ACNA Archbishop must answer allegations that include sexual immorality, bullying and plagiarism By David W. Virtue, DD www.virtueonline.org September 9, 2026 CHARLESTON, SC — At long last Archbishop Steve Wood goes to trial for allegations that could derail his future hopes and aspirations and lead to a future of ignominy and shame. Exonerated, he will go back to leading a denomination struggling over the ordination of women and distrust by a growing number of laity disillusioned by his leadership. He faces a split among his fractious military chaplains, unresolved lawsuits and much more. No archbishop of the Anglican Church in North America has ever stood in the dock of his own church. Wood is the first. The denomination that was born in 2009 out of a flight from the Episcopal Church — a flight undertaken in the name of holiness, orthodoxy, and the plain reading of Scripture — now finds itself asking whether it can hold its own primate to the standard it once demanded of Canterbury. That is the real question the six-day trial in Charleston will answer, and it is far larger than the fate of one man. The court will not make it easy to watch. The proceedings, seated September 7 through 12 with extension dates reserved for September 21 through 26, are closed to the public. The Court for the Trial of a Bishop, presided over by the Rt. Rev. Ryan Reed, has given each side fifteen hours — no more — to lay out its case, examine and cross-examine witnesses, and argue before the bench. The Charges Wood answers three formal charges: violation of his ordination vows; conduct giving just cause for scandal or offense, including the abuse of ecclesiastical power; and sexual immorality. They are among the gravest a bishop can face, and they carry, on conviction, the prospect of deposition. The Allegations Behind the three charges lies a presentment that ranges wider still. The case broke into public view in October 2025, when The Washington Post reported that Wood had been accused of sexual harassment during his long tenure as rector of St. Andrew’s Church in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina — the flagship parish he built over twenty-five years and the platform from which he rose to the archbishopric. Claire Buxton, a divorced mother of three who served as the parish’s children’s ministry director, alleges that Wood began behaving inappropriately toward her in the fall of 2021, showered her with attention and with money — more than three thousand dollars, she says, drawn from church funds — called her by a pet name, and, in April 2024, attempted to kiss her in his office. A presentment — the canonical instrument by which charges are brought — was filed that same month by a group of Wood’s former colleagues, among them four presbyters and seven lay people. It carried not only Buxton’s account but allegations that Wood bullied his staff and plagiarized sermons. In November it was resubmitted to add the account of a second woman, who said Wood had pressured her into situations that made her uncomfortable and had invited her to drink with him, and to add the claim of the province’s former communications director that Wood had conspired with other senior leaders to tilt the church’s investigative machinery in a “bishop-friendly” direction. Wood has denied the allegations, declining to comment on the most recent. How the Church Got Here The months since have been a slow procession through canons the ACNA had never before tested on a primate. On November 3 Wood announced a voluntary leave of absence — a device that, his critics were quick to note, would have allowed him to return to office whenever he judged the moment right. More than 140 clergy were unpersuaded and signed an open letter asking that he be inhibited outright until a verdict was rendered. On November 16 the Dean of the Province, Bishop Julian Dobbs, did exactly that, barring Wood from the exercise of ordained ministry. Dobbs has carried the archbishop’s duties ever since. On December 12 a ten-member Board of Inquiry found probable cause to send Wood to trial. In June the Court for the Trial of a Bishop denied his motion to dismiss. The trial date wandered — from July to late October and finally forward to September — and in August the court closed the last door Wood had tried to open, denying his bid to pry loose the sealed files of the Board of Inquiry and ruling that it would decide the matter solely on the presentment, the archbishop’s responses, and the evidence heard in the room. A House Already Shaking Wood goes to trial in a province coming apart at several seams at once, and the trial cannot be understood apart from the wreckage around it. His military chaplains are in revolt. In September 2025 Wood inhibited Bishop Derek Jones, who led the Special Jurisdiction of the Armed Forces and Chaplaincy and the roughly three hundred chaplains it endorsed, over complaints alleging abuse of ecclesiastical power. Within a day the jurisdiction declared itself out of the ACNA, and Jones — denouncing the move as a “hostile corporate takeover” — filed a million-dollar lawsuit against the province and, before Christmas, founded a rival body, the Anglican Reformed Catholic Church. Last month an ACNA court found Jones guilty on all four charges laid against him, promoting schism among them, and referred him to the College of Bishops for sentencing. Nor is Jones the only bishop in the dock. On the very eve of Wood’s trial the province charged Bishop Edgar with misconduct — and Edgar’s diocese, which overlaps Wood’s own Diocese of the Carolinas, has been among the most active in pressing the case against the archbishop. Earlier, Bishop Stewart Ruch escaped a court that seemed more exercised by laypeople asking questions on social media than by the substance of what they were asking. Over all of it hangs the unresolved question of women’s ordination, the fault line that has divided ACNA dioceses since its founding and that no archbishop has yet been able to close. What Is at Stake Two futures now hang on the Charleston bench. If the court acquits, Wood returns — as he must, canonically — to a house that has spent a year learning to live without him: to fractious chaplains, unresolved suits, and a laity a good portion of which has already made up its mind. If the court convicts, he faces the prospect of deposition, an appeal, and the unhappy distinction of being the first archbishop his church has ever cast down. The verdict will not come quickly. Under the canons the court may take as long as 101 days after the trial concludes to render its judgment; an acquittal ends the matter; a conviction opens the door to appeal. But the deeper reckoning is not Wood’s alone. A church that left one communion because it would not discipline itself must now prove that it can. That is what is on trial in Charleston. Steve Wood is only the defendant. David W. Virtue, DD, is founder and managing editor of VirtueOnline. His writings can be found at www.virtueonline.org, where you can subscribe to receive his free biweekly VIEWPOINTS. His Substack on the Middle East is at davidvirtue2.substack.com

The West, the Churches, and the Faith Betrayed Muggeridge saw it. Solzhenitsyn named it. Melanie Phillips is living it. Os Guinness traced it to the root. And the churches, God help us, have joined the demolition crew. COMMENTARY By David W. Virtue, DD www.virtueonline.org September 9, 2026 Civilizations, we are told, fall to barbarians at the gate. The truer and more terrible story is that they open the gate themselves, hand the barbarian the torch, and applaud the blaze as an advance in lighting. Malcolm Muggeridge understood this better than any man of his generation, and he was my friend. He said it with a mordant glee that never quite concealed the grief beneath it: whereas every previous civilization had been brought down by attacks from without, ours had achieved the unique distinction of training its own destroyers at its own educational institutions, then paying, out of the public purse, to broadcast their destructive creed far and wide. What is called Western Civilization, he wrote, is in an advanced state of decomposition, and another Dark Ages will soon be upon us — arriving so gradually, through the steady erosion of our values, that we should scarcely notice the lights going out. He was not describing a foreign invasion. He was describing a suicide. The prophet nobody wished to believe Muggeridge had the credentials to say it. He had gone to Moscow a believing socialist and come home having seen the famine the fellow-travelers refused to report. He had spent a lifetime in the newspapers he came to distrust. When he warned that the West was dreaming up its own dissolution in the minds of its own intellectual elite, he was not a crank shaking his fist at modernity. He was a man who had watched utopia devour its children and had learned the price of the lie. His diagnosis was moral before it was political. The West, he saw, had contrived to manufacture its own boredom out of its affluence, its own impotence out of its appetites, its own vulnerability out of its strength — and, having decided it was too numerous, had labored with pill and scalpel to make itself fewer. He gave us the unforgettable image of Western Man as a weary old brontosaurus, educated into imbecility, keeling over into extinction. It was meant to sting. It still does. The deeper wound Where Muggeridge supplied the satire, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn — the novelist and historian who had survived the Gulag and lived to chronicle it — supplied the reckoning. Standing before the smug certainties of Harvard in 1978, he told a graduating class that expected to be flattered that the West had suffered a decline of courage — a loss of nerve at the very heart of its ruling and intellectual classes. They did not thank him for it. Five years later, accepting the Templeton Prize, he reached for the sentence that explains the whole catastrophe. Asked why the horrors of the twentieth century had come upon us, he answered as an old Russian peasant might: Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened. There is the whole matter in six words. Not economics. Not empire. Not the failure of this policy or that party. A forgetting. A deliberate, cultivated amnesia about the God on whose reality the entire edifice of Western law, liberty, and conscience was raised. Muggeridge said the same in his own idiom: what we still call Western Civilization began not with the theory of evolution but with the Christian revelation, and it will not long survive the loss of it. The witness from outside the walls It is one of God’s ironies — the kind Muggeridge relished — that the sharpest contemporary voice on this theme belongs not to a churchman but to a Jewish journalist who describes herself as an agnostic. Melanie Phillips has spent two decades as a prophet in the wilderness, and her recent book, The Builder’s Stone, presses the argument that the West was built by Jews and Christians and can be saved by no one else. Her thesis deserves a hearing precisely because she has no denominational axe to grind. Western liberty, she argues, rests on the moral scaffolding of biblical religion — objective truth, moral duty, the dignity of the person — and once that scaffolding is kicked away, the building does not float in mid-air. It falls. And into the vacuum left by a Christianity in full flight from its own beliefs, something else will always move. Nature abhors a vacuum; so does the soul of a civilization. Where I would part company with Phillips is in her sharper rhetoric about Islam, which flattens a billion souls into a single menace and hands her critics an easy exit. The deeper truth she keeps returning to is more searching and more uncomfortable for us: Islam is not rising because it is strong, but because we are weak. A confident faith is not displaced. A vacated one is. The relevant question is not why the muezzin grows louder, but why the church has fallen silent. A cut-flower civilization If Phillips diagnoses from outside the walls, my old friend Os Guinness diagnoses from within them — a sociologist by training, a Christian by conviction, and I know no sharper social critic alive. He has spent a lifetime arguing that a free civilization can do to itself what no invader could. His 2012 book bore the blunt title A Free People’s Suicide, and its warning has only sharpened with the years: the deadly threat to the West comes not from the wolves at the door but from the termites in the floor. We are the termites. The enemy is within — which is only what Muggeridge said, in a different key. More recently Guinness has given us the image that ought to haunt every bishop and every parliament: the West has become a cut-flower civilization. It was severed from its Christian root long ago and has stayed brilliant in the vase a while longer, admired for a beauty it can no longer produce and cannot sustain. Freedom, he insists, is not self-perpetuating. It rests on a golden triangle we have forgotten — freedom requires virtue, virtue requires faith, and faith requires freedom. Snap any leg and the whole figure falls. Cut the flower and it dies on schedule, however fine it looks in the vase today. And Guinness, alone among these witnesses, aims the charge exactly where I have long believed it belongs. The greatest enemy of the Western church, he has written, is not the state, nor atheism, nor any ideology arrayed against it from without, but the world and the spirit of the age within. The West has rejected the faith that made it — and the deeper tragedy is that the church has too often led the rejection, sawing at the very root it was ordained to guard. That is the silence Phillips hears. It is the sound of a church busy severing its own stem. The knife in our own hand Here the indictment turns homeward, and here it must be honest. The men and women dismantling the faith once for all delivered to the saints are, many of them, sincere. They are frequently clever, often kind, and fluent in the language of compassion. They believe they are opening the church’s arms. That is precisely what makes them so effective, and so deadly. Muggeridge’s barbarians were not shaggy horsemen from the steppe; they were credentialed, articulate, and paid by the institution they were unmaking. So it is in the church. Liberal pansexual theology is a knife at the throat of historic Christianity, and it has been drawn not by the world but by the church’s own hands. It does not deny Christ outright — that would be too crude, too easily resisted. It does something subtler. It keeps the vestments and empties the creed. It retains the liturgy and revises the God. It preaches a gospel with no sin to be saved from, a cross with no atonement, a resurrection reduced to a metaphor for springtime feelings. It calls the abandonment of two thousand years of moral teaching “inclusion,” and the surrender of Scripture “listening.” The Episcopal Church perfected the technique; the Church of England, with Phillips watching, has hurried to catch up. As she observed with more candor than most bishops can muster, the progressive denominations have put themselves at the very forefront of the assault on the culture they were founded to nourish. This is the point Muggeridge, Solzhenitsyn, Phillips, and Guinness converge upon, each from a different door. A civilization forgets God not all at once but by installments, and the church that should stand as the last guardian of memory has, in its liberal precincts, appointed itself chief among the forgetters. The city that does not fall And yet. Muggeridge, who could be the bleakest of men, refused despair, and so must we. All earthly cities, he reminded us, are vulnerable; men build them and men pull them down. But there is a City of God which men did not build and cannot destroy, and it is everlasting. Christendom may sink. Christ’s kingdom remains. The faith once for all delivered has been buried before — under Diocletian, under the sword of Islam’s first expansion, under the dead orthodoxy that provoked a Reformation, under the confident atheisms of the last century that now lie in history’s ditch. It has never stayed buried, because it was never ours to keep alive. The remnant that holds the line today across the Global South, in the faithful parishes of a fracturing Communion, in the quiet obedience of believers who will not bend, is not the last flicker of a dying flame. It is the seed. Muggeridge’s brontosaurus keeled over because it had forgotten how to live. The church has no such excuse and no such fate — unless it chooses one. The barbarians are indeed within the gates, and some of them wear mitres. But the gates were never the church’s final defense. The empty tomb was. It still is. Men have forgotten God. The church’s one task, in a decomposing West, is to remember Him out loud — not muttered in synod committees, nor filed away as a footnote to the spirit of the age, but proclaimed from the housetops while there are still ears to hear it. David W. Virtue, DD, is founder and managing editor of VirtueOnline. His writings can be found at www.virtueonline.org, where you can subscribe to receive his free biweekly VIEWPOINTS. His Substack on the Middle East is at davidvirtue2.substack.com.

The hollowed-out Episcopal Church has demonstrated for all to see that the less you believe, the faster you dissipate. COMMENTARY By David Virtue, DD | www.virtueonline.org | September 8, 2026 The Episcopal Church and the United Methodist Church are in a race to the bottom. The only question is who will get there first? The Episcopal Church has just installed its first transgender cathedral dean in the Diocese of Wisconsin — a diocese that was three dioceses and is now one, for the simple reason that if you cannot make new converts, the next best thing is death by a thousand cuts. That may answer the question. All Saints’ Cathedral in Milwaukee recently installed the Very Rev. Micah Cronin as its new dean. He — formerly she — is the first transgender-identifying dean in the history of the Episcopal Church. Cronin is a biological woman who identifies as a man, married to another biological woman, the Rev. Elias Henry, who also identifies as transgender and serves at a Lutheran, LGBT-affirming campus ministry at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. So from two genders we briefly jumped to four, and now we are back to two. Confused? Stay with me. The Breadcrumbs of Orthodoxy Progressives now feed off the breadcrumbs of Anglican orthodoxy — a little creed, a touch of liturgy, coupled with a sermon on inclusion. Wrap it in Anglo-Catholic Eucharist, garnish it with smells and bells, and hey presto, the new reforming Episcopal Church emerges from its chrysalis into a new sexual dawn, hopefully blessed by the Trinity. If god were not dead, maybe she wishes she were. The hollowed-out Episcopal Church has demonstrated for all to see that the less you believe, the faster you dissipate. Thus it ever was. The feeding of the Episcopal 2.5 million is now down to just over 400,000 — faithful, or is it faithless, souls; Boomers longing for a columbarium to relieve themselves of the pain of spiritual cancer. African Methodists came to the rescue of North American Methodism. African Anglicans came to the rescue of North American Episcopalians. God is not mocked; He never is. The stones would cry out, but not this week, despite newfound sexualities for the Episcopal Church to embrace. A remnant of the faithful remains. The Episcopal Church will not end with a bang, but a whimper. This new historic milestone will undoubtedly be received with joy by Anglicans in Canada and by the Church of England as it heads, Gadarene-like, into the Thames over same-sex marriage. The Episcopal Church doesn’t want you to be confused. Sit back and relax; it’s all part of the plan. God loves absolutely everybody, regardless of who you think you were, now are, or want to be in the future. Don’t let sexual confusion get in the way. If you didn’t choose it, you can always say you were born that way, and that will get you off the hook. In the end you can blame God for messing up your genes, so just carry on. The church of confusion has become the church of affirmation. Be All You Can Be is the Episcopal Church’s new motto. Come as you are, stay as you are, just bring the wine and wafers. Cronin explained the journey in an introductory message to the congregation, describing being raised Methodist before joining the Episcopal Church at 19, around the same time as identifying as transgender. “The churches I was raised in were not able to receive me as I am,” Cronin wrote, contrasting those experiences with the acceptance found in the Episcopal Church. It is ironic that the more the Episcopal Church keeps screaming that God loves and accepts absolutely everybody, the more the pews empty. Why did gays not come rushing in when they learned that the red doors could swing both ways? Nope. They never came. And don’t look for transgender Americans to fill pews; there are not that many of them to start with. The Restless Heart Jesus indiscriminately welcomed sinners — from a Gentile woman at a well to a short Jewish man up a tree who collected taxes. He called them to repentance. They complied. Historically, Christianity has never said that our feelings matter or that they determine what is true. Looking for your “authentic self” can lead you into some pretty nasty corners of yourself. You might not want to go there. People who go in search of themselves tend to deserve exactly what they find. Our identity is defined by God; it is not shaped by our sexual preferences. Our “authentic self” is not the highest spiritual goal. Scripture instead calls Christians to deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow Christ. For one of the great fathers of the church, St. Augustine, the self is not an autonomous, self-defining entity but a soul whose true identity and peace are found only in God, revealed through inward reflection and confession. His famous line — “our heart is restless until it rests in you” — names an ache that no reinvention of the self can cure. Mr/Mrs/They Cronin hasn’t figured that out. The Empty Math A little arithmetic helps here. All Saints’ Cathedral reportedly draws an average of only about 70 worshippers on a typical Sunday, most of them Boomers, in a Gothic-Revival building of the kind that seats between 300 and 350 when full. That empty math is the whole church in miniature. The median Episcopal parish now draws just 38 people on a Sunday, and 92 percent of all parishes report an average Sunday attendance under 150 — in buildings whose median seating capacity is 165. Churchwide, in-person Sunday attendance in 2024 stood at 413,034, essentially flat and still more than a quarter below where it was before COVID. Baptisms — the surest sign of a church replenishing itself — fell to 19,624 in 2024, down from more than 28,000 a decade earlier. The median age of an Episcopalian is now 60. A church that cannot baptize its way even to replacement is a church quietly arranging its own funeral. Wisconsin itself is a parable of the decline. In 2024, three Episcopal dioceses — Milwaukee, Fond du Lac, and Eau Claire — were folded into a single Diocese of Wisconsin, the ecclesiastical equivalent of merging three failing branches to keep one storefront open. The reunited body launched with, on paper, some 11,500 baptized members across 101 congregations. The paper flatters it. As recently as 2015 those three dioceses counted 15,902 members between them; by 2023 the figure had fallen to 10,535 — a third of the flock gone in eight years. For 2024 there is no official membership number at all, because the Episcopal Church, unable to make sense of its own redesigned questionnaire, simply declined to report a churchwide total. What can be counted is who actually turns up: across the entire state, all 98 remaining congregations of the Diocese of Wisconsin together drew an average of 3,997 worshippers on a Sunday in 2024. Not quite four thousand souls — in a state of nearly six million. For decades, progressive Christian leaders have argued that churches must rethink historic teaching on sexuality, marriage, and gender in order to remain relevant to modern society. If cultural accommodation is supposed to make Christianity more attractive, where are all the people? Evangelicals Should Not Gloat Evangelicals should not gloat. Several big-time names have gone soft on the subject, and among the worst was a father-and-son team, Richard and Christopher Hays. Richard B. Hays was one of the most influential New Testament scholars of the past forty years; though a United Methodist who taught at Duke, his work long furnished conservatives with their most-cited scholarly case against same-sex relationships. His 1996 book, *The Moral Vision of the New Testament*, was for a generation the traditionalist’s standard authority. His son, Christopher, is an Old Testament scholar at Fuller Theological Seminary. In 2024 the two jointly published *The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story*, which reverses Richard’s earlier position and argues for a fully LGBTQ-affirming ethic — framed, in Richard’s own word, as a *metanoia*, a repentance for the very work that had made his name. He died in January 2025, months after the book appeared, his recantation his last public act. The Apostle Paul’s charge in Romans 12:2 — “Be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind” — is not a text you will hear exegeted from a progressive pulpit. Were anyone to try, the walls would likely cave in. David W. Virtue, DD, is founder and managing editor of VirtueOnline. His writings can be found at www.virtueonline.org, where you can subscribe to receive his free biweekly VIEWPOINTS. His Substack on the Middle East is at davidvirtue2.substack.com.

For the More Perfect Understanding of the Catholic Faith And also officially admits that this is nothing more than pure satire, possibly even written by a Protestant — Nihil Obstat: Not Granted) By the Reverend David Straw I www.virtueonline.org I September 6, 2026 The following is purely a work of satire. It is not an official Roman Catholic document, nor is it intended to add to the official Catechism of the Catholic Church. These are not actual additional catechesis questions issued by Rome, nor do they represent any real magisterial teaching. Although Anglicans — including John Henry Newman and Henry Edward Manning — have at times genuinely contributed to the development of Catholic doctrine, this is definitely not one of those instances. It is offered in the hope that a few additional questions may assist the faithful in appreciating the historical, theological, and ecclesiastical complexities of the Catholic Faith. A Pastoral Introduction? In response to the continuing desire of the Catholic faithful for a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of the Faith, the appropriate ecclesiastical authorities have determined that the existing catechetical resources would benefit from several further questions and answers. While the Church has always possessed the fullness of the Faith, it has become increasingly apparent that the faithful may occasionally require additional clarification concerning what the Church teaches, when she began teaching it in its present form, how precisely she defines it, and what exceptions may apply. These additional questions are offered in that spirit. As one distinguished ecclesiastical authority might put it: “The purpose of these supplementary catechesis questions is to clarify the boundaries of Catholic doctrine, deepen the learnedness of the faithful, and assist the ordinary Catholic in understanding more clearly those things which the Church has always believed, particularly when the historical record requires further explanation.” As His Excellency Monsignor Bartolomeo Alessandro Maria della Sacra Congregazione per la Diffusione della Fede e la Retta Interpretazione dei Suoi Sviluppi Storici Antonio Vincenzo Ignazio Bonaventura della Santissima Trinità has more recently observed: “This merely proves, once again, that the One True Church is incapable of error — only of explanation.” Accordingly, the following questions are presented. Additional Catechesis Questions I. On the Canon of Scripture Q. By what majority was the Canon of Scripture defined? A. An affirmative plurality. Q. Did a majority of those eligible to vote at the Council of Trent actually vote in favor? A. No. Q. Nevertheless, was the decree adopted? A. It was. Q. Was the decree thereafter received as an authoritative definition of the Catholic Canon? A. It was. Q. Is the Canon therefore settled? A. It is. Q. Then are there further questions? A. There are. II. On Tradition and Development Q. What is Sacred Tradition? A. That which the Church has always believed. Q. Are there doctrines whose precise formulation occurred considerably later? A. There are. Q. Had the Church always defined them in precisely the same terminology? A. No. Q. Had the Church always believed them? A. Yes. Q. Does the absence of an early, precise definition prove that a doctrine is new? A. It does not. Q. Does the presence of a later, precise definition prove that everybody understood it precisely that way from the beginning? A. It does not. Q. Could earlier Christians have expressed the matter differently? A. They could. Q. Could some earlier Christians have understood the matter differently? A. They could. Q. What is this process called? A. Development. Q. Is development a convenient explanation? A. It is. III. On John Henry Newman Q. Who became one of the most influential formulators of the modern Catholic theory of doctrinal development? A. John Henry Newman. Q. Was Newman in communion with Rome when he began writing his Essay on the subject? A. He was not. Q. What was he then? A. An Anglican priest, and a leader of the Oxford Movement. Q. Did he complete the Essay before or after he entered the Roman Catholic Church? A. In the very course of his conversion. Q. Did this Essay help persuade him to convert? A. It did. Q. Did Rome subsequently adopt this Anglican convert’s theory as an important account of how doctrine develops? A. She did. Q. Is it therefore fair to say that one of Rome’s most influential modern accounts of her own doctrinal development was first worked out by an Anglican? A. It is. Q. Is this irony often noted? A. Not often enough. Q. If Protestant ministers helped reform the liturgy, and an Anglican priest supplied Rome’s own theory of doctrinal development, have Protestants influenced the modern Catholic Church? A. They have. Q. Has that influence been considerable? A. It has. Q. Should this count as a significant Protestant contribution to the cause of Christian unity? A. One might think so. Q. Are Protestants, and Anglicans in particular, regarded accordingly? A. Not especially. Q. Is that fair? A. Next question. IV. On Papal Infallibility Q. Does papal infallibility have limits? A. It does. Q. Is the Pope therefore infallible whenever he speaks? A. He is not. Q. Must he speak ex cathedra for papal infallibility to be exercised in its strict sense? A. He must. Q. Can the Pope make an ex cathedra definition without obtaining the consent of the Cardinals? A. He can. Q. Can he make such a definition without first obtaining the consent of an Ecumenical Council? A. He can. Q. Can he make such a definition without taking a vote of all the bishops of the Church? A. He can. Q. Can the Cardinals prevent an otherwise valid ex cathedra definition merely by withholding their consent? A. They cannot. Q. Can an Ecumenical Council prevent it merely by refusing to vote for it? A. It cannot. Q. Can the Pope nevertheless declare anything whatsoever to be an infallible doctrine simply by saying so? A. He cannot. Q. Why not? A. Because papal infallibility has limits. Q. Are those limits important? A. Very. Q. Are they frequently explained? A. They are. Q. Are they frequently misunderstood? A. They are. V. On Pope Honorius Q. Was a Pope named Honorius the First ever condemned as a heretic? A. He was. Q. By whom was he condemned? A. By the Third Council of Constantinople. Q. Was that an Ecumenical Council? A. It was. Q. Did Rome eventually accept that council’s authority? A. She did. Q. Was Honorius condemned by name? A. He was. Q. Did subsequent Popes ratify that condemnation? A. They did, for centuries. Q. Was this a condemnation of something Honorius merely permitted, or of something he himself taught? A. Of something he himself taught. Q. Does this trouble the doctrine of papal infallibility? A. Next question. Q. Was Honorius speaking ex cathedra when he taught it? A. That is disputed. Q. Is that distinction convenient? A. It is. Q. Is it therefore untrue? A. It is not. Q. Is there anything else to clarify? A. There usually is. VI. On Roman Primacy and Universal Jurisdiction Q. Has the office of the Pope always been what it is now? A. Next question. Q. Of the five ancient patriarchal sees of Christendom, are all presently in communion with Rome? A. They are not. Q. Which are? A. Rome alone. Q. Does this trouble you? A. Next question. Q. Does Rome therefore possess universal jurisdiction over the entire Church? A. Next question. Q. If not all the ancient sees accepted Roman primacy, on what grounds does Rome claim it now? A. Development. VII. On the Reform of the Liturgy Q. Following the Second Vatican Council, was the Roman Missal revised? A. It was. Q. Was a priest named Annibale Bugnini given chief responsibility for that revision? A. He was. Q. Did Protestant ministers take part in the work of reforming the Mass? A. They did. Q. Did Bugnini himself describe the reform as having important ecumenical dimensions? A. He did. Q. Did the reformed liturgy come to resemble Protestant worship in certain respects? A. Many have thought so. Q. Would Rome describe this as Protestant influence? A. She would not. Q. What would she call it? A. Renewal. Q. Is renewal another word for development? A. It is beginning to sound like one. VIII. On Clerical Celibacy Q. Have all Popes been celibate? A. Next question. Q. Must priests in the Latin Church ordinarily be celibate? A. They must. Q. Are there married Catholic priests? A. There are. Q. Is clerical celibacy therefore a universal requirement of every Catholic priest in every circumstance? A. It is not. Q. Has clerical celibacy always been universally practiced throughout the history of the Catholic Church? A. It has not. Q. Is clerical celibacy therefore an ancient discipline? A. It is. Q. Is it an unchanging discipline? A. Next question. IX. On Thomas Cranmer Q. Was Thomas Cranmer offered the opportunity to recant? A. He was. Q. Did Cranmer sign recantations? A. He did. Q. Did he make more than one recantation? A. He did. Q. Did he receive absolution after his recantations? A. He did. Q. Was he nevertheless executed? A. He was. Q. Did Cranmer subsequently repudiate those recantations publicly? A. He did. Q. Was he burned at the stake? A. He was. Q. Did he famously declare that the hand which had signed his recantation should suffer first? A. It did. X. On Martin Luther Q. Did Martin Luther leave the priesthood so that he might marry? A. He did not. Q. Did he subsequently marry? A. He did. Q. Did he marry a former nun? A. He did. Q. Is the commonly cited explanation more convenient? A. It is. Q. Is it therefore the more accurate explanation of the Reformation? A. It is not. Q. Was Luther’s dispute with Rome concerned with considerably more than marriage? A. It was. Q. Is the more complicated explanation less convenient? A. It is. XI. On Henry VIII Q. Did Henry VIII desire an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon? A. He did. Q. Did this dispute contribute to the English Reformation? A. It did. Q. Was Henry’s marital difficulty the entirety of the theological dispute between England and Rome? A. It was not. Q. Did English theologians subsequently produce extensive arguments concerning Scripture, tradition, justification, the Sacraments, ecclesiastical authority, and the nature of the Church? A. They did. Q. Is “Henry wanted a divorce” easier to explain? A. It is. Q. Is it therefore the complete explanation? A. It is not. Q. Would the English Reformation have happened without Henry’s desire for a divorce? A. Possibly not. Q. Does that settle the theological question? A. It does not. XII. On Councils Q. Are Ecumenical Councils important to the Catholic Church? A. They are. Q. Have councils ever disagreed with Popes? A. Next question. Q. Have Popes ever disagreed with councils? A. Next question. Q. Has the Church’s conciliar history always been straightforward? A. It has been historically rich. Q. Is “historically rich” another way of saying “complicated”? A. It is an acceptable expression. XIII. On Marian Dogmas Q. Was the Immaculate Conception solemnly defined as dogma in 1854? A. It was. Q. Was the Assumption of Mary solemnly defined as dogma in 1950? A. It was. Q. Had these doctrines been solemnly defined as dogmas from the beginning of the Church? A. They had not. Q. Had these doctrines nevertheless been taught or believed in some form before their solemn definitions? A. They had. Q. Is this an example of doctrinal development? A. It is. Q. Was the doctrine clearer after the definition? A. It was. Q. Was the doctrine therefore new? A. It was not. Q. Is there anything else to clarify? A. There usually is. XIV. On Purgatory Q. Is Purgatory the same thing as Hell? A. It is not. Q. Is it a state of purification for those who die in God’s grace? A. It is. Q. Is the word “Purgatory” found in Scripture? A. Next question. Q. Is the concept of postmortem purification found in Christian tradition? A. It is. Q. Was the doctrine developed and defined with increasing precision? A. It was. Q. Is this development? A. It is. XV. On Indulgences Q. Can an indulgence forgive the guilt of sin? A. It cannot. Q. Can an indulgence remit temporal punishment due to sins already forgiven? A. It can. Q. Were indulgences abused? A. They were. Q. Did abuses of indulgences contribute to the Protestant Reformation? A. They did. Q. Did the Church reform the practice? A. She did. Q. Was the existence of abuse proof that the doctrine itself was false? A. It was not. Q. Is the distinction important? A. It is. XVI. On Catholic Answers Q. Do Catholic theologians have answers to everything? A. They do. Q. Do those answers sometimes require additional distinctions, qualifications, and explanations? A. They do. Q. Can the explanation itself sometimes become part of the problem? A. It can. Q. Is this necessarily evidence that the answer is wrong? A. It is not. Q. Is it nevertheless worth asking whether the explanation has become more complicated than the question? A. It is. Q. Does the existence of an answer necessarily mean that the original objection has been satisfactorily answered? A. Next question. XVII. On the Average Catholic Q. Must the average Catholic understand every theological distinction contained in this catechism? A. No. Q. Is the average Catholic nevertheless expected to accept the teachings of the Church? A. Yes. Q. Even when the historical explanation is complicated? A. Yes. Q. Even when the theological qualifications are numerous? A. Yes. Q. Even when the doctrine was defined centuries after the Apostles? A. Yes. Q. Must he also trust the theologians who explain why the objections do not succeed? A. He should. Q. Is this convenient? A. It is. Q. Is the Catholic Faith therefore difficult? A. Not at all. Q. Is explaining it difficult? A. Occasionally. Q. Why? A. Development. XVIII. Final Examination Q. Has the Catholic Church always possessed the fullness of the Faith? A. She has. Q. Has she always expressed every doctrine in precisely the same language? A. She has not. Q. Has she always defined every doctrine with precisely the same degree of precision? A. She has not. Q. Has the Church ever changed her doctrine? A. She has developed her doctrine. Q. Is development the same as changing doctrine? A. It is not. Q. Is the distinction important? A. Very. Q. Is historical evidence important? A. It is. Q. Is historical evidence always conclusive? A. Not always. Q. Is theological interpretation therefore necessary? A. It is. Q. Is ecclesiastical authority necessary? A. It is. Q. Is the Pope infallible? A. Under certain conditions. Q. Are the conditions important? A. Extremely. Q. Have all Popes been celibate? A. We refer you to Section VIII. Q. Is everything the Church teaches ancient? A. Yes. Q. Is everything the Church teaches ancient in its present formulation? A. No. But it is always meant to. Q. Is everything the Church teaches therefore new? A. Certainly not. Q. What is the explanation? A. Development. Q. Should an Anglican clergyman with an afternoon and a laptop be able to poke this much fun at Rome so easily? A. He should not. Q. Does Rome have answers to difficult questions? A. It does. Q. Are those answers sometimes highly sophisticated? A. They are. Q. Do they sometimes involve distinctions the original question did not appear to require? A. They do. Q. Does the existence of an elaborate answer prove that the doctrine is false? A. It does not. Q. Does it prove that the doctrine is true? A. It does not. Q. Are Catholics Christian? A. They are. Q. Are all Christian expressions made up of only the sinful? A. They are. Q. Given how much Catholics, Anglicans, and Lutherans have shaped one another, should the work of ecumenical dialogue be further along than it is? A. It should. Q. Should we pray that Christ’s Church should be one? A. We should. Q. Has this supplementary catechism made the Catholic Faith easier to understand? A. We believe so. Q. Has it answered every question? A. It has not. Q. May further questions be submitted? A. They may. Q. And if a question proves particularly inconvenient? A. Next question.

Mouneer Anis, Barbara Gauthier, and Gerald McDermott the NORTH AMERICAN ANGLICAN i May 22, 2026 Global Anglicans have been congratulating themselves ever since their 2023 Ash Wednesday Statement declaring they would no longer recognize the leadership of the Archbishop of Canterbury because of the Church of England’s decision to bless same-sex couples. Their recent Abuja Affirmation gives its leaders a high-five for obeying the Bible’s “plain and canonical sense, respectful of the church’s historic and consensual reading.” It is ironic, then, that global Anglicans who claim to prize the Bible and historic tradition are circumventing both biblical and traditional approaches to ministry and polity (church government). These are not secondary issues. On the long front in the war between secularism and orthodoxy, they are sites of the fiercest battles. For secularism’s god is, arguably, Equality. There is to be no distinction between man and woman in ministry, and laity should join clergy in determining church practice and doctrine. Yet the historic Church has paid careful attention to both Scripture and tradition on these matters. Jesus was a revolutionary in the way he treated women and had plenty of godly and gifted women to choose from, but he restricted the apostolate to men. Paul reserved pastoral and sacramental ministry to men as well: “I do not permit a woman to have authority over a man . . . A bishop must be the husband of one wife . . . . Let deacons be the husbands of one wife” (1 Tim 2:12; 3:1-2; 3:12). Paul made clear that this sexual distinction followed from creation rather than the Fall when in justifying sexual differences in ministry he pointed to God’s order in creation: “Adam was created first, then Eve . . . . For man was not made from woman, but woman from man” (1 Tim 2:12-13; 1 Cor 11:8). The Church did not reserve all ministry for men, only ordained ministry. In the first millennium in the East, deaconesses exercised a variety of ministries under the authority of the rector or bishop, such as pastoral care, counseling, caring for the sick and poor, teaching, spiritual formation, prayer ministry, preparing candidates for baptism and confirmation, assisting at baptisms, leading morning and evening prayer, and conducting other forms of social and educational work. Most of these continue among the ministries of deaconesses in several Anglican provinces. The historic Church also taught an apostolic succession in which Christ rules the church through bishops whom Jesus said are successors to the apostles: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you” (John 20:21). And as St. Irenaeus taught, “The apostles instituted bishops in the churches . . . leaving [them] behind as their successors, delivering up their own place of government to these men” (Against Heresies 3.3.1). Yet the Canterbury-rejecting Abuja Affirmation has recently formed a new Global Anglican Council that consists of primates, advisors, and guarantors—the latter of whom will be laity. This is a rejection of the historic Anglican commitment to Christ’s rule of the Church through bishops. Laity have always been involved in advising priests and bishops and archbishops, but final decisions for application of apostolic practice and doctrine have been left to the episcopacy. Now, however, global Anglican leaders are inviting laity to join bishops in making final decisions on Christian practice and doctrine. This reverses the 2024 decision of the Global South Fellowship of Anglicans to restrict final church governance to provincial bishops. The new result is presbyterian–not Anglican–polity. This rejection of Holy Tradition and the plain sense of Scripture is exactly what the Abuja leaders condemn as “normalizing hermeneutical pluralism.” What better way to describe “dual integrities”—the incoherent phrase which Anglicans use to describe contradictory views on Holy Orders? These leaders justly criticize Canterbury for “elevating cultural capitulation.” But is not this Abuja statement capitulating to secularism and current feminisms in its bowing before the altar of the new godword “equality,” which denies the sexual difference that is broadcast so loudly in both nature and revelation? And while these Anglican leaders aptly lampoon Canterbury for reframing the rejection of biblical authority as “good disagreement,” what about their own rejection of biblical authority and suggesting we can have good disagreement on Holy Orders and historic polity? Global Anglicans have hereby telegraphed to the world that their new structure and doctrines represent just another liberal Protestant denomination. It is not surprising that the arguments for women’s ordination in those Protestant denominations used the same hermeneutical methods that were later employed for an actively gay priesthood and so-called marriage. After all, if sexual difference is indifferent and the sexes are interchangeable in Holy Order, why not also in marriage? Anglican leaders in recent years have sought unity for the Anglican fight against the LGBT+ juggernaut threatening the Church and society. We commend them for bold leadership on this set of issues. But there is a danger that in seeking unity and numbers under a “big tent” they are embracing a premature and superficial unity that violates biblical and traditional norms. We exhort global Anglican leaders to consider two examples—one ancient and one recent—of recognizing the need for God’s people to turn (the Hebrew word for “repent”) toward deeper unity based on revealed truth. The first example is from Nehemiah 9. The great Jewish reformer has led his flock out of Babylon and realizes they have not broken from pagan ways—even after suffering from exile and condemning their idolatrous overlords. He leads them in one of the Bible’s most majestic prayers of corporate repentance: “We have acted wickedly (v 33), we have not kept your Law (34), we are slaves [of unreformed ways] (36), [but now] we make a firm covenant [to repent and follow Your law]” (38). The Latvian Lutheran Church is about the same size as the Anglican Church of North America (ACNA). The former has 250,000 souls and 300 parishes while the ACNA has 135,000 souls in 1000 parishes. From 1975 to 1993 the Latvian Lutheran Church (LLC) ordained women to the pastorate. But in 1993 Archbishop Janis Vanags led his Church to obedience to the Scriptures and the Great Tradition. The Church formally agreed that ordination to the pastorate should be restricted to men. Ordained women were permitted to keep ministering until retirement. And under the new Church constitution approved in 2016 women were given ministries as lay readers, teaching theologians, and evangelists. The LLC has always maintained the truth of marriage between a man and woman, and the sanctity of human life against abortion and euthanasia. It took humility for Nehemiah and Latvian Lutherans to admit they had gone wrong. It always takes humility for church leaders to “turn.” But just as Jesus taught that true unity must be based on truth (John 17:17, 19), global Anglicanism will have a deeper and stronger unity if its leaders turn toward full biblical obedience in both Holy Order and Church polity. Then it will be able to say in truth that it is obedient to the ancient “church’s historic and consensual reading.” Mouneer Anis is the emeritus Archbishop of Alexandria; Barbara Gauthier is an Anglican theologian and editor of Anglican News Update; Gerald McDermott is a priest in the Reformed Episcopal Church who teaches at Reformed Episcopal Seminary (Philadelphia) and Jerusalem Seminary (Israel).

Brothers and Sisters in Christ, Grace and peace to you in our Lord Jesus Christ. Tuesday morning at 8:45 a.m., Bishop Edgar submitted a letter to Bishop Julian Dobbs, Dean of the Province, indicating voluntary submission to discipline in the matter of the Porter-Gaud chapel dedication. On Sunday evening, Bishop Edgar was notified that a Presentment had been submitted to the Province charging him with just cause for scandal or offense in violation of the disciplinary canons of the ACNA because of his conduct during the dedication service on August 18. Bishop Edgar confessed to the truth of the charge in the Presentment, stating that he should not have participated in the dedication service in the manner that he did. The College of Bishops will determine the punishment for Bishop Edgar at their meeting in Plano, Texas September 21-25, 2026. This disciplinary notice was posted to the website of the Anglican Church in North America today, and we wanted you to be aware of this fact. We, the Standing Committee of the Anglican Diocese of South Carolina, are in support of Bishop Edgar, and his voluntary submission to discipline is a reminder of our need for the mercy of God through the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We invite the Anglican Diocese of South Carolina to pray for our Bishop, our Diocese, and the College of Bishops during this difficult time. Faithfully, The Standing Committee of the Anglican Diocese of South Carolina Additional comments from Rt. Rev. Julian Dobbs Brothers and Sisters, Last week, I shared a statement with the Province reaffirming our position of principled disengagement from those who promote false teaching. I did so in the context of the participation of the Bishop of the Anglican Diocese of South Carolina, ACNA, with a bishop of The Episcopal Church in a joint dedication of a local school chapel. The seriousness of the situation led a complement of Bishops within our College to submit a Presentment, that is, a formal canonical document that advances a disciplinary case by setting out allegations of canonical misconduct against a bishop. In response, Bishop Chip Edgar, against whom the Presentment has been issued, agreed with the charges against him and has consented to be disciplined by the College of Bishops when it gathers later this month. This act of humble submission means there will be no board of inquiry, nor a trial. You can anticipate additional communication from the College following our September gathering. I share this with heaviness of heart but in obedience to the truth Christ calls us to proclaim. Once again, I call on the faithful in the Church to pray that God would guide and sanctify His Church for the glory of His Name. In Him alone, Rt. Rev. Julian Dobbs, Dean of the Province

COMMENTARY By David W. Virtue, DD www.VirtueOnline.org September 1, 2026 The Global Anglican Council — the conciliar body GAFCON raised up as an alternative to the Anglican Consultative Council, the Instruments of Communion, and the Archbishop of Canterbury — announced this week that the headquarters of the reordered Global Anglican Communion will be established in Abuja, Nigeria. No Sign of Repentance This should surprise no orthodox Anglican, whether of the West or the Global South, who has watched in vain for more than two decades for a single sign of repentance from Western Anglicanism and its pansexual agenda. From Lambeth Resolution 1.10, through the Windsor Report, to the present hour, the West has been running Gadarene-like toward the cliff. It has ordained gay and lesbian bishops in the Episcopal Church and in the Anglican Church of Canada, and it has now enthroned a partnered lesbian, Cherry Vann, as Archbishop of Wales — the first such primate in the history of the Communion. Down the slope they go, hastening to join the swine our Lord sent over the edge two thousand years ago, never to return. Rowan Williams once conceded that on this question the Church felt “out of step with what the rest of the culture take for granted.” The West resolved to close that gap, and it succeeded. Never mind that the more it caught up, the more the pews emptied. The Decision at Recife The decision to plant the Communion’s headquarters in Abuja was taken at the Council’s meeting in Recife, Brazil, on Saturday, August 22, 2026, and announced in a communiqué from its chairman, the Most Rev. Dr. Laurent Mbanda, “to strengthen and support the future life and ministry of the global fellowship.” Abuja was the natural — perhaps the only — choice. It was there, at G26 in March, that the Abuja Affirmation declared the old Instruments of Communion to have failed and proclaimed the Anglican Communion reordered into a truly global Church, with the Jerusalem Declaration as its doctrinal spine and the newly minted Global Anglican Council as its conciliar voice. The city that named the new order should fittingly become the seat from which it is governed. Where the Believers Are There is a deeper fitness still. Abuja is already the administrative home of the Church of Nigeria, the largest and most vigorous province in the Anglican world, numbering some eighteen to twenty-five million souls. The reordered Communion is not planting its flag on neutral ground. It is planting it in the most fertile soil the Communion possesses — among Anglicans who are multiplying while the West buries its dead. That is the whole story of the realignment in a single geographic fact. The center of gravity has not merely shifted from Canterbury to the Global South; it has been relocated, deliberately and with intent, to a city where the faith is growing. Modern technology lets a communion be governed from anywhere. The choice of Abuja says what a Zoom link cannot: that the future of Anglicanism will be written where its people actually are. Canterbury kept the buildings, the history, and the letterhead. Abuja has the believers. And the Church has always, in the end, followed the believers — as it is doing again. David W. Virtue, DD, is founder and managing editor of VirtueOnline. His writings can be found at www.virtueonline.org, where you can subscribe to receive his free biweekly VIEWPOINTS. His Substack on the Middle East is at davidvirtue2.substack.com.

Dame Sarah Mullally's forte is thermometers not theology The good ship Anglican Communion, going down by the head — women’s ordination the last thing above water. COMMENTARY By David W. Virtue, DD I www.virtueonline.org I August 31, 2026 Just when you thought the Global South might come to the rescue of the Anglican Communion over the ordination of women, it all suddenly collapses. Anglicans are brilliant at muddying the waters. The Hegelian-driven Archbishop Rowan Williams, the thoroughly conflicted Archbishop Justin Welby, and now a former nurse running the Anglican ship of state just as the Church of England slides into hospice care. Dame Sarah Mullally's forte being thermometers not theology. Consider the anomaly. A GAFCON province, Kenya, already seats women in the episcopate — and has done since 2021, when Emily Onyango was made an assistant bishop in Bondo and Rose Okeno was consecrated diocesan of Butere — at the very moment the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) is still agonizing over women priests. The ACNA is firmly against ordaining a woman to the episcopacy, but even ordination to the priesthood is raising talk of internal schism. The Reformed Episcopal Church (REC) is firmly opposed to the ordination of women in any order, and there are rumblings that it might be the first to show ACNA the back door. The ACNA's Anglo-Catholic wing is also opposed to the ordination of women as are some evangelicals. The province's two-tier approach to women's ordination is showing its fragility in the face of Anglo-Catholic and confessional-evangelical resistance. At least two provinces aligned with GAFCON or the GSFA — Kenya and South Sudan — have consecrated women as bishops, and a growing number ordain women to the priesthood. The Jerusalem Declaration treats the ordination of women as a secondary matter, noting that full agreement has not been reached among all signatories and that it is not held to affect one's salvation. Its proponents emphasize that while they maintain a unanimous view on primary matters, the diversity of opinion on women's ordination is acknowledged within their global fellowship. Yet here is the contradiction that will not stay buried. If the matter is genuinely secondary — adiaphora, a thing indifferent — why did the GAFCON primates adopt a moratorium in 2018 on consecrating any further women bishops? A moratorium is the language of discipline, not of liberty. The fellowship wants to call the question secondary while policing it as though it were primary, and that unresolved tension is precisely why the Global South could not, in the end, ride to anyone's rescue. The map bears this out. Kenya and South Sudan permit the ordination of women as both priests and bishops. Nigeria currently limits women to the diaconate. Uganda's canons would allow a woman to be elected and consecrated a bishop — but none ever has, and there are no plans to do so; women there serve as archdeacons, provosts and deans, never as bishops. Tanzania has no province-wide provision, though individual dioceses such as Tabora have lately voted to ordain women. The Church of the Province of Myanmar authorizes women as deacons and priests but not bishops. Even the GAFCON-sponsored Diocese of the Southern Cross in Australia — led by Glenn Davies, the former Archbishop of Sydney who spent decades resisting the priesting of women — has now licensed a woman minister. The ACNA, for its part, leaves the question of women priests to individual dioceses rather than settling it at the provincial level. For Anglo-Catholics and a good number of evangelicals, the ordination of women to any order of ministry is strictly verboten. They are supported theologically by the Roman Catholic Church and, in its own idiom, by the Southern Baptist Convention, which in June voted overwhelmingly to advance a constitutional amendment barring women from the pastorate — a measure introduced by the Rev. Dr. Albert Mohler that still requires a confirming vote in 2027 to take effect. A victory for Mohler, and a signal of where the confessional wind is blowing. How this all plays out is still open to speculation. That it remains a live issue for Anglicans in North America more than fifteen years after the ACNA's founding cannot be swept under the rug of contemporary history. The "no ordination" position has a long historical pedigree that will not simply go away. Nor can one ignore the argument that The Episcopal Church, having admitted women to the priesthood and episcopate, found itself on the slippery slope to ordaining homosexual and lesbian priests and bishops. Cause and correlation are not the same thing, and honest opponents will concede as much — but the sequence is there in the record, and it haunts every ACNA diocese now weighing the question. Righteous rejecters of women's ordination can point to history, to tradition and, depending on how one reads it, to Scripture itself. That the throne of Canterbury is now held by a woman speaks volumes. It is where the Church of England has been drifting for more than twenty-five years. With the denomination in freefall — little more than one percent of the English population to be found in its pews on any given Sunday, and barely four in a hundred under-35s attending any Christian service even monthly — she may well prove to be its last Archbishop of Canterbury. Time will tell. David W. Virtue, DD, is founder and managing editor of VirtueOnline. His writings can be found at www.virtueonline.org, where you can subscribe to receive his free biweekly VIEWPOINTS. His Substack on the Middle East is at davidvirtue2.substack.com.

COMMENTARY By David W. Virtue, DD I www.virtueonline.org I August 28, 2026 It is now apparent to the world’s roughly 85 million Anglicans that the Anglican Communion is irretrievably broken, and that short of repentance it will never be repaired. There is no glossing over it, no parsing it, no pretending otherwise, no hope that if we talk long enough and lovingly enough about unity, we will somehow arrive at a different conclusion. We will not. The Fault Line and the Point of No Return Lambeth Resolution 1.10, passed in 1998, was the starting point of the schism. GAFCON and the Jerusalem Declaration of 2008 were its ending point — the moment the orthodox declared, decisively and without apology, that there is no third way, no place at which anyone may say we have reached consensus and can now move forward together. There is no consensus to be had. There never was. Every Remedy Has Failed Consider what has been tried, and what has come of it. Neither the coercive maneuvering of the late Frank Griswold, nor the bullying of the late John Shelby Spong, nor the unctuous self-regard of Gene Robinson, nor the mailed fist of the LGBTQ lobby has moved the needle a single inch toward reconciliation. Just the opposite. Each hardened the divide while The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada raced headlong toward their own demographic extinction. Rainbow flags draped over every available surface, endless invocations of God’s indiscriminate love for absolutely everybody, and the ready cry of “homophobe” for anyone who dared question the new sexual theologians made one thing abundantly clear: compromise was never on the table. Never. Conform, or be gone. The remedies offered by successive Archbishops of Canterbury resolved nothing. The Windsor Report, alternative episcopal oversight, the Communion Partners bishops — each was a bridge thrown across a chasm that could not be spanned. Rowan Williams, for all his genuine brilliance, could not resolve the impasse, because he was himself conflicted. The obscurantist theology of his “The Body’s Grace” — an essay that labored to baptize what Scripture plainly forbids — could neither persuade the global bishops nor kindle the faithful in the pews. One cannot, in the end, synthesize sin. God has not changed His mind. Two Narratives, Two Religions Here is the heart of it, the thing no committee can paper over and no communiqué can disguise. Two narratives now govern the Anglican Communion, and they do not merely disagree. They cannot be reconciled, because they do not share a common authority. The first narrative receives. It holds that God has spoken — in creation, in Scripture, in the person of His Son — and that the church’s whole task is glad obedience to a word already given. The second narrative revises. It holds that God is still speaking, and that He speaks most clearly through human experience, through the felt truth of the self, through the shifting spirit of the age. The first asks, “What has God said?” The second asks, “What have we come to feel?” These are not two points on a single spectrum. They are two different religions wearing the same vestments. You cannot average revelation against its denial. You cannot split the difference between “Thus saith the Lord” and “the Lord could not possibly have meant that.” No synod can legislate the gap away. No listening process can listen it into agreement. No carefully worded statement can make Scripture and the zeitgeist say the same thing. The revisionist has never wanted a seat at the orthodox table. He wants the table torn down and rebuilt to his own design. Conform or Be Cast Out The pansexualists grasp this more honestly than the institutionalists forever pleading for more time. They have made sex their identity and their identity their god, and before that god they will brook no rival and no dissent. Conform, or face ecclesiastical punishment. Ask Bishop Bill Love of Albany, hauled up under Title IV for the “crime” of holding the very line Scripture drew. Ask Charlie Holt, twice elected in Florida and twice denied his see, what it is to be cast into episcopal outer darkness for the offense of believing what every Anglican believed five minutes ago. It would be screamingly Monty Python funny if it were not so tragic. It has cost hundreds of priests their livelihoods, their futures, and their pensions. It has broken congregations, split dioceses, and ended lifelong friendships. What Becket Would See One can only imagine what Thomas Becket would make of it — told, on his way to martyrdom in his own cathedral, that five centuries on a practicing homosexual would stand at that very altar in open defiance of Scripture and the holiness of God; that the nave which drank his blood would host a rave, a post-coital revel in the wake of Holy Eucharist. He might be vomiting still. A Church That Would Sooner Die So, the Communion is left with two irreconcilable stories. The Western version — culturally captive, theologically spent, and demographically on its last legs — will not repent. It would sooner die in its sin than change its mind. For this church, hell is evidently preferable to heaven, provided one may enter it unrebuked. Obedience to God’s word is not on offer. Scripture, we are informed, must yield to experience. We will not be told what to do, or with whom to do it. God — or perhaps she — has opened new eyes to a new age. The Gospel Comes Home But the Global South has risen from the ashes of colonialism, shrugged off its former paymasters, and declared open season on the West. We gave them the gospel; they received it, believed it, and are now handing it back to the senders who no longer want it. The missionary tide has turned and runs the other way. What Canterbury shipped out in the age of empire, Africa and Asia now ship home to a continent that has forgotten its own name. And so we in the West wait — for a new resurrection, a revival ahead of the great and final coming of the Lord. It is long overdue. Even so, come, Lord Jesus. David W. Virtue, DD, is founder and managing editor of VirtueOnline. His writings can be found at www.virtueonline.org, where you can subscribe to receive his free biweekly VIEWPOINTS. His Substack on the Middle East is at davidvirtue2.substack.com.

A response to Dale Coulter's "The Great Seminary Sorting" By Bryan Hollon I Trinity Anglican Seminary I August 27, 2026 Although I’m a little late to the game, I’d like to make a few comments about Dale M. Coulter’s recent essay for “The Protestant Mind,” a project of First Things magazine. The essay is titled, “The Great Seminary Sorting,” and describes recent trends in theological education that none of us can ignore. After going through a list of institutions which have either shut down or seen dramatic decline (and the list is substantial), Coulter identifies three major shifts defining the present and future of theological education: A generational shift – major scholars who defined theological education in the late 20th century have largely retired or died. An ecclesial shift – away from mainline and “magisterial” Protestant traditions toward non-conformist churches. Educational shift – toward distance learning, which now accounts for more than 50% of all seminary enrollment. Coulter provides an analysis of these trends and explains well why they have taken hold so rapidly, and in a summary of the argument at the end of the essay, he asks and then answers his own question: “what do these three shifts tell us about the future? First, the “traditional freestanding seminary with an on-campus population is over.” Interestingly, he suggests that “niche programs” like Nashotah House will remain, but most will not. He obviously knows nothing about Trinity Anglican Seminary, the far larger niche seminary of the ACNA. Second, “seminaries that remain flexible and entrepreneurial will grow” Third, “seminaries that effectively use the new media landscape will grow” Coulter seems to be suggesting that those of us leading theological education should really get with the current trends or face a bleak future. In some ways, he is right, and one of the frustrations of leading in theological education today is that we cannot bend the world to our needs. We must live and work and do our best in the world as it is, and the world that Coulter describes is here whether we like it or not. No doubt, we must be flexible and entrepreneurial, and we must come to terms with the digital landscape and figure out how to flourish within it. But what I found most interesting about Coulter’s essay is what he did not say. And that is, he offered no qualitative judgment on these trends whatsoever—no account of what is lost when residential theological education is abandoned, no reckoning with what these shifts mean for the ecclesial traditions that these seminaries exist to serve (if they serve an ecclesial tradition). In other words, what do these trends mean for theological and ecclesial formation? Worship at Trinity Anglican Seminary’s Trophimus Center. For Anglicans, a near-total reliance on distance education feeds a tribalism that is taking hold in our culture and across the wider church and certainly in the ACNA. Formation that is dispersed entirely into various “satellite campuses,” “Anglican tracks” and distance programs—and one that fails to unite students from different geographical locations the varieties of churchmanship in the common pursuit of theological formation—is a serious threat to “catholicity.” How can we form our aspirants to proclaim the “faith once and for all delivered” in service to the “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic” church when we have no institutions bringing the various parts of the church together in common cause? How do we maintain cohesion and good-will without the friendships forged during three years of intense classroom study, communal living, and common worship—with people not presorted according to region, churchmanship, and other cultural identity markers? At Trinity, we continue to believe that a vibrant residential seminary must be among the key factors ensuring catholicity and uniting a diverse province across differences but within the bounds of biblical orthodoxy. Though not distinctively Christian, the work of Yuval Levin and others would suggest that institutions like residential seminaries are absolutely essential for the vitality and resiliency of religious communities. Coulter also fails to mention artificial intelligence, which is arguably the most important feature of the “new media landscape,” and the one that will shape the future of educational institutions more profoundly than any other. For reasons that I won’t go into in great depth here, AI could render asynchronous, computer-based education essentially meaningless. AI agents can already enroll in a class and complete all assignments as though they were human, and some distance programs have little defense against this sort of thing. There are many seminary programs that have invested heavily in the “new media landscape” and are now highly vulnerable to the emerging ubiquity of artificial intelligence. These issues are very much on my radar as a seminary leader. So… while I agree with Coulter that seminaries need to be flexible, creative, and entrepreneurial, the most important factor moving forward is that formation must be increasingly personal. It requires more personal mentoring, more classroom instruction, more oral examinations, more hand-written assessments, and more apprenticeships. A totally digital, online education is woefully insufficient in the age of AI. At Trinity, we want our students to be well established within a community of learning where they can be personally observed and known deeply by those helping them to discern their future in Christian ministry. We want to hear and see their learning as they ask questions, engage in dialogue, exposit the Word of God, eat and drink with people they would not have chosen as friends, and much more. With our residential students, this human assessment happens naturally, though it is also programmatic as we meet regularly as a faculty to discuss the progress of the students that we work with. For our distance students, this means that we are working hard to ensure that their formation takes place in a church-based community and that they are paired with competent and caring mentors (in the context of a faithful church) who can provide ongoing, human assessment. Several years ago, we developed a “church-based pathway” to ensure that our distance students receive the hands-on personal and communal formation that ministry preparation absolutely requires. As we move forward, we aren’t focused on “surviving” the great seminary sorting. Our clear goal is to remain faithful in the midst of it and to subvert its most destructive tendencies. We want to be the sort of institution worth saving, so as we adapt to meet the many challenges of this time, it is always to pursue that calling more faithfully. The challenges before us will require flexibility, creativity, and courage, but they do not alter our mission or justify losing sight of it. Trinity exists to form leaders for Christian ministry and mission who are deeply known, personally formed, theologically grounded, and prepared to serve the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. In the age of AI, pastoral ministry will remain one vocation where “knowledge work” continues to matter as much or more than ever because it employs knowledge not as a utilitarian tool but as a key dimension of human formation for the very personal “cure of souls.” May God bless all who labor in and benefit from this important work. A Mere Christian On the Anglican Way is free today. But if you enjoyed this post, you can make a pledge for a future subscription. When subscriptions become available, 100% of the funds raised will go to the Trinity Fund, which supports operations at Trinity Anglican Seminary. You won't be charged until we enable payments. The Great Seminary Sorting can be read here: https://protestantmind.com/p/the-great-seminary-sorting?utm_source=LinkedIn&utm_medium=&utm_campaign=Newsletter&utm_term=Seminary

COMMENTARY By David W. Virtue, DD | www.virtueonline.org | August 27, 2026 On multiple fronts, the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) finds itself embroiled in one ecclesiastical fight after another, with no apparent end in sight. Even as it heads toward the September 7 trial of its archbishop, Steve Wood, in Charleston — on charges of sexual harassment, bullying of staff, and plagiarism — another fire has broken out in the usually bucolic Low Country of South Carolina. This one is over the dedication of a school chapel, a shared altar, and the question of who may stand at it. At the center are two bishops: one of them orthodox in faith and morals, the other described by her critics as heretical and apostate, a woman whose theology her detractors say has already booked her passage to a warmer climate. The optics were dreadful, and within hours the story was everywhere — including here at VirtueOnline, this reporter not being known for restraint at such moments. Like a game of Whac-A-Mole, it popped up where no one was looking. The Anglican Bishop of South Carolina, Charles F. “Chip” Edgar III, was photographed standing shoulder to shoulder with the Episcopal Bishop of South Carolina, Ruth Woodliff-Stanley — the two of them smiling in the narthex like a pair of Cheshire cats caught making nice. The occasion was the August 18 dedication of the new St. Timothy’s Chapel, a 600-seat church on the campus of Porter-Gaud School in Charleston. The photographs — the two bishops processing together, draping a hanging over the altar, laughing, embracing — raced across social media. An ecclesiastical storm erupted, with charges flying that could yet end in a defrocking. Into the breach stepped Bishop Julian Dobbs, Dean of the Province and, since Wood’s inhibition last November, the acting Archbishop of the ACNA. It is Dobbs and his fellow bishops who will weigh what, if anything, is to be done. Edgar Explains Himself Reacting to the exposure, Edgar — genuinely orthodox and no man’s pushover — first got testy, lambasting the media for what he took to be overblown publicity. Then he sat down and wrote. “I write to apologize for the hurt feelings and re-opened wounds that the photographs of my participation in the dedication of the new St. Timothy’s Chapel at Porter-Gaud School may have caused,” he began. He had heard from many — in his diocese, in the Province, and in the wider communion — that the images had caused pain and confusion. “I regret that very much.” Edgar then laid out the history. Porter-Gaud is an Episcopal school; when his diocese left TEC, the board resolved that, to serve both ACNA and TEC families, both bishops would sit on it. “There is, of course, an inherent awkwardness in that arrangement,” he wrote. “We in the ACNA are in broken communion with TEC. Our disagreements are real and substantial. I know that. I’ve lived that. In no way do I intend to diminish that hard reality.” As a bishop and a board member, Edgar said, he was asked to take part in the dedication, and he weighed the cost. “I worried that it could cause consternation. I also knew that my refusal to participate would be dispiriting to our diocesan clergy and lay people who serve there, and the many diocesan families who send their children there.” The gospel, he argued, is bearing fruit at Porter-Gaud, and the diocese ought to press into that work, not retreat from it. The liturgy, he insisted, had been planned so that neither bishop would preach or celebrate the Eucharist; one of his own priests, the chaplain, preached and proclaimed the gospel. But — and here is the rub that no amount of planning could smooth — “such services inevitably involve difficult choices and produce awkward moments.” Both bishops dedicated each piece of the new furnishings rather than dividing them up. Who would get the pulpit? The Table? Had he consulted his more seasoned brother bishops beforehand, he conceded, “some of this confusion could have been avoided; that’s on me.” Then he addressed the two photographs that have done the most damage. The first showed both bishops at the Table. Before the service, Edgar explained, they had been asked to help vest the newly consecrated altar. “Some who saw these photos online understood them to show that we celebrated at the Table together. We did not.” The second — and the one that drew the loudest outcry — showed Edgar’s crozier in his hand and the Episcopal bishop’s hand resting on it. “I wish I could go back and change that,” he wrote. Neither bishop was to carry a crozier, the chapel being independent of both dioceses; at the last minute Edgar was asked to use his only to trace the sign of the cross on the threshold, after which he put it away. “Clearly, both of our hands should not have been on it, even if only momentarily. In hindsight, I wish I had insisted on using the processional cross.” He understood, he said, how the image “suggests more than it was, and has become for some a source of anger and pain.” “Brothers and sisters, where my actions have offended, forgive me,” he closed. “At the same time, please pray for the good work that many in our diocese are engaged in at Porter-Gaud School.” The Communion Question Here is where the accounts part company — and where the fight will finally be settled. Edgar’s careful line is that neither bishop celebrated the Eucharist, and that is true as far as it goes. But independent accounts of the service, including this one’s earlier reporting, describe Holy Communion distributed at two stations, with both bishops taking part in administering the Sacrament. Neither presided; both, it appears, distributed. That distinction is the whole quarrel in miniature. To Edgar’s defenders it is exculpatory: no concelebration, no joint consecration, nothing that formally breaches the broken communion between the two churches. To his critics it is beside the point. Sharing in the distribution of the Body and Blood alongside a bishop one holds to be apostate is, they say, precisely the scandal — celebrant or no. A remnant that bled for a decade and forfeited its buildings to walk away from that altar does not much care who held the paten. Edgar has asked the College of Bishops to spend a season of prayer and reflection and to give guidance on how ACNA bishops should conduct themselves in these shared settings. “As a bishop in the church, I will follow the College’s conclusion,” he said. That conclusion will come sooner rather than later. Dobbs Draws the Line It did not take long. Within hours of the diocese releasing Edgar’s letter, Dobbs issued his own — and it carried the unmistakable chill of a man who has already made up his mind. “A situation has arisen in our Province that has given great offense to many who worship in our churches,” Dobbs wrote. “I want to address this and be plain about the position of the Anglican Church in North America.” Many in the Province, he said, had been shocked by “what appears to be renewed communion with The Episcopal Church.” Then the history, delivered in the cadence of a man reading out a verdict. “It is now nearly two decades since many of us separated from The Episcopal Church, whose leadership abandoned the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. Departing from those with whom we worshiped and served was costly to our parishes and to our souls. It remains painful for many of us. It was, however, the right thing to do.” Dobbs invoked the Global Anglican Council, which last March called Anglican leaders to a “principled disengagement” from those who remain in communion with churches that have abandoned biblical teaching. That same principle, he said, governs the ACNA’s dealings closer to home. “Those who hold ecclesiastical authority in our Province bear a solemn responsibility to uphold this position.” “Disengagement does not mean indifference,” he added. The ACNA prays for those who have departed the faith and pleads with the Lord to restore them. “Until it comes, however, we cannot be in communion with those who have distorted God’s Word.” And then the sentence Edgar surely read twice: “Next month, as part of the scheduled College of Bishops meeting, I will lay the seriousness of this situation before the bishops and ask them to consider with me what faithfulness to our Lord and the faith we have received requires of those who have been entrusted with ecclesiastical authority.” Cui Bono? There is a veiled threat in that language, and no one in the ACNA will have missed it. Edgar is on the hot seat. The man putting him there is the acting head of a province already convulsed by the inhibition and looming trial of its archbishop, and by a run of lawsuits among its own bishops — hardly a house at peace with itself, and hardly the setting for a caretaker to be sitting in judgment on a diocesan. It should be said that Edgar did not act from weakness. When he stood beside Woodliff-Stanley he did so not as the grateful leader of a remnant but as the shepherd of a diocese nearly three times the size of hers — a man with standing, not a supplicant. That makes the miscalculation more puzzling, and the response to it more revealing. Read one way, this is a straightforward matter of a line that must hold: the ACNA is not in communion with TEC, and a bishop who blurs that line invites correction. Read another way, it is something older and more human. Whatever else it accomplishes, this episode retires any notion that Edgar — able, orthodox, and widely respected — might one day succeed Wood. That would leave the top slot open to the man now holding it. We shall see. David W. Virtue, DD, is founder and managing editor of VirtueOnline. His writings can be found at www.virtueonline.org, where you can subscribe to receive his free biweekly VIEWPOINTS. His Substack on the Middle East is at davidvirtue2.substack.com.

COMMENTARY By David W. Virtue, DD | www.virtueonline.org | August 25, 2026 They never met, and there was never any intention that they should. The country was Brazil. Spiritually and theologically, the two gatherings might as well have convened ten thousand miles apart. Two bodies of Anglican leaders — with different gods, different gospels, and different destinations — passed each other like ships in the night. Sunni and Shia without the bullets and the guns, a communion in unambiguous schism. All talk of unity — that perennial incantation of archbishops, and never more so than from the present occupant of Lambeth Palace — has long since evaporated. It survives now only as liturgy, recited over a body that has already died. Dame Sarah Mullally spent her first African pilgrimage this summer at Cape Coast Castle in Ghana, defending the Church of England's £100 million reparations fund from the very dungeons of the transatlantic trade, praying in lament and calling for healing. Even sympathizers noticed what was missing. The historian Bijan Omrani asked aloud why she prayed only in penance and never in thanks — never for the British clergy, sailors, and abolitionists who spent their lives, and in many cases their blood, to bring the trade to an end. The Church of England now knows how to apologize for its past. It has forgotten how to preach. Why Brazil? Why Brazil, one might ask? It has indigenous peoples, a rainforest of international note, and a burgeoning Pentecostalism that is slowly but surely overtaking several centuries of moribund Roman Catholicism. The people will no longer be intimidated into believing that the Roman Church is the one true church that alone dispenses salvation. God, it turns out, is bigger than the Vatican. Anglicanism has had a footing in Brazil far longer than most realize. It arrived in 1810, when the Treaty of Commerce and Navigation between Portugal and the United Kingdom permitted the Church of England to build chaplaincies for British expatriates in what was still a Portuguese colony — making Anglicanism the oldest non-Roman church in the country. A genuinely Brazilian, Portuguese-speaking church came later, in 1889-90, carried by young missionaries from the Theological Seminary of Virginia — Lucien Lee Kinsolving and James Watson Morris among them — who came not to serve homesick Englishmen but to plant a national church. From a missionary district of the American Episcopal Church, it grew into an autonomous province of the Anglican Communion in 1965: the Igreja Episcopal Anglicana do Brasil, the IEAB. And, like the Episcopal Church it sprang from, it eventually tore in two. The Recife Story The fracture came in 2005, over the issue that has broken Anglicanism on every continent: human sexuality. After the Episcopal Church consecrated the openly partnered Gene Robinson in 2003 in open defiance of Lambeth Resolution 1.10, the Diocese of Recife, under its bishop Robinson Cavalcanti, refused to bend. For that refusal he was deposed and expelled from the IEAB. He did not go quietly, and he did not go alone. He took with him roughly two-thirds of the diocese’s clergy and the overwhelming majority of its laity, and placed himself under the primatial oversight of Archbishop Gregory Venables of the Southern Cone. The province kept the buildings; Cavalcanti kept the people. Then came the tragedy that still shadows the diocese — and shadows me. On the night of February 26, 2012, Robinson Cavalcanti and his wife, Miriam, were stabbed to death in their home in Olinda by their adopted son, a young man with a long history of drug abuse. The bishop was sixty-eight; Miriam was sixty-four. Robinson was my friend, and I miss him still. A confessor who had faced down an entire province lost his life not to persecution but to private anguish under his own roof. GAFCON mourned him as one of its steadfast heroes; I mourned a man I had known and admired. Into that breach stepped Miguel Uchôa Cavalcanti. He had planted the Church of the Holy Spirit in Greater Recife in 1996 with just thirty souls — a congregation that would become the largest Anglican parish in Latin America. This writer recalls the early days of that work quite vividly. Elected to succeed the martyred bishop later in 2012 and consecrated that December, Uchôa did not merely hold the line; he multiplied it. By 2018 the single embattled diocese had become a province — the Anglican Church in Brazil, the IAB — with Uchôa as its first Archbishop and Primate, recognized by GAFCON and the Global South. Today he sits as Vice-Chairman of the Global Anglican Council, the new governing body of the reordered Global Anglican Communion. The man who buried his predecessor now helps lead a communion. That is the ground on which the two gatherings met. One tribe would remember none of it. The other had lived every word. Gathering One: São Paulo The first group convened in São Paulo from August 10 to 12 — the Anglican primates of the Americas, seven of them, gathered under the aegis of the IEAB and the Canterbury-aligned Communion. They were Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe of the Episcopal Church; Marinez Rosa dos Santos Bassotto of Brazil, the first woman to lead an Anglican province in Latin America; Shane Parker of Canada; Alba Sally Sue Hernández García of Mexico; Juan David Alvarado Melgar of Central America; Brian Williams of South America; and Philip Wright of the West Indies. They pledged to labor together on the great global questions of the age. They issued a statement. They affirmed the dignity and rights of indigenous peoples. They deplored colonialism, secularism, polarization, migration, corruption, and climate change. They revitalized a committee on migration. What they did not do — what they dared not do — was look out the window at their own emptying pews. It is tempting to file all seven under the banner of the progressive left, and the truth is more revealing than that. But the statement they signed named every crisis in the world except the one consuming their own provinces. Not a word about the collapse of attendance across the Anglican West. Not a word about the doctrinal earthquakes that have shattered the Communion they represent. It is more congenial to pronounce upon the state of the planet in righteous indignation than to stare the state of one’s own church in the face. Picture, if you can bear it, the logical terminus of this trajectory: a gay dean preaching to an empty cathedral, announcing that God has now blessed every arrangement the age approves, and inviting the faithful — all four of them — to a rave in the nave afterward, gin and tonics provided. It is satire only until you notice how little distance remains between the joke and the trend line. Gathering Two: Recife Under the banner of God’s faithfulness, a very different assembly met in Recife under GAFCON, now the Global Anglican Communion. Its purpose was to install the Very Rev. Gabriel Moreira Uchôa Cavalcanti as Dean of the Catedral Anglicana do Espírito Santo. By the movement’s own account, the service overflowed with joy and hope as Archbishop Miguel Uchôa passed the mantle of the cathedral’s leadership to his son, Gabriel. Ecclesiastical nepotism is not new, and where genuine generational faith is concerned it can be a mercy rather than a machination — the handing of a torch, not the hoarding of a throne. The celebration marked thirty years since Archbishop Miguel planted that church in 1996 with thirty people. Yet even amid the celebration there was no forgetting the cost. Those thirty years told a story of hope purchased through severe trial. Faithfulness to the authority of Scripture had come at a punishing price for the brothers and sisters in Brazil — the loss of their former institutional home, their buildings, their standing in the province that raised them. That is the price of faithfulness, and the Lord did not abandon his people. Note well: the São Paulo primates, meeting in the same country the same month, made no mention of this schism, these losses, this exile. One cannot lament what one has caused. When faithful Anglicans in Brazil found themselves cast out of their provincial home, GAFCON stood with them, offering recognition, encouragement, and a place within the global Anglican family. The Diocese of Recife became an extra-provincial diocese; then, through what the movement calls gospel growth, it multiplied into the Anglican Church in Brazil in 2018. Suffering and sacrifice, it turned out, had not been in vain. The gathering was careful to locate its hope where hope belongs — not in institutions, buildings, or human strength, but in the risen Christ. During their days in Recife, members of the Global Anglican Council also met to continue the work of building out the new Communion, and announced that the G27 Prayer Conference will be held in Recife from April 20 to 23, 2027. The Most Rev. Dr. Laurent Mbanda, Chairman of the Global Anglican Council, reminded the faithful that thirty years after a small band stepped out in faith, they were being shown again that God is able to do immeasurably more than they could ask or imagine. Two Gatherings, Two Gospels Two gatherings. Two worldviews. Two gospels. One stood in the sunlight of its own self-congratulation, imagining itself a chamber of globalists, deploring the condition of the world and hoping the governments of men might deign to listen. The other gave thanks to God for His faithfulness in bringing dead souls to living faith in Christ — even as the world staggers toward apocalypse. One counted its causes. The other counted its converts. And only one of them was growing. David W. Virtue, DD, is founder and managing editor of VirtueOnline. His writings can be found at www.virtueonline.org, where you can subscribe to receive his free biweekly VIEWPOINTS. His Substack on the Middle East is at davidvirtue2.substack.com.