The Federal Trade Commission has recently completed a study of the practice of using credit ratings to price auto insurance, a practice several states forbid because blacks and Hispanics as a group tend to have poorer credit records.

Marginal Revolution points out

(1) the FTC finds credit records are very good at predicting accident risk implying that good black and Hispanic drivers pay higher rates in states that prohibit the use of credit risk;

(2) when the price of insurance increases for good drivers in these states, good drivers may quit buying insurance, pushing up the price of insurance for bad drivers to the price they would have paid without the prohibition.

Good intentions do not necessarily make for good public policy.

There is both good news and bad news to report if you care about the value of diversity. First, the bad news: a study conducted by Harvard Professor Robert Putnum finds that diverse commjunities can lead to an increase in social distrust. As Daniel Henniger of the Wall Street Journal explains:

Robert Putnam, the Harvard don who in the controversial bestseller "Bowling Alone" announced the decline of communal-mindedness amid the rise of home-alone couch potatoes, has completed a mammoth study of the effects of ethnic diversity on communities. His researchers did 30,000 interviews in 41 U.S. communities. Short version: People in ethnically diverse settings don't want to have much of anything to do with each other. "Social capital" erodes. Diversity has a downside.

Prof. Putnam isn't exactly hiding these volatile conclusions, though he did introduce them in a journal called Scandinavian Political Studies. A great believer in the efficacy of what social scientists call "reciprocity," he wasn't happy with what he found but didn't mince words describing the results:

"Inhabitants of diverse communities tend to withdraw from collective life, to distrust their neighbors, regardless of the color of their skin, to withdraw even from close friends, to expect the worst from their community and its leaders, to volunteer less, give less to charity and work on community projects less often, to register to vote less, to agitate for social reform more, but have less faith that they can actually make a difference, and to huddle unhappily in front of the television." The diversity nightmare gets worse: They have little confidence in the "local news media." This after all we've done for them.

Colleagues and diversity advocates, disturbed at what was emerging from the study, suggested alternative explanations. Prof. Putnam and his team re-ran the data every which way from Sunday and the result was always the same: Diverse communities may be yeasty and even creative, but trust, altruism and community cooperation fall. He calls it "hunkering down."

Read it all here.

So what is the good news? There is a study that has strong evidence that diversity leads to better decision making. As the Scientifc American reports:

In the study, Sommers asked 30 different mock juries, each composed of six adults, to watch a video summary, edited from Court TV coverage, of the trial proceedings of an actual sexual assault case in which a black male defendant allegedly assaulted, separately, two white females. Sommers went to extraordinary lengths to make these mock trials as much like a real trial as possible. The study was conducted in a courthouse. Participants were jury-eligible adults who were at the court for real jury duty. Their age ranged from 18 to 78. Only racial composition was varied systematically: half of the juries were white, and the other half were made up of four white and two black jurors.

. . .

In the end, the majority (55 percent) of the mock juries voted unanimously to acquit, just as the real jury had. But both verdicts and deliberation quality and content varied significantly depending on the juries' racial make-up.

Mixed and all-white juries were equally likely to raise the subject of race when discussing the case -- but differed sharply in how they reacted to the subject once it was raised. Every time racism was mentioned in an all-white jury, at least one juror objected that racism was not relevant (J5: "What about the fact that he was a Black man?" J6: "What does that have to do with it?"). That's a 100 percent rate of objection to the idea that race was relevant. In the diverse juries, by contrast, only 22 percent of mentions of possible racism met with objections. Meanwhile, the diverse juries deliberated longer, cited more case-relevant facts during deliberation, made fewer factual mistakes, and were more likely to correct inaccurate statements than the all-white juries were.

So who among the jurors is creating the difference in dynamics between the homogenous and heterogeneous juries? One possibility is that the black jurors alone improved jury performance. Black jurors may have different life experiences that lead them to contribute unique information and perspectives to the deliberations. By this hypothesis, it is the sole burden of the black jurors to provide the benefits of diversity.

But Sommers' data tell a very different story: He found that white jurors were actually responsible for a large proportion of the group differences, as they behaved differently in a racially mixed jury than in one all-white. White jurors in diverse groups mentioned more facts, made fewer factual errors, corrected more mistakes and raised the possibility of racism more often than did white jurors in homogeneous groups. Even before the deliberations began, white participants who expected to deliberate with black jurors privately espoused less harsh views of the (black) defendant than did white participants who expected to deliberate in an all-white group. Both the anticipation and the experience of serving on a diverse jury seemed to sharpen the white jurors' sensitivity not just to race but to accuracy and due process.

. . .

In all, Sommers' data show that diverse juries reason better, not just as groups but as individuals; everyone on the jury benefits, and justice, it appears, is better served. As Sommers concludes, these results make the benefits of diverse juries not just more concrete but readily attained. Minority jurors need feel no burden or need to "educate" white jurors or convey a unique minority perspective; diversity seems to do its own work. The results suggest that representative juries do not merely honor a civil right or a constitutional ideal but provide an effective tool for achieving more thorough and competent jury deliberations.

Read it all here. Read Sommers paper here.

So what conclusions can we draw from these two studies? First, the obvious fact that living and working in a diverse community can be a real challenge, and that we should not sugar-coat the difficulties. But, second, we must remember as well, that the struggle is worthwhile--if nothing else, we seem to make better decisions if we embrace diversity.

What do you think?

The Anglican Church of Nigeria now requires couples seeking marriage to have blood tests for HIV. Christianity Today reports:

The Anglican Church in Nigeria has made it manditory for couples wishing to be married by the Church to first take a HIV test.

HIV tests are required to help couples make more “informed choices” when choosing marriage partners, said the Rev Akintunde Popoola, spokesman for the Anglican Church in Nigeria.

“The aim is to help intending couples to make informed decisions because we don’t want anyone to be kept in the dark about their partner,” he said, according to the BBC News website Friday.

“The whole point is for the couples to know their HIV status before getting married.”

Yet the church is careful to point out that it is up to the couple whether to marry in cases where one of the partners has the HIV virus. Popoola said the church will offer the couple care and support if they decide to tie the knot despite the discovery of infection in either or both partners.

Nigeria has one of the world’s highest HIV infection rates – trailing behind India and South Africa only.
...
Other non-Anglican churches in Nigeria have imposed similar tests on parishioners who want to marry, reported the BBC. [Update: But see this comment by Akintunde.]

Western Christian leaders have also urged people to take HIV tests and for the Church as a whole to become more involved in the battle against HIV and Aids.
...
At the annual Global Summit on AIDS and the Church hosted by Saddleback Church, Warren along with presidential candidates Republican Senator Sam Brownback and Democratic Senator Barack Obama all took the Aids test to encourage the practice.

In Nigeria, not everyone supports the Anglican Church’s new mandatory HIV testing for marrying couples, however.

“We cannot accept what the church is proposing. Every Nigerian must be allowed to decide on their own whether they want to be tested or not,” said Professor Tunde Oshotimehin, who heads Nigeria’s state HIV control agency, according to BBC.

“HIV testing and counselling must be voluntary. What the church is trying to do will encourage denial.”

The Catholic Church in Nigeria is one Church that has decided against imposing such a policy, explaining that it wants HIV testing to be voluntary and personal.

Nigeria's AIDS control agency says the new policy is illegal.

But the Covenant University says its policy had been misunderstood by the media.

"We are not testing our students for HIV," Covenant University spokesman Emmanuel Igban told the BBC News website.

"What we do is a general medical test at the point of entry or admission and at graduation."

The university says it wants to produce "total graduates" which means in addition to passing all examinations, Covenant University graduates must be "morally upright" too.

The National Agency for the Control of Aids (Naca) calls the university's action "a breach of the fundamental human rights of the students".
...
Nigeria is a deeply religious country with her 140 million people almost evenly divided between Christians and Muslims.

The BBC yesterday carried the story of public reaction to the release of men on bail who were accused of crossdressing in the Muslim province of Bauchi:

Although they were initially accused of sodomy, the charges have now been changed to "indecent dressing" or cross-dressing and "vagrancy".

"Any (male) person who dresses .. in the fashion of a woman in a public place... will be liable to a term of one year or 30 lashes" a spokesman for the local sharia police, Muhamad Muhamad Bununu, told AFP news agency.

The Sharia punishment for sodomy is death by stoning, but he said that was much harder to prove as four witnesses were needed. More than a dozen Nigerian Muslims have been sentenced to death by stoning for sexual offences ranging such as adultery and homosexuality.

But none of these death sentences have actually been carried out - either being thrown out on appeal or commuted to prison terms as a result of pressure from human rights groups. Many others have been sentenced to flogging by horsewhip for drinking. There have been two amputations in north-western Zamfara State - which pioneered the introduction of the Islamic legal system in the country.

Nigeria, like many African countries, is a conservative society where homosexuality is considered a taboo.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) has released figures that show progress on the Millennium Development Goal of cutting the infant mortality rate. For the first time since records started being kept in 1960, the world child mortality rate has dropped below 10 percent. And, more funding has been provided toward this goal since the data was gathered, so officials are optimistic this trend will continue.

The estimated drop, to 9.7 million deaths of children under 5, “is a historic moment,” said Ann M. Veneman, Unicef’s executive director, noting that it shows progress toward the United Nations Millennium Development Goal of cutting the rate of infant mortality in 1990 by two-thirds by 2015. “But there is no room for complacency. Most of these deaths are preventable, and the solutions are tried and tested.”

Interestingly, Unicef officials said, the new estimate comes from household surveys done in 2005 or earlier, so they barely reflect the huge influx of money that has poured into third world health in the last few years from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria; the Gates Foundation; and the Bush administration’s twin programs to fight AIDS and malaria. For that reason, the next five-year survey should show even greater improvement, they said.

“We feel we’re at a tipping point now,” said Dr. Peter Salama, Unicef’s chief medical officer. “In a few years’ time, it will all translate into a very exciting drop.”

Read more at The New York Times.

The Anglican Communion News Service (ACNS) has published the text of an address by the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Kids Company Conference taking place in Britain:

"[Rowan Williams] called on the government to invest in the vulnerable children in our society:

'It's been said sometimes that you can gauge the termperature, the kind of moral climate of a society by looking at the way it treats its most vulnerable people…. What do we do on behalf of those who don't have voices, who don't have leverage, how do we bring their voices into public discussion? Are we a society where people are prepared to advocate for those who don't have voices of their own? Above all, are we prepared to put the necessary resource, skill and commitment, into the nurturing of human beings?''

Read the rest of the Archbishop's remarks to the 'No bullsh*t – What matters to every child' conference here.

We will remember Veterans Day this weekend on Sunday. There will most likely be prayers offered in thanksgiving for their service to their country in churches all over the US. But there are other issues at stake here as well. It has been recently reported that almost a quarter of the homeless on America's streets are former veterans who served to defend her.

A report from the National Alliance to End Homelessness states:

"Far too many veterans are homeless in America. Homeless veterans can be found in every state across the country and live in rural, suburban, and urban communities. Many have lived on the streets for years, while others live on the edge of homelessness, struggling to pay their rent. We analyzed data from the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Census Bureau to examine homelessness and severe housing cost burden among veterans. This report includes the following findings:

• In 2006, approximately 195,827 veterans were homeless on a given night—an increase of 0.8 percent from 194,254 in 2005. More veterans experience homeless over the course of the year. We estimate that 495,400 were homeless in 2006.
• Veterans make up a disproportionate share of homeless people. They represent roughly 26 percent of homeless people, but only 11 percent of the civilian population 18 years and older. This is true despite the fact that veterans are better educated, more likely to be employed, and have a lower poverty rate than the general population.
• A number of states, including Louisiana, California, and Missouri, had high rates of homeless veterans. In addition, the District of Columbia had a high rate of homelessness among veterans with approximately 7.5 percent of veterans experiencing homelessness.
• We estimate that in 2005 approximately 44,000 to 64,000 veterans were chronically homeless (i.e., homeless for long periods or repeatedly and with a disability)."

The report concludes with a call for congress and state legislatures to being to act to find solutions to this issue.

Read the rest here.

The Fair Trade movement is becoming quite active, but its premise--that consumers will pay a bit more for better pay to workers--is often based on stories and assumptions rather than data. At least some economists, however, have begun to study the so-called "Ben & Jerry's Effect", and they are finding that at least some consumers purchasing some products, fair trade works:

These days, everyone from big oil to Wal-Mart claims to be jumping on Ben & Jerry's bandwagon. Corporate America is busy announcing charitable-giving programs, releasing sustainability reports, and otherwise going all-out to demonstrate a commitment to corporate social responsibility. And so it's worth asking, does it pay for corporations to be nice?

This is the question animating a recent study (yet to be published) by Harvard researchers Michael Hiscox and Nick Smyth. They set out to discover whether customers prefer to buy from do-gooder companies. In their research at Manhattan's ABC Carpet and Home, they found that shoppers care a lot. When an item was labeled as being produced under "fair labor" practices, sales jumped. And when Hiscox and Smyth raised the prices of "fair labor" products, people bought even more than before. So, at least for ABC Carpet, being nice is good business.

We already know from surveys that consumers claim to prefer to eat their ice cream and wear their T-shirts free from the guilt that someone may have suffered for their consumerist pleasures. Or, if they don't care about ethics for their own sake, many people believe that conscientious companies are more likely to make high-quality, reliable products. (The people running these companies would presumably feel guilty about doing otherwise.)

But economists have a general distrust of surveys, since they're about words rather than actions. That's why Hiscox and Smyth set up their shopping experiment at ABC Carpet and Home, an upscale department store in lower Manhattan. They picked two brands of towels and two brands of candles that had all been produced under fair labor conditions. First, the researchers recorded the weekly sales of the towels and candles without labeling any of them as fair-labor certified, measuring purchasing decisions based solely on taste. After a few weeks, Hiscox and Smyth spent the night at ABC sticking fair-labor labels on one brand of towels and one brand of candles. When the store reopened, sales of the now-labeled fair-labor towels jumped by 11 percent relative to sales of the unlabeled brand. For candles, the effect was even greater—an increase of 26 percent.

A few weeks later, Hiscox and Smyth were back in the stockroom, marking up the prices on the labeled towels and candles by 10 percent. Quite remarkably, this increase made people buy even more towels and candles (a 20 percent increase for towels and 30 percent for candles). The authors suggest this may be because the higher prices made the products' fair-labor claims more credible.

By looking at both towels and candles, the researchers deliberately contrasted a mundane, anonymous household item (towels) with a luxury good that was much more likely to be purchased as a gift (candles). And they think that helps explain why the fair-labor sticker boosted candle sales more. Virtuous towel purchasers are anonymous in their good deeds. When you give a fair-labor-certified candle, others also bask in the warm glow of your goodness.

While encouraging, the researchers offer an important caveat:

As anyone who has ever paid a visit to ABC Carpet knows, its customers are not normal people. (I realized this when I first went there a couple of years ago and saw ethically sourced tree stumps selling for thousands of dollars apiece.) As Hiscox and Smyth acknowledge, ABC customers are wealthy, liberal New Yorkers who can afford to pay $15 for a candle or $40 for a single towel. So, what we've really learned is that socially minded rich folk can afford to let conscience dictate their purchasing decisions, whatever the markup. ABC shoppers, however, represent only the tiniest sliver of American consumers, and their buying preferences alone aren't enough to make American businesses kinder, gentler, and cleaner.

Will home builders at large pay more for fair-labor plywood at Home Depot? Could Wal-Mart raise prices by 5 percent to cover health-care costs for its workers, pass the cost along to its customers while telling them the reason for the higher price, and take no hit in the market? This new research doesn't really tell us. But if Home Depot were willing to let them try, I'm sure Hiscox and Smyth would be happy to spend a few more nights in the stockroom with their label gun to find out.

Read it all here. Read the study itself here.

The Episcopal Public Policy Network notes that during its recent meeting in New Orleans the House of Bishops called upon Congress to fulfill its moral obligation "to create a new vision for recovery of the Gulf Coast." H.R. 1227, which addressed this call, passed the House of Representatives with "strong bipartisan support," according to EPPN, and now the Network has turned its attention on generating grassroots support for the Senate version, S.1668.

Sadly many needs in the Gulf Coast remain unmet. Even more tragic, those who were poor and vulnerable before the storms have continued to be neglected in the recovery process. "What more can we do? How can we continue to help?

Contact your Senators today and urge them to support S. 1668, the Gulf Coast Housing
Recovery Act of 2007:

This legislation, which passed the House as H. 1227 with strong bipartisan support, is an opportunity for concerned Episcopalians across the nation to give the Gulf Coast a tremendous boost with our voices. The Senate could soon consider S. 1668, which will help ensure that all residents—homeowners, renters, first-time homebuyers and public housing residents alike—have a way to come home. Episcopalians and people of faith are doing our part; we must encourage our Government to fulfill its commitment to Gulf Coast Rebuilding.

Read the full appeal here.

It has become a tradition every year for Caroline Baum to run this Thanksgiving column about the Pilgrim's first Thanksgiving. Some excerpts:

In the spring of 1623, Governor Bradford and the others ``begane to thinke how they might raise as much corne as they could, and obtaine a better crop than they had done, that they might not still thus languish in misery,'' according to Bradford's history.

One of the traditions the Pilgrims had brought with them from England was a practice known as ``farming in common.'' Everything they produced was put into a common pool; the harvest was rationed according to need.

They had thought ``that the taking away of property, and bringing in community into a common wealth, would make them happy and flourishing,'' Bradford recounts.

They were wrong. ``For this community (so far as it was) was found to breed much confusion and discontent, and retard much imployment that would have been to their benefite and comforte,'' Bradford writes.
...
After the Pilgrims had endured near-starvation for three winters, Bradford decided to experiment when it came time to plant in the spring of 1623. He set aside a plot of land for each family, that ``they should set corne every man for his owne perticuler, and in that regard trust to themselves.''
...
Bradford writes: ``This had very good success; for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corne was planted than other waise would have bene by any means the Govr or any other could use, and saved him a great deall of trouble, and gave far better content.''

A new book published in Canada presents the experience of the homeless in that country in their own words. The collection was the brainchild of Cathy Crowe:

"Crowe is a street nurse and homeless activist who has worked with Toronto’s homeless population for the past 18 years. She also co-founded the Toronto Disaster Relief Committee (TDRC) in 1998, which promptly declared homelessness in Canada a national disaster. Most recently she has received the Atkinson Charitable Foundation Economic Justice Award, and works from a base at Sherbourne Health Centre in downtown Toronto.

Crowe had an epiphany while watching the reports on television of the ‘Ice Storm Disaster’ of January of 1998. She describes quite poignantly how she decided to take a leave from her job as a street nurse to go and help out with the disaster. And then the light dawned: ‘I realized that the images on television that had moved me were the daily, hellish circumstances of homeless people’s lives. . . . Homelessness is a man-made disaster.’ What Crowe also realized was that people did not respond to the homelessness disaster in the same way they do to a natural disaster.

Dying for a Home is an anthology of the stories of 10 (11 including Crowe) homeless activists many of whom resided in Tent City – a squat on a piece of land near the Toronto waterfront from 1998 to 2002. Tent City existed for almost five years and at its peak there were almost 100 people living there.

The contributors to this anthology talk about their lives and the trajectory that brought them to Toronto and then homelessness. They also share their hopes and dreams of having a home and the frustration they feel with governments who remain blind to their plight."

Read the rest here.

The Episcopal Public Policy Network posted its Lenten Resource series online. The resources are arranged by week and available in a number of different formats and from a wide variety of theological, cultural and scientific sources.

According to the description of the program:

"During Lent we will explore our responsibility to the environment and what steps we can take as a community and as individuals to maintain God’s amazing creation. The climate is changing and that affects all aspects of life around the world. This Lenten Series will look at opportunities for advocacy and personal conservation as well as share stories about what Episcopalians across the country do to honor creation.

Additional resources will be added throughout Lent so visit these pages often. If you have ideas, resources, tips, sermons, or stories, share them with us so that we can post them so that others can share in your success."

Read the rest here.

Writing in The Nation, Sasha Abramsky reports on The New Sanctuary Movement:

While many admire the sense of moral purpose demonstrated by New Sanctuary Movement leaders, some progressive immigration reformers are skeptical of their modus operandi.

"It's a highly laudable cause in many ways, and you can appreciate why they're doing what they're doing," says Muzaffar Chishti, director of the Migration Policy Institute at New York University's School of Law. "But it touches such an incredibly minuscule part of the population. It's more symbolic than meaningful in the lives of immigrants."

Chishti believes, moreover, that it's problematic that New Sanctuary advocates fail to distinguish between civil and criminal immigration cases, embracing individuals who have willfully ignored final deportation orders and who have ended up with criminal cases against them. "There are people who have final notices, know they have final notices, and then they're taking refuge. It gets you in the harboring problem."

It also gets into what is in many ways an even thornier issue: progressives don't like faith-based infringements on the secular political and legal system when conducted by conservatives. How, therefore, does it make sense to claim sacred privilege from the left? "Our legal system," Chishti notes, "does not recognize a church-based sanctuary. We have a separation of church and state."

Yet for all the flaws in New Sanctuary philosophy, its practitioners are highlighting something important: America is a country of immigrants, but in recent years more and more of those immigrants have entered illegally. They have done so not out of a desire to live on the margins and at perpetual risk of deportation but because the current immigration process makes it extremely hard for large numbers of people to migrate legally from countries like Mexico and Guatemala--or, for that matter, from countries such as the one the San Diego sisters came from--while at the same time economic and political factors, such as the way NAFTA has played out, make it extremely hard not to embark on a migration journey.

Read it all. Hat Tip: The Revealer

And check out this essay on immigration reform at Episcopal Life Online.

Charles Jenkins, the Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana, has been searching for a different way of trying to reconcile the people of New Orleans who's racial and economic divisions have been increasing since the Hurricane.

Jenkins is particularly interested in the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission model.

According to the an article by Bruce Nolan carried by the Religious News Service:

"Jenkins said he has been quietly discussing the idea among colleagues since last fall. And although he said he thinks New Orleans badly needs to repair its social fabric, he is not yet committed to a particular plan of action.   'An issue for me is that I don't want to do something that's going to do more harm than good, and I acknowledge that's a possibility,' Jenkins said before the meeting.   He described the reception his idea has received in private conversations as less than lukewarm. 'Cool' was more accurate, he said.   Still, he said, 'We have worked on race relations in the city for years, and there's not a whole lot of change. I don't think we can continue doing the same things and expect different results.'   Jenkins said he has been quietly talking for months with clergy friends and activists about the idea. He brought the Seokas from South Africa to his diocese's annual convention, where Seoka preached about reconciliation before several hundred Episcopalian clergy and lay people"

Read the rest here.

Tony Blair, the former prime minister of Britain, will serve a one year fellowship appointment at Yale University where he will be helping lead a course of study on faith and globalization.

According to the Ecumenical News Service,

"Blair will serve as the Howland Distinguished Fellow during the 2008-09 academic year, the university announced on 7 March. Blair will work with the faculties of the Yale Divinity School and the Yale School of Management.

Yale President Richard C. Levin said: 'As the world continues to become increasingly inter-dependent, it is essential that we explore how religious values can be channelled toward reconciliation rather than polarisation. Mr Blair has demonstrated outstanding leadership in these areas.'

Concurrent with his Yale position, Blair - who was an Anglican but in 2007 converted to Roman Catholicism - is expected to launch later in 2008, the Tony Blair Faith Foundation. This 'will promote understanding between the major faiths and increase understanding of the role of faith in the modern world', the university, based at New Haven, Connecticut, said in its announcement.

The appointment was not lauded by all however. Ian Gibson, a former MP who served in the Commons during Blair's time as prime minster said of the news:

'It is a pity that Mr Blair did not think more deeply about issues of religious strife before he went and bombed Baghdad,' Gibson told the London-based Guardian newspaper in 2007. 'Now he wants to be vicar to the world? It is ridiculous.'"

Read the rest here.

An article in the Baltimore Sun this morning reports on clergy in a number of denominations and religions who are beginning to refuse to solemnize weddings between men and women as a form of protest against what the clergy perceive as discrimination by the state in not allowing legal forms of same-gender blessings to be recognized.

From the article:

"Some rabbis and ministers in states including Virginia, Minnesota, Michigan and Connecticut have told their congregants that when it comes to weddings they are in the business of religious ceremonies - only - and they have redirected couples to the local courthouse for the paperwork.

'There's sort of a steady drip, drip, drip of people starting to do this,' said the Rev. Donald Stroud, minister of outreach and reconciliation at That All May Freely Serve Baltimore, an organization that advocates for the full inclusion of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people in the Presbyterian Church.

'I think it does raise people's consciousness - that's one element. But I think a lot of ministers who do this do this first because their conscience compels them,' said Stroud. The Presbyterian Church does not sanction same-sex marriage, but it also does not compel pastors to sign licenses, he said. And like some of his colleagues, he would decline to do so if the issue arose because of what he sees as the state's discriminatory laws.."

The article continues with quotes from a number of clergy around the country who discuss the reasons for their actions and the various ways their congregations and communities have responded.

Read the rest here.

News about the effects of sky-rocketing food prices is starting to break through to the foreground of public policy discussions. While to this point most of the conversation has focused on the cause or causes of the increase, there are people starting to suggest ways that society needs to respond.

An article by Mark Trumbull published today in the Christian Science Monitor has some specific suggestions:

"Although poor nations are most at risk, much can be done by rich nations to avert a crisis and to set the stage for long-run solutions.

Some of the steps – such as boosting food aid – are obvious. Others are more difficult or politically controversial, but could reap meaningful benefits. Some examples:

• Ramp up cash-handout programs for people who spend half or more of their income on food.

• Curb or phase out government mandates or subsidies for using crops as fuel.

• Expand agricultural research and spread existing technologies throughout Africa, where farmers lag furthest behind.

• Prepare International Monetary Fund assistance to help food-poor nations cover rising trade deficits.

• Resist the temptation to tamper with the free-market price signals that will ultimately encourage greater food production. This means resisting price controls or farm subsidies within nations, and keeping trade open among nations."

Additionally the director of the USAID (US Agency for International Development) points out that the national security implications of the developing crisis. He makes additional recommendations about aid delivery mechanisms that are being supported by the US administration, and which may soon be implemented.

The article concludes by pointing out that this does not appear to be a short-term issue. It is expected that the present pressures will intensify squeezing those in extreme poverty more and more in coming years.

Read the full article here.

Peter Timmer is Visiting Professor in the Program on Food Security and Environment at Stanford University and a Non-Resident Fellow at the Center for Global Development. In a Q&A he says,

Unless some way can be found to stop the explosive rise in food prices generally, and rice prices in particular, we will see sharply higher mortality. Most of these deaths will be in Asia because of the huge numbers of poor, hungry people there who are dependent on rice for their daily subsistence.

This will not be mass starvation, with people dying in the streets, but it will be sharply higher infant and child mortality and weakened adults succumbing prematurely to infectious diseases. If current rice prices in world markets are actually transmitted into most Asian countries--and this is not yet a reality, but it becomes more likely every day the world price stays this high--then even conservative calculations suggest that upwards of 10 million people will die prematurely.
...
The trigger for the explosion in rice prices was the decision of the Indian government to impose an export ban in November 2007, taking the world's second largest exporter out of the market. That set off fears in the newly elected, populist government in Thailand that rice prices would get out of control there, so export controls were openly discussed-- Thailand is the world's largest rice exporter. Vietnam followed with export restrictions in January 2008.

On the import side, the Philippines has been throwing fuel on the fire by insisting on huge tenders for rice from a world market that cannot provide it, thus driving up the price in this thin market.
...
There are two obvious things the rich countries can do: first, boost supply by funding food aid channels, including the World Food Program and others, with cash and commodities. Rice is now quite scarce physically in a number of distressed countries--a reversal of situations caused mostly by local crop failures or disasters. Second, end bio-fuel subsidies and mandates immediately. There is substantial disagreement over the role corn-based ethanol (in the U.S.) and vegetable oil-based bio-diesel (in Europe and some parts of Asia) in the recent price spikes--the "respectable" range is from 10 to 60 percent. But there is no way the rich countries can play a leadership role in bringing this crisis under control as long as they insist there is plenty of food for people, livestock, AND automobiles. There just isn't--and we've known that from the start of the U.S. bio-fuels program.

At econbrowser James Hamilton provides a graphic showing the growth of ethanol corn use in the US. Hamilton asks,

How should a well-fed American react when some of the world's poorest citizens in Haiti and Bangladesh riot over the rising price of food? To be sure, there are many factors influencing food prices. But to me it's natural to begin with the element that represents a deliberate policy choice on the part of the United States. I refer to America's decision to divert a significant part of our agricultural production for purposes of creating a fuel additive for motor vehicles.

On one level, the question of whether it is morally acceptable for us to divert the food that might have fed the hungry for purposes of driving our SUVs is no different from similar questions about any of a number of other details of how the well-off dispose of their wealth. But I'm thinking that the profound inefficiencies associated with this particular disposition of resources may also be relevant. As a result of ethanol subsidies and mandates, the dollar value of what we ourselves throw away in order to produce fuel in this fashion could be 50% greater than the value of the fuel itself. In other words, we could have more food for the Haitians, more fuel for us, and still have something left over for your other favorite cause, if we were simply to use our existing resources more wisely.

We have adopted this policy not because we want to drive our cars, but because our elected officials perceive a greater reward from generating a windfall for American farmers.

Free exchange, the economics blog at The Economist, has this to say:

[Bio-fuel production] has come in for particular scrutiny in America, where government incentives have led to a boom in ethanol production and have helped to tie movements in energy costs to those in food markets.

But the connection between energy and food prices doesn't stop there. Petroleum is an input to farm machinery, and dear petrol adds to the cost of food shipments. And, as Felix Salmon noted yesterday, fertiliser is overwhelmingly produced from natural gas. Mr Salmon quotes Paul Scheckel, who writes:

Fertilizer production is second only to petroleum refining when it comes to industrial use of natural gas in the United States: 97 percent of the fertilizer applied to crops is manufactured from natural gas. With spiking energy costs, fertilizer manufacturers are opting to close their doors and instead sell their natural gas supplies.

Interestingly, this creates another link between biofuel production and food costs. It seems that fields planted repeatedly in corn require an especially large dose of nitrogen fertiliser.

In 2006, the Diocese of Washington asked the General Convention to include Thurgood Marshall in the book of Lesser Feasts and Fasts. The request was referred to a church commission, and will be reconsidered at the 2009 Convention

But those who support Marshall's cause can hold a Eucharist in his honor next month, perhaps on May 17, the date that the diocese proposes establishing as his feast. (and the anniversary of his victory in the landmark school desergregation case, Brown. v. Board of Education.

For background on the diocese's effort read these two stories from the Washington Window.

The resolution recommending Marshall's inclusion that was passed by the Convention of the Diocese of Washington, and a biography put together by St. Augustine's, Marshall home parish in Washington, D. C. are also available.

To find the propers of the day, and suggestions for hymns, click on read more.

Read more »

While HIV/AIDS is thought of as the world's greatest public health challenge, there are other significant diseases that are are taking a similar toll. Today is World Malaria Day and a number of organizations around the world have taken advantage of the attention being paid to their work to call for new initiatives in the prevention of Malaria.

The AFM (Africa Fighting Malaria) organization has issued a call for a renewed push for "indoor spraying" of homes with DDT. DDT, banned in much of the world because of its dangers to the environment, is one of the most effective spot treatments in preventing domestic Malaria infection vectors.

From their release:

"Indoor Residual Spraying (IRS) is a highly effective method of malaria control recommended by the World Health Organization. Unfortunately it remains underutilized in sub-Saharan Africa, where, each year, malaria kills over a million people and drains the continent of US$12 billion. World Malaria Day 2008 focuses on malaria across borders – some of the best cross-border malaria control programs rely heavily on IRS. Yet most donor agencies are loath to strengthen IRS programs in Africa, train medical entomologists to run them, and invest in new insecticides.

This World Malaria Day, AFM is issuing a Call to Action to support IRS. AFM created an interactive map to indicate which countries are conducting IRS (orange) along with the main financiers - the US President's Malaria Initiative, Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, the private sector and/or strong domestic government support.  "

Read the rest here.

Episcopal Relief and Development has released a statement today as well.

Episcopal Relief and Development is actively fighting the spread of malaria, which infects 500 million people a year and kills over 1 million, mostly children and pregnant women living in Sub-Saharan Africa. Our Millennium Development Goals (MDG) Inspiration Fund is dedicated to achieving MDG 6-Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases- and is in the process of raising $3 million dollars towards this effort.

Episcopal Relief and Development’s NetsforLife® program is a partnership to prevent malaria in 15 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The partnership is comprised of individual, foundation and corporate sponsors including Standard Chartered Bank, ExxonMobil Foundation, The Starr International Foundation, The White Flowers Foundation and The Coca-Cola Africa Foundation. NetsforLife® works in partnership with the Anglican Church and other ecumenical partners in affected communities to distribute long-lasting insecticide-treated nets to the most vulnerable, build awareness about malaria, and train community leaders to teach prevention and treatment methods.

“We know what we have to do,” says StephenDzisi, Technical Director of NetsforLife® .“Our ability to reach vulnerable families living ‘at the end of the road’ is the work of our Church and enables us to contribute to the global effort to eliminate malaria.”

The Catholic News Service reports on calls by Roman Catholic bishops that the Church must respond to expected continued rise in the price of basic food commodities.

According to the article:

"Already this year, demonstrations linked to spiraling food prices have struck more than a dozen countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Protests forced Haitian Prime Minister Jacques-Edouard Alexis out of office April 12, and demonstrators have been killed in Cameroon, Peru and Mozambique.

The price increases are fueled by a variety of factors that 'are all coming together at once,' said Lisa Kuennen, director of the public resource group at Catholic Relief Services, the U.S. bishops' international relief and development agency.

[...]Price increases hit poor countries -- and their poorest citizens -- hardest. "

In response:

After violent protests in Haiti in early April, the country's Catholic bishops urged the government to implement both emergency and long-term policies to tackle hunger. In a statement issued April 12, the Haitian bishops' conference condemned the violence that began with protests in the southern city of Les Cayes and left at least five people dead.

Although "the right to demonstrate is sacred," the statement said, "this does not authorize anyone to take lives or attack property belonging to others."

In their statement, the bishops warned that peaceful demonstrations should not be infiltrated by "agitators and interested manipulators." Many Haitian analysts had suggested that the demonstrations over high food prices had been hijacked by politicians trying to turn the unrest to their political advantage.

The article ends with a call for the development of long-term policies in areas such as land reform, export controls and monetary policy changes that together are hoped to be able to "keep large numbers of people from slipping back into hunger and poverty".

Read the full article here.

A new coalition of voices within the American Christian community is beginning to lobby in concert for a change in US environmental policy.

The newest voices that are joining to the call for this change are coming from the traditionally politically conservative evangelical wing.

From an article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

"The once-tiny Christian environmental movement began accelerating quickly in 2006, when 85 prominent evangelical leaders signed on to the Evangelical Climate Initiative calling for action on global warming. The number has climbed to more than 100.

'It's a bit out of the ordinary for evangelicals to be involved with this issue,' said Jim Jewell, chief operating officer of the Evangelical Environmental Network, a group that educates and mobilizes Christians on environmental issues. 'The evangelical involvement with climate has kind of shaken the political landscape a bit.'

In March, dozens of prominent Southern Baptist leaders called on followers to acknowledge human contributions to global warming, and demanded bold action to address climate change.

They said the church's cautious approach was 'too timid' in promoting stewardship of God's creation.

'To abandon these issues to the secular world is to shirk from our responsibility...' they declared. 'The time for timidity regarding God's creation is no more.'

Jonathan Merritt, the 25-year-old seminary student from Atlanta who organized the Baptist environmental declaration, said younger Baptists in particular were relieved to see church leaders take a bold public stance."

Read the full article here.

According the article this new coalition is expected to have a significant effect on next month's debate over legislation moving through the Senate that is designed to confront global warming.