Historic return for N[orthern] I[reland] Assembly
BBC News (8 May, 2007)
"Northern Ireland has a new power-sharing government in an historic day at Stormont. D[emocratic] U[nionist] P[arty] leader Ian Paisley and Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness took office as first and deputy first ministers as five years of direct rule ended. 'Mr Blair said that the day's events offered the chance for Northern Ireland to 'escape the heavy chains of history' and 'make history anew.' .... 'Look back and we see centuries pock-marked by conflict, hardship, even hatred, among the people of these islands,' the prime minister said.... Ministers from the four main parties took the pledge of office, which includes support for the police. The return of devolved government follows an historic meeting in March between Mr Paisley and Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams, where they agreed to share power." [More of the Story].

"I believe that Northern Ireland has come to a time of peace, a time when hate will no longer rule."—Ian Paisley, First Minister, Northern Ireland (Full speech).

"As for Ian Paisley, I want to wish you all the best as we step forward towards the greatest yet most exciting challenge of our lives."—Martin McGuinness, Deputy First Minister, Northern Ireland (Full speech).

Liberal Protestantism Finding New Life
By Diana Butler Bass, Newsweek-Washington Post (10 May 2007).
"The New York Times recently ran a story about the Riverside Church, the congregation that serves as a national cathedral for liberal Protestantism, and its search for a new minister. Riverside's past ministers have included renowned leaders such as Harry Emerson Fosdick and William Sloan Coffin, making the current task a daunting one. The Times referred to Riverside as 'the capital of a theological movement that has been slowly deteriorating,' citing mainstream Protestantism's 'decades-long pattern of losing members, vitality, and influence' as a challenge to finding a new pastor. A photograph illustrated the story: two men looking down from the church's balcony over forty parishioners huddled in the back pews of a mostly-empty building. Last October, I preached at Riverside's Fosdick Convocation—a five-day teaching event celebrating liberal Protestantism—to a crowd of approximately 800 people. The building was not empty. More than three-dozen leaders, theologians, and writers preached, offered workshops, and led worship with large audiences in attendance. That conference was energetic, intelligent, and, frankly, emotional—testifying to a renewed spiritual vitality among mainstream Protestants. Mainline Protestant vitality (denominations including the Episcopal Church, the Presbyterian Church USA, the United Church of Christ, the United Methodist Church, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) is probably the most under-reported religion story in America today. While these denominations face undeniable challenges of leadership and attendance, many local congregations are experiencing new growth—in terms of both numbers and theological depth.... in recent months, three academic studies have suggested that liberal renewal might be at the edge of a trend: Ian Markam's 'Why Liberal Churches Are Growing,' Hal Taussig's 'A New Spiritual Home: Progressive Christianity at the Grass Roots,' and my own, 'Christianity for the Rest of Us.' Together, these books explore the characteristics of liberal congregational growth, renewal in progressive communities, and patterns of vitality in mainstream churches based in research involving thousands of congregations." [More of the story].

Iraqi refugees and displaced now total 4.2 million, U.N. refugee agency says
"GENEVA -- More than 4 million Iraqis have now been displaced by violence in the country, the U.N. refugee agency said Tuesday, warning that the figure will continue to rise. The number of Iraqis who have fled the country as refugees has risen to 2.2 million, said Jennifer Pagonis, spokeswoman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. A further 2 million have been driven from their homes but remain within the country, increasingly in 'impoverished shanty towns,' she said. Pagonis said UNHCR is receiving "disturbing reports" of regional authorities doing little to provide displaced people with food, shelter and other basic services. 'Individual governorates inside Iraq are becoming overwhelmed by the needs of the displaced,' Pagonis told reporters in Geneva, where UNHCR has its headquarters. More than half of Iraq's 18 governorates are preventing displaced people from entering their territories, either by stopping them at checkpoints or by refusing to register them for food aid and other basic services. Astrid van Genderen Stort of UNHCR said checkpoints are increasing in northern governorates, specifically along the 'green line' that divides Kurdish-controlled zones from the rest of the country. Displaced people are also being stopped on the roads leading out of the cities of Karbala and Najaf, which are both south of Baghdad and considered holy by Shiite Muslims. While many of the checkpoints were originally established for security reasons, they are being increasingly used to prevent displaced Iraqis from moving around the country, van Genderen Stort said. Almost half of all displaced people have no access to official food distribution programs, according to U.N. estimates. Most of those uprooted from their homes come from Baghdad and its surrounding districts. More than 85 percent of the Iraqis displaced within the country have moved to central and southern regions, Pagonis said. She said about 30,000 Iraqis continue to flee each month to Syria, which is now housing 1.4 million Iraqi refugees. Another 750,000 are in Jordan. While Iraq's neighbors are bearing the bulk of the refugee burden, few Iraqis are being welcomed into countries farther away, particularly in Europe, Pagonis said. The Bush administration says it will allow up to 7,000 Iraqis to settle permanently in the U.S. -- up from 202 in 2006 -- by the end of September and will pay more to help Iraq's neighbors cope with the surge of refugees. UNHCR hopes to find a permanent home for 20,000 Iraqi refugees by the end of the year." [Story].

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: An International Update on the Comparative Performance of American Health Care
By Karen Davis, Ph.D., Cathy Schoen, M.S., Stephen C. Schoenbaum, M.D., M.P.H., Michelle M. Doty, Ph.D., M.P.H., Alyssa L. Holmgren, M.P.A., Jennifer L. Kriss, and Katherine K. Shea
Editor(s): Deborah Lorber, Commonwealth Fund (May 15, 2007; updated May 16, 2007).
"Despite having the most costly health system in the world, the United States consistently underperforms on most dimensions of performance, relative to other countries. This report—an update to two earlier editions—includes data from surveys of patients, as well as information from primary care physicians about their medical practices and views of their countries' health systems. Compared with five other nations—Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, the United Kingdom—the U.S. health care system ranks last or next-to-last on five dimensions of a high performance health system: quality, access, efficiency, equity, and healthy lives. The U.S. is the only country in the study without universal health insurance coverage, partly accounting for its poor performance on access, equity, and health outcomes. The inclusion of physician survey data also shows the U.S. lagging in adoption of information technology and use of nurses to improve care coordination for the chronically ill." [More of the summary; the entire report; entire chart pack for the study].

Fundamentalism and Freedom
The Jehovah's Witnesses are more than a knock-knock joke.
by David Neff, Christianity Today (05/22/07).
"Jehovah's Witnesses are America's favorite punch line, says Joel P. Engardio, co-producer of Knocking, a documentary on the 7 million-member sect, which, he says, spends 1.3 billion hours per year knocking on doors. The film, which airs tonight on PBS's Independent Lens, begins with the sound of knocking, followed by a deep sigh. Is it the sound of apprehension? The dullness of routine? Weariness of the present evil age? And then come the jokes—clips from The Simpsons and Letterman. But Engardio is not joking. His mother converted when he was a child, and he has observed the Witnesses at close range, although he himself never became a member—he chose journalism over fundamentalism, he says. Engardio helps viewers to get past the joke by following the stories of two men: one an aged survivor of the Holocaust and one a 20-something with a rare disease.... But Engardio's Knocking is not just about Jehovah's Witnesses. It is also about fundamentalism and the fear of religious 'extremism' abroad in our land.... According to an ACLU spokesman in the film, Witnesses were in the Supreme Court 45 times between 1935 and 1958 fighting for their rights of freedom of religion, freedom of expression, and (because of their conscientious opposition to blood transfusions) patients' rights. Long before the founding of Christian public interest law firms, such as the Liberty Fund, The Becket Fund, and the ACLJ, the Jehovah's Witnesses were using the courts to establish liberties. And, claims Engardio, Witnesses were among the first to report and condemn Hitler's persecution of the Jews. Because of their anti-military stand, the Nazis bundled off to concentration camps about 10,000 of the 25,000 Witnesses in Germany. (The rest went underground.) Witness prisoners smuggled out accounts of the brutality and slaughter as well as detailed diagrams of the camps' layout. Their leadership in America publicized the atrocities. This film offers a one-sided portrait, and I would welcome a careful assessment by a knowledgeable historian. Nevertheless, Engardio's point is powerful. Religious minorities—as exasperating as they can be—serve to test our capacity for freedom. And those who suffer in order to secure our civil liberties deserve our gratitude." [Full article].

The Independent Lens documentary "Knocking" on PBS.

Christian Colleges' Green Revolution
From the cafeteria to the classroom, students are learning to be environmentally conscious.
By Cindy Crosby, Christianity Today (5/25/2007).
"Flush twice. It's required at Calvin College's Vincent and Helen Bunker Interpretive Center's restrooms; once before, once after. The flushed water, which is the consistency of a bubble bath, washes waste to an underground room. There, preserve manager Cheryl Hoogewind and I climb up on a metal receptacle and look into a huge bin of waste that smells pleasantly of wood chips. This compost will eventually be spread as fertilizer on the college grounds. Above us in the 5,000-square-foot building, a student-designed solar photovoltaic system generates electricity from sunlight; meanwhile, gray water from drinking fountains and sinks nourishes plants lining the classroom windowsills. It's all part of the Bunker Center's environmental sustainability. Integrating creation care with academics is a growing emphasis on Christian campuses around the country. According to Paul Corts, president of the interdenominational Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU), about 40 of 105 North American member schools have adopted significant green initiatives. These vary considerably, from multimillion-dollar sustainable 'villages' and student volunteer educational programs to majors in environmental studies and recycling pop cans in school cafeterias. There is also national action." [More of the story].

Theocons of the World, Unite
A prominent pundit wants American conservatives to make common cause with Muslim reactionaries.
By Cathy Young, Reason magazine (June 2007 Print Edition).
"A few years ago, I heard someone call into a right-wing radio show to rail against the feminists, the homosexuals, the atheists, and other usual suspects. The host enthusiastically agreed. The caller then voiced the hope that the host would join him in supporting the establishment of Islamic law in America, a twist that left the host sputtering incoherently. These days, the idea of conservative Christians aligning themselves with radical Muslims is not a prank caller's gag but the subject of heated debate on the right. Dinesh D'Souza sparked the argument with his controversial book The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11 (Random House).... Yet D'Souza's critique of Spencer falls flat because he shares some of the same basic assumptions—for instance, that Islam is inherently incompatible with secularism and is inherently 'fundamentalist' in the sense of relying on a literal reading of the Koran. It's just that, for D'Souza, these are not vices but virtues. The anti-Muslims regard secularized but Islamic Turkey as an anomaly; so does D'Souza, who writes mostly with approval of the push to reverse Turkey's secularization: 'Muslims have the right to live in Islamic states under Muslim law if they wish.' It is quite true that, in the age of militant Islamic terrorism, it is not very helpful to tell millions of peaceful Muslims that their religion is inherently violent, evil, and oppressive. It is equally unhelpful of D'Souza to deny the obvious: The best hope for peaceful coexistence is for the Islamic world to embrace modernization and individual liberty, not for the West to turn its back on those values." [More of the opinion piece].