… the United States and the European Union resisted calls to reduce the enormous subsidies that they hand out to agricultural producers. This is one of the main barriers to developing countries having a chance to trade their way out of poverty, for it funds cheaper agricultural produce against which farmers in poorer countries cannot compete.
The Common Word project, started last October by 138 Muslim scholars, says Christianity and Islam share two common core values — love of God and love of neighbor. The group says discussions on this among experts can help defuse tensions between the faiths.
The new manual provides safeguards for workers who request time off for religious observances, and protects workers whose faith requires they wear specific religious garments, such as a hijab, a head covering worn by some Muslim women.
As buildings cry out for major maintenance, and the financial responsibility gets passed from one generation to the next, we “boomers” are emerging as the new elders, whether we like it or not. Raised in the counter-cultural, anti-institutional world of the 1960’s and 70’s, we now have to ask ourselves. “Do we think there should be churches for the next generation?
“I love to tell the story of unseen things above,
Of Jesus and his glory, of Jesus and his love . . .”
This Sunday School song, echoing from my earliest childhood memories, suggests a question—just how do we tell the story of the unseen? So, it’s about Jesus and his glory—but how and when have we witnessed heavenly glory?
Sitting in airports with wifi and traveling home after the Lambeth Conference, bishops reflect on their experiences and offer thoughts on “what now?”
Now that the Bishops are on their way home, the press is trying to make summarize the just completed Lambeth Conference and the pundits are polishing their crystal balls to tell us what it all means. Here is a round up of press reports from the day after Lambeth.
In many ways the Lambeth Conference appears to have had dual personalities. There was the listening, engaging side where Bishops met face-to-face and there was the organizational side where the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Anglican Communion Office and the Bishops attempted to find a structure by which the Communion can continue to hold together.
Corey Fincher, of the University of New Mexico, has a different hypothesis for the origin of religious diversity. He thinks not that religions are like disease but that they are responses to disease—or, rather, to the threat of disease. If he is right, then people who believe that their religion protects them from harm may be correct, although the protection is of a different sort from the supernatural one they perceive.
Virginia Governor Tim Kaine and Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius reportedly sit on top of Barack Obama’s vice presidential short list. What binds these two–aside from being effective Democratic governors of red (or reddish) states–is that they’re both Roman Catholic. But their similarities mask a surprising gulf: Sebelius and Kaine have had markedly different political relationships with the Church.