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"We must allow the Word of God to confront us, to disturb our security, to undermine our complacency, and to overthrow our patterns of thought and behavior." — John Stott

"Do nothing that you would not like God to see. Say nothing you would not like God to hear. Write nothing you would not like God to read." — J. C. Ryle

"Wake up. Islam is a danger. If Christians don't start caring about our faith, Islam will take over the West. They'll impose their laws and culture. They'll grow massively in number. And we will decline." — Cardinal Robert Sarah

"Go on in a full pursuit of all the mind that was in Christ, of inward and then outward holiness; so shall you be not almost, but altogether, a Christian; so shall you finish your course with joy: you shall awake up after his likeness, and be satisfied." — John Wesley

"Prince William claims he 'believes.' But does anyone buy it? With King Charles's health in question and a controversial new Archbishop now in power, the monarchy is scrambling to reassure the public that the next king can defend a faith he has never practiced." — Justin Kurian, Reclaiming Christendom

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

www.virtueonline.org

April 10, 2026

CHURCH MEMBERSHIP IN FREEFALL

Religion demographer Ryan Burge paints a stark picture: mainline churches are rapidly shrinking, and there is almost no chance of the trend reversing. United Methodists and Episcopalians are among the biggest losers, having shed more than half their membership over the past few decades.

Episcopal Church membership stood near 3.4 million in the mid-1960s. By 2010 it had fallen below 2 million. By 2023 it had dropped to 1.55 million — a decline of more than 50 percent from its peak.

Several factors drive this collapse:

Young people are increasingly reluctant to join any organization, even among those who still identify as religious. Institutional membership will likely continue falling for decades.

Evangelicals and Black Protestants are far more effective at cultivating and retaining members than their mainline and Catholic counterparts.

Marriage, age, and gender all show strong positive correlations with church membership.

Membership is a powerful predictor of regular attendance. Members are three times more likely to attend weekly worship than non-members, even after controlling for other variables.

One additional factor deserves attention: people who are actively religious tend to live longer. The effect is large, consistent, and measurable across many studies — and the strongest predictor is regular attendance at religious services, not merely private belief.

THE COLLAPSING PASTORAL PIPELINE

The deeper crisis in mainline churches may not be empty pews or shuttered buildings. It may be the vanishing pastoral bench.

Consider what is happening on the ground: a pastor is being moved from a thriving 350-person congregation to a struggling sub-100 church. The move feels less like strategy and more like triage — a symptom of a system running out of clergy.

Ordinations are collapsing across the board. According to a 2023 report, between 2014 and 2021 the number of active diocesan priests declined by 9 percent, religious priests dropped 14 percent, seminarians fell 22 percent, and total priestly ordinations declined 24 percent. The bench is thinning so dramatically that it is reshaping how churches staff their congregations.

In 2023, 44% of congregations had full-time clergy. In 2010, that number was 63%. In 2023, 20% of congregations were served by a priest who was either retired or not active in the Church Pension Fund. A year earlier, that figure was 12%.

IS THE NEW ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY IRRELEVANT TO THE ANGLICAN COMMUNION?

The new Archbishop of Canterbury, Sarah Mullally, is fast becoming irrelevant to the vast majority of Anglicans worldwide — many of whose primates will simply not receive her.

The structural collapse that preceded her appointment has only deepened. The Anglican Communion — once a family of 85 million baptized members across 165 countries, now estimated at 100 million — has been fracturing for decades. The fault lines deepened dramatically after the U.S. Episcopal Church consecrated Gene Robinson, an openly gay man, as Bishop of New Hampshire in 2003. That act triggered the Jerusalem Declaration of 2008, the formal launch of GAFCON (the Global Anglican Future Conference), and the eventual birth of the Global Anglican Communion (GAC).

Today, GAFCON represents the only genuinely global Anglican body, encompassing the majority of the world's practicing Anglicans — concentrated overwhelmingly in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The Anglican Consultative Council, one of the four historic Instruments of Communion, is no longer recognized by this new world order and has been rendered effectively impotent. Most African Anglican provinces have abandoned it. The Global South Fellowship of Anglicans (GSFA), while not yet formally aligned with GAFCON, has similarly distanced itself from Canterbury's authority.

Institutional unity has already been shattered. Nothing Mullally has said or apparently believes will move the needle toward greater cohesion or meaningful growth. [Full analysis: virtueonline.org]

MULLALLY BLASTS TRUMP OVER IRAN WAR

Archbishop Mullally has delivered a sharp rebuke of the Trump administration's posture toward the Iran conflict, declaring that rhetoric around a "war prayer circle" is morally wrong and warning that war can never be considered holy. "War is not holy," she said. "Only peace reflects the will of God."

Breaking from the typically measured tone of senior church leadership, Mullally condemned the situation with unusual directness, emphasizing the human cost: soldiers losing their lives, civilians caught in the crossfire, and innocent victims suffering the consequences of decisions made far from the battlefield.

It is worth noting, however, that Mullally's sweeping condemnation appears to overlook St. Augustine's Just War Theory — a foundational framework of Christian moral theology that has guided the Church's thinking on armed conflict for sixteen centuries.

THE DEATH OF THE EPISCOPAL CHARISMATIC MOVEMENT

Another milestone in the Episcopal Church's long decline: St. Paul's, Darien — the flagship charismatic parish in The Episcopal Church — is to be demolished to make way for multimillion-dollar homes.

For decades, St. Paul's stood as the leading charismatic congregation in TEC, shaped by the vision of the Rev. Everett L. "Terry" Fullam, who served as rector from 1972 to 1989. Under his leadership, the parish became one of the most active and fastest-growing churches in the United States, centered on renewal through the work of the Holy Spirit.

Fullam had come under the influence of Dennis Bennett, an Episcopal clergyman widely regarded as the most prominent pioneer of the modern charismatic movement. Through Bennett, Fullam became a leading voice of the charismatic renewal then sweeping the country — and a counterweight to TEC's accelerating drift toward theological revisionism. [Full story: virtueonline.org]

DEPOSED ACNA BISHOP RETURNS TO MINISTRY

Less than two years after an Anglican church court deposed him from ordained ministry, Todd Atkinson is back — this time offering "spiritual direction" through Arrupe Spirituality, a Zoom-based ministry offering retreats, book discussions, and instruction in Ignatian prayer.

In May 2024, the Anglican Church in North America removed Atkinson following an ecclesiastical trial that found him guilty on four charges, including improper relationships with women and inappropriate interactions with minor females. The ACNA College of Bishops voted to depose him on May 9, 2024.

In a 2025 interview, Atkinson described his current work as one-on-one sessions focused on listening, discernment, and guiding people through their spiritual experience. Spiritual directors meet privately with individuals seeking guidance in prayer — often including those recovering from church trauma. Unlike ordained ministry, the role can operate without standardized licensing, formal supervision, or a clear disciplinary pathway, depending on the organization. [Full story: virtueonline.org]

IS THE POPE RIGHT ABOUT WAR?

Pope Leo XIV has appealed directly to Donald Trump to end the war with Iran, urging world leaders to "look for solutions to problems" and bring the conflict to a close. The pope's position reflects a long tradition within Roman Catholicism that emphasizes peace and restraint in the use of military force.

Yet his comments have stirred debate. The Catholic Church has never held that all war is immoral. The concept of just war was first articulated by St. Augustine in the fourth century and later developed by St. Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth. The tradition attempts to set moral boundaries around warfare, identifying conditions under which military action may be justified.

Some theologians believe the pope's tone risks obscuring this nuanced heritage. Biblical scholar and ethicist Robert A. J. Gagnon has argued that broad condemnations of warfare overlook the long-standing Christian framework that permits military action under specific moral conditions. Even committed pacifists acknowledge that the defeat of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan was necessary — and that without it, the consequences for the world would have been catastrophic. [Full analysis: virtueonline.org]

REPARATIONS AND THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND

The Church of England has committed £100 million to a reparations fund — Project Spire — aimed at addressing its historical links to the transatlantic slave trade, with ambitions to eventually expand the initiative to £1 billion.

Not so fast, say a number of evangelical theologians. Dr. Ian Paul and Professor Richard Dale argue that the Church Commissioners' document underpinning Project Spire is deeply flawed, both historically and theologically. Their combined case is threefold:

The historical basis for Project Spire is factually wrong.

The theological and moral framing is corrosive and divisive.

The governance and legal process behind the project is procedurally improper and potentially unlawful.

Project Spire, they argue, rests on a false narrative, is theologically and socially harmful, and is being pursued through means that may not withstand legal scrutiny. [Full analysis: psephizo.com]

The Episcopal Church is pursuing its own reparations agenda with considerably less momentum. The Diocese of Virginia pledged $10 million in 2021, establishing a Racial Reparations Task Force and committing to raise a reparations endowment. Nearly four years later, the effort has stalled, with no evidence that any of the pledged funds have been raised. The Diocese of New York has committed $1.2 million to a similar fund as part of a broader effort to address its historical involvement in racist practices.

WILL LATHROP GPM SOLVE ACNA'S TRANSPARENCY PROBLEM?

Lathrop GPM is a law firm hired by the ACNA Executive Committee and ACNA Chancellor to audit the processes of the Bishop Ruch trial. A glance at their website reveals that they represent their clients — and boast a record of winning exoneration for institutions facing allegations of sexual and spiritual abuse. From the outset, this raises serious questions about the independence of the review.

Two questions now hang over the ACNA House of Bishops:

First, will the bishops require that the contract with Lathrop GPM be made public? The contract will reveal the parameters of the investigation and whether the firm has a fiduciary duty to protect the institution rather than pursue the truth. If it does, this exercise is little more than an expensive exercise in image management — paid for by the people in the pews.

Second, will the bishops mandate release of the full report, not merely its "findings"? The 92-page Ruch report was widely seen as an exercise in obfuscation, concealing nearly all the information that would demonstrate genuine concern for abuse victims. The full report will show what the ACNA values most: truth, or its own reputation.

Let us hope and pray that our bishops will demonstrate genuine courage. These two steps — transparency about the contract, and full disclosure of the report — would go a long way toward showing that this is a church willing to hear hard truths and change accordingly. We cannot simply close our eyes and wait for this to pass. (h/t Dean Chuck Collins)

ANTI-ISRAEL SENTIMENT GROWS

A new Pew Research survey finds that roughly 60 percent of Americans now hold unfavorable views of Israel — a figure that rises to 70 percent among those aged 18–49. The survey, conducted March 23–29 among 3,507 U.S. adults, found that unfavorable views of Israel rose 7 percentage points over the past year and nearly 20 points since 2022.

Among those with unfavorable views, 28 percent described theirs as "very unfavorable" — a 9-point increase from last year and nearly three times the figure recorded in 2022.

The partisan divide is stark: 80 percent of Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents hold unfavorable views, compared to 41 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning voters — though that latter figure has also risen. Antipathy is most pronounced among the young: 70 percent of those aged 18–49, including 57 percent of young Republicans, view Israel unfavorably.

Jewish Americans and white Evangelicals remain the two groups most likely to hold positive views of Israel.

In response, Israel has launched several large-scale influence campaigns in the United States. According to U.S. Department of Justice FARA filings, Israel signed a $6 million contract with Clock Tower X — a firm run by former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale — to execute a nationwide campaign combating antisemitism. The effort targets Gen Z across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and podcasts, aiming for 50 million impressions per month. Whether it moves the needle remains to be seen.

IN MEMORIAM: ANDREW CAREY

It is with deep sadness that we note the passing of Andrew Carey, 60, son of Lord and Lady Carey, who died recently after a battle with cancer. Andrew served as editor of the Church of England Newspaper until it ceased publication. A gracious friend and colleague, he once arranged for my wife and me to spend a night at Lambeth Palace in the late 1990s. He will be greatly missed.

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