The issue that will not die has found new champions — and one bishop's letter shows how the door gets opened from the inside COMMENTARY By David W. Virtue, DD | www.virtueonline.org | November 1, 2026 It won't go away. Women's ordination has become the bête noire of the Anglican Church in North America. It is the recurring bad dream from which the province cannot wake. It is the guest who was never formally invited to the founding in 2009, yet has had a seat at the tab

The Episcopal Church has drawn up its plans for the 82nd General Convention, complete with new committees on artificial intelligence, racial justice, migration and the Holy Land. A committee for the salvation of souls did not make the list. By David W. Virtue, DD www.virtueonline.org October 29, 2026 Every three years The Episcopal Church gathers its bishops and deputies in a convention hall, and every three years its leaders send out a letter telling the church what to e

The new Archbishop of Wales offers dissenters "space." Bishop Bill Love, late of Albany, knows exactly how much that space is worth. COMMENTARY By David W. Virtue, DD www.virtueonline.org October 27, 2026 Give Cherry Vann her due. The Archbishop of Wales, the first openly partnered lesbian to lead an Anglican province, is not a shouter. She does not call her critics bigots, and in her interview with BBC Wales she said the right-sounding things. She respects those in the C

The Klink sermon, the Holcomb essay, and the silence from 1047 Amsterdam Avenue By David W. Virtue, DD www.virtueonline.org October 27, 2026 There is an unwritten rule in the Episcopal House of Bishops, and it is older and more faithfully kept than most of the written ones: you do not correct another man's clergy. Dioceses are fiefdoms. A bishop may disagree with a brother bishop at General Convention, vote against him, even sigh about him over dinner. What he does not do i

James Talarico has a problem with the authority of Scripture COMMENTARY By David W. Virtue, DD www.virtueonline.org October 26, 2026 At a CNN town hall earlier this month, a Texas woman named Sarah Gardner, a Christian and a small business owner, looked James Talarico in the eye. She told him that what he has said about God, gender and abortion had led a great many Christian voters to question whether his faith was real. It was the most important question of the eveni

The Diocese of the Southern Cross is small. What it belongs to is not. By David W. Virtue, DD www.virtueonline.org October 22, 2026 The Diocese of the Southern Cross, Australia's orthodox Anglican refuge, is quietly growing. On October 10 in Brisbane, two lay ministers were ordained deacons, bringing their congregations in as Member Churches. The Anglican Church of the Torres Strait is about to join as well, making it the twelfth Member Church. In Perth, Rev. Mekyal Keira

The Episcopal Church's Palestine lobby has discovered suffering in the Holy Land. It has yet to discover who started the war. COMMENTARY By David W. Virtue, DD davidvirtue2.substack.com October 22, 2026 The Episcopal Church wants you to believe that the "existential crisis" in the Holy Land is Israel's doing, and Israel's alone. The Episcopal Peace Fellowship Palestine Justice Network (EPF PJN) is now amplifying a statement from the Synod of the Episcopal Diocese of

The Episcopal Church's new strategic plan has everything in it but the Gospel By David W. Virtue, DD www.virtueonline.org October 21, 2026 On Monday, October 19, inside the building it is about to sell, the Executive Council of The Episcopal Church adopted Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe's strategic plan and authorized officers to negotiate the sale of the Episcopal Church Center at 815 Second Avenue. Rowe, never short of a phrase, summed up the whole enterprise in one sentenc

Vatican upholds sentence on Louisiana deacon who fled to an Anglican parish after a priest abused his son. The priest remains a priest. By David W. Virtue, DD www.virtueonline.org October 20, 2026 The Vatican has spoken, and it has spoken with perfect canonical clarity. Scott Peyton, a former Roman Catholic deacon from Lafayette, Louisiana, stays excommunicated. His offence was walking into an Anglican church. The man who molested his son, Fr. Michael Guidry, was never ex

Entertainment, prosperity, revisionism, a cold orthodoxy and a flag-draped faith have each traded the real thing for an imitation. The pews are emptying accordingly. COMMENTARY By David W. Virtue, DD | www.virtueonline.org | October 19, 2026 Every heresy, the old saying goes, is a truth gone mad. One could say something similar of the practices now hollowing out the American church. None of them began as an outright denial of the faith. Each began with something good, s

Three streams, two integrities and a divided diocese. By David W. Virtue, DD www.virtueonline.org October 18, 2026 The issue of women's ordination bedevils the Anglican Church in North America. The “two integrities” position the province adopted at its birth is not working. Sides have been drawn up and the fight is on. How it ends is anybody’s guess. But the fault line runs deeper than a quarrel over who may stand at the altar. It runs to a more basic question: what, exac

The Episcopal News Service sees stabilization. The 2025 Parochial Report shows a church that has lost a third of itself in ten years. By David W. Virtue, DD www.virtueonline.org October 15, 2026 The Episcopal News Service is very good at what it does. Give it a decade of hemorrhage and it will give you back a headline about stabilization. Its account of the newly released 2025 Parochial Report tells us that attendance is "stabilizing," that finances are steady, that you

A satirical essay By David W. Virtue, DD www.virtueonline.org October 14, 2026 The Rt. Rev. Wilbert Smitherspoon, Bishop of the Diocese of Lower Wokefield, has ordered his priests to hold a revival at the local arena, a 12,000-seat venue more accustomed to monster-truck rallies and the Shriners' circus. "With all the woke causes we embrace, I thought it would be good to have a little change," the bishop told VOL. "Not too much change, mind you. We're Episcopalians."

COMMENTARY By David W. Virtue DD | www.virtueonline.org | October 8, 2026 She lay strapped to the gurney, awake enough to ask whether her arm was supposed to feel that way. Then came the snoring, and it went on for more than an hour until the chamber microphone was cut. The lethal injection had failed…twice. Christa Pike did not die. Four months earlier, in May, Tennessee had tried to execute Tony Carruthers. His executioners spent more than an hour probing his arms,

A satirical essay By David W. Virtue, DD I www.virtueonline.org I October 7, 2026 The Episcopal Bishop of Las Vegas, the Rt. Rev. Albert Sniffle, says he will offer his body to science as he prepares for voluntary euthanasia. "I suddenly realized I no longer believe in God," he told this reporter. "It's been coming on for some years now. When I realized that Jesus didn't rise from the dead, and that a picnic in the park was more relevant, it was the beginning of the e

The televangelists hid their sins. The Episcopal Church repealed them. And when neither worked, the bishops closed ranks. Jim Bakker's death is a reminder that no one in this story would submit to judgment COMMENTARY By David W. Virtue, DD I www.virtueonline.org I October 6, 2026 One by one they die off. Conmen for the Lord. The latest, Jim Bakker, bowed out on Monday at the age of 86, having disgraced the gospel and the Lord he professed to love and serve. Jimmy Swaggart

Kris McDaniel says he "spoke too broadly" when he invited people to the Table regardless of sexual conduct; election set for November 7 By David W. Virtue, DD www.virtueonline.org October 2, 2026 The bishop of the Diocese of Churches for the Sake of Others (C4SO) has moved to shore up his nominee for suffragan bishop after audio from a decade-old parish meeting surfaced online, raising questions about the candidate's teaching on Holy Communion and same-sex practice. In a lett

The Archbishop of Canterbury preached humility, dodged every hard question, and left the Anglican Communion exactly where she found it By David Virtue, DD | www.virtueonline.org | October 1, 2026 The Art of Saying Nothing I have always been intrigued by leaders who stand in a pulpit and preach about the issues of the day without ever actually touching them, and then close piously with "pray for me" or "pray for wisdom." Whether "pray for me" amounts to much, or whether

FEDERAL COURT THROWS OUT JAFC LAWSUIT AGAINST THE PROVINCE Two blows in six days end a year-long rebellion, one in the church's court and one in Caesar's By David W. Virtue, DD www.virtueonline.org September 30, 2026 In the space of six days, the rebellion of Derek Jones against the Anglican Church in North America has collapsed on two fronts. On September 23, the ACNA College of Bishops deposed Jones from the Sacred Ministry. Five days later, on September 28, a feder

COMMENTARY By David W. Virtue, DD I www.virtueonline.org I September 29, 2026 There is a word for someone who has no argument to make but blows warm smoke about "unity," "joy," being "overwhelmed by welcome," and "building understanding and friendship." The word is delusion. Another name for it is dodging reality. Dame Sarah Mullally, Archbishop of Canterbury, did exactly that, and with considerable poise, when she turned up at the Episcopal Church's House of Bishops at