The rise of science was not an extension of classical learning. It was the natural outgrowth of Christian doctrine. --- Rodney Stark

The reason Jesus is a stumbling stone to people in this old world is because he shows us the way of the cross, not the way of glory. We don't expect our heroes, our gods, our messiahs to die! We expect them to be victorious and to crush their enemies under their feet. But the one true Christ has done the opposite. In the brokenness of his death, new life sprang forth. Only after loss and death did resurrection come. --- Rebecca Florence Miller

Dear Brothers and Sisters
www.virtueonline.org
May 13, 2016

A little known fact about John Kasich, who recently stepped out of the presidential limelight, is that he is a member of the Anglican Church in North America, which broke from the Episcopal Church over biblical authority and the sacrament of marriage, among other issues. Kasich has belonged to a small group of men that have met every week for more than 20 years, which is the subject of his 2010 book, Every Other Monday. He also contributed a short chapter to a book celebrating the life and ideas of Dallas Willard.

While there have been several notable Episcopalians including names like Claiborne Pell and William Samuel Johnson in public life, Kasich is the first Anglican governor of a state in modern times.

We can skip movie star Tallulah Bankhead, who self-identified as a "high Episcopalian agnostic"; she too much resembles a couple of presiding bishops who shall not be named.

So the question is, why did evangelical Republicans not vote for him and allow the other two candidates, one a Tea Party republican, and the other with no political experience whose specialty is personally vilifying anyone who came across his pathway, further claiming he didn't need to repent of his sins! Clearly there is a huge disconnect here that requires some explanation.

According to an article in Christianity Today magazine, Kasich claims his faith leads him to positions that fall outside of party doctrine. In a room full of donors convened by the Koch brothers, Kasich was asked by one woman why he agreed to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, extending health insurance to more low-income people. Many conservatives disapproved of the decision because they believe it undermined congressional efforts to repeal Obamacare. Kasich responded, in front of an audience of wealthy, libertarian-leaning donors: "I don't know about you, lady, but when I get to the pearly gates, I'm going to have an answer for what I've done for the poor."

That's an answer Bernie Sanders (a secular Jew) or a Hilary Clinton (liberal Methodist) might have offered up, but no, it was a Republican. Not a kosher answer. Kasich is, sadly, political history and Republicans might have lost their one best chance to still have a Republican Party and not the Party of Donald Trump.

Our nation is currently beset by a candidacy that is based around one fundamental principle: winning. All that matters is winning, dominating, and conquering. It doesn't matter how one does this or who gets trodden underfoot. Winning is the one true value and virtue of the Trump campaign, under which everything and everyone else is subsumed. That is a tragedy of the first order.

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A task group has been appointed to "maintain conversation" among the primates of the Anglican Communion, as requested during the gathering of primates at Canterbury Cathedral in January.

The primates asked the Archbishop of Canterbury to establish the group as part of their commitment to "walk together" despite "deep differences."

The primates requested the group "with the intention of restoration of relationship, the rebuilding of mutual trust, healing the legacy of hurt, recognizing the extent of our commonality and exploring our deep differences, ensuring they are held between us in the love and grace of Christ," they said in a communique issued at the end of the gathering.

Secretary General of the Anglican Communion, Josiah Idowu-Fearon, confirmed during the recent Anglican Consultative Council meeting in Lusaka, Zambia, that the group had been established. On May 10, the Anglican Communion Office confirmed the membership of the group.

It includes seven primates, a bishop suffragan, a provincial secretary and the former vice chair of the Anglican Consultative Council.

VOL did an analysis of this group and we found only three, yes, three primates that are orthodox in faith and morals out of the 11-member task force. They are Archbishop Ian Ernest, Church of the Province of the Indian Ocean, Archbishop Philip Freier, Anglican Church of Australia and Archbishop Ng Moon Hing, Province of South East Asia. The deck is stacked against any disciplinary measures ever being taken against TEC. This is how Welby planned this all along. Stack the deck and, if you can, marginalize the Anglican Province of Kenya by inviting a woman theologian who opposes GAFCON onto this Task Force.

Canon Rosemary Mbogo, provincial secretary of the Anglican Church of Kenya, is definitely not a supporter of GAFCON. While she is considered personally orthodox and able, she has close links with the Anglican Communion Office and showed little interest in GAFCON 2013 when it was hosted by the Anglican Church of Kenya. It was noted that when she controversially allowed her name to go forward in the election for the Bishop of Embu in 2014 (the ACK Constitution only refers to male bishops), the Anglican Communion News Service highlighted her in a very supportive way.

So you know where all this is going. No wonder the General Secretary of GAFCON, Archbishop Peter Jensen, said Lusaka was irrelevant, so, apparently, was the meeting of the Primates in Canterbury. You can read the full story in today's digest.

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A Harvard law professor has called for liberals to begin treating like Nazis, those who subscribe to Christian or conservative beliefs.

In a Friday blog post at Balkinization, Mark Tushnet said conservatives and Christians have lost the culture wars, and now the question is "how to deal with the losers."

"My own judgment is that taking a hard line ('You lost, live with it') is better than trying to accommodate the losers," he wrote.

"Trying to be nice to the losers didn't work well after the Civil War, nor after Brown," Mr. Tushnet wrote, citing the Supreme Court case on segregation. "And taking a hard line seemed to work reasonably well in Germany and Japan after 1945."

Mr. Tushnet said liberals should stop being so hesitant to advance their agenda through the judiciary, saying a majority of federal judges have been appointed by Democratic presidents, and they need not worry "reversal by the Supreme Court", now that former Associate Justice Antonin Scalia is dead.

But Heritage Foundation senior research fellow, Ryan T. Anderson, argued that liberals have already used the judiciary unrelentingly to advance their prerogatives when the democratic process fails.

You can read Albert Mohler's commentary on this in today's digest.

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Church of England advertising booboo. This week two new roles were advertised on the Church of England website. The adverts for the posts of National Young Vocations Adviser and National Minority Ethnic Vocations Office included rubric which read: "This role does not have an occupational requirement to be a Christian."

This was a mistake said the Rev Arun Arora -- Director of Communications, Archbishops' Council. The adverts for the role were taken down and re-posted. These new roles will carry (to use the legal term) a "Genuine Occupational Requirement" for the post-holder to be a Christian. The adverts that went out slipped through unchecked, apparently.

Part of the reason for this, a subsequent statement said, is that there are various roles working for the Church that do not require the post-holder to have a Christian faith. "Working for the Church can take many forms - from data inputters to school teachers, accountants to graphic designers, project managers to investment analysts there are jobs and roles for people of all faiths and none.

"Alongside those roles there are some jobs which require the post-holder to have a Christian faith, with some (like mine) requiring the post-holders to be a practicing Anglican." That clears that up.

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The realignment of the Anglican Communion continues apace, even as talks of reconciliation and Indaba go nowhere.

This week in Birmingham, Alabama, The Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) approved Samford University's Beeson Divinity School's Certificate of Anglican Studies (CAS) to be officially recognized by the denomination as only one of two non-Anglican seminaries in the United States to train Anglican clergy.

The announcement came from ACNA's Archbishop Foley Beach while he was in Nairobi, Kenya, at the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) Primates' Meeting in April.

"We are excited that one of the most rigorous seminary programs in the United States has a well-developed track for training clergy and laypeople in the Anglican way," Beach said. "We look forward to a strong partnership with Beeson in the future."

Beeson Divnity's founding dean, Timothy George, hopes that this is a partnership that will deepen and flourish for years to come.

"In past years Beeson has attracted a growing number of Anglican students," George said. "Our interdenominational divinity school is delighted to be able to train men and women for ministry in the growing worldwide Anglican Communion."

Beeson established an Anglican Institute and the CAS in 2014, to foster biblical Anglicanism and to help students deepen their knowledge and practice of Anglican belief, worship and spirituality. This certificate is awarded with the successful completion of the M.Div. degree through Beeson. Four Anglican churches in the Birmingham area offer opportunities for Anglican internships that meet the certificate requirements.

"Our interdenominational faculty provides students with differing but orthodox perspectives. And with seven Anglican professors, we are able to give abundant personal attention to Anglican ordinands," said Anglican Chair of Divinity Gerald McDermott, who also oversees the Anglican Institute. "Beeson aims to be the premier center for orthodox Anglican training in the South."

For more information, please contact Kristen Padilla, Marketing and Communications Coordinator at Beeson Divinity School, at kpadilla@samford.edu or 205-726-2398 or The Rev. Canon Andrew Gross, Director of Communications and Media Relations at the Anglican Church in North America at andrew.gross@anglicanchurch.net or 269-214-2979.

Beeson Divinity School of Samford University is an evangelical, interdenominational, theological school, whose mission is to train ministers of the gospel. For more information about Beeson Divinity, visit www.beesondivinity.com

It should not be missed that Trinity School for Ministry has an alliance with orthodox Lutherans (North American Lutheran Seminary) and TSM is also training ministers for the ACNA. While all this is going on, Episcopal seminaries are slowly wilting and dying. Most are barely staying alive, with one or two like Virginia Theological Seminary, still financially viable. The biggest problem is attracting young seminarians who are debt free and can then be guaranteed a church that will pay them a full salary when they leave. TEC has fewer and fewer of those.

The very big difference, even for small ACNA parishes that still cannot afford a full time pastor, is that ACNA parishes are committed to vigorous programs of evangelism, discipleship and church growth. In time, they will be able to afford full time rectors because they are going in the opposite direction from TEC with a very clear fix on the gospel.

*****

Every time I turn around, the Diocese of South Carolina (Anglican) seems to be on the move. They announced this week that The Rt. Rev. Mark Joseph Lawrence will ordain seven new deacons. They are James Anthony Cato, Daniel Paul Farley, Roger Marion Griffin, Joyce Cameron Harder, Barbara Lynne Holliman, Gerald Lee McCord and Samuel Tracy Turbeville, Jr. The Episcopal Church in that area doesn't seem to have the same drive. Go figure.

*****

Someone is really spinning the truth or playing fast and loose with what the communique issued in Canterbury and the consequences for TEC, if it did not repent of its ways.

Two Anglican Communion leaders and some outgoing members of the Anglican Consultative Council are at odds about what exactly happened on the last full day of last month's ACC-16 meeting in Lusaka, Zambia.

Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has said that the council passed a resolution accepting the so-called "consequences" called for in January, by a majority of the primates -- leaders of the Anglican Communion's 38 provinces -- for the Episcopal Church's decision to allow same-sex marriage. However, some ACC members dispute that interpretation.

Anglican Communion Office Secretary General rejects criticism over Walking Together resolution. The "criticism" Archbishop Idowu-Fearon "rejects", came in a statement from the outgoing Standing Committee of the Anglican Consultative Council.

In their statement, the standing committee clarified its understanding of the resolution which "received" the Archbishop of Canterbury's (ABC) report to the ACC on the primates' communique which laid out "consequences" for the Episcopal Church. In its clarification, the six members of the standing committee wrote,

"In receiving the Archbishop of Canterbury's formal report of the Primates' Gathering and Meeting, ACC16 neither endorsed nor affirmed the consequences contained in the Primates' Communique.... No consequences were imposed by the ACC and neither was the ACC asked to do so."

The "clarification" is at odds with the ABC's interpretation of the resolution. Prior to the issuance of the standing committee's clarification the ABC wrote, "By receiving my report, which incorporated the Primates' Communique, the ACC accepted these consequences entirely, neither adding to nor subtracting from them. There was no attempt during the Meeting to increase the consequences or to diminish them...." So much for that issue, which has been much distorted in comments since the end of the ACC.

Over a week earlier at the conclusion of ACC-Lusaka, the ABC spoke with ACNS and said, "The actions of the ACC demonstrate that it is working in close collaboration with the Primates, as has been the aim since both started and is set out especially in Resolution 52 of the Lambeth Conference 1988."

"Given that my report, referred to in the resolution, incorporated the Communique and was very explicit on consequences; the resolution clearly supports and accepts all the Primates' Meeting conclusions.

"No member of the Episcopal Church stood for office in the ACC or Standing Committee. The consequences of the Primates' meeting have been fully implemented."

The GAFCON primates did not take the ACC's resolution as acceptance of the consequences. In their post-ACC communique, they took the position that consequences were not enforced and the ACC was damaged as an instrument of unity.

The members of Episcopal Church attending ACC-Lusaka stated, as the meeting wrapped up, that ACC members seemed to have little energy for answering the primates' call for consequences, for discussing disagreements over human sexuality, or for taking up the call of Anglican Communion Secretary-General Josiah Idowu-Fearon to pursue the Anglican Covenant. A resolution that sought to pursue further consequences against The Episcopal Church was withdrawn just before it was scheduled for debate.

The ping pong between principals over the interpretation of the Walking Together resolution passed at the recent Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) in Lusaka continues.

As far as the GAFCON primates are concerned, this just goes to show how irrelevant the January and later Lusaka meetings were. They know that nothing will change. The Global North will hurry on its way to sexual self-destruction, and they want no part of it. Fiat Lux.

*****

The Anglican Church of Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia has decided to table its 'A Way Forward' report on blessings of same-sex couples until General Synod 2018, "with a firm expectation that a decision to move forward will be made" at that time.

Archbishop Brown Turei, Archbishop Philip Richardson and Archbishop Winston Halapua will appoint a working group to establish a structure that allows both those who can and those who cannot support the blessing of same-sex relationships, to remain within the church with integrity.

The three archbishops made this statement today:

"We are aware of the considerable pain that this decision will cause to those most affected.

"But we are confident that our determination to work together across our differences will bring us to a place of dignity and justice for everyone."

IN OTHER NEWS The Anglican Church in Aotearoa, decided to press for equal gender representation in its highest decision-making bodies.

Just back from the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (UNCSW) in New York, Archdeacon Mere Wallace (Te Waipounamu) moved a General Synod motion that sets the church on track to meet the UNCSW goal of 50:50 gender representation.

Archdeacon Mere praised the Diocese of Polynesia, which last year set a goal of equal numbers of women and men in decision-making bodies across the diocese.

She also drew synod's attention to the motion's appendix of research from the province's Anglican Women's Studies Centre, which reveals continuing low participation of women in provincial decision-making bodies.

Nine speakers rose to support the motion, including Bishop Helen-Ann Hartley (Waikato), who called on synod to remember that women also need support, once in leadership roles.

Even today, women leaders are called to answer questions for no other reason than that they are women.

Bishop Kelvin Wright (Dunedin) offered a message for Anglican men.

"There is still a culture of male privilege in our society. It is demeaning, dangerous and not acceptable," he told synod. "This happens because we men have let women fight this issue on their own. It is time for men to make it our struggle, too. Otherwise, we miss out on the contribution of too many talented, capable women."

The Anglican Church of Aotearoa is to establish a "clear resilience strategy" to strengthen its response to future natural disasters in the Pacific islands. The move, adopted at the Province's General Synod, came as researchers announced that five pacific islands have completely disappeared, and a further six are experiencing "severe shoreline recession" as a result of rising sea levels.

Writing in the online Environmental Research Letters journal, scientists say that aerial and satellite photos taken between 1947 and 2014 of 33 Pacific islands show that "five vegetated reef islands . . . have vanished over this time period and a further six islands experiencing severe shoreline recession."

*****

A civil rights watchdog group called the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) is demanding that the Marine Corps University in Virginia cancel the National Day of Prayer event, saying it's a violation of the Establishment Clause.

"This absurdly named organization has nothing to do with religious freedom in the military, and is actually on a campaign to remove religious freedom from the military," Matthew Clark of the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) told CBN News.

The ACLJ sent a letter to Brig. Gen. Helen Pratt, university president, requesting her to reject the group's demands.

It said that the MRFF is also threatening to file complaints against Pratt for allowing a military chaplain to invite soldiers in training to an optional prayer service.

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I was privileged this week to be interviewed for an hour by radio broadcaster Rick Wiles of TruNews, Flowering Streams, based in Vero Beach, Florida. The hour long interview can be found at PRAZOR.COM You can download the audio in mp3 format and listen to the interview here: http://www.virtueonline.org/dropbox/images/2016/05-May/trunews_virtue_interview.mp3
TRUNews is heard by more than half a million readers weekly across the U.S.

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David