The earthquake-damaged Anglican Cathedral in Christchurch, New Zealand is beyond repair and will be demolished and replaced by a new cathedral with a different design, said Bishop Victoria Matthews on 2 March.

The 131-year-old landmark ChristChurch Cathedral was severely damaged in last year’s 22 February earthquake, which killed 185 people. The building sustained further damage from several aftershocks and had been cordoned off.

Matthews said the Cathedral will be taken down, as it would be too expensive and dangerous to rebuild. It would cost $42 million to rebuild using existing parts of the building or $84 million for a complete reconstruction–at least $41 million more than insurance could fund.

“This decision has been made with prayer, with great deliberation, and an utmost concern for safety. We acknowledge the high level of community interest and sense of ownership as the cathedral was both an iconic building and a place of regular worship by many.”

The deconstruction will bring the building to a level of two or three meters, with the base of the church to be used as a prayer garden. Heritage items and taonga (treasures), such as stained glass windows, will be retrieved.

“There would be no bulldozers or wrecking balls. This will be done with deep respect and love for a building that has served us so well for so long,” said Christchurch Mayor Bob Parker, who called the decision to demolish the cathedral “heartbreaking.”

“It is not an easy decision for the church. It is not an easy decision for many of us to accept, either,” he said.

Christchurch city counselor Aaron Keown said demolition would happen “over my dead body.”

“I would be in there chaining myself to the building to stop that and I know lots of other volunteers would come in to do that,” he told the Christchurch Press.

“The Cathedral is the revered Mother Church,” said Matthews, “but it is not the only thing we have to consider. Twenty five other churches are very seriously damaged; five further churches have been demolished.”

Matthews said the Christchurch diocese will establish a transitional cathedral “to bring hope to Christchurch and provide a much-needed venue where the community can pray, reflect, and gather for worship.”

I admire my pastor’s walk with God. It truly is an inspiration to behold. It’s even more amazing when you consider that dude’s strut is complicated by a crazy stank wedgie.

The term “stank wedgie” is gross and therefore shouldn’t be condoned in Christian communication. And, that’s exactly my point.

Unfortunately, “stank wedgie” does remain a vitally relevant term to today’s Church. If you only read typical, predictable Christian rehashes, written in that collective one voice, you may be asking what’s a “stank wedgie?”

Assuming all know what a wedgie is, I’ll add that “stank” is descriptive of the wedged undies cutting so deep, that enough color and odor is produced to induce an instinctive scrunching up of the nose and a bodily recoiling while disgustedly exclaiming a drawn out and loudly escalating “S-T—A—N—-K.”

So, what does a stank wedgie have to do with my pastor’s walk with God and worship?

Well, the wedgie has him bound up so tight his eyes are popping and the stank reeks of politics–partisan politics.

My pastor pushes the same brand of politics I subscribe to but, God has never “laid it on my heart” to dump a political pile all over a worship service like my pastor feels called to do –- nearly every week.

Seriously, this guy does walk with God; however is God really cool with him rendering unto to Caesar the praise time that belongs to Him? Can fragrant worship be mingled with politics – or is God wincing at the whiff of stank wedgie too?

Although it jeopardizes tax exempt status, politics have long been introduced within the Church. Inevitably, many congregations invite high profile candidates to speak during church services and some even take up collections for the candidate’s campaign.

Political tensions are engrossing the country – church should be one place where it’s not wedged in. Your politics, as well as the other guy’s politics, is not God’s politics. The Church is promoting a Kingdom that transcends Democrats and Republicans – so there’s no need to mess with political stinking messes in church.

The Christian rallying cry, “Thy Kingdom come” will remain necessary regardless of which party wins the big elections. No political party has any special insight into “Thy will be done” and who ever is in charge is guaranteed not to do it on earth as it is in heaven. Winning elections pretty much delivers the victors into the hands of evil and multiplies temptations.

“For thine is the Kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever,” even during church services, Amen. With that power and glory in mind, why forego pure worship in order to settle for dirty politics?

What can you do if you’re not content to stew in the same stank as a political preacher?

You can’t just physically remove the politics wedgie from your pastor, like you would a speck in his eye; I’m rather sure that’s a no-go zone. I guess you could give your pastor a copy of this swanky essay but, he’s likely not read it if it’s not from a preferred political rag.

I fear that, like some demons, this type of wedgie may only come out by prayer and fasting. And prayer and fasting, not politics, are Kingdom building actions that are a fragrant worship to God.

Be sure to be on the sweet smelling side of worship during this political season!

ST. LOUIS (RNS) For 18 years, the Rev. William Rowe has done a little improvising while celebrating Mass on Sunday mornings at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Mount Carmel, Ill.

Now those deviations have led to his resignation in an incident that may be tied to global changes to the Catholic liturgy.

On Jan. 29, instead of saying “Lord our God that we may honor you with all our mind and love everyone in truth of heart,” during the opening prayer, he altered the phrasing to better reflect the day’s Gospel message, in which Jesus heals a man with a troubled spirit.

“We thank you, God, for giving us Jesus who helped us to be healed in mind and heart and proclaim his love to others,” the 72-year-old priest prayed instead.

Three days later, Rowe received a letter from Bishop Edward Braxton of Belleville, Ill., accepting his resignation.

“The problem is that when I pray at Mass, I tend to change the words that are written in the book to match what I was talking about, or what a song is about,” Rowe said in an interview.

The book in question is the Roman Missal, a book of prayers, chants and responses used during the Mass. Rowe has been saying some of those prayers in his own words for years.

But last December, the Vatican-mandated adoption of a new English-language translation of the missal may have given bishops an opportunity to rein in freewheeling priests who have been praying in their own words for decades.

“Since December when the new translation came out, no one has said what would happen to you if you changed stuff,” said the Rev. John Foley, director of the Center for Liturgy at St. Louis University.

“But I find it hard to believe a priest in Illinois would be forced to resign because he wasn’t using the exact words from the translation. It’s not a strong enough offense for that.”

In the wake of sweeping changes in the church as a result of the Second Vatican Council, some priests in the 1970s began using their own words and phrasing in place of the verbatim translations of the original Latin liturgy in the missal, Foley said. He said there has never been an established penalty for improvising nonalterable prayers, and bishops have traditionally looked past an individual priest’s extemporizing.

Monsignor Kevin Irwin, professor of liturgical studies at the Catholic University of America, said there are some prayers said by a priest at Mass in which he is “beholden to the structure, not to the words.”

But there are also prayers that priests are “duty-bound to say,” said the Rev. John Baldovin, professor of historical and liturgical theology at Boston College. Most of the prayers in the missal, in fact, are not optional, he said.

Rowe said his previous bishop, Wilton Gregory, had discussed his off-the-cuff prayer habit with him, referring to the practice as “pushing the envelope.” He said five years ago, Braxton also discussed the matter with him, and asked him to read directly from the missal.

“I told him I couldn’t do that,” Rowe said. “That’s how I pray.”

Last summer, Rowe said, the bishop made it clear to his priests that “no priest may deviate from any wording in the official missal.”

Braxton did not respond to a request for an interview with the Post-Dispatch.

In October, two months ahead of the introduction of the new missal translation, Braxton said he couldn’t permit Rowe to continue improvising, according to Rowe. The priest offered his resignation but didn’t receive a response.

On Monday, Braxton wrote Rowe a letter informing him that he’d accepted his resignation.

The action did not sit well with the nearly 500 families at St. Mary’s.

“The ways Father changed the Mass ritual with his words have only made it more meaningful to us as opposed to distancing us from the church,” said Alice Wirth, principal at St. Mary’s School.

“Everything he does is based on our faith; it’s not just a whim. There’s a reason for every word he prays.”

(Tim Townsend writes for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in St. Louis.)

In the midst of a governance crisis that threatens to divide the Philippines, several churches say they are marking the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity by setting aside doctrinal differences, praying and working for change.

“Even amidst new political trouble that threatens to polarize again our country, we Christians can take the lead in getting together in prayer,” the Rev. Felipe Ehican of the Lutheran Church of the Philippines told ENInews on 18 January.

The week of prayer usually takes place between 18 and 25 January. Resources such as texts for ecumenical servicees are sponsored jointly by the Geneva-based World Council of Churches (WCC) and the Roman Catholic Church’s Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity.

Ehican was referring to the current Senate impeachment proceedings of Supreme Court Justice Renato Corona, which began 16 January, also the start in the Philippines of the celebration of the week of prayer.

The Rev. Joie Galinato of the United Methodist Church likewise stressed the importance of strengthening the unity of the Christian population to prevent the country’s division as a result of the impeachment trial of Corona.

“The impeachment trial is now dividing the country between the pro-Corona and the anti-Corona,” Galinato told ENInews. “But we can help a lot in bridging divisions by our coming together in prayer as Christians from various denominations, united in our common desire for righteous and good governance.”

Roman Catholic lay leader Dr. Raylita Calimlim also acknowledged and prayed for Bukal, an ecumenical pastoral group. She said Bukal volunteers from Baguio City travelled to southern Philippines to counsel and rehabilitate traumatized survivors of a deadly storm there last December. “Bukal has been doing a great job in helping bring change,” she said.

The week of prayer in this northern Philippine city was organized by the Baguio-Benguet Ecumenical Group, an interdenominational organization, which has been celebrating the Vatican and WCC-led weekly activity since 1999.

As a spin-off of the week of prayer in past years, the ecumenical group has been actively involved in social and political advocacies such as honest, peaceful and clean elections, anti-gambling drives, and good governance. “We seek to sustain these as we continue to pray and work together,” said Galinato.

A federal judge ruled Wednesday (Jan. 11) in favor of a teenage atheist who sought the removal of a prayer banner from her Rhode Island high school.

Attorneys for Jessica Ahlquist, 16, argued that a banner on display in Providence’s Cranston High School West’s auditorium titled “School Prayer” and addressing “Our Heavenly Father” is a violation of the Constitution and the Supreme Court’s 1962 decision banning state-mandated prayer in school.

Lawyers for the school district argued that the banner had hung in the school since the 1960s and was more secular than sacred.

U.S. District Judge Ronald Lagueux disagreed and ruled that the banner should be removed immediately. He also upbraided school officials for holding community meetings about the mural that “at times resembled a religious revival.” At one meeting, several school officials read from the Bible or declared their faith. Ahlquist needed a police escort to leave one meeting.

“I am hopeful that this case can be looked back on in the future and encourage others to stand up for their rights as well,” Ahlquist said from the Providence office of the American Civil Liberties Union, which represented her.

Ahlquist had to leave Cranston High School West due to threats, but said she is considering a return.

Rob Boston of Americans United for Separation of Church and State hailed the ruling as “a 40-page slam dunk.”

Roy Speckhardt, executive director of the American Humanist Association, praised Ahlquist. “She fought for the rights of nonbelievers and religious minorities and is an example for everyone.”

As waves of demonstrators descended on New York City to protest corporate greed, they were met by typical sounds of raucous youth-led protests: drum beats, police sirens and shouted political slogans.

They didn’t expect to hear hymns.

Yet protestors rounding the corner of Zuccotti Park encountered dozens of white-robed worshipers singing spirituals and blessing the demonstrators while holding signs reading “Blessed are the poor” and brandishing handmade Christian crosses.

The group, calling themselves the “Protest Chaplains,” traveled from Boston to join the “Occupy Wall Street” movement, which claims to advocate for “the 99 percent” of Americans against the “1 percent” who control much of the country’s wealth.

The Protest Chaplains, a loose group of mostly Christian students, seminarians and laypeople organized though Facebook, expressed support for the movement the best they knew how: through their faith.

“In a group that had a lot of bandanas and black hoodies, we stood out,” said Marisa Egerstrom, an organizer of the group and doctoral student at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Arts Sciences. “But people kept coming up to us and saying, `You know, you are the first Christians I’ve seen at a protest … on our side.”’

Religious protesters, once a staple of the American progressivism, have become a rare sight at liberal demonstrations in recent years. But as the Occupy Wall Street movement rapidly expands to Boston, Chicago, Washington and other cities, progressive religious groups are playing an increasingly visible role.

“We had a real desire for there to be a specifically Christian voice of protest,” said Egerstrom, an Episcopalian. “Advocating for the 99 percent is the same vision for the world that Christianity has, only rendered into secular language.”

While many of the religious elements of the Occupy movement have been spearheaded by laypeople and students organized through social media, more established clergy are starting to follow the lead of groups like the Protest Chaplains.

The Rev. Brian Merritt, pastor at Palisades Community Church in Washington, started affiliating with the Occupy movement after delivering peanut butter to “Occupy K Street” demonstrators in Washington’s McPherson Square. He was surprised, however, when organizers asked to hold a “wholeness” worship service on behalf of the protesters.

“I was just really shocked,” Merritt said. “But God is so free, God can institute the church wherever God thinks the church can be.”

On Sunday (Oct. 9), a diverse group of New York religious leaders marched to Zuccotti Square carrying a handmade golden calf fashioned to resemble the iconic bull statue near the New York Stock Exchange.

“We think Wall Street has become idolatrous,” said the Rev. Donna Schaper, minister at New York’s Judson Memorial Church and one of more than 50 clergy who joined the New York protest, independent of the chaplains group.

“I’m not saying God is against the people of Wall Street, but I think God is sick of Wall Street taking more than they deserve.”

Schaper explained that the group’s guiding principle was the biblical “golden rule” ― do unto others as you would have them do unto you ― but stressed the interfaith aspect of the demonstration, noting that the march was followed by a prayer service featuring Christian, Jewish and Muslim speakers.

“The golden rule is not just one that Christians observe … it’s a way that all major faiths can unite,” Schaper said. “We plan to be (at the demonstration) every Sunday and pray with people and thank people for making incredible sacrifices on behalf of our nation.”

Interfaith activities are increasingly the norm for the Occupy movement. Organizers of the “Occupy Boston” tent community partnered with the Protest Chaplains to erect a “Faith and Spirituality” tent in early October. The tent hosts yoga workshops, Muslim prayer celebrations and even a Yom Kippur service that drew more than 125 Jewish attendees.

“The Occupy movement feels like church,” Egerstrom said. “You have to work with people you don’t necessarily agree with, but we also have to eat together, and there is room for everyone.”

One of the Muslim prayer services in Occupy Boston was lead by Nuri Friedlander, the Muslim chaplain at Harvard University, who said his involvement was a natural extension of his religious commitment.

“One of the principles of my faith is to stand up for those who are oppressed, to give to those in need, to bear witness,” Friedlander said.

Ryan Adams, a student at Harvard Divinity School and lead organizer of several Jewish services at Occupy Boston, echoed Friedlander’s spiritual call.

“I think it’s very important for me, as a Jewish person, to be out here supporting this. Your identity as a protester and your identity as a Jew shouldn’t have to be mutually exclusive,” Adams said after a Yom Kippur service.

“As a spiritual people, we have a great responsibility. And if this can be a shofar blast to the world, to recognize the spiritual reality that’s around us, telling us to do less in terms of greed and more in terms of people, that would be good.”

Three countries, namely China, Saudi Arabia and Vietnam slammed recently a U.S. government religious freedom report which included two of them, China and Saudi Arabia, among eight Countries Of Particular Concern regarding religious freedom.

Vietnam was not included among the eight cited in the U.S. State Department’s annual International Religious Freedom Report, but was nonetheless mentioned for its treatment of Catholics in detention, including an ailing Catholic priest.

Religious groups backed by China’s government said the report was simply an attempt to smear the country’s image, and denied all of the report’s findings.

“The U.S. report … attempted to smear the image ofChina. The Chinese government has…protected the legal rights and interests of religious people,” a statement from five government-controlled religious associations said, according to the AFP.

“We feel greatly disturbed as the US has tried to interfere in China’s domestic affairs by targeting religion and create chaos among religious people in a bid to harm social harmony,” the AFP reported.

‘World police’

Legal activists and religious scholars in Saudi Arabia also censured the report, and said the US should stop acting as ‘world police’ by meddling in other countries’ internal affairs.

Dr. Muflah Al Qah’tani, chairman, National Society for Human Rights, KSA told Gulf News, “There is a need for those who prepare the report to be objective because there is much focus on individual cases, which are generalized in case of the country. The report ignores reference to any positive or reformatory steps taking place in the KSA.”

Biased, erroneous

Vietnam also rejected the report, and Foreign Ministry spokesman Luong Thanh Nghi told the government-controlled newspaper, Nhan Dan, that the report had “biased assessments” and “erroneous” information, according to World Community.

Nghi claimed that Vietnam’s constitution protects religious freedom and claimed that the nation’s practice of these rights has gained international recognition.

Especially troubling records

The U.S. State Department International Religious Freedom report covers the second half of 2010, and said that China and Saudi Arabia have especially troubling religious freedom violation records, while Vietnam has a “mixed record.”

The report cited methods of active repression in these and other countries, including the use of torture and violence against religious groups, laws on blasphemy and apostasy, restrictions on religious expression and anti-Semitism.

In China, some 500 Protestants were imprisoned in the past year, according to a report by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom.

China was also cited for imprisoning dozens of Catholic priests who did not register with the government, and for destroying places where Christians meet—all of which China denies.

Perhaps the highest incidence of persecution of Christians in China which has gained publicity internationally is that of Shouwang Church in Beijing, which has not been allowed to meet since Easter. (See http://theundergroundsite.com/index.php/2011/06/more-members-of-shouwang-arrested-in-china-on-eighth-week-showdown-16180/).

Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia has been cited for disallowing the public practice of any faith except Islam. News reports have cited imprisonment of Christians, including two Pentecostal Indian nationals who were jailed in Saudi Arabia for six months on trumped up, faith-related charges. (See http://theundergroundsite.com/index.php/2011/07/2-christians-released-from-saudi-jail-after-six-months-imprisonment-16808/).

Vietnam

In the case of Vietnam, the freedom report cited issues of religious harassment in provinces and villages, including the treatment of detainees arrested for protesting the closure of the Con Dau Parish Catholic cemetery, and the re-imprisonment of Catholic activist, Father Nguyen Van Ly who is frail after enduring a number of strokes while in detention.

Media reports often cite harassment, repression, and pressure on Christians and other people of different faiths to coerce them to renounce their religious beliefs.

Also mentioned in the report as Countries Of Particular Concern are Myanmar, Eritrea, North Korea, Sudan, Iran and Uzbekistan.

A new study of Evangelical Christians in the United Kingdom showed recently that more than half of total respondents support the Allied intercession in Libya, but three-fourths were against the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The study, Does Belief Touch Society? was conducted by the Evangelical Alliance and Christian Research, to help provide a more comprehensive profile of U.K. Evangelical Christians in the 21^st century.

The survey was conducted online with over 1,000 Christian respondents hailing from various denominations including Charismatics, Methodists, Anglicans, Free Evangelicals, Pentecostals and the Church of Scotland.

The study follows up the breakthrough 21^st Century Evangelicals Survey conducted last year with some 17,000 respondents. Both studies are designed to look into Evangelicals’ behavior, habits, practices and beliefs.

Steve Clifford, general director of Evangelical Alliance said in the study’s introduction, “We hope that this report, by holding up a mirror, will inspire us to seek — and be certain of — God’s truth in our lives and our communities.”

Demographics

The respondents to the study are a balanced representation gender-wise and come from a wide range of churches. However, limitations to the study are the under-representation of ethnic minorities and youth. Most respondents are highly educated. Because of the study’s limitations, only raw figures were presented.

The study’s validity lies in its contribution to the unfolding of a full census of U.K. evangelicals that may, in due time, provide a more nationally-representative demographic.

Findings revealed the following:

Faith

Most evangelicals overwhelmingly prescribe to the central Christian belief of Jesus’ death for the sins of all men and his resurrection. Furthermore:

• 99 percent believe the message of the cross changed their lives.
• 91 percent believe Jesus rose with a physical body from the dead.
• 85 percent strongly believe that Christians have eternal life.
• 82 percent strongly believe the resurrection shapes how they live now.
• 78 percent strongly believe that they will have eternal life after they die.

Practice:

•  95 percent went to church on Easter Sunday, but only 65% went to church on Good Friday.
• 57 percent go to churches that participated in inter-church activities during Easter.
• 41 percent participated in an evangelical activity over Easter.
• 23 percent visited friends, family, or went on holiday during Easter.

Public life

The study showed that most respondents are active participants in public life, with one-fourth of the total being trustees in a registered charity, nine percent serving as school governors, and four in 100 being with a political party. Nine out of 10 respondents voted in the AV referendum (compared to the national turnout of 42 percent).

Clifford said, of the findings, “There is much to celebrate in this report. Evangelical Christians are not bystanders. We are actively involved in our communities. But yet we must also rise to the challenge presented to us by some of these figures.”

To download the complete study, go to http://www.eauk.org/snapshot/does-belief-touch-society.cfm.

I was in the hardware store when I first heard the news, though I did not know what I was hearing. As the cashier tallied my purchase, I overheard a reporter on the store’s radio make the peculiar announcement that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. At the time, I thought of it as little more than a curiosity. How wrong I was.

It’s been ten years since that September morning, and still I can recall the horror and heroics of that day. The pancaking towers, the daring and duty-bound firefighters, the dust-soaked city of New York, and the ash-covered-walking-wounded, stumbling like ghosts through Manhattan.

Each September since 9/11, when the proper and solemn remembrance ceremonies begin, I am tempted to believe the now faded bumper stickers that were so common in the months following the tragedy: The stickers read, “We Will Never Forget.” Not true. We will forget.

No, those who lived in the cities directly attacked will never forget. Those who huddled around television sets as bewildered and confused witnesses will never forget. And of course, those who buried their loved ones murdered in the attacks would easier forget their own names as forget that Tuesday morning.

But those following us will forget. They are not calloused or forgetful. They are simply too young. Most of the students who entered college this fall were in elementary school ten years ago, and many of this generation (including my own children), were even younger or not yet born.

This is more than a generation that thinks Starbucks and cell phones were created shortly after Adam and Eve; that can text eighty words a minute, but can’t write in cursive; that has never known the limitation of having only three network television channels, and can’t imagine life without Google and YouTube. This is a generation that will come to maturity in the shadow of a dreadful event not even in their collective memory.

Yes, I want my children (and the generations to come) to remember and reflect upon these events. I want them to forever hold in their memory the suffering and injustice of that day and the days that have followed. But I do not want them to cloud their memories with the notion that the “world was changed forever on 9/11,” for it was not.

Violence, retaliation, the suffering of the innocent, and the struggle for power have been around for all of human history. 9/11, rather than changing that status quo, was another brutal, heart-rending chapter in the same narrative. To say that 9/11 is the defining, irreversible mark on human history is to give evil and injustice far too much credit; and for followers of Jesus to say such a thing, it is a loss faith.

Consider, that whenever Christians gather, they gather to remember, celebrate, and hopefully integrate into their lives a profound event from the past, an event to which the Eucharist and the Creeds point: “Jesus Christ was crucified, dead, and was buried; but on the third day he rose again.”

Our faith informs us that Jesus took all the hate, evil, retaliation, death, and rejection the world could muster, and when the world had done its worst, he responded with his best. He overcame all of these with resurrected life, goodness, and hope. This is the defining event of our past, the memory we will never forget, and the trajectory for our future.

Yes, I will bow my head and say a prayer for those taken away from us a decade ago. I will give thanks for the rescue workers, the firefighters, and those who tried to save and serve the hurt and dying. I will ask God to assuage the sorrow of the families and friends left to grieve.

But when I am finished praying, I will work for peace; I will seek to overcome evil with good; I will pursue the example of Jesus; and I will teach my children to remember properly. Remember that grace, not hate, will have the final word.

Ronnie McBrayer is a syndicated columnist, speaker, and author. His books include “Leaving Religion, Following Jesus” and “The Jesus Tribe.” Visit his website at www.ronniemcbrayer.net.