Rabbi Jonathan Sacks: "Credo: Sunday shopping has not made us better or happier"

AMEN!

~The Rev. Peter M. Carey

Read it all HERE

From the TimesOnline (London Times)

Credo: Sunday shopping has not made us better or happier
The Sabbath is our counterweight to the pressures and values of the market undefined

Jonathan Sacks

During this economic crisis much attention has been paid to the deregulation of financial services that took place in the 1980s. That opened the floodgates to higher, and eventually unsustainable, levels of borrowing and spending. Little attention has been paid to another act of deregulation at about the same time, that played its own part in creating an overheated credit-and-consumption culture: the deregulation of Sunday, turning the day of rest into a day of shopping.

It was probably inevitable given the secularisation of society. But from a Jewish perspective I doubt whether Judaism would have survived, let alone thrived, without the Sabbath. It is our counterweight to the pressures and values of the market. It is our oasis of rest in a world that seems as if it is moving too fast for anyone to know where it is going. It is our sanctuary in time, when we celebrate the things that have value but no price....

Read it all HERE

"Don't blame greedy bankers, blame your own pride," Rowan Williams tells Government

from Ruth Gledhill of the London Times, a wonderful introduction to an amazing speech that the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams delivered today...

Don't blame greedy bankers - blame your own pride, Rowan tells Government

Any student of human failings understands that the deadliest of the seven deadly sins is not greed, but pride. It has taken the Archbishop of Canterbury to point this out to the Government in a thunderously excellent speech tonight in a public lecture in Cardiff. See our story here and the full transcript also.

This is the Archbishop at his best, and I recommend to you the three principles with which he concludes:

(i) Our faith depends on the action of a God who is to be trusted; God keeps promises. There could hardly be a more central theme in Jewish and Christian Scripture, and the notion is present in slightly different form in Islam as well. Thus, to live in proper harmony with God, human beings need to be promise-keepers in all areas of their lives, not least in financial dealings.

read it all HERE

Rowan Williams on the US Election: Stirring our imagination

Archbishop of Canterbury on US election

'It's been an amazing demonstration of the vitality of the democratic process. A record turnout. And the sense therefore that the issues in the election, the issues about the outgoing American administration, have actually stirred the moral imagination of the United States in ways that people didn't expect. Given the sort of turnout that we have in British elections it would be quite nice to have an election one of these days that stirred our imagination to that extent.'

From Ruth Gledhill's London Times Blog

Anglican Church schism recedes over gay issue with African leaders

so, I wonder if Time, Newsweek and all the others will report that the Anglican Communion just might stay together...?

From Times Online

June 24, 2008

Anglican Church schism recedes over gay issue with African leaders

The prospect of schism in the worldwide Anglican Church receded as African leaders meeting in Jerusalem stepped back from the brink and declared they are not seeking to start a new church.

Archbishop Benjamin Nzimbi, Primate of Kenya and leader of that country's four million Anglicans, and the Ugandan Primate Archbishop Henry Orombi confirmed last night that there will be no split.

Archbishop Nzimbi's comments are especially significant because he is heading the committee that will draw up the final communique to be issued on Sunday night.

Related Links

• Bishop accuses Williams over ‘apostasy’

• Anglican conference hit by bar on archbishop

• Bishop attacks gay priests' 'wedding'

It also confirms the word behind the scenes in Israel and as disclosed by The Times on Monday, that the agenda is now reform from within rather than starting a breakaway conservative Anglican church that excludes homosexuals or tried to "convert" them to heterosexuality.

The emerging figure that is crucial in the softening of the line on schism is the Archbishop of Sydney, Dr Peter Jensen, who has become the key player on the Anglican conservative wing, shifting the emphasis from the US and African conservatives to Australia. Significantly, the Pittsburgh Bishop Bob Duncan, who heads the US conservative grouping Common Cause, is not in Israel although he is named as one of the Global Anglican Future Conference (Gafcon) leadership team in the programme.

In a recent interview in the Sydney Morning Herald, Dr Jensen said that it would be legally impossible to engineer schism. The Episcopal Church of the US has already launched a number of legal actions against breakaway parishes and bishops. Dr Jensen said: "I can't. I'm part of a constitution, which is virtually unchangeable, of the Australian Church. I wouldn't want to. I love the Church. It would be bad for Christianity, bad for the Gospel." He continued: "I think there is going to be an evolution in the Anglican Communion. It has occurred. And what the Future Conference is going to work out is how to live best within that evolution. That's its business."

Gandalf planning to preach Bishop Robinson's Sermon?

Wow,...we certainly live in interesting times...on Ruth Gledhill's (London Times Religion Correspondent) blog, she asserts that there may be a plan to have Sir Ian McCellan (the wonderful actor who played Gandalf in the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings series) preach Bishop Gene Robinson's sermon since Bishop Robinson has been denied permission to preside at the Eucharist and to preach in England by Archbishop Rowan Williams ...

... perhaps just a few rumors stitched together, but the idea is pretty interesting....

~The Rev. Peter M. Carey


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From Ruth Gledhill's blog:

Episcopal Cafe has a good story in its 'lead', that Bishop Gene Robinson has been denied permission by the Archbishop of Canterbury to preach while in this country during Lambeth. I've been following this for some time, as there was a story going round that Sir Ian McKellan, the gay actor, would take part in a service and 'preach' the sermon for Bishop Gene while he stood silently beside the pulpit. Sir Ian is understood to have expressed his sympathies for Bishop Gene in writing. Also, when my own husband interviewed him a while back for The Times Magazine, although these quotes didn't make it into the finished article because they weren't relevant, Sir Ian was clear in his outrage at the Anglican goings-on. When I spoke to Sir Ian about it a few days ago he was adamant that he wished to make no comment. And Sir Ian's office tells me he has no plans to do anything for Bishop Gene at present. In any case, whether he did or not would depend on Bishop Gene being banned from preaching in the first place. So has he or hasn't the bishop been banned? Will Bishop Gene and Sir Ian put on a 'double act' at St Mary's Putney, an event that would be a massive publicity coup for Inclusive Church and Bishop Gene's supporters?

It does make me wonder whether the Archbishop of Canterbury has deliberately given them the opening they need to do just this. Because if Lambeth Palace hadn't denied him permission to preach, he could hardly make such a powerful protest against a non-existent injunction. But maybe that's a conspiracy theory too far.....

Read it all HERE.

If Gandalf preaches Bishop Robinson's sermon, who will preside and preach for Bishops Minns or Venables (if they too are banned)

Hmmmmmmm, what do you think...?



I, for one, would be happy to have Merry or Pippin preach for me in England ....

Benazir Bhutto

There is a lot of news coverage of the assasination of Benazir Bhutto - appropriately so, in my mind. I found the following article, posted here by Ruth Gledhill of the London Times to be particularly interesting and helpful as I try to understand her life and work more fully. Below the excerpt from Ruth Gledhill's article I've posted a bit from the New York Times obituary.

Clearly she was an incredible woman and we have much to learn from her life and work. I pray for Pakistan and those who knew and loved Benazir Bhutto.

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Benazir: 'I am not afraid of death'

'I am not afraid of death,' Benazir Bhutto told me when I interviewed her for the Daily Mail in November 1985. She was just 31 at the time. 'My religion teaches that I will rejoin my father and my brother when I die. It is the living who have to suffer the grief and the pain,' she said. In an attempt to pay tribute, although nothing I can say will ever be enough,








You can find the entire article HERE .

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Benazir Bhutto, 54, Lived in Eye of Pakistan Storm

Douglas E. Curran/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images

Benazir Bhutto in front of a poster of her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, after she won first parliamentary elections in 1988. More Photos >

By JANE PERLEZ and VICTORIA BURNETT

Published: December 28, 2007

Charismatic, striking and a canny political operator, Benazir Bhutto, 54, was reared amid the privileges of Pakistan’s aristocracy and the ordeals of its turbulent politics. Smart, ambitious and resilient, she endured her father’s execution and her own imprisonment at the hands of a military dictator to become the country’s — and the Muslim world’s — first female leader.

You can find the entire New York Times obituary HERE.