rights is evident when people are asked whether school boards should have the right to fire teachers who are known homosexuals. That idea gains support from only 15% of those who have a close friend or family member who is gay. Almost four-in-ten (38%) of those who don't have close friends or family members who are gay support the idea. In other words, those without close friends or family members who are gay are more than twice as likely to say schools should be able to fire gay teachers as are people who are close to gays. Overall, 28% of the public thinks school boards should be able to fire gay teachers.

Read the study here.

The Telegraph reports that some Bishops in the Church of England have suggested that the floods that devastating parts of England are God's judgment. One bishop, the Rt Rev Graham Dow, Bishop of Carlisle, has said that the floods are the result of our lack of respect for the planet, and also are a judgment on society's moral decadence.

The Telegraph reported that Bishop Dow said "This is a strong and definite judgment because the world has been arrogant in going its own way."

"We are reaping the consequences of our moral degradation, as well as the environmental damage that we have caused, " Dow says.

The bishop, who is a leading evangelical, said that people should heed the stories of the Bible, which described the downfall of the Roman empire as a result of its immorality.

"We are in serious moral trouble because every type of lifestyle is now regarded as legitimate," he said.

"In the Bible, institutional power is referred to as 'the beast', which sets itself up to control people and their morals. Our government has been playing the role of God in saying that people are free to act as they want," he said, adding that the introduction of recent pro-gay laws highlighted its determination to undermine marriage.

"The sexual orientation regulations [which give greater rights to gays] are part of a general scene of permissiveness. We are in a situation where we are liable for God's judgment, which is intended to call us to repentance."

He expressed his sympathy for those who have been hit by the weather, but said that the problem with "environmental judgment is that it is indiscriminate".

The West is also being punished for the way that it has exploited poorer nations in its pursuit of economic gain. "It has set up dominant economic structures that are built on greed and that keep other nations in a situation of dependence. The principle of God's judgment on nations that have exploited other nations is all there in the Bible," he said.

He urged people to respond to the latest floods by turning away from a lifestyle of greed to instead live thinking of the consequences of their actions.

Other Bishops laid the blame less on God's judgment and more on humanity's strewardship of the environment.

Global warming has been caused by people's lack of care for the planet and recent environmental catastrophes are a warning over how we behave, according to the Bishop of Liverpool.

"People no longer see natural disasters as an act of God," said the Rt Rev James Jones.

"However, we are now reaping what we have sown. If we live in a profligate way then there are going to be consequences," said the bishop...

"We have a responsibility in this and God is exposing us to the truth of what we have done."

Bishop Dow's assertion that natural disaster is in fact the judgment of God on a sinful culture is an old-fashioned theological back-flip—blame God for the disaster, but absolve God of responsibility by saying God's hand was forced by humanity's bad behavior. So God did it...but it wasn't really God's fault. It is hard to imagine that kind of theology will change anyone's behavior, except that it might help some of the righteous feel better about themselves. Perhaps the most scandalous part of this kind of “teaching” is that people farthest away from the sin being condemned are the ones who are facing the alleged divine wrath. Of course, this approach does nothing to help the actual flood victims come to terms with their own trauma. But hey, in this view of God's economy, someone's got to pay.

Read the rest.

Two more dioceses are acting to hold departing former Episcopalians accountable for Church property they are holding onto for use in their new congregations.

The Diocese of Massachusetts has sued former Episcopalians who departed their parish to start a new congregation under Anglican Mission in America. While they left the building, the diocese claims that the leadership systematically diverted funds from the parish to a separate account held by an organization that the leadership themselves formed.

the diocese said that over an 11-month period last year, the parish's rector at the time, the Rev. Lance Giuffrida, and the parish's vestry transferred $111,863.36 from the church's treasury to an organization called The Lesser Franciscans Inc., an organization founded in late 2004 with offices at Giuffrida's house and governed by members of the parish's former vestry. The diocese also alleged that the parish spent $85,000 on unknown expenses and gave the Giuffridas a $10,000 loan.

The diocese is asking the court to order the departed parishioners to turn over all the records of the church to the diocese and to repay the missing money.

Read the rest here.

In the Diocese of Connecticut, a Bristol congregation that has voted to depart the Episcopal Church and become part of CANA [Communion of Anglicans in North American] has until July 8th to vacate the building and account for the assets of the parish.

Connecticut Bishop Andrew Smith said the Rev. Donald Lee Helmandollar "renounced his orders" and was deposed - the equivalent of being defrocked - on June 13 by the clerical members of the diocesan standing committee. Smith said he has since written to leaders at Trinity Episcopal Church informing them that the diocese intends to take over the property July 8.

Trinity Church in Bristol is the second of the so-called Connecticut Six parishes that Bishop Drew Smith and the Standing Committee has acted to recover. The Rector and Vestry claim the parishes charter, which predates the formation of the Diocese, allows them to leave unilaterally and retain all property and assets. The Diocese claims that the rector of the parish renounced his orders when he was accepted onto the ministerial roles of CANA and that the vestry gave up their fiduciary responsibility over the parish when they voted to align with CANA. The Bishop brought the case of the priest and parish to the Standing Committee after a vote in the parish to join CANA.

Read the rest here.

Conventional wisdom is that Democrats learned about the importance of talking about faith after the election of 2004. Madeline Bunting, writing in The Guardian, says that Gordon Brown is the third Prime Minister in a row in Great Britain to “do God.” The son of a Church of Scotland minister, he says he will bring “competence and serious moral purpose” to government.

It's a curious phenomenon that at a time when Christianity continues its steady decline in this country, religion has re-emerged as a central inspiration of political rhetoric - not as the flash-in-the-pan aberration of one individual but now well established as a convention of the centre ground, acknowledged by the Cameroons as much as by Labour. This strange afterlife of religious belief must be pretty galling to secularists and humanists.

But even as Brown talks about “moral purpose,” and is comfortable with integrating his faith into his political talk, there are differences between him and his predecessor, Tony Blair.

It's very hard to imagine Brown praying with anyone, let alone George Bush, nor is he likely to make references to God's judgment on his Iraq policy, and least likely of all is his being tempted down the path to Rome. Blair found God in emotionally charged prayer meetings in Oxford hosted by a gregarious Australian vicar. In contrast, Brown saw faith sustaining communities through hardship in his father's ministry - he describes it as "social Christianity". He was not interested in theology and personal salvation in the hereafter, the hellfire and damnation side of Presbyterianism, but in how religion inspires bonds that help individuals and communities through hard times, how it provides solidarity and ensures resilience - and that still fascinates him.

She continues:

Brown's faith bears the hallmarks of his origins. He may have done away with hellfire but he's replaced it with a dour if noble vision of endless duty, effort and obligation - his school motto of "I will try my utmost" - without even the promise of celestial reward. Self-restraint and self-discipline are principles written into the Brown DNA but to a consumer-obsessed, debt-ridden electorate, they are as foreign as Mars.

Read the rest: Madeline Bunting: The church may be struggling, but in politics its rhetoric is on the rise.

Meanwhile politicians in the U.S. continue to play the God card. Recent evidence:
-Stump Speeches Taking a Page from the Bible
-Op-Ed: The Gospel Of Obama
-Faith Has Role in Politics, Obama Tells Church

The Church's presence on the internet is varied and growing. Church-on-the-net is a new internet church site that targets people who not in the Church in a gentle but clearly evangelistic approach. David Walker in his blog, Cartoon Church, interviews Nicola, one of the founders of Church-on-the-net. She says:

We’ve seen a lot of models of online services/worship/community/even ‘church’, but not much particularly evangelistic. Some sites which purport to be evangelistic ask you to sign a statement of faith before you enter! How many ‘bricks’ churches do this? Some ask for donations right up-front (very very common!) and on one I saw, when you click on the question ‘What if I don’t believe in this stuff?’, you get a web page with scary music and the following text in a fiery font: ‘You will most likely go to hell.’ Encouraging!

As for Christian communities online attracting existing churchgoers, both St Pixels and i-church are made up of predominantly Christian members, although I hear i-church is going to be launching a renewed and more evangelistic site soon.

In this country, many congregations are using the internet to extend their reach, most notably but not certainly not limited to Trinity Church, New York, and Grace Cathedral, San Francisco, and Mission St. Clare has become a kind of daily chapel for many Episcopalians. The news blog epiScope and this i-magazine The Episcopal Cafe have their own followings. Certainly Barbara Crafton's Geranium Farm is a varied and interesting internet community, especially anchored by her gentle wisdom and appreciation for the daily foibles of the average parish, cat and garden.

There are even churches in the virtual world Second Life.

Walker concludes in his post:

One thing that I sometimes wonder is whether there are places online that function as ‘church’ even though they do not carry that name and probably did not set out to become such a thing. Communities of blogs, bulletin boards and even the comments sections of individual blogs come to mind. I have to say that that has sometimes been my experience. That said I still remain a fan of the old fashioned style ‘bricks and mortar’ real life church. You should go along one time - you might like it.

Which raises an interesting question. For all the variety of resources and experiences that the Church offers on-line, is an internet Church really a community? Back when virtual churches happened mainly over the television airwaves, a Church Ad Project ad once asked a question that is still relevant today. “With all due respect to tele-evangelists,” the banner headline read. “Have you ever seen a Sony give Communion?”

What do you think? How much community is a virtual community? How do brick-and-mortar churches and i-churches relate to one another?

The focus on homosexuality and the work of establishing parallel Anglican structures in the US and in the Anglican Communion has distorted the relationships of the African Church, made a few powerful at the expense of the average African Christian and distracted them from their mission.

Kerry Eleveld writes a detailed article in the Advocate describing how a few powerful leaders, including Archbishop Peter J. Akinola, have taken a cultural taboo and leveraged into political and religious power both at home in Nigeria and in the United States.

Describing the relationship between Akinola and conservative movements in the American Church as a “union,” between wealthy American religious interest groups and an increasingly self-conscious African Church.

Akinola must have felt a strong calling to make such a move. It put him in defiance of a church tradition, dating back to the fourth century, that limits the activity of a bishop to that bishop’s jurisdiction. Put simply: One bishop doesn’t tread on another bishop’s turf...

The Nigerian primate wrote Schori that due to what he called the “unbiblical agenda'' of the Episcopal Church, “'the usual protocol and permissions are no longer applicable.”
His words depict a leader who is secure in the purity of his agenda. Yet as I began to ask questions about this stern spiritual icon, I discovered an all-too-fallible man who has found that condemning gay people is a shrewd career move.

Eleveld says “No doubt [Akinola], like most Nigerians, grew up believing that homosexuality is a sin. But this pastor has let his flock at home suffer while he networks in America, accumulating power, publicity, and—according to informed observers—money.”

The article describes the context of the typical Nigerian attitude towards gays and lesbians. Davis Mac-Illya,founder of Changing Attitudes-Nigeria, says that “We have been part of the community,” but that homosexuality has come under great scrutiny in Nigeria only in the past few years. “It is only now that the government and the church have decided to use us to its political gain.” The result? “Most people get themselves married, but they still know that they are gay or they are lesbians.”

Mac-Illya and eight were jailed and beaten after a rally in the nation's capital, Abuja, and is routinely the subject of threats of harm and even death.

“It frightens me, although it will not make me stop,” says Mac-Iyalla, who now lives in exile in nearby Togo. “Those who are doing this are Christians and members of the church—they think they are working for God by getting rid of me.”

Both Akinola and the Nigerian government have exploited this issue despite the pressing issues of health, education, and the divide between the oil wealth of the nation and the poverty of much of the population.

Nigeria, with about 120 million people, is the most populous country in Africa and among the poorest in the world. Life expectancy is 47 years, roughly 3 million people are infected with HIV, and between 1996 and 2005, nearly 30% of children under age 5 were malnourished. It is a land of dichotomies, where oil flows at about 2.5 million barrels a day—making Nigeria the largest oil producer in Africa—and yet anywhere from 60% to 75% of Nigerians, according to various sources, live on less than a dollar a day.

And yet he strongly backs a proposed Nigerian law, currently under debate, that would prohibit same-sex marriage and call for a five-year imprisonment of anyone who enters into a same-sex marriage or “performs, witnesses, aids, or abets” a such a marriage. The bill even specifies that anyone involved in advocacy for gay and lesbian rights would get five years behind bars. The United Nations, the Bush Administration and 125 religious leaders have condemned the proposed legislation.

Not everyone is happy and not all Anglican leaders in Africa agree with the strategy of increasing influence and prestige at the expense of a minority group and the mission of the Church.

“We debate these things whilst people are dying,” says Bishop Musonda Trevor Selwyn Mwamba of Botswana.

“[Akinola’s] voice has been the icon of the conservative position,” says Mwamba. “[But] Africa is not a monochrome continent. His is the voice that has been given publicity, but it is not the dominant voice.

“The voice which is not heard,” Mwamba continues, “and this is what I would call the real voice of the Anglican Africans, is a silent voice, which simply seeks to live its Christian values without drawing attention to itself. It’s a voice of trying to make ends meet.”

Mwamba sees the real issues of the African people—poverty, the lack of clean drinking water, nutrition, HIV and AIDS, education, women’s rights—being neglected by the small cadre of bishops led by Akinola. “Thousands of kids are dying every day,” Mwamba says. “Now, those are the issues the church should be addressing.”

An other African priest likens the struggle to the hiring of mercenaries.

One anonymous source who is African-born but now works as an Episcopal minister in the United States sees the whole African crusade against homosexuality as someone else’s war. “For me, the primates in Africa are mercenaries who have been hired to fight a war, which in the U.S. they have lost,” he says, adding that Robinson’s consecration was the final straw. “If you are losing a battle, if you don’t have enough manpower to fight, you go and hire mercenaries from somewhere who can fight for you.”

The Rev. Emmanuel Sserwadda, Interim Africa Officer for the Episcopal Church is quoted as saying that while outreach in Nigeria and other central African churches has crippled because funds from Episcopal sources are refused, a handful of American benefactors have increased their influence with Akinola and others with the use of money.

The “influence” Sserwadda describes comes in the form of all-expenses-paid trips to the United States, envelopes that contain several hundred to several thousand dollars—gifts big enough to be meaningful for one person but too small to have serious impact on an entire ministry. The money is nearly impossible to track because it isn’t linked to any specific organization.

“If an American gives an envelope like that, it is not given for the use of the church, it is given to the individual,” says Sserwadda. “Or if not that, someone is flown into the States, and all his bills are paid…. He goes back after doing shopping, and sometimes that person comes with his wife or with his child.…” In other words, it’s a cushy family trip for free.

For U.S. executives, such perks may be common, but by African standards, they are rich. Says Sserwadda: “I am telling you that even [a bishop’s] annual salary cannot facilitate” travel on such a scale.

Sserwadda has not personally witnessed an exchange of money, he says. “But we hear of it,” he adds. “It has been happening.”

Bishop Mwamba concurs: “To a great degree Africa has always been the play field of different powers. The whole issue of sexuality is an American issue that somehow has found itself being played out across the Atlantic in an African conference.”

Read the entire story: The Advocate: Akinola's Power Play

Nigerian Priest, Venerable Geoffrey Chukwuneye, Vicar, All Saints Church, Surulere, Lagos is a rallying point for people of different age groups and gender desirous of finding true happiness and blessings of God.

According to a story in All Africa, by Bonny Amadi, writing in the Lagos Daily Champion,

Chukwunenye does not just wait for people to come to him to seek the face of God but also devotes greater part of his time in searching for lost souls who are confined inside the prison walls, those walking the street as the wretched of the earth as well as people with various diseases and illness who may have given up hope.

The prison evangelism department of his church, hospital outreach and his poverty alleviation programmes have since become a beehive of activities where various food items, clothes, money, property and other items are assembled regularly for the less privileged and needy thereby passing a message that he that oppresses the poor, oppresses his God.

"An apostle of democratic leadership that provides the needs of the common man, this clergy of repute has been an advocate of transparent leadership and on the vanguard to see that the youths who are leaders of tomorrow are taken out of the streets not as political tugs (sic) but as major contributors to the development of our nations economy.

To achieve this, he ensures that special empowerment and training programme are regularly organised for youths to equip them for the challenges of times."

The Independent reporters Jonathan Owen and Sadie Gray discuss the publication by the Church of England of a new magazine for 11 to 16 year old girls.

At first glance it looks like any other teen magazine, in a glossy colour cover and in a handbag size - aimed at "girls with spirit". But don't expect to find any tips on snogging techniques. Grace, to be launched next month, is anattempt by the church to appeal to a fresh audience as attendance figures fall.

Grace is the brainchild of Paul Handley, the editor of the Church Times, who said: "It is for girls who have got a spirit as well as a body and who think there is more to life than shopping."

One big difference, he says, is that the magazine will not contain articles about sex. "It's for 11- to 16-year-old girls, so the assumption is that they are not having sex. We say that the best place for sex is in a marriage, not in a magazine... The message of the magazine is that life at that age is about other things."

An independent focus group of 13-year-old girls from London took a look at Grace last Friday and was, broadly, in favour. Almost oblivious to the religious elements, they welcomed it as an antidote to existing fare aimed at their age group, which they felt is too sexually explicit and promotes super-thin bodies.

Tayra Fuentes, 13, said: "Other magazines make you feel like you're growing up too quickly - you've got to get a boy, got to wear lots of make-up. This one shows there are other things to worry about, like school and friends and sports."

Read the article here

Click here for more on Grace and to download a free copy in pdf.

HT to Dave Walker

As the US and other countries move away from using cash and towards the use of automatic payment of bills, debit and credit cards, churches are joining the cashless society. The Dallas Morning News Sam Hodges, reports on Good Shepherd in Dallas that made the decision to offer parishioners the opportunity to pledge with automatic assessments on their credit cards.

"They want to get the points, and that's fine," said Bobby Brown, the church's business manager.

But is it really Christian to collect frequent flier points on the way to heaven? Are churches that take plastic contributing to the nation's credit card debt crisis? Does automatic assessment rob from the thoughtfulness and spirituality of giving?

One big benefit of automatic giving, the business manager of Good Shepherd and others said, is that it eases what's widely known in church circles as the "summer slump."

People go on vacation and often don't make their scheduled offerings. With automatic credit card or bank draft payment, the church tends to collect more and definitely collects more evenly.

Just as important at the Church of the Good Shepherd, Mr. Brown said, was the need to keep up with how church members prefer to handle their finances.

"We couldn't afford not to do it," he said of the decision to take credit cards.

Does your church use automatic withdrawals, credit or debit cards to collect offerings and tithes?

Read the article here

HT to epiScope

From Gordon Brown's speech before Parliament today, his first as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom:

The Church of England is, and should remain, the established church in England. Establishment does not, however, justify the Prime Minister influencing senior church appointments, including bishops.

The Prime Minister and executive should surrender or limit their powers - the exclusive exercise of which by the Government should have no place in a modern democracy.

These are:
-the power of the executive to declare war;
-the power to request the dissolution of Parliament;
-the power over recall of Parliament;
-the power of the executive to ratify international treaties without decision by Parliament;
-the power to make key public appointments without effective scrutiny;
-the power to restrict Parliamentary oversight of the intelligence services;
-power to choose bishops;
-power in the appointment of judges;
-power to direct prosecutors in individual criminal cases;
-power over the civil service itself;
-and the executive powers to determine the rules governing entitlement to passports and the granting of pardons.

What the Green Paper from the Ministry of Justice says about the Church is here from Thinking Anglicans.

The Bishop of York welcomes the change to method of appointment.

“I welcome the prospect of the Church being the ‘decisive voice in the appointment of bishops’ which the General Synod called for 33 years ago (in 1974).

“I am grateful for the Prime Minister’s thoughtfulness and for his overt support for the role of the Queen and the establishment by law of the Church of England which have been strongly reiterated in the Green Paper.

“The challenge we face as the Church of England is to use the sacred trust, enshrined in law, for the common good of all the people of England...."

Read the York web site here

Listen to a podcast of The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori interviewed by Cathy Lewis on HearSay, a program of WHRO broadcasting over an area from Richmond, VA to the Outer Banks. The Presiding Bishop answers questions of why it is exciting and challenging to be an Anglican in this time, difficulties with change, hopes for the future, legal issues, and being a Christian and scientist in the 21st century. HearSay is a call in show with questions from callers, baptism, combatting pedophilia and abuse, Windsor Report, fallout with churches who are breaking away, the Anglican Communion remaining one body and its importance for mission, growth, and immigration The Presiding Bishop talks about how she balances work and rest in a demanding position.

From the website:
Listen to Segment B: From Pilot to Peacemaker
In the second portion of the show, join Cathy for an intimate conversation with Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, spiritual leader to more than 2.4 million Episcopalians.

Listen to this Podcast here

HearSay website is found here

A Los Angeles Superior Court judge rules that the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles is the rightful owner of the buildings and other property of a conservative La Crescenta congregation that broke away from the diocese last year. The decision against St. Luke's of the Mountains comes barely a week after an appeals court panel in Orange County ruled in favor of the six-county Los Angeles diocese in a similar property dispute with three other local churches.

Complete story at Episcopal Life Online

BBC Radio 4's Sunday programme wants to name a new dahlia. Canon Christopher Hall, Hon. Secretary, Li Tim-Oi Foundation asks everyone to go to the BBC website to vote to name the Dahlia after The Rev. Florence Li Tim-Oi.
He writes:

'FLORENCE LI TIM-OI' is in the short list of 10. The Rev. Florence Li Tim-Oi was the first Anglican woman priest and this is the centenary year of her birth. Please vote for her by going to this website page before noon BST on Friday 6 July.

This will greatly raise the profile of her Foundation in UK.

Every Blessing,
Canon Christopher Hall
Hon Secretary, Li Tim-Oi Foundation

Follow the Dahlia link, Vote Here

As was posted here yesterday, there was another California court ruling in favor of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles.

The Los Angeles Times reports this morning:

The Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles is the rightful owner of the buildings and other property of a conservative La Crescenta congregation that broke away from the diocese last year, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge ruled Tuesday.

The decision by Judge John Shepard Wiley Jr. against St. Luke's of the Mountains came more than a week after an appeals court panel in Orange County ruled in favor of the six-county Los Angeles Diocese in a similar property dispute with three other parishes.

The judge said Tuesday that he could not ignore the higher court's extensive June 25 ruling on comparable issues, but said he expected an appeal in the St. Luke's dispute as well.

"This case is far from over, but it's over in this court," he said.
...
In Tuesday's hearing, Wiley said that before the appellate court's detailed, 77-page ruling, he had been leaning toward a decision for St. Luke's. But after the appellate ruling, he was obliged to defer to the higher court and its analysis of church property precedents in California and elsewhere, he said.
...
Eric Sohlgren, lead attorney for St. Luke's and the other dissident local parishes, said St. Luke's officials were expected to quickly decide whether to appeal. Sohlgren repeated his view that the appellate ruling was contrary to three decades of legal precedent in California and that it probably would be overturned.

But the Rt. Rev. J. Jon Bruno, bishop of the Los Angeles Diocese, said he was happy with Tuesday's decision and eager to reconcile with St. Luke's parishioners and leaders, many of whom he has known for years.

1642 - Vestry system adopted by the legislature although opposed by overseeing bishop in London. It gave powers not given in the England including the right to choose ministers, and to terminate them.

1750s - Baptists sometimes imprisoned for being Baptists.

1776 - Episcopal ministers, as members of the government, required to swear oath of loyalty to the state (and, thereby, disavow their previous loyaly oath to the crown).

1780 - Tax support for Episcopal clergy salary ends.

1869 - African American clergy admitted to Council, but their congregations are not.

1886 - Council creates a "Colored-Missionary District" within the diocese. In 1889 the district is allowed representation at council but only on matters pertaining to race. Clergy representation shrinks.

1895 - Mary E. Jones admitted as candidate for the order of deaconess.

"Parochial reports of 1919 listed thirteen women serving as treasurers in congregations and two as vestry clerks or registrars. By 1930 women were quietly serving on the vestry-equivalents at small missions, and one was listed as a warden in 1936. Women also became paid church professionals."

1927 - Women allowed to serve as trustees of the Church Schools corporation.

1890 - Diocese of Virginia approved creation a diocesan-wide women's auxiliary.

1930 - Women allowed to vote at parish meetings.

1931 - Constitutional amendment of the diocese restores voice and vote to all resident African-American clergy.

1937 - St. Philips first black congregation admitted to full membership.

1949 - "After consulting with the Colored Convocation and having its unanimous support, the diocese erared all mention of race and the convocation from its constitution and canons.

1951 - Virginia Theological Seminary is integrated.

Late 1950s - Camps and conference centers opened to blacks.

1955 - General Convention changes constitution to allow presidents of diocesan women's auxiliaries to have have voice and vote at annual conventions.

1961 - First black enters a St. Stephen's School.

1964 - "Female deacons gained the right to marry."

1967 - "Diocese of Virginia finds itself in deep financial trouble by 1967 as angry conservatives responded to the Episcopal Church's support of civil rights and urban renewal by withholding pledges so that the money would be available for [its] national initiatives.

1967 - Council voted to allow women to serve on vestries.

1974 - VTS faculty voted unanimously in favor of women's ordination.

"Virginia's diocesan, Bishop Robert Hall, attempted to gain permission to regularize [Alison] Cheek's ordination, but the House of Bishops refused his request...."

1976 - General Convention changes canons to allow ordination of women starting in 1977. Several are ordained in the diocese after the first of the year.

2003 - Bishop "Lee revealed that his decision to confirm Gene Robinson's election as bishop of New Hampshire rested not only, or even mostly, on questions of diocesan autonomy but on his understanding of Acts 15, finding in the passage clear support from the early church leader's decision to adapt 'the requirements of Jewish law to the realities of the gentile world" for a vision of an inclusive church."

Source: Edward L. Bond and Joan R. Gunderson, "The Episcopal Church in Virginia, 1607-2007," Virginia Magazine, Vol 115, No 2.

The Washington Times reports,

The [Evangelical Presbyterian Church] was founded in 1981 after a split with the mainline Presbyterian Church over the denomination's increasingly liberal direction.

The EPC started with just 12 churches. In the years since then, it has grown to include 188 congregations and 75,000 members.
...
Most EPC churches are either newly planted or converts from other denominations, notably the nation's largest Presbyterian denomination, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

That church boasts 2.4 million members and 11,100 congregations but continues to struggle after three decades of declining membership. The denomination also has wrestled with disputes over same-sex "marriage" and ordination of homosexual ministers.

We, of course, don't hear about the small denominations that folded or merged. Denominations that start from a tiny base - and have survived - more than likely are experiencing high growth. No doubt PCUSA has lost some members due to controversial issues - and gained or held onto others for the same reason. But what newspapers rarely mention, when pointing out the declining membership in the mainline denominations, is that conservative denominations tend to have higher birthrates, and in mainline denominations the birthrate hovers at or below replacement.

Besides, PCUSA isn't merely following the times. It is following its moral compass - even if that means those more attracted to religion are turned off by the change in direction.

Liberal readers will not be surprised that The Telegraph resists changes in the relationship between the Church of England and the state. In an article titled "Biggest change since Henry VIII and the Pope" Jonathan Petre writes

The decision by Gordon Brown to allow the Church of England to choose its own bishops for the first time since Henry VIII was broadly welcomed by Church leaders yesterday.

But the reform - one of the biggest changes in the relationship between Church and state since the Tudor king fell out with the Pope - will reopen the fraught issue of disestablishment.

It will also dismay many Anglicans that such a major reform could have been announced with so little consultation or public debate.
...
The row will surface next week when the General Synod meets in York as a debate on senior ecclesiastical appointments is already on the agenda.
...
Welcoming the proposals, Dr Sentamu said in his statement that Mr Brown had consulted both him and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, about his intentions.

He said he was "grateful" for the Prime Minister's backing of the continuing role of the Queen and the "establishment by law of the Church of England."

But some clerics said that the removal of Downing Street from the process of choosing bishops and deans could further concentrate power in the hands of a few senior prelates.

Canon David Holding, a Synod member, said: "This goes to the heart of the Church/state relationship. It has huge implications.

"It will threaten the diversity of senior appointments, and could well lead to the old boy network running riot."

If a governance role by an democratically elected government did ensure against the concentration of power in the hands of a few in the church, then what does that say about the polity of provinces in the Anglican Communion? If the church is not established, for instance, should the polity be one where the laity and clergy have a large voice in the election of bishops and the provincial bishop as in the American model?

Santificarnos:

Zachariah Jok Char was only five years old when he walked 1,000 miles for the first time. One of the Lost Boys and Girls of Sudan, he braved the desert heat and attacks by lions and hyenas, without shelter, food, water or adult protection.
....
On June 16, Char walked in a procession of a different sort: down the aisle of Grace Episcopal Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to his ordination to the priesthood.
...
More than 180 people attended the Saturday morning service officiated by Bishop Robert Gepert of the Episcopal Diocese of Western Michigan. Both a drum and organ accompanied the singing, which along with the readings and prayers alternated between Dinka, Nuer, Arabic and English languages.
...
To prepare for his ordination in the U.S., Char received instruction through correspondence courses and residential weeks at Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry in Pittsburgh, the only seminary that provided education in Char's native language and culture....

Thanks to Standing Firm for the link.

"The world's most powerful Anglican leader," as Ruth Gledhill calls Peter Akinola, shares his thoughts with the Times Online religion blogger in his first interview with a British national newspaper. While the tone of the article belies the author's sympathies, it nonetheless paints a compelling portrait of the Nigeran archbishop, his upbringing, and the challenges he faces as his own country becomes more divided over religious issues. Muslims and Christians, who in many parts of the country live in harmony, are starting to have problems in other areas of Nigeria.

The bigger the Church gets, the fewer conflicts Christians will face. “That is what we believe. So we have put ourselves into the work of mission very seriously.” The era of bishops living like lords in their own little empires has long gone. “Every bishop in his area is an evangelist,” he says.

When his predecessor, Archbishop Abiodun Adetiloye, stepped down, there were 76 dioceses. He had trebled the size of the church by planting a bishop in every city. “I was the Dean then. We did not know who would be Primate. I said, Baba has finished the work, everything is now done, allelujah! He said, Peter, that is a big mistake you are making because the work is yet to begin. As God would have it, I then became the Primate and we set a vision for ourselves as to how to carry on with this great task.

From the interview it becomes clear that Akinola's objection to the Episcopal Church and other provinces that are moving toward full inclusion of gays and lesbians is that he fears we will impose our view on the Communion as a whole.

The demand from the West that his Church liberalise he sees as a gross reimposition of an old imperalism. “For God’s sake let us be. When America invades Afghanistan it is in the name of world peace. When Nigeria moves to Biafra it is an invasion. When England takes the Gospel to another country, it is mission. When Nigeria takes it to America it is an intrusion. All this imperialistic mentality, it is not fair.”

HT to Chuck Blanchard.

The entire article by Gledhill is here.

At a "reconciliation Eucharist" held July 4 in Houston, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori talked about the relationship between freedom and reconciliation, saying that neither is fully experienced despite being "fully around us."

"We live in a world that is not yet whole, and we understand our vocation to be its healing or repair," she said in a sanctuary filled with both black and white Episcopalians. "Our Jewish brothers and sisters call it 'Tikkun Alam,' the repair of the world."

A healed world is an ancient dream, the presiding bishop said during her sermon. Telling stories of both joy and grief is part of the healing process.

"Over and over and over again, the prophets railed against those who brought greater divisions to the world, those who bring more injustice, those whose deeds sow destruction," she said.

Jefferts Schori said there are many kinds of reconciliations — "between individuals, within families, among nations, between politicians and, yes, even theological factions."

She also told the congregation gathered at at Christ Church Cathedral in downtown Houston that when one is oppressed, all are oppressed. Also in attendance were members of the Union of Black Episcopalians, who were gathered for their 39th annual meeting.

Read the whole thing in the Houston Chronicle.

Bishop Geralyn Wolf has told a priest who professes to be both a Christian and a Muslim that she is "not to exercise any of the responsibilities and privileges of an Episcopal priest or deacon" for the next year. The case of the Rev. Ann Holmes Redding had become a cause célèbre among conservative bloggers, but was largely ignored by the mainstream media.

In an email to her diocesan clergy, members of the diocesan council and the standing committee, Bishop Wolf wrote:

As many of you know, The Rev. Dr. Ann Holmes Redding is an Episcopal priest who has recently professed her faith in Islam. Dr. Redding is canonically resident in the Diocese of Rhode Island, though she has not served here for over twenty years.

After meeting with her I issued a Pastoral Direction giving her the opportunity to reflect on the doctrines of the Christian faith, her vocation as a priest, and what I see as the conflicts inherent in professing both Christianity and Islam. During the next year she is not to exercise any of the responsibilities and privileges of an Episcopal priest or dea