How to get student loans at 2%

This was first published at CNN Money.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Question 1. How are people able to get their student loans down to 2%? Two of my children have student loans and we'd be very interested to know this. Thank you very much. -- Diane, North Dakota

We got a LOT of e-mail from folks wondering the same thing. If your children have older variable rate Stafford or PLUS loans that were issued before July 1st 2006 and they haven't been consolidated, you may be able to consolidate them now so you can take advantage of that 2% interest rate. That's a historic low.

But, if you have loans that were originated after that date, your interest rate will be the weighted average of all your loans combined (generally that will be 6 to 8.5%). For more information, call your lender.

Jesus, Justice, and Jazz

Starting today, Wednesday, July 22, over 40,000 Youth and Adults will begin their journey of Jesus, Justice, and Jazz at the 2009 ELCA National Youth Gathering in New Orleans. The Florida-Bahamas Synod is excited that over 500 youth and adults from 40 congregations in our synod are among the participants at the event. Among these representatives of our synod are many pastors and leaders in our synod including our Youth and Young Adult Specialist Amy Santoriello, Assistant to the bishop Pr. Rita Gardner Tweed, and Bishop Edward R. Benoway. Please keep all of these leaders, the youth, and all of the hundreds of volunteer adults from our congregations in your individual and corporate prayers this week and in the context of your weekend worship.

Why are there so many people who are threatened by the thoughts of women, homosexuals, and other not white heterosexual males?

This past Sunday, a friend of mine and I went to see Doug Pagitt and his presentation of “A Christianity Worth Believing – Spreading a Hope-filled, Open-armed, Alive & Well Faith for the Left-out, Left-behind and Let-down.” Pagitt is an author in the emerging church movement, and he is the head pastor of Solomon's Porch in Minneapolis MN.

I had a couple of reasons why I wanted to hear Doug speak. The first reason came from the fact that I had not been part of the emerging church movement, and I wanted to see it first hand. The second reason simply came from the fact that I liked the sub title of his book – “Spreading a Hope-filled, Open-armed, Alive & Well Faith for the Left-out, Left-behind and Let-down.” (I tend to like just about anything that bumps head with the theology of the rapture and the entire left-behind concept.)

While I did not agree with everything that Doug said, overall, I did enjoy what he said. I really like the fact that he pointed out what St. Augustine wrote about and said during the 5^th century was a good explanation for the 5^th century church. But we do not live in the 5^th century, and what St. Augustine said and wrote is not part of our cannon. Therefore, the teachings of St. Augustine should be treated as 5^th century teachings, and not as the 67^th book of the Bible.

All of this came back to me because I just read an article that Former President Jimmy Carter wrote concerning. The title of this article is Losing my religion for equality. I have copied part of the article here

[The view of women being inferior to men is] at its most repugnant, the belief that women must be subjugated to the wishes of men excuses slavery, violence, forced prostitution, genital mutilation and national laws that omit rape as a crime. But it also costs many millions of girls and women control over their own bodies and lives, and continues to deny them fair access to education, health, employment and influence within their own communities.

[This] discriminatory thinking lies behind the continuing gender gap in pay and why there are still so few women in office in the West. The root of this prejudice lies deep in our histories, but its impact is felt every day. It is not women and girls alone who suffer. It damages all of us.

The carefully selected verses found in the Holy Scriptures to justify the superiority of men owe more to time and place - and the determination of male leaders to hold onto their influence - than eternal truths. Similar biblical excerpts could be found to support the approval of slavery and the timid acquiescence to oppressive rulers.

I am also familiar with vivid descriptions in the same Scriptures in which women are revered as pre-eminent leaders. During the years of the early Christian church women served as deacons, priests, bishops, apostles, teachers and prophets. It wasn't until the fourth century that dominant Christian leaders, all men, twisted and distorted Holy Scriptures to perpetuate their ascendant positions within the religious hierarchy.

The truth is that male religious leaders have had - and still have - an option to interpret holy teachings either to exalt or subjugate women. They have, for their own selfish ends, overwhelmingly chosen the latter. Their continuing choice provides the foundation or justification for much of the pervasive persecution and abuse of women throughout the world. This is in clear violation not just of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but also the teachings of Jesus Christ, the Apostle Paul, Moses and the prophets.

I believe President Carter’s article and Doug Pagitt’s presentation have struck me the way they have comes from the fact that I have heard so many times over the past several months (this statement mainly comes from white heterosexual males), “I trust God’s wisdom over man’s wisdom.” My question is “Why do people (Christians) worship the Bible, and not Jesus?” Why are so many people hell bent on trying to create a 1^st or 5^th century environment in the 21^st century? And why are there so many people who are threatened by the thoughts of women, the thoughts of homosexuals, the thoughts of people who are not white heterosexual males?

Episcopal Church's Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori

The more that I learn about the Episcopal Church's Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, the more I like.

Here is a link to her opening statement for their 2009 General Convention: http://www.americananglican.org/presiding-bishop-s-opening-address/.

I love this part of her address.

The great Western heresy - that we can be saved as individuals, that any of use alone can be in right relationship with God. It's caricatured in some quarters by insisting that salvation depends on reciting a specific verbal formula about Jesus. That individualist focus is a form of idolatry, for it puts me and my words in the place that only God can occupy, at the center of existence.

Sex and the (Vatican) City

First thing first, Jessica Coblentz, a graduate of Santa Clara University, works in Catholic young adult ministry. She will begin graduate studies at Harvard Divinity School this fall. This post originally appeared on her personal blog, http://www.jessicacoblentz.blogspot.com./ This post can also be viewed on the Emerging Women blog at http://www.emergingwomen.us/2009/07/16/sex-and-the-vatican-city/.

With the Episcopal bishops backing the blessings of same-sex unions, lifting the ban on ordaining gay bishops, and its fallout (N.T. Write calling this a slow-moving train crash and the formation of the U.S. Anglican Church launches that will ban female and gay bishops), I have been thinking about the 2009 ELCA Churchwide Assembly. I believe that we are going to have the same type of fallout when we approve (I think we are going to approve) the proposed social statement on human sexuality, Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust, and the Report and Recommendation on Ministry Policies.

Then I read Jessica's blog. She blogged about the lack of honest talk and the complexities of sexual decision-making in the Roman Catholic church. While she does imply that this issue is not unique to the Roman Catholic Church, I am wondering if the church can really have a frank and honest talk about sex. For some reason, the church can take this wonderful gift that God has given us, our sexuality, and turn it into a subject that people would rather avoid by drink gasoline than engaging it.

Here is Jessica's blog:

By Jessica Coblentz
I have a problem. I’m addicted to Sex— Sex and the City, that is.

A friend lent me a couple seasons on DVD recently. I had needed an episode for a program I facilitated at the women’s college where I work in campus ministry. The students and I gathered for popcorn, Oreos, and an episode of Sex and the City, followed by a thoughtful discussion about sex, dating and spirituality. Ideally, the show provides a point of reference for the discussion beyond one’s own sexual and dating experiences (or, sexless and dateless experiences).

The weekend following my program was chilly and wet. Cooped up in my apartment, I found myself utterly pathetic in any attempt to resist the sassy DVDs stacked on my desk. I would watch a couple episodes, eject the disk, and return to some writing, my “to do” list, or a phone call to a friend—only to cave in, again, to “just one more episode!”

What is it about this series that I love so much?! Why do I find it so utterly irresistible? Surely, I love the clothes, the shoes, and the posh New York restaurants. Ultimately, though, it’s the hip sitcom’s candid, witty talk about sex that keeps me glued to the screen. It’s so absolutely refreshing. Even when I disagree with the assertions they make about sex, I love the honest, bold, and fearless way they talk about the sexual decisions they make. They are confident in their sexualities. Not driven to silence or timidity by guilt or shame like so many of us.

In the discussion that followed the episode I watched with my students, I had asked them to characterize the conversations they’d had about sexuality in their religious communities. Most of them were Catholic like me, and all of them responded with, “NO. No, no, no, no, no, no! All we’ve heard is NO.” If they heard about sex in the church setting, it came across as “no,” and “Don’t do it, period. None of it.” There was no honest talk about the complexities of sexual decision-making. No hospitality that allowed them to feel they could ask genuine questions about the reality of sex in their relationships.

This got me thinking…what would a Catholic-type Sex and the City look like? Sex and the Vatican City, perhaps? Honestly, my first response was, “Well, it might look exactly the same as the regular Sex and the City!” Like most folks, we Catholics have pious speech about sex that we often fail to live up to. However, as I thought about it more it occurred to me that if there was a “Catholic” version of Sex and the City that embraced a conversation style akin to the show, yet ultimately continued to espouse the same “Catholic” positions on sexual ethics (anti-abortion, pro-NFP and anti-artificial birth control, no extra-heterosexual-marital sex, etc.), I might still love it. And my students might have a very different experience of Catholic sexual teaching.

I can see it now: The four ladies chatting over brunch. Charlotte is cheering about how happy she is that her natural family planning is not working and she’s pregnant again with her fifth child. Samantha is complaining about her latest boyfriend who just can’t understand why she won’t marry him: he’s been divorced and she is standing by the Church’s position that he cannot remarry. Miranda is still struggling to balance her work as a mother and as a lawyer—only now its in the context of Pope John Paul II’s teachings on “the genius of women” and women’s unquestioned responsibility to family life. Carrie writes a witty sex column for the National Catholic Reporter.

I can envision it now! And I would still like this “Catholic” version in many ways—even if I continued to wrestle with some of the ethical positions it endorsed. Perhaps this type of show will never happen for the Catholic Church, but I still hope that some version of this honest, hospitable conversation about sexuality will.