Old Courthouse photo courtesy of www.mo.gov

They say that if you want to know a person’s real priorities in life, look at their checkbook.  “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also,” and all that (Matthew 6:21, for those who are wondering).  Well, what holds true for individuals often holds true for the state as well, and today Missouri’s leaders are faced with difficult choices about how to spend our money.

The decisions that our state government makes during these next few weeks regarding the 2010 budget will have real and lasting consequences for everyone in the state, but no persons will be more directly affected than the poor, the disabled, children, and the elderly.  In other words, those very people for whom we are most responsible, if we wish to be a just and compassionate society.

Lawmakers and others are pleading poverty for the state, saying that we simply can’t afford all of…

We’re falling apart at the seams. That would be the general impression I get of the Anglican Communion in most media reports of the last several years.

Not that I’m blaming the media, mind you. The conflicts within the Anglican Communion are real, painful, and profound. And of course priests and bishops and lay people who are all storming around and slamming doors behind them like one big dysfunctional family make good press. So be it.

The war drums (or death knells, depending upon whom you read) seemed to get louder and louder in the weeks leading up to the Lambeth Conference. Lambeth is a once-a-decade gathering of Anglican leaders (archbishops, bishops, and presiding bishops from around the globe), and the conference received oodles of press attention from the moment it was announced. The stories that streamed forth about the fractious, potentially schismatic state of the third largest Christian group in the world…