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By Chuck Collins www.virtueonline.org January 6, 2025 Twelve-year old Princess Elizabeth gave her stepmother, Katherine Parr, an extraordinary new year’s present December 30, 1545. It was a small book covered in blue silk that she hand-embroidered with two red and silver initials: HR and KP (Henry Rex and Katherine Parr). The book was a long letter that she wrote in French to Katherine along with her own translation of the first chapter of John Calvin’s Institutes of Christian Religion.   This was the first translation of the 1541 French edition of the Institutes, and only one of two translations of any of Calvin’s writings known in England before the end of the reign of King Henry VIII in 1547. The year before her new year’s gift to Katherine was her translation of Marguerite d’Angoulême’s A Godly Medytacyon of the Christian Sowle , what propagandist John Bale called: “a godly Protestant manifesto.” Young Elizabeth’s tutors were humanist evangelicals, so it was no accident that her studies included languages and the new religion that was gaining popularity in England. But translating the Swiss reformer into English as a gift for her queen mother in the last years of King Henry’s life was daring and tricky. She wanted to show her love and appreciation to Katherine who had supported her and who was a quiet evangelical (Protestant) herself, without raising the ire of her Catholic and intractable father.   Walking this delicate road, Elizabeth didn’t mention Calvin or the title of his work anywhere in her letter or in the translation, describing him only as “my author,” and near the end of her letter she described the translation as “a little book whose thesis or subject, Saint Paul said, surpasses the capacity of every creature.” Clearly this gift was more than a classroom assignment; it shows Elizabeth’s incredible intellect and her sympathetic leanings towards Protestantism.   When that twelve-year old grew up, Elizabeth developed a discrete and sometimes undefined view of Protestantism. As Queen of England and Ireland for 44 years, Elizabeth was mostly interested in keeping peace in the realm between moderate Protestants who supported the 1559 Prayer Book and the more vociferous nonconformist Puritans who were sure that its reforms didn’t go far enough. In 1550 the Protestant Bishop John Hooper wrote the Swiss reformer Heinrich Bullinger that Elizabeth was “inflamed with the same zeal for the religion of Christ” as that of her brother Edward VI.   In her personal Bible the queen inscribed in the flyleaf: “I walke many times in the pleasaunt fieldes of the holye scriptures, Where I plucke up the goodlie greene herbes of sentences by pruning: Eate the[m] by reading: Chawe the[m] by musing.” Her appointment of three decidedly Protestant Archbishops of Canterbury shows her commitment to a church that is thoroughly biblical, theologically reformed and confessional, pastorally generous, and liturgically beautiful. There is no reason to doubt Elizabeth’s essential and unwavering Protestantism, and her personal commitment to the historic Anglican formularies: the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion (1571), the Book of Common Prayer (1559 and 1662), and the Edwardian and Elizabethan books of Homilies. This became known as the the famous “Elizabethan Settlement.” On the other hand she was religiously complicated; she said and did some things that had some Protestants scratching their heads. For example, she strongly believed that clergy should remain celibate (although she never enforced this), she kept a crucifix in her private chapel for devotion, ordered the use of the prescribed homilies (written sermons) and forbade the popular “exercises of prophesying” where clergy gathered to hear sermons and pray for one another, and she opposed the Calvinistic Lambeth Articles (1595), either because her view on predestination was more moderate (like Article 17 of the Thirty-nine Articles) or because she was upset with Archbishop Whitgift for introducing them without her approval. Commenting on Elizabeth’s religion as Queen and Supreme Governor of the Church of England, historian Diarmaid MacCulloch said: “Sometimes she has been seen as a Henrician Catholic, pushed into a more Protestant settlement by those around her. This is a clear mistake. Elizabeth was an evangelical, but of a distinctive and (in the conditions of the late 1550s) an extremely old-fashion variety. She disliked the marriage of clergy and enjoyed more ceremonial and decoration in worship than her half-brother would have considered tolerable. If we want to place her beliefs, we should do so not at the court of Edward, but at the court of Henry VIII and Catherine Parr in the mid-1540s. This was the era when Elizabeth had first been given a role of dignity, when she became one of the elite of children who enjoyed an exceptional rich and privileged education."   Reformation scholar Roland Bainton wrote, “If there be any who doubt the sincerity of her religious sentiment let them ponder this her private prayer”: “This God of my life and life of my soul, the King of all comfort, is my only refuge. For his sake therefore, to who thou hast given all power, and wilt deny no petition, hear my prayers. Turn thy face from my sins (O Lord) and thine eyes to they handiwork. Create a clean heart and renew a right spirit within me. Order my steps in thy word, that no wickedness have dominion over me, make me obedient to thy will, and delight in thy law. Grant me grace to live godly and to govern justly: that so living to please thee and reigning to serve thee I may even glorify thee, the Father of all goodness and mercy.”   Dean Chuck Collins is a Reform theologian and blogger

COMMENTARY By David W. Virtue, DD www.virtueonline.org   January 1, 2025   Amichai Chikli, minister of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism, publicly reprimanded Pope Francis for his part in a recent display portraying Jesus as a Palestinian Arab and lectured the pope on the Jewishness of Jesus.   There is no other way to understand the decision to present his image in a cradle, wrapped in a keffiyeh,” Chikli chided. “Had this been a one-time matter, I would not have written. However, just a few weeks before this strange and false homage, in a more severe expression, you echoed the new blood libel, insinuating that the State of Israel ‘might be’ committing genocide in Gaza.”   “It is a well-known fact that Jesus was born to a Jewish mother, lived as a Jew, and died as a Jew,” Chikli wrote in a three-page missive. He cited Matthew’s gospel, reminding Francis of the “well-known fact” that “Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea.”   Increasingly Francis is coming across as a liberal Protestant wrapped in papal garb stuck in a literal and theological wheelchair. His comments about other religions of equal standing with Christianity and downplaying the uniqueness of Christ shocked conservative Catholics, while the growing infiltration of homosexuality in the Vatican is equally shocking to millions of orthodox Catholics, especially at a time when sexual abuse is so rampant. Increasingly homosexuality in the Vatican is dominating the headlines.   Chikli quotes other biblical texts reiterating to Francis the significance of “Bethlehem” and “Judah” in Jewish history. He notes that Bethlehem is both the city of Rachel’s death and David’s birth, explaining that Rachel is Israel’s matriarch and David is Israel’s archetypal king.   “It is also a well-known fact that the term ‘Jew’ originates from Judah, the fourth son of Leah, from whom the Tribe of Judah descended,” the minister pointed out.   Chikli proceeded to give the pope a lesson in Roman history and the empire’s attempts “to eradicate the connection between the Jews and Judah; one of the most prominent of these was Emperor Hadrian.” He records details of Titus’s destruction of the Second Temple and the Bar Kokhba Revolt, which resulted in the massacre of 580,000 Jews.   “Hadrian was not satisfied with the physical destruction of the Jewish settlement; he anticipated the future, to the day when the Jews would seek to return to Judea. Therefore, he renamed the province of Judea ‘Syria Palestina,’ after the Philistines, the arch-enemy of Israel,” he writes, explaining the origin of the name “Palestine.”   In a dig at Francis, Chikli also notes that the pope can verify the evidence for himself by driving just “13 minutes by car from St. Peter’s Basilica” and examining the Arch of Titus with its depiction of Israel’s conquest and humiliation by the Romans.   Perhaps Francis should take a course in Biblical history and theology to freshen up these embarrassing moments.   THE GENOCIDE BLOOD LIBEL   Referring to the pope’s recent comments calling for an investigation into the alleged genocide in Gaza, reported by The Stream, the minister contends: “This is a desperate and disgusting attempt to rewrite history.”   “As a nation that lost six million of its sons and daughters in the Holocaust, we are especially sensitive to the trivialization of the term ‘genocide’ — a trivialization that is dangerously close to Holocaust denial,” he notes.   Chikli details how the term “genocide” can be aptly applied to Nazi Germany, which “for the first time in the history of nations, set as its ultimate goal the complete annihilation of an unarmed people with whom it had no conflict, and most of whom were not even living in its territory.   “Let us recall that between the Jews, who made up less than 1% of the population of Germany in the 1930s, and the Germans, there had been no prior violent, territorial, religious, or political conflict,” he notes. Recalling the “sickening strategy” of the “Final Solution,” the minister cites as one example the Treblinka death camp, where 845,000 Jews from Poland, including children and elderly people, were murdered in gas chambers and then dumped into execution pits, concluding: “This is what genocide looks like.”    “The Vatican’s silence during those dark days of the Shoah is still deafening,” he writes, asking Francis to “clarify your stand regarding the genocide blood libel against the Jewish state,” a “new blood libel” recently promoted against Israel by the human rights organization Amnesty International.   Chikli concludes by drawing Francis’s attention to the 60th anniversary of the Nostra Aetate Declaration from the Second Vatican Council, which will be celebrated in 2025. The declaration announced that God's eternal covenant with the Jewish people is still in force: "God holds the Jews most dear for the sake of their Fathers; He does not repent of the gifts He makes or of the calls He issues-such is the witness of the Apostle".  This marked a “significant milestone in the relationship between the Jewish people and Christianity,” he maintains, noting that Francis is known to be “a close friend of the Jewish people.”   The Vatican has maintained a diplomatic silence on the minister’s letter, with neither Vatican News nor Avvenire, the Italian bishops’ media, reporting on it.   In response, the pope has doubled down on Israel since Chikli’s letter, twice in public remarks last weekend accusing the Jewish state of massacring children in Gaza.   From this writer’s perspective, the so-called Vicar of Christ on earth is little more than a failed cleric falling for all the prejudiced statements of the UN and its antisemitic secretary-general.   Dr. Jules Gomes of The Stream contributed to this story.

COMMENTARY   By David W. Virtue DD www.virtueonline.org December 31, 2024   They have healed the wound of my people lightly - Jer. 8:11   Globally, evangelicals in the Anglican communion have taken a huge beating. They have been scorned and derided as lacking diversity and inclusion. Progressives charge them with using Scripture to “gay-bash” while steadfastly refusing to believe that God has changed his mind to “widen His mercy” to include “committed” same-sex relationships which now meet His approval.   God has finally flipped the bird to straight white and black marriages and installed a new sexual sheriff with more inclusive views.   Evangelicals get bad press from the MSM because of their stand, whether it’s a Christian baker who refuses to bake a cake for two queers who want to get married, or African archbishops who believe the Bible, brought to them by Anglican missionaries a century ago, definitively repudiates both homosexuality and polygamy.   Before he fell from grace, Archbishop Justin Welby was well known for phoning African primates when he thought their nations were showing a jaundiced eye to sodomy, only to discover that in many cases their culture had no known word for “homosexuality.” All the while the West was buying African leaders’ acquiescence on the issue.   The Evangelical Fellowship in the Anglican Communion (EFAC) leaders note two things in their response to the IASCUFO Nairobi-Cairo proposals. The first was the anachronism of colonial era structures for the Anglican Communion when the vast majority of active members are now found in the Global South; and secondly the broken and impaired relationships of communion which have arisen due to doctrinal differences, especially having to do with biblical anthropology and marriage.   The unspoken aspect to all this (though it was blurted out by the late  Bishop of Newark John Shelby Spong at Lambeth ‘98,) is that Africans have a primitive form of religion that is superstitious, defying both science and modern scholarship.   The EFAC leaders noted that while the issue has been in contention for several decades it has heightened since the Bishops and General Synod of the Church of England opened the way for the blessing of same sex relationships in 2023.   All this makes clear that earlier attempts to reform the Instruments by seeking moratoria, repentance, and renewed covenantal affirmations and commitments have not succeeded.   The American Episcopal Church paved the way for this rebellion against the moral order resulting in a split in that church and the formation of the Anglican Church in North America, with some 30 dioceses having their own archbishop, whom Justin Welby steadfastly refused to recognize.   Recognizing the tragic failure in theology and discipline, the EFAC leaders say they welcome the work of GSFA and GAFCON to reset the Communion and create structures which can enable full communion to continue between churches and faithful Anglicans based on Catholic and Apostolic faith and order.   A new twist will only heighten tensions. The Church’s evangelicals are seeking their own archbishops over a “de facto parallel province” to prevent a split over the blessing of same-sex partnerships. That may be the only way to preserve the fig-leaf of community.   The Rev Canon John Dunnett, director of the Church of England Evangelical Council (CEEC), an influential conservative group, is among those calling for a “de facto parallel province” to be created within the church, grouping together parishes that oppose last year’s move to allow priests to bless the unions of gay couples.   If it were legally enshrined as an official province, it “would have to have an archbishop” to oversee it, Dunnett said.   This would be in addition to the archbishoprics of Canterbury and York, whose provinces cover southern and northern England.   Divisions over gay rights extend to the highest levels of the church. Twelve dissenting bishops went public last year to declare they were “unable to support the collective decision” made by the House of Bishops to approve blessing gay couples who are married or are in civil partnerships.   The CEEC forms part of a conservative umbrella group called the Alliance, which counts 2,000 priests as supporters.   The Alliance, consisting of 2,000 priests as supporters issued a warning that if there is “further departure from the church’s doctrine” on sex and marriage, they “will have no choice but rapidly to establish what would in effect be a new de facto ‘parallel province’ within the Church of England”, which would require “oversight from bishops who remain faithful to orthodox teaching on marriage and sexuality”.   As EFAC leaders bishops Stephen Hale and Keith Sinclair noted; “it is vital that in ongoing reflection on our calling as the Church, the state of the Communion, and the report’s proposals to find a new way forward, that we are not found to come under the Lord’s judgment through the prophet Jeremiah: ‘they have healed the wound of my people lightly’ (8:11).   END

THE CITY OF MAN AGAINST THE CITY OF GOD   by David G. Duggan ©  Special to Virtueonline www.virtueonline.org December 26, 2024   Though I live in a city housing millions of souls, the pandemic, its crime and politics of unmatched corruption have largely robbed it of the vibe of city life. Crowds are shunning the downtown, remote workers don’t pack the public transit, and despite the holiday lights, the art, shopping, sports and entertainment venues don’t draw the suburbanites from their manicured lawns. It doesn’t help that its sports teams are beyond lousy.   For thousands of years, Christians and Jews have worshiped in cities. Perhaps not a requirement of the faith, cities create the critical mass and stark contrast of wealth and poverty, aloneness and congestion, sacred and profane. Mere blocks from cathedrals lie red-light districts, mere steps from high-end retailers beggars stick their hands out, and pickpockets are always prowling the streets and subways.   Though raised in rural Judea, Jesus spent about a third of his ministry in cities, principally Jerusalem, but also Capernaum and the Decapolis. He used cities as examples of places of sin worthy of redemption as a hen gathers her brood. Sometimes the crowds in the cities Jesus visited were so packed that the lame and the halt hoped simply to touch his garment to be healed. Their faith was rewarded.    Why God has chosen cities as recipients of His grace may seem incongruous. His initial call was to Abram to leave Ur, the largest city of Mesopotamia, and go to the Canaan wilderness, some 700 miles to the west. God later appeared to Moses in the wilderness and He used Moses to lead His people into the desert. After Nebuchadnezzar had leveled Jerusalem, the Israelites were exiled to Babylon where they were a religious minority. One might think that God was telling His people: “Forget this fascination with crowds and temples, walled enclosures and sentries. Stick to your roots as farmers and shepherds. There you will see my abundance and mercy.”   Yet the Israelites rebuilt the holy city when they were released from exile, and for 2,500 years ever since then, through the destruction of Jerusalem, the sack of Rome, the Black Death and plagues and pandemics, the faith has persisted in cities. Despite the crime and the grime, the poverty and the alienation, cities create the means of God’s mercy to shine through the winter darkness.    David Duggan is a retired attorney living in Chicago.

By Chuck Collins www.virtueonline.org January 14, 2025 Anglicans can’t avoid the 16th century Reformation. It’s more than the elephant in the room; it’s the room! Ashley Null wrote this about the man who composed the Book of Common Prayer, the confession for the Church of England (The Articles of Religion), and the compiler of the Homilies library: “Thomas Cranmer devoted the full powers of his position as Primate of All England to inculcating the Protestant faith into every fibre of English life.” Whether or not he was successful is the question that literally colors our view of English church history, and quite literally determines Anglican worship and the way we think about God and his church. Anglican identity, the perennial crisis facing us, hinges on how we see the elephant room. There are three big-picture ways Anglicans have dealt with the Protestant Reformation. The most prevalent group today sees the Reformation as a mistake, an unfortunate distraction from the true catholic church. They see it as a temporary historical deviation from some amorphous “great tradition.” The great tradition, or some sense of common consensual Christianity (usually described as the church fathers, creeds and councils), took a leave-of-absence in the period from Archbishop Cranmer to Archbishop William Laud to clean up a few obvious Medieval mistakes, so that the Caroline divines could pick up where the church left off before King Edward VI.   This group views Scripture as the birth-child of the church and therefore it is a co-equal authority with tradition, they prefer the altar to the pulpit, see salvation as a cooperative venture between God and man, and they consider the sacraments (they usually identify seven in number) as automatic purveyors of God’s grace whether or not faith is present. Some will hang out the banner of “catholic and reformed” borrowing the phrase from William Perkins, without any reference to Perkins, and as a euphemism for “catholic.” Many in this group identify with the Anglo-catholic preferences for high church ceremonial and “the beauty of holiness.” They almost always introduce themselves as “father,” and they are unusually fond of putting a “+” before or after their names when writing emails. This group will eventually consider Roman Catholicism, and they would convert if it wasn’t for the pope and the pesky sex abuse scandals. A second group speaks of a long Reformation: beginning with Wycliffe, Tyndale and Cranmer, but continues along the road of history picking up the Caroline divines and anyone else they fancy, up to our own day. They reference the English reformers who spoke of the church always reforming herself (ecclesia semper reformanda est), but in a completely different context from what the reformers intended. These folks see Scripture as a co-equal authority with reason, a Schleirmacherian marriage of convenience between the Enlightenment and traditional Protestantism. They consider Anglican theology as a buffet of attractive choices to pick and choose from: theologians, movements, sweet pickle relish from the state of Washington, and whatever else tickles their fancy. These folks emphasize the generosity of our Anglican heritage over any particularities or distinctives. This second group makes plenty of room for such aberrations as the three-legged stool (Scripture, tradition and reason), Instruments of Unity over biblical and theological definitions of identity, and three-streams (catholic, protestant and pentecostal). In this way, the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) has in some places become its parent, the Episcopal Church, without a few of the nastier sins which where adopted as the cause of the Episcopal Church. The last group considers the English Reformation as determinative for our Anglican identity. They see the reigns of King Edward VI and Queen Elizabeth as critical for what is called “the Settlement” or “the Elizabethan Settlement.” The Settlement is based on the supreme authority of Holy Scripture as understood and explicated in the Book of Common Prayer (1662), the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion (1571), and the Edwardian and Elizabethan collections of Homilies. These came to be known as Anglican formularies because they have served to varying degrees as place markers for the elephant room. The formularies unambiguously value the Bible as uniquely inspired and the norming norm for all other authorities (over tradition, reason and experience). They value its perspicuity: the Bible is clear enough for the simplest person to live by, deep enough for readers of the highest intellectual ability, and clear in all essential matters of faith and practice. Reformation Anglicans value both word and sacrament, and they see the communion table as an extension and explication of God’s written word; what is experienced by one human sense in preaching (hearing), is experienced by all senses in the two sacraments of the gospel, baptism and holy communion.   Reformation Anglicans are passionate about proclaiming Christ in all matters of church life, and they abhor moralistic sermons that end with advice for trying harder and doing more. They believe that salvation is a loving gift for undeserving sinners, and that we we are reconciled to God by grace alone through faith alone, and that this is the logic of Cranmer’s liturgy that is heard Sunday by Sunday. These folks believe in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, not in the bread and wine, but in the hearts and affections of those who receive the grace of the sacrament by faith with thanksgiving. Reformation Anglicans view ordained ministry in the light of 1 Corinthians 12 and the universal priesthood of all believers.   They largely value the principle of simplicity; Anglican worship is to be dignified and orderly as an offering to a completely worthy God, but paired down of all words, actions and ceremonial that distracts from the the goal of pointing people to Christ, rather than to fancy-dressed priests prancing around an altar and lifting up the sacrament. Queen Elizabeth’s favorite advisor, Sir Christopher Hatton, writing three decades after she became queen, spoke of the static and settled theology of the Church of England: “The queen had at the beginning of her reign placed her reformation as upon a stone to remain constant.” And the 1571 (and final) version of the Thirty-nine Articles succinctly states their lasting purpose: “For the avoiding of diversities of opinions and for the establishing of Consent touching true religion.” Every priest, bishop and layperson has one or both feet in one of these camps.  But in a day when we are tempted to close a blind eye to our Anglican theological distinctives for conciliar solutions to our indisposition, it couldn’t be more important to find again the ancient landmark of our fathers to anchor our faith and practice. A Reformation Anglican church that sees its authority in Holy Scripture as understood and explained in the traditional formularies is our only way forward. All other ways are place markers for individual pet peeves. At its heart, this is a church that is thoroughly biblical, theologically confessional and reformed, pastorally generous, and liturgically beautiful. Dean Chuck Collins is a Reformed Anglican theologian

Prof. Robert Gagnon debunks the claims Richard and Christopher Hays make in their latest book, The Widening of God’s Mercy   By Jules Gomes THE STREAM January 3, 2024   “Psst! Did God really say?” The very first words of the serpent, slyly whispered to Eve in the Garden of Eden, haunted me as I wrestled with the Bible’s prohibition of homoerotic sex.   I was teaching a module on Biblical Sexuality at the London School of Theology in 2009, and I was overwhelmed by the volume of new scholarly arguments challenging me to rethink my conservative position on same-sex relationships.   Of course I believed the Bible was inspired, inerrant, and infallible — but in the light of new exegetical evidence, was I correct in holding to a traditional interpretation of the texts prohibiting homogenital relations?   Moreover, several of my students who claimed to be “evangelical” had adopted rather worrisome postmodern and permissive perspectives on sexuality. It wouldn’t be easy to persuade them to accept an orthodox interpretation of the biblical texts.   Gagnon’s Bombshell   Robert Gagnon’s 2002 opus magnum The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Texts and Hermeneutics was the answer to my Sisyphean struggle. The meticulously researched and rigorously argued 500-page tome refutes every possible argument progressive scholars have raised in the last three decades. Its use of the Bible’s original languages and insight into the ancient world is unparalleled.   Gagnon is an evangelical Presbyterian scholar who has devoted his life to almost single-handedly dissecting and debunking every avant-garde argument that raises its serpent-like head against the biblical teaching on homosexuality. Unlike most scholars, he does this through his online lectures, website, debates, articles, and Facebook and X accounts. I got my students to read Gagnon’s book. It was like dropping a thermonuclear bomb. It won the battle for the Bible against the babble of the gay brigade. The serpent sulked and slithered back into his hole.   But the serpent has now returned with a state-of-the-art argument: “Psst! Maybe God did really say homosexuality is wrong. But can’t you see He’s now changed his mind?”   This is the reasoning of the evangelical father-son duo Richard B. Hays and Christopher B. Hays in their book The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality within the Biblical Story, published in September 2024.   Richard teaches at Duke Divinity School; Christopher is chair of the Old Testament department at Fuller Theological Seminary. In 1996, Richard published The Moral Vision of the New Testament, arguing that “though only a few biblical texts speak of homoerotic activity, all that do mention it express unqualified disapproval.”   Deeper or Flawed Logic?   Richard has changed his mind because he (and Christopher) believe that “a deeper logic” shows the biblical God frequently changing His mind to “reveal an expansive mercy that embraces ever wider circles of people, including those previously deemed in some way alien or unworthy.” It is this “trajectory of mercy” in the Bible that “leads us to welcome sexual minorities.”   “The acceptance of sexual minorities in the church reenacts a narrative pattern that is pervasive in the Bible,” they argue. How dare we call “unclean” what God declares to be “clean”?   Further, there is a “metaphorical correspondence” between those formerly “unclean” foreigners, eunuchs, tax collectors, gentiles, non-kosher folk and LGBTQ people.   The book trumpets: We advocate full inclusion of believers with differing sexual orientations not because we reject the authority of the Bible. Far from it: We have come to advocate their inclusion precisely because we affirm the force and authority of the Bible’s ongoing story of God’s mercy.   In other words, God has really said, but God has also really changed His mind. He’s become more inclusive. He’s repented of His homophobia. Richard states that he wants “to repent of the narrowness of my earlier vision,” and he wants us to join him (and God) in his metanoia. And since the Holy Spirit promised to lead the church into all truth (John 16:12–13), that’s just what He’s doing, the Hayses claim.   Spirit of the Age   Gagnon, however, demolishes this woke reading of Scripture. “None of the other groups that get included in God’s ‘ever-expanding mercy’ … get a pass for immoral behavior,” he notes. God embraces Gentiles — but far from permitting their sexual licentiousness, Paul insists they must “abstain from sexual immorality” and “no longer live like Gentiles who do not know God” (1 Thessalonians 4:3, 5).   And while Jesus does change His mind on sexual ethics, “he does so in precisely the opposite direction of a ‘widening of God’s mercy,’ closing remaining loopholes on the basis of a rigorous application of the moral logic of God’s intentional creation of a sexual binary,” Gagnon writes.   As for the Holy Spirit, Gagnon observes:   If only the Hayses had read on from John 16:13, they would have discovered that the Spirit’s job is to “take from [Jesus] and report it to you” (16:14–15). … Yet this “spirit” the Hayses speak about is not elaborating or expanding on Jesus’s teaching about a male-female prerequisite for sex for a new context but rather diametrically opposing that teaching. Thus, it is far more likely that the Hayses are imbibing from the spirit of this age rather than from the Spirit of Jesus Christ.   As for the overall hermeneutical grid the Hayses impose on Scripture, he argues:   The “widening of God’s mercy” is not even a universal theme of the Bible … Even when present in the biblical story, the theme of God’s expansive mercy everywhere presupposes repentance from immoral conduct. And, finally, not only is this theme never applied in the Bible to an acceptance of homosexual practice, but it is categorically rejected whenever homosexual practice is mentioned.   What About Incest, Bestiality, Polyamory?   In a second essay pointing out “12 Disqualifying Errors in Richard Hays’ ‘Biblical’ Case for Gay Relationships,” Gagnon stresses how the authors “fail to recognize that the biblical theme of God ‘changing his mind’” nowhere entails a radical loosening of God’s moral standards but “entails God extending unfathomable kindness that is supposed to lead people to repentance from sins (Romans 2:4).”   So is God going to change His mind on adult-consensual incest, bestiality, and polyamory? As a biblical scholar, I must agree with Gagnon that the Hayses never deal with counterarguments and neither do they engage the relevant scholarship from the past 30 years.   In a 2016 essay, I wrote: I have explored every conceivable avenue for an exegetical get-out clause on the issue of homosexuality. For over 10 years I have considered every major publication on the issue. Quite honestly, I wish we could interpret the Bible with academic integrity in a manner that would permit rather than prohibit gay relationships.   Slaves, Women, and Homosexuals   I investigated a line of reasoning similar to the Hays’ using William J. Webb’s book Slaves, Women & Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis. Like the Hayses, Webb explores what he calls a “redemptive hermeneutic” showing that the Bible demonstrates a progressive attitude to excluded groups like women and slaves.   However, Webb reaches a conclusion diametrically opposed to the Hays’, demonstrating that as it moves from Old to New Testament, the issue of homoerotic relationships is decided and closed from beginning to end.   Moreover, Webb observes, the same canons of cultural analysis, which show a liberalizing or less restrictive tendency in the slavery and women texts relative to the original culture, demonstrate a more restrictive tendency in homosexuality relative to the original culture. While continuing a negative assessment of homosexuality today, even of its least offensive form, the Christian community should reserve its greatest denouncement for the vilest forms of homosexual activity.   So does God even change His mind? Gagnon warns that the Hayses have capitulated to a form of “open theism” which may be “nothing more than a rhetorical smokescreen on their part, a means to shift the blame to God for the changing of their own minds about homosexuality.”   I was curious how the Hayses had dealt with the last chapter of the last book of the Bible. Does God change His mind again by the time we get to Revelation 22:15? Here God shuts the gates of the New Jerusalem to “the dogs and sorcerers and the sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.”   Several scholars conclude that “the dogs” in this verse refers to homosexuals. Gagnon suggests that the term “primarily has in view emasculated male cult prostitutes, without excluding a wider reference to any who engage in homosexual practice.”   Even if the scholars are wrong, the Bible is clear that the “trajectory of mercy” does ultimately exclude the “sexually immoral.”   I wasn’t surprised to find that the Hayses had failed to mention this text even in a footnote.   Dr. Jules Gomes, (BA, BD, MTh, PhD), has a doctorate in biblical studies from the University of Cambridge. Currently a Vatican-accredited journalist based in Rome, he is the author of five books and several academic articles. Gomes lectured at Catholic and Protestant seminaries and universities and was canon theologian and artistic director at Liverpool Cathedral.

Multimillion dollar mansions or humble shanties face the same fate of being reduced to ashes By Mary Ann Mueller VOL Special Correspondent www.virtueonline.org January 12, 2025 The pictures of A-list celebrity oceanfront mansions reduced to piles of smoldering ruins are grabbing the headlines.  It's like a Hollywood fire flick being played out in real time. The burning of Atlanta in the 1939 classic Gone With the Wind was Hollywood make-believe. What is currently unfolding in Los Angeles is horribly real.  It is a stark reminder that no one or nothing is immune from the powerful forces of nature — fire, wind, water and terra firma. Wildfires, hurricanes, floods and mudslides all wipe the slate clean leaving behind them trails of devastation — homes gone, lives upended, infrastructure destroyed, important community touchstones such as churches and schools disrupted. As the multiple wildfires rage in the Los Angeles area the city is entering into a deepening humanitarian crisis. Burned-out families have nowhere to go. No place to return to. No job. Many with no insurance. They immediately need the very basics of life  — food, clothing, water, shelter, employment, hope. Each day more families join the growing list of people who have lost virtually everything. White, Black, Asian, Hispanic … Anglican,  Catholic, Jewish, Islamic … Rich, poor, middle class, homeless ... Banker, baker, teacher, priest …  It doesn't matter.  The fire claims all in its path.  Since Tuesday (January 7) wildfires fuelled by hurricane strength gusts of the Santa Ana winds have been leveling various neighbors in and around the City of Los Angeles and the wider surrounding county.  Thousands of structures — twelve thousand and counting — have been leveled by the unrelenting flames. More than 2,000 structures a day are being destroyed. Saint and sinner face the same fate. Gone are their homes … their businesses … their hopes … their dreams. The question is how do they deal with their losses?  Do they curse God and government and neighbor for their fate or do they humbly bend the knee to the God of creation and acknowledge Him to be in charge regardless of the outcome even when that future seems to be covered with ashes and soot? How many people will follow Job's lead in giving glory to God in any and all circumstances? JOB HONORS GOD Job was a rich man of faith. He had 10 children and much livestock with many servants to help. “In the land of Uz there lived a man whose name was Job. This man was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil.    He had seven sons and three daughters,    and he owned seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen and five hundred donkeys, and had a large number of servants. He was the greatest man among all the people of the East.” (Job 1:1-3)  Job, a loving father, would even offer sacrifice and penance on behalf of his children should they sin. “His sons used to hold feasts in their homes on their birthdays, and they would invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them. When a period of feasting had run its course, Job would make arrangements for them to be purified. Early in the morning he would sacrifice a burnt offering for each of them, thinking, ‘Perhaps my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.’ This was Job’s regular custom.” (Job 1:4-5) But alas his fortunes turned. In one fell swoop he lost everything. His livestock was stolen. His servants were killed by  marauders and all his children died in a tornado. “ One day when Job’s sons and daughters were feasting and drinking wine at the oldest brother’s house,    a messenger came to Job and said: ‘The oxen were plowing and the donkeys were grazing nearby, and the Sabeans attacked and made off with them. They put the servants to the sword, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you!’ While he was still speaking, another messenger came and said: ‘The fire of God fell from the heavens and burned up the sheep and the servants, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you!’    While he was still speaking, another messenger came and said: ‘The Chaldeans formed three raiding parties and swept down on your camels and made off with them. They put the servants to the sword, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you!’ While he was still speaking, yet another messenger came and said: ‘Your sons and daughters were feasting and drinking wine at the oldest brother’s house, when suddenly a mighty wind swept in from the desert and struck the four corners of the house. It collapsed on them and they are dead, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you!’” (Job 1:13-19) In the face of devastating loss — his entire family, save his wife; and his livelihood along with his helpers — Job did not despair. He did not fault God.  He mourned, he grieved but he worshipped the Almighty, not laying any blame on God. His unwavering faith held.  “At this, Job got up and tore his robe and shaved his head. Then he fell to the ground in worship and said: ‘Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the Name of the Lord be praised.’” In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing.” (Job 1:20-22)  THE HALPIN FAMILY SINGS Now Peter and Jackie Halpin are facing devastating loss as their Altadena home was reduced to ash during last week as a part of the deadly Eaton Fire. As a result they, like Job,  worshipped. They gave God the glory through song honoring the Resurrection of the Son of God. The Halpins and six of their nine adult children  gathered on the ruins of their burned out  bungalow  and turned to singing a familiar prayer.  https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1HC3hXTyYq/ The children came to support their parents in a time of unimaginable loss. To grieve together the loss of their childhood home. And to join together in unified family prayer. The National Catholic Register reports that all that was left of the home the Halpins  have lived in since 1988 was  “the foundation, debris, and singed concrete statues of Our Lady of Guadalupe and St. Joseph.” But what was not lost were their lives, their memories and most importantly their rock-solid faith. Originally the Halpins’ Craftsman home was three bedrooms and one bath which over the years was stretched into four bedrooms and two bathrooms to accommodate their growing family. Being Roman Catholics, with a strong devotion to Mary,  it was natural for the Halpins to turn to her in prayer singing in Latin, and in perfect four-part acapella  harmony, the  Regina Caeli which honors the Resurrection of her Son — Jesus. It is alleged that St. Augustine of Hippo once quipped that “when you sing you pray twice.” With their eyes closed, bared heads bowed, and hands clasped in front of them they sing beneath an orange-tinged sky.  They sing from memory and from their hearts: “ Regina caeli, laetare, alleluia …”  (Queen of  Heaven, rejoice, alleluia.)  “Quia quem meruisti portare, alleluia …”  (For He, whom you did merit to bear, alleluia.)  “Resurrexit sicut dixit, alleluia …”  (Has risen as He said, alleluia.)  “Ora pro nobis Deum, alleluia…”  (Pray for us to God, alleluia.)  Mary would understand their displacement. She was travelling when her Holy Child was born.  Then she and St. Joseph had to leave their cozy home and flee to Egypt, a foreign land, to protect her Son Jesus from the murderous King Herod the Great. Upon hearing the Halpins sing Lepanto Institute President Michael Hichborn commented: “Only those with real faith can sing so beautifully in praise of Our Blessed Lord on the ashes of what used to be their own home.”  Mary Ann Mueller is a journalist living in Texas.  She is a regular contributor to VirtueOnline

Archbishop Sentamu Academy in Hull will rebrand after an abuse victim criticised the peer’s ‘appalling’ safeguarding record Lord Sentamu, then the Archbishop of York, officially opened the Archbishop Sentamu Academy in Hull in 2008 Credit: Anna Gowthorpe/PA Archive By Janet Eastham Acting Religious and Social Affairs Editor THE TELEGRAPH 07 January, 2025 A Church of England school plans to drop the name of a former Archbishop of York over his failure to act on a report of child sexual abuse. Archbishop Sentamu Academy in Hull has announced that it will rebrand after an abuse victim criticised the peer’s “appalling” safeguarding record. In 2013, Lord Sentamu, then the Archbishop of York, failed to act after a retired vicar, the Rev Matthew Ineson, told him that he had been raped and sexually abused by a priest in Bradford called Trevor Devamanikkam as a 16-year-old boy in the 1980s. A Church national safeguarding team review later concluded that the failure of Lord Sentamu and other senior clergy to help the victim report these allegations to the police meant “safeguards could not have been put in place to protect others”. On Monday, Helen Wimm, the school’s chief executive, and Jane Lewis, the chairman of the Hope Sentamu Learning Trust, wrote to the Rev Ineson to let him know that the Archbishop Sentamu Academy would be changing its name. The decision came after the survivor appealed to academy executives to “distance” themselves from Lord Sentamu following the publication of the Church safeguarding report in 2023. He wrote: “I am sure that you will agree that John Sentamu’s behaviour is utterly appalling. Given that your place of learning is named after him I am sure that you will agree this puts you in a very difficult position. “Would you be willing to publicly distance yourself from his behaviour and do you think it appropriate that he is honoured by having a place where youngsters learn named after him?” Devamanikkam died by suicide in 2017 before facing court on six sexual offence charges, but Church safeguarding experts found that he had sexually abused the Rev Ineson in 1984. In correspondence seen by The Telegraph, school leaders told the survivor that they would be consulting on alternative names for the academy, with staff and pupils able to vote for their favourite. ‘On a journey of improvement’ A spokesman for the secondary school said: “Archbishop Sentamu Academy is on a journey of improvement, and we have been making good progress. This has led us to think carefully about who we are, what we stand for, where we are going, and how we communicate this to the outside world. “We believe a more relatable name for our school will help us to communicate the positive impacts we are making.” The academy’s decision to sever ties with the former Archbishop of York contrasts with the actions of the former Archbishop of Canterbury, the Right Rev Justin Welby, and the Most Rev Stephen Cottrell, the Archbishop of York, who has taken over as the institution’s temporary leader. Last November, the pair were revealed to be pushing for Lord Sentamu’s return to ministry. Because he had previously held permission to officiate in the Diocese of Newcastle, it fell to the Bishop of Newcastle, Helen-Ann Hartley, to suspend him following the publication of the national safeguarding team’s review. On Nov 11, shortly after Bishop Hartley called for the Right Rev Welby to resign, her diocese published a letter from him and the Archbishop of York on X, formerly Twitter, which said they “would very much like to see a resolution to this situation which enables Sentamu to return to ministry”. The bishop accused the two most senior leaders in the Anglican Church of using “coercive language” to pressure her into restoring Lord Sentamu’s permission to officiate. School leaders told the abuse survivor that they will be consulting on a shortlist of alternative names for the academy School leaders told the abuse survivor that they would be consulting on a shortlist of alternative names for the academy The Rev Ineson told The Telegraph the contrast between the school’s decision to drop Lord Sentamu’s name and the Archbishop of York’s attempt to restore his ability to minister demonstrated why the Archbishop was “wholly unfit” to act as the Church’s caretaker leader. “Lord Sentamu is beyond rehabilitation. If a school can see this, why can’t Stephen Cottrell? He has today taken over as the Anglican Church’s most senior leader when the institution is in crisis, and he is wholly unfit for the job,” he said. A report by the Church’s national safeguarding team published in May 2023 found that “the survivor’s allegation that he disclosed his abuse to the Archbishop of York [Lord Sentamu], and he did not act on this, is substantiated”. It also said: “Whilst the review has not been made aware of any further allegations against Trevor Devamanikkam, the failure to support the survivor in reporting his allegations to the police in 2012 and 2013 meant that safeguards could not have been put in place to protect others.” Lord Sentamu’s claim that he had “no authority” to act in the matter was disputed by a reviewer who said “no Church law excuses the responsibility of individuals not to act on matters of a safeguarding nature”. A spokesman for the Archbishop of York has previously told The Telegraph that his attempt to support his predecessor in returning to ministry was “not about minimising the impact of anything Lord Sentamu previously said”. The Telegraph has attempted to contact Lord Sentamu

Justin Welby resigned as the 105th Archbishop of Canterbury at midnight on Monday amid mounting criticism over sexual abuse allegations and... By Milton Quintanilla CROSSWALK.COM Jan 07, 2025 Archbishop Justin Welby Officially Resigned and Now Requires Permission to Serve Justin Welby resigned as the 105th Archbishop of Canterbury at midnight on Monday amid sexual allegations in the Church of England. According to the Telegraph, Welby spent his last day in office in private at Lambeth Palace, where he participated in a lunchtime Eucharist and handed down his ceremonial bishop's crozier during an Evensong service later that day.   Per Church of England rules, Welby can no longer perform priestly duties and lead services without first obtaining permission from a bishop, The U.K. Times reported.   Although former archbishops have been granted this approval, there is no guarantee whether Welby will receive it. A source explained that the approval would not be granted "immediately or automatically" without first undergoing "a period of discernment … in conjunction with a diocesan bishop."   Welby's resignation follows criticism concerning sexual abuse allegations in the Church of England, The Christian Post reports. He was also criticized for blocking a disciplinary case against the Bishop of Derby and for insufficient efforts in investigating allegations against John Smyth, a barrister who was accused of assaulting multiple boys over multiple years.   According to an earlier independent review, Smyth "might have been brought to justice" if Welby had filed a formal police report in 2013.   Prior to stepping down, Welby made few appearances since mid-November and did not give a Christmas sermon at Canterbury Cathedral. He also did deliver a New Year's Day message as he typically would in the past.   As reported by Telegraph, his Christmas donation to The Children's Society was rejected, with the organization explaining that accepting it "would not be consistent with the principles and values that underpin our work."   Three senior Church of England figures will assume key functions of the Archbishop of Canterbury, including the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, the Bishop of London, Dame Sarah Mullally, and the Bishop of Dover, Rose Hudson-Wilkin, with Cottrell assuming the majority of the duties.

By Emma Thompson THE TIMES January 06 2025 In the film Conclave, Ralph Fiennes plays a cardinal trying to organise the election of a pope. The drama highlights the difficulties of choosing a religious leader with sufficiently broad appeal and no skeletons in the cupboard. Candidates struggle to achieve the necessary majority. A two-thirds majority of the 17 voters is needed to become Archbishop of Canterbury.   As in the film, the tortuous selection process could end in the appointment of a relative unknown, with the attendant risks. So it was with Justin Welby in 2013. He had spent little more than a year as a bishop (Durham). Now we know how his appointment turned out.   The Church of England cannot afford another damaging public shaming, particularly concerning safeguarding. Leaving aside whether the right people are involved in the nomination process — over nine months — they need to reach the right result. The Church’s senior hierarchy, its policies, practices and culture are in a mess.   As Justin Welby leaves office on Monday on his 69th birthday, this is a critical opportunity for a reset. The overriding necessity is to appoint a godly, unifying, humble person with the leadership skills to get a grip on a top-heavy bureaucracy.   One difficulty is the small size of the field, if you limit it to the 42 diocesan bishops and rule out those approaching 70 (clergy retirement age). Historically, episcopal appointments used to alternate between different wings or factions, which avoided narrowing the Church’s appeal and alienating potential supporters.   However, it is widely felt that Welby has “packed” the bench of bishops with others who share his managerial style of churchmanship. Many of the names bandied about as potential successors would be an unbalanced continuation from his wing of the Church.   What we don’t need is someone who loves playing amateur politics in the House of Lords, spending money on making churches carbon neutral when they can’t afford to turn the heating on, or undermining the parish system. We need someone who wants to spend time loving and caring for the “downstairs church”. By this, I mean the local places where people actually participate in and fund the Church.   The “upstairs church” of bishops, bureaucracy and bluster has become inward-looking and detached from the parishes. It has grown on an indefensible scale. We need a parish-facing, pastoral archbishop, someone with the willingness and leadership ability to halve the “upstairs church”, scaling it back to a more appropriate and affordable level of overheads. There might then be some hope of reversing the decline that has been accelerated from within.

On church collapse, evangelism, and inclusion Ben Crosby Dec 27, 2024 What is the current state of the Anglican Church of Canada? Last August, David Goodhew published a piece in The Living Church ’s Covenant blog entitled “ The Collapse of the Anglican Church of Canada ,” in which he argued, as the title suggests, that its state is poor indeed. In fact, he argued the Anglican Church of Canada is the first province of the Anglican Communion to have collapsed. He pointed out a sharp decline in Average Sunday Attendance but stressed that attendance decline along with financial woes are “lagging indicators.” Rather, he argued that the “key metrics” of ecclesial health are baptism numbers and age profile – and that on these measures the ACC has already collapsed, with no recovery in sight. He blames this decline in particular on the Anglican Church of Canada’s progressivism, and in particular a focus on progressive causes which led to individual discipleship and church growth being minimized. The ACC may still have the outer trappings of a church – bishops, diocesan and national bureaucracies, church buildings – but apart from a few pockets of vitality, it is dead. This piece, perhaps unsurprisingly, sparked a number of responses. Sharon Dewey Hetke sought to nuance parts of Goodhew’s analysis but fundamentally agreed with it. In response, she called for a return to a focus “on the gospel and the teaching of Scripture, not on secular causes” and noted with hopefulness that leaders in the Canadian church seem to be more committed to “core teachings like the necessity of faith in Christ, the Virgin Birth, and the physical resurrection of Christ.” Even in the light of overall collapse, she argued, there are opportunities to nurture the remaining pockets of vitality in the ACC. Cole Harten wrote about the Reimagining the Church commission of which he is a member, appointed to discuss needed changes to the national structure of the church. Such structural changes, he suggested, are necessary but not themselves a silver bullet for church decline. What we really need to do is to “stay focused on prayer, preaching, and teaching the Bible, focused on discipleship and evangelism, focused on Jesus” – and to want to grow, for the sake of lives transformed by the Gospel. Most recently, a few days before Christmas, Emilie Smith published a response entitled “ It’s Not Dead .” As the title suggests, this is the only piece to seriously take exception with Goodhew’s analysis. Of course, Smith grants that the statistics around decline are accurate, but she asks, “are these indicators a true picture of the status of the Anglican church within Canadian society? Or are they a sign of a repositioning of the place of all churches in a pluralistic, multicultural world?” She draws upon interviews with Archbishop Lynne McNaughton, bishop of the Diocese of Kootenay, and Bishop John Stephens of New Westminster to attempt to refute Goodhew’s argument. From McNaughton’s work in Kootenay, she argues that the church in Canada is not dying but thriving – albeit in a new way, renouncing nostalgia for the “false and unhealthy model” of the church of the “postwar baby boom” and instead paying attention to what God is calling the church to be today. She argues that Goodhew’s blaming of the ACC’s progressivism for its decline is vague and unclear, and in fact Canadian Anglicanism’s attempts to move beyond its colonial past in reconciliation with First Nations, to fully include women and LGBTQ people, and to advocate for creation are not distractions from the Gospel but a faithful living out of it. “The humble embracing of the matters of the world is the very heart of our mission,” she argues. The numerical decline, while real, does not seem to be an adequate measure of the ACC’s health – rather, its moving beyond the oppressive church models of the past and its new flexibility and attention to God’s mission of addressing contemporary social, political, and environmental crises is the real measure of our church’s thriving. I wanted to write a little bit about this exchange, and especially the final piece by Smith. Because while I share with her some important commitments around inclusion in the church, her piece encapsulated many of the things that I find most frustrating about conversations concerning church decline: an attempt to reframe our church’s failure at making disciples as a new way of being church, a lack of clarity about whether or not being a Christian really matters, an abandonment of the church’s historic mission of Gospel proclamation, an unhelpful discussion of the relationship between various forms of liberalization and ecclesial decline. And so I decided to write a little bit about it: The numbers are really bad. First, I think it’s worth spending a little time with the demographic realities that we’re dealing with. I want to start with some graphs to make more concrete the scope of decline about which we are talking. First, average Sunday attendance. Frustratingly, there aren’t publicly available, solid Average Sunday attendance numbers for the whole ACC until 1996. 1 But in that time, the decline is precipitous, as the graph below shows. Let’s set aside the 2022 numbers as likely still reflecting some temporary pandemic losses. From 1996 to 2019, average attendance declined by over 50%. I was born in 1991. In less than my lifetime, ACC attendance halved. But I think that Goodhew is right that Sunday attendance is in some ways a lagging indicator. To understand the prospects of the church, as well as whether the church is carrying out its mission of leading people to new life in Jesus Christ, let’s look at baptisms and confirmations. Baptism gives us the number of people initiated into the Christian life. Confirmation gives us, at least in principle, the number of people committing to living out the promises made on their behalf in baptism; it has at least something to do with the church’s ability to nurture the baptized into a life of discipleship. Now, we should not be naïve about the fact that confirmation’s function as a coming-of-age ritual not infrequently eclipses its ostensible ecclesial function. That is, rather than marking the beginning of committed adult discipleship, confirmation all too often marks the end of one’s serious engagement with church. But certainly we should not expect that the church is adding more committed, faithful adult members than the number of confirmands in a given year. Here we have data from 1959 on. In 2019 (again, before the pandemic), the ACC baptized 10% as many people as it did in 1959 and confirmed 5% as many. That is, one person baptized for every ten baptized some sixty-five years ago, and one person confirmed for every twenty. Just think about that for a minute. Imagine a confirmation class of twenty children at St Wherever’s in 1959. Twenty desks in a Christian education room. Now, today, on average, there would be just one confirmand. In 2017, 2019, and 2022, fewer than two thousand people a year made an adult profession of faith in the ACC, either as children raised in the church or as adult converts. There are a few more than two thousand congregations in the entire Anglican Church of Canada. This means that, on average, each congregation is baptizing around two people and confirming one a year. These are, to put it mildly, not the numbers that you can sustain a church (or, indeed, any mass membership organization) upon. This is not just a return to the pre-baby-boom pattern, as Smith’s piece suggests. This is, as Goodhew puts it, an “extinction-level event.” If indeed making new believers and leading them in a life of discipleship is at the core of the church’s mission – as I believe it is – then it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the Anglican Church of Canada has in fact collapsed. 2 Yes, decline is a problem. But of course, Smith acknowledges that the statistics concerning decline are rather grim; her fundamental disagreement with Goodhew is about how they should be interpreted. In fact, if I am understanding her rightly, she seems to be quite suspicious about the use of numbers like these as measures of whether a given church is healthy. The once-higher ACC numbers, she or her interviewees suggest, reflect a demographic blip (the baby boom) and were the product of an unhelpful (or even wicked) colonial model of being church. Indeed, our earlier numbers and strength were associated, she argues, with real failures of the church in living out its mission; she highlights the Anglican Church’s involvement in the (very real!) evils of the residential school system. Thus, she thinks, by forsaking nostalgic attachment to this earlier model, the church can go about fulfilling its God-given mission in pluralistic contemporary Canada. Numerical decline can coexist with a thriving church that is finding new and innovative ways to live out God’s mission in the world. But unfortunately, if we think it matters that people are Christians, I don’t think we can avoid the truth that numerical decline is a disaster. Now, we can freely admit that in an earlier era where churchgoing was socially expected, people had motives other than pure commitment to God for showing up on Sunday mornings. But if we believe that God has appointed Word and Sacrament as the normative means by which the Spirit draws us to new life in Christ, then surely it is awful if fewer people are availing themselves of these means of grace. I expect that God can work with mixed and imperfect motives (if he doesn’t, I am in trouble, along with everyone else I know). If it matters that people are Christians, the number of people in our churches matters. The Rev. Everett Lees (RIP) put it well in an interview I did with him last year: I think that often talking about growth gets pooh-poohed in Episcopal Church circles. “You’re just about butts in pews; this is a business model of measuring success”, etc. I think some of that is just defensiveness. But I do think it is important to articulate theologically why church growth matters, what theologically sound church growth would look like. Would you say you have a theology of church growth? For one, we can look at this scripturally. In the New Testament, there are a lot of times when the apostles are counting numbers, right? The Gospel writers tell us that there are this many people who are receiving at the miracle of the loaves and fishes. In the Book of Acts, every time the Spirit shows up, there’s this many people who turn and give their life to Christ. So I think we can say, biblically, that that numbers actually do matter. It’s not that numbers matter at the top line, so that we can just sit there and say, “well, we grew x number,” but it's that each one of those [numbers] is somebody whose life has been changed and transformed through a relationship with Jesus Christ and the power of the Spirit. [Each individual story of conversion] is hard to capture in ASA, but anyone’s story is still wrapped up in those numbers. So those numbers really do matter.After all, why does it matter that someone follows Jesus? I consider myself evangelical in that I think that a relationship with Jesus Christ is actually really important. I think having a strong prayer life is important. I think being formed by the Scriptures is important, being transformed by the sacraments is important. Those things are so vital to the good of the world. Those things inform our social and public witness. I think we've created some false dichotomies, divisions between faith and witness or faith and action, and it seems like evangelism and church growth is always the one that loses. I think that Fr Everett is exactly correct. If we think a relationship with Jesus matters, then numbers matter – and if numbers matter, then decline matters. No number of declarations about bold new ways of being church can escape the force of this argument. We are, as a church, failing to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ in a way that moves people to follow him. This is what decline means. And this is a problem. But, frankly, even if instead you view the church’s mission as about seeking progressive change in the world than about such a suspiciously evangelical notion as fostering relationships with Jesus Christ (more on that shortly), these numbers are still disastrous. Simply put, you can’t mobilize your people to fight for justice if you don’t actually have any people. What good is an Anglican church taking bold stands for justice if such stands are immediately ignored because the church doesn’t really represent anyone? In my years in the labor movement, the union leaders I knew were always crystal clear that staying the same size (to say nothing of shrinking!) simply was not an option for us. It is precisely because we believed that the work of social change was so urgent that we were always concerned with numbers – because more people meant more power, which meant meant a greater capacity to win good wages and working conditions. Evangelism, discipleship, and worship are at the heart of the Church’s mission. This leads us to what I expect is the core of my disagreement with Smith. In response to complaints that the ACC’s embracing of various progressive social and political causes has distracted it from its mission, Smith argues that such causes are in fact the church’s mission: “The humble embracing of the matters of the world is the very heart of our mission,” she writes. Now, I don’t disagree that the church needs to address matters of justice, and I expect that she and I would agree about a good amount of what justice looks like. But I worry that this account of the church’s mission puts the cart before the horse, as it were, confusing an effect of the church’s mission with that mission itself. The point of the church, I believe, is not first and foremost seeking the amelioration of social ills. There are many organizations far better suited to such a task than the church already working at this, and, frankly the way that the church spends the most of its time and energy (gathering for public worship) has no direct impact on such evils. Nor is the point of the church to provide a sort of nondenominational spiritual accompaniment, helping people make meaning as they pass from birth to death. No! The church is here to witness to God’s saving work in Jesus Christ, to point to Jesus as God’s free gift to us, to proclaim that in his life, death, resurrection and ascension is the world’s salvation. Jesus himself tells us to “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.” That is, we are sent out to proclaim the Good News and invite people into a life of following Jesus in thankful response to what Jesus has done for us – a life of worship, discipleship, and good works. Now, because Jesus is particularly concerned with the poor, the forgotten, the oppressed, we need to be too. Certainly the church must repent of its own participation in wrongdoing and seek to address evils where it finds them. But what the institution of the church is about is not primarily organizing or agitating for justice, worthy as such activity is. In fact, there’s a weird sort of ecclesiocentrism in the idea that churches qua institutions are the proper vehicle for such political engagement, rather than that churches should form people to participate well in those institutions actually set up for such work. I fear that it often reflects a sort of embarrassment about the otherworldly end of Christian teaching (eternal life!) and the fact that churches spend most of their time on things that are, from a purely immanent, secular perspective, largely useless. But without derogating the dignity of working for social justice or even denying that churches have a role to play in such efforts, I just don’t find in the New Testament the idea that addressing social and political ills is the heart of the church’s mission. And, perhaps paradoxically, I find that in looking at the history of the church, the church has been most effective in changing society when it sees such social change as a consequence of its proclamation of Jesus rather than the very substance of its mission. In mainline contexts, we are often uncomfortable talking about evangelism or discipleship. Sometimes we seem to be nervous about the idea that it really matters whether someone is a Christian, so long as they have a source of meaning in life and are committed to the cause of justice (as I’ve written about before ). But I just don’t think we can make sense of Jesus’ life and teaching without the idea that being a Christian matters, that Jesus calls people to follow him , specifically. If we (the Anglican Church of Canada, but also mainline Christianity more broadly) are going to survive – if we deserve to survive – we are going to need to recover the message that is a scandal to a pluralistic age: that in Jesus, specifically, uniquely, God’s nature and will are revealed because Jesus is God incarnate, that in Jesus alone can be found new life now and forever, freely given to all. And we are going to need to recover an understanding of the church as fundamentally about proclaiming this wonderful truth. Does progressivism cause ecclesial decline? Now, I want to turn to the part of Smith’s intervention which I do find helpful. I think she is right to note that Goodhew posits an association between a vaguely-defined progressivism and ecclesial decline without really demonstrating it. But in fact, theological conservatism by itself is no silver bullet solution to ecclesial decline. As Smith notes, the Diocese of the Yukon in the Anglican Church of Canada – one of the dioceses whose decline Goodhew particularly focuses upon – is actually known for theological conservatism. Moreover, more conservative Canadian churches are not necessarily thriving. Roman Catholicism is struggling mightily, especially but not only in Quebec. The Lutheran Church of Canada (the LCMS in Canada) saw a 30% decline in membership from 2010-2022, although it is worth noting that baptism and confirmation numbers were quite steady from 2010 until the pandemic. And indeed, baptism and confirmation numbers have been in decline in the ACC since at least the early 1960s, a time which, if Pierre Berton’s The Comfortable Pew is to be believed, was hardly a time of extreme progressivism in the Anglican Church of Canada (although the fact that his book was commissioned by the hierarchy does perhaps hint at where the winds were blowing…). Changes in birthrates and a secularization that has affected all Christian denominations in Canada are important parts of the story; theological or social or political liberalism simply is not the sole driver of the emptying out of the Anglican Church of Canada. Further, I would want to affirm strongly that a commitment to the full inclusion of women and LGBTQ people or a concern for reconciliation between indigenous and non-indigenous Anglicans does not prevent one from taking the basics of discipleship and evangelism seriously. 3 I think Goodhew is right as an empirical matter that many of the churches that are loudest in embracing these positions seem to struggle to articulate why being a Christian uniquely matters, and thus struggle with both evangelism and retaining their own members. I think we see this in Smith’s own response and her construal of the church’s mission. But I don’t think this is inherent in embracing any of these ‘progressive’ positions. Rather, the promise of what is loosely called ‘inclusive orthodoxy’ is a full-throated Christian proclamation, rooted in Scripture and the creeds, alongside precisely this sorts of commitments and concerns. I think that the onus is on those of us us who fall in this camp to, as it were, prove Goodhew wrong, to prove that the association between liberalization on certain secondary (though important) issues and decline into theological mushiness and irrelevance is not a necessary one. What is to be done? How, then, are we to do this? If our mission is to baptize and make disciples, and we take an honest look at our church and see that we are failing at this mission, what comes next other than despair? I of course don’t have all the answers, and I certainly want to affirm that it is possible to be faithful, be rooted in Christ, and still see decline. The headwinds of secularization are real, and even more than that, it is the Spirit who gives the growth; there is no perfect technique for automatically producing faithful disciples. But at the same time, I don’t think that evangelism and forming disciples is impossible in Canada (or in the United States or Europe) – such a claim actually strikes me as blasphemous, a denial of the Holy Spirit’s power to grant the gift of faith when and where he wills! For a Canadian context specifically, this article in the Anglican Journal is a good place to start. It looks at examples of growing Anglican churches and notes that they share a strong desire to grow, a commitment that evangelism and growth really are central to their obeying Jesus’ command. 4 It’s worth asking ourselves how we might nurture such a desire, such a commitment in ourselves and in our congregations. I’d also like to recommend two books written by Americans on the basis of empirical research there. To be sure, the American and Canadian contexts are not the same – but I am confident that much of the advice applies across the border as well. Martha Grace Reese’s Unbinding the Gospel is the outcome of a Lilly Foundation study of evangelism in mainline church contexts specifically. She examines mainline churches that regular baptize adults. She focuses on this rather than just, say, membership gains because in churches that baptize infants, adult baptism indicates people that are actually converting to Christianity as adults rather than, say, simply moving from one church tradition to another. She explores the attributes that they share and offers advice to churches looking to train up people in sharing their faith. Growing Young , then, is not specifically about mainline contexts but broadly looks at what churches that attract a large number of young people do. I’m also very fond of this interview I did with Fr. Everett Lees before his untimely death, and The Living Church has a regular series called “ In Search of Growth ” looking at growing Episcopal churches. I fear that Goodhew is correct and Smith is wrong: the Anglican Church of Canada is currently in a state of collapse. And where it leads the way, other provinces of the Anglican Communion are likely to follow. But we worship a God who heals the sick and raises the dead! And I believe that there is hope even for us. I pray that we avoid the soothing analyses that our precipitous decline is just a new way of being church, tell the truth about our state, and recommit ourselves instead to being a church centered on the proclamation of the Gospel, on evangelism, discipleship, and worship, not just for the sake of preserving our tottering institutions (many of them will probably fail regardless) but for the sake of welcoming people into saving relationship with Jesus Christ. Frankly, spending time with ACC data has made me all the more appreciative of the Episcopal Church’s robust and transparent church data. For a while, the ACC measured Easter communicants, then began to move towards measuring average Sunday attendance but many dioceses failed to report numbers until, as noted above, 1996. Incidentally, I took a particular look at the Diocese of Kootenay, because Smith’s piece lifts it up as an example of Anglicans thriving in a new situation. Unfortunately, if we grant that numbers have at least something to do with thriving, it is hard to argue with the statement made by a diocesan working group in 2022 that “the institution of the Diocese of Kootenay – as it exists today – has entered a palliative state.” ASA held fairly steady from the 1970s into the early 2000s; we then don’t have data again until 2017 by which point it had declined by over 40%, and by 2022 it had declined by nearly half again (hopefully a good part of this is a temporary pandemic decline!). Baptisms, however, were tending towards decline from the beginning of the period we have readily accessible statistics for, the late 1960s. The diocese was baptizing just over one hundred per year by the break in the data in 2001; since 2017, no more than fifty people have been baptized per year and in fact the trend (admittedly without many data points) is sharply negative. I do not mean to pick on this diocese; I expect its numbers are not much worse than average. And I don’t doubt that there are many faithful clergy and laity living Christian lives of faith and service there. Thanks be to God for them! But I don’t think it’s credible that (as Smith argues) this is where we should look to find a thriving Anglican future. I appreciated Sharon Dewey Hetke’s hope, from a conservative/traditional perspective on sexuality questions, for “better relationships across disagreement” between conservatives and those who “by all accounts have a strong faith in Jesus and who uphold the Creeds but with whom theological conservatives will have serious disagreements — based on Scripture and received tradition — on sexuality and other issues.” I agree with her that this will indeed important for the future of the Anglican Church of Canada, and would suggest that the work of the Episcopal Church’s Task Force on Communion Across Difference might be a useful resource. “That’s a key thing the congregations that are still growing have in common, says Bowcott: a theology of evangelism that prioritizes forging meaningful ties between a church and the community it serves.”

by David G. Duggan © Special to Virtueonline www.virtueonline.org December 23, 2024   I don’t know what has happened to this world. Forty years ago, I was a captain of one of the usher crews at St. Bartholomew’s Church at 50th St. and Park Avenue in New York City. Seating over 1,200 people in pews that if people squished would accommodate 12 backsides, St. Bart’s was the largest Episcopal parish church in this hemisphere. Ushers were predominantly male, and regardless of gender dressed in pin-striped grey livery, with white shirts and a black and grey tie, unless the usher owned a morning suit with its swallow-tail jacket. White carnations were pinned to their left lapel.   Imagine my surprise when on a recent trip to NYC I walked into St. Bart’s and saw chairs instead of pews, 2" thick cushions instead of kneelers, and ushers wearing uncovered blouses, sport coats and multi-colored shirts. Even communion was dispensed, not while kneeling at the rail, but while standing at stations in the nave. Quelle sacrilege.   Back then, ushers would count the house, pass the collection plates, and guide congregants to the communion rail where vectors of priests would dispense the bread and wine. Built in the 1910s and designed by Bertram Goodhue in the Byzantine style (the only such building in Manhattan), St. Bart’s featured a mosaic and stained-glass by Hildreth Meiere, a sculpture by Gustav Thorvaldsen, and a movie-set backdrop for films as diverse as rom-com “Arthur” and spy-thriller “Salt.” After the service those ushers who had trained for the role gave tours. I was one of those.   I won’t comment on the nature of the service. Having had my connection to the Episcopal Church of my upbringing strained to the breaking point by wokesters and heretics, cowards and grifters, all I can say is that God must have a sense of humor to allow one of the cardinal parishes of creation to fall into an abyss of irrelevance greased by the triple-threat of diversity, equity and inclusion. The people whom I saw there (and did not remember me from my service decades ago) seemed to have drunk the Kool-Aid of what has become the Democratic party at prayer.   God has a long timeline. He, and He alone can stem the tide, stop the clock, and raise the dead. Perhaps those dead will include the Episcopal Church. Or perhaps not.