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by David G. Duggan © www.virtueonline.org March 6, 2025 While the world agonizes over Ukraine, Trump’s speech to Congress, and the unsolved mystery of the death of Gene Hackman and his 30-years younger wife Betsy Arakawa, as we enter Lent matters spiritual should be top-of-mind. In this regard, the death last week of the Rev. Dr. Martin E. Marty 3 weeks after his 97th birthday deserves note. Dr. Marty was a longtime professor of church history at the University of Chicago’s divinity school (few know that the U of C got its start as Northern Baptist Seminary until John D. Rockefeller came around with mega-donations totaling nearly $35 million during his lifetime), but got his start as a Missouri Synod Lutheran pastor in the Chicago suburbs. One of the few theological academics with practical experience in parish ministry, Dr. Marty traveled and lectured widely, finding time to edit The Christian Century, a monthly journal of “progressive Christianity,” write a bi-weekly newsletter Context, publish 60 books, hundreds of scholarly articles, essays, and columns and then deliver commencement addresses. He also served as a doctoral adviser to budding academics looking to add the gilt-and-maroon-edged diploma to their CVs. In the ‘60s, Dr. Marty was active in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam movements, founding “Clergy and Laity Concerned,” sort of an antipode to Billy Graham’s public indoctrination by Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. Conceding his march to Selma, invited by Dr. King, and as potential Vietnam-era cannon-fodder, I have found academics’ anti-war protests troubling: protected by tenure, they get the cheap grace of not having to sacrifice for their beliefs. I heard Dr. Marty speak several times: once at the Newberry Library some 20 years ago just after Martin Luther’s 130-volume opus was boiled down to 30 CDs; and another time at a Northside Chicago parish where he discussed the religious movements which derived from Chicago’s 1893 Columbian exposition (including the introduction of Hinduism to the States). Within those 130 volumes, Luther defended a married clergy as consistent with Scripture (cf. Matthew 8:14–15; Mark 1:29–31; Luke 4: 38-39; Jesus healing Peter’s mother-in-law; which sort of implies that he was married). I asked whether there was anything in those 130 volumes dealing with homosexual clergy which Luther himself had encountered during a pilgrimage to Rome. My recollection of Marty’s answer was that there was nothing. More recently, with Dr. Marty I have been participating in a zoom Bible-study coordinated by my local Lutheran parish. I am not now, nor can ever become a Lutheran: I worship Jesus, and even if his apostle Luther is as responsible for my Christian faith as anyone in the last 500 years, I cannot bring myself to adhere to a denomination so embedded in a Germanic culture which inter alia gave us World Wars I and II. Not that there is any virtue in the Episcopal denomination of my upbringing, but the shibboleth which distinguishes Lutherans from Anglicans–among Lutherans, the only schism is heresy; among Episcopalians, the only heresy is schism– is at best a glib glossing over of a theological divide which hasn’t been bridged in those 500 years. Dr Marty had suffered a fall recently and had moved from his John Hancock Bldg apartment to Minnesota, closer to the state of his origin, Nebraska, which punches well above its weight in theology and law, two disciplines which I follow (legal scholars Roscoe Pound and Karl Llewellyn were cornhuskers as was Harold deWolf, Martin Luther King’s dissertation advisor). Martin Emil Marty, Ph.D. and servant of the Risen Christ: RIP. We shall not see your likes again. END

By Chuck Collins www.virtueonline.org March 8, 2025 ASH WEDNESDAY is very strange for Anglicans. First, the passage from Matthew chapter 6 is read that tells us to keep our religion private, not like the Pharisees who love to be seen by others. Then we smudge ashes on foreheads to announce our piety like neon flashing signs. And what’s with the pronouncement,“Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return”? This was God’s punishment for Adam’s disobedience in Genesis 3 that is hopeless even for those of us who are not already depressed. No, I need to hear, “Remember that Jesus came to seek and save the lost!” or “Remember that he was crushed for your iniquities.” “Christian holiness finds its ground not in human mortality,” says Liam Beadle, “but in the sure and certain hope of the new creation.” The practice of imposing ashes was first introduced in the church by Pope Urban II in 1091 who stated, “On Ash Wednesday, everyone - clergy and laity, men and women - will receive ashes.” In the span of church history, it is a relatively recent practice. The practice was abruptly ended by the 16th century English reformers and excluded from the Book of Common Prayer, never to be seen officially again until the 1979 Prayer Book revision - 1979! The imposition of ashes was stopped because the reformers wanted to distance the Church of England from the Medieval Catholic understandings of penance and compulsory auricular confession to a priest. The reformers opposed the blessing of material objects, such as ashes, especially when this suggested that blessing automatically conveys grace apart from faith, and they recognized the contradiction of Matthew chapter 6 with the very visible sign of piety. Imposing ashes was left out of all Church of England Prayer Books (1549, 1552, 1559, and 1662) and replaced with a service called “A Commination” for the first day of Lent. Bishop Nicolas Ridley, in a famous sermon, called the imposition of ashes idolatry because of its potential to separate a meaningless devotional act from the alluring love of God. It is a historically new Anglican practice that started in small ways and places by the ritualist marching band that followed the 1830s Oxford Movement, and then gradually gained traction to the point where in the 1979 Prayer Book it is wildly prominent. Ask any Episcopalian or Anglican today and you will hear that the imposition of ashes is the central feature of our Ash Wednesday service. And even though the 2019 Anglican (ACNA) Prayer Book claimed to be faithful to the 1662 standard, like many Roman Catholic carryovers into the 1979 Prayer Book, the practice of imposing ashes has a front-and-center place in the American Anglican Prayer Book. Archbishop Thomas Cranmer in 1548, the year after King Henry VIII died, secured an order from the Privy Council to forbid Candlemas candles, the use of ashes on Ash Wednesday, and Palm Sunday palms. Even though it was a directive only for Canterbury diocese, it signaled the end of the Medieval superstitious practices in the Church of England. Ash Wednesday has always been a part of Anglicanism (called in the 1662 Prayer Book “A Commination, or Denouncing of God’s anger and judgments against sinners, With certain prayers to be used on the first day of Lent”), albeit without any mention of imposing ashes. This beautiful and simple service was written to take the communicant from sin and repentance to grace and gratitude. Just looking at the very short homily supplied in the Commination that follows the ten curses (1662 Book of Common Prayer), those who are crushed by the sinfulness of their wrong-doing are led to the abundance of God’s grace and mercy for repentant sinners. It’s beautiful; it’s the gospel! This is the way to begin Lent! "For such is the force of simplicity that it lifts men's minds towards divine things more than a long series of ceremonies united by however good a meaning" (“Of Ceremonies” from Saepius Officio,1897). This week many will attend Ash Wednesday services which will include the imposition of ashes on foreheads, and many very faithful Christians will participate. We will be reminded that we will all die, and the message will be preached that we need to get our acts together before Easter. May we also be reminded that God’s mercy is everlasting and new every morning. Remember, we are not left in the dust, but we are, by God’s grace, destined to be sons and daughters of the King of Heaven in his New Creation. This seems to me to be a better way to prepare for Easter, by taking sin very seriously, but always mindful that crushing guilt is meant to lead us to grace and gratitude. “Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, O God, that we, worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness, through Jesus Christ our Lord.” “Ashes in a Time of Plague,” Samuel L. Bray https://www.pbs.org.uk/.../09/faith-worship88-website.pdf “No Imposition: The Commination and Lent,” Liam Beadle

Nashotah House Receives ACNA Prayer Book // Marty E. Martin has died // We should not ask, ‘What is wrong with the world?’ for that diagnosis has already been given. Rather we should ask, “What has happened to salt and light? – John Stott Never in the history of its existence has the Church of England been more influenced by the rule of women, and never in the history of its existence has the Church of England been more at risk of collapse. – Aaron Edwards Ultimately, we have a generation who has not only misrepresented Jesus in His sovereignty but has also robbed him of His masculinity. We have not seen Him as our all-powerful King, nor have we seen Him as a masculine Man. As a result, we have produced a version of Christianity that lives up to the Christ we have created—weak, effeminate, delicate, and soft. However, this is not the Christ of the Bible. – Dale Partridge The era that we are living in is post-Christian, but not post-religious. The post-Christian world is not ending up in atheistic nihilism, as many had assumed; rather, it is re-paganizing. – James Wood The Church of England ought to be a shining light to the nation and the world, representing truth, beauty, love, grace, order, joy, and peace. But instead of glorifying God by upholding His Word against the scoffers who hate what that Word says and implies, they have chosen instead to align themselves with their enemies, trading light for darkness, selling their birth-right for a pot of stew, denying the very Word of God in order to warm their hands by the fire with strangers who do not mean well. – Aaron Edwards The American church today is at a crossroads. While the kingdom of God will go on, its future in this country is not certain. The Great Dechurching could well be the American church’s most crucial moment and greatest opportunity. – Ryan P. Burge Dear Brothers and Sisters, www.virtueonlione.org March 7, 2025 Is denominationalism dead? For Generation Z it is a timely question. Denominations define doctrine. This is not a sacrosanct issue for generations Y and Z and Nones, so defining beliefs by denominational loyalty might be meaningless. Furthermore, are the doctrinal disputes of previous generations that so haunted many of us, relevant in today’s techno world of Facebook, TikTok and X. The Pope is trying to modernize the church by downplaying doctrines and scrapping sacred moral positions in order to make the RCC more relevant. But the pushback has been startling, and he may have made a strategic mistake. There is a rise of orthodoxy in Catholicism that might give pause for the next pope to reconsider the pathway his predecessor took. Do generations of young adults really care that the PCA broke away from the PCUSA or ACNA from TEC? Do they have sleepless nights worrying about the Lord’s return and will they be left behind? Will they be moved by which Prayer Book we should all be using or how to cross oneself? Are they agonizing over whether they are saved by grace or good works? Or if salvation even really matters! Or are their concerns really about whether they can freely express their views without being cancelled. Will their freedoms be their tomorrow morning when they wake up? Is it more to the point that we are at a civilizational moment with the waning of the West and the War of the Worlds, outlined in Os Guinness’s new book? Perhaps it is not a simple either/or, but whether we like it or not, the universe has moved under our feet and we are no longer in Kansas. Do we need new strategies for evangelism and discipleship? Are the old evangelistic paradigms now long gone, and no longer recoverable, perhaps a good thing? Recently I wrote that only one percent of churches in America are effectively engaged in evangelism. That came as a shock to many readers. If we don’t evangelize, we will die. Liberal and progressive churches are already on life support, but evangelical churches are not far behind. This is not your parents’ church, and kids don’t automatically follow in their parents’ footsteps. There are multitudes of grieving parents who have watched their children abandon the faith they were raised in (think the Campolos); many have drifted away forever; many have inexplicably committed suicide, died of fentanyl and the list goes on. There are more trails of tears than tv shows. I watched Pastor Rick Warren in a video, who lost a son to suicide, explain why pain was necessary for growth in Christian character. He is a compelling speaker. “You don’t get over it, you get through it.” Or as James Blunt in his new recording, Monsters sings, “You’re not my father, I’m not your son, we’re just two grown men saying goodbye.” Or is it as one blogger recently noted; “Something extraordinary is happening in American spiritual life. As traditional religious institutions decline, new forms of meaning-making have emerged, creating what scholars call a New Civil Religion. This contemporary spiritual landscape is characterized by its provision of meaning, purpose, community, and ritual outside traditional religious frameworks.” Perhaps this explains why the Church of England is irrelevant to 98% of the British public, or why Christianity in the rest of Europe is in decline (while Islam is on the rise) and why Nones are the fastest growing “religious” group in America today. Doing things the same old way hoping for a different result is a dead end. Someone should tell Franklin Graham that crusades don’t work anymore. That was his father’s generation. The times they are a changing. Churches can’t rely on methods and techniques that worked in the past. We live in the world of AI, hamstrung only by our imagination. We do know that people are drawn to a church that appears authentic and real. They won’t be concerned about how the Eucharist is delivered, or even if the right words are said. They probably don’t know them anyway. The church will be color blind, race blind. Our Hispanic pastor was born in Newark, NJ where turning the other cheek could mean a bullet in your face. He still wrestles with what that means even though he is now a safe distance from that world. From the pulpit he shares his conversion story from the rough and tumble streets of Newark to the safe climes of Drew University, but he never forgets how the Lord of the universe stepped into his life and saved him. That is seared in his mind. It consumes his evangelism and his style as he reaches out to a diverse community. Nothing is cast in stone only the timeless message of the gospel. ***** In a few short weeks, a group of orthodox, mostly evangelical primates of the Anglican Communion, meeting on the acronym GAFCON (Global Anglican Future Conference) will meet in Plano, Texas to consider their role in the communion. These primates have formally broken with Canterbury. The next-generation gathering of GAFCON primates have come out with a statement soundly rejecting proposed reforms by the Anglican Communion. The G25 Mini Conference is at a very crucial time in the life of the movement, as they gather for the first time since the resignation of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, to consider how GAFCON will continue to lead the renewal of the Anglican Communion, according to chairman and GAFCON primate Rwanda Archbishop Laurent Mbanda. “For this reason, we will be convening an extended Primates Council meeting, where our agenda will focus on how to strengthen our fellowship with authentic Anglicans, both those who are contesting the faith in liberal dioceses, as well as those who have found refuge in dioceses established and authenticated by GAFCON,” he said. You can read more here: https://www.virtueonline.org/post/gafcon-rejects-anglican-communion-reforms-cites-doctrinal-drift ***** In what looks to be a case of Dé·jà vu, a second Episcopal bishop, John Taylor Bishop of Los Angeles, has publicly slammed Donald Trump following a verbally tough exchange between the president and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office of the White House. The first was Washington Bishop Marianne Budde who rebuked Donald Trump from the pulpit of Washington National Cathedral over his immigration and other policies. Outraged by her comments, Trump asked her to apologize. She refused. Taylor opined that seeing Putin's boys bully a besieged freedom fighter in the Oval Office was humiliating for every American. “Surely this crosses the line, even for the diehards. Are there really no Republicans out there who have the courage to stand up and say: All Americans should be deeply ashamed of what he has done in our name, and deeply ashamed of how he did it. No?” You can read more here: https://www.virtueonline.org/post/los-angeles-episcopal-bishop-slams-president-trump-over-oval-office-debacle Ironically Taylor is the former director of the Nixon Presidential Library. Nixon was the acolyte of "realpolitik": accepting the world as it is and doing what you can to improve it on the edges. ***** Has the Sexual Revolution destroyed the mainline churches? On any reading, the sexual revolution, begun in the 60s, has morphed into the most powerful moral force upending 4,000 years of sexual teaching, overturning the ancient binary tradition of male and female. Os Guinness, an Anglican and social critic notes in his new book, Our Civilizational Moment, the Waning of the West and the War of the Worlds notes, “this smashing of the categories is not the ultimate goal of the sexual revolution. Its spiritual elite have a higher goal in mind: to strive towards ultimate harmony beyond all categories. In aiming for this state, the elite revolutionaries are attempting to return both paganism and sexual androgyny to their primitive pedestal and to license every possible type of sexuality as an expression of freedom---with polyamory now half in the door and pedophilia and zoophilia (or bestiality) well on their way.” The sexual revolutionaries are out to subvert thousands of years of “patriarchal” societies (including the four thousand years of both the Jewish roots and the Christian flowering), he declares. Guinness blasts both the Episcopal Church and the Church of England. “Much of the Christian church did not need to be overcome. Significant branches, such as the Episcopal Church, now closely followed by a large wing of the Church of England led by their progressive bishops and archbishops, rushed forward to embrace the sexual revolution, and enlist on “the right side of history.” Simultaneously, they cut themselves off from their own tradition and from the majority of their fellow believers around the world, and they suicidally emptied their own pews. You can read more here: https://www.virtueonline.org/post/how-the-sexual-revolution-destroyed-the-mainline-churches ***** Nashotah House Dean Lauren Whitnah hosted some 61 bishops, priests, deacons, professors, and seminarians from across the country for a ceremony honoring the addition of ACNA’s 2019 edition of the Book of Common Prayer to the Underwood Prayer Book Collection. It joins rare and historic prayer books dating back to the 16th century that are available for research purposes. Three current and former archbishops of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) gathered February 25 at Nashotah House in honor of their denomination’s prayer book. You can read more here: https://www.virtueonline.org/post/acna-s-2019-prayer-book-joins-nashotah-collection ***** The Diocese of Dallas has announced the call for a new bishop coadjutor to replace retiring Bishop George Sumner. A slate of three candidates for the diocese’s bishop coadjutor has emerged: They are: The Rev. William Carroll, rector of Trinity Episcopal Church in Longview, Texas; The Rt. Rev. Fraser Lawton, bishop assistant in the Diocese of Dallas and rector of the Church of St. Dunstan in Mineola, Texas; The Very Rev. Rob Price, dean of St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Dallas, Texas. By all accounts they are orthodox, but the kicker will be if the evangelically driven diocese will be able to elect a bishop who won’t go along with Resolution B012, and if they do not, will that bishop obtain consents from the HOD and HOB or will it be another debacle like the Diocese of Florida that is still without a permanent bishop? We shall see. ***** A former archbishop of Canterbury is among a number of clergy facing possible disciplinary action over safeguarding failures after an abuse report which prompted Justin Welby's resignation, the Church of England has announced. Lord George Carey, who still sits in the upper chamber, was named in the Makin review, which concluded abuse carried out for decades by Christian camp leader John Smyth was known about and not acted upon by various people within the Church. Lord Carey resigned as a priest in December following an investigation into the Church of England's handling of a separate sexual abuse case. He is one of 10 clergy named by the Church's national safeguarding team (NST) on Tuesday as people they are seeking to bring disciplinary proceedings against over potential failures in safeguarding. Ironically, the archbishop who should have resigned over multiple charges of failed safeguarding, the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, has steadfastly refused to go, and now presides as a lame duck leader over the Church of England, temporarily replacing Archbishop Justin Welby. ***** The Church of England continues to cultivate the seeds of its own demise with such unerring success that sometimes you wonder if it is deliberate, writes Dr. Aaron Edwards, a theology lecturer at Cliff College, who was dismissed for “misconduct” after posting a tweet defending Christian sexual ethics. He wrote; At a recent Anglican Synod, the Bishop of London, Sarah Mullally, broke down in tears. Why was the Bishop of London moved to tears? Was it because of the utter lack of faith in so many modern churches? Was it because of the catastrophic decline of the Church of England in our time? Or was it due to the hundreds of thousands of aborted babies every year in the very nation to which that Church is called? None of the above. She was moved to tears because of “micro-aggressions” and “institutional barriers” against women within the Church of England. “It’s difficult to describe just what those culturally Marxist terms of the Zeitgeist communicate at such a time as this. This is, after all, a time in which women are “permitted” to teach and exercise authority over men in the church as preachers, vicars, and even as bishops, with many even calling for a first female archbishop.” He writes; “Never in the history of its existence has the Church of England been more influenced by the rule of women, and never in the history of its existence has the Church of England been more at risk of collapse. Yet it is the apparent ongoing raft of subjective “micro-aggressions” against women deemed to be the greatest cause of ecclesial harm.” You can read his brilliant take down, A Lament for the Church of England here: https://www.virtueonline.org/post/a-lament-for-the-church-of-england ***** On the CULTURE WARS front, a new poll shows most Americans oppose transgender participation in women's sports and gender care for kids. A recent survey reveals that nearly half of Americans believe the U.S. has overstepped in permitting male, trans-identified athletes to compete in women's sports, alongside substantial opposition to medical interventions for children facing gender dysphoria. Conducted by The New York Times/Ipsos, the poll gathered responses from 2,128 American adults between January 2 and January 10. When respondents were asked if they felt that “Society has gone too far in accommodating transgender people,” 49% responded positively. In contrast, 21% agreed with the statement that “Society has not gone far enough in accommodating transgender people,” while 28% thought that “Society has achieved a reasonable balance in accommodating transgender people.” You can read more here: https://www.virtueonline.org/post/poll-shows-most-americans-oppose-transgender-participation-in-women-s-sports-and-gender-care-for-kid ***** U.S. Christianity’s downturn is leveling off, but the Roman Catholic Church faces precipitous decline, according to a comprehensive Pew Research Center survey published in late February. Catholicism loses 8.4 members for every convert it gains through ‘religious switching’, writes Jule Gomes, a Vatican-based reporter. The decades-long decline in Christianity across the U.S. has stalled, yet Catholics are still leaving in significant numbers, according to Pew. The religiously unaffiliated population — who have also come to be known as “nones” — has leveled off; the Christian share of the population after years of downturn has been relatively stable since 2019, the Religious Landscape Study (RLS) reported. The study, which is the largest single survey of its kind and was conducted over seven months in 2023-24, found that 62% of U.S. adults identify as Christians (40% of whom identify as Protestants and 19% as Catholics). You can read more here: https://www.virtueonline.org/post/u-s-christianity-s-downturn-levels-off-but-catholic-church-faces-precipitous-decline ***** Who are evangelicals? There are about 78 million evangelicals in America, according to Pew Research Center’s massive new survey of the religious landscape released on Wednesday. Most are white, Republican, and say religion is very important to them. But not all. The study—considered the most comprehensive look at religion in the United States, with more than 36,000 people filling out a 116-question survey in all 50 states—shows significant evangelical variety. Evangelicals are diverse: racially, politically, economically, and even in terms of religious practice. You can read more here: https://www.christianitytoday.com/2025/02/who-are-evangelicals-pew-study/ ***** On a personal note, VOL recognizes the 98th birthday of the former Episcopal Bishop of South Carolina, the Rt. Rev. Dr. C. FitzSimons Allison. The evangelical bishop has authored six books and resides with his wife Martha to whom he has been married for 75 years, in Georgetown, SC. He is known for his role in the Anglican realignment, which led to his participation in the controversial consecration in 2000 of two bishops opposed to the blessing of same-sex unions by the Episcopal Church, that took place in Singapore. He serves as a retired bishop of the Anglican Diocese of South Carolina in the Anglican Church in North America since 2022. ***** A notable death took place this past week. Martin E. Marty was 97, and his death could be interpreted as the end of an era. For roughly six decades, Marty was recognized as the leading authority on religion in America. He wrote 60 books and thousands of articles and reviews. Marty was president of various academic societies, and held administrative posts and memberships on boards. At the height of his career, Marty was often cited in national media and advised presidents Carter and Clinton. He was a leading proponent of liberal Christianity. “The noise of conflict” was a frequent Marty topic. He led a research project on fundamentalism and lectured on “hardline” religion. His attention to Christian tradition was sobered by analysis of institutional fractures because of “culture wars.” Marty, who published some 60 books in all, served for a half-century as an editor and columnist for the Christian Century. ***** “The truth about the Enneagram turned my blood cold,” writes Christina Lynn Wallace at her substack. The Enneagram takes our eyes off of the God in whose image we are made and gets us contemplating how we experience that image through tools which do not point us to Him in the first but rather the last instance. You can read her take here: https://christinalynnwallace.substack.com/p/the-truth-about-the-enneagram-that?utm_source=multiple-personal-recommendations-email&utm_medium=email&triedRedirect=true ***** VOL’s website is fully up and running. Over the next few weeks, we will place over 35,000 stories in the archives. Please bear with us. A transition like this is time consuming and costly and we could use some financial assistance to place the archives. We have specialists and consultants who must be paid who are making the transition possible. With VOL’s new website you can more easily navigate to areas of interest. Please consider a tax-deductible donation. A PayPal donation link can be found here: DONATE | Virtue Online If you are more inclined with old fashioned checks, (as I am), you can send your donation to: VIRTUEONLINE P.O. Box 111 Shohola, PA 18458 Warmly in Christ, David

Catholicism loses 8.4 members for every convert it gains through ‘religious switching’ By JULES GOMES March 6, 2025 The decades-long decline in Christianity across the U.S. has stalled, yet Catholics are still leaving in significant numbers, according to a comprehensive Pew Research Center survey published in late February. The religiously unaffiliated population — who have also come to be known as “nones” — has leveled off; the Christian share of the population after years of downturn has been relatively stable since 2019, the Religious Landscape Study (RLS) reported. The study, which is the largest single survey of its kind and was conducted over seven months in 2023-24, found that 62% of U.S. adults identify as Christians (40% of whom identify as Protestants and 19% as Catholics). The RLS found that the number of U.S. adults identifying as Christians had dropped from 2007 (78%) and 2014 (71%), but the Christian share of the adult population has been relatively stable since 2019, hovering between 60% and 64%. Big Deal “If you look to the long term, it’s a story of decline in American religion,” said Gregory Smith, a senior associate director of research at Pew. “But it’s a completely different story if you look at the short term, which is a story of stability over the last four or five years. Much of the shift is among young, conservative white males, says David Campbell, a political scientist at the University of Notre Dame noted. Ryan Burge, a political scientist at Eastern Illinois University, agreed. “We’re entering a new era of the American religious landscape,” he said, adding that the growth of the “nones” has “either slowed or stopped completely, and that’s a big deal.” A significant exception to the decline of religiously affiliated adults is the Catholic Church, which continues to hemorrhage members through what the survey labels “religious switching,” a process of moving to another denomination or choosing to leave the church altogether. Catholicism Nosedives “For every U.S. adult who has become a Catholic after being raised in some other religion or without a religion, there are 8.4 adults who say they were raised in the Catholic faith but who no longer describe themselves as Catholics,” the RLS found. In contrast, only 1.8 people have left Protestantism for every person who converted to it after having been raised in another religious group or in no religion, Pew reported, noting that “the ratio for Catholicism is even more lopsided.” The survey elaborated on the nosedive in the Catholic population: Catholics have experienced the greatest net losses due to switching. About three-in-ten U.S. adults (30.2%) say they were raised Catholic. But 43% of the people raised Catholic no longer identify as Catholic, meaning that 12.8% of all U.S. adults are former Catholics. Conversely, only 1.5% of U.S. adults converted to Catholicism after being raised in another denomination or no religion, bringing the Catholic population among U.S. adults to 18.9%. New Reformation “This is a 1530’s Europe level crisis, and Catholics can’t put their heads in the sand and pretend everything is awesome. We need a new Catholic Reformation,” Crisis Magazine Editor in Chief Eric Sammons lamented on X. “With respect to my beloved Catholic friends, I don’t know how one could read the Pew report and come away with a triumphalist Catholicism that is very prevalent on X,” wrote Dr. Andrew T. Walker, professor of ethics and public theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. “I should add that, yes, in the same report, you can find very unpleasant things about evangelicalism, too, but it does seem to indicate that Protestants have less of a discipleship problem than Catholicism does,” Walker tweeted. Catholic numbers have also taken a hit among the Hispanic population, who hail from a predominantly Catholic background. Overall, 36% of Catholics in the U.S. are Hispanic. Hispanic adults identifying as Catholic sharply declined from 58% to 42%, Pew reported. “We have reached the point where most Hispanics are not Catholic, and we’ve been there for some time now,” Gregory A. Smith told the Catholic media outlet Crux. “The Catholic share of the Hispanic population in the United States has been declining rapidly for a long time.” Evangelical Gains While Protestant churches also lost more people than they gained through religious switching, the losses were significantly smaller, with 13.7% of U.S. adults no longer identifying as Protestants, compared with 7.6% of Americans who were not raised Protestant but now identify as such. Among Protestants, nondenominational evangelicals have bucked the trend, with more American adults switching to nondenominational churches than those leaving such churches. While 1.7% of U.S. adults who were raised as nondenominational evangelicals have left, more than three times as many now switched to nondenominal evangelical churches after having been raised in another way (5.7%). Among those who were raised Protestant, 75% remained Protestant as adults; only 22% of people raised as Protestants quit their churches to maintain no religious affiliation. In contrast, only 57% of those who were raised Catholic remain Catholic as adults. About 14% of people raised as Catholics converted to Protestantism as adults, and a quarter of those who were raised Catholic now say they are religiously unaffiliated (24%), the survey found. Baptists, Lutherans, Pentecostals, and nondenominational evangelicals were reported to have among the highest retention rates of Protestant denominations. More than half of Americans who were raised Baptist (54%) remained Baptists as adults; 47% raised Lutheran remained Lutherans; and 45% raised Pentecostal or nondenominational remained that way as adults. Catholic Decline Worsens The RLS released in 2014 also reported a precipitous decline of membership in the Catholic Church, stating: Within Christianity the greatest net losses, by far, have been experienced by Catholics. Nearly one-third of American adults (31.7%) say they were raised Catholic. Among that group, fully 41% no longer identify with Catholicism. This means that 12.9% of American adults are former Catholics, while just 2% of U.S. adults have converted to Catholicism from another religious tradition. No other religious group in the survey has such a lopsided ratio of losses to gains. In contrast, the 2014 RLS also noted that the evangelical Protestant tradition is the only major Christian group in the survey that has gained more members than it has lost through religious switching. Roughly 10% of U.S. adults now identify with evangelical Protestantism after having been raised in another tradition, which more than offsets the roughly 8% of adults who were raised as evangelicals but have left. Loss of Faith The Public Religion Research Institute’s Health of Congregations Survey (2023) explained that loss of belief was the primary reason for Catholics leaving the church, with 69% of former Catholics citing it. Nearly 39% of Catholics left because of clerical sex abuse scandals, 36% because of negative religious teachings about LGBTQ people, and 14% because of a traumatic event in their lives. The U.S. Catholic Church spent over $5 billion on victim compensation and attorneys’ fees in lawsuits over the clerical sexual abuse of minors between 2004 and 2023, The Stream reported. It now spends an average of $36,399,720 every year to protect minors from predatory clergy. A quarter of former Catholics (26%) cited growing up in a family that was never that religious as a reason they left the church;15% left because their church or congregation became too politicized. Today, 50% of former Catholics are religiously unaffiliated, and 25% are evangelical or Protestant, the PRRI survey found. “We know that many of the dechurched have left because of abusive leadership and failing character in their leaders,” authors Jim Davis, Michael Graham, and Ryan P. Burge wrote in The Great Dechurching: Who’s Leaving, Why Are They Going, and What Will It Take to Bring Them Back? Church leaders have a greater burden in front of the Lord than the rest of those in the faith. The American church today is at a crossroads. While the kingdom of God will go on, its future in this country is not certain. The Great Dechurching could well be the American church’s most crucial moment and greatest opportunity. Originally published in The Stream. Dr. Jules Gomes, (BA, BD, MTh, PhD), has a doctorate in biblical studies from the University of Cambridge. Currently a Vatican-accredited journalist based in Rome, he is the author of five books and several academic articles. Gomes lectured at Catholic and Protestant seminaries and universities and was canon theologian and artistic director at Liverpool Cathedral.

COMMENTARY By David W. Virtue, DD www.virtueonline.org March 5, 2025 On any reading, the sexual revolution, begun in the 60s, has morphed into the most powerful moral force upending 4,000 years of sexual teaching, overturning the ancient binary tradition of male and female. But as Os Guinness, in his new book, Our Civilizational Moment, the Waning of the West and the War of the Worlds notes, “this smashing of the categories is not the ultimate goal of the sexual revolution. Its spiritual elite have a higher goal in mind: to strive towards ultimate harmony beyond all categories. In aiming for this state, the elite revolutionaries are attempting to return both paganism and sexual androgyny to their primitive pedestal and to license every possible type of sexuality as an expression of freedom---with polyamory now half in the door and pedophilia and zoophilia (or bestiality) well on their way.” The sexual revolutionaries are out to subvert thousands of years of “patriarchal” societies (including the four thousand years of both the Jewish roots and the Christian flowering). As Guinness observes; “at its deepest, this vision is religious and not secular, as many gurus have made clear. It looks far beyond immediate sexual freedom. Its supreme goal is to erase all distinction and fuse all opposites, especially between male and female, in order to attain the primordial cosmic wholeness and unity that has long been sought by pagan priests and shamans. Sexual androgyny is the key to this quest for both the religious and the secular.” The revolutionaries knew, of course, that to win, they would have to win by overcoming all who prized the differences between male and female—above all, three major enemies: the patriarchal family and the Jewish and Christian faiths---and therefore enforced the rigid straightjacket of sexual stereotypes (“gender fundamentalism”). The revolutionaries would sideline parents, for instance, by introducing sex education, drag queen shows, a general sexualization of women, and sexual grooming of children at the earliest age, making an end run around parents and parental responsibilities. “We’re coming for your children,” as the drag queen shows now boast. And in more and more areas, the idea grew that the state, not parents, should be the authority over children, with schools now hiding critical information from parents. Guinness, an Anglican and social critic, blasts both the Episcopal Church and the Church of England. “Much of the Christian church did not need to be overcome. Significant branches, such as the Episcopal Church, now closely followed by a large wing of the Church of England led by their progressive bishops and archbishops, rushed forward to embrace the sexual revolution, and enlist on “the right side of history.” Simultaneously, they cut themselves off from their own tradition and from the majority of their fellow believers around the world, and they suicidally emptied their own pews. “Just as the rainbow as the symbol of human Pride overcame the rainbow as the symbol of divine Promise, so the Anglican House of Bishops turned the teaching of the Bible and Christian tradition upside down in blessing homosexual couples. What was once pronounced to be deviance and sin is now pronounced to be the church’s failure to relate to faithful marginalized people, because through being marginalized, their voices were unacknowledged, ignored, and silenced, and the church colluded in this sin.” “Liberation” instead of condemnation, or condemnation of the former judgement, now turned into the new liberation. Such a clear inversion of Christian truth as an abject surrender to the spirit of the age will be obvious to future ages, for as Dean Inge remarked in a lecture in 1911, “Whoever marries the spirit of the age will find himself a widower in the next.” Earlier liberals cut off the branch on which they themselves were sitting; today’s liberal clerics cut off the branch on which almost everyone is sitting. Today, there are Church of England parishes with the Pride symbol on their altar cloths. This is to pour blasphemy upon blasphemy. The end result is social chaos such as we are seeing in transgenderism and sexual anarchy today. The Episcopal Church is rapidly heading downhill, (and, as it appears so is the Church of England), not just because the demographic figures demonstrate it, and evangelism is all but dead; it is the attempt to reverse the God-given moral order that most clearly touches and angers the heart of God. God will not withhold his hand of judgement forever. The church and its leaders will one day have to give an account, and the “doctrine” of niceness won’t cut it. Reaping what we sow is as timeless as the seasons, and so is the finality of God’s mercy. END https://www.amazon.com/Our-Civilizational-Moment-Waning-Worlds/dp/B0DL3LW558?dplnkId=02a7f48c-aef4-4c0e-b1ff-fee3249b4512&nodl=1

By David W. Virtue, DD www.virtueonline.org March 4, 2025 A next-generation gathering of GAFCON primates later this month in Plano, TX has come out with a statement soundly rejecting proposed reforms by the Anglican Communion. The G25 Mini Conference is at a very crucial time in the life of the movement, as they gather for the first time since the resignation of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, to consider how GAFCON will continue to lead the renewal of the Anglican Communion. “For this reason, we will be convening an extended Primates Council meeting, where our agenda will focus on how to strengthen our fellowship with authentic Anglicans, both those who are contesting the faith in liberal dioceses, as well as those who have found refuge in dioceses established and authenticated by GAFCON,” said Rwanda chairman and GAFCON primate Archbishop Laurent Mbanda.. The Anglican future conference issued an official statement rejecting proposed reforms to the Anglican communion citing a weakening of core doctrines. The Council, in an official statement criticized the December 2024 report of the Inter Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order saying it sanctifies the revisionist theologies of the sitting provinces and dioceses. Further into the statement it acknowledges the merit of rotating leadership within the Primates Council and Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) but asserts that the proposed restructuring of the instruments of communion fails to achieve genuine renewal. The statement specifically condemns the report's call to embrace diverse locally authorized prayer books including those deviating from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer teaching on human sexuality. This only repeats and reaffirms the errors of successive archbishops of Canterbury. The official statement accused them of failing to prevent the tearing of the fabric of the Anglican communion. According to the statement, Scripture is paramount, “the Bible is very clear that those who embrace immoral behavior will not inherit the Kingdom of God.” The statement emphasizes the centrality of Biblical teaching on sin and salvation and claims to represent 85% of the world's 85 million Anglicans. Furthermore, it asserts that the only Instrument of Communion that ultimately matters is the Word of God. The organization, in convening the G25 conference in Plano Texas, will discuss its continued leadership in the renewal of the Anglican communion. It also expresses solidarity with the Global South Fellowship of Anglican (GSFA) churches emphasizing their shared desire for Anglicans to speak the truth in love. END

By David W. Virtue, DD www.virtueonline.org March 4, 2025 In what looks to be a case of Dé·jà vu, a second Episcopal bishop, has publicly slammed Donald Trump following a “disgraceful display by our Mafioso-in-Chief” in a verbally tough exchange between the president and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The first was Washington Bishop Marianne Budde who rebuked Donald Trump from the pulpit of Washington National Cathedral over his immigration and other policies. Outraged by her comments, Trump asked her to apologize. She refused. This time it is the Episcopal Bishop of Los Angeles, John Taylor, who opined that seeing Putin's boys bully a besieged freedom fighter in the Oval Office was humiliating for every American. “Surely this crosses the line, even for the diehards. Are there really no Republicans out there who have the courage to stand up and say: All Americans should be deeply ashamed of what he has done in our name, and deeply ashamed of how he did it. No?” Taylor, the former director of the Nixon Presidential Library, said, “Seeing Putin's boys bully a besieged freedom fighter in the Oval Office was humiliating for every American.” “Musk can fire the White House speechwriters, too, because there's the Trump Doctrine for you. If Ukraine wants to be part of negotiations to end Russia's criminal war, it has to pay in the form of a share of its mineral rights. Since President Zelensky was allegedly rude today, Trump has threatened to cut off military aid and let more Ukrainians die.” According to Taylor, today's incident was far more than it appeared. “Trump and his mini-me Vance wrote the latest chapter in the biography of the United States as a world power. Periodically we have to decide what values we think our country should uphold in the world.” “Readers should not assume that everyone disagrees with Trump. Millions of Americans opposed the U.S. entering World War II to help Europe against Hitler, history's greatest evildoer. Some were Nazi sympathizers. Others just thought it was none of our business. Most leaders were internationalists in the Cold War, and Americans by and large went along. We rebuilt Japan and Germany and avoided war with the Soviets. We also bred cynicism by leaving bloody footprints from Chile to Vietnam, sometimes meaning well, sometimes not. George W. Bush's massive overreaction to the Sept. 11 attacks, leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan without making the U.S. safer, gave foreign policy itself a bad name, enabling Trump to sound like a peacenik by attacking our endless wars.” Taylor took a swipe at some of America’s other cherished gods; “Notwithstanding the heretical teachings of Christian nationalists and apostolic reformists, God doesn't love us more than other people. We're not chosen or anointed. We've had moments of glory and deep disgrace. It has taken more than a quarter of a millennium to come anywhere near letting freedom ring for everyone.” “A decent and indeed a Christian foreign policy would look out for our interests while promoting global security, encouraging economic and political liberalism where we can, addressing suffering through a generous foreign aid budget befitting the richest nation in the world, and leading on climate change mitigation and innovation. This is how a good nation counts its blessings. That's how we say thank you to God and sorry to those we hurt along the way.” Taylor said he disagreed with some who argue that the U.S. always acts on behalf of its strategic and economic interests while just claiming we're for justice and democracy. “I must disagree. Too many Americans have died fighting for other nations' freedom and sovereignty. But Trump has swept those values aside in favor of pure self-interest. Those who insist the U.S. has always been out for number one are carefully watching us every one during Trump's days of shame. We're finding out how much sadism and cruelty the American people will tolerate — and so far, we've tolerated quite a bit.” Taylor believes Trump is obviously paying Zelensky back for refusing to cooperate with dirty tricks against Joe Biden in the 2016 election. “That is as deep as this individual's strategic vision goes. The rest of his foreign policy is equally thoughtless and toxic. Besides selling out Ukraine, his most significant move was depriving sick, starving people of foreign aid.” “Zelensky's first calls after his Trump beat down were to European leaders. One possible future is western Europe supporting Ukraine and deterring Russian conventional aggression on its own. Should that happen, Trump would say it was his idea all along. But China would reckon it as an invitation to conquer Taiwan. Its people deserve to be free, but according to Trump's rulebook, if they can't defend themselves, they're out of luck.” “The alliances Trump is ripping apart like an angry kindergartner help keep the peace and limit the spread of the most dangerous weapons. Without them, aggressors will gobble up weaker nations. Non-nuclear powers will join the club faster than you can say enriched uranium. If the American people acquiesce in Trump's disgraceful behavior, his abandonment of the weakest among us, our country will end up as exactly what its harshest critics have always said: Out just for itself and its economic interests, or in this case Trump's.” Taylor concludes his riff by saying that the Trump Doctrine will go on to light up a hundred wars. “If the U.S. ever needs its friends again, no one will answer the phone. We'll be as lonely as Trump when he turns out the lights.” On the last point he might be right. END

By Tyler Hummel THE LIVING CHURCH March 3, 2025 Nashotah Dean Lauren Whitnah with ACNA bishops and Nashotah faculty and alumni | Leighton Ryder - Photo Three current and former archbishops of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) gathered February 25 at Nashotah House in honor of their denomination’s prayer book. Nashotah House hosted 61 bishops, priests, deacons, professors, and seminarians from across the country for a ceremony honoring the addition of ACNA’s 2019 edition of the Book of Common Prayer to the Underwood Prayer Book Collection. It joins rare and historic prayer books dating back to the 16th century that are available for research purposes. The seminary did not initially expect a large crowd for the event, which was to be held in the Frances Donaldson Library, but it was moved into Adams Hall in the DeKoven Commons after exceeding the library’s capacity. After a Mass and Evensong at the Chapel of St. Mary the Virgin—with a homily by Archbishop Steve Wood—the group gathered in Adams Hall for a reception. Former Archbishops Foley Beach and Robert Duncan spoke about the importance of the new prayer book, alongside Dean Lauren Whitnah and the Rev. Ben Jefferies, who served as lead designer on the ACNA Liturgy Task Force for the 2019 edition. “The 2019 is a major achievement,” Whitnah told The Living Church. “It was something people wanted to celebrate in 2020, but for all the reasons we’re aware of, that did not happen. A number of the folks who worked on the 2019 were Nashotah House alumni, faculty, friends, and students, so they came not only to celebrate the reception of this book into our special collections but because they appreciate the contribution of this place in particular.” The copies donated by Anglican House Publishers included multiple editions of the 2019 prayer book, plus copies of the St. Bernard Breviary and the New Coverdale Psalter. The breviary is a version of the 2019 prayer book’s daily office pointed for chanting and the psalter contains its new translation of the Book of Psalms, which “seeks to preserve the poetry, phrasing, and rhythm” of the 16th-century translation of the classic prayer books. Archbishop Duncan donated two copies from his personal archive, including the first printed copy of the 2019 book. Nashotah House played a major role in the formation of this edition. Roughly half of the ACNA Liturgy Task Force’s 11 committee members were Nashotah faculty or alumni, including Jefferies and the Rev. Dr. Arnold Klukas, a retired professor of liturgy. While the seminary serves 81 dioceses and ecclesiastical jurisdictions of the Episcopal Church and the ACNA, it strives not to show overt preference for either church. Worship in St. Mary’s Chapel uses the Episcopal Church’s 1979 Book of Common Prayer, which seminary officials say they find more flexible and applicable. There are no plans to begin using the 2019 book for corporate worship. “Dean Whitnah has to walk a fine line in keeping both the ACNA and TEC interested, which is a competitive task,” Jeffries said. “To get the occasional thing like this, to say we support and celebrate the ACNA and its mission, says a lot about its dual integrity.” “The nature of Nashotah House presently is that the majority of the faculty are in TEC but the majority of the students are in the ACNA,” he added. A Nashotah House spokesperson noted that 39% of its students are ACNA, 33% are members of the Episcopal Church, 10% are from Continuing Anglican churches and the remaining 15% belong to other churches. “The bylaws of Nashotah House fixed that only the 1979 prayer book is to be used normally in the chapel. Its roots are deep in that of TEC, but including the 2019 in the Underwood collection reminds them that, while the 1979 is still there shaping prayer on campus, there is love and warmth for this other book. I hope this event is the seed of incorporating the 2019 more into campus prayer life,” Jefferies said. “The 1979 is the common denominator,” Whitnah said. “It is authorized for use in the ACNA and gives us the most flexibility in corporate worship. Any decision has to balance what makes sense for the community in day-to-day life and what will best prepare our students in their future ministry. Many students don’t go on to use the 1979 in their prayer ministries, but feel well prepared to by our training.” Tyler Hummel is a freelance writer based in Elkhorn, Wisconsin.

By Sarah Carter JUICY ECUMENISM February 18, 2025 Misrepresented for being born chiefly out of King Henry VIII’s divorce, Anglican reformed teaching was in actuality “a wave breaking on the shores of England that had been building for some time,” according to a prominent reformed clergyman in the Anglican Church in North America. The Falls Church Anglican (TFCA) Rector Sam Ferguson spoke on doctrinal reforms and expounded upon the history and practice of the English Reformation at History and Hope: Reformed Theology in the Anglican Tradition. The February 4 Reformed Theological Seminary collaboration with TFCA focused on the reformational roots of Anglicanism and its doctrinal convictions. Anglicanism is the third largest Christian tradition in the world after Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. The worldwide Anglican Communion counts more than 85 million members in more than 40 national churches (known as provinces in Anglican parlance) with diverse expressions of worship informed by the Book of Common Prayer. English religious figures’ close adherence to Italian church officials decreased at the end of the late medieval period. Social and political momentum brought about change through invention of the printing press, the rise of Renaissance humanism, and eventual disquiet about theological error in the church. This was especially seen in the use of paid indulgences (a practice to reduce time spent in Purgatory after death) to finance construction of Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Reformation figures like John Wycliffe and William Tyndale were condemned and, in the case of Tyndale, martyred for his effort to provide English-speaking people with Bibles in their vernacular, consequently making it illegal to own an English Bible in England from the late 1300s to 1538. Reaction to clericalism not only sparked reformational change in England, but also in Germany with Martin Luther, and in France with John Calvin, who read the Scriptures in the original form and believed the system of salvation the late Medieval church taught was unbiblical. The system of salvation in the Medieval church taught that Christians entered the Church through baptism in grace, but that sin after baptism jeopardized salvation. Christ covered the eternal consequences of sin, but acts of penance (such as fasting, saying prayers, charitable giving, or other good works) were necessary to repair the temporal consequences of sin. If a person died without addressing sin’s temporal consequences, a period of temporary suffering (purgatory) purified the soul. These theological errors in the system of salvation, Ferguson maintained, developed “a spirit of fearfulness and performance instead of a biblical spirit of grace and peace.” Both clericalism (through no vernacular Bible or liturgy), and reformational tension gave rise to the dispute between King Henry VIII and Pope Clement VII in 1509. To maintain a political alliance, Henry was persuaded to marry Catherine of Aragon, his older brother’s widow. Although Leviticus 18:16 prevented a man from sleeping with his sister-in-law, Pope Julius II used his papal authority to grant a dispensation to permit the marriage. After Catherine was unable to produce a son, Henry was convinced it was because they violated God’s law by marrying. He pushed for annulment, but the pope rebuffed. Henry found a young scholar, Thomas Cranmer, and made him Archbishop of Canterbury. Cranmer convened a court in England to issue a final ruling on the “King’s Great Matter” which annulled Henry’s marriage to Catherine. In 1534, the English parliament declared that Henry and his heirs were by “divine right the supreme head on earth of the church” which finalized the Church of England’s independence from Roman authority. As Reformation scholar Ashley Null explained, “While Henry’s divorce was not the beginning of the English Reformation, it dramatically changed the circumstances for its advancement.” Henry was neither a fan of Martin Luther nor of Reformation theology but in 1538 he lifted the ban on vernacular Bibles. Two-thirds of the English translation of the “Great Bible”- which was printed and put in every church – came from the work of William Tyndale, whom Henry had executed one year prior. By Henry’s death in 1547, Cranmer expedited reforms in the Church of England, and by 1603, the reformed faith in England was established. Even in this modern age, this Reformation Anglicanism is still the state religion. When King Charles III was crowned, he was asked by Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, “Will you to the utmost of your power maintain in the United Kingdom the Protestant reformed religion established by law?” Reformation Anglicanism is that Protestant reformed religion still practiced today. This is part one covering the history of Reformation Anglicanism. Part two on Anglican doctrine and practice, Scripture in Reformation Anglicanism, may be accessed here. ***** SCRIPTURE IN REFORMATION ANGLICANISM Sarah Carter JUICY ECUMENISM February 25, 2025 Following the death of King Henry VIII, Edward VI, Henry’s son by his third wife, Jane Seymour, became King. Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer had the opportunity to reshape biblical interpretation and push for theological reform. During these years preceding the reign of Roman Catholic Queen Mary, many writings developed which helped bring about Reformation doctrinal reform. Critical to these writings were the Book of Homilies, the Book of Common Prayer 1549 and 1552 editions, and the Articles of Religion. The Falls Church Anglican (TFCA) Rector Sam Ferguson spoke on doctrinal reforms and expounded upon the history and practice of the English Reformation at History and Hope: Reformed Theology in the Anglican Tradition. The February 4 Reformed Theological Seminary collaboration with TFCA focused on the reformational roots of Anglicanism and its doctrinal convictions. Part I – History (English Bibles, Refuted Clericalism, and Reformation Anglicanism) may be accessed here. Word of God Chief among these reformation doctrines is a focus on the word of God which set apart Christianity in England from other medieval trends. Cranmer established that the Bible is not only God’s word but is sufficient, powerful, satisfying, and authoritative. Scripture is Sufficient The first homily in the Book of Homilies by Cranmer was A Fruitful Exhortation on the Reading of Holy Scripture. It declares that Holy Scripture is sufficient for knowing all we need for salvation. Stated plainly, “There is no truth or doctrine necessary for our justification and everlasting salvation but that is or may be drawn out of that fountain and well of truth, the Bible.” This focus on the sufficiency of scripture for all things salvific was an attack on a late medieval church belief that Church leaders, filled with the Holy Spirit, could declare new authoritative teachings. Reformational doctrines, emphasizing the word of God and its sufficiency, would reject this Roman Catholic belief. Instead, Scripture became understood as solely sufficient for salvation. Scripture is Powerful and Satisfying In the same homily, Cranmer describes the power of Holy Scripture through the images of light, food, and fire. Further, he describes that Scripture is wholly satisfying. “As a drink is pleasant to them that be dry and meat to them that be hungry so is the reading, hearing, searching, and studying of Holy Scripture to them that be desirous to know God.” Scripture is Authoritative Among the most important doctrines developed in the Reformation was in Scriptural authority. The reformers reaffirmed Scripture’s authority over the church, contrary to trends in late medieval Christianity which claimed otherwise. For the Church of England, this truth was articulated in the 39 Articles of Religion: 20. Of the Authority of the Church. “The Church hath power to decree Rites or Ceremonies, and authority in Controversies of Faith: and yet it is not lawful for the Church to ordain anything that is contrary to God’s Word written, neither may it so expound one place of Scripture, that it be repugnant to another. Wherefore, although the Church be a witness and a keeper of Holy Writ, yet, as it ought not to decree anything against the same, so besides the same ought it not to enforce anything to be believed for necessity of Salvation.” Although reason, Scripture, and tradition are often seen as a “three-legged stool” in the Anglican tradition, Ferguson explained that a more proper analogy for the church’s authority would be a garden bed. In this example, Scripture is the garden bed, and reason and tradition are tools to unlock its beauty. Reason and tradition are seen within Anglican Christianity as tools for biblical revelation, but not equal in authority to biblical revelation itself. Justification by Grace Through Faith Ferguson explained the reformational doctrine of justification by grace through faith, compared with the late medieval church’s understanding. While the reformers believed that grace permutated the entire process of salvation, especially justification, Roman Catholics believed that since works of penance must remit the temporal consequences of sin, the process of justification is not wholly grace. This was stated explicitly at the Council of Trent: Canon 12 “If anyone saith, that justifying faith is nothing else but confidence in the divine mercy which remits sins for Christ’s sake; or, that this confidence alone is that whereby we are justified; let him be anathema.” The Reformers took these words and compared them to biblical passages such as Ephesians 2:8-9 (NIV). “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God — not by works, so that no one can boast.” The 5 Solas Ferguson concluded with a re-focusing upon the “5 Solas” of the Reformation, describing how they all play a role in the grace-filled salvation that the reformers reaffirmed. It is by Scripture alone that rests full authority and is how God presents Christ to us, which includes everything necessary for salvation. It is grace alone that God works out salvation. By faith alone, we trust the person of Christ for salvation. It is Christ alone who sufficiently cleanses all one’s sins. It is to the glory of God alone that all things are done. These Solas are: Scripture alone, Grace alone, Faith alone, Christ alone, and Glory to God alone. END

Landmark translation follows anglophone bishops approving Protestant Bible translation for Catholic Churches By JULES GOMES Mere Matchlight March 1, 2025 In a historic ecumenical initiative, Italian churches divided by the East-West schism of 1054 and the Protestant Reformation of 1517 have united to publish a literary translation of the New Testament, based entirely on the original Greek text. The Vatican-backed collaboration, which for the first time involves the Eastern Orthodox churches, is aimed at a “non-denominational dissemination” of the Bible in the traditionally Catholic country where church attendance has catastrophically plummeted since the late 1990s. The translation is an “unprecedented non-denominational version that unites the Christian Churches to make the Gospel known in schools, among ordinary people, and in the church,” Mario Cignoni, secretary general of the Bible Society of Italy (BSI) told an ecumenical audience during the launch of the publication at the Waldensian Church in Rome on Thursday. Evangelization of Italy The translation is aimed at evangelizing a post-Catholic Italy, “where the Bible permeates art, culture and daily life but still represents a little-read and little-known book,” the BSI noted in a press release. Cardinal Matteo Zuppi (president of the Italian Episcopal Conference (CEI) and a key frontrunner to succeed Pope Francis), Cardinal Gualtiero Bassetti (former president of the CEI), and Cardinal Kurt Koch (prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity) were three high-ranking Catholic prelates who endorsed the new translation at the gathering. Eighteen denominations, including the Greek and Romanian Orthodox as well as multiple evangelical churches, were part of the historic project, with Bishop Dionysios Papavasileiou of the Holy Orthodox archdiocese of Italy, Alessandra Trotta of the Waldensian Church, and Fr. Luca Mazzinghi from the Pontifical Biblical Institute speaking at the event. “The most significant feature of this translation is its truly ecumenical collaboration: each book or group of books of the New Testament was translated in pairs by a Catholic and an evangelical,” explained Mazzinghi, who is also president of the Italian Biblical Association. Literary Translation The new translation is a “formal” or “literary” translation: “this means that it privileges the source language, the Greek of the New Testament, while still trying to offer correct and fluent Italian,” Mazzinghi said. The translation was like a “choral” work, Mazzinghi observed, “which has given dignity and space to all ecclesiastical traditions and interpretational sensibilities, in true brotherhood between the Churches.” Words can have “different interpretations” and this can become a major impediment in “meeting each other” across denominational boundaries, Papavasileiou stressed. The new translation manages, finally, to be the “first instrument that gives us the possibility of working all together, thus becoming an indispensable tool for the whole Church.” Such a translation was necessary because the earlier interconfessional translation of 1978 was based on the translational principle of “dynamic equivalence” which “privileges understanding in the target language (Italian), sometimes sacrificing the original text,” the biblical scholar noted. In comments to The Stream, Rome-based Greek and Latin scholar Lorenzo Murrone explained why he would “welcome the attention given to the biblical text in Italy, especially in the wake of Vatican II.” Murrone, a confessional Lutheran minister, continued: Before the 1960s, biblical translations in Italian were, by and large, either relegated to the evangelical minority (like the Diodati and Luzzi versions) or not based on the original Greek–Hebrew text and mostly accessible to an academic minority. It is only in the last century or so that Italian translations began to become commonplace, and even nowadays interest for Sacred Scripture hardly percolates from the halls of academia to the average Christian. I hope that Christian churches in our country will see this as an opportunity to intensify the faithful’s knowledge of God’s Word. The 18 churches involved in producing the ecumenical translation said that work had already begun on an ecumenical Old Testament and the translators were seeking to offer Italians an interconfessional version of the whole Bible as soon as possible. Catholic Bishops Adopt Evangelical Bible Meanwhile, in another historic ecumenical breakthrough, the Catholic bishops’ conferences in India as well as England and Wales have adopted the English Standard Version — an evangelical Bible translation — for use in their lectionaries for reading the Bible during the Eucharist. Nigel Fernandes, an Indian who heads the Asian Trading Corporation, the continent’s best-known Catholic publishing house, was the brainchild behind getting Crossway, the publisher of the ESV, to make it possible for Catholics to endorse the translation by adding a supplement of the deutero-canonical books and create a Catholic edition. The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales had begun to use the new ESV-based lectionary since Advent 2024, Fernandes told The Stream. The publisher also explained that biblical scholarship and basing the translation on the Hebrew and Greek texts had “narrowed translational differences so the extent they were almost negligible and noncontroversial.” Historians, theologians, and biblical scholars have extensively explored how flawed Bible translations like the Latin Vulgate led to the medieval church adopting fallacious doctrine, which were challenged after the Dutch Catholic priest Desiderius Erasmus, known as the scholar who “laid the egg that Luther hatched,” produced his Greek edition of the New Testament. Overcoming Historic Divisions The Vulgate, which was made the official version of the Roman Catholic Church, had several egregious errors, like Genesis 3:15 which read: “she [Mary] shall crush your head” instead of “he [Jesus] shall crush your head” — an error finally corrected by the Vatican in the Nova Vulgata (1979). Pope Sixtus V’s edition of the Vulgate contained at least two thousand errors. Catholic translations like the Douay-Reims version which uncritically adhered to the Vulgate replicated philological, translational, and copyist errors, translating presbyteros as “priest” instead of “elder,” agape as “charity” instead of “love,” metanoia as “[do] penance” instead of “repentance,” and dikaiosune as “make righteous” instead of “declare righteous.” While the Council of Trent (1545-1563) opposed the Reformation by dogmatically declaring an anathema on anyone who did not receive the biblical texts “as they are contained in the old Latin vulgate edition,” the Vatican joined hands with the Protestant United Bible Societies in 1987 and published its “Guiding Principles for Interconfessional Cooperation in Translating the Bible.” Rejecting the exclusive authority of the Vulgate, the Vatican announced that “interconfessional translations will continue to be based on a Hebrew text of the Old Testament and a Greek text of the New Testament which have been agreed on by scholars from various church traditions.” “The clear goal of this interconfessional effort is to produce editions of the Holy Scriptures which provide all speakers of the language with a common text,” the statement noted. “This will in turn make possible, often for the first time, a common witness to the Word of God in the world of today.” Originally published in The Stream. Dr. Jules Gomes, (BA, BD, MTh, PhD), has a doctorate in biblical studies from the University of Cambridge. Currently a Vatican-accredited journalist based in Rome, he is the author of five books and several academic articles. Gomes lectured at Catholic and Protestant seminaries and universities and was canon theologian and artistic director at Liverpool Cathedral.

Crying Female Bishops and the Ecclesial Harm of Feminism The Church of England continues to cultivate the seeds of its own demise with such unerring success that sometimes you wonder if it is deliberate. By Aaron Edwards That Good Fight Feb 22, 2025 At a recent Anglican Synod, the Bishop of London, Sarah Mullally, broke down in tears. Why was the Bishop of London moved to tears? Was it because of the utter lack of faith in so many modern churches? Was it because of the catastrophic decline of the Church of England in our time? Or was it due to the hundreds of thousands of aborted babies every year in the very nation to which that Church is called? None of the above. She was moved to tears because of “micro-aggressions” and “institutional barriers” against women within the Church of England. “I would love to encourage women,” she said, “which I do all the time. But there continues to be institutional barriers. We continue to experience micro-aggression…” It was at that point that she broke down in tears, after which she was lavishly applauded by the well-groomed crowd. It’s difficult to describe just what those culturally Marxist terms of the Zeitgeist communicate at such a time as this. This is, after all, a time in which women are “permitted” to teach and exercise authority over men in the church as preachers, vicars, and even as bishops, with many even calling for a first female archbishop. Never in the history of its existence has the Church of England been more influenced by the rule of women, and never in the history of its existence has the Church of England been more at risk of collapse. Yet it is the apparent ongoing raft of subjective “micro-aggressions” against women deemed to be the greatest cause of ecclesial harm. I wonder, then, whether the bishop might class it as a “macro-aggression” if I suggested that her very response—whether a symptom of her own ideological delusion or a subtler form of emotional sabotage—shows why we need not fewer institutional barriers against women in the Church, but more? THE PROBLEM WITH FEMINIST “PROGRESS” We might start with the very barrier Mullally so rudely stepped over in order to become a bishop in the first place, continuing the pattern of Anglican apostasy which seeks to justify their fundamental embarrassment of the Bible's representation of women to the feminists of this world, whom they have so desperately sought to impress for so long. This ought to go without saying but because we have now become so accustomed to living with perpetual compromise, it ought to be said again: The very fact that women can dress up as bishops is itself evidence of a form of divine judgement upon the Church of England. As Isaiah says, so very politically incorrectly: “My people—infants are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, your guides mislead you and they have swallowed up the course of your paths.” —Isa. 3:12 “Ah,” the feminist bishops may say, “but that was in the ‘Old’ Testament, when things were all so terribly intolerant and God was far less educated and far more micro-aggressive than he is nowadays.” Perhaps the “New” Testament might provide us with this apparently much-needed “progress”? Alas, it seems Paul is even more politically incorrect than Isaiah: “I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.” —1Tim. 2:12 Nor was this a one-off. For a doctrine that is now apparently seen by many as a take-it-or-leave kind of issue, it comes up an awful lot in the New Testament. You may leave it if you wish, but only if you wish to build on sand. It may seem fine for a while. The women may even seem to be doing a far better job than many of the men in many respects. But then come the storms, and then Jesus’ words (Matt. 7:24-27) come back to haunt, and all is too late. The fact is, the acceptance of women vicars and bishops in the Church of England is not an isolated issue. It is inseparable from the torrent of subversive unfaithfulness that has poured in and out of that once-great institution in recent decades, undermining its foundations and eroding its convictions. This will remain the case unless and until it repents and returns to the Word and Spirit of the God it claims to serve. To the average cultured unbeliever, the very notion of women bishops is seen as obviously good. In such a politically correct age, many will have been amazed that the CofE ever made it to 2013 without them. Look how well the decision was received by parliament at the time, for example: “obviously very welcome news”. Some of the comments in the parliamentary exchange in response to that decision were very telling about the naivete the impact this decision would have on the mission of the Church. Martin Vickers, a Conservative MP, said: “I, too, welcome the fact that the Church has at long last made progress on the matter of women bishops… Is [my hon. friend] confident that the Church can now move on from these endless internal debates and start preaching the gospel and working for the good of society?” Further on, a Labour MP, John Cryer, further highlighted how crazy the idea of not having women bishops already was to the world: “The congregation of the Church of England has been in headlong decline for a long time, and that is continuing. How likely is it that that trend would be reversed were the Church of England by some chance to pursue its existing policy of barring women from being bishops, which most people think is redolent of a past era?” He seemed to assume that the Church of England’s decline was linked not to the seeds of unbelief that had already been long sown by its alignment with subversive modern ideologies like feminism, but linked rather to the previous “policy” of remaining obedient to Scripture in keeping with virtually all churches of that “past era”. To this, the Conservative MP, Tony Baldry replied: “I am glad to say that a large number of parishes are growing. The Archbishop of Canterbury has made it clear that his primary mission is growth. We want to see the Church of England grow. Hopefully, now that we have resolved the issue of women bishops, everyone in the Church of England and everyone who supports it can focus their intention on that growth.” Reflecting on such comments twelve years on from that momentous decision, how did that season of Church of England growth turn out? Has the Church of England been free to “move on” past all those “internal debates” that it may “start preaching the gospel” and get on with its “work for the good of society?” Of course not. A good deal of that time they have been embroiled in abuse scandals, trans ideology, and arguments for same-sex relationships. And indeed, even now we have the female bishop of London weeping over micro-aggressions and institutional barriers against women. The subversives were never going to be happy with breaking down the “barrier” to women bishops. Once fed, the wolves always come back for more. THE ECCLESIAL HARM OF WOMEN BISHOPS The politicians may call it “obviously welcome news”, but in light of Scripture and Church history, the advent of women bishops was obviously shameful news. It dresses itself as kindness and liberation and Christian charity, but it is borne of a spirit that is entirely of the world, and truly foreign to Christianity. It would not and could not have happened were it not for the tide of unbelief in and through secular western society which eroded Christian norms in general. This tide coincided not only with the rise of feminism in the West but with the decline of the institutional Church in the West too. This correlation is patently obvious to anyone who looks at this issue beyond the gaze of the sophisticated horde of feminists who have been entrenched for so long now across the breadth of the Church, who can only keep denying this connection between unfaithfulness and decline for obvious reasons. Such people seem to think that the modern Church's "breaking down of barriers" against women—barriers which were instituted, remember, not by men but by God—is evidence not of unfaithfulness to God but evidence of progress and enlightenment, demonstrating the true kingdom of God advancing into new ways of thinking and being which are less “oppressive” and “harmful”. The voices should not have been heard, let alone obeyed. They have aggressively harmed the Church more than all the Bishop-pretenders may ever know. Such voices were the voices of serpents and wolves. They have been at work for some time, devouring the flock from within. “But how could speaking about being less oppressive to women by restricting their freedom in ministerial leadership be tantamount to ‘devouring the flock’?”, one might ask. Well, aside from the necessary undermining of Biblical authority that is an obvious by-product of ignoring the Biblical passages which teach against it, having more women in leadership positions simply does different things owing to the fact that, because God made man and woman differently (cf. Gen. 1:27; 1Cor. 11), men and women often sin differently. Joe Rigney, having previously written extensively on the connection between empathy, feminism, and the church, recently weighed in on another emotive bishop—Bishop Budde of the US episcopal church—who was praised by some for preaching various Democrat talking points in the guise of Christian compassion at Donald Trump’s inauguration service last month. In an article titled, “The Bishop’s Untethered Empathy,” Rigney noted the danger of misplaced compassion that results from the feminist lens: Feminism’s destructive nature is owing to two basic facts. First, women are more empathetic than men, a fact that, in its proper place, is a great blessing. God designed women to be life-givers and nurturers, and the feminine ability to intuit and share emotions serves such care and compassion. When a baby is crying or a person is hurting, female empathy enables women to be first responders, moving toward the hurting with comfort and welcome. But, second, what is a blessing in one place becomes a curse in another. When it comes to upholding strict standards of justice, empathy is a liability, not an asset. It’s why in certain circumstances involving gross error and high-handed sin, God’s law forbids empathy and pity. If someone—even a close family member—enticed Israel to commit idolatry and abandon the Lord, God told them that “you shall not yield to him, or listen to him, nor shall your eye pity him, nor shall you spare him” (Deuteronomy 13:6–10). It’s why some of us have taken to warning about “toxic empathy” and “the sin of empathy.” It is in this way, decision after decision, micro-compassion after micro-compassion, that unpopular Biblical truths—the kind that might not always strike a mother as “nice”—tend to erode away in the hearts and minds of the faithful. Compromise comes in many forms, male or female, of course, but in our time this appears to be the weak spot, and one which was first enabled by weak men overly susceptible to the tears and frowns of women over and against the rock of God’s Word. Those who think of women’s ordination as a liberation from oppression—God’s Word being the ultimate “oppressor”—will only ever see it like the aforementioned parliamentarians, as an “obviously very welcome” step towards further progress and advance. But how can anyone honestly look at the present-day instantiation of the Church of England and say that its direction of travel represents an “advance” of the kingdom of God in any sense? Is God really looking on all this and saying, “Well done, good and faithful servants. Keep up this good and faithful progress. Onward!”? WHAT IS THE CofE GOOD FOR? It is increasingly clear that any substantial good that still occurs within/from the Church of England now is only ever an aberration from the norm, from that inevitably “progressive” trajectory which moves it further and further away from the security of God’s Word and Spirit. This has already been the case for some time. I expect the average unchurched person in Britain knows that too (regardless of whatever the MPs of a decade ago believed). That’s not to say that the institution of the CofE won’t retain a good deal of heritage and societal gravitas in the eyes of many. But if we’re honest, the modern Church of England has become an embarrassment to the Christian faith, and an appallingly impotent witness at a time when the world needed it most. It grieves me to see it and to say it, because it ought not to be this way. The Church of England ought to be a shining light to the nation and the world, representing truth, beauty, love, grace, order, joy, and peace. But instead of glorifying God by upholding His Word against the scoffers who hate what that Word says and implies, they have chosen instead to align themselves with their enemies, trading light for darkness, selling their birth-right for a pot of stew, denying the very Word of God in order to warm their hands by the fire with strangers who do not mean well. Much of what we appreciate about the legacy of Christendom in Britain is rooted in the heritage of what eventually became the Church of England. Thus, even those who are not Anglicans, even those who are not English, should care about what does or does not happen behind its walls. I so felt the need to care about it that I got fired from my job for doing so. What happens in the CofE is no small thing. It affects much of what happens in the churches across this nation, and even beyond this nation. It seems as though the CofE now has so many leaks that it becomes too difficult to know where to start plugging. I still have Anglican friends who are labouring away faithfully within the behemoth, and there are also many pockets of faithfulness and beauty and tradition here and there. Just last week I enjoyed a very pleasant time in the library and chapel of Pusey House in Oxford, a centre within the Anglo-Catholic tradition of the Church of England. As I’ve discussed many times before, evensong remains something of a national treasure, and something from which many evangelical “low churches” could learn a great deal. There is indeed much of the sinking ship that may be salvageable. The ongoingly depressing reality, however, is the tangled bureaucratic web which has been so comprehensively infiltrated on so many fronts over so many years. Thus, it seems more likely that the good that remains within the institution will need to leave that web in order to better flourish and advance the kingdom elsewhere in our time. The trojans may keep fighting on if called to do so, but they must be wary lest their mission to the institution end up conforming them to the very worldliness which made that institution so desperately sick in our time. God knows what the future may hold. We know He is not averse to rebuilding broken walls and temples, but not before He has first allowed the fullness of judgement and exile upon those who refused to hear and heed His Word. END

By Abe Greenwald COMMENTARY February 26, 2025 A new Pew poll of religion in America captures something unexpected: “After many years of steady decline, the share of Americans who identify as Christians shows signs of leveling off—at least temporarily.” More specifically, the number of self-identified Christians stabilized during the past five years. And over that same period, the number of Americans who identify with a religion other than Christianity has ticked up ever so slightly. What might explain the sudden interruption of atheism’s charge? Politics, naturally. Like renewed trust in police, the turn against trans surgery for minors, and Donald Trump’s very election, the rediscovery of traditional religion is a piece of the public’s response to the radicalism that became institutionalized in 2020—five years ago. All leftist radicalism has its roots in socialism, which, with few exceptions, has always offered itself up as a godless religion and alternative to traditional faiths. It’s to be expected that after the public rejects the fruits of radicalism, it grasps for socialism’s natural nemesis: belief in God. The trans factor looms particularly large here. Trans activism wages war on our scientific and religious understanding of man and woman. That’s why so much of it has been aimed at religious institutions. Consider, for example, the trans-activist organization calling itself the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. Remember them? Their shtick is to go around as lascivious drag-queen nuns and mock the Catholic Church. In 2023, they were invited to Dodger Stadium to receive a community-hero award at a Pride Night event. When word got out about their repulsive hijinks, however, the Dodgers rescinded the offer. But this was back when cultural radicalism was still riding high, so there was a backlash to the backlash. In the end, the Dodgers reinvited them and gave them the award while religious groups protested at the stadium entrance. For five years, media and Democrats did everything they could to raise the profile of such activists. And when Americans got a clear look at the grotesquerie on display, surely more than a few lost their faith in radicalism and re-upped their religious commitments. In addition to the ugliness of the then-prevailing radicalism, there are its enforced strictures on speech and conduct. Perhaps this, too, played a part in the cultural shift. The woke elite dictates what is permissible, and if you don’t follow, you’re excommunicated. In this sense, the left took on the role of the brittle, scolding clergy that American popular culture once assigned to the church. If you stopped attending religious services because you found them intolerant and small-minded, you’re certainly out of luck among the radicals. The left has become far more tedious and dogmatic than most American houses of worship. And, of course, less satisfying. Meanwhile, the radical left is deftly countered by a new breed of entertaining and engaging pro-religion superstar. In the realm of the public intellectual, the smug atheism of the late Christopher Hitchens has been buried by the Judeo-Christian dazzle of Jordan Peterson. Helpfully, the Pew poll breaks down religious trends along ideological lines. “Today, 37% of self-described liberals identify with Christianity, down from 62% in 2007, a 25-point decline. Meanwhile, 51% of liberals now say they have no religion, up from 27% in 2007, a 24-point increase. There are now more religious ‘nones’ than Christians among liberals, a reversal since 2007.” At the same time, “a large majority of conservatives continue to identify with Christianity.” Here's what’s interesting about that. There are now more self-identified Republicans than Democrats in the United States. That’s also a new reality. So the political party whose members are more likely to be discarding religion is suddenly in the minority. This could all be momentary. The poll shows that, despite the general leveling off, young Americans are still significantly less religious than previous generations of young Americans. If they stay that way throughout the course of their lives, the country will resume its glidepath away from God. But the Democrats haven’t given up on radicalism. And Americans haven’t stopped rejecting it. If both circumstances hold for the foreseeable future, this could be the start of a long, slow-motion spiritual awakening. God willing. Abe Greenwald is the executive editor of COMMENTARY.