Archbishop reveals his unorthodox way to God

London Times Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent

THE Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has revealed how his first encounter with God was not at an Anglican or even a Roman Catholic service but at a Mass of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Dr Williams was only 14 when his local Anglican curate took him along to an Orthodox Mass in Swansea celebrated by a visiting Russian priest.

Although his long journey of faith began at his “mother’s knee”, Dr Williams said the Russian Orthodox Mass was one of only two moments in his teenage years when he met the “living God”.
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Religions target female foeticide

By Geeta Pandey
BBC News, Haryana

A caravan of 25 vehicles and 200 people has been criss-crossing five northern and western states of India for the past 10 days.

The travellers are on a mission. They are campaigning against female foeticide, which has resulted in a gender imbalance in some parts of the country.

The campaign is being led by well-known religious leader and social activist, Swami Agnivesh.

“There’s no other form of violence that’s more painful, more abhorrent, more shameful,” declares Swami Agnivesh.
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Conservative Episcopalians Warn Church That It Must Change Course or Face Split

New York Times NEELA BANERJEE November 12, 2005

PITTSBURGH, Nov. 11 – Conservative leaders of the Episcopal Church U.S.A. and their Anglican counterparts from overseas intensified their warnings Friday about the possibility of a schism in the Anglican Communion if the Episcopal Church did not renounce the consecration of gay bishops and the blessing of same-sex unions.

About 2,400 Episcopal Church and Anglican bishops, clergy members and lay leaders from around the world gathered here Thursday for a three-day show of solidarity in preparation for a general convention of the Episcopal Church next June in Columbus, Ohio.

While Episcopal and Anglican conservatives have warned before of the possibility of a split in the 77 million-member Anglican Communion over these issues, powerful primates of national and regional Anglican churches from Africa, Asia and the Caribbean said Friday that a break was all but inevitable if the Episcopal Church did not vote to change course at the Columbus meeting.
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U.S. Report on Religious Freedom in Russia Draws Fire

Zenit News

Catholics and Orthodox Alike Dispute Findings

MOSCOW, NOV. 10, 2005 (Zenit.org).- A Russian Catholic representative publicly expressed his disagreement with a U.S. State Department report that contends there is a lack of respect for religious freedom in Russia.

Father Igor Kovalevsky, secretary-general of the Conference of Catholic Bishops of Russia, said that “Russian power makes no discrimination whatsoever against the freedom of religious minorities.”

According to the report on religious freedom around the world, presented in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Russia is one of the countries that practices a preconceived policy in its relationship with representatives of minority religions.

In the opinion of U.S. experts, the Russian authorities and the Russian Orthodox Church, as well as the Federal Security Service (formerly the KGB), limit the freedom of religious minorities.
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Early skirmish in the Eurabian civil war

Jewish World Review Mark Steyn November 9

According to its Office du Tourisme, the big event in Evreux this past weekend was supposed to be the annual fête de la pomme, du cidre et du fromage at the Place de la Mairie. Instead, in this charmingly smoldering cathedral town in Normandy, a shopping mall, a post office, two schools, upwards of 50 vehicles and, oh yes, the police station were destroyed by — what’s the word? — “youths”.

Over at the Place de la Mairie, M le Maire himself, Jean-Louis Debré, seemed affronted by the very idea that un soupçon de carnage should be allowed to distract from the cheese-tasting. “A hundred people have smashed everything and strewn desolation,” he told reporters. “Well, they don’t form part of our universe.”

Maybe not, but unfortunately you form part of theirs.
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Voice for Orthodoxy unity — from Brooklyn

The rites were quiet, yet elaborate, and drew small clusters of dedicated worshippers out of their homes on a Saturday morning and into Byzantine sanctuaries across the nation.

Somewhere in each church stood an icon of a dignified Arab wearing the rich liturgical vestments of an Eastern Orthodox bishop. The worshippers took turns kissing the icon and chanters gave thanks to God for the work of the new saint whose name still causes smiles — St. Raphael of Brooklyn.

“It isn’t every day that you hear the word ‘Brooklyn’ used in a Divine Liturgy,” said Father Gregory Mathewes-Green, the priest in my own parish near Baltimore. “St. Raphael is important not only because he lived a remarkable life, but because of where he came from and who he was. He is a wonderful symbol for Orthodox unity in America. Š

“Our church was unified in his day and we pray it can be unified again.”
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Why Immigrants Don’t Riot Here

Wall Street Opinion Journal JOEL KOTKIN Tuesday, November 8, 2005

France’s rigid economic system sustains privilege and inspires resentment.

The French political response to the continuing riots has focused most on the need for more multicultural “understanding” of, and public spending on, the disenchanted mass in the country’s grim banlieues (suburbs). What has been largely ignored has been the role of France’s economic system in contributing to the current crisis. State-directed capitalism may seem ideal for American admirers such as Jeremy Rifkin, author of “The European Dream,” and others on the left. Yet it is precisely this highly structured and increasingly infracted economic system that has so limited opportunities for immigrants and their children. In a country where short workweeks and early retirement are sacred, there is little emphasis on creating new jobs and even less on grass-roots entrepreneurial activity.
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Population Politics

Wall Street Opinion Journal Monday, November 7, 2005

Why Ellen Sauerbrey has become a liberal target.

Samuel Alito isn’t the only nominee under attack by liberals for his record on abortion. So is Ellen Sauerbrey, President Bush’s choice to be Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration.

To be precise, Ms. Sauerbrey is under fire for supporting Mr. Bush’s priorities at the United Nations, where the former Maryland legislator and gubernatorial candidate has spent four years as U.S. envoy to the Commission on the Status of Women. Among her alleged sins is that she supports the Administration’s decision to withhold $34 million from the U.N. Population Fund because some of the agency’s contributions go to China’s appalling forced-abortion policy.

The Population Fund is one of the principal cheerleaders of China’s one-child policy, which has been enforced through fines, imprisonment, forced abortion, sterilizations and even, human-rights groups charge, infanticide. Several weeks ago Mr. Bush invoked a 20-year-old policy–known as the Kemp-Kasten Amendment–which prohibits federal funding of “any organization or program which supports or participates in the management of a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization.”

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