This past weekend, the three churches in the AMIA Midwest Region (one of which, I’m a member) got together for a joint celebration. Bishop John Rucyahana of Rwanda preached at the service. The timing of the service came just shortly after the Lambeth Commission’s report, and reinforced how important conservative Anglican groups like the AMIA are becoming as the ECUSA becomes increasingly irrelevant.

Now, Ted Olsen, the astute online editor at Christianity Today and former Wheaton Record scribe is reporting at the CT Weblog that the ECUSA has now begun officially promoting idol worship:

This is not a joke nor an overstatement. In all truth and seriousness, leaders of the Episcopal Church USA are promoting pagan rites to pagan deities. And not just any new pagan deities: The Episcopal Church USA, though its Office of Women’s Ministries, is actually promoting the worship of idols specifically condemned in Scripture.

“A Women’s Eucharist: A Celebration of the Divine Feminine” is taken almost completely (without attribution) from a rite from Tuatha de Brighid, “a Clan of modern Druids … who believe in the interconnectedness of all faiths.” But who cares where it’s from? Look at what it says. Here’s how it begins.

We gather around a low table, covered with a woven cloth or shawl. A candle, a bowl or vase of flowers, a large shallow bowl filled with salted water, a chalice of sweet red wine, a cup of milk mixed with honey, and a plate of raisin cakes are placed on the table.

You might be wondering: What’s with the raisin cakes? Is it just Communion wafers with raisins? No.

The plate of raisin cakes is raised and a woman says,

“Mother God, our ancient sisters called you Queen of Heaven and baked these cakes in your honor in defiance of their brothers and husbands who would not see your feminine face. We offer you these cakes, made with our own hands; filled with the grain of life—scattered and gathered into one loaf, then broken and shared among many. We offer these cakes and enjoy them too. They are rich with the sweetness of fruit, fertile with the ripeness of grain, sweetened with the power of love. May we also be signs of your love and abundance.”

The plate is passed and each woman takes and eats a cake.

So those raisin cakes have a historical reference: Those “brothers and husbands” banned them. Sound familiar? It’s a reference to Hosea 3:1:

And the LORD said to me, “Go again, love a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress, even as the LORD loves the children of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love cakes of raisins.”

Now there are other biblical references to raisin cakes, but this is the only reference (except possibly this one) to them having any kind of role in worship.

Many scholars believe they were offerings to the goddess Asherah, the female counterpart to Baal, but in this context it may be more directly tied to Ishtar/Ashtoreth/Astarte, the “Queen of Heaven.”

It goes on. Go read it and then tell me which side has moved — the ECUSA or the conservative Anglicans that are standing firmly with Scripture and tradition.

The ECUSA is no longer even a Christian religion if this type of nonsense is being officially promoted and condoned. I don’t think you just explain this away as, “times changes, so must we.”

So Howard Stern calls in to Ronn Owens’ radio show on KGO in San Francisco yesterday to confront FCC Commissioner Michael Powell. Here’s the transcript.

The current state of broadcasting is pretty messy. It’s hard to argue otherwise. We are feeling the effects of the waves of deregulation that have been ongoing since the Reagan administration, but really came home to roost with the 1996 Telecommunication Act. With companies like Clear Channel, Infinity, and a handful of other companies gobbling up stations, the entire industry has contracted. The power now resides in the hands of just a few stations — the power to program, the power to sell, the power to promote, the power to innovate. Howard Stern is a direct beneficiary of this trend. Without consolidation, Stern wouldn’t be carried on as many stations as he is. There would be dozens of local morning shows on all these stations. But Stern is cheaper and generates enough revenue to justify his satellite-fed programming rather than a local show.

Ever since Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction in January, the FCC has been working overtime to enforce very vague notions of indecency and obscenity. The problems isn’t that they are doing this. Rather, it’s how they are going about it. First, the FCC only investigates indecency claims made by the general public. They don’t sit around monitoring thousands of radio and TV stations waiting for someone to utter a profane word. Because of this system, the process is necessarily selective. If no one reports a violation, it won’t be investigated.

Second, the policy and law on the issue of obscene and indecent content are not exceedingly clear. It’s subject to broad interpretation and ultimately comes down to the votes of the FCC commissioners. It would certainly be easier to codify the specific words that can’t be said on radio, but I don’t think any law-making body wants to get into that kind of restriction of speech.

So we are left with a very messy system that seems to target people like Stern, while leaving other broadcasters like Oprah untouched. Stern’s decision is to leave the public airwaves at the end of 2005 and sign on with Sirius satellite radio in 2006. He believes he will evade the watchful eyes of the FCC by moving to satellite. However, it’s conceivable that satellite could come under FCC scrutinty sometime in the next few years. Some, including Bud Paxson, have already begun to make the argument that the FCC should have oversight of all cable and satellite broadcasting, just as it does for the over-the-air stations.

It had been all quiet on the TBN front for a few weeks, but now comes this:

Trinity Broadcasting Network officials say they want a former employee jailed or fined because he violated a court order against talking about a homosexual tryst he says he had with the ministry’s leader, televangelist Paul Crouch.

A temporary restraining order issued by Orange County Superior Court Judge John M. Watson in 2003 at the network’s request barred Enoch Lonnie Ford from talking about the alleged encounter — or anything else involving Crouch and TBN, the world’s largest religious broadcaster.

So today’s electoral map at EVP 2004 looks really scary. It has Bush 264, Kerry 264 with only Minnesota tied. With less than two weeks until the election, anyone who doesn’t think this thing is going to be close is crazy. The key to winning for Bush remains taking Florida and Ohio. Kerry can win Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Iowa, and Michigan, as long as Bush wins Ohio and Florida, he wins. That assumes a lot of other things (like Bush taking Wisconsin, Kerry taking Iowa and New Mexico), but I still think that if either Ohio or Florida goes to Kerry early on election night, it’s going to be tough.

As I attempt to overcome whatever strange illness has beset me, I’ll offer some thoughts on the Lambeth Commission report that came out a few days ago.

As was expected, it had a little bit of everything, which may not go very far in accomplishing much of anything. The conservatives don’t think the report went far enough in slapping the collective wrists of the ECUSA for their behavior, while the liberals seem pretty upset that anyone would even suggest that they are headed in the wrong direction.

One of my favorite heretics John Spong writes in the London Times:

he developing consensus on this subject in Western countries could never be bound by the culture of the Anglican Church in Sydney, Chad or Sudan. Only a leader who imagined that his version of truth and Truth were the same could have thought that a proper tactic.

The Commission made its first mistake in that it spoke to the symptoms that it erroneously assumed were the causes of our division. Its second mistake was to presume that the great moral issues of our day can be made secondary to the Church’s unity. When-ever a prejudice dies, there is always conflict and dislocation. A Church united in either prejudice or ignorance can never be the Body of Christ.

Needless to day, Spong takes an openly hostile position against the evangelical wing of the Anglican church. It would hard to imagine him not.

N.T. Wright, the Bishop of Durham, and the top theologian on the Lambeth Commission, spoke to Christianity Today and shared his observations:

we say that there is a basic duty that if you’re going to propose an innovation—and everybody agrees that it was an innovation, is an innovation—then it is incumbent on you to provide a full explanation as to why you’re doing it. And they simply haven’t done that. So that is a matter of process. But it is also a matter of content. We must stress, and I think the report says this two or three times in italics, that we were not set up to talk about sex. Had we been, we would have had very different membership, for a start. We were set up to talk about the issues of communion, because in a sense, an obvious example, the issue of sexuality may be the fire that somebody has lit in one room that is actually setting bits of the house on fire. But what we’re doing is actually fireproofing the house, and then saying now we’ve got to deal with this particular fire, which happens to have broken out in this room. But we’re really more interested in long-term fireproofing the house. And of course that demands patience, because there’s plenty of people who want to say what you should simply do is go in with all water canons as fast as you can. And the difficulty about that is that the Anglican Communion, unlike some other churches, simply does not have an international canon law or polity that would enable that to happen.

I’m glad people like Wright are involved in this debate. He seems to bring a certain thoughtful optimism that is otherwise missing in this discussion.

With the Lambeth Commission’s report due out soon, the chatter about homosexuality in the Anglican Church has started again. As I was reading this article, I was struck by this quote:

The Reverend Martin Reynolds, spokesman for the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement, said: “We are not in crisis. It is those people who find homosexuality unacceptable who are in crisis.

Really? You can’t be serious. I’m willing to entertain this conversation about homosexuality and the Church. I think it’s obviously an important issue that deserves thoughtful prayer and attention. That’s why I can’t imagine how some can make claims like this. Seriously, how do you disregard 2000 years of tradition and church teaching? What do you do with Genesis, Romans, and the teachings of faithful Christian thinkers for hundreds and hundreds of years? Do we just dismiss them because of your own personal sexual experience?

I really haven’t spent as much time as I should have focusing on the Senate races that are tight this year. I guess with Keyes so far behind Obama here in Illinois, I haven’t really been motivated to look elsewhere.

But I did run across this story over at PowerLine:

Sen. Tom Daschle (D-SD) may have forfeited his South Dakota residency last year when he and his wife purchased a $2 million home in an exclusive Washington, DC neighborhood. The Senate minority leader declared the mansion to be his “principal place of residence” when he applied for a property tax credit intended to help DC homeowners cope with sky-rocketing property values in the city.

It would appear that Daschle voluntarily surrendered his residency in South Dakota with his April 2003 declaration. Under state statute, Daschle would no longer be eligible to hold elective office in South Dakota or represent it in Washington.

Under South Dakota law, Daschle’s seat became vacant upon executing the affidavit designating Washington, DC as his domicile. SDCL 3-4-1(5) stipulates that vacancy occurs when an officeholder ceases “to be a resident of the state, district, county, township, or precinct in which the duties of his office are to be exercised or for which he may have been elected.”

Article 1, Section 3, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution states, “No person shall be a senator who shall not have attained to the age of thirty years, and been nine years a citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen.”

Don’t think that Larry Clayman and the folk over at Judicial Watch won’t be on top of this like white on rice.

I had an old college friend who worked for John Thune’s campaign in 2002, and I really hope Thune knocks Daschle, with or without this scandal.

John Edwards was in Iowa this week, where he declared:

“We will do stem cell research. We will stop juvenile diabetes, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and other debilitating diseases. America just lost a great champion for this cause in Christopher Reeve. People like Chris Reeve will get out of their wheelchairs and walk again with stem cell research.”

Gotcha. Let me check that one off now as a campaign promise that will not be fulfilled.

Charles Krauthammer, himself confined to a wheelchair, responds to this nonsense:

In my 25 years in Washington, I have never seen a more loathsome display of demagoguery. Hope is good. False hope is bad. Deliberately raising for personal gain false hope in the catastrophically afflicted is despicable.

Where does one begin to deconstruct this outrage?

This is the dirty little secret of stem cell research — cures for these diseases cannot be guranteed, nor will they come quickly if they do come. I can appreciate the desire of Democrats and others to advance the scientific process, but I think it’s pretty offensive to build that case on the backs of disabled people.

I just read this post by Dave Winer, and I’m just slack-jawed by this statement:

A white-haired woman in the seat in front turned around and passed back a political cartoon which seemed to say Bush was the right choice. I said I don’t understand, does this mean you’re voting for Bush? She just wanted us to know there are “other points of view.” I handed it back and said I know, half the people are voting for Bush. Then I turned to my Canadian friends and said “But I have no respect for them.”

Seriously, if you vote for Bush and he wins, we’re going to blame you for what happens in the next four years.

This is why the system is broken. People driven by hatred for a candidate are unable to accept that anyone can, in good conscience, support that candidate. They think that Bush supporters are mindless idiots, not worthy of respect. They don’t allow any room that we might have thoughtful reasons for supporting Bush and his policies, even if they don’t agree with us.

Look, I didn’t like Bill Clinton or Al Gore. But I didn’t jump on the bandwagon that thought they weren’t deserving of respect. I disagreed with many of their policies, but I understand why a large number of people supported them. In much the same way, I think there are many Americans who look back at Reagan, and while they disagreed with his policies for years, respected the man, and are now allowing history to be the judge of his decisions.

I don’t care if you disagree with Bush. That’s your right, and it actually makes our democracy stronger. I’m glad that nearly 50% of the population will be disappointed on Nov. 3. That means that the discussion and debate will continue, forcing whoever sits in the Oval Office to pay attention to the American public.

But I find it reprehensible that there are those like Winer who hold Bush supporters in such contempt that they can’t even fathom the idea that a sane human being would be able to support the president. That’s not how a democracy operates. That’s not how we move forward and make this country better.

The difference between me and Winer is that I have respect for Sen. Kerry and his supporters, even thought I vehemently disagree with his positions. I respect his service to the country in both the military and the Senate. I respect his desire to make America better for all Americans.

I even respect Dave Winer and hope that he’s able to overcome his disdain for Bush supporters.

For most people my age, there will never be another Superman. I can remember watching Christopher Reeves in the original Superman when it first came out on VHS. While I disagreed with his political leanings in recent years, I think it’s terribly sad that he suffered the tragedy that he did. He will certainly be missed. I think there should be a moratorium on new Superman movies. Retire the film franchise and let Reeves’ legacy endure.

My generation has now lost both Mr. Rogers and Superman in the span of two years. There are no more heroes left.

I thought Kerry’s answer about abortion on Friday night was horrible.

He started by claiming that his faith guides him, but he can’t legislate his religious beliefs for all Americans. That’s fair. I think that’s the appropriate position to take for elected officials. The question then becomes, guided by his faith, what will Kerry do as president to reduce the number of abortions in America? Because, after all, Republican or Democrat, pro-life or pro-choice, that ought to be our goal. No one thinks that more abortions is better. We should all be working to reduce the number of abortions in America, while not trampling on the Constitutional rights granted by Roe v. Wade.

So what would Kerry do to this end?

But I can counsel people. I can talk reasonably about life and about responsibility. I can talk to people, as my wife Teresa does, about making other choices, and about abstinence, and about all these other things that we ought to do as a responsible society.

So the most powerful man in the world is going to … Counsel? Talk Reasonably? Talk about abstinence? It doesn’t get more ineffective than that.

He is so sold-out to the pro-choice lobby of NARAL, Planned Parenthood, and others, that his entire position on abortion is … talk. No policy proposals, no legislation, nothing. Great, I’m sure all that talk is going to do something.

The original question was actually about federal funding for abortion, which Kerry kind of answered when he said:

… but you have to afford people their constitutional rights. And that means being smart about allowing people to be fully educated, to know what their options are in life, and making certain that you don’t deny a poor person the right to be able to have whatever the Constitution affords them if they can’t afford it otherwise.

So now the government has to subsidize the Constitutional rights of poor people. I’m no Constitutional scholar, but that seems a little dubious.

In contrast, Bush pointed to a number of substantive actions taken by his administration to reduce the number of abortions — partial birth abortion ban, unborn victims of violence, adoption law, maternity group homes, etc. These kinds of things, along with his support for abstinence in sex education, really do go towards promoting a culture of life and are not just the lip service that Kerry is offering.

I haven’t written much in the last week or so because I think the deabtes create a fog of spin that isn’t worth mucking through until all the dust has settled. I think people will begin to realize that these debates are worthless. With the rise of the blogosphere and cable news, both candidates can be declared the winner by any number of pundits. Real-time blogging pushes the hands of the clock even further, allowing anyone to spin the candidates’ words as they are uttering them. In the end, it’s hard to raise the analysis above the fray.

With all that said, I think there are some important stories to pay attention to that have nothing to do with the debates. The report from Charles Duelfer, the top US weapons inspector, says a lot of important things. The media is quick to emphasize that it reports that Iraq did not have WMD’s at the time of the US invasion in 2003. That’s great, but there’s more in there worth looking at.

Saddam Hussein had not produced WMD’s since 1991, but he was obsessed with presenting the appearance to the world community that he did possess those weapons. He made very effort to put up a front to his Middle Eastern neighbors — specifically, Iran and Saudi Arabia — that he was continuing to develop weapons systems.

It’s been said time and again that Hussein and his regime was not a religious dictatorship, and therefore, did not have reason to align himself win Osama bin Laden. However, to Hussein, his own legacy was greater than any jihad against the West. Further, his refusal to comply with UN requirements to disclose his weapons system was a manifestation of his own insecurity. Hussein knew the cards he held close to his vest were a bust, but he bluffed his way through a decade of inspections. He needed to keep up the appearance of being a nuclear power and of being in control and of being a threat. Otherwise, he would have been vulnerable in the eyes of the Iranians, Saudis, Palestinians, not to mention the Americans and the British.

This is the situation President Bush and his administration faced in 2002 and 2003. All the intelligence he had at his disposal — CIA, British, Russian, Israeli, etc. — indicated that Hussein was holding a full house in his hand. Bush had to make a decision about what to do with an openly hostile dictator in the Middle East who was actively seeking to preserve his legacy by bargaining with anyone who would listen. We KNOW that Hussein was financing suicide bombers in Palestine. That illustrates his willingness to get involved in causes that otherwise bear no connection to his regime. He wanted to remain relevant to the world. To do say, he was willing to support the Palestinian cause through financial means. Is it completely unthinkable that he would have done thing for al Quadea?

I don’t think it’s reasonable to believe that an American president, in the wake of September 11, can be expected to sit idly by and try to discern the veracity of claims being made by a dictator like Hussein. If he was bluffing, then he deserved what he got. Even without WMD’s or direct connections to bin Laden, the war was justified on a number of levels, including as one way to hold other leaders to account for their claims. The message to the world after 9/11 is that the US will not tolerate the kind of false claims and grandstanding done by Hussein. Because if those claims are to be believed and are found to be true, then the US must do everything it can to topple those regimes.

Some will say that Hussein was being transparent about his weapons programs in 2002 and 2003 when the inspectors were in Iraq. He claimed he didn’t have any WMDs, after claiming years before that he did. It sounds a lot like Kerry voting for the war before voting against it. The inspetors did not have full access to the country and could never have verified Hussein’s claims, one way or another, until he was removed from the scene.

The question that needs to be asked is why so many European nations and other world powers opposed this war in light of Hussein’s growing obsession with power and influence? The answer lies in the question.

Duelfer also said as a result of Saddam’s steady efforts, it appeared U.N. sanctions “were in free fall” by 2001 and that Saddam was breaking them with impunity.

The report said Saddam made $11 billion in illegal income and eroded the economic embargo through shrewd schemes to secretly buy off dozens of countries, top foreign officials and major international figures. The officials allegedly included the former top U.N. official in charge of humanitarian relief, Benon Sevan.

Russia, France and China — all permanent members of the U.N. Security Council — were the top three countries in which individuals, companies or entities received the lucrative vouchers. Saddam’s goal, the report said, was to provide financial incentives so that these nations would use their influence to help undermine the punishing sanctions imposed after Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

So while at a time when the US was working hard to discern the possibility of future terrorist threats, France, Russia, and Germany were taking payoffs from Iraq, presumably to lean on Bush and the US. This is why the UN cannot be trusted, sanctions aren’t always the answer, and the US must act in the best interest of the US.

Remember this when Kerry walks about the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time. Remember this when he talks about the global test. Remember this when he talks about using sanctions against North Korea and other countries.