Christian Today reports:

The petitions collected by Coral Ridge Ministries are a response to the hate crimes amendment that Sens. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Gordon Smith (R-Ore.) attached to the defence spending bill under consideration in the Senate this week.

“This is the single most dangerous piece of legislation we have seen in the recent past, because of its threat to silence the Church on the subject of homosexual behaviour,” said Jerry Newcombe, senior producer of The Coral Ridge Hour, CRM’S TV broadcast. “I shudder to think what the impact on free speech will be if this law is enacted.”

Many Christian and pro-family groups have been protesting the hate crimes bill for months, arguing that the federal bill is repetitive of existing state laws and threatens the free speech of those who speak on the biblical view of homosexuality.

- Family Research Council: Targetting Republican Senator Lamar Alexander, "the Family Research Council is placing automated calls (sometimes known as "robo-calls") to Nashville households about legislation that would include attacks motivated by the victim's sexual orientation among the offenses covered by federal hate-crime laws."

- Focus on the Family: "Democrats have attached an amendment to a Defense spending bill that would create federally protected “class status” for homosexuals, bisexuals, transvestites, “transgender” and “transsexual” people. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., has pulled the bill off the floor.... Ashley Horne, federal policy analyst for Focus on the Family Action, said hate crimes legislation likely will return to the Senate floor [in September]."

The Episcopal Public Policy Network has issued an appeal to supporters of hate crimes legislation to contact their representatives. Here is an extract of a letter sent to Congress by our Presiding Bishop:

As the Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church, I am pleased to add our endorsement of hate crimes legislation and urge your strong support for the Matthew Shepard Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007 S. 1105. As Christians, in Eastertide we celebrate the new life that comes out of death. One of the important transforming steps our nation can take toward the new life that Christ personified is the full inclusion of gay and lesbian persons and the valuing of their lives and gifts equally to all other persons. All are children of God. Even though it may be difficult to find God in the face of the other, God is there. And we must hope that others see the face of God in us as well.

The fact that Matthew was an Episcopalian makes our grief no more sharp, but it does give us a particular responsibility to stand with gays and lesbians, to decry all forms of violence against them - from verbal to physical, and to encourage the dialogue that can, with God's help, lead to new appreciation for their presence in the life of our church, and the broader community.

The Associated Press reports:

VATICAN CITY -- Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador, the outspoken church leader who was killed in 1980 as he celebrated Mass, has become as polarizing in death as he was in life.

The campaign to make him a Roman Catholic saint appears to be languishing, as Vatican officials privately debate whether Romero was a martyr for the faith or for the political left.

The sensitivity of the issue was clear in remarks last May by Pope Benedict XVI, as he was flying to Brazil -- his first visit to Latin America as pontiff.

Benedict told reporters that "Romero as a person merits beatification," but Vatican officials removed that quote in an official transcript, keeping only the pope's general praise of the slain prelate as a "great witness to the faith."

Shirley Ragsdale, religion editor of the Des Moines Register, writes:

When it comes to the Republican presidential campaign, some conservative Christian voters say they ain't seen nothing yet.

That is, none of the top-tier GOP candidates is addressing the issues that these Iowans care passionately about, and few exhibit the moral values they want to see in the leader of the free world.

"Morality is the No. 1 issue with me," said Ken Rogers, 62, of Altoona, a member of Central Assembly of God Church in Des Moines. "If a person can't live by the Ten Commandments, how can he lead the nation?"

Evangelical Christians have traditionally been a strong factor in Iowa Republican politics. They were credited with helping to push President Bush to victory in Iowa in 2004.

Read it all.

The violent death of Episcopal seminarian Jonathan Daniels' was remembered Saturday by 200 people who braved in 103-degree heat to honor the white seminary student who gave up his life to save a black teenage girl 42 years ago, according to a report in the Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser. A student of the Episcopal Divinity School, Daniels answered the call of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders for the church to become more involved in the struggle for civil rights. Daniels was killed on August 20, 1965 by a shotgun blast fired by an Lowndes County special sheriffs deputy at a small convenience store where Daniels and several other civil rights activists had gone following their release from the Lowndes County Jail, where they spent a week behind bars on charges related to a protest in Fort Deposit.

Episcopalians were joined Saturday by adherents of other faiths from throughout Alabama, Georgia, Florida and Mississippi, who paid their respect to Daniels and the civil rights cause under a blistering sun.

Jerry McGee of Destin, Fla., recited a Biblical passage about "giving your life for another," something Daniels did without question when he stepped in front of 16-year-old Ruby Sales to protect her and take the fatal shotgun blast.

"That's why I wanted to come here and honor him," said McGee. "He gave the greatest gift he could possible give -- his life."

The Rev. Polk Van Zandt of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Selma said Daniels has been given a "Black Letter Day," which sets aside a day each year to honor his memory.

Van Zandt said others given "Black Letter Days" include nursing pioneer Florence Nightingale and author C.S. Lewis, but added that Saturday's commemoration was "more than just about him."

"This is also about all the martyrs of Alabama," said Van Zandt, who alluded to honors bestowed Saturday on several others who were killed during the civil rights era.

Also included in the commemoration were four girls killed in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham and Viola Liuzzo, who was shot to death by Ku Klux Klansmen in Lowndes County a few months before Daniels was killed

Daniels was a native of Keene, New Hampshire, and a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute. The VMI archives writes about Daniels in this way:

In August 1965 Daniels and 22 others were arrested for participating in a voter rights demonstration in Fort Deposit, Alabama, and transferred to the county jail in nearby Hayneville. Shortly after being released on August 20, Richard Morrisroe, a Catholic priest, and Daniels accompanied two black teenagers, Joyce Bailey and Ruby Sales, to a Hayneville store to buy a soda. They were met on the steps by Tom Coleman, a construction worker and part-time deputy sheriff, who was carrying a shotgun. Coleman aimed his gun at sixteen year old Ruby Sales; Daniels pushed her to the ground in order to protect her, saving her life. The shotgun blast killed Daniels instantly; Morrisroe was seriously wounded. When he heard of the tragedy, Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "One of the most heroic Christian deeds of which I have heard in my entire ministry was performed by Jonathan Daniels."

In the years since his death, Daniels' selfless act has been recognized in many ways. Two books have been written about his life, and a documentary was produced in 1999. The Episcopal Church added the date of his death to its Calendar of Lesser Feasts and Fasts, and in England's Canterbury Cathedral, Daniels name is among the fifteen honored in the Chapel of Martyrs.

At VMI, the Board of Visitors voted in 1997 to establish the Jonathan M. Daniels '61 Humanitarian Award. The award emphasizes the virtue of humanitarian public service and recognizes individuals who have made significant personal sacrifices to protect or improve the lives of others. The inaugural presentation was made to President James Earl Carter in 2001; the second award was presented to Ambassador Andrew Young in 2006.

In addition, one of only four named archways in the VMI Barracks is dedicated to Daniels, as is a memorial courtyard.

The feast commemorating Jonathan Daniels is August 14

Here are two other remembrances: here and here.

From the Rocky Mountain News

The dispute at the usually tranquil Lakewood campus pits Andrew Paquin, head of a religious charity that aids poor people in Africa, against former U.S. Sen. William Armstrong, R-Colo., president of Colorado Christian and a pillar of the religious right.

Armstrong fired Paquin from a position teaching global studies at the end of the spring semester amid concerns that his lessons were too radical and undermined the school's commitment to the free enterprise system. Paquin assigned works by Jim Wallis, who writes from the Christian left, and Peter Singer, an atheist and animal rights activist.

Armstrong won't discuss Paquin's case specifically, but he says free enterprise is fundamental to the school's philosophy. "I don't think there is another system that is more consistent with the teachings of Jesus Christ," Armstrong said.

That doesn't mean socialists can't be good Christians, and a belief in free enterprise is not linked to salvation, Armstrong added. But free enterprise is the message of Colorado Christian, he said. "What the university stands for, among other things, is free markets."

Paquin, 36, says he supports capitalism, too. The Lafayette-based charity he founded gives "micro-loans" to poor Africans, allowing them to start simple businesses.

Let's put the shoe on the other foot. What if a professor at an Episcopal college or seminary deified the free enterprise system? Would she be fired? Would a economist who believed in markets be hired at some of our colleges in the first place?

Ed Stoddard of Reuters examines the enthusiasm of Evangelicals for the death penalty. His take:

"In Texas you have all the elements lined up. Public support, a governor that supports it and supportive courts," said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center.
...
Like his predecessor, Governor Perry is a devout Christian, highlighting one key factor in Texas' enthusiasm for the death penalty that many outsiders find puzzling -- the support it gets from conservative evangelical churches.

This is in line with their emphasis on individuals taking responsibility for their own salvation, and they also find justification in scripture.

"A lot of evangelical Protestants not only believe that capital punishment is permissible but that it is demanded by God. And they see sanction for that in the Old Testament especially," said Matthew Wilson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

Texas also stands at an unusual geographical and cultural crossroads: part Old South, with its legacy of racism, and part Old West, with a cowboy sense of rough justice.

Some critics say the South can be seen in the racial bias of death sentences with blacks more likely than whites to be condemned -- though Texas is not alone on this score.

Over 41 percent of the inmates currently on death row in Texas are black, but they account for only about 12 percent of the state's population.

Meanwhile, for some in Texas the death penalty is about the victim.
...
"Demographics could change things as minority groups like Latinos are generally less enthusiastic about the death penalty," said Dieter of the Death Penalty Information Center.

Churches have been providing sanctuary for illegal immigrants who want to stay in the United States to be with their US born children. Immigration sweeps have mounted since congressional measures to legalize the country's undocumented immigrants were defeated this summer. The Los Angeles Times reports:

Elvira Arellano, an illegal immigrant from Mexico who became a symbol in the nation's immigration wars after she took sanctuary in a Chicago church last year, was arrested Sunday by federal immigration agents outside Our Lady Queen of Angels Church in Los Angeles.

Arellano, 32, a single mother, moved into a Chicago church a year ago to prevent being separated from her 8-year-old U.S.-born son.

She was arrested Sunday afternoon as she was leaving the downtown Los Angeles church also known as La Placita with her son and a supporter.

Supporters said the car in which Arellano was riding was surrounded by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, who took her into custody.

The agency did not say where she was being held but did confirm that Arellano would be deported to Mexico.

For immigrant-rights groups she had become the human face of stepped-up enforcement efforts that frequently separate immigrant mothers and fathers from their American-born children.

Arellano came to Los Angeles on Friday to speak at four area churches over the weekend. She was pressing for immigration reform that would provide a path to citizenship for the estimated 12 million people in the U.S. illegally.

In Jackon Hole, Wyoming, near me, even legal immigrants fear visiting Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks because of the hassle of being detained or arrested if they do not have enough i.d. with them. Latinos are especially targeted although there are many from Eastern Europe also working in the area. The resorts could not exist without labor from Mexico and other countries.

Click here for the Presiding Bishop's letter on immigration reform.

Read the rest of the article here

Mark Lilla, professor of the humanities at Columbia University explores political theology in an essay in The New York Times adapted from his upcoming book The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics and the Modern West. He believes there is huge gap between those who believe that there is a one-way track toward modern secular democracy and that other societies, once placed on that track, will inevitably follow; and those who see political institutions conceived in terms of divine authority and spiritual redemption.

The twilight of the idols has been postponed. For more than two centuries, from the American and French Revolutions to the collapse of Soviet Communism, world politics revolved around eminently political problems. War and revolution, class and social justice, race and national identity — these were the questions that divided us. Today, we have progressed to the point where our problems again resemble those of the 16th century, as we find ourselves entangled in conflicts over competing revelations, dogmatic purity and divine duty. We in the West are disturbed and confused. Though we have our own fundamentalists, we find it incomprehensible that theological ideas still stir up messianic passions, leaving societies in ruin. We had assumed this was no longer possible, that human beings had learned to separate religious questions from political ones, that fanaticism was dead. We were wrong.

Understanding this difference is the most urgent intellectual and political task of the present time. But where to begin? The case of contemporary Islam is on everyone’s mind, yet is so suffused with anger and ignorance as to be paralyzing. All we hear are alien sounds, motivating unspeakable acts. If we ever hope to crack the grammar and syntax of political theology, it seems we will have to begin with ourselves. The history of political theology in the West is an instructive story, and it did not end with the birth of modern science, or the Enlightenment, or the American and French Revolutions, or any other definitive historical moment. Political theology was a presence in Western intellectual life well into the 20th century, by which time it had shed the mind-set of the Middle Ages and found modern reasons for seeking political inspiration in the Bible. At first, this modern political theology expressed a seemingly enlightened outlook and was welcomed by those who wished liberal democracy well. But in the aftermath of the First World War it took an apocalyptic turn, and “new men” eager to embrace the future began generating theological justifications for the most repugnant — and godless — ideologies of the age, Nazism and Communism.

It is an unnerving tale, one that raises profound questions about the fragility of our modern outlook. Even the most stable and successful democracies, with the most high-minded and civilized believers, have proved vulnerable to political messianism and its theological justification. If we can understand how that was possible in the advanced West, if we can hear political theology speaking in a more recognizable tongue, represented by people in familiar dress with familiar names, perhaps then we can remind ourselves how the world looks from its perspective. This would be a small step toward measuring the challenge we face and deciding how to respond.

Read it all here

Grace Church, Colorado Springs, member of the Anglican Church of Nigeria (CANA) is back in the news offering space to a religious right training institute.

Fr. Jake cites the Colorado Springs Independent

...All of the attention over Grace has been lavished on the Rev. Don Armstrong, found guilty this month by an ecclesiastical court of financial misconduct and tax fraud totaling nearly $1 million, and receiving more than $122,000 in illegal loans. Armstrong is now a "person of interest" in a Colorado Springs police investigation.

Meanwhile, the John Jay Institute, its organizing machine hard at work in the bowels of Grace's building, has somehow escaped scrutiny.

What is this John Jay Institute, you wonder? Let's start with its president, Alan R. Crippen II. You might recognize Crippen — he's the guy who's been pitching Armstrong's talking points in the press. Turns out he's much, much more than a mouthpiece. But more on that in a minute...

...So just what is Crippen's institute? For starters, it's named after founding father John Jay, the first chief justice of the United States and co-author of the Federalist Papers. According to its literature, the official mission is to "prepare Christians for principled leadership in public life."

Let's cut to the nuts-and-bolts translation: Essentially, the institute appears to be a sort of high-class, all-expenses-paid Christian boot camp for recent promising college grads (preferably white, if the academy's online testimonials are a clue).

Every semester, a dozen or so idealistic students will trek to Colorado Springs to learn how to be secularity-busting soldiers for Jesus. They will then, as hopes go, attain leadership roles in the highest levels of government, where they will presumably work to obliterate the separation of church and state.

Talk 2 Action covers the story in Breakaway Episcopal Church installs big budget religious right training academy in the basement.

Analyzing the Christian Right vs. progressive leadership David Korten says "...the only voices most people hear speaking about values and spirit in the public discourse are those of the Far Right. Virtually every progressive leader I know is working from a deeply spiritual place, but we rarely speak openly in our environmental, peace, and justice work of values or the sacred. The time has come for the nation's mainstream churches to come out of the closet and speak publicly of values and the spiritual foundations of the progressive agenda and to articulate spiritually grounded stories of human possibility and the world that the living Jesus called us to create."

Other stories on this subject here and here.

Thanks to epiScope for the lead.

The New Republic has a fascinating cover story on the pyschology of terror. It describes how several experimental pyschologists have shown that exposure to our own mortality will trigger a series of emotions--including distain for other cultures and races--and this can have political consequences:

There is, however, one group of scholars--members of the relatively new field of political psychology--who are trying to explain voter preferences that can't be easily quantified. The best general introduction to this field is Drew Westen's recent book, The Political Brain, but the research that is perhaps most relevant to the 2004 election has been conducted by psychologists Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, and Tom Pyszczynski. In the early 1980s, they developed what they clumsily called "terror management theory." Their idea was not about how to clear the subways in the event of an attack, but about how people cope with the terrifying and potentially paralyzing realization that, as human beings, we are destined to die. Their experiments showed that the mere thought of one's mortality can trigger a range of emotions--from disdain for other races, religions, and nations, to a preference for charismatic over pragmatic leaders, to a heightened attraction to traditional mores.

. . .

Their first experiment was published in 1989. To test the hypothesis that recognition of mortality evokes "worldview defense"--their term for the range of emotions, from intolerance to religi- osity to a preference for law and order, that they believe thoughts of death can trigger--they assembled 22 Tucson municipal court judges. They told the judges they wanted to test the relationship between personality traits and bail decisions, but, for one group, they inserted in the middle of the personality questionnaire two exercises meant to evoke awareness of their mortality. One asked the judges to "briefly describe the emotions that the thought of your own death arouses in you"; the other required them to "jot down, as specifically as you can, what you think will happen to you physically as you die and once you are physically dead." They then asked the judges to set bail in the hypothetical case of a prostitute whom the prosecutor claimed was a flight risk. The judges who did the mortality exercises set an average bail of $455. The control group that did not do the exercises set it at an average of $50. The psychologists knew they were onto something.

Over the next decade, the three performed similar experiments to illustrate how awareness of death could provoke worldview defense. They showed that what they now called "mortality salience" affected people's view of other races, religions, and nations. When they had students at a Christian college evaluate essays by what they were told were a Christian and a Jewish author, the group that did the mortality exercises expressed a far more negative view of the essay by the Jew- ish author than the control group did. (German psychologists would find a similar reaction among German subjects toward Turks.) They also conducted numerous experiments to show that mortality exercises evoked patriotic responses. The subjects who did the exercises took a far more negative view of an essay critical of the United States than the control group did and also expressed greater veneration for cultural icons like the flag. The three even devised an experiment to show that, after doing the mortality exercises, conser- vatives took a much harsher view of liberals, and vice versa.

As the New Republic article explains, this theory can explain why there was a rise in "values" voting in the wake of September 11th:

Mortality reminders not only enhanced the appeal of Bush's political style but also deepened and broadened the appeal of the conservative social positions that Republicans had been running on.

For instance, because worldview defense increases hostility toward other races, religions, nations, and political systems, it helps explain the rage toward France and Germany that erupted prior to the Iraq war, as well as the recent spike in hostility toward illegal immigrants. Also central to worldview defense is the protection of tradition against social experimentation, of community values against individual prerogatives--as was evident in the Tucson experiment with the judges--and of religious dictates against secular norms. For many conservatives, this means opposition to abortion and gay marriage. This may well explain why family values became more salient in 2004--a year in which voters were supposed to be unusually focused on foreign policy--than it had been from 1992 through 2000. Indeed, from 2001 to 2004, polls show an increase in opposition to abortion and gay marriage, along with a growing religiosity. According to Gallup, the percentage of voters who believed abortion should be "illegal in all circumstances" rose from 17 percent in 2000 to 20 percent in 2002 and would still be at 19 percent in 2004. Even church attendance by atheists, according to one poll, increased from 3 to 10 percent from August to November 2001.

Read it all here.

Perhaps this is taking this theory one (or several steps!!) too far, but is it not possible that the current Anglican fascinatation (some would say obsession) with issues of homosexuality is a manifestation of the pyschology of terror? In other words, would we be where we are today had Bishop Robinson been approved by General Convention in 1999 rather than 2003?

Bishop Charles Jenkins, 10th Bishop of Louisiana, wrote in his blog what he wished he could have said to President Bush during his visit to New Orleans on the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

He writes that he wishes he could share with the president the tremendous outpouring of material help and support by many in the faith community for this wounded region. And he also wonders why it is that our government has failed in so many ways the people of the Gulf Coast.

We already know who faith-based America has proven to be.

These volunteers have not sacrificed for the “safe” above-sea-level neighborhoods or the economically secure residents of this city. They have not given their time, talent, and hard-earned dollars to the recovery of communities that rest securely on higher ground.

The volunteers of this country are still coming in larger numbers than ever to help heal the lives of their fellow Americans – the same vulnerable Americans we saw trapped, suffering and dying on our televisions two years ago this week. And those “looters,” “those people down there” as the President has called us, are proving to be some of the most courageous and resilient citizens of this land. Mr. President, did you know that according to a survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 98% of survivors interviewed in the Houston Astrodome following the federal flood said that their faith in God is what had enabled them to survive? I am proud to be one of “those people.”

Does the President realize what hundreds of thousands of Americans are saying when they come to gut and rebuild this city block by block with their own bare hands? Does he realize what it means that tens of thousands of volunteers sacrifice personally to finance the purchase of building materials for residents who have yet to receive their Road Home money from the government? Does he hear what young people are saying by the thousands when they come to serve the children of this city as teachers in our struggling second-tier public schools?

It means, Mr. President, that a huge number of Americans love their neighbor as themselves. Not in words alone but in actions. This segment of our society, a segment whose values you claim to represent and share, has already cast its vote in the referendum on New Orleans. We clearly do not believe any of New Orleans or its people are dispensable or undesirable. We stand together in our fight to recognize and cherish the dignity and worth of every citizen of this city, and we believe how the citizens of this city are treated says who we really are as a nation.

Read the rest here.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons has directed the departments chaplains to purge their libraries of all religious books which are not on list approved developed by the Bureau. According to a New York Times report by Laurie Goodstein, the move is supposed to prevent inmates from getting relgiously-based terrorist ideas.

Traci Billingsley, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Prisons, said the agency was acting in response to a 2004 report by the Office of the Inspector General in the Justice Department. The report recommended steps that prisons should take, in light of the Sept. 11 attacks, to avoid becoming recruiting grounds for militant Islamic and other religious groups. The bureau, an agency of the Justice Department, defended its effort, which it calls the Standardized Chapel Library Project, as a way of barring access to materials that could, in its words, “discriminate, disparage, advocate violence or radicalize.”

The list, which has reduced religious libraries to a list of 150 approved books and 150 multi-media for each of 20 religions or religious categories, does not ban liturgical texts, prayer books or scriptures.

The lists are broad, but reveal eccentricities and omissions. There are nine titles by C. S. Lewis, for example, and none from the theologians Reinhold Niebuhr, Karl Barth and Cardinal Avery Dulles, and the influential pastor Robert H. Schuller.

Chaplains already watch out for materials that promote violence or disparage groups or classes of people, so, they say, the effort is unnecessary. The department has not provided funds for Chaplains to purchase the approved materials. This means that many prison library have simply been cleared of materials.

This effort has managed to displease nearly everyone: evangelical Christian groups have found their materials banned as well as Jewish and Muslim groups. Already some prisoners have filed suit.

If bureaucrats are concerned about radical ideas that are infectious, they may want to have another look at those Gospels.

Read the rest here including a multi-media description of the banned materials.

A delegation of religious leaders from Iran was supposed to arrived in the US today to meet with Christian leaders from the United Methodist, Episcopal, Baptist, Catholic, Evangelical, Quaker, and Mennonite traditions, but at the last minute their visas were denied. The visit reciprocates a visit last February by American Christian leaders to Iran for face-to-face dialouge, the first since the fall of the Shah of Iran in 1979.

According to a report in the blog Ekklesia, the visit was sponsored by these faith-groups plus the National Council of Churches and Sojourners/Call to Renewal.

The (Bush) administration denied visas to four of fourteen Iranians invited to the United States, including the two leaders of the delegation. The Iranians were invited to meet with their counterparts in the United States this September as the next step in an ongoing dialogue with a diverse group of Christian leaders from United Methodist, Episcopal, Baptist, Catholic, Evangelical, Quaker, and Mennonite traditions. The U.S. group traveled to Iran in February 2007 at the invitation of Iranian religious leaders and the government. Members of the U.S. delegation hoped that by reciprocating the Iranians’ hospitality, they could further work to inspire the governments and people of both countries to commit to a diplomatic solution to the ongoing dispute between the United States and Iran. Words not war could answer the national interests of both peoples.

Read more....

That's the headline on the op-ed by John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York, in the Observor. The archbishop writes,

The time has come for Mr Brown, who has already shown himself to be an African interventionist through his work at the UN in favour of the people of Darfur, finally to slay the ghosts of Britain's colonialist past by thoroughly revising foreign policy towards Zimbabwe and to lead the way in co-ordinating an international response.

The time for 'African solutions' alone is now over. Despite his best efforts, [South Africa's] President Mbeki has failed to help the people of Zimbabwe. At best, he has been ineffectual in his efforts to advise, cajole and persuade Robert Mugabe to reverse his unjust and brutal regime. At worst, Mbeki is complicit in his failing to lead the charge against a neighbour who is systematically raping the country he leads.

Britain needs to escape from its colonial guilt when it comes to Zimbabwe. Mugabe is the worst kind of racist dictator. Having targeted the whites for their apparent riches, Mugabe has enacted an awful Orwellian vision, with the once oppressed taking on the role of the oppressor and glorying in their totalitarian abilities.
...
The appalling poverty suffered by those who queue daily for bread in southern Harare is a world apart from the shops, boutiques and sprinkled lawns of northern Harare, where Mugabe's supporters live in palatial surroundings. Britain must lead the way in calling for targeted sanctions against those purveyors of misery whose luxury is bought at the cost of unbearable poverty.

The Observor reports:

Sentamu's intervention will be seen as highly significant, because Mugabe will struggle to depict him as a white colonialist. The archbishop was born in 1949 in a village near Kampala, the capital of Uganda. In a passage that is likely to resonate in Africa, Sentamu likens Mugabe to the late Ugandan dictator Amin. Sentamu, who was imprisoned for 90 days by Amin after he had showed his independence as a judge
...
The Foreign Office last night said that there would be no change in the government's policy towards Zimbabwe. Britain offers humanitarian help to Zimbabweans but is relying on Harare's neighbours to take political action so as to avoid accusations that it is throwing its weight around as a former colonial power.
...
Mugabe received a rapturous reception when he arrived at a meeting of the 14-nation Southern African Development Community (SADC) in Zambia last month.

The BBC News also spoke to Sentamu. See its news and video here.

All Saints Episcopal Church of Pasadena, California, will keep its non-profit status after a two year inquiry of a sermon given by a visiting speaker in 2004, but the IRS also found that the sermon was an improper intervention in electoral politics. The Los Angeles Times has the report:

The rector of a liberal Pasadena church today demanded an apology and a clarification from the Internal Revenue Service after being notified that the agency had closed a lengthy investigation of the church over a 2004 antiwar sermon -- but also found that the same sermon constituted illegal intervention in a political campaign.

The Rev. J. Edwin Bacon Jr., rector of All Saints Episcopal Church, told congregants during morning services today that he and other officials were relieved that the church no longer faced the imminent loss of its tax-exempt status, but were bewildered by the IRS' seemingly contradictory conclusions about the case.

All Saints has "no more guidance about the IRS rules now than when we started this process over two long years ago," Bacon said. He said the lack of clarity from the IRS in its recent letter to the church would have a continuing "chilling effect" on the freedom of clerics from all faiths to preach about core moral values and such issues as war and poverty.

. . .

All Saints, one of Southern California's largest and most liberal congregations, came under IRS scrutiny after a sermon two days before the 2004 presidential election by a guest speaker, the Rev. George F. Regas. In the sermon, Regas, the church's former rector, depicted Jesus in a mock political debate with then-presidential candidates George W. Bush and John F. Kerry.

Regas did not instruct parishioners whom to support in the presidential race, but his suggestion that Jesus would have told Bush that his preemptive war strategy in Iraq "has led to disaster" prompted a letter from the IRS in June 2005 stating that the church's tax-exempt status was in question.

Federal law prohibits tax-exempt organizations, including churches, from intervening in political campaigns and elections.

In its latest letter to All Saints, dated Sept. 10, the IRS said the church continues to qualify for tax-exempt status but that Regas' sermon on Oct. 31, 2004, amounted to a one-time intervention in the 2004 presidential race. The letter offered no specifics or explanation for either conclusion, but noted that the church did have appropriate policies in place to ensure that it complied with prohibitions on political activity.

. . .

In addition to its requests for clarification and an apology, All Saints has asked a top Treasury Department official -- its inspector general for tax administration -- to investigate what the church described as a series of procedural and substantive errors in the case, including allegedly inappropriate conversations about it between IRS and Justice Department officials.

Those conversations, documented in e-mails obtained by the church through Freedom of Information Act requests, appear to show that Justice Department officials were involved in the All Saints case before the IRS made any formal referral of it for possible prosecution, an attorney for the church said. And they raise concerns that the IRS' investigation may have been politically motivated.

"In view of the fact that recent congressional inquiries have revealed extensive politicization of [the Department of Justice], my client is very concerned that the close coordination undertaken by the IRS allowed partisan political concerns to direct the course of the All Saints examination," attorney Marcus S. Owens wrote in a Sept. 21 letter requesting an investigation.

Read it all here.

For church leaders concerned about this issue, the most recent IRS guidance on political activity by churches and other nonprofits can be found here. A description of the IRS's enforcement actions against churches in 2006 can be found here. The Alliance Defense Fund, a legal organization affiliated with the Christian Right has a useful "Pastor Do's and Don'ts" here.

News came this week that the ban on religious books (other than primary texts like the Bible, the Torah, or the Koran, etc...) in US Prisons has been reconsidered:

The US Federal Bureau of Prisons is purging prison libraries of "non-approved" religious books and materials because of terrorism concerns, say a number of US religious groups amid warnings of possible violations of religious freedom.

Books not approved include works by respected 20th century theologians such as Reinhold Niebuhr and Karl Barth, and contemporary fare like Rick Warren's "The Purpose-Driven Life" and Harold Kushner's "When Bad Things Happen to Good People".

"The idea of government bureaucrats drafting a list of approved books on religion seems like something out of Soviet-era Russia, not the United States of America, where freedom of religion, even for those behind prison walls, is something we treasure," said the Christian activist organization Sojourners in an e-mail this week to its supporters.

Traci Billingsley, a spokesperson for the Bureau of Prisons, told The New York Times the policy was prompted by a 2004 justice department report. This warned of the need to prevent US prisons from becoming places where those advocating militant Islamic beliefs or other religious views deemed "extremist" could recruit followers.

Read the rest of the story here.

Does a nation full of Christians make for a Christian nation? Newsweek editor Jon Mecheam writes an op-ed in today's New York Times reminds us that while America may be full of Christians, that does not make America a Christian nation.

He shows us that Thomas Jefferson, an Anglican, said that his bill for religious liberty in Virginia was “meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and the Mahometan, the Hindu, and infidel of every denomination.”

Mecham also relates how fellow Anglican George Washington wrote to a synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island said, “happily the government of the United States ... gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance. ... Everyone shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.”

But when Episcopally- (and Virginia-) -raised Baptist John McCain said to beliefnet.com that “the Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation” it was enough to make the former scourge of the religious right earn an 8 out of 10 on beliefnet's God-o-meter.

Mecheam writes in rebuttal to what he calls an article of faith among many evangelical Christians:

According to Scripture, however, believers are to be wary of all mortal powers. Their home is the kingdom of God, which transcends all earthly things, not any particular nation-state. The Psalmist advises believers to “put not your trust in princes.” The author of Job says that the Lord “shows no partiality to princes nor regards the rich above the poor, for they are all the work of his hands.” Before Pilate, Jesus says, “My kingdom is not of this world.” And if, as Paul writes in Galatians, “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female: for you are all one in Christ Jesus,” then it is difficult to see how there could be a distinction in God’s eyes between, say, an American and an Australian. In fact, there is no distinction if you believe Peter’s words in the Acts of the Apostles: “I most certainly believe now that God is not one to show partiality, but in every nation the man who fears him and does what is right is welcome to him.”

The kingdom Jesus preached was radical. Not only are nations irrelevant, but families are, too: he instructs those who would be his disciples to give up all they have and all those they know to follow him.

He goes on:

The founders were not anti-religion. Many of them were faithful in their personal lives, and in their public language they evoked God. They grounded the founding principle of the nation — that all men are created equal — in the divine. But they wanted faith to be one thread in the country’s tapestry, not the whole tapestry.

Read:A Nation of Christians Is Not a Christian Nation

For more on how candidates make use of religious language to appeal to religious voters (and to get an idea of what politicians think religious people want to hear) see the God-o-meter on www.beliefnet.com, which is done in partnership with TIME.

Graham Nash says "the world is in such peril. Most religions are being taken over by people who want to kill their neighbors. I find it so unreligious to kill people in the name of God. But we have to start by first taking care of things at home." And so, at the invitation of Bishop John Chane of of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, Nash and David Crosby are going to round up as many musicians as they can for a concert on Pray for Peace Day on October 16th at the National Cathedral.

The concert is a short break from the tour that brings them to the Borgata in Atlantic City on Saturday. A good deal of the program will undoubtedly focus on music you've heard before - "Marrakesh Express," "Teach Your Children," "Military Madness," "Chicago"/"We Can Change the World," and "Immigration Man" - but Nash hints there will be some tracks from the CD he is working on.

When performing with Neil Young and Stephen Stills, the crew has been a supergroup since 1968 - a band known as much for its political activism as its distinctive harmonies. As charter members of Woodstock Nation, they helped globalize what folk-rockers had been singing about for years.

"We've never shied away from social issues," Nash insists.

Indeed, only a year ago CSN&Y mounted a Freedom of Speech tour that helped support Young's CD "Living With War," a blistering attack on the Bush administration. The tour drew more than its share of protests from people who preferred to hear them play, not preach.

Read: The New York Daily News-- David Crosby and Graham Nash 'Carry On'

The Episcopal Church and the United Methodist Church are urging US legislators to reconsider the vetoed legislation for funding the State's Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).

The Episcopal Church October 14 bulletin insert reports:

There are 8.7 million uninsured children in the United States -- and a serious gap in serving children who do not qualify for Medicaid, but whose parents cannot afford private health insurance. For many families with children who fall into this category, the State's Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) is their safety net. The importance of this program, together with wider issues of children's healthcare, is the focus of Episcopal Life's parish bulletin inserts for October 14 available here

Ekklesia reports that the United Methodist Church's chief executive of the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries, the Rev R. Randy Day, began faxing letters to all US senators and representatives regarding the veto. He also e-mailed a last-minute appeal to the White House.

"We firmly believe that all children in the US deserve the opportunity for a healthy life and the people of The United Methodist Church strongly agree and have voiced their support for the SCHIP legislation," the letter to each member of Congress stated. "The substantial bipartisan support for SCHIP proves that this reauthorization is needed and worthy of your undivided support."

Harriett Olson, chief executive of the UMC board's Women's Division, added her support to Day's letter, calling SCHIP a "critical step" in protecting the nation's children.

She said: "One of the measures by which a society is judged is the quality of the care and support it offers to its most vulnerable," she said. "Children in this country are among the most vulnerable and it is our moral and ethical responsibility to support basic health care for them."

Read it all here

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Ekklesia also reports that churches in the US are propping up the health care system with minstries to fill in the gaps in care.

The Congregational Health Ministry Survey, conducted by the National Council of Churches USA (NCC) with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, shows that a majority of churches are ministering to their communities by providing 'health care ministries'. As the number of uninsured Americans reaches 47 million people, congregations are supplying health education and direct health care services. Many are also advocating on behalf of public policy issues related to health care.

According to the survey, about 70 percent of responding churches provide direct health services, with 65 percent offering health education programs within their community. The survey defines direct services as provision of medical care to individuals by trained health care professionals.

Dana Milbank writes:

In the wildly popular "Left Behind" series of evangelical Christian novels, the Antichrist takes the form of the secretary general of the United Nations, sets up an abortion-promoting world government and becomes the Global Community Supreme Potentate.

Last night, the National Association of Evangelicals met for dinner at the Sheraton in Crystal City. The keynote speaker? Why, the Antichrist himself.

Read it all. New opportunites are emerging for progressive Christians to work with segments of the Evangelical community on issues of common concern.

The American Prospect, a liberal opinion magazine, now devotes a regular feature to chronicling the political machinations of the Religious Right. It's called The FundamentaList, and it asks savvy questions like this one:

Would James Dobson or Tony Perkins have had as many Google News hits this week had the press not fallen for the story that the dynamic duo was ready to dump the GOP in favor of certain failure and irrelevancy? Out of the circus that ensued after the Salt Lake City meeting last week, they got a massive, free get-out-the-vote drive.

Have a look.

From Beliefnet:

When people say "America is being run by evangelical Christians," they usually mean that it only feels that way. But with George W. Bush in the White House, James Dobson on the airwaves, and evangelical books filling the best-seller lists, evangelicals have rarely been as prominent as they are today. And as a major new study by sociologist Michael Lindsay reveals, evangelical Christians now hold seats of influence in American government, business, culture, and higher education. This month, Beliefnet invited Lindsay, journalists Hanna Rosin and Jeff Sharlet, evangelical author Jerry Jenkins, and former Bush aide David Kuo to discuss American evangelicals and their rise to power.

Follow it here.

CATO Unbound has an issue devoted to politics and religion. As the Editors explain:

Americans are among the most religious people in the wealthy, democratic West. Yet we are not only comfortable, but proud, of the independence of church and state. Are we bound to fumble in our foreign policy if we cannot understand why the politics of equality, liberty, toleration, and democracy fit so uneasily with the explicitly religious politics of the Middle East? Closer to home, evangelical Christians remain one of the most powerful forces in American politics, and perhaps a dominant force in the Republican Party. Will they bring down the "big tent" if the GOP nominates a cosmopolitan pro-choice New Yorker or a Mormon? Is there, perhaps, a place for religious ideas on the American left?

This month's Cato Unbound explores these questions and with a stellar lineup of deep thinkers about God and politics.

The issue includes a lead essay by Mark Lilla, author of The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West, and responses by Penn State professor of history and religion Philip Jenkins; Damon Linker, author of The Theocons: Secular America Under Siege; and The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan, author of recent The Conservative Soul: How We Lost It; How To Get It Back.

The Democratic National Committee has hired its first religious outreach director and its “Faith in Action” team now counts seven staff members, including those directing Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, and Muslim outreach according to The New York Times. Leah Daughtery heads up this effort to assist candidates to reach out to religious voters and she has prompted the party to convene a 60-person faith advisory board and to train its members to combat the religious right on television.

Ever since he cited the Book of Job as his favorite part of the New Testament (it is actually in the Old Testament) and explained during his 2004 presidential campaign that he had left his church over a bike-path dispute, Howard Dean has been seen by many religious Americans as the nation’s secularist in chief.

That is why Mr. Dean, the Democratic National Committee chairman, still gets surprised looks when he points out that his chief of staff is a Pentecostal minister.

Indeed, the raucous three-and-a-half-hour service that the chief of staff, Leah Daughtry, 44, presided over last Sunday from the pulpit of the House of the Lord Church in Brooklyn seemed a world away not just from Mr. Dean, but also from the ways of official Washington.

Donning the yellow and white garments of that church’s clergy, Ms. Daughtry led a 25-member choir through the foot-stomping gospel number “I Can Go to God in Prayer.” She laid hands on parishioners and implored them to clear the way for Jesus.

“When I’m there in the pulpit, it really isn’t me,” the typically mild-mannered Ms. Daughtry said in an interview. “Sometimes I pray, ‘Decrease me and increase you, Lord.’”

Her duties at the Democratic National Committee are even more behind-the-scenes, with Ms. Daughtry preferring to stay out of the news. But for much of the last three years, she has worked to bridge the gap between the Brooklyn church in which she was raised — its pastor is her father, the Rev. Herbert Daughtry — and her Washington day job, becoming the quiet architect behind the committee’s religious outreach program.

Read it all here

David Helm, executive editor of the Christian Century offers some interesting thoughts on the issue of the appropriate involvement of the faithful in politics on the Christian Century Theolog blog:

I have been hearing some significant voices on the right that are disillusioned about political engagement.

For example, at a Yale Divinity School conference on religion and politics in October, David Kuo, former aide in the Bush White House, talked about the need for Christians to “fast from politics” for a few years. Conservative Christians helped Republicans get control of Congress and the White House, he said, but they didn’t accomplish that much for the country and, with their focus on partisan politics, they ended up diluting or distorting their own spiritual life.

Also speaking was Gregory Boyd, a dynamic pastor in Minnesota, who doubts that anything good comes from aligning oneself with Caesar (his words to describe Christians engaging in politics). He spoke eloquently about how the church is called to embody Christ’s self-sacrificing love in the world, not to take up the levers of power.

Skepticism about politics is always healthy. But it strikes me that Kuo’s and Boyd’s comments reflect a broad, unhelpful tendency in American Christianity to oscillate between two poles: either a fervent engagement in politics for the sake of the gospel and the world, or an equally fervent detachment for the sake of the purity of the gospel and the health of the church. Isn’t there something between the two poles?

It might help the discussion of religion and politics if we thought not about the two poles of political engagement and detachment but about politics as a particular kind of vocation to which Christians are called in different ways depending on their gifts and their position in the church and society.

I’d be happy to stipulate, with Boyd, that the church as church is not called to be Caesar or even Caesar’s adviser. We don’t want bishops, pastors or church councils issuing statements on tax laws or free trade agreements or on which version of the SCHIP bill should be passed. Churches and church leaders have their particular vocation of proclamation, worship, prayer and sacramental ministry. Except in emergency situations, the church—here I mean the church as an official body—leaves the details of what public justice means to those who are called to the work of politics.

Meanwhile, however, individual Christians have their particular vocations. In a democracy, all people have the vocation of citizen and so are in some degree called to the work of politics. Beyond that, a certain number of individual Christians are called to a more specific vocation: to study, analyze or participate in the day-to-day workings of politics. They make arguments and pay attention to data. They look for affinities between the gospel and political philosophies and programs. They listen to what constituents say and arguments other people make. Their work is fallible, limited, pervaded by sin, always subject to revision—but so are lots of vocations.

Unless one takes a truly separatist view of the Christian life and wants to preclude anybody with political influence from being a member of the church, then one has to grant that some Christians have the specific vocation of working out the details of seeking justice in political life. This is not the only task of the Christian life, nor is it the primary task of the church. But it is a genuine vocation for Christians, one just as worthy as farming or schoolteaching. If we are clear about the distinct vocations to which Christians are called, there is no reason for Christians to fast from politics or apologize for their involvement in it.

Read it here. What do you think? Is politics part of our vocation? Or is it time for the faithful to fast from politics?