Evidence continues to accumulate that the brain rewards certain behaviors and that we respond to those incentives. The Washington Post reports:

The results were showing that when the volunteers placed the interests of others before their own, the generosity activated a primitive part of the brain that usually lights up in response to food or sex. Altruism, the experiment suggested, was not a superior moral faculty that suppresses basic selfish urges but rather was basic to the brain, hard-wired and pleasurable.

Their 2006 finding that unselfishness can feel good lends scientific support to the admonitions of spiritual leaders such as Saint Francis of Assisi, who said, "For it is in giving that we receive." But it is also a dramatic example of the way neuroscience has begun to elbow its way into discussions about morality and has opened up a new window on what it means to be good.
...
The more researchers learn, the more it appears that the foundation of morality is empathy. Being able to recognize -- even experience vicariously -- what another creature is going through was an important leap in the evolution of social behavior. And it is only a short step from this awareness to many human notions of right and wrong, says Jean Decety, a neuroscientist at the University of Chicago.

The research enterprise has been viewed with interest by philosophers and theologians, but already some worry that it raises troubling questions. Reducing morality and immorality to brain chemistry -- rather than free will -- might diminish the importance of personal responsibility. Even more important, some wonder whether the very idea of morality is somehow degraded if it turns out to be just another evolutionary tool that nature uses to help species survive and propagate.
...
Joshua D. Greene, a Harvard neuroscientist and philosopher, said multiple experiments suggest that morality arises from basic brain activities. Morality, he said, is not a brain function elevated above our baser impulses. Greene said it is not "handed down" by philosophers and clergy, but "handed up," an outgrowth of the brain's basic propensities.
...
Marc Hauser, another Harvard researcher, has used cleverly designed psychological experiments to study morality. He said his research has found that people all over the world process moral questions in the same way, suggesting that moral thinking is intrinsic to the human brain, rather than a product of culture.

Compare these results to the strong evidence that sexual preference is hard wired. That, to my mind, is not an argument that homosexuality is moral; that argument has to be made on other grounds. Otherwise, we have given away the notion that we are responsible for any behaviors that are preference driven.

What about this evidence that moral decisionmaking is brain chemistry driven? It could be that the cultural and religious proscriptions of homosexuality have their roots in survival of the species through propogation. These mores do not fit today's world.

Deviancy! Immorality! Racism! If you read enough of the papers—not to mention the bloggers-- this is what one might think the Episcopal Church stands for. Have you heard? The Episcopal Church is swinging the door open to deviants! Also, six Anglican bishops want Canadian Anglicans want to approve immorality so they won't be distracted from global warming. And don't forget, when the Executive Council disagrees with African Archbishops, it's racism.

Dinesh D'Souza, a conservative columnist, Robert and Karen Rishwain Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and a popular public speaker for conservative causes, whose reputation as a race-baiter was established by his book, The End of Racism, trains his animus on gays, lesbians and the Episcopal Church in his most recent blog entry. Under the heading "Attention Social Deviants! The Episcopal Church Wants You," D'Souza likens the Church's acceptance of gays and lesbians to the acceptance of child molesters and serial killers.

“--Convicts Who Have Been Found Guilty of Violent Crimes (more marginalized now than ever before)
“--Child Molesters (marginalized even within the prison population!)
“--Serial Killers (admired in the movies, but otherwise very marginalized since at least the days of Jack the Ripper)
“--Pedophiles (so marginalized that even gays keep their distance, and all for holding that there's nothing magical about being "of age")
“--Polygamists (marginalized for holding the view, "Why Stop at Two?")
“--Skinheads (more marginalized today than the groups they seek to marginalize)
“This is hardly a complete list, and I'm sure I'll be hearing shortly from nudists, swingers, wife-swappers, Nazis, and other groups I've left off my list.”

So, in one swipe D'Souza includes a faithfully partnered gay man with child molesters and serial killers. Does this make any sense at all? Only if one's goal is to stir up rage. Keep in mind that D'Souza's career has been financed since his college days by the same foundations that keep the Institute on Religion and Democracy in business. Not only does this kind of thing make happy people who agree with D'Souza, he knows that it will illicit rage from some quarters of the people he opposes.

D'Souza is certainly not alone in this approach.

Washington Times columnist Mark Steyn claims that the plea of six Anglican bishops to this weeks General Synod to allow for some provision to bless same-sex couples is another fashionable stand along with their concerns for Global Warming, both of which lead to global moral depravity.

And just last week, Chris Sugden of the Anglican Maintream says disagreeing with certain African Archbishops is racist. It was all well and good, he tells us, for the 1998 Lambeth Conference to condemn genocide in Rwanda, but now the tables are turned when it comes to the ordination of openly gay bishops, Americans should be quiet and listen. “Now,” Sugden says, “something that was regarded as acceptable when dealing with Africans is not acceptable to the Americans. It sniffs of racism.”

To make this analysis work, one must equate the deaths of 800,000 Rwandans in the late 1990's—and what this horror did to the Church and the people of Rwanda-- to the ordination of one man in 2003 in New Hampshire.

By themselves, these statements seem irrational. Most faithful Episcopalians ignore them, perhaps with a sigh and a roll of the eyes. Small shots across the bow don't stop the vast majority of the faithful from going about the business of living faithfully. But taken together, these statements are 'red meat' for a loyal base—many of whom are not even Episcopalian—in a nasty war of words. And when ideas don't work, exaggeration, smear and outright lies will.

And the worst part is this: most of the time it's not about the Episcopal Church or the Anglican Communion per se. For most of these writers, it about using the Church as a symbol of all that is wrong with the world from their point of view. Which sure beats writing about what's right.

Stop Trying to 'Save' Africa is the challenge by Uzodinma Iweala, writing in this past Sunday's Washington Post. Although thankful for all assistance from the wider world, Africans "...do question whether aid is genuine or given in the spirit of affirming one's cultural superiority."

It seems that these days, wracked by guilt at the humanitarian crisis it has created in the Middle East, the West has turned to Africa for redemption. Idealistic college students, celebrities such as Bob Geldof and politicians such as Tony Blair have all made bringing light to the dark continent their mission. They fly in for internships and fact-finding missions or to pick out children to adopt in much the same way my friends and I in New York take the subway to the pound to adopt stray dogs.

This is the West's new image of itself: a sexy, politically active generation whose preferred means of spreading the word are magazine spreads with celebrities pictured in the foreground, forlorn Africans in the back. Never mind that the stars sent to bring succor to the natives often are, willingly, as emaciated as those they want to help.

Such campaigns, however well intentioned, promote the stereotype of Africa as a black hole of disease and death. News reports constantly focus on the continent's corrupt leaders, warlords, "tribal" conflicts, child laborers, and women disfigured by abuse and genital mutilation. These descriptions run under headlines like "Can Bono Save Africa?" or "Will Brangelina Save Africa?" The relationship between the West and Africa is no longer based on openly racist beliefs, but such articles are reminiscent of reports from the heyday of European colonialism, when missionaries were sent to Africa to introduce us to education, Jesus Christ and "civilization."

Read it all here.

Reuters has a substantial article reminding us of the dilemmas we face in a world where medicine can extend "life" in quotes:

"The ability of medicine to keep people alive for such long periods of time -- despite their best efforts to die -- has changed the way people perceive the end of life," said Susan desJardins, a pediatric cardiologist and member of the ethics committee at Arnold Palmer Hospital in Orlando, Florida.
...
"Our hospital attempted a few years ago to write a policy on futility," Mary Ruckdeschel, a social worker from Barnes Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, said at the Georgetown course.

"We were never able to do this because people could not agree on the definition of futility."

If you missed the fine report on hospital chaplains in the New York Times earlier this week, check it out here.

Earlier this year, 17 prominent evangelical leaders and scholars issued “An Evangelical Declaration Against Torture: Protecting Human Rights in an Age of Terror.” As Peter Steinfels of the New York Times notes, while the document received a great deal of attention when issued, it has largely been forgotten:

Four months have passed since a group of 17 prominent evangelical leaders and scholars issued “An Evangelical Declaration Against Torture: Protecting Human Rights in an Age of Terror.”

. . .

Will everyone who has read this document, or even heard of it, please raise his hand?

Well, you’re forgiven. There are reasons, unfortunate perhaps but understandable, that the declaration hasn’t received the attention it deserves.

Not that it went entirely unnoticed, particularly back in March, when the board of the National Association of Evangelicals all but unanimously endorsed it. This endorsement, by a body claiming to represent 45,000 evangelical Protestant churches with 30 million members, was quickly reported as another sign of an important shift in evangelicalism’s political stance. For several years, leading evangelicals have been pressing the movement to widen its public agenda to embrace issues like poverty and global warming alongside standing concerns about abortion, religious symbols in public spaces and sexual norms.

But in March, the declaration also drew immediate fire from other religious conservatives. Daniel R. Heimbach, a Southern Baptist professor of ethics at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, called the evangelical declaration a “diatribe” that was “confused and dangerous,” mainly because it failed to pinpoint exactly where coercive interrogation crossed into torture.

Mark D. Tooley, a leader of the neoconservative Institute on Religion and Democracy, quickly dismissed the declaration as the work of “pseudo-pacifist academics and antiwar activists” who were contributing to “a barely disguised crusade against the U.S. war against terror.”

The initial flurry of attention has died down, although people who want to use the declaration for church or classroom discussions continue to download it from the Web site www.evangelicalsforhumanrights.org.

As Steinfels observes, however, the document might have had an impact after all. Recent polling by the Pew Research Center shows that those who worship every week--including Evangelicals--are more likely to oppose torture than those who don't, which suggests that religious voters are susceptible to a purely religious argument on issues like torture:

The survey found that in every religious group, those who said they worshiped weekly appeared more restrictive toward torture than less observant believers, although the difference was modest. Dr. Green considered this finding “a bit counterintuitive” because weekly worshipers “tend to be more Republican, conservative and supportive of the Bush administration than their co-religionists” — traits otherwise associated with more permissive attitudes toward torture.

Not surprisingly, the poll data showed that white evangelicals were somewhat more permissive toward torture than other religious groups. But in Dr. Green’s fine-grained effort to sort out religious identity and weekly worship from other factors like party identification, political ideology and views on the Iraq war, white evangelicals also appeared the most likely to have their views modified on religious grounds alone.

Does this mean that “An Evangelical Declaration Against Torture” is a potentially influential document? Its original authors and the scores of significant evangelical leaders who have signed on to it along with the National Association of Evangelicals obviously hope so. But this is also an act of conscience, to which they were compelled regardless of its impact.

“What we developed was a pretty sizable teaching document,” writes David P. Gushee, a professor of moral philosophy at Union University and the principal drafter of the declaration, who has compared it to a papal encyclical. But in the end, he said, the drafters’ motivation was simply “to bear Christian witness.”

Read it all here.

So did this document make a difference? How can members of the faith community most effectively address issues like torture and war? How do we measure success? Is being a Christian witness sufficient reason to issue such a document?

Related: Bush signs new executive order on interrogation methods.

A reporter for the LA Times looks at how the stories he covered affected him and his spiritual journey. William Lobdell relates how he went from enthusiastic believer to despair over the actions of the leaders and members of churches, especially as they covered up sex abuse by clergy.

When Times editors assigned me to the religion beat, I believed God had answered my prayers.

As a serious Christian, I had cringed at some of the coverage in the mainstream media. Faith frequently was treated like a circus, even a freak show.

I wanted to report objectively and respectfully about how belief shapes people's lives. Along the way, I believed, my own faith would grow deeper and sturdier.

But during the eight years I covered religion, something very different happened.

Sexually abusive priests, in all denominations, who are moved around and allowed to continue to work as clergy; fake healing ministries, and the prosperity gospel purveyors gradually sapped his faith.

Lobdell concludes:

My soul, for lack of a better term, had lost faith long ago — probably around the time I stopped going to church. My brain, which had been in denial, had finally caught up.

Clearly, I saw now that belief in God, no matter how grounded, requires at some point a leap of faith. Either you have the gift of faith or you don't. It's not a choice. It can't be willed into existence. And there's no faking it if you're honest about the state of your soul.

This "de-evangelization," as I call it, continues in all faith groups. Wherever power and secrecy are allowed, people will arise to use it for their own purposes and not the purposes of holiness.

Read the entire article here.

Recommended reading for anti-racism work is Silent Racism: How Well-Meaning White People Perpetuate the Racial Divide by Barbara Trepagnier. It is discussed by Marc Speir in the Texas State News Service.

Barbara Trepagnier says that people should replace the question of whether or not they are racist with asking themselves how they are racist.

"It’s a much more fruitful question," Trepagnier, a sociology professor at Texas State University, said. "We’re this way because of the stereotypes we all grew up with and the ideas in our head have everything to do with our actions. My point is that those stereotypes matter."

Trepagnier argues that every person harbors some racist thoughts and feelings, and that the acknowledgements of these attitudes are important to changing racial inequality.

The 66 year-old recently celebrated Paradigm Publishers’ March 30 paperback release of her book entitled, Silent Racism: How Well-Meaning White People Perpetuate the Racial Divide, as it continues to find further shelf space in bookstores nationwide.

Trepagnier says while blacks can act with prejudice, there is a difference between being prejudiced and being racist.

"I’m referring to systemic racism," Trepagnier said. "Blacks can certainly act with prejudice. But with whites as the majority in our society, racism becomes an institutional structure practiced by the dominant group."

Her book contends that “silent racism” fosters routine actions not recognized by an individual as racist, but upholds the status quo.

Trepagnier says that this form of superiority remains prevalent in American society, and is a major reason African-Americans continue to struggle. Blacks are outperformed by their white counterparts in most social demographics, including factors such as education, employment and income. She says that whites that deny the existence of racism or dismiss it as unimportant are often protecting white privilege.

Trepagnier says that some whites become detached from the race issue while others are so concerned with it that they become apprehensive about it, avoiding even the mention of the topic. In both cases, this passive stance silently provides the racist actions of others an endorsement, or worse, encouragement.

General Convention resolutions encourage church leaders to take anti-racism training and all candidates for ordination are required to study this issue in their formation.

Have you participated in anti-racism training yet?

Information on The Episcopal Church's anti-racism program is here

Last week, USA Today reported on the growing trend of doctors' refusing to treat patients for religious reasons. The phenomenon goes beyond abortion and fetal tissue research and includes such matters as prescribing Viagra or performing in-vitro fertilization. At issue in many of these cases is gay discrimination:

The collision between religious freedom and rules against discrimination occurs when physicians perform procedures selectively, offering them to some patients but withholding them from others, says Jill Morrison, legal counsel to the National Women's Law Center.

This year in a case generating wide interest, the California Supreme Court will hear a first-of-its-kind lawsuit: fertility treatment denied to a lesbian.

In Washington state, a gay man recently settled out of court with a doctor who refused to prescribe him Viagra.

"He told me he had prescribed certain drugs for married people, but he wasn't going to do that for me," Jonathan Shuffield says. "It was very painful having the trust broken between my doctor and me."

Patrick Gillen, legal counsel for the Thomas More Law Center, a Michigan-based public interest law firm that defends religious freedom, says the political clout of gays and lesbians has led to a situation that "is ripe for conflict." Gillen says no doctors should be required to perform procedures that violate their religious faith, especially "if the patients can get the treatment elsewhere."

The whole story is here, and seems to be a sidebar for a related story on the California court case, reported here.

Edited to add: This is the topic in the Washington Post's "On Faith" feature this week. Check it out here.

Scott Gunn at Inclusive Church blog wonders about all the rumors, plots and secrets and how perhaps we need to laugh at ourselves when we get caught up in them. He writes:

Our church has become a place where we need to learn to hide our work? We need to master the skill of techno-obfuscation? This veil of secrecy should reveal something to all of us. God's love is open and transparent. In the Gospels, just as in life, the good guys don't plot in secret. In life, as in James Bond movies, all the plotting happens secretly, sometimes even in fake volcanoes. Shouldn't it tell us something that these dissenters gather in secrecy, to engage in secret business? Contrast that, if you will, with the progressive side. Our plans for Lambeth 2008 are right out in the open. Anyone can come to a meeting of the St. Anne's network, and the minutes are posted for all to see. We meet in a church, not in a fake volcano.

Here's my idea. Let's talk about rumors, but only for humor and jest. We could use a few laughs in the Communion. And let's stop the schoolyard whispering. It's not polite, and it's probably not God's love at work.

Seems like there is something in the Bible about things done in secret ---

Read Scott's blog here

Anita Roddick, founder of the Body Shop, who died on September 10, is being honored around the world for her life commitment to ethical, cruelty free business practices. Initially uneasy with religion, she believed that "anybody who has a religious inclination has no sense of rationale or intellectual understanding and therefore should be dismissed." She came to see the value of spiritual development bringing about material change to the way we live and act - and she was surprised and delighted by her experience of the annual Greenbelt Festival, commenting that its practical vitality and intellectual energy was far from the stereotypes of Christianity she had often met, and the stuffiness of the church she had personally encountered.

Tributes have been pouring in from across the world for green and ethical business pioneer Anita Roddick, founder of the Body Shop chain and supporter of Fair Trade, who died on 10 September 2007 aged 64 after a major brain haemorrhage. Ekklesia reports on Dame Anita, the daughter of Italian immigrants, who set up the first Body Shop in Brighton in 1976 - when its approach was regarded as radical and new. She pioneered cruelty-free beauty products and turned them into a highly profitable enterprise.

Simon Barrow, co-director of the Christian think tank Ekklesia, said that the best way to honour the memory of Anita Roddick was to take forward the case for corporate responsibility as a human obligation, not a luxury option.

"It is easy to be cynical about 'ethical business' now that it has become mainstream and trendy", he commented. "Of course there is a lot of hot air around it. But developing alternative practices for doing business as if people and the planet matters is a tough call. Roddick recognised that massive injustice in trade, corporate greed and unfair debt often confounded efforts to take the world in a different direction. But she wasn't daunted or deceived. Nor should we be."

Ekklesia has also praised Roddick for bringing people together from different belief and non-belief backgrounds to work for a better world in spite of their differences.

"She didn't feel easy with 'religion' and she was highly critical of a lot of established religious institutions", said Barrow. "But Anita Roddick also saw the value of spiritual development bringing about material change to the way we live and act - and she was surprised and delighted by her experience of the annual Greenbelt festival, commenting that its practical vitality and intellectual energy was far from the stereotypes of Christianity she had often met, and the stuffiness of the church she had personally encountered."

Speaking to the Church Times newspaper ahead of her appearance at the Greenbelt Christian arts festival back in 2004, Dame Anita Roddick - who died yesterday - declared at the time: “What’s wonderful about being my age is having to face your prejudices."

She continued: "I had no idea how big Greenbelt was. I had no idea how organised it was; how free it was; how joyful it was. And I had no idea that there was such a strong activist, trade justice plank in its platform."

She said: “It’s really hard, when you have had your antennae up for most of these movements, to have completely ignored it. I have fallen for the zeitgeist that says anybody who has a religious inclination has no sense of rationale or intellectual understanding and therefore should be dismissed."

“I am cheering the Greenbelt festival from the top of every bloody mountain…for me, it’s like a heartbeat. And it’s youth. I’m ashamed of my bloody prejudices, but I’m delighted to be a convert. I find it wonderful.”

Read more here and here.

Greenbelt Festival website here

Fallibilism as a philosophy was advanced by Kwame Anthony Appiah in his Commencement address at Swarthmore in May 2006. Perhaps it applies to Anglicans.

Appiah began his address:

Often I find myself seated next to a stranger on an airplane who asks me what I do. Sometimes I say I'm a philosopher. The commonest responses are:

(1) An expression that combines boredom and alarm, and the end of the conversation (which leaves you with the pretzels and the soda, and the really fascinating article from the Review of Metaphysics you've been meaning to get to for a couple of years) and

(2) "So, what's your philosophy?"

To that question, I usually reply: "Everything is much more complicated than you first thought." In philosophy at least, that really is my philosophy. So, I can tell the truth and we can both get back to those wonderfully inviting pretzels.

The truth, I said: I happen to be a great believer in objective truth. But one way in which things get more complicated than you thought is that I am also a great believer in what philosophers call fallibilism. Fallibilism is the idea that our knowledge is imperfect, provisional, subject to revision in the face of new evidence. Fallibilism says: Here's what I know to a moral certainty, know well enough to live by. But I could be wrong.

He continues on the subject of tolerance:

Yet tolerance, too, is more complicated than it looks. We can't suppose that mindless tolerance of cruelty and repression is a virtue. Yet how much evil is done by fanatics who can't countenance the possibility that their beliefs, sanctioned by ideological or religious authority, might conceivably be mistaken! Here, then, is one of the uncompleted tasks of our era: to spread fallibilism - not skepticism about the truth or indifference to it, but just the glimmering recognition that one may not be in full possession of it - from the empyrean of scientific fact to the hardpan of moral conviction: to make it as common as Coca-Cola. People say that common sense is the ability to see what's in front of your eyes. But even madmen and extremists can see what's in front of their eyes; so, again, I think it's more complicated than that. Common sense, I'd prefer to say, involves the ability to see what's in front of the other fellow's eyes. That's what makes it something we might have in common.

Read the address here.

Read more on Appiah here

The New York Times business section highlights the increease in Fair Trade programs around the world. Although there remain questions of certification and participation, the movement to Fair Trade products are an increasing part of the economy.

Fair Trade in Bloom by Andrew Downie:
Rafael de Paiva was skeptical at first. If he wanted a “fair trade” certification for his coffee crop, the Brazilian farmer would have to adhere to a long list of rules on pesticides, farming techniques, recycling and other matters. He even had to show that his children were enrolled in school.

“I thought, ‘This is difficult,’” recalled the humble farmer. But the 20 percent premium he recently received for his first fair trade harvest made the effort worthwhile, Mr. Paiva said, adding, it “helped us create a decent living.”

More farmers are likely to receive such offers, as importers and retailers rush to meet a growing demand from consumers and activists to adhere to stricter environmental and social standards.

Read it all here

The Episcopal Church, through Episcopal Relief and Development, supports Fair Trade and offers a variety of blends of coffee. Pura Vida is the supplier for the coffee and they have teas and cocoa available as well. Does your church use Bishops Blend or other Fair Trade coffee and tea?

An editorial in the Anglican Journal begins by recounting the history of a case of alleged abuse against students at a school connected to the Anglican Church of Canada. Leanne Larmondin, the author, then lists some specific recommendations for all churches in terms of how they work with institutions inside and alongside them.

First a bit of the history and background of the allegations being made against Grenville Christian College and the way the Anglican Church of Canada responded:

"Initially, when the story broke in the secular media, the church tried to distance itself from the school, saying there was ‘no direct relationship at all between the Anglican Church of Canada and Grenville Christian College.’ Yes, church officials said, three of the former headmasters were Anglican priests, including the most recent holder of that office, but they were there in a private capacity. Yes, the school used Anglican prayer books and hymnbooks, but it used other forms of worship too. Yes, bishops and other Anglican church dignitaries presided at ceremonial functions, but church officials are invited to many events."

Later on, Larmondin makes some specific recommendations:

What lessons should the church have learned from the residential schools affair?

For one, the church ought to be scrupulous about the groups with whom it associates. Regardless of whether the Anglican church was a founding body of Grenville, there appeared to be a close relationship between church and school that was cemented with the regular worship “in the Anglican tradition” in the school’s chapel, with the regular visits from church dignitaries and the Anglican flag that flew on the campus. Any rumours of misconduct at the institution should have been investigated. It was not a matter of whether the school was an Anglican school, it was thought of as such and the church must protect its integrity and care for society’s most vulnerable members.

Additionally, an Anglican priest on leave is still a priest. Although the allegations have not been proven in court, the strange stories about cultish practices at the school did reach the diocese; failure by the diocese to investigate those claims when the school headmaster was a member of the clergy seems pure folly.

A week or so after the story broke in the media, the church did make an effort to redeem itself. By mid-September, it appeared to be making more of a pastoral effort, with the bishop meeting with former students to hear their complaints and the diocese launching an investigation of the incidents.

Read the rest of the editorial here.

New research suggests that those who say the believe they are moral are likely to take extreme actions. The Washington Post reports:

Scott Reynolds and Tara Ceranic of the University of Washington said their research highlights the idea that people with exceptionally strong convictions about their moral goodness are likely to follow extreme courses of action because they can convince themselves that whatever they do is good. When the right course of action is ambiguous, they added in a paper published in the November issue of the Journal of Applied Psychology, such people are likely to gravitate to opposite ends of a range of behaviors. When there is wide social consensus that something is wrong, they tend to conform to social norms.

When the researchers tested their hypothesis on managers who were asked to make a judgment call involving a conscientious employee who needed to go home early one day, they found that the managers who believed most strongly that they were good people came to extreme conclusions: They either let the employee off for the rest of the day with full pay, or insisted the employee stay and work full hours. The managers who did not think they were particularly good people tended to reach moderate conclusions: They had the employee finish some work and then leave early.

Robin Hanson has some thoughts and a link to the research at Overcoming Bias.

Does this research have any implications for the church?

AP science writer Malcolm Ritter yesterday reported, " Scientists have made ordinary human skin cells take on the chameleon-like powers of embryonic stem cells, a startling breakthrough that might someday deliver the medical payoffs of embryo cloning without the controversy."

The method promises not just to be a substitute for embryo cloning but to be superior to it medically and ethically:

The new work shows that the direct reprogramming technique can also produce versatile cells that are genetically matched to a person. But it avoids several problems that have bedeviled the cloning approach.

For one thing, it doesn't require a supply of unfertilized human eggs, which are hard to obtain for research and subjects the women donating them to a surgical procedure. Using eggs also raises the ethical questions of whether women should be paid for them.

In cloning, those eggs are used to make embryos from which stem cells are harvested. But that destroys the embryos, which has led to political opposition from President Bush, the Roman Catholic church and others.

Those were "show-stopping ethical problems," said Laurie Zoloth, director of Northwestern University's Center for Bioethics, Science and Society.

The new work, she said, "redefines the ethical terrain."

Richard Doerflinger, deputy director of pro-life activities for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, called the new work "a very significant breakthrough in finding morally unproblematic alternatives to cloning. ... I think this is something that would be readily acceptable to Catholics."

The story is frontpage news today at the Washington Post and the New York Times. Another article in the Washinton Post asks whether this vindicates President Bush's policy of refusing to fund embryonic stem cell research. The NYT also looks at the politics, reminding readers that Bush "steadfastly maintained that scientists would come up with an alternative method of developing embryonic stem cells, one that did not involve killing embryos. Critics were skeptical."

Ekklesia reports that electronics workers in Mexico are regularly subjected to denial of labour rights and dignity by companies - practices which needed to be challenged and changed, says a new report from the England and Wales Catholic development agency, CAFOD.

The report from the Catholic Fund for Overseas Development, which operates autonnomously but is recognised by the Catholic Bishops Conference of England and Wales, says workers are exposed to toxic materials.

It also claims that safety rules are ignored, contributing to the alarming incidence of accidents, and it says workers are denied other rights, including being banned from joining trade unions or trade unions being taken over and controlled by companies.

CAFOD's 'Clean Up Your Computer' campaign in 2004 persuaded leading electronics manufacturers like Dell and IBM to sign up to Codes of Conduct aimed at improving conditions for workers across their supply chain.

AFOD's partner in Mexico, CEREAL who wrote the report, found disturbing cases including a woman whose hands were severed by a company machine because of a fault with the machine Other workers described how they were still worried about exposure to toxic materials and requests to switch roles were turned down.

One woman worker died after being hit by a car in the work car park. Her family were asked to withdraw their compensation claim against the transportation company but after CEREAL's intervention the transportation company relented and have paid compensation to her family.

Electronics equipment is Mexico's main export and the industry employs 400,000 workers who earning on average 100 pesos (US$ 9.25) a day. The industry was worth US$46 billion in 2006 and Mexico is the tenth largest exporter of electronics equipment in the world.

The report also reveals that some workers were forced to stand during the whole of their twelve hour shifts and requests for chairs were denied. Even a six-month pregnant woman was forced to stand for the whole of a seven hour shift. The report also highlights other bizarre rights abuses including employees being asked in interviews if they had tattoos and another worker described how she was asked about her sex life during an interview.

Read it all here.

Allison Schrager writes:

Regardless of how you feel about why we are in Afghanistan, many of us would hope to improve the daily lives of those who live there. But how can we help the citizens of a country so far away? How do we even know what they might need? I could join the military or find work with an NGO there. But really, I am far too selfish to do either of these things. I have endless admiration for those who are willing to disrupt their lives and put them on the line. I, however, want to be able to offer help from the comfort of my own home.

and

But it is hard to deny that aid can do harm when given too enthusiastically to countries in need. However, putting the ever-sceptical economist in me aside, the fact remains that I do want to help people in Afghanistan. How can I do this effectively, and without offending my professional sensibilities?

The best way is to find an organisation that has local knowledge of the country and a thorough understanding of its economic needs. Also, target individuals and leave the big macro-development projects to the government and large aid organisations. I find the Global Partnership for Afghanistan (GPFA) appealing. It is a New York-based charity, founded by Afghan-Americans and Americans, which offers micro-loans to Afghan land owners to plant fruit and nut orchards. It also provides agricultural training and support to the Afghan farmers, particularly women. The group's goal is to spur economic development by empowering individual farmers with a source of income and food.

I usually recoil at talk of agricultural subsidies. But in this case the farmers receive micro-loans, which require some discipline and accountability. Micro-loans, when administered properly, provide an institution that developing countries generally lack.

Read it all and More Intelligent Life.

A new study from a University of Utah law professor shows a high correlation between concentrations of pay day lenders, notorious for high interest rates, and the political dominance of Christian conservatives.

Payday lenders, creditors that charge interest rates averaging about 450 percent, are more prevalent in Conservative Christian states, according to a new study coauthored by University of Utah law professor Christopher Peterson. The study, which is based on the most comprehensive database of payday lender locations yet compiled, maps a surprising relationship between populations of Christian conservatives and the proliferation of payday lenders.

“We started this project hoping to find out more about the spatial location of payday lenders and were surprised when a pattern reflecting a correlation with the American Bible Belt and Mormon Mountain West emerged,” said Peterson, who conducted the research and coauthored the article with Steven M. Graves, an associate professor of geography at California State University, Northridge. “The natural hypothesis would be to assume that given Biblical condemnation of usury there would be aggressive regulation and less demand for payday loans in these states, but ironically, the numbers show the opposite is true. It’s sad that states with a pious and honorable religious heritage now disproportionately host predatory lenders.”

Read it all here.

As reported yesterday in The Lead there's a new study out that finds payday lending is prevalent in the Bible Belt.

Robert Parham, executive director of the Baptist Center for Ethics, has an editorial in today's Ethics Daily. He writes specifically of Baptist efforts at reform of state law in Virginia:

Given the clarity of the biblical witness and the crippling reality of payday lenders, some Baptists are addressing the issue.

Religious Herald editor Jim White encouraged Virginia Baptists last fall to urge state legislators to place a cap on the interest rate payday lenders can charge. White called payday lending a "great injustice" and called a cap on interest charged "the least we can do."

White returned to payday lending in a January editorial, beseeching readers to contact their representatives supporting specific pieces of legislation that would cap payday lending. He wrote that these bills "will not eliminate the suffering of the poor. But, it will end one way the oppressed are being further impoverished."

The Baptist General Association of Virginia spoke out against payday lending in a November 2007 resolution, denouncing "the payday lending industry and its practice of further impoverishing the poor."

BGAV's Christian Life Committee members have contacted their own legislators, supporting reforms in payday lending. The committee is now preparing a report to present to Virginia Baptists that will identify the negative impacts on families of predatory lending and offer steps for advocacy.

The committee is also interfacing with the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy, which has a campaign to combat payday lenders, including a pledge for action designed to lobby state legislators.

BGAV is clearly the moral exception among Baptist state conventions. Most appear so morally malnourished that payday lenders flourish and impoverish the poor.

A visit to the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy is recommended.

The Episcopal Diocese of Virginia passed its own resolution at its January 2008 council:

R-6 Payday Lending
Adopted.

Whereas, God calls us to compassion; to alleviate the suffering of the poor; to speak up for those who have no voice; and to protect those who live closest to the edge; and

Whereas, our faith compels us to connect our values with the moral issues of the day, leading us to abhor usury, to turn away from greed, and to reject profiting from another's vulnerability; and

Whereas, we believe that reducing or eliminating poverty is a faithful mandate, that creating opportunity for all people is an achievable goal, and that predatory payday lending undermines our values and our mission; and

Whereas, the 2002 Payday Loan Act provides a special exemption for this one industry from Virginia's usury cap law; be it therefore

Resolved, that the 213th Annual Council of The Diocese of Virginia expresses its deep dismay at the usurious practices of the payday lending industry and the exemption granted this industry by Virginia's General Assembly, and be it further

Resolved, that this 213th Annual Council calls upon the people of this Diocese to contact their senators and representatives in the Virginia General Assembly and urge them to cap these small loans at thirty-six (36) percent.

Here are some questions. If payday lending is removed as an alternative, would those "closest to the edge" be better off? How so -- in a paternalistic way that it forces them to better live within their means or borrow from lenders who ask more invasive questions?

Who gives how much to whom? Why? And to what end? The New York Times Magazine published an in-depth exploration of the world of philanthropy on Sunday and still somehow managed to get a beautiful young actress on the cover.

We looked at one of these articles on Sunday. Today we call your attention to two pieces by Jim Holt--one on whether philanthropy is genetically rooted, and the other on the role of celebrities in putting charities on the map, are especially good. The second of these focuses on micro-finance.