Integrated Study Guide   By Bryan Hollon April 5, 2025   This session is part of the multi-post Study Guide titled "Learning to Pray with C.S. Lewis." You may find it helpful to refer to the  introduction and session one to understand the nature of the project as a whole. There will be 10 sessions in all. "The servant is not greater, and must not be more high-minded, than the master. Whatever the theoretical difficulties are, we must continue to make requests of God." - C.S. Lewis,  Letters to Malcolm Primary Readings: ·         Letters to Malcolm , Letters 5, 7, 11 ·        "Work & Prayer" from  God in the Dock ·        C.S. Lewis,  Mere Christianity , Book 3, Chapter 12: "Faith" Theological Context: The Progression of Petition In Letters 5, 7, and 11, Lewis confronts what might be called petition's "scandalous particularity"—the biblical encouragement to make petitions despite God’s omniscience - in other words, asking God for things knowing that God knows what we need before we ask. Rather than dismissing petition as spiritually immature, Lewis insists it remains central to authentic Christian prayer, and he anchors his defense in Christ's own example in Gethsemane. Lewis articulates a vision of petitionary prayer that evolves from passive submission to active participation in God’s own purposes and work, reflecting the Trinitarian pattern of the indwelling Spirit enabling us to fulfill the Father's will through participation in the Son's perfect obedience. Key Concepts 1. The Validity and Necessity of Petitionary Prayer In Letter 7, Lewis challenges the notion that mature Christianity might transcend petitionary prayer in favor of pure adoration and submission. Against this seemingly "high-minded" spirituality, Lewis offers a surprisingly earthy response: "Remember the psalm: 'Lord, I am not high minded'" (Letter 7). This appeal to Psalm 131 gives us insight into Lewis's theological intuition that Christian maturity never transcends childlike dependence - it requires it. As I’ve already mentioned, Lewis grounds his defense of petition in Christ's example and teaching: "The New Testament contains embarrassing promises about prayer... It is maintained primarily on the dominical authority of Our Lord Himself" (Letter 7). This incarnational approach reflects Lewis's distinctive contribution to a theology of prayer—his integration of materiality and spirituality. In the assigned reading from  Mere Christianity , Lewis offers further insight about the perseverance required in petitionary prayer: "Faith is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods." This distinction addresses petition's greatest challenge—maintaining confidence amid divine silence or apparent refusal. Lewis warns that we will never attain eternal life "as long as [we] are trying to get it as a reward." Likewise, we cannot approach petition from a utilitarian perspective; rather it is fundamentally grounded in relationship. We ask because we our deepest needs can be fulfilled only in relation to the God who created and knows us. 2. Personal "Festoonings" of the Lord's Prayer In Letter 5, Lewis shares his personal interpretations (or "festoonings") of the Lord's Prayer, demonstrating how abstract theology becomes personal practice. For "Thy kingdom come," Lewis contemplates three levels of meaning: God's reign appearing in nature's beauty, in the lives of good people, and ultimately in heaven. This multi-layered interpretation connects present experience with ultimate hope. His interpretation of "Thy will be done" reveals evolving understanding: "For there isn't always—or we don't always have reason to suspect that there is—some great affliction looming in the near future, but there are always duties to be done... 'Thy will be done—by me—now' brings one back to brass tacks" (Letter 5). This demonstrates prayer's transformative dimension—moving us from passive recipients to active agents in divine work. Most striking is Lewis's insight about submitting to unexpected blessings: "I am beginning to feel that we need a preliminary act of submission not only towards possible future afflictions but also towards possible future blessings... It seems to me that we often, almost sulkily, reject the good that God offers us because, at that moment, we expected some other good" (Letter 5). This observation challenges our tendency to dictate not only what God should do but how and when He should do it. 3. Prayer as Participation in Divine Causality In "Work & Prayer," Lewis offers perhaps his most philosophically penetrating analysis of petition through comparison with physical causation. He addresses the determinist objection by noting that its logical extension would invalidate all human action: "Why wash your hands? If God intends them to be clean, they'll come clean without your washing them." The essay's central insight is that prayer represents a form of causality analogous to but distinct from physical work: "The two methods by which we are allowed to produce events may be called work and prayer. Both are alike in this respect—that in both we try to produce a state of affairs which God has not (or at any rate not yet) seen fit to provide 'on His own.'" This understanding of prayer as participation in divine causality rather than as an exception to it counters both magical thinking about prayer's efficacy and mechanical skepticism about its objective reality. Quoting Pascal, Lewis suggests  God "instituted prayer in order to allow His creatures the dignity of causality." 4. Biblical Paradoxes in Prayer In Letter 11, Lewis confronts the tension between Jesus's seemingly unconditional promise in Mark 11:24 ("Whatever you ask for... you will receive") and the reality of unanswered prayer, including Jesus's own prayer in Gethsemane. Rather than attempting to resolve this tension through reductive explanations, Lewis acknowledges its difficulty: "How is this astonishing promise to be reconciled with the observed facts?... I have found no book that helps me with them all" (Letter 11). Lewis honors apparent contradictions in scripture and experience as indicative of deeper truth rather than as problems to be eliminated. This reflects the biblical pattern in which both human responsibility and divine sovereignty are affirmed without systematic resolution of their apparent tension. Lewis recognizes that prayer involves genuine paradoxes that cannot be easily resolved but must be faithfully embraced. Questions for Reflection 1.      Lewis shares his personal "festoonings" of the Lord's Prayer in Letter 5, noting that they are his private interpretations rather than authoritative explanations. How might developing your own thoughtful engagement with this prayer enrich your prayer life? What personal meanings have you discovered in the Lord's Prayer? 2.     Consider Lewis's suggestion that we need to submit to possible future blessings as well as afflictions. Have you experienced times when you "almost sulkily, reject[ed] the good that God offers... because, at that moment, we expected some other good"? How might awareness of this tendency transform your approach to God's provision? 3.     Lewis describes prayer as a form of causality analogous to but distinct from physical work. How might this understanding challenge both magical thinking about prayer's efficacy and mechanical skepticism about its objective reality? What implications does this have for how you approach petitionary prayer? 4.     In "Work & Prayer," Lewis writes that "the very act of asking is what God has ordained as a means by which our prayers are fulfilled." How might this understanding of prayer as participation in divine causality rather than exception to it transform your approach to petition? What implications does this have for how you understand apparently unanswered prayer? 5.     Lewis strongly defends petitionary prayer against both philosophical objections and religious over-spiritualization. How might his defense address contemporary skepticism about prayer's effectiveness? How does it challenge approaches to spirituality that minimize asking God for specific things? 6.     In Letter 11, Lewis confronts the tension between Jesus's seemingly unconditional promises about prayer and the reality of unanswered petitions. How have you navigated this apparent contradiction in your own prayer life? How might embracing this paradox rather than resolving it enrich your understanding of prayer? 7.      Lewis suggests that the highest faith in prayer might belong primarily to "the prophet's, the apostle's, the missionary's, the healer's prayer." How might this perspective transform expectations about prayer without diminishing its importance? How might it challenge contemporary emphasis on individual spiritual technique? Practical Exercise: Praying the Lord's Prayer with Personal "Festoonings" (2-3 days) Taking inspiration from Lewis's approach in Letter 5, spend time with the Lord's Prayer over several days, developing your own thoughtful "festoonings" or personal interpretations: 1.       Select a phrase  from the Lord's Prayer each day (e.g., "Thy kingdom come," "Give us this day our daily bread"). 2.      Pray the phrase slowly , allowing its meanings to unfold in your mind. 3.      Consider multiple levels of meaning , as Lewis does with "Thy kingdom come" (in nature, in human lives, and in heaven). 4.      Connect the phrase to your current circumstances , exploring how it might apply to specific situations you face. 5.      Practice prayer as participation , recognizing that in praying these words you are not merely expressing desire but participating in divine causality—joining your voice to Christ's perfect prayer and allowing the Spirit to pray through you. 6.      Journal your reflections , noting how these personal interpretations enrich your understanding of the prayer and how they might reflect your participation in the unfolding of God's purposes. After this period, reflect on how this practice has affected your engagement with this familiar prayer. Has it helped you move beyond rote recitation to more thoughtful participation? Have you discovered meanings you hadn't previously considered? How has it deepened your understanding of prayer as participation in divine reality rather than mere expression of human desire? The Rev. Dr. Bryan Hollon is president of Trinity Anglican Seminary in Ambridge, PA.

By Jeffrey Walton JUICY ECUMENISM April 4, 2025   I’ve long been critical of the Episcopal Church for effectively resigning itself to the role of a “boutique church.”   Episcopalians, broadly, no longer believe that they offer something unique to the world or that most people would be particularly interested. Instead, they’ve found themselves catering to a caste of highly educated (and increasingly aged) white liberals. The problems are apparent; the group is less likely to procreate and, when they do, their children do not remain within the Church. Data bears this out, and the denomination’s priorities reflect this skewed demographic: caricature of the Episcopal Church as a chaplaincy to lefty professors and a handful of identity categories is deserved.   This is compounded by a form of universalism and religious humanism that has displaced the Gospel of Jesus Christ, sapping evangelistic energy. No kids and no converts, save for a few liberal Catholics and Exvangelicals. Readers of this blog know that this is nothing new.   Left unsaid is that Anglicans outside of the Episcopal Church could very well be painting themselves into another corner.   “Our studies show that the Anglican Church is in growth,” Bishop Derek Jones of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA)’s Jurisdiction Armed Forces and Chaplaincy recently shared in a presentation on religious liberty and traditional Christian values. “But, I believe that what’s going on is a great shift.”   Jones pointed to data from groups like Pew and Barna showing that faithful Christian communities that maintain Biblical teaching are actually growing while denominations that accommodate secular values continue their decades-long decline.   “Right now it is the historic sacramental churches: Orthodox, Roman, and Anglican that are growing, along with Messianic Judaism while all other faith groups are on decline. All.” Jones emphasized. “And I believe that the Anglican Church has simply been the benefactor of those faithful Christians from Protestant denominational groups finding their way to an Anglican Church.”   While I suspect that Jones might be overstating Orthodox growth, and possibly unaware that Roman Catholicism struggles with retention more than any Christian group in the United States, he’s right about the nature of the present growth of Anglicanism. Even an enthusiastic cheerleader of ACNA like me needs only look around in our most vibrant congregations to see that we’re witnessing consolidation, not conversion from unbelief. We also tend to draw disproportionately from the professional class, just as Episcopalians do. But, as a century of Pentecostal growth showed, and a century of Methodist and Baptist growth before that, reaching the working class with the Gospel is essential: the Gospel message is for everyone.   Jones spoke March 1 at the St. Luke’s Anglican Theology Conference in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, where he asked how many present had their origin in a Protestant faith group.   Nearly everyone raised their hands.   “Does that answer your question? We’re coming to the end of that growth,” Jones flatly declared. “It’s time for us as a church to say we have a responsibility to our communities to be a beacon of light of the truth of the Gospel. It’s time for us to be going up and saying ‘do you know Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and savior?’”   Jones wasn’t seeking to lay blame: “I don’t always do the best either,” he acknowledged. But he offered a clear-eyed view that Anglican churches attracting a narrow subset of Protestants (usually Baptists and Presbyterians considering a liturgical expression or Methodists exiting a rapidly liberalizing United Methodist Church) won’t see that same pipeline of new members indefinitely, and the cultural headwinds of secularism will hit Anglicans, too.   Episcopalians and other Anglicans in North America may see themselves as worlds apart, and that’s not without basis. We Anglicans can be grateful that many of these faithful Protestants are deepening their Christian discipleship in our churches and that our rates of procreation appear healthier than within the Episcopal Church (yes, procreation is a form of church growth – it’s how the Amish double in size every generation).   That said, we can learn from the mistakes of the Episcopal Church and not paint ourselves into a demographic corner. God’s view is more expansive than our own: he’s calling us not to recline and wait for others to come to us, but to go to them.   Watch Bishop Derek Jones’ talk, “Legislating Morality in the Midst of Cultural Wars” from the St. Luke’s Anglican Theology Conference here.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWzu-XpMltw&t=2318s

By Angela Tilby THE CHURCH TIMES April 2, 2025 BBC: The Rt Revd Justin Welby is interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg   THERE has been much criticism of the Rt Revd Justin Welby for saying, in a BBC interview with Laura Kuenssberg this week, that he “forgives” John Smyth. In reality, his comments were much more nuanced. Watching the whole interview, I found it impossible not to be moved as he sat still like a prisoner, or at least a penitent, as, for nearly 40 minutes, Ms Kuenssberg politely but firmly hammered in the nails, and, again and again, he expressed profound sorrow at the safeguarding failures that led to his resignation last November.   There has been much tragedy in Bishop Welby’s life: an unhappy childhood, the death of his own child in infancy, and a depressive tendency that runs through the family. Towards the end of the interview, he expressed a longing for the obscurity of private life.   It left me wondering whether the greatest tragedy of his life was to have been appointed Archbishop of Canterbury. It was, after all, an unlikely appointment. He had only recently become Bishop of Durham; he was a late ordinand, having previously worked in the oil industry, and he was initially turned down for ordination.   But he was also an Evangelical with Charismatic leanings, and had worked briefly at Holy Trinity, Brompton. The ever-powerful Evangelical networks chose him as their man, trusting him to promote their particular vision of mission and growth, which he did, as far as he could, setting the Church on a path of rewarding church-planting and innovation over traditional parish ministry. In the interview, rather touchingly, he claimed that the Church was actually growing, a claim for which there is, sadly, limited evidence.   In his years as Archbishop, he gradually outgrew his initial supporters. One of the most moving parts of the interview was when he spoke of conducting the funeral for the late Queen. Suddenly, it was as though he “got it”: he understood what it meant for the C of E to be the national Church. As his archiepiscopate went on, he upset the Evangelical lobbies and a substantial part of the Anglican Communion over gay relationships, greatly overestimating his ability to bring them on board.   For all his well-earned reputation as a reconciler, he never really had the bandwidth to cope with the demands of those who had promoted him and expected him to toe the line. But then this was the central dilemma of his episcopate. He is a product of the Iwerne camps, with their repressed homo-eroticism and, in some quarters, disregard for the wider Church of England. It was his misfortune to have come from the same stable as the serial abuser Smyth.   Plain Bishop Welby, in his blue open-necked shirt, has carried the can not only for safeguarding errors, but for the whole theology that has been used to mould the C of E into its image and is now exposed as theologically and morally bankrupt.   END

By Sue Careless THE LIVING CHURCH April 4, 2025   The Anglican Church of Canada has announced four nominees for the office of primate: the Most Rev. Christopher Harper, the Most Rev. Greg Kerr-Wilson, the Rt. Rev. David Lehmann, and the Rt. Rev. Riscylla Walsh-Shaw.   In the church’s polity, bishops choose the nominees for primate, but the election is made by clergy and lay delegates to its General Synod, which will meet in London, Ontario, in late June. The election is scheduled for June 26.   The Nominees   Chris Harper has been the National Indigenous Anglican Archbishop since 2003, overseeing Indigenous ministries in the Anglican Church of Canada. He is also the Presiding Elder of Sacred Circle, a gathering of Indigenous Anglicans. Traditionally Sacred Circles are held every three years, usually ahead of General Synod.   From 2018 to 2023 Harper was the Bishop of Saskatoon. Harper is Plains Cree, and the son of a residential school survivor. He spent much of his younger life on a reserve of the Onion Lake Cree Nation, which straddles the Alberta-Saskatchewan provincial boundary.   Harper was an emergency medical technician before preparing for the priesthood at Wycliffe College in Toronto. He was ordained to the priesthood in 2005 and served in the Dioceses of Saskatchewan, Algoma, and Toronto, both on and off reserve. He is also Chancellor for the College of Emmanuel and St. Chad, an Anglican theological college affiliated with the University of Saskatchewan, in Saskatoon.   Greg Kerr-Wilson is the Metropolitan of the Ecclesiastical Province of Northern Lights (formerly Rupert’s Land) and Bishop of Calgary. As one of the church’s four metropolitans, he oversees ten dioceses within a regional area that covers the Arctic and stretches across Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and parts of Ontario.   Kerr-Wilson is a graduate of the University of British Columbia and Nashotah House Theological Seminary. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1990, beginning his ministry as curate of St. Paul’s, Bloor Street, in Toronto, the Anglican Church of Canada’s largest congregation. He served as a rector in Ontario and as dean of All Saints’ Cathedral in Edmonton before becoming Bishop of Qu’Appelle, a diocese in southern Saskatchewan, in 2006.   Kerr-Wilson was elected Bishop of Calgary in 2012, and in 2015, he was elected metropolitan. Kerr-Wilson is also a member of Communion Partners, a group of church leaders within the Anglican Church of Canada and the Episcopal Church devoted to maintaining traditional teaching and fostering the unity of the Anglican Communion.   David Lehmann has been the Bishop of Caledonia, a diocese that covers the northern half of British Columbia, since 2018. He is also chair of the Council of the North, a group of nine jurisdictions, including eight dioceses that receive financial assistance from General Synod for their ministry to largely Indigenous and geographically isolated communities across Northern Canada.   Lehmann was born in Toronto and raised in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories. He earned degrees from Camrose Lutheran College in Alberta (now the University of Alberta’s Augustana Campus) and Wycliffe College, and was a naval reservist.   After ordination, he served in Fort Simpson, an isolated and mostly Indigenous village in the Northwest Territories, and in the Diocese of Edmonton. Throughout his parish ministry, he was involved in community initiatives, heritage projects, and Fresh Expressions, a movement focused on creative evangelism. He is also chair of the Board of Governors for Vancouver School of Theology, an ecumenical divinity school affiliated with the University of British Columbia.   Riscylla Walsh-Shaw is a suffragan bishop in the Diocese of Toronto. She was elected in 2016, and is responsible for 57 parishes in the Trent-Durham area.   With Red River Métis family roots, Walsh-Shaw grew up on a small farm. She studied at the University of Toronto and earned a Master of Divinity from Wycliffe College in 1999. She worked in youth ministry, and after her ordination in 2011, served in several parishes in the Diocese of Toronto.   Walsh-Shaw has been involved in reconciliation work with Indigenous communities, and was a witness and an ambassador to Canada’s national Truth and Reconciliation Commission. She represents the Anglican Church of Canada on the World Council of Churches’ Central Committee and the Anglican Consultative Council. She served on the Primate’s Commission on Discovery, Reconciliation, and Justice.   The Issues   There will be enormous challenges ahead for the next primate.   Except in the Diocese of the Arctic, membership numbers have been dropping precipitously in the Anglican Church of Canada for decades. The church faces a financial crisis, and is considering several options for restructuring to adjust to a future with fewer resources.   Last September, a commission appointed by former primate Linda Nicholls released a report, Reimagining the Church: Proclaiming the Gospel in the 21st Century, which proposes several options for structural change.   Some of the proposals, like eliminating one level of church structure (either General Synod or the ecclesiastical provinces); restructuring the work of Church House, the national headquarters in Toronto; or having the primate continue to serve as a diocesan bishop have prompted considerable discussion.   Kerr-Wilson told TLC he supported returning to an earlier model in which the primate also retained oversight of a diocese. “I think it can be done, and it would also assist in the needed downsizing and reorganizing of General Synod—which means I am also in favour of revisioning Church House,” he said.   A proposal to dismantle the Council of the North, and to redistribute the funds to parishes across the entire church, has been much more controversial. Lehmann criticized the proposal, saying that Council of the North funding is “a response to the disparity that exists in north-south ministry. This disparity remains today. Travel across the north is more expensive, along with utilities, housing, and groceries.”   The church also remains divided on proposals to change its canons to permit same-sex marriage. The last time a vote was held, at General Synod 2019, a canon change was narrowly defeated in the House of Bishops. Walsh-Shaw and Harper voted to change the canon, while Lehmann and Kerr-Wilson voted against it.   The Process   Anne Germond, Archbishop of Algoma and Metropolitan of the Ecclesiastical Province of Ontario, has been Acting Primate since Archbishop Linda Nichols retired in September 2024, at the denomination’s mandatory retirement age of 70.   Video interviews of the nominees will be released after Easter, and General Synod will be held June 23-29 in London, Ontario. It usually meets triennially but this year is meeting after a two-year gap.   During the primatial election, the bishops do not vote, but are sequestered while the clergy and laity vote separately. To become primate, a nominee must obtain a majority in both orders. The primate does not serve a fixed term, but usually leads the church until retirement.   The election is “a profound moment of spiritual discernment in the life of our beloved Church,” said the Ven. Alan Perry, general secretary. “Please pray for those who [are] nominated, their families and dioceses, and for the person who will be elected—whom God has already chosen to be our next Primate.”   He also asked for prayers for Germond “as she steers us through the next few months.” She only agreed to accept the office of Acting Primate on the condition that she would not be a primatial candidate.   The installation of the 15th Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada is planned for the last day of General Synod, June 29.   Sue Careless is senior editor of The Anglican Planet and author of the series Discovering the Book of Common Prayer: A Hands-On Approach. She is based in Toronto.

If the former archbishop of Canterbury hoped his self-abnegation on the BBC might salvage what was left of his reputation, he was wrong.   By Tim Wyatt THE NEW STATESMAN April 3, 2025   Overwhelmed. When Justin Welby looks back on the early months of his tenure as archbishop of Canterbury, that is the word that comes to his mind. In his first interview since his resignation, Welby told the BBC that he was shocked by the torrent of safeguarding cases that flooded across his desk when he entered Lambeth Palace in 2013: historic cases, recent cases, disputed cases; bishops, deans, archdeacons and priests accused or suspected of abusing choirboys, parishioners, even their fellow clergy. “Safeguarding was the crisis I hadn’t foreseen – I didn’t realise how bad it was,” Welby said. The scale of the problem was why, Welby now says, he failed to adequately respond to the case that would ultimately bring his tenure to an end 11 years later.   An independent investigation into the abuses of John Smyth – which were first reported to the Church of England (C of E) in summer 2013, months after Welby took office – was published last November. The Makin review criticised Welby for not ensuring those early allegations reached the proper authorities. Within days of its publication, Welby resigned, becoming the first ever head of the Church to step down in disgrace.   In the BBC interview on 30 March, Welby apologised: “I am so sorry for what I failed to do [and] for what the Church did do with John Smyth… I am so sorry that I did not serve the victims and survivors… as I should have done, and that’s why I resigned.”   He attempted to explain, if not justify, his failures. He was new and inexperienced in the job when the accusations came across his desk. The national Church then had a single, part-time staffer for safeguarding (under Welby, the team grew to almost 60). The rules said it was the local bishop in Ely, not Canterbury, who should take the lead. The police asked him to hold off while they looked into the case themselves. He was distracted by another scandal that was going through the courts and seemed more pressing. “It was an absolutely overwhelming few weeks,” Welby said. “That’s not an excuse… The reality is, I got it wrong. As archbishop, there are no excuses for that kind of failure.”   If the former prelate hoped his self-abnegation might salvage what was left of his reputation, he was wrong. The response to the interview has mostly been anger at what many victims see as an attempt to shift the blame. Some continue to believe Welby is obscuring the extent to which he knew about Smyth’s abuse before 2013, given he had attended camps with Smyth in the 1970s.   Smyth was perhaps the most prolific abuser in the modern history of the Church of England. Around 130 teenage boys, many of them groomed while attending evangelical summer camps co-led by Smyth, were sexually, psychologically and physically abused by him. After this was discovered in 1982 by the trust that ran the camps, Smyth was quietly pushed out. But the trust chose not to pass on what they knew to the Church authorities or the police. Smyth went on to set up camps in Zimbabwe, where he began abusing boys again.   The Makin report concluded that Smyth’s crimes were an “open secret” among many in the conservative-evangelical wing of the C of E. But it took a Channel 4 News documentary in 2017 to expose him. Survivors continue to demand every clergy member named in the report resigns or be disciplined. The Church has identified ten – including a former bishop of Durham and George Carey, archbishop of Canterbury from 1992 to 2002 – whose involvement in the “cover-up”, as the report calls it, warrants formal disciplinary proceedings.   There has also been outrage over Welby’s admission to the BBC that if Smyth were still alive, he would forgive him. The former archbishop went on to say that it was up to victims to decide for themselves if they wished to extend the same grace to Smyth, who died in 2018 shortly after the TV exposé of his abuse. One victim told the BBC that, never mind Smyth, he could not even forgive Welby for continuing to “blank” survivors.   While the Church reeled in the wake of the Makin report, other dark secrets were forcing their way to the surface. Weeks after Welby’s resignation, the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, now the de facto interim head of the C of E, was implicated in a scandal over an Essex vicar known to have a history of sexual offences against children. In January, the bishop of Liverpool, John Perumbalath, was forced from office after it emerged two women – one of them now a bishop herself – had made complaints against him for sexual harassment and misconduct. Then, Channel 4 revealed that the evangelical vicar who led the cover-up of Smyth’s abuse in the 1980s, David Fletcher, was also an alleged abuser himself. Fletcher’s brother, Jonathan, a prominent church leader in London for decades, is awaiting trial for indecent assault and grievous bodily harm during his ministry.   What is it about the C of E that allows – perhaps even enables – such cases to proliferate? No doubt some abusers deliberately infiltrate the priesthood knowing it grants clergy ready access to vulnerable potential victims. There is also a powerful culture of deference to the dog-collared elite. Even more pervasive is the fear that exposing abuse will harm the mission of saving souls; this is lofty, eternity-minded work too important to be threatened by bad press. In truth, abuse scandals have afflicted a panoply of other institutions: the BBC, the NHS, parliament, too many schools to count. But, rightly, none is held to moral standards as high as its the nation’s established church.   In an attempt to halt the onslaught, in February the C of E’s governing body, the General Synod, considered radical reforms to Church safeguarding. Independent safeguarding had long been demanded by many in the survivor community, who do not trust the Church to “mark its own homework”. Indeed, Welby told the BBC he had been in favour of such a reform for years. But to the surprise of many observers, the Synod instead voted for a pared-back version of independence: the national team was transferred to a new, independent employer, but local safeguarding was kept within dioceses. Unwilling to defend the status quo but not yet ready for radical reform, the C of E is caught in a messy compromise that will please few.   Welby’s successor, due to be announced in the autumn, will be under no illusions about the scale of the crisis facing Lambeth Palace. Speedily implementing the outsourcing of the national safeguarding team, a legally and logistically complex task, must be apriority. The Church must also begin to rebuild trust with both survivors and the wider public. Yet the archbishop of Canterbury does not have the executive powers of the pope; they are not CEO of C of E plc. “I would have loved to be able to wave a magic wand and get it all right,” Welby told the BBC regarding the Church’s struggle to introduce gay marriage. “But that isn’t the reality, and I didn’t have the votes.” Without friendly majorities in the Synod, archbishops can only achieve so much.   Many of those angered by Welby’s tenure are placing their hopes in a fresher, more modern next resident of Lambeth Palace. A change of tone at the top would no doubt help the Church begin to regain the nation’s trust. But the 106th archbishop of Canterbury will be just as constrained – by millennia of tradition, by complex internal systems and cultures, and by ordinary human weaknesses – as Welby.

As Canada’s Anglican church dwindles, its most remote (and most expansive) diocese has shown growth. One bishop responsible for that trend is retiring, leaving his successor to find clergy willing to take on the Arctic’s challenges. Anglican Bishop David Parsons poses in the village of Puvirnituq, Quebec, in northern Canada . (Photo by Julia Duin) By Julia Duin April 2, 2025   INUKJUAK, Quebec (RNS) — Outside, on the banks of a chilly river flowing into the blue-black waters of Hudson Bay, it was only 10 degrees.   Inside St. Thomas Anglican Church, in the northern Canadian hamlet of Inukjuak, about 70 people were gathered — one of them an imposing, 6-foot-1 man with a thatch of white hair, a full beard and the long, sweeping red, black and white robes of an Anglican bishop.   Bishop David Parsons, holding up a red paper heart to signify the blood of Jesus, a black one to signify sin, a Bible and a flashlight, said: “This Bible is a light to show us where to go. For 12 years, I’ve worn the robes of a bishop. The robes remind me that I am a sinner.”   Parsons had recently turned 70, the mandatory retirement age in the Anglican Church of Canada, and was taking a farewell tour after a dozen years heading the Diocese of the Arctic. Covering Canada’s northern third, it is the largest Anglican diocese (by area) in the world. Inukjuak, population 1,821, is in Nunavik, a region at the diocese’s far eastern end in the remote northern reaches of Quebec.   Translating for Parsons was his predecessor and mentor, Andrew Atagotaaluk. Wiry and compact, with bushy eyebrows and silvery-black hair, and standing almost a foot shorter than Parsons, Atagotaaluk was the diocese’s first Inuit bishop and one of four translators of the first Inuktituk-language Bible.   Together, the two bishops had created an evangelical outpost with 34,171 members and still growing amid the more liberal ACC that is dropping numbers so fast, the entire denomination may not last beyond 2040.   Anglican Bishop David Parsons, left, preaches about the need for redemption while his translator, retired Bishop Andrew Atagotaaluk, holds a yellow paper heart as a sermon prop, during a service at St. Thomas Anglican Church in Inukjuak, Quebec, in late November 2024. (Photo by Julia Duin)   The diocese’s bishops have consistently voted throughout the years against same-sex unions, gender transition liturgies and other liberalizing trends in the ACC. “The South doesn’t want to support us because we’re too biblical,” the bishop mused. “We believe Jesus is Lord, we’re not interfaith and we don’t have the intelligence to run things on our own without the Holy Spirit.”   If its congregations are growing, however, Parsons’ successor, who will be elected May 9 in Edmonton, will grapple with the never-ending problem of how to attract priests to the Arctic. Only 16 full-time clergy serve the diocese’s 49 parishes, recruited from around the world to serve in 13 hamlets ranging from Kugluktuk to Kuujjuaq. Parsons has used a patchwork of retired clergy, deacons and laity to lead another two dozen churches, leaving 10 parishes with no clergy or lay leader.   Meanwhile, climate change, geopolitics and tourism bring the world farther north every year. The Anglicans, who have been in the region since the late 17th century, and the Catholics, who’ve been there a century, are seeing a bit of competition. Jehovah’s Witnesses and Muslims have established footholds in the Arctic, and independent Baptists and Seventh-day Adventists have also moved in.   To meet that challenge means a constant search for new blood, which is tremendously draining. The onetime corps of missionary Anglican clergy from the U.K. eager to minister in the Arctic no longer exists. Many non-Inuit clergy leave after a few years due to the isolation of the Arctic and easier career opportunities elsewhere.   Add to this the simple wear and tear on the body from constant travel in subzero cold. Born in Labrador, Parsons is used to living up north, but his first post as a lay minister in 1989 in Aklavik was truly remote. Only reachable by plane or ice road, the village, near the Alaskan border, was a trading post for the Hudson Bay Co. and the site of the diocese’s first cathedral.   Dioceses and provinces of the Anglican Church of Canada. The Diocese of the Arctic is highlighted in blue. (Image courtesy of ACC)   Parsons adored his four years there, he said, as there were several clergy within a day’s journey to mentor him. “It was like a party for me,” he said. “I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. These were high-caliber people who treated me if I were one of them.”   One of them, Atagotaaluk, ordained him and sent Parsons to head a parish in Inuvik, a town on the Mackenzie River Delta near the Arctic Ocean. Parsons served happily there until Atagotaaluk announced his retirement in 2012, and Parsons was nominated to replace him. Parsons dithered on whether to keep his name on the ballot.   “Dad,” said Davey Parsons, the bishop’s youngest son, then 30, “how long are you going to run away from everything?”   Parsons’ name stayed. He was elected after several ballots. “The next morning,” he remembered, “a member of the Nunavut government asked me what I was going to do about all the suicides.”   In 2012, after he prayed about how to answer the government official’s question, he realized the key was hiring a youth coordinator for the at-risk teenagers dying by suicide. He hired one and got a $45,000 grant to help train parish leaders in suicide prevention. Then COVID-19 hit. Meanwhile, the youth coordinator married, got pregnant and quit.   The question of suicide came up at the bishop’s next stop, in Puvirnituq, the largest town on Hudson Bay’s eastern coast and home of the new $4 million (Canadian) St. Matthew’s Anglican Church. Its priest, Esau Tatatoapik, and his wife, Mary, a deacon, met him at the airport and took him to their home beneath skies green with the northern lights.   Just before Parsons’ plane pulled in, the couple had presided at a funeral for a woman who’d been killed by her drunken grandson. Esau averages three funerals a month, but this past week he’d had four. Parsons asked what was killing everyone, and the couple — along with their youth group leaders — responded that the causes were alcohol-related, drug overdoses or cancer. “Mary and I are so tired,” the priest said. “There have been so many funerals. So many of the clergy have had suicides.”   Parsons had been going all day, but somehow, he had to encourage this dispirited group. “I am soon going to be gone,” he said. “It will be you guys who will need to look for an answer. We need to get people in their 20s. We need to empower a crowd of teenagers. Instead of killing themselves, they need to come alongside each other and build each other up.”   He repeated a prophecy that Anglicans across the north have talked about for years: Through the Arctic, God will revive the South. There have been prophets among their own people, he said, that have said the dying southern half of the Canadian church will be awoken by a resurgent, evangelical, spiritually powerful North.   He repeated this message at an evening confirmation service whose Pentecostal-style hymns were led by a six-piece band. Parsons asked the youthful crowd of 70 how many teens were present without their parents. At least 10 raised their hands.   “Where are the elders?” he asked. “They are home drunk … with busyness.”   His 40-minute sermon reassured his listeners they have a destiny despite their remote locale. “God wants to send the people of the North to the whole world.”   The irony was maddening; here he had plenty of people but not enough leaders, while dioceses in the South have plenty of clergy, but no people.   The next day, Parsons was off for Ivujivik, a scenic village in a tiny fjord off Digges Sound, at the very northern tip of Quebec. The local priest, Peter Ainalik, who would turn 80 in a few days, was one of the men Parsons has talked out of retirement to staff the tiny St. Columba Anglican Church. He met with Parsons for several hours before the service to pray and reminisce.   Ainalik told the bishop that church members wanted a prayer time for all the suicides in town. Thirty-two people — mostly women — made their way through the falling snow for an evening service where one person was confirmed. When Parsons invited people up for prayer afterward, the floodgates burst open. A petite dark-haired woman named Piellie asked for prayer for a broken heart: Her 32-year-old son, Lucassie, died by suicide the year before, she said between sobs. Many others wept as well.   “Some of them cannot heal after suicide,” Parsons reflected afterward. “So many young people are doing it. Many have been lost. It’s hard to find the answer why.”   The next day, Ainalik, engulfed in a mustard-yellow parka, saw Parsons off at the tiny airport. The priest and the bishop shook hands.   “See you in heaven,” Parsons said.

By Gavin Ashenden                                                                                                                                             CATHOLIC HERALD                                                                                                                                                          April 2, 2025   Being interviewed by a skilled journalist can be a high-risk event. This weekend just gone, Bishop Justin Welby, former Archbishop of Canterbury, submitted to a long in-depth interview at the hands of the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg.   It may not have been the softest of soft-ball interviews that the BBC has conducted, but it came close. Kuenssberg pitched some unusually gentle questions.   The overwhelming response to the interview has been to ask why Justin Welby chose to do it?   There was a kind of quantum element to it: contradictory streams of thought within a single conversation. At one and the same time, there was an air of self-pity and victimhood running under the surface as an implicit sub-motif; while at the same time the questions and answers on the surface displayed an ineptitude and incoherence that were more likely to result in serious criticism than sympathy.   In answer to what went wrong, he claimed he had been overwhelmed by a torrent of safeguarding issues. The implication was that it wasn’t his fault if the Church he was leading was so corrupt that the scale of the reporting of abuse took his office aback.   It seems odd for someone who was responsible for running a multi-billion-pound organisation to claim that he lacked the resources to manage the daily business that came to his office. It was not a question of lacking resources, so what was lacking?   Rebecca Chapman, a member of the Church of England’s General Synod, writing in the Spectator immediately afterwards, thought she might have the key to Welby’s early difficulties in managing his daily business. She suggested that his unhelpful and possibly overly egocentric global travel plans had dominated his daily schedule.   She wrote of her astonishment that “much of the diary juggle seemed to be his own making as he kicked off a self-imposed plan to visit every single primate of the Anglican Communion over the next 18 months”.   Similarly, despite the gentle interview treatment Kuensberg offered to the former archbishop, she herself wrote of her difficulty in making sense of his responses after the interview:   “For many of the victims of serial abuser John Smyth, and likely many of you reading this, Welby’s confessed failures are not just mystifying but deeply alarming.   “He wasn’t ‘curious’ enough to pursue allegations of child abuse in the Church of England. He says now that when he took the job in 2013 he was too overwhelmed by the scale of the problem to check what had happened with Smyth, a man he had known for years, even though he believed the allegations were probably true.”   In fact, critics have insisted that despite Welby’s protestations, he had known there were problems with Smyth long before 2013.   In the early 1980s, Welby was sharing accommodation with the Rev Mark Ruston, a vicar in Cambridge who authored the first secret report of Smyth’s abuse. Furthermore, Welby had an official position in helping run the Smyth camps. Not only is it unlikely he knew nothing of the alarm and talk behind the scenes – which led to the authoring of the report by his landlord in whose house he lived – but witnesses have claimed they overheard conversations involving Welby in which concerns over Smyth were being discussed.   But even if they are mistaken, the reports about Smyth, whom he knew well, should have provoked an immediate response, since both abuser and victims were people that Welby knew personally. It was this personal connection that played its part in moving this tragedy from a failure of the institution to a personal failure also of the Archbishop.   Like the Baskerville hound that failed to bark in the night, it was what was not said in the interview with Kuenssberg that had the most powerful effect. There was no acknowledgement of how during the ten years it took for the Makin report to be commissioned and published – which basically required being leaked – Welby had made promises to talk and listen to the victims, which he had not kept.   During the second half of the interview, Bishop Welby was asked about the state of the relationship between the state Church and society. As with all questions, the preconception that lies behind the question aims to determine the answer. Ms Kuenssberg put it to the bishop that because there was still no automatic right for a woman to be appointed as a clergy person to an Anglican parish, and because homosexual couples could not yet demand marriage by right in the C of E, to what extent was the Church actually mirroring society?   Any theologian, any bishop, any thinking lay Christian might have drawn breath, then offered a couple of poignant examples from the excesses of Western culture in the early decades of this century before asking Ms Kuenssberg if she was confident that it was a good thing for the Church to mirror society; to wonder if perhaps the Church might have a role to play in curbing excesses, challenging and redirecting appetites and addictions, questioning the value of hedonism, and reflecting on the incoherence of ill-formed notions of equality.   But these were not questions that Welby thought to address.   One of the strangest elements in the interview was the lack of any spiritual, theological or moral perspective that you might expect a senior Church leader to offer when presented with the complex relationship between post-Christian society and the Christian state Church. Welby spoke more as a frustrated managerial executive than as a retired bishop offering help to interpret the opposing values of two conflicting world views.   One can sympathise as well as criticise. The issue of when the state Church becomes so hostage to anti-Christian ideology that it raises questions about the legitimacy of its attempts to remain faithful to Christian values, tradition and philosophy is becoming an increasingly painful and fraught one. But ignoring it does not make it go away. And one could argue that a recently retired Archbishop of Canterbury is in the very best position to offer some kind of perspectival discernment on the presence of the elephant in the room.   From a Catholic perspective, there has always been a hope that the leader of the state Church in England might act as a mouthpiece for the other Christian elements in the country. Welby’s failure to do so leaves the vacuum that the Catholic bishops increasingly feel the need to fill.   Given recent weeks in which social commentators have been deeply struck by the emergence of what appears to be a new world order emerging as both Trump and the Catholic vice-president in the US have appeared to threaten sanctions on the United Kingdom government – for its refusal to guarantee freedom of speech and conscience, in particular to Christians over abortion – it was odd for Welby to appear to be so afflicted with self-pity on the one hand and with concerns over feminist and gay rights on the other, that the issue of free speech and totalitarian government passed him by.   Perhaps his disavowing of clerical dress and adoption of shirt and jacket were intended to send a signal of more than just a preference for informality in a well-lit TV studio.

Staff Writer CHRISTIAN TODAY 31 Mar, 2025   PHOTO: Justin Welby with the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg. (BBC)   Justin Welby has spoken of a “deep sense of personal failure” over how allegations of horrific sexual abuse by the late John Smyth were handled.  The former Archbishop of Canterbury also said he was "profoundly ashamed" of a farewell speech in the House of Lords in which he appeared to make light of the safeguarding failures that led to his resignation.  Welby stepped down in the wake of the Makin Review which concluded that he could have and should have done more to stop Smyth's abuse. Smyth died in South Africa in 2018 while still under investigation by UK police.  Speaking on the BBC's  Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg  programme, Welby said that he should have stepped down sooner.  “What changed my mind was having been caught by the report being leaked and not really thought it through enough, to be honest,” he said. “Over that weekend, as I read it and reread it and as I reflected on the horrible suffering of the survivors which had been, as many of them said, more than doubled by the institutional Church’s failure to respond adequately, it increasingly became clear to me that I needed to resign.” He said he had failed to properly handle allegations of historical child sex abuse because they were on an "overwhelming scale" with more cases arriving every day.  Asked if he would forgive Smyth, Welby said, “Yes, I think if he was alive and I saw him. “But it’s not, it’s not me he has abused. He’s abused the victims and survivors. So, whether I forgive or not is, to a large extent, irrelevant.” Asked if he wanted to be forgiven by abuse survivors, he said, "Obviously, but it’s not about me. When we talk about safeguarding, the centre of it is the victims and survivors. “I have never, ever said to a survivor, ‘you must forgive’, because that is their sovereign, absolute individual choice. Everyone wants to be forgiven, but to demand forgiveness is to abuse again.” He said that after taking up office as Archbishop of Canterbury in 2013 he was not as "pushy" as he could have been, and that he "didn’t realise how bad it was".  “I’d been in post 11 weeks and safeguarding had been the crisis I hadn’t foreseen," he said. “I should have pushed harder because I knew enough to know that people, very rarely, almost never abuse once.” Welby came under fire for his farewell speech in the House of Lords given shortly after announcing his resignation in which he suggested that a head had to roll.  "And there is only, in this case, one head that rolls well enough," he said.  The speech was met with dismay not only by victims but senior clergy in the Church of England.  Looking back on his words made him "profoundly ashamed", he told Kuennssberg, adding that he "wasn't in a good space at the time".  "It's one of those moments where, when I think of it, I just wince.  It was entirely wrong and entirely inexcusable," he said.  During the interview, he repeated an apology to victims: “Just for the avoidance of doubt, I am utterly sorry and feel a deep sense of personal failure both for the victims of Smyth not being picked up sufficiently after 2017 when we knew the extent of it, and for my own personal failures.” END

By Ryan Foley, CHRISTIAN POST  March 30, 2025   An overwhelming majority of Christians reject the basic Christian teaching of the Trinity, prompting new concerns that Americans are living without the influence of “the truths and life principles of God.”   The Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University released the latest installment of its American Worldview Inventory series which documents Americans’ views on the Trinity. The research is based on responses collected from 2,100 adults in January.   Overall, just 40% of respondents believe that God exists and affects people’s lives. That figure rises to 53% among self-identified Christians, 60% among theologically-identified born-again Christians, and 100% among Integrated Disciples. The latter term refers to those who have a biblical worldview. While a majority of those surveyed (59%) believe in the existence of Jesus Christ, a significantly smaller share of adults (29%) believe in the Holy Spirit.   Slightly more than 1 in 10 respondents (11%) believe in the Trinity, that the God of the Bible is “three distinct but inseparable and equal persons in one infinite Being.” The persons in the Trinity are God the Father, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.   Belief in the Trinity, characterized by the Cultural Research Center as a “fundamental tenet of Christianity,” increases to 16% among self-identified Christians, 24% among theologically-identified born-again Christians and 62% among Integrated Disciples.   “These results are further evidence of the limited or lack of trust Americans have in the Bible, the limitations we place on the authority and influence of God, and our refusal to cooperate with God by living in harmony with His ways and purposes,” said CRC Director of Research George Barna in response to the survey results. “Even the statistics for the groups that are most in-tune with biblical teachings, such as belief in the nature and impact of the Trinity, are shockingly low for a nation in which most people claim to be Christian.”   Sign up now to get PragerU’s 5-Minute Video series and e-book on the Ten Commandments sent straight to your inbox, for free. Dennis Prager explain how the Ten Commandments shaped Western Civilization and why they remain relevant to your life today. Sign Up Now   Barna identified “these findings about America’s ignorance or rejection of the Trinity” as “simply another in a long list of examples of people living without the truths and life principles of God shaping their life.”   He lamented, “We know from our national worldview tracking studies that most Americans are uninformed about the many essential biblical teachings, ranging from the Ten Commandments and the Trinity, to matters related to repentance, salvation, the chief purpose of life, and divine measures of success.”   “It could be argued that the primary theologians influencing the spiritual views of America these days are figures such as Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan, Russell Brand, Jordan Peterson, Megyn Kelly, and Bill Maher” — all influential podcasters and not religious figures.   Brand and Peterson have expressed interest in Christianity, with Brand recently getting baptized, while Carlson and Kelly are established Christians and Maher is an outspoken atheist.   “They mix practical and sometimes unbiblical theology and philosophical points of view into their commentary on life and world events,” Barna said of the podcasters. “Meanwhile, many Christian churches are focused on delivering multi-part series that are not effectively developing or bolstering an integrated, biblical worldview that congregants can rely upon to counteract popular, secular takes on reality.”   Barna suggested that no influential cultural figure or church is “devoted to obsessively building a solid theological foundation for the masses,” asking a series of rhetorical questions designed to make the point that American culture is missing the elements needed to ensure a biblically literate population: “Who is committed to ensuring that people grasp the basic theological building blocks of a biblical worldview? Where is the concern or anguish over the near universal rejection of numerous central biblical teachings?”   “Is the Church of God devoted to know Him and making Him know, or has it been seduced by the distractions and distortions of our culture?” he inquired.

By Catarina Demony REUTERS March 30, 2025   LONDON (Reuters) -Justin Welby, the former spiritual leader of Anglicans worldwide, reiterated he had failed to ensure proper investigations into allegations of abuse within the Church of England, saying the scale of the issue was "overwhelming".   Welby stepped down as Archbishop of Canterbury in November 2024, after calls for him to resign intensified following a report that found he had taken insufficient action to stop one of the Church's most prolific serial abusers.   The report said John Smyth, a British lawyer who volunteered at Christian summer camps, had subjected more than 100 boys and young men to "brutal and horrific" physical and sexual abuse over 40 years.   In an interview with the BBC, which will be broadcast in full on Sunday, Welby said "every day more cases were coming across the desk that ... hadn't been dealt with adequately (in the past)".   "This was just, it was another case - and yes I knew Smyth but it was an absolutely overwhelming few weeks," Welby said. "It was overwhelming, one was trying to prioritise - but I think it's easy to sound defensive over this."   "The reality is I got it wrong. As Archbishop (of Canterbury), there are no excuses," he added.   A spokesperson said the Church of England was "deeply sorry" for the abuse experienced by Smyth's victims, and that they continued to be offered support.   "If anyone comes forward to the Church today with a concern, they will be heard and responded to carefully and compassionately by safeguarding professionals according to our clearly set out guidance," the spokesperson said.   Smyth moved to Africa in 1984 and continued to carry out the abuse until close to his death in 2018, the report said.   The report found the Church had known at the highest level about the sexual abuse claims in 2013 and Welby became aware, at the latest, about the accusations in the same year, after he became Archbishop of Canterbury.   Media reports since Welby resigned have alleged more abuse within the institution.   (Reporting by Catarina Demony. Editing by Aidan Lewis and Mark Potter)

By Bruce Atkinson PhD Special to VIRTUEONLINE www.virtueonline.org March 29, 2025   Orthodox Christianity requires holding fast to the Holy Scriptures, regarding them as the highest authority for the Church prior to the Parousia.  When I use the term “orthodox” here, I am not referring to the assorted ethnic varieties of the Eastern Orthodox Church, although of course individual members of the EOC may be quite orthodox in the more general sense. No religious tradition can rightly go against the plain teachings of Holy Writ and still be truly Christian.  It is the only place where we find the words of Jesus, and Jesus Himself upheld the moral laws found in the Old Testament (Matthew 5:17-20).   The eminent Anglican teacher Dr. John R.W. Stott put it well:  "We take our stand on the divine origin of the Bible because we believe the Bible itself requires us to do so.  Indeed, it is a strange fact that theologians who are prepared to accept the biblical doctrine of God, of Christ, of the Holy Spirit, of man and of the church, are often not willing to accept the biblical doctrine of Scripture.  But…if the Bible is authoritative and accurate when speaking about other matters, there is no reason why it should not be equally so when speaking about itself." For example:  “ All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work .” (2 Timothy 3:16) “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever.“ (Isaiah 40:8) "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways,'' declares the Lord. "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts. As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread to the eater, so shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; it will not return to Me empty, but will accomplish what I desire, and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.” (Isaiah 55:8-11) “Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation.  For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:20-21; cf.  Matthew 4:4, Matthew 24:35, Hebrews 4:12, John 6:63, 68).   According to John R.W. Stott, “God's word is infallible, for what he has said is true.  But no Christian individual, group or church has ever been or will ever be an infallible interpreter of God's Word.  Human interpretations belong to the sphere of tradition, and an appeal may always be made against tradition to the Scripture itself which tradition claims to interpret.”   (confirmed as well in the 39 Articles of Religion, VI, VII, and XX)   Although some areas of doctrine may be more flexible due to assorted interpretations of scripture by language experts and theologians, most of the doctrines and teachings are unequivocal and consistent throughout both OT and NT.   Two issues provide a clear litmus test for orthodox belief in the realm of morality and the culture wars:   sexual morality and abortion.   Whenever believers, especially Christian leaders, stray from these two scriptural principles into supporting the secular values of the Zeitgeist (political correctness), then we can appropriately doubt their orthodoxy.  In fact, this means that to accept homosexuality or abortion is to endorse heresy.   Homosexual behavior is named as an abominable sin consistently in both Old Testament and New Testament, and abortion violates one of the Ten Commandments (“Thou shalt not murder”) because the Bible clearly regards infants in the womb as human beings worthy of protection.  Here is evidence of what God thinks about these things (I have shared this information elsewhere):   I.  Sexual Morality and Marriage.    See Genesis 1-2 (defining the image of God as male and female), Genesis 18-19 (Sodom and Gomorrah, which as Jude 1:7 indicates is primarily about homosexuality not hospitality), Leviticus 18:22, Leviticus 20:13, and Deuteronomy 23:18.   And in the New Testament we have Matthew 19:4-6 (Jesus defining marriage as man and woman) and Paul’s clear teaching about homosexuality in Romans 1:26-27, 1 Corinthians 6:9, and 1 Timothy 1:10.   These scriptures condemn homosexual behavior as a sin, that without repentance and amendment of life will keep you out of heaven. “Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?  Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality…” (1 Cor 6:9; note also that the Romans 1 passage clearly includes women having sex with women in this category as well.)   Additionally, there are many more scriptures that condemn sexual sin in general, which may be defined as any sexual behavior outside of male-female marriage (this then must logically include not only adultery but also fornication and homosexual behavior).   Chastity, sexual purity and sexual faithfulness in marriage are virtues valued highly throughout the Bible.  Their opposite is always condemned.  One of the 10 Commandments is about sexual faithfulness.  Jesus even condemned lust for someone not our spouse as sin.   And there is no hint in the scriptures that marriage can be other than a man and a woman.   II.   The Holocaust of Abortion-on-Demand.    This is a far worse evil than slavery ever was, certainly according the scriptures.  Note that the killing of not-yet-born infants is the world's leading cause of death, including the leading cause of death in the USA.   Note this little blurb from LifeNews.com that should shock us, but it may also improve our sense of proportion.  The number of COVID-19 and abortion deaths in 2020:   Abortion— 42,655,372,  Coronavirus— 1,830,979.   That the abortion rate has fallen slightly in the U.S. in the past decade does not much lighten the seriousness of this holocaust .   Abortion breaks one of the cardinal 10 commandments because it truly is murder of the most innocent and vulnerable of all human beings.  Jesus said that He identifies with the “least of these,” that how we treat them is how He will regard our treatment of Himself (Matthew 25).  Are you OK with killing Jesus again and again, without repentance? (1)   In many places the scriptures regard unborn children as living humans known to God and even capable of a level of consciousness (2).  One of the earliest writings of the early Christian Church (“The Didache,” or Teachings of the Apostles) clearly names abortion as a major sin (3), and for two thousand years, church tradition in both the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches have followed this rule.  Of course, the Reformed evangelical tradition has also condemned abortion.    It is only in the last millisecond of church history that some radically liberal churches like the Episcopal Church have embraced this murderous act.  Except to save the physical life of the mother, this selfish “pro-choice” is to kill an innocent life simply for the sake of convenience.  Adoption is always a better option.   Notes:   (1)  No Hebrew woman would have ever thought of killing her unborn baby.   In those days in Hebrew culture, having children was the most valued and worthy thing a woman could do. And to be barren was one of the worst things for a woman to endure (Gen. 17:15-16; 25:21; 30:1; 1 Sam. 1:2-10; Ps. 113:9; 127:3-5; Luke 1:7; 23:29; Gal. 4:27; Heb. 11:11).  To kill an “inheritance from the Lord” would have been unthinkable, it was so taboo and obviously horrible as to be not worth mentioning.  But the Didache definitely DID mention it (see below)   (2)    Unborn babies are viewed as persons in the scriptures, already known to God as unique and valued individuals.   For example: “Now the word of the Lord came to me, saying, 'Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.' ” (Jeremiah 1:4-5) “My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together… your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” (Psalm 139:15-16)   The Bible attributes self-consciousness to preborn babies, something that even modern medicine has studied and acknowledged. https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnfarrell/2018/04/19/tracing-consciousness-in-the-brains-of-infants/?sh=53440b50722f   Jacob and Esau “struggled together within” their mother’s womb (Gen. 25:22).  The New Testament offers a similar glimpse into prenatal consciousness: “And it came about that when Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb” (Luke 1:41). “Struggling” and “leaping” are the result of consciousness, and most certainly of human life and worth.   (3)   From:   The Didache, or The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles .  Circa 90 AD.  Tim Sauder, translator.  Chapter Two:   “And this is the second commandment of the teaching:  you shall not kill; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not corrupt children, nor practice sexual deviation; you shall not steal; nor practice calling on spiritual guides; nor use sorcery; you shall not procure an abortion, nor practice infanticide; you shall not covet your neighbor’s goods.”    (4)  And most important is the revealed heart of the Lord Jesus .   We know that He loved little children.  Jesus also taught His disciples (Matthew 25): "Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.. ... Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me."   We should get the point.  Who are truly the most innocent and vulnerable (“least of these”) of all human beings if not babes in the womb?  From God's perspective, the pro-choicers are seeking the abortion of Jesus, because He identifies with these not yet born infants.       Dr. Bruce Atkinson is a graduate of Fuller Theological Seminary with an M.A. in theology and a Ph.D. in clinical psychology.  He also has an M.S. in research psychology from Illinois State U. and a B.A. from Beloit College.  He is a member of the Anglican Church in North America and is Moderator and contributor of articles at VirtueOnline.

COMMENTARY   By David W. Virtue, DD www.virtueonline.org March 29, 2025   As the Episcopal Church moves further and further away from the gospel over the biblical doctrine of marriage; it should not come as a complete surprise that in the area of interfaithery, TEC should take an equally leftward turn.   Recently an interfaith iftar was hosted by St. Ambrose Episcopal Church in Claremont, California which brought the Rev. Jessie Turnier, the church’s rector, with the sentimental line, calling the iftar, “a beautiful way of loving one another.” The rector said the event grew out of the church’s interfaith partnerships.   Atilla Kahveci, vice president of the Pacifica Institute, an organizer of the gathering, explained that during Ramadan, a holy month of fasting, worship and community, Muslims “don’t eat or drink anything in the daytime. Then we gather to break the fast at an iftar, a community meal. We are here because we believe when the blessings are shared, it doubles, triples and quadruples,” ENS reported. Some 70 persons were invited. The Rev. Paul Colbert, an Episcopal priest in the Diocese of Los Angeles, said hearing once again the call to prayer, reminded him of his former experiences in Sudan and Yemen, “So thank you for that.”   “We’re all here as those on the path seeking the divine and we all have different ways of approaching that, different disciplines,” Colbert said. “It’s a joy to be with others on the road seeking the divine presence in our midst.”   Marianne Cordova, an associate minister at the Claremont Center for Spiritual Living and a member of the Claremont Interfaith Council, said she drew strength from the gathering. “We’re all one. We’ve got to practice what we believe, I believe that. There is strength in coming together and understanding each other.”   The Rev. Tom Johnson, retired Claremont School of Theology professor and retired pastor of Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in Covina, California, addressed the gathering and said, “Diversity, equality and inclusiveness is a wonderful thing.”   However, the Rev. Dr. Gerry McDermott Anglican theologian and scholar had a different take on this event. “It all sounds charming.  But is it based on truth?  Is the Rev. Colbert right that we are ‘on the [same] road seeking the divine presence’”?   “That implies that we are all going to the same God.  But what if the gods we seek as Christians and Muslims are very different gods?   “The Muslim God--Allah--is quite unlike the Christian God.  Allah is not a Father; the Qur'an never calls him that.  And Muslims insist he could not possibly have a Son.  They reject fiercely God as Trinity and the crucifixion (not to mention the resurrection) of the Son of God.   “Furthermore, the God of Islam is not a God of love.  Love for God is never commanded by the Qur’an and is rarely even mentioned. The paramount commandment in the Qur’an is fear of God, not love for him. The Bible portrays God as father and shepherd and lover whom we are to love in return, but according to specialist in Islamic law Sir Norman Anderson, “In Islam, by contrast, the constant reference is to God as sovereign Lord (Rabb), and man as his servant or slave (‘abd).”   “Love for God has been important in the Sufi mystical tradition, but many Muslim leaders have denounced Sufism as heterodox or heretical. Besides, the Sufi conception of love for God dissolves the human self in unity with the divine and dismisses the idea of God’s love for us as “incompatible with the very nature of God as sublime” (Murad Wilfried Hofmann) to both Sufi and non-Sufi Muslims, God does not have unconditional love for humans generally. He loves only Muslims who are faithful to him. In contrast, the God of the Bible pursues sinners even in their sins and offers his love to them.   “If Allah does not love sinners, neither does he tell Muslims to give universal love to others. In fact he commands his followers, “Do not take as close friends other than your own people” (sura 3:118). The Encyclopedia of the Qur’an explains that in Islam “one can truly love only [fellow] believers, since love for unbelievers separates one from God and . . . is equivalent to lining up on the side of the enemies of God. “This stands in stark contrast to Jesus’s command to his followers to love their enemies.   “Therefore, Muslims and Christians might all be on a path seeking a divine presence, but the Muslim divine presence is radically different from--and in fact opposed to--the Christian divine presence. The Qur'an tells Muslims to kill non-Muslims, including Christians: Surah 9:5: "Then kill the disbelievers (non-Muslims) wherever you find them, capture them and besiege them, and lie in wait for them in each and every ambush …"   “Religious diversity in the abstract might be a wonderful thing because it represents religious freedom.  But sentimentalist cliches can obscure the hard truths that the Christian and Muslims paths go to very different places.  One destination is marked in fact by an absence of love.”   British Anglican theologian Dr. Ian Paul says that in the UK, the Ramadan fast has a different status. “Fasting is one of the five pillars of Islam (along with confession of faith, ‘There is no god but Allah, and Muhammed is his prophet’, prayer, giving alms, and pilgrimage to Mecca), and the iftar meal usually happens just before evening prayers. In a non-Muslim culture, the iftar will have an important function in identifying and encourage cohesion for the Muslim community. But it isn’t possible (as some have argued) to simply say that the iftar is not a religious meal. Islam does not separate the ‘religious’ from the ‘social’, and has a totalising world view, making exclusive claims over the whole of life.” END