One can guess what Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams will say to Pope Benedict when the spiritual head of the Anglican Communion travels to the Vatican later this year. The more interesting question might be what  Queen Elizabeth is likely to say when she hosts the pope next year.

(Photo: Queen Elizabeth, 13 June 2009/Luke MacGregor)

The timing of the trips couldn't be more intriguing, especially the second one. The pope is due to visit Britain in September 2010 and is expected to preside there over the beatification of the late Cardinal John Henry Newman, a famous 19th-century convert from Anglicanism to Catholicism.

The queen is, after all, the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, many of whose flock the pope is seeking to poach with his offer last week allowing Anglicans to convert en masse while keeping many of their traditions. And among her honorifics is "Defender of the Faith." While that sounds impressive, it pales in comparison to Benedict's long string of titles including "Vicar of Jesus Christ, Successor of the Prince of the Apostles and Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church." But oneupmanship is a British sport, so one never knows how these things can turn out.

It is unclear how many CofE traditionalists, upset at moves to ordain women bishops and the issue of homosexuality, will move over to Rome, but the conservative Anglican group Forward in Faith suggested 12 Church of England bishops may switch - more than a quarter of their total.

It was suggested by the Daily Telegraph newspaper earlier this month, before the Vatican effectively sabotaged decades of dialogue between the two churches, that the pope would receive a warm welcome at Buckingham Palace. "The warmth of her welcome will come as no surprise to the pontiff," it said.

Citing sources speaking to the Catholic Herald weekly, the Telegraph said the queen has "grown increasingly sympathetic" to the Roman Catholic Church over the years while being "appalled," along with her son and heir Charles, at developments in the Church of England.

(Photo: Pope Benedict, 11 Oct 2009/Max Rossi)

The Sunday Telegraph in July said the queen had told the heads of a traditional group that she "understood their concerns" about the future of the 77 million-strong global church.

But whether the warmth will stand up to the pope parking his tanks on her lawn, as Ruth Gledhill described it in The Times -- especially Buckingham Palace's lawns -- would be astonishing.

As head of her faith she must defend her church, and can do so on an equal footing in both political and spiritual terms, Vicki Woods of the Telegraph wrote. "When Pope John Paul II met the queen on his visit to Britain, he was for once wrong-footed," she pointed out.  "She spoke to him not as a fellow head of state but as a fellow head of the church: her church. Her faith. Which she defends. He was quite taken aback."

It is not only her church's clergy and laity which are up for grabs, but possibly also the buidlings.

And it was Queen Elizabeth I, after all, who so staunchly defended the English Reformation introduced by her father Henry VIII in 1534 in his dispute with Rome over his desire to divorce one wife and marry another.

The queen has already potentially been slighted by her Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who it has been reported in the media, apparently personally invited the pope to visit Britain during a private audience last February.

"He should read Carla Powell's diary in The Spectator," Woods wrote.  "Gordon Brown says he invited His Holiness, which if true would represent a gross breach of protocol. Only the queen can invite a head of state to Britain."

(Photo: Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, 11 Feb 2009/Kieran Doherty)

The queen, needless to say, has said even less than her archbishop. The older royals don't often leave themselves open to be quoted. On one of the rare occasions they have, the late queen mother was reported to have only commented that church services should not last beyond an hour. The archbishop has barely said much more in response to the pope other than he did not see it as "an act of aggression" and that it would not derail dialogue between the two churches.

But when you become the focus of general sympathy, you must know that you have probably been dealt a rum deal.

The fact that the archbishop was only notified two weeks before the pope revealed just how far he was prepared to go in accommodating the Anglo-Catholics must have left him "starting to wonder if he has any friends left," Gledhill wrote in the Times over the weekend.  "He is like the academic boy at school who no one wants to play with because he doesn't understand the rules of fisticuffs," she added.

Many religious figures have been indignant at the way the Vatican has behaved towards Williams, with his predecessor George Carey urging him to protest at its "appalling" injustice.

The Vatican is expected to reveal more details about the offer in the next week or two. The conservative Anglican group Forward in Faith debated the offer in London at the weekend and decided its members would be consulted, with a decision due in late February after the CofE general synod.

Some women priests say that timing is cynical, based on emotional blackmail.

"It is beginning to sound like an abusive marriage," said the pro-women ordination spokeswoman Reverend Miranda Threlfall-Holmes, chaplain at University College, Durham, in northern England. She suggested the disaffected will threaten to leave unless concessions are made on the possible ordination of women bishops, which is due to be discussed at the synod.

(Photo: Rev. Miranda Threlfall-Holmes)

The Vatican made moves 17 years ago to attract Anglicans when the ordination of women priests was being discussed.  "They could say we will leave unless you do this and that," she  said.

What do you think? Will Queen Elizabeth surprise Pope Benedict and defend the faith, as she did with Pope John Paul? Or will diplomacy prevail?

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(Photo: Pope Benedict XVI with African bishops in St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican, 4  Oct 2009/Alessandro Bianchi)

Roman Catholic bishops called on corrupt Catholic leaders in Africa on Friday to repent or resign for giving the continent and the Church a bad name. Around 200 African bishops, along with dozens of other bishops and Africa experts, also accused multinational companies in Africa of "crimes against humanity" and urged Africans to beware of "surreptitious" attempts by international organizations to destroy traditional African values.

Their three-week synod, which ends formally on Sunday with a Mass by Pope Benedict, covered a range of Africa's problems, such as AIDS, corruption, poverty, development aspirations and crime. But it had a very direct message for corrupt African leaders who were raised Catholics.

"Many Catholics in high office have fallen woefully short in their performance in office. The synod calls on such people to repent, or quit the public arena and stop causing havoc to the people and giving the Catholic Church a bad name."

The message did not name any leaders. The international community has for years called on Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, who was raised a Catholic and educated by Jesuits, to step down, saying he had brought his once-prosperous country to its knees.

Another African leader who was raised a Catholic and has been accused of corruption is Angola's President Eduardo dos Santos. Both men deny any wrongdoing.

In a section on AIDS, the bishops' message repeated the Church position that the spread of the disease could not be stopped by the use of condoms alone. Last March, on his way to his first trip to Africa, the pope caused an international storm by saying that the use of condoms could actually worsen the spread of AIDS.

Read the whole story here.

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An atmosphere of stale defensiveness has sunk over Kabul. The mood has been lowered by the protracted saga of the Afghan election count, almost two months on from the first round August 20 vote. It’s a drama veering towards farce more often than post-modern play, as we wait endlessly for a result, that like Godot, does not want to come.

Winter has not yet arrived in Kabul, though the evenings are cold, quickly taking the heat of the sun out of the day. Afghan politicians are frustrated and twitchy, second-guessing the reasons for the U.N.-backed election watchdog’s plodding. We are being solidly methodological to retain the confidence of all, says the Electoral Complaints Commission, as it examines thousands of dodgy votes. A thankless task, most likely. The ECC officials will be puzzling over whether a box of votes has been mass-endorsed for one candidate, and should not stand, or if the suspiciously similar ticks on the ballot paper are attributable to only one man in the village knowing how to write. Many of the rural voters will never have held a pen in their hand, argued one official. It is natural in such a tribal society for the village to establish a consensus on who to support. Do such ballot papers count? Remember Florida, and how ‘hanging chads’ and the U.S. Supreme Court gave George W. Bush the presidency over Al Gore? It’s that kind of agony.

Behind the scenes the whispers are that hesitation and delay are because the outcome is excruciatingly close, too close to call. President Hamid Karzai, once set clear for victory, may find first round success ripped from his grasp by the disqualification of votes stuffed into ballot boxes by his supporters. He’ll likely win a second round, if it happens, against his former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah; but there will have been a loss of dignity, of self-confidence and of an opportunity to stabilise Afghanistan and get on with fighting the Taliban.

Other more fraught scenarios are possible, as outlined by my colleague. Would Karzai gamble that the West has no alternative to him in Afghanistan? And that he can therefore afford to ignore the opprobrium that would follow if he rejected an outcome he did not like? Or are the suspicions of chicanery, back-room pressure on election officials and string-pulling by all involved just a proliferation of nonsense to fill the void left by the lack of a clear outcome?

Eventually the result will be out, perhaps by the time some of you get round to reading this. Most likely I will be back in London, watching from afar. Optimists would have it that clarity will clear the air, the Afghan political mood will lighten and spoils to all will come from the haggling over the shape of the next government.

Meanwhile Afghanistan is Limbo-stan. Obama won’t decide his strategy on Afghanistan until he sees what kind of Afghan partner he has to deal with. At least until then, and possibly longer, he won’t say yes or no to the extra troops that General Stanley McChrystal says he needs to carry out the counter-insurgency strategy that he has prepared. (Though he’ll carry out a different strategy, with no or fewer extra troops, if that’s what he’s ordered to do by his commander-in-chief). So in this limbo - the Washington policy void is filled with echo-chamber exhortations across the political divides; the Taliban is emboldened; Afghanistan’s neighbours are positioning themselves to benefit or at least guard against strategic loss should Washington fold its tent; and Western publics are wondering if there is a real purpose to their boys getting their limbs blown off while trudging through the fields of southern Helmand.

Photo; Irish "Yes" campaigners celebrate in Dublin, 3 Oct 2009/Cathal McNaughton)

Europe has become increasingly selfish and materialistic in the 20 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the heads of the Roman Catholic bishops' conferences across Europe said at the end of their three-day annual meeting at the weekend.  "The crisis sweeping Europe today is serious," they said in a statement after the session in Paris. They cited materialism, individualism and relativism as major challenges facing European society.

The bishops' sober assessment contrasted with the upbeat mood that the overwhelming "Yes" vote in Ireland's Lisbon Treaty referendum created.  It must be noted they drew up their statement before they'd heard the news from Dublin on Saturday. And their statement ended with a note of Christian hopefulness. Still, their diagnosis is so fundamental it's hard to imagine they would have changed much in the text.

Here's the way they put it:

"All that has happened since the fall of the Berlin Wall has been a great stepping stone in the European adventure... (but) twenty years later, we now see that the incredible European project, with a strong ethical basis, has greatly weakened... The hopes placed on building Europe have not so far been fulfilled. Here we take note of the influence of several factors:

• "The development of the European Union has gone hand in hand with a growth in consumption, at least for some people. The mere constant acquisition of goods will never fill people's hearts... The rules of the market and competition will never give birth to the ideal.
• "Present society wishes to give to the individual every possible opportunity to exercise individual choice and to seek personal fulfilment. In doing so it risks simply locking the individual into the defence of self-interest or acquired benefits... A society in which each individual, each group, each nation defends only their own vested interests cannot but be the jungle... We should not be surprised then if mafia and terrorist organizations thrive against this background...
• "A pluralistic society often risks being tempted by relativism, and particularly by ethical relativism. Each person sets their own norms and claims their own rights. Social life can only rest on common rules, on a vision of humanity that does not change according to shifting lobbies or opinion polls...

"The crisis sweeping Europe today is serious. Low birth rates and the future of its demography do not lead to optimism. However, we do not intend to be prophets of doom. Things are not necessarily doomed to get worse! Our faith calls us turn our attention to the European society in which we live, and to gaze on it with hope."

Do you think materialism, individualism and relativism are the main problems nagging Europe? If so, will it take more than the feel-good factor from the Irish vote to put "EU show... back on the road" again?

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Welcome to the live blog of the German election, a showdown between Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier (left) and Chancellor Angela Merkel (right). More than 50 Reuters correspondents, photographers and television crews in Berlin and across Germany will be tracking the story throughout the weekend.

And in this box you will be able to follow the latest twists and turns throughout the weekend. We’re using #germanelection as the hashtag if you want to follow us on Twitter.

Here is a glimpse of the Reuters office in Berlin that will be delivering the story to Germany and the world.

Until not too long ago, most people believed human morality was based on scripture, culture or reason. Some stressed only one of those sources, others mixed all three. None would have thought to include biology. With the progress of neuroscientific research in recent years, though, a growing number of psychologists, biologists and philosophers have begun to see the brain as the base of our moral views. Noble ideas such as compassion, altruism, empathy and trust, they say, are really evolutionary adaptations that are now fixed in our brains. Our moral rules are actually instinctive responses that we express in rational terms when we have to justify them.

(Photo: Religious activist at a California protest, 10 June 2005/Gene Blevins)

Thanks to a flurry of popular articles, scientists have joined the ranks of those seen to be qualified to speak about morality, according to anthropologist Mark Robinson, a Princeton Ph.D student who discussed this trend at the University of Pennsylvania's Neuroscience Boot Camp. "In our current scientific society, where do people go to for the truth about human reality?" he asked. "It used to be you might read a philosophy paper or consult a theologian. But now there seems to be a common public sense that the authority over what morality is can be found by neuroscientists or scientists."

This change has come over the past decade as brain scan images began to reveal which areas of the brain react when a person grapples with a moral problem. They showed activity not only in the prefrontal cortex, where much of our rational thought is processed, but also in areas known to handle emotion and conflicts between brain areas. Such insights cast doubt on long-standing assumptions about reason or religion driving our moral views. "A few theorists have even begun to claim that that the emotions are in fact in charge of the temple of morality and that moral reasoning is really just a servant masquerading as the high priest," University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt, one of the leading theorists in this field, has written.

Haidt's Moral Foundations Theory argues that morality is based on five concepts that evolved in all cultures: harm/care, fairness/reciprocity, ingroup/loyalty, authorty/respect and purity/sanctity. Those concepts have real-life consequences, he says -- political liberals and conservatives disagree so much on so-called "culture war issues" because liberals base their moral views on the first two concepts while conservatives use all five. Other theorists such as Marc Hauser of Harvard and John Mikhail of Georgetown suggest humans have a universal moral grammar akin to the universal grammar that linguist Noam Chomsky claims underlies all the world's languages.

For more on these ideas, see review articles such as "The Moral Instinct" (Stephen Pinker, New York Times), "Do The Right Thing" (Rebecca Saxe, Boston Review), "The Emerging Moral Psychology" (Dan Jones, Prospect), "The Roots of Morality" (Greg Miller, Science) and "The End of Philosophy" (David Brooks, New York Times). Hat-tip to fellow boot camper Tamar Gendler for pointing them out.

(Photo: Mark Robinson at the boot camp,10 Aug 2009/Tom Heneghan)

Does this mean that public opinion will turn away from seeing reason or religion as the bases for morality, in favor of the brain? Robinson doubts that. "I don't know that they will shift to a completely neurobiological view of morality (and) I don't think this is a fundamental shift away from religion. But it will mean that religion will have to come to terms with the public's perception.

"I think there will be a greater acceptance of biology as an accepted domain within which to ask certain types of questions. That isn't to say that people will understand morality completely differently in the future, or won't have any morality. But they will at least know that (neuroscience) is another domain to go to for answers. The question of authority is a big one. Who is the ultimate authority on these issues about the fundamental nature of human morality?"

Robinson stressed that the authority issue is different from the question of personal belief. In future, he says, people could have moral positions similar to those today, but based on different authorities than in the past. "Think of it in search terms. Where will people go? What kinds of questions will they ask?" he said. "If they will lead to different beliefs, who knows? But the process of looking has changed."

What do you think? Do you sense that science is taking over from reason or religion as the preferred way for people to justify moral decisions?

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Knowing what not to report is just as important for journalists as knowing what to write. We're inundated with handouts about some pioneering new scientific research or insightful new book. Should we write about it? It's refreshing to hear experts who can dazzle you with their work but warn against falling for any hype about it. This "let's not overdo it" approach has been a recurrent theme in the Neuroscience Boot Camp I'm attending at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

(Photo: The "official" boot camp T-shirt, 8 Aug 2009/Tom Heneghan)

Andrew Newberg's "no God spot" message to boot campers has already been noted here on FaithWorld. Other lecturers added similar reality checks to their presentations. Cognitive science has already begun to influence religion studies (as John Teehan explained here) and we're bound to hear more in the future about what neuroscientific research has to say about faith, morals, altruism and other issues of interest to readers of this blog. Much of this will be fascinating. But before the next "gee-whiz" report comes out, here's the advice the neuroscientists are giving us about speculative claims based on brain research.

(Photo: Geoff Aguirre, 5 Aug 2009/Tom Heneghan)

After two days of explaining fMRI brain scanning, the sexiest procedure in current neurological research, Geoff Aguirre poured cold water on some of the exaggerated conclusions that researchers or journalists draw from it. When shown brain scan images, he said, "people immediately start thinking about trying to catch terrorists and being able to screen people as they pass through metal detectors." This is "science fiction, science fantasy," he said, but it comes up regularly. Why? Aguirre, who is an M.D and assistant professor of neurology at Penn, listed several reasons:

• scientific awesomeness -- "This is an incredible technology. Neuroimaging is not phrenology. It really is a scientific discipline that has reproducible results that makes valuable predictions that explain larges areas of cognition and cognitive neuroscience that previously had been inaccessible."
• image properties -- "There's definitely an esthetic in the presentation of this data. People see this as a natural aspect of the brain, not the result of tests. Some groups made a very wise investment in the display technology for how neuroimaging results were reported. Those were the images that got displayed on the covers of the top scientific journals and made a splash."
• thresholding -- The brain images leave out data outside the main focus. "This contributes to the overly localised view of brain function. So we say, 'ah this is the spot for love' or whatever, because it's all that we see."
• overinference -- "It's very easy to believe a lot of things about these images that might not be true... It's also implied that when you've found activisation in a region, you've found the region 'for' something. But what does that mean?"
• chicken versus egg problem -- "Just because you find a difference between groups in some brain imaging measure does not mean that structural difference was genetically determined." But the brain also develops according to its owner's environment and experience, so this is too narrow a focus.
• lurking Cartesian dualism -- "In the way we think about people's actions and describe the effect of diseases or drugs, there is frequently a lurking dualism there. We say, 'oh it wasn't his fault, his brain did that.' Well, who else could it have been? Where else could those thoughts and feeling or plans have come from, except in the brain? This idea that the brain and the mind are separate is part of what makes these images so remarkable. Wow look! Here's a part of the brain that's more active when you're feeling romantic love or not! That's just astounding to folks who would have thought romantic love was outside the brain, in the heart or the soul and far away."
  

  (Photo: Near infrared spectroscopy imaging slide/GK Aguirre)

• illusion of inferential proximity -- "It doesn't automatically follow that a brain imaging technology is going to give you greater inferential leverage on a question than just talking to somebody. There's an illusion that somehow you're getting much closer to the behavior you want to measure, just because you're measuring a brain image. That might not be the case."
  
• ease of imaging -- Many hospitals have brain scanners and researchers can use them and free imaging software to create impressive images. "If you have an internet connection and a scanner, you can be a cognitive neuroscientist and publish a paper. Lots of the variance in the lousy scientific papers over these years can be explained this way. What will come out will be a well-formed brain image that will give the impression you must be a very good scientist because you created something that looks very polished."

Aguirre said that brain scans might be able to identify pedophiles by showing they are excited by pictures of children. "Does having that response to seeing kids in underwear lead to an increased risk of you actually going out and molesting kids?" he asked. "It could be the case that this population of people now divides into two subgroups, one that can control that impulse and one that cannot." It would be hard to base a policy on who to put in jail on the basis of such brain images, he said.

(Photo: Reward responses slide/Joe Kable)

Another example would be a study into people who lose their temper. "So I do a study of people who are enraged and can find that activity within the right insula is associated with a sense of rage. I have explained the sense of rage," he said. "But since we all strongly suspected that the sense of rage was derived from events taking place in our nervous system, what have we learned?" The study could say what happens in the brain during rage but still not explain why the person flew off the handle.

Penn law professor Stephen Morse said that "neuroscience can gives us tons of data that teaches us about our capacities and our propensities, but ultimately it's up to us to decide. Neuroscience might have a lot of information for us, but ultimately deciding what to do won't be decided by neuroscience, it will be decided by us."

In a well-attended session on "the chemistry of love," Mike Kaplan, director of Penn's Neurolab, said "a lot of people think that, as soon as you've come up with a physical explanation for something, you've taken the magic out of it. I don't think that. If they find a peptide that's released when you fall in love, some people would say love is just another brain function. If this was reported next week, how many of you would stop buying Valentine's Day cards? Saying something is a brain function is not an insult. The brain is the most interesting object in the universe."

(Photo: Mike Kaplan in the Neurolab with boot campers Jennifer Drobac and Sita Kotnis, 5 Aug 2009/Tom Heneghan)

For more on the daily lectures, check out Francis X. Shen's Bloggin' the Boot Camp blog.

What do you think about what brain science is telling us about the relationship between the brain and religion, morality and behavior?

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A crucial part of gunman Mohammad Ajmal Kasab's confession at the Mumbai attack trial has been censored by the judge on the grounds that it could inflame religious tensions between Hindus and Muslims in India. After stunning the court on Monday by admitting guilt in the the three-day rampage that killed 166 people, Kasab gave further testimony on Tuesday that included details about his training by Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), a Pakistan-based militant group on U.S. and Indian terrorist lists.

The front-page report in today's The Hindu, which noted the judge's gag order in its sub-header, put it this way:

Ajmal made some crucial statements on Tuesday as part of his confession. They pertained to the purpose of the attack as indicated by the perpetrators and masterminds and the message they wanted to send to the government of India. Ajmal also wanted to convey a message to his handlers. However, this part of his confession faces a court ban on publication.

In view of the communally sensitive nature of Ajmal’s statements, judge M.L. Tahaliyani passed an order banning the publication and broadcast of Ajmal’s statement recorded on Tuesday by any media or person, except the part which pertains to the CST. Mr. Tahaliyani remarked that the trial was at “a delicate stage.”

Given the complex mix of religion and politics in India, it's not unusual to see the media playing down the communal aspect of tension and violence. In the recent general election, the party that usually plays up these differences, the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), hardly used the "religion card" in its losing campaign. But that doesn't mean things are getting better. According to the Centre for Study of Society and Secularism in Mumbai, the "unfortunate year of 2008 ... proved to be worse than 2007." See their two-part report on 2008 here and here.

But Kasab's testimony could shed important light on what role religion plays in Islamist militancy. How could a young man who wanted to become a dacoit (bandit) be convinced by Islamist militants to try to become a shahid (martyr) instead? Was he actually convinced, or did he do it for other reasons?

(Photo: Taj Mahal hotel burns, 27 Nov 2008/Punit Paranjpe)

Kasab told the court on Monday that he originally approached the militants to get weapons and training and won (surprisingly easy) admission to their office by saying he wanted to wage jihad. He was taken in and given extensive training in preparation for the Mumbai attack last November. All of this is detailed in published accounts of his statement in court on Monday. In earlier statements, police say, he showed little understanding of Islam or jihad, saying the latter was "about killing and getting killed and becoming famous."

What role did Islamist ideology play in this, and what part the confused ambitions of a poor and impressionable young man? In a publication entitled Why Are We Waging Jihad?, Lashkar-e-Taiba listed its goals as:

1) to eliminate evil and facilitate conversion to and practice of Islam;

2) to ensure the ascendancy of Islam;

3) to force non-Muslims to pay jizya (poll tax, paid by non-Muslims for protection from a Muslim ruler);

4) to assist the weak and powerless;

5) to avenge the blood of Muslims killed by unbelievers;

6) to punish enemies for breaking promises and treaties;

7) to defend a Muslim state; and

8 ) to liberate Muslim territories under non-Muslim occupation.

Did his handlers stress all this to Kasab? Did he want to do any of the above? What did his Islamist handlers say about Hindus? If they fed him a diet of anti-Hindu hatred, might it be better to publicise the details so they can be debated and discredited? Some of the most interesting contributions to such a debate could come from Indian Muslims, who live in the kind of secular democracy the LeT rejects.

(Photo: Kasab in detention, 3 Feb 2009/video grab from CNN IBN)

I'd be especially interested to hear the reaction from the famous Darul Uloom Deoband seminary, which is a traditionalist Sunni school but has urged Muslims to reject terrorism and vote in elections against extremists.

Right now may not be the best time to publish Kasab's censored confession. But revealing it at a later date, for example after the verdict, might do more good than the harm Judge Tahaliyani fears. What do you think?

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts - Some Americans are swapping homes for motels as the ranks of the homeless swell during the recession, crowding out shelters and forcing cities and states across the country to find new types of housing.

In Massachusetts, a record number of families are being put up in motels due to high unemployment and the rising number of homes going into foreclosure, costing taxpayers $2 million per month but providing a lifeline for desperate families.

“I feel like this has saved my life,” said Tarya Seagraves-Quee, a 37-year-old former nurse.

(Click on her picture above for a slideshow on Americans forced to live hotels during the recession)

Seagraves-Quee has lived in a cramped one-bedroom suite in a hotel in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with three of her four children for nearly two months. “I’m managing the best way possible. I’ve learned to make things in the microwave oven.”

In Massachusetts, homeless shelters are at capacity. State law requires temporary accommodation for those without shelter, leading authorities to place 830 families, including 1,125 children, in 39 motels — an unprecedented number.

“This truly is the highest we have ever seen it,” said Nancy Paladino, director of the family team for the Boston Health Care for the Homeless.

Other cities are noticing a similar trend. In Indianapolis, Indiana, overcrowded homeless shelters are turning families away, forcing growing numbers to seek vouchers for hotels provided by nonprofit groups such as United Way.

“Anecdotally, it’s increased,” said Michael Hurst, director of the Coalition for Homeless Intervention and Prevention Indianapolis. The advocacy group started to compile statistics on the number of homeless families living in hotels this year after noticing signs of an increase.

“The hotel owners will tell you it has increased. The homeless service providers and the school officials will say we know there are more people living in hotels and putting their kids in school because that is the address they are giving us.”

(Click on the video below for an audio slideshow about the Seagraves-Quee family by photographer Brian Snyder. It is narrated by Tarya Seagraves-Quee, who is also a gospel singer)

(Click here for more on Tarya Seagraves-Quee)

‘JUST A STEPPING STONE’

In the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area, the large Wilson family turned to a budget motel as a weeklong transition between a homeless shelter and an apartment.

“Each step we’re going it’s just a stepping stone,” said 42-year-old Frederick Wilson as he sat with his wife, Annette, in a one-bedroom suite they share with four of the six children in their care, including a grandchild.

Called by God, they said, to move from Minnesota to Texas, the family has rapidly made a shift from homeless status to paid employment. Annette has just landed a job as a bus driver, while Frederick said he will work in an office that offers clerical support to Medicaid patients.

They spent two-and-a-half weeks in a homeless shelter in Dallas and were preparing to move into an apartment from the motel. The Urban League, an organization that helps struggling African Americans, is paying the $204 cost of their suite, which does not include sheets, pillows or toilet paper.

(Click on the video below for an audio slideshow about the Wilson family by photographer Jessica Rinaldi, narrated by the Wilsons)

(Click here for an update on the Wilson family)

In Phoenix, demand for emergency accommodation is swamping available services as the recession and spiraling foreclosures turn even more families out of their homes.

One nonprofit bought two former hotels — a Days Inn and a Super 8 — in a gritty downtown neighborhood to provide emergency accommodation for homeless and low income families. When the $23 million project is finished in September, it will be able to house 156 families, up from 112 now.

“We’ve seen a whole new subset of homeless families due to job loss and foreclosures, and our waiting list has doubled in the past year,” said Nichole Barnes, chief fund development officer of the UMOM New Day Centers.

“Some were previous homeowners. Due to the housing market out here, they’d got into a mortgage with a flexible interest rate. Some were working full time, but lost their jobs, went through their savings trying to save their home, and then found themselves without a home due to foreclosure,” she said.

FORECLOSURES AND FAMILIES

In many cities, foreclosures are a big part of a spike in homeless and rise in families living in hotels or motels.

Nearly 80 percent of homeless services providers and advocacy agencies say at least some clients became homeless as a result of a foreclosure, according to a joint report by four of the largest U.S. homeless advocacy groups.

Staying with family or friends and in emergency shelters were the most common post-foreclosure living conditions, followed by hotels or motels, according to the June report.

“In many areas shelters are now completely full, so the only option to keep their families together is to rent a motel room for $200 a week. That’s pretty standard for many who lost their homes to foreclosure,” said Michael Stoops, executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless.

Unlike Massachusetts, most states do not pick up the tab. “People are spending 80 percent of their total income on hotels,” he said. “And food costs are higher because they can’t cook.”

In Cambridge, Massachusetts, Seagraves-Quee found refuge at a budget hotel after losing her job in Georgia more than a year ago and going without health care for 10 months. She suffers from multiple sclerosis, anemia and lupus, and was recently found to have two cancer spots on her breast. Two of her children, aged 16 and 6, are autistic.

She spent $700 — almost all her savings — on plane tickets to Boston, where she had relatives. Soon the family was in a shelter.

Local authorities later moved her to the hotel and Seagraves-Quee was given medical treatment as part of a program carried out by Boston Health Care for the Homeless.

“Right now, I am picking up from where I left off in Georgia 10 months ago. When I got here I was in really bad health,” she said. “I’ve heard some people say ‘Oh that is a ghetto shelter.’ But to me it’s a wonderful place.”

(Additional reporting by Ed Stoddard in Dallas and Tim Gaynor in Phoenix; Editing by Doina Chiacu. Cambridge photos and audio slideshow by Brian Synder, Dallas photos and audio slideshow by Jessica Rinaldi)

A spate of bombs targeting churches in Baghdad this week has Iraq's minority Christian community trembling at the prospect of being the next victim of militants trying to reignite war.

Iraqi Christians, one of the country's weakest ethnic or  religious groups, have usually tried to steer clear of its many-sided conflict. For the most part, they manage.

While Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims killed each other by the dozen at the height of Iraq's sectarian conflict in 2006 and 2007, Christians were rarely targeted, although sometimes they were.

(Photo: A policeman at the site of a car bomb attack on a Baghdad church, 13 July 2009/Saad Shalash)

On Sunday, in apparently coordinated attacks, five bombs went off outside churches in Baghdad, killing four people and wounding 21, including a number of Christians.

Iraqi Christians or "Messihi", as they are called by an Arabic word related to the Hebrew term "Messiah,"  number around 750,000. That makes them a tiny minority in a Muslim nation of 28 million. They are mostly concentrated around Baghdad and the violent northern city of Mosul, which is still struggling to shake off al Qaeda and other Sunni Arab insurgent groups.

Historically, though, they have got on well with their Muslim compatriots. Under Ottoman rule, non-Islamic faiths were generally respected. More recently, Saddam Hussein used to draw attention to his Chaldean Christian Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz, currently doing time for assisting Saddam's mass murders of Iraqi merchants, as an example of the Baath party's religious tolerance.

But partly because they are small, Christians are an easy target. About 2,000 families, an estimated 12,000 people, fled Mosul after a campaign of threats and attacks on Christians there in October last year, but many have since returned.

(Photo: A man cleans up after a bomb attack on a Baghdad church, 13 July 2009/Thaier al-Sudani)

"Attacking Christians can have a big impact on public opinion, because they are a minority and the international media will take this news seriously. That's what the extremists want," William Warida, a Christian and chairman of a Baghdad human rights organisation told me. "And some extremists just don't want the existence of Christians in this country at all."

The country's Christians fall into roughly two denominations, the majority Chaldeans under the authority of the Vatican and the minority Assyrians. "We are like one family, with two brothers: one is Chaldean, one is Assyrian. I have four grandsons: two are Assyrian and two Chladean," says Assyrian Christian parliamentarian Yunadim Kanna. According to the Rome-based news agency Asianews.it, both Chaldean and Assyrian churches were attacked.

Many Iraqi Christians from both branches speak Syriac-Aramic, a semitic tongue related to old Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus.

Today, many of them live in exile in Jordan or Syria, scared off by the chaos unleashed by the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

(Photo: Mourners grieve at funeral of bombing victim, 14 July 2009/Mohammed Ameen)

"After Sunday, the Christians that were thinking of coming back from outside, now maybe they will change their minds," said Warida. "This was a message to them not to come back."

The Vatican's procurator for Chaldean Catholics, Chorbishop Philip Najeem, gave the same analysis in an interview with Vatican Radio.

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