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www.virtueonline.org   • July 31, 2026

“The Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time.” — C.S. Lewis

“We need to repent of the haughty way in which we sometimes stand in judgment upon Scripture and must learn to sit humbly under its judgments instead. If we come to Scripture with our minds made up, expecting to hear from it only an echo of our own thoughts and never the thunderclap of God’s, then indeed he will not speak to us and we shall only be confirmed in our own prejudices. 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 behaviour.” — John R.W. Stott

“Mrs. Mullally’s casuistry isn’t as sophisticated and polished as Sir Humphrey Appleby’s, but she’s getting there. Perhaps watching a few episodes of Yes, Minister or Yes, Prime Minister might help?” — Canon Dr. Jules Gomes

“For the glory of God is the living man, and the life of man is the vision of God.” — St. Irenaeus

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

LOYAL TO THE INSTITUTION, NOT THE FAITH

How wide is the political divide between mainline clergy and the people in their pews? Very wide indeed. The Public Religion Research Institute’s landmark survey of mainline Protestant clergy — including Episcopal and United Methodist ministers — found that mainline clergy are markedly more liberal, and more Democratic, than their congregants.

Some 45 percent of mainline clergy are liberal Democrats, against just 24 percent of those sitting in the pews. The laity, for their part, are roughly three times more likely than their pastors to be conservative Republicans.

This raises an obvious question: why do politically conservative Episcopalians remain in parishes where the priest may be not only openly gay but well to their left?

The answer is loyalty. Aging boomers want to be buried in their parish’s cemetery — or, failing that, its columbarium. Their loyalty extends to writing the checks and attending the meetings, because what matters is the institution. Absent that loyalty, the whole edifice would come tumbling down. They love the Prayer Book, the liturgy, the creed and the ancient hymns. By the time they reach coffee hour, they have forgotten what the priest preached.

The deeper question is what happens when the boomers are gone. There is no loyal generation coming up behind them. None. For all his insistence that it is “a lie from the pit of hell” to say The Episcopal Church is finished, the Most Rev. Sean Rowe — the church’s chief grandstander and poobah — has produced no visible evidence that TEC will survive beyond the next generation. He is whistling Dixie.

A BISHOP TELLS THE TRUTH

To make the point, I wrote a piece headlined “Western New York’s Bishop Admits His Diocese Is in Decline.” The national numbers say he was describing the whole church.

The Rt. Rev. Stephen T. Lane, Bishop Provisional of the Episcopal Diocese of Western New York, has done something bishops in his church rarely do. He has told his people the truth.

In a pastoral letter, Lane laid out — without spin or evasion — why there are no priests coming. Not why there might be a shortage. Why there are none.

“The Boomer generation has now largely retired, and the flow of aspirants has slowed to a trickle. We need about twice as many candidates for the priesthood. At the same time, more than half of our congregations cannot afford a full-time priest.”

Give the man his due. That is a bishop describing an institution in liquidation, doing it in his own name, over his own signature, to the people who will pay the price. Most of his colleagues prefer the language of “adaptive change” and “new expressions of ministry” — the ecclesiastical equivalent of a hospice brochure written by the marketing department.

Lane’s letter is a short, unsentimental history of how his church arrived here, and it deserves to be read on its own terms. He admits that the Church Pension Fund’s “55/30” offer — retire at fifty-five with thirty years of service, on full benefits — never really caught on, functioning as a safety valve rather than a solution, because the Social Security retirement age kept clergy in post. In plainer English: the richest pension fund in American Protestantism could not persuade its own priests that they could afford to stop working. Valued at some $19.1 billion, the Church Pension Group has zero ability to put a single new parishioner in a pew.

The real kicker is that Lane was describing the whole church. Think about that.

Read the full report: https://www.virtueonline.org/post/western-new-york-s-bishop-admits-his-diocese-is-in-decline

FIFTY YEARS OF ‘FULL AND EQUAL CLAIM’ — AND WHAT IT COST

Episcopalians across the country have been invited to commemorate fifty years of pansexual inclusion in The Episcopal Church — an event affirming “that homosexual persons are children of God who have a full and equal claim with all other persons upon the love, acceptance, and pastoral concern and care of the Church.”

The truth is that fifty years of “full and equal claim” has produced schism, loss and disharmony — and little else.

The Office of Public Affairs has invited Episcopalians back to Minneapolis, September 3–5, for “Full & Equal: 50 Years in Pursuit of a Promise,” a three-day gathering of worship, workshops and storytelling marking the milestone. Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe will join a panel discussion and preside at the closing Eucharist at St. Mark’s Cathedral. The event has been organized by the church’s Task Force on LGBTQ+ Inclusion, chaired by the Rev. Susan Russell, a longtime advocate for LGBTQ inclusion and former president of Integrity USA.

By any measure the campaign for full inclusion has been wildly successful. But the price has been very high.

From the moment the Anglican Communion passed Lambeth Resolution 1.10 in 1998 — declaring that sexual intimacy belongs within the marriage of a man and a woman, and that homosexual practice is incompatible with Scripture — The Episcopal Church set its face against the Communion. The consecration of Gene Robinson in 2003, the approval of same-sex marriage rites in 2015, Resolution B012 in 2018 forcing those rites into every diocese, the steady ordination of gay and lesbian clergy, and the consecration of at least six openly homosexual and lesbian bishops all tell the same story: the church forced homosexuality on a laity that largely, if privately, disagreed — but went along, out of loyalty to the institution, the pension board, and the future occupants of the parish columbarium.

It has been a remarkable ride. The cost has been heavy.

In the decade after Robinson’s consecration as the first openly homosexual Bishop of New Hampshire, the church lost more than 400,000 baptized members — from some 2.3 million in 2003 to fewer than 1.9 million by 2013 — along with hundreds of priests and roughly 700 congregations. Many of those priests watched their pensions cut short.

Fifty years ago, in Minneapolis, The Episcopal Church made its choice. Fifty years from now, there will be no one left to commemorate it.

Read the full report: https://www.virtueonline.org/post/50-years-of-full-and-equal-claim-for-lgbtq-people-has-produced-schism-loss-and-disharmony

TWO BOATS, NOT ONE SHIP

Globally, the Anglican Communion continues to roil in deep waters. For months, orthodox Anglicans who long to see the fracture lines of realignment healed have nursed a single hope: that GAFCON and the GSFA — the two great orthodox bodies that between them speak for the overwhelming majority of the world’s practicing Anglicans — might at last converge into one instrument, one fellowship, one voice against the collapse of the Canterbury-centered Communion.

When the bishops of the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches gathered at the Lweza Training and Conference Centre in Uganda this month, they came not to negotiate a treaty but to be formed. From July 14 to 20, under the theme “Rooted in Christ, Renewing the Church, Reaching the Nations,” bishops and their wives from Burundi, South Sudan, the Indian Ocean and the Ghanaian Diocese of Sunyani sat under seasoned teachers to learn the unglamorous disciplines of the episcopal office — delegation, accountability, retirement, and the health of a marriage stretched thin across the demands of a diocese.

It was, on its face, a modest affair. But modest gatherings often disclose more than grand communiqués, and this one discloses something the headlines have missed. Lweza quietly buried the hope of convergence — not with a slammed door, but with something more eloquent. The GSFA is building its own house.

Read the full report: https://www.virtueonline.org/post/two-boats-not-one-ship

GAFCON EUROPE

As if to make the point about the growing irrelevancy of the Church of England, GAFCON Europe is holding an Evangelism Today, Reaching Europe for Christ 12-15th Nov 2026 gathering in The Stormont Hotel Belfast, Northern Ireland.

“It's our prayer and longing that the breadth of Orthodox Anglicanism in Europe will avail of these special days of coming together, to gather under the word of God, to worship and be equipped to better reach Europe for Christ. It is our longing that we would see many people reached for Christ in every nation throughout Europe in the years that lie ahead and that Anglicans would play a full part in the task of the great commission given to us by Christ himself,” say its leaders.

THE DIOCESE THAT CAN’T FIND A BISHOP

The Anglican Diocese of the Western Gulf Coast — our little Red Riding Hood, lost in the woods — cannot seem to find a bishop who wants the job. Two candidates with similar views on the ordination of women failed to make it over the finish line, so Clark Lowenfield, the sitting bishop, was asked to stay on. He demurred. So did former ACNA Archbishop Bob Duncan, when the job was floated to him. He said no.

Now the Anglican Bishop of Fort Worth, the Rt. Rev. Ryan Reed, has agreed to step in. This flailing diocese would do well, for its own good, to be absorbed into a neighboring jurisdiction. The nearest see is Fort Worth; to the west lies the Anglican Diocese of the Southwest under Bishop Steven Tighe. The question of women’s ordination will likely split the diocese either way.

ACNA, meanwhile, still faces the ecclesiastical trial of its inhibited Archbishop, Steve Wood, and unresolved lawsuits involving the diocesan dean and Bishop Julian Dobbs, who serves as ACNA’s temporary leader while Wood is inhibited. The JAFC debacle remains unresolved.

THE END-TIMES INDUSTRY RIDES AGAIN

Over the years — and again just now — I have watched End Times stories resurface as the world roils: a Middle East war that looks as though it could become a world war, along with earthquakes, fires, famine and much more. People are fearful, and the fundamentalist speculators are out in force, stoking that fear with books (which they want you to buy, and which chiefly enrich themselves), with prophetic charts, and with fresh predictions of when Jesus will return.

Much of it descends from the dispensational teaching of John Nelson Darby, the former Irish Anglican priest who became a founding figure of the Plymouth Brethren, and whose views were later popularized by Hal Lindsey of “The Late Great Planet Earth” fame. Among the distortions the system spawned was the notion that we ought not to help the poor or our neighbor, since doing so would only delay Christ’s return — the perverse logic being that the faster the world goes to hell, the sooner the Lord comes back.

I took the gloves off on this, and you can read it in full below. I have also set out what a properly Anglican theology of the end times looks like.

The End of the End Times: https://www.virtueonline.org/post/the-end-of-the-end-times

An Anglican View of the End Times: https://www.virtueonline.org/post/an-anglican-view-of-the-end-times

FREE AT LAST: THE VINDICATION OF BERNARD RANDALL

Free at last. The Rev. Dr. Bernard Randall, a godly Church of England chaplain, has finally been cleared after a seven-year ordeal — his “crime” being that he preached, in a Church of England chapel, at a school with a Church of England ethos, a sermon rooted in Church of England doctrine on human sexuality.

He encouraged pupils to think, to debate and to love their neighbors. He did not bully. He did not harass. He did not incite hatred. He did what a Christian minister is called to do. For that, he was treated as dangerous.

He was forced out of his job, reported to Prevent for “religious extremism,” referred to safeguarding authorities, dragged through years of litigation, and blacklisted by his own church from the ministry he loved. Had he preached in a Church of England place of worship during those years, he could have faced disciplinary action.

This is not merely the story of one man wronged, grave though that is. Randall’s case exposes something deeper: the rot that has taken hold in Britain’s institutions.

The tragedy is that Bernard said nothing radical. His sermon — on competing ideologies — was pastoral, careful and Anglican. It came after Trent College had brought in Educate and Celebrate, an outfit whose stated aim was to “smash heteronormativity” and embed Queer Theory throughout school life. (The group later collapsed amid scandal, including the imprisonment of one of its patrons for child sex offences.) Staff were encouraged to chant slogans. Children, including those in nursery, were drawn into a program promoting a highly contested vision of identity and human nature.

When a pupil asked why this was being taught in a Christian school, Bernard answered as a Christian chaplain should. He told the pupils they were free to think critically. He said they should treat everyone with dignity. He explained that Christians believe human beings are made male and female in the image of God. That should have been unremarkable. Instead, it was treated as a safeguarding concern.

The Church of England’s own reviewer found the safeguarding allegation “unsubstantiated.” Randall — who holds, as his church’s own Canon B30 requires, that marriage is the lifelong union of one man and one woman — told pupils that nobody should be forced to accept an ideology about sex and marriage. For that, the school reported him to Prevent, the government’s counter-terrorism program.

The officer who assessed the referral found no counter-terrorism risk. The Teaching Regulation Agency found no case to answer. The Disclosure and Barring Service cleared him. Trent College was ordered to pay £20,000 in costs and then settled out of court. “Seven years have been taken from me,” Randall says, “for doing my duty as a CofE chaplain.” Not a word of apology has come from the Archbishop of York or the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Read more: https://thecritic.co.uk/a-chaplains-vindication/

TRUMP AND THE EVANGELICALS: A FRAYING LOYALTY

White evangelicals remain Trump’s most loyal religious bloc — but through 2026 that loyalty is fraying. Pew put white-evangelical approval at 69 percent in late January, down from 78 percent in early 2025; NPR/PBS/Marist had it at 64 percent by late April, with net approval sliding from +50 to +30 across the year; and a June Reuters/Ipsos poll found just 52 percent among evangelical voters, down from 61 percent the previous August. For a group that broke for Trump 82 to 17 in 2024, that slide is politically consequential heading into the midterms.

The driver is not a moral awakening but the economy and the Iran war that began at the end of February. In that same June poll, 54 percent of evangelicals said Trump’s use of the military in Iran did not square with their understanding of Christianity, against 41 percent who said it did.

The quietest number is the most telling. Pew found only 40 percent of white evangelicals extremely or very confident that Trump acts ethically in office — a 15-point drop since early 2025. Approving a president’s performance is one thing; trusting his character is another, and among the faithful it is the latter that has fallen furthest and fastest. The bloc has not broken, but the terms of its allegiance are narrowing from conviction toward mere transaction — which, for a movement that once cast him in providential terms, is a downgrade worth marking.

EVANGELICALS AND ISRAEL: THE TIDE GOES OUT

The share of white evangelicals with a favorable view of the Israeli people has fallen ten points since 2024, to 74 percent; their view of the Israeli government has slipped further — to roughly 57 percent favorable, down from 71 percent in 2024. Even the older, still-supportive core is eroding, not just the young.

The generational gap that alarmed Israeli analysts is the backdrop. The Inbari–Bumin study (Oxford University Press) documented the collapse among under-30 evangelicals: support for Israel fell from about 69 percent in 2018 to roughly 34 percent by 2021, while support for the Palestinians quadrupled from about 5 percent to 24 percent, with some 42 percent now backing neither side. No poll tracks young evangelicals specifically past 2021, but an August 2025 Harvard-Harris poll found that a majority of Gen Z overall — 60 percent — would let Hamas remain in power if it released the hostages, which suggests the evangelical youth number has not recovered.

What is genuinely new since late 2025 is that the erosion is now being driven from the right, not merely from progressive “deconstruction.” The fracture runs through MAGA itself. Tucker Carlson has publicly attacked evangelical pastors for giving “theological cover” to the Gaza war, and the Carlson–Owens axis is now openly contesting Christian Zionism on the podcasts and TikTok feeds where younger evangelicals actually live. Charlie Kirk, before his assassination in September 2025, was himself said to be feeling “the pull of his generation” — which, across party lines, is critical of the Gaza war — and the right has been fighting over his true views ever since.

Israel clearly sees the threat. Its government has announced a 2026 public-diplomacy budget of nearly $750 million, much of it aimed at evangelicals, and has begun lobbying them directly rather than only through AIPAC. On the ground, groups such as the Philos Project’s “Generation Zion” are trying to train young evangelicals and Jews as advocates, recruiting at Turning Point’s AmericaFest — a defensive posture that tells you which way the tide is running.

The old dispensationalist framing — “bless Israel and be blessed,” still voiced by operatives like David Lane — is losing its grip on two fronts at once: progressive deconstruction on the left and America First realism on the right, with the Gaza war as the accelerant.

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