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Gillis Harp on the Tyranny of Modern Freedom versus the Freedom of Jesus TOUCHSTONE MAGAZINE The 125th anniversary of Grove City College was marked by the publication of an institutional history entitled Freedom’s College. The title was appropriate given the college’s long-established defense of American political and economic freedoms. The title was also inspired by the famous Supreme Court case of the 1980s when the college defended her independence from federal interference. It strikes me as very wise for a Christian college to enjoy a good deal of independence from intrusive state controls. The separation of church and state is one of the historical distinctives that helps account for the relative health and prosperity that Christian churches have enjoyed in the United States in contrast to the experience of Christianity in, say, Western Europe. This sort of freedom and other historic American political freedoms should definitely be celebrated and defended by Christians. But I would like to address some problematic notions of freedom that have gained currency among American Christians, especially in recent decades. Some conservative Christians have, I fear, uncritically accepted ideas of personal and civil freedom that are at odds with traditional Christian teaching. Some have naively accepted what are essentially Enlightenment understandings of liberty that are at best in tension with what Scripture and Christian tradition teach. First, I’d like to survey the sources of these popular views and clarify the problems with them. Next, I’ll describe a Christian perspective on this subject. And, finally, to conclude, I’ll try to offer a few practical suggestions about how to resist this tendency. My main point is a simple one: that for the Christian, freedom can never be asserted in an unqualified, absolute sense, without limits or some higher end in view. In other words, the Christian must always ask, freedom for what? Undirected Freedom For a long time, and especially since the Enlightenment, many in the West have defined freedom simply as the right to do as I choose, as long as I don’t hurt others. Note how this open-ended definition has no larger good or final goal in view. It is primarily negative, i.e., my freedom is defined as the freedom from external restraint or from imposed restrictions. It is often argued that individuals should be left free to pursue their particular ends without reference to some larger social good. Indeed, some enthusiasts assert that there is actually no larger social good. They go as far as to assert that there is no such thing as society! For some, that’s just a meaningless abstraction. There are only individual goods, no general interest of the community in any organic or larger corporate sense. Our self-centered consumerist society has latched onto this particular idea of freedom in recent decades. Of course, by doing so, it reduces our significant freedoms to trivial choices. I remember a promotional program that the convenience store Seven-Eleven ran back in the nineties. It was for their soda-fountain drinks. Big posters in red, white, and blue proclaimed: “Super Big-Gulp. America Loves the Freedom!” At the time, I wondered what foreign visitors would think about the American idea of liberty when it was reduced to being able to purchase a garbage-can-sized cup of Mountain Dew. Clearly, this is choice with no higher end in view, choice as an end in itself; choice reduced to just following my personal passion for soda or Slurpees. William Cavanaugh, a theologian who teaches at St. Thomas University in Minnesota, addresses the question of this trivialized notion of freedom and how impoverished it is. He argues (drawing upon Aristotle and others) that this sort of freedom has no end; it is undirected freedom. Cavanaugh argues that for freedom to really constitute and create human freedom, there must be a telos, a goal or end in view. In his book Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire, he writes, “The absence of objective goods [that is, moral ends worth pursuing] does not free the individual, but leaves him or her subject to the arbitrary competition of wills.” It creates the sort of world vividly described by the inspired author of the Book of Judges: “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25). Cavanaugh cites examples of areas in which such an extreme approach can actually produce what he calls “unfreedom.” Nor is this competition of wills fought out on a level playing field. Some commentators praise the consumer as sovereign in our day, yet they overlook the fact that billions of dollars are spent to persuade him to choose certain things, as advertisers cleverly manipulate “goods that cannot be commodified, such as self-esteem, love, sex, friendship and success.” In such a system, Cavanaugh concludes, “You still exercise free will, but the dynamics of power have shifted because the situation is set up to advance the interests of others.” Free for God This is clearly not the freedom celebrated by traditional Christian thinkers; they have never been indifferent about the particular ends for which one exercises freedom. For example, St. Augustine’s political thinking was founded on the idea that what a community loves profoundly shapes what sort of community it will be. Much modern political thinking tries to construct systems that are so flawless that no one has to be good in order for them to function. They run on their own, with no need of human virtue. Yet Augustine repudiated such an approach. He understood that he who worships the self will create a self-absorbed community. Undergraduates often experience this truth in their dorm life. A selfish roommate can easily destroy genuine community. Instead, Christians have always hastened to ask, “Freedom yes, but for what?” In Freedom, Faith and the Future, Michael Ramsey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, said that in the mid-twentieth century “we know what we want to free men from. Do we know what we want to free men for?” Freedom simply to follow my personal whims or passions is ultimately slavery. Just obeying my every desire can ultimately be a horrible bondage for sinners like you and me. Christians have historically seen such a model of freedom as mere license, not true Christian freedom. By contrast, Ramsey contended that the Christian is always “free from someone and free for someone. He is free from self, and free for God.” Of course, Jesus himself is our most powerful example, with what Ramsey characterized as his amazing “blending of authority and self-effacement.” Significantly, Jesus is free, but free “into another.” Note how Christ says that he must be about his Father’s business, and how he asks in the Garden of Gethsemane before his crucifixion that not his will but the Father’s be done. Jesus allowed short-term concerns to be overridden by the Father’s larger redemptive plan. Of course Jesus isn’t only our example in this realm of personal freedom; he is also the one who actually makes our real freedom possible. As Ramsey explains, “Christians see Jesus not only as the image of what freedom is but the source of freedom to us.” That is, in personal relationship with Jesus, we learn “about God as creator and saviour and about ourselves as creatures and sinners, we are set in the path which leads to the freedom of mature sonship.” The Blessing of Authority But our challenge as Christians in today’s world is complicated. First, we are certainly called to fight the public injustices that destroy human freedom. In this struggle, we should cooperate with non-Christians, men and women of good will who share such concerns. But at the same time, our vocation is to proclaim a message that is offensive to the modern mind and therefore a difficult calling. It is a message about a higher understanding of freedom than that put forward by the Enlightenment and its followers. It is the message that the enemy of this higher freedom is, to quote Ramsey again, the “self,” and that the goal of this higher freedom is the “glory of God.” American Christians haven’t always done a good job of making that latter point. Instead, we have often been seduced by the Enlightenment’s perspective and the narcissistic, consumerist version of liberty that blossomed during the twentieth century. There was a time when Americans understood these truths better. The first governor of the Massachusetts Bay colony, John Winthrop, drew a helpful distinction between natural and civil liberty. The first was the freedom that individuals have to do whatever they want. It is the same natural liberty that animals enjoy. But, as Winthrop explained, “If you stand for your natural corrupt liberties, and will do what is good in your own eyes, you will not endure the least weight of authority, but will murmur, and oppose, and be always striving to shake off that yoke” (as documented in Judges). On the other hand, civil liberty for Winthrop was founded upon hierarchy and subjection to authority. We modern Westerners aren’t comfortable with those concepts! By contrast, we have embraced instead a very individualistic, rights-based attitude. Studying Scripture can help us clarify our thinking on this subject. The Book of Judges and the Old Testament in general furnish many negative examples of this sort of individualism. Left to their own devices, individuals doing what’s right in their own eyes can make quite a mess of things. Commenting on the passage from Judges previously cited, John Wesley concluded, “Blessed be God for magistracy!” At the same time, in Galatians, the Apostle Paul explains what real freedom, Christian freedom, is for: “You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love. The entire law is summed up in a single command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’” (Gal. 5:13–14). Bolstering Family & Communal Duties How, then, should we as Christians confront our culture’s destructive hyper-individualism, its unbalanced stress on individual rights? Cardinal George of Chicago commented recently that “in the United States, individualism as an ideology is so closely associated with creativity and personal freedom that the Gospel’s injunction to surrender oneself to Christ and to others in order to be free has become largely incomprehensible.” How can we make it more comprehensible? One thing we could certainly work on is the bolstering and promoting of mediating institutions, such as the traditional family. “If, in fact, we are able to strengthen family life,” Cardinal George concludes, “when it seems to be dissolving, that would be a great step forward, because there people learn that they are not the most important person.” Perhaps we can also begin to change our political language, not always insisting on our rights but stressing our communal duties instead. Such a change of approach can certainly help both the private and public spheres—both our political life and our family life. May God grant us the grace not to be indifferent about our ultimate ends, but to always ask “Freedom for what?” and to use our freedom primarily in the service of others. • Gillis J. Harp is the retired Professor of History at Grove City College in Pennsylvania and the author of Brahmin Prophet: Phillips Brooks & the Path of Liberal Protestantism (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003). He and his family worship at Grace Anglican Church in Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania.

Matthew Lee Anderson on reputation, catechesis, and the glory of God at the first Anglican Formation Network Conference Cooper Nye I A MERE CHRISTIAN I June 30, 2026 I'm pleased to share the first guest contribution to A Mere Christian on the Anglican Way. Cooper Nye, Trinity Anglican Seminary's Director of Executive & Academic Communications, attended this year's Anglican Formation Network Summer Conference and interviewed Dr. Matthew Lee Anderson after his opening lecture. — Bryan Hollon The quaint campus of Trinity Anglican Seminary in Ambridge, Pennsylvania—a quieted steel town between rocky, rolling hills along the Ohio River—was recently a hotbed of activity, and it had nothing to do with that week’s unseasonably warm June weather. Nearly two hundred people convened for different occasions over the course of several days. June intensives, a Lutheran conference, the launch of the Anglican Bioethics Center’s new website, and the first-ever Anglican Formation Network (AFN) Conference. Yet these groups gathered ultimately shared one purpose: Formation. This purpose was especially explicit for the AFN Summer Conference, which took as its focus “The Gospel and Catechesis,” a theme drawn from Article 1 of the Jerusalem Declaration and oriented toward one of the Anglican Church in North America’s most pressing challenges: the leadership pipeline crisis. Through keynote addresses, breakout sessions, and lively conversations, Anglican leaders—from across the Province and around the world—thought through the question of catechesis together. What does rejoicing in the gospel look like? And how do we pass this practice to the next generation? These talks were kicked off by Dr. Matthew Lee Anderson, Assistant Professor of Ethics and Theology in the Honors Program at Baylor University, with an engaging public lecture. Titled, “The Glory of God and the Ethics of Reputation,” Anderson explored how the glory and name of Jesus Christ shape an ethic of reputation, and how catechesis, as a practice of Christian formation, shapes us to lead sanctified lives that are permeable to God’s glory. The lecture, streamed live from Trinity’s Trophimus Center, is available above. Afterward, Anderon (who writes on Substack here) graciously joined me for a conversation, edited below for length and clarity. Cooper Nye: Let’s start with your focus. Why the ethics of reputation? Do you think this is overlooked? Dr. Anderson: I started thinking about the ethics of reputation because of various crises I found myself in that had to do with reputational questions. When you have bad actors inside institutions, you wonder what you should do, how you can protect victims, and how you can protect people’s reputations. Those questions are extremely difficult. I went through a series of circumstances where I was confronted with those questions personally. It was highly unpleasant and extremely hard, and at points I felt adrift and without guidance. So, it was very personal and very practical for me And I do think it is overlooked. There is lots of advice out there on the practical dimensions of reputation. But a lot of that exists in corporate America. There is very little in contemporary theological ethics about reputation. Almost nothing, from what I can tell. Cooper Nye: How do you bridge reputation to catechesis? How does catechesis equip us to lead lives that bring honor to God’s name? Dr. Anderson: When we lose our good names, or when our reputations are called into question, it feels terrible. To be accused of something you did not do, or to have it come out that you did something horrible and for that to become publicly known, it feels like death. It feels like someone has died—namely, you, in a certain way. That feeling is extraordinarily important for our sanctification because it forces us to reckon with whether our happiness truly consists in how God sees us. If I have sinned and it comes out that I have sinned, and everyone knows that I am a sinner, am I okay with that? Because God already knew that. And if I have been contrite, repented, and he has forgiven that sin, then I can survive false accusations or public humiliation. It is intensely hard to reach a place where we will be okay if all our sins are publicized. But that is what is going to happen when we encounter divine judgment. All the secrets of the heart will come to light before God, who will make manifest our characters to ourselves and—I think—to others. That is terrifying, but it is also a source of enormous personal transformation. I think catechesis is trying to get us to a form of sanctification where we immerse our lives in God’s glory, God’s judgment, and God’s name, so that they transfigure us in a deep and profound way. If we do that, we will look and feel different to the world. Losing our reputations is a litmus test for whether we are secure in the love of Christ. Christian formation should be aimed at helping us become so secure in God’s love that if we are slandered, defamed, unjustly treated, or lose our good names, we can rejoice—not because reputation does not matter, but because our glory is in Christ. Cooper Nye: What does it mean, as you said in your lecture, for us “to be permeable to God’s glory?” Dr. Anderson: I say “permeable” to make clear that I am still there when God’s glory shines through me. I have not disappeared. God acts in our acting, but we are really acting. He is acting in my acting, but he has not replaced me. In acting as Christians, then, we become permeable, not transparent, to divine glory. Our life is transfigured, lifted up, elevated by grace. It shines forth with a radiance and beauty that is like unto God’s, by virtue of living within his love and his life. That all sounds wonderful. But what does it actually mean or look like? To me, that is the question. One thing it must mean is a great deal of joy and a good sense of humor, even in the midst of very difficult times. It certainly looks like sorrow and contrition for our own sins, and for the sins and evils of the world. But the only way we will be able to discern what this actually looks or feels like is by cultivating real sanctity and encountering real saints. C.S. Lewis writes somewhere about the problem of writing good characters. It would be easy for me to write evil characters into a novel because I know what evil motivations are: I only need to look inward to discover all sorts of dark places in my heart and mind. Writing a good character is more difficult, though, because if I could imagine that level of goodness, I would become that good. My imagination for goodness is limited by how sanctified I am. That means if I am thinking about what divine glory in my life looks like, I am inherently limited by my own current level of sanctification. To expand my imagination for what divine glory in a human person might look like, I have to think about the saints who have achieved levels of sanctification that I currently cannot fathom. What sort of radiance do they have? What does it feel like to be around them? What is their joy like? What does their sanctity feel like? I have to open myself to the love of God to become that. But knowing what that looks like is a hard problem. Cooper Nye: One of the lines that stood out to me was your warning against ascribing negative motivations to people whose conduct is ambiguous. Could you say more about that? Dr. Anderson: For Augustine, one of the things we have to recognize is that we are opaque to each other. We do not know each other’s minds. We do not know each other’s intentions, by and large. That is especially true when we do good things. There are all sorts of reasons why you can do good things, even though there are fewer reasons why you could do something obviously evil. If you were to murder someone, we know your intentions are likely very bad because we recognize you have done something very bad. But if you give money to the poor, we might ask: Are you doing that because you love the poor? Are you doing that for the social boost? There are all sorts of ways we can impute negative motivations even when someone does good things. It is deeply pernicious and corrosive to relationships. There was an earlier version of the talk where I elaborated more on suspicion as a disposition, which is this imposition of negative motivations onto someone. It is a hard problem in intimate relationships because once suspicion takes hold, it is very hard to undo. Elvis Presley has a song, Suspicious Minds, that captures this dynamic well. But it also affects relationships with pastors, friends, authorities, employers, and others. Suspicion is everywhere, and no one gives it a second thought. But it is deeply problematic. Cooper Nye: That seems especially true in marriage, not only with serious things, but in small daily things. Someone does not do the laundry, and suddenly we assume it means something about us or the relationship. Dr. Anderson: That is exactly right. “She does not really love me because she did not do the laundry like she promised.” But perhaps she forgot because she was baking me cookies! Then you are arguing and having a big fight, and it started over this tiny suspicion. Cooper Nye: What is the one thing you hope seminarians and current church leaders take away from this topic? Dr. Anderson: I hope there is a deep sense of contrition and humility that comes from the knowledge that the Lord seeks their glory, so they do not have to seek their own. I also hope we can have pastors who are gentle and willing to receive fraternal correction, and who create cultures in their churches of gently extending fraternal correction because they are capable of receiving it themselves. If we have clergy who have that humility in a deep and genuine way, who are regularly examining their own hearts, confessing their own sins to God, and eager to be corrected, I think that is all we can ask as laity. I think that is all we want from our clergy at the end of the day. Anderson’s lecture was a fitting beginning to a conference devoted to catechesis. Since formation is more than information, the care of our good names is more than reputation management. It means, in Anderson’s words, becoming “a people who iconically display God’s glory.” Cooper Nye is the Director of Executive & Academic Communications at Trinity Anglican Seminary. His writing focuses on interviews with faculty and Anglican leaders, as well as news from Trinity.

Lawsuits, small parishes, theological differences, divided leadership, women's ordination rankle the orthodox Anglican denomination. By David W. Virtue, DD I www.virtueonline.org I June 24, 2026 Gloating about being orthodox as opposed to revisionist might seem like a winning ticket. After all, the Anglican Church in North America was born from the Episcopal Church's embrace of pansexuality, and it has watched as that revisionist denomination has paid a steep price in lost membership, declining attendance, and an aging Boomer generation slowly disappearing from the pews. It was ACNA's moment. Or it should have been. But it has not worked out as seamlessly as hoped. Across 17 years, the headline number is around 130,000 members with just under 100,000 in weekly attendance. Even its apparent "growth" in recent years partly reflects better data collection rather than actual new members. The denomination has seen multiple bishops depart under a cloud — several forced out over sexual misconduct. The current Archbishop Steve Wood was compelled to step aside and now faces an ecclesiastical trial on allegations of sexual misbehavior, bullying, and plagiarism. No ACNA archbishop in the denomination's short history has faced such a constellation of charges. Yet hope springs eternal. Mark Eldridge of the American Anglican Council, fresh from the Provincial Council meeting in Tulsa, Oklahoma, declared that reports of ACNA's death have been grossly exaggerated by social media bloggers. While lauding the camaraderie of assembled delegates, he soberly noted that half of the 1,005 churches comprising the ACNA average fewer than 50 in Sunday attendance, and nearly 75% average fewer than 100. The data confirms what many have long suspected — and what this writer knows firsthand: my own parish in Germantown, Philadelphia was forced to close for lack of growth, interest, and inadequate leadership. That reality has prompted Anglican Revitalization Ministries to launch three programs — Revive, Renew, and Reframe — with church planting described as "desperately needed in a growing province." But a closer look at the methodology raises serious questions about whether ACNA is on the right track. The old "come and hear" model has not worked in decades. The imperative is "go and tell" — but that begs the question of how. Trained missiologists and frontline church planters who have succeeded on the global stage believe ACNA has it backwards. If "church" means a building with professional paid clergy, the growth strategy is dead before it starts. Disciple Making Movements Jerry and Stacy Kramer, two Anglican missionaries are part of a team that have planted 15,000 churches across 12 countries using a lay-led, bottom-up discipleship model. They have demonstrated what multiplication actually looks like. The Kramer's Love Shows Up (formerly Love for the Least) ministry represents a striking departure from traditional Western mission models. Rather than planting expatriate-led congregations or building institutional infrastructure, they pursue a Disciple Making Movement (DMM) methodology—training indigenous believers to rapidly reproduce house churches through oikos (household) networks, with an emphasis on "persons of peace" as entry points into unreached communities. The approach is radically decentralized: the missionary's goal is to become unnecessary as quickly as possible, equipping local disciples to evangelize, baptize, and plant without foreign dependency. Justin Long a missionary researcher has been involved in missions research for over 30 years, and presently works to help rapidly multiplying movements to Christ identify unreached gaps and send workers to those who haven't yet heard the Gospel. Long is a committed advocate for Disciple Making Movements (DMM) and Church Planting Movements (CPM) as the scalable answer to the remaining missionary task. He stresses why multiplication of church planting movements matters and why Christians must stay ahead of cultural trends and population growth. Critically, he has documented a major shift in how movements now spread: over 90% of new movements started in the past five to ten years have been started by teams sent out from existing movements — without any Western cross-cultural workers involved — because insider near-culture believers can reach neighboring unreached peoples more easily, without learning a new language or culture, and do so intentionally since their own movements began out of a vision to reach the unreached. This multiplication dynamic, he argues, means the completion of the Great Commission task is genuinely within reach. Meanwhile, the Rev. Canon Tony Melton, Director of Always Forward, offered the notion that churches would grow if delegates thought of the "church as mother" — a metaphor that left at least one observer wondering if it belonged in a Monty Python skit. The hard questions remain unanswered: What is the actual strategy? Has ACNA catalyzed multiplication of disciples and churches — and where? What tools are being used? What metrics will determine success? How will multiplication be baked into the ACNA's DNA? If the answer is simply a more polished invitation to church under an Anglican brand, it is dead on arrival, say those who have actually done it. The only credible metric is multiplication — and by that measure, ACNA has come up short. One Bright Spot The Anglican Diocese of the South (ADOTS) celebrated the approval by the Provincial Council to establish the Anglican Diocese of the Mid-South as a new diocese within the province. The new diocese, developed from the Mid-South Missionary District of the Anglican Diocese of the South, covers Missouri, Arkansas, West Tennessee, Mississippi, and parts of eastern Texas. As part of this transition, the Anglican Diocese of the South will release fifteen of its parishes to form the founding congregations of the Anglican Diocese of the Mid-South. Turmoil Over Women's Ordination One simmering issue that refuses to go away is women's ordination. It recently erupted in the Diocese of the Western Gulf Coast, which has been locked in a standoff with provincial leadership over its refusal to ordain women to the priesthood — despite the ACNA's "two integrities" policy theoretically permitting it. The conflict came to a head during the episcopal election process, with candidates favoring women's ordination effectively excluded. The broader significance is clear: ACNA's uneasy truce on this question satisfies neither convinced egalitarians nor committed complementarians, and the Wood crisis has made it far harder to manage at the provincial level. Power Struggles Power struggles have already emerged over who will lead ACNA if Wood is formally removed. Two names — Chip Edgar and Julian Dobbs — have surfaced as likely contenders. An insider told VOL there is no small amount of jealousy directed at the Carolina dioceses because of their comparative success. Whatever happens, the bishops will circle the wagons — and only when the white smoke rises will we know the outcome. ACNA must resolve its divisions quickly if it is to have a future. One genuine bright spot is Trinity Anglican Seminary, which offers outstanding theological formation. Dean Bryan Hollon has demonstrated the kind of new-generation thinking the province desperately needs — if the incoming leadership is wise enough to draw on it. END

Konstantin Kisin interviews Ayaan Hirsi Ali at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship Conference 2026. (Photo: Andrew Parsons / Parsons Media) By Xia-Maria Mackay I Christian Today I June 23, 2026 Thousands of people have gathered from around the world in London this week, united by a common concern around existential threats to the West and a sense of urgency to reverse the course of decline. Many delegates at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) conference are Christian - or at least sympathetic to Christianity, and are conscious of both its foundational role in the development of the West and the part it can play in charting a new path. Indeed the roster includes many Christians - Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Carl Trueman, Rod Dreher, Eric Metaxas, Os Guinness, Kate Forbes, Danny Kruger and Miriam Cates among others. Not surprisingly, Christianity, God and faith were mentioned frequently throughout the first day of proceedings. Outside, a group of protesters gathered with placards branding the conference “fascist”. Inside, delegates pressed on with identifying the factors behind the “decades of deconstruction” that have led Western societies to where they are today, and laying the groundwork for the “reconstruction” they believe needs to happen to restore freedom and flourishing. Hirsi Ali, a conservative thinker who grew up under Islam and Communism in Somalia before later seeking asylum in the Netherlands, said it was “shocking” to see Western nations embrace these belief systems, warning that her own experience had been “fear”, “propaganda”, forced religion, and no individual freedom. She warned that Islamists and communists are attempting to “deconstruct” Western institutions and that if they succeed, Western nations will come to resemble the country she fled. Instead, Hirsi Ali argued, the West must “reconstruct” its institutions by resisting Islamism and reasserting the “pillars” that traditionally distinguished it from others: critical thinking, individual responsibility and personal accountability. “I would say to all of these institutions: do not give in to the demands of Islamists. Confront them with the question: why are you here? If Sharia law is so fantastic, why are so many Muslims moving to the infidel West?” she said. Hirsi Ali said it was very easy for Westerners who “breathe liberty” to fall into “this delusional state believing that there is some utopia out there”. This false notion must be confronted, she asserted. “There is this idealist, romantic story that if only communism was done one more time, this time differently, it’s going to yield something else. It will not. It’s going to yield the exact same thing as it yields everywhere from Mogadishu to Caracas to the Soviet Union - lots of debt, starvation and hunger," she said. "There is no alternative to what the Christian Western civilisation has built. “What you see in the deconstruction period is always censorship, self-censorship, political correctness, the pretence that there are other systems and other ways of doing things and other worlds are better than what you already have.” While she acknowledged that too much individualism can lead to narcissism and selfishness, she contended that the “Christian story” and “Western civilisational story” offer “the remedy for that”, although this is being undermined by attempts to brand the achievements of Western civilization as “white supremacist”. “We were checked by biblical truths … some form of accountability was built into every institution. And what we did was remove these layers of accountability by labelling them white supremacist structures that had to go,” she said. She pointed to Britain’s grooming gangs scandal as an example of what can happen when institutional accountability breaks down, arguing that this has damaged the West’s moral authority. “Young women in Britain have been abused by groups and somehow we let it happen. It is not possible now for any Western European leader to go to any part of the third world and lecture them about human rights with atrocities like that taking place here,” she said. Trueman, a theologian and author of Crisis of Confidence, said the West was in “chaotic times” and that many of its current ills could be traced back to the emergence of a “psychologised”, “sexualised” and “politicised” sense of self. Much was made of the need to support marriage and strong families during the first day’s sessions and Trueman also touched on the subject, saying that the modern aversion to marriage was down to its being recast as “oppressive”. In his view, though, the current “chaos” that now surrounds marriage has far more to do with the advent of no-fault divorce than the introduction of gay marriage. “No-fault divorce says that the binding nature of marriage depends on the two persons involved meeting each other’s emotional needs. Once that ceases to be the case the marriage can be dissolved. That turns marriage into a sentimental bond with therapeutic value. And it also, incidentally, turns children into collateral damage,” he said. Freedom of speech, once considered a “virtue” that distinguished democratic nations from the likes of the Soviet Union and China, has also come under “immense” pressure. “Today, anyone holding a view that hurts somebody’s feelings is considered to have committed an act of violence,” he said. It has reached such an extent that “even your body must not stand in the way of your feelings”, thus giving rise to transgenderism. Elsewhere he warned that once freedom of speech comes under pressure as it has in the West, freedom of religion is sure to be next. “What has been the primary means of enforcing sexual taboos? Religion - in the West specifically Christianity,” he said. “To tell somebody that their sexual behaviour is wrong is to commit an act of violence against them because it is to call into question their inner feelings.” GB News co-owner Sir Paul Marshall echoed the calls for a new era of “reconstruction” in the West, telling the ANC conference that the assault on Western civilisation has reached the point of “just plain destruction”, driven by ideologies like critical race theory, gender theory, extreme net zero policies, and a pervasive sense of “victimhood” among other things. “They gave us DEI - division, entitlement and indoctrination,” he said, adding, “We need to recover confidence in our civilisation and defend it from parasitic and progressive follies.” Turning to “radical progressivism”, he said it took some good ideas from the classical liberal tradition “but robs them of their moorings in faith, responsibility, and above all common sense”. In the end, it “seeks to break down traditional structures like the family, the Church and the nation in the name of individualism”. “As a result, a creed which sees itself as positive and constructive ends up being the engine of destruction,” he said. Sir Paul went on, “Most progressives have also forgotten God, or at the very least, they don't do God. The traditions of Christian socialism, working class Methodism, nonconformism, have all been lost.” As a result progressives do not understand religion, nor the differences between religion, he said, and instead they embrace cultural relativism, open borders, and are ashamed of their own history. Sir Paul warned that when societies avoid speaking uncomfortable truths, they risk losing their moral direction and coherence. “When a society stops telling the truth because it might be hurtful or because it might be unpopular, then that society will soon lose its north star. It will lose its soul,” he said. The conference also heard from Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch who described herself as a “cultural Christian” while admitting that her grandfather who was a church minister would be “so upset about how few times I actually go to church”. Nonetheless, she said it was important that Britain cares for the institutions that helped make the country great “whether it's the Church, army [or] monarchy”. “If we don’t look after these things, they will go away,” she said.

Denominational collapse is announced with plan to sell NYC headquarters The Episcopal Church Center headquarters in New York City By Albert Mohler I WORLD I June 24, 2026 The collapse of The Episcopal Church in the United States doesn’t really qualify as headline news. Membership has been in a freefall for decades now. More than 30 years ago, a prominent sociologist of religion declared in the Wall Street Journal that the church’s days were numbered. The article’s headline stated the issue clearly: “The Episcopalian Goes the Way of the Dodo.” That pretty much summarizes the situation, but the denomination still had money and social status. Arguably, the Episcopal tradition stood at the top of the denominational status pyramid for something like 200 years of American history. Even a brief glance at the church’s history in the United States reveals a denomination that once was absolutely supreme in financial power and unchallenged in cultural power. Just go to New York City and see the massive and elegant Episcopal parish churches, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and Trinity Church in the heart of historic Manhattan. See St. John’s Church on Lafayette Square, where U.S. presidents appear for inaugural services. Look at the statistics ranking the Episcopal Church in terms of Ivy League tradition, representation in Congress, residence in the White House, and family wealth. The Episcopal Church was created out of the emergency situation created by the American Revolution. Let’s just say that identification as the Church of England presented a pretty powerful challenge as the colonists declared independence and went to war against King George III, who included among his royal titles “Supreme Governor of the Church of England.” The Anglican tradition would continue after the revolution, but was recast in the new nation as The Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America. They worked out a plan for a succession of bishops and set to work building America’s elite Protestant culture. The Washington Post has observed that The Episcopal Church had dominated elite culture through much of the nation’s history: “Half of America’s founders were Episcopalians, the American counterpoint to the Church of England. More U.S. presidents have been Episcopalian than any other faith group, and until recent decades the denomination was shorthand of crème de la crème of American society.” But theological liberalism began to spread in the denomination by the early decades of the 20th century, and it was largely driven by shifts among the intellectual and cultural elites. Like the Church of England itself, the Episcopalians could pull off the attempt to look conservative (with the Book of Common Prayer, robes, choirs, and stunningly beautiful churches) and at the same time shift in a decidedly liberal direction. Over the last several decades, the Episcopalians had joined the sexual revolution, ordained women as priests, moved toward the full blessing of the LGBTQ spectrum, and embraced radical theology.  The church of presidents has moved so steadily to the left that it has become a parable of postmodern Christianity. The Episcopal Church ordained women as priests in the 1970s, consecrated its first woman bishop in 1989, and consecrated an openly homosexual man, Rev. Gene Robinson, as Bishop of New Hampshire in 2003. Its clergy marched steadily leftward and its left wing, driven by various forms of Marxism, liberal theology, critical theory, and social activism, increasingly dominated. Even in the early years of the 21st century, there were still conservative clergy and evangelical believers within the church, but the move toward enthusiastic embrace of the entire LGBTQ agenda forced a conservative exodus, largely to newly formed Anglican groups in North America. Since the 1970s, The Episcopal Church’s membership rolls have been plummeting. We are talking about absolute collapse. That’s why sociologist Wade Clark Roof predicted extinction more than 30 years ago. Roof broadened his prediction of doom to most of the established denominations of liberal Protestantism, but the Episcopalians were at the top of the charts.  As of this year, the denomination has lost well over half of its historic membership in the 1960s, numbering some 1.5 million on the rolls today. But the problem is even worse when the aging of members and clergy is taken into consideration. In recent days, the church has announced plans to sell its Manhattan headquarters, formally known as the Episcopal Church Center. A press release from the Episcopal News Service indicated that the sale of the church’s 63-year-old headquarters building, located at a prestigious New York City address, might be in order. As far back as the 1970s, the denomination had considered the sale of the facility. Now, the church’s presiding bishop has announced the intention to sell the building, if the real estate will bring an adequate price. The church’s leadership indicated that they would be open to co-development proposals and other options. It is also clear that any specific proposal to sell the facility will be hotly debated and, if financially adequate, might still trip ideological and social justice tripwires within the denomination. In any event, the announcement of the intention to sell the denomination’s headquarters is deeply revealing. The story has to include the displacement of The Episcopal Church in American culture. The church of presidents has moved so steadily to the left that it has become a parable of postmodern Christianity—what’s left when the gospel is sidelined and the Holy Scriptures are undermined. Even as this news story broke, a series of unrelated articles in the media considered what would happen to abandoned church buildings in American cities. Mayors and others are looking to abandoned churches for repurposing as social centers or subsidized housing. The hard fact is that even healthy denominations may decide to sell real estate—even a venerable headquarters building. But it’s a very different thing when denomination collapse is on the horizon. That’s the parable visible in this announcement from The Episcopal Church. In that sense, the sale of a building is the least of its problems. Albert Mohler is president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and Boyce College and editor of WORLD Opinions. He is also the host of The Briefing and Thinking in Public. He is the author of several books, including The Gathering Storm: Secularism, Culture, and the Church. He is the seminary’s Centennial Professor of Christian Thought and a minister, having served as pastor and staff minister of several Southern Baptist churches.

Kenya Archbishop Jackson Ole Sapit By Shadrack Omuka I THE LIVING CHURCH I June 21, 2026 The Anglican Church of Kenya’s All Saints’ Cathedral in Nairobi was invaded by unidentified individuals on motorcycles on Friday, June 12, during a public forum called to discuss the national budget. The chaos began when armed men arrived on motorbikes and engaged in a confrontation with security personnel. They forced their way into the church, with some wearing face masks to hide their identity. During the attack, they lobbed tear gas canisters inside the church and fired live bullets, dispersing the congregation before damaging vehicles and breaking church windows. “We just saw people entering the hall and started harassing us. We couldn’t determine what was going on immediately and before we could take refuge, we were attacked and robbed of phones and other valuables like cash,” one of the victims told TLC. The public dialogue had been convened by civil society organizations to analyze Kenya’s 2026–2027 budget, which had recently been presented by Treasury Cabinet Secretary John Mbadi. More than 100 people were affected, including representatives from the Kenya Human Rights Commission, Transparency International Kenya, and the Institute for Social Accountability. The Anglican Church of Kenya has been a victim of thuggery and “goonism,” a term used by politicians to describe politically charged gang activity in the country, for the past year. Previously, on January 25, 2026, at the Witima ACK Church in Nyeri County in central Kenya, suspected goons disrupted a church service attended by former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua. The incident caused injuries and fueled mistrust among congregants. The incident at the cathedral was decried by the nation’s religious leaders, including the Most Rev. Jackson Ole Sapit, the Archbishop of Kenya. Sapit called for justice, demanding the immediate arrest of the perpetrators and those who may have enabled them. The primate also warned the Inspector General of Police and Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI), telling them to either apprehend the perpetrators or resign for failing to protect Kenyans against gangs. “I want to condemn what happened at the Nairobi All Saints’ Cathedral with the strongest terms possible and demand the arrest of perpetrators; also, I want to tell the Inspector General of Police and his counterpart from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations to either arrest the goons or resign,” Sapit said. Speaking at All Saints’ Cathedral during a church service just two days after the attack, Sapit said he had been forced to withdraw from other engagements to address the matter, which he said is of national concern. Sapit further recounted that CCTV footage clearly captured images of the attackers’ faces and showed their motorbike registration numbers, adding that he will not agree with the authorities if they claim they cannot identify the culprits. Claiming that the issue of hired goons intimidating law-abiding Kenyans should not be taken lightly, Sapit told TLC that he demands to know “who owns the goons and why.” No reason for the attack was given by the attackers, though one of them has revealed details of how the operation was planned, financed, and executed with plainclothes police officers. Speaking to Citizen TV, the man narrated how he and others were recruited a day before the attack and told that they would disrupt a political meeting associated with former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua. But on Friday morning, the target changed and they were directed to All Saints’ Cathedral. Two victims were compensated for phones that had been stolen in the attack when they went to report the incident at a local police station. They were paid about $200 and told to buy other phones and keep their mouths shut. The National Council of Churches of Kenya (NCCK), the largest umbrella body for Protestant churches and Christian organizations in Kenya, condemned the attack in a statement published on social media, calling it a blatant and appalling disrespecting of a sacred place of worship. While the statement did not name who was responsible, the NCCK characterized the attack as “state sponsored” and ordered by a government official. The statement added that the right of Kenyans to access information held by the state is guaranteed in Article 35 of the Constitution and must be respected. “We remind all government officials that in due course, they will be individually held responsible for their actions, just as the Bible guarantees in Matthew 10:26,” the statement reads. “There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known to the citizens of Kenya,” the NCCK concluded. The Inter-Religious Council of Kenya said of the attack, “No amount of threats or thuggery will deter Kenyans from exercising their rights.” The council continued, “We call on security agencies to protect peaceful assemblies & bring perpetrators to justice.” The Supreme Council of Kenya Muslims has also come out to condemn the attack. The council in a statement described the incident as an unacceptable display of political intolerance and called for immediate action against those responsible. Cabinet Secretary for Ministry of Interior and National Administration Kipchumba Murkomen called the incident extremely unfortunate and unacceptable, assuring Kenyans that peace-threatening gangs within the capital would be exterminated by use of elite police. Murkomen said elite police have succeeded in bringing peace in other cities across the country where peace-threatening gangs have been neutralized. Murkomen said at least one person was arrested immediately when police arrived at the scene while others have been arrested since, adding that the images captured on CCTV are being analyzed. END

She Has Never Made That Pledge For Nigeria's Massacred Christians By Jim Chimirie on X I June 23, 2026 On Sunday morning Dame Sarah Mullally, the 106th Archbishop of Canterbury, stood in a church in Birzeit in the occupied West Bank and told the congregation she would use her role to seek the peace you desire and the freedom you deserve. It was a specific, named, actionable commitment. A promise from the senior Christian voice in Britain to one community in one conflict. Search for an equivalent promise made to Nigeria's Christians and you will not find it. In 2024 alone, over 4,000 Christians were killed in Nigeria, the majority by Islamist Fulani militia and Boko Haram affiliates. The Open Doors World Watch List, the most comprehensive annual survey of Christian persecution globally, documents severe persecution across more than 50 countries. Iraq's Christian population has collapsed from 1.5 million before 2003 to fewer than 250,000 today, one of the most complete destructions of an ancient Christian community in recorded history. The Coptic Christians of Egypt face sustained institutional discrimination and periodic massacres. Sub-Saharan Africa is experiencing what some researchers describe as a slow motion genocide of Christian communities, conducted largely by Islamist groups, largely in silence. Dame Sarah has not made a five day pilgrimage to stand with any of them. She has not stood at a pulpit in Kaduna or Cairo or Kirkuk and pledged to use her role to seek the freedom they deserve. The Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, used his Christmas Day sermon at York Minster to say that Israel had committed genocidal acts. Neither Archbishop has used that language about the groups killing Christians in their thousands across Africa and the Middle East. That asymmetry is not accidental. It reflects the ideological framework the Church of England has absorbed so completely that it can no longer see it operating. The same progressive institutional culture documented across British policing, the NHS, the BBC and the Ministry of Justice has captured the Church of England too. Its moral grammar has been rewritten. Suffering that fits the framework gets named, visited and pledged to. Suffering that does not fit the framework gets a footnote in an inaugural address that mentions Myanmar and the Democratic Republic of Congo alongside Ukraine and Russia, carefully balancing the optics without committing to anything specific. This matters because the Archbishop of Canterbury is not merely a religious figure. She is in law and in cultural memory the senior Christian voice in a nation whose institutions, laws, liberties and moral inheritance were built on Christian foundations. When that voice makes its most specific and most actionable commitment, it is not to the 4,000 Nigerian Christians killed last year. It is not to the last 250,000 Christians clinging on in Iraq. It is not to the Coptic families burying their dead in Egypt. It is to the community whose cause resonates most comfortably in the progressive institutional culture the Church now inhabits. Justin Welby resigned over catastrophic safeguarding failures. Dame Sarah was installed while live safeguarding complaints against her remained unresolved. Abuse survivors called it a galling betrayal. The Church pressed ahead. The institution that could not pause a ceremony for its own survivors has found the moral clarity to make a specific political commitment from a West Bank pulpit within weeks of taking office. The Church of England once stood for something that transcended politics. It spoke for the persecuted, the forgotten and the voiceless regardless of whether their cause was fashionable. It does not do that now. It speaks for those whose suffering fits the approved narrative and stays carefully silent about the rest. Nigeria's Christians are still waiting. They will keep waiting.

N.T. Wright versus Alice Linsley COMMENTARY By David W. Virtue, DD | www.virtueonline.org | June 23, 2026 Women’s ordination to the priesthood never quite leaves the table. It simmers beneath nearly every major Christian communion and periodically threatens to split even the sturdiest of orthodox bodies — most recently the Southern Baptist Convention, which voted by roughly 80 percent against allowing women pastors, a clear victory for SBC president Albert Mohler. Rome remains unmoved, refusing to ordain women to either the diaconate or the priesthood, with little internal pressure to change course. The liberal Protestant churches have gone the opposite direction — ordaining women not only to the priesthood but, in the case of the Episcopal Church, to the episcopacy, and electing women to lead both the Church in Wales and the Church of England. Within Anglicanism, the question remains very much alive. It resurfaced sharply in May, when the Anglican Diocese of the Western Gulf Coast (DWGC) convened its electing synod at St. Timothy’s Cathedral in Spring, Texas, to choose a successor to Bishop Clark Lowenfield — a diocese that, under Lowenfield, had become known within ACNA for empowering women in ministry through a robust diaconate. The synod deadlocked across seven ballots between the Rev. Fr. Russell Martin — the son of a female Episcopal priest who nonetheless supports a male-only priesthood while championing the permanent diaconate for women — and the Rev. Fr. Ben Sharpe, who likewise backs ordaining women as deacons while reserving the priesthood for men. Clergy delegates favored Martin; lay delegates favored Sharpe. That this split occurred between two candidates holding nearly identical positions shows just how unsettled the underlying question remains. Unable to break the deadlock, the convention voted 21–17 among clergy and 23–20 among laity to refer the election to the ACNA College of Bishops — the first time since the province’s 2009 founding that the bishops have had to resolve a diocesan election impasse. The College met June 15–17 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, alongside has learnede Provincial Council, to select the next bishop ordinary directly, bypassing a new nominating process. The episode lands amid wider strain in ACNA over Holy Orders, following the province’s 2017 “differing principles of ecclesiology” settlement that left women’s ordination to individual dioceses, and amid renewed calls — from dioceses such as Fort Worth — for a province-wide moratorium until the College of Bishops reaches a common mind. The DWGC is now under the temporary ecclesiastical authority of Archbishop Robert Duncan. VOL has learned that Duncan has resigned from that position. Should Women Be Ordained? The leading evangelical case for women’s ordination comes from N.T. Wright, the influential scholar and former Bishop of Durham, who has waded into this debate repeatedly and unambiguously on the affirmative side. His fullest statement remains a 2004 paper delivered at St John’s College, Durham, to the Symposium on ‘Men, Women and the Church,’ later expanded in his popular volume Surprised by Scripture. VirtueOnline asked Alice C. Linsley — biblical anthropologist, Anglican traditionalist, and former Episcopal priest — to present the contra position. What follows sets the two arguments side by side, drawn from their own words and published writing. Wright Rejects the Terms of the Debate Wright begins, characteristically, by refusing the vocabulary both sides have settled into. He calls “egalitarian” language a “red rag” that overclaims, risking the implication of identity between the sexes rather than mere equality. He is equally unwilling to cede the word “complementary” to those who use it to mean women are barred from ministry altogether, calling it too good and important a word to surrender to one side of the argument. Notably, he declines to build his case on the verse most American egalitarians lean on hardest. Galatians 3:28, he argues, is not about ministry at all but about membership in Abraham’s family through baptism. He further contends that the common translation — “neither male nor female” — obscures Paul’s actual wording, which echoes Genesis 1’s “male and female” in a way that argues against using creation order to justify male privilege in the believing community, without erasing sexual differentiation itself. Wright’s actual case rests on the Gospels and Acts rather than Pauline proof-texts. He points to Mary Magdalene as the first witness to the empty tomb and the first person commissioned to carry the resurrection message — “the apostle to the apostles.” He pairs this with Romans 16:7, where Paul names a woman, Junia, among the apostles, noting pointedly that some modern translators relabeled her a man (“Junias”) without a shred of manuscript support. On the “women should keep silent” passage in 1 Corinthians 14, Wright leans on Ken Bailey’s Middle Eastern cultural parallel: uneducated women, seated apart and unable to follow a service conducted in formal language, growing noisy during the sermon and being told to ask their husbands at home. Whatever the explanation, Wright insists the passage cannot mean total silence, since 1 Corinthians 11 plainly assumes women are praying and prophesying out loud in worship — Paul is regulating how they dress while doing so, not whether they may. On headship in 1 Corinthians 11:3, Wright argues for reading “head” as “source” rather than “authority,” drawing on the Genesis 2 imagery of woman taken from man’s side. Importantly — and contrary to how he is sometimes characterized — Wright does not argue for an undifferentiated ministry. He states plainly that this passage “tells, for me at least, quite strongly on the side of those who see the ministry of women as significantly different to the ministry of men,” resisting any push to make women’s ministry a simple clone of men’s. Wright calls 1 Timothy 2 “the sheet-anchor for those who want to deny women a place in the ordained ministry,” and it is here that his argument is most disputed. He proposes that Paul is writing into Ephesus, home to the great temple of Artemis with its all-female priesthood that, in his words, “ruled the show and kept the men in their place.” On this reading, Paul’s prohibition is not a permanent bar on women teaching but a corrective against a particular Ephesian danger: that converts might import an Artemis-style pattern of female dominance into the church. His proposed rendering of verse 12 reads: “I’m not saying that women should teach men, or try to dictate to them; they should be left undisturbed.” The Adam-and-Eve reference that follows, in Wright’s view, is not about female culpability for the Fall but an argument for why women, like Eve, need full access to learning — since it was deception born of inadequate instruction, not innate weakness, that led Eve astray. Alice Linsley: The Contra Position Where Wright argues from narrative and translation, Alice C. Linsley argues from an entirely different foundation. A biblical anthropologist, Anglican traditionalist, and former Episcopal priest who renounced her own orders in 2006, Linsley builds her case for a male-only priesthood on comparative anthropology, patristic consensus, and the structure of the priesthood as it descends from the Hebrew ruler-priests of Abraham’s line. Her case, set out most fully in her widely circulated VirtueOnline essay “Ten Objections to Women Priests,” does not engage Wright directly — but it answers him at nearly every point he raises, often from premises he never considers. Linsley agrees with Wright that Galatians 3:28 is not a warrant for ministerial equality, but she arrives there by a different route, and goes further. She notes that the early heretical sect of the Cataphrygians (Montanists) used precisely this verse to install women as bishops and priests — a usage the fourth-century bishop Epiphanius condemned as heretical. For Linsley, the text speaks to the unity of the baptized in Christ, not to who may preside at the table: in her words, the idea of a woman presiding at the Feast “would have been unthinkable.” The Church Is Not a Democracy Linsley’s first objection is jurisdictional rather than exegetical: no synod or General Convention has the authority to alter what she calls “the constant and universal Tradition of the Church,” a phrase she draws from Pope John Paul II’s 1994 ex cathedra statement on the male priesthood. A vote, in her view, cannot manufacture authority the Church was never given. This places her case on different terrain from Wright’s entirely — his argument concerns what the texts mean; hers concerns whether any body, however it reads the texts, has standing to change the practice at all. The Patristic Witness Linsley marshals the Church Fathers directly against the practice. She cites Epiphanius, who argued that if women could licitly be ordained, the honor would have gone to Mary first — and was not. She cites John Chrysostom’s On the Priesthood, which holds that “the whole female sex must retire before the magnitude” of priestly oversight, and Augustine’s description of the Pepuzians, a sect he faulted for elevating women to priestly honor. Where Wright treats tradition as something open to re-examination and, where mistaken, correction, Linsley treats patristic consensus itself as binding evidence of the Church’s settled mind. Biblical Anthropology: Blood, Sacrifice, and the Two Genders Linsley’s most distinctive contribution — and the piece of her argument with no real counterpart in Wright’s paper — is anthropological rather than exegetical. Drawing on decades of research into the Hebrew ruler-priest caste, she argues the priesthood is rooted in a near-universal binary distinction found in archaic religion: men perform the “blood work” of taking life, in combat, hunting, and sacrifice; women perform the “blood work” of giving life, in menstruation and childbirth. On this reading, the male priesthood is not a culturally contingent accident Scripture happens to reflect, but a structural feature of how the priesthood has signified the boundary between life and death since before Abraham — a boundary she argues Scripture itself instructs Israel not to blur (Deuteronomy 30:15–20). Linsley’s essay also makes historical claims Wright does not address at all: that the 1974 and 1975 “irregular” ordinations of women in the Episcopal Church were bound up from the outset with the homosexual-activist organization Integrity, founded the same year, with several of the women ordained counted among its members; and that the subsequent decades-long rise in female clergy in both the Episcopal Church and the Church of England has coincided with declining male attendance and participation — a trend she connects to sociologist Leon Podles’s 1999 study The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity. Wright’s case is built almost entirely from the New Testament text — the resurrection narratives, Paul’s letters, the Ephesian context of 1 Timothy. Linsley’s rests on jurisdiction, patristic consensus, comparative anthropology, and sociological trend data, with Scripture cited more as confirming witness than as the central battleground. Here are two of her best pieces on the subject: Ten Objections to Women Priests https://jandyongenesis.blogspot.com/2019/11/ten-objections-to-women-priests.html The Church's Consensus on Women and the Priesthood: https://jandyongenesis.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-churchs-consensus-on-women-and.html The Cost of Fidelity — and the Call to Return The deeper question is whether the ordination of women can be treated as a secondary matter. We do not believe it can. The stakes are nothing less than the Church’s sacramental identity and her continuity with the apostolic faith. The evidence of a slippery slope — from women’s ordination to the wider normalization of homosexual practice within the same liberalizing provinces — cannot be waved away. The path back is not through further innovation but through obedience. The Church cannot heal herself by doubling down on disobedience; she must return to the order God has established. Only then will the broken line of succession be mended and the full sacramental life of the Church restored. For more stories go to Virtueonline: www.virtueonline.org For my take on the situation in the Middle East go to: davidvirtue2.substack.com

Bishop C. FitzSimons Allison: At 99 A Living Anglican Legend Bishop FitzSimons Allison is now in his 99th year. His mind, though not as quick as when I interviewed him in 2022, - "The Lion in Winter" (Allison was 95) - remains profoundly alert to the times in which we live. He is a living witness to nearly the entire arc of the modern Anglican crisis — from the pre-revisionist Episcopal Church through the Singapore consecrations to the founding of the ACNA. Very few people alive can speak to that history from personal experience. AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW By David W. Virtue, DD | www.virtueonline.org | June 20, 2026 Early Life and Formation Christopher FitzSimons Allison was born on March 5, 1927, in Columbia, South Carolina, the son of James Richard Allison and Susan Milliken FitzSimons. He attended the University of the South at Sewanee, though his studies were interrupted by service in the United States Army during World War II. He was discharged and returned to complete his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1949. He then earned a B.Div. from Virginia Theological Seminary in 1952 and a D.Phil. from Christ Church, Oxford, in 1956. He married Martha Allston Parker on June 10, 1950. Academic Career Ordained deacon in June 1952 and priested in May 1953, Allison went on to become one of the Episcopal Church's most respected patristic scholars and Anglican historians. Following his Oxford doctorate, he served as associate professor of church history at the University of the South, Sewanee, from 1956 to 1967, and then as professor of church history at Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria from 1967 to 1975. Parish Ministry and the Diocese of South Carolina He then served for five years as rector of Grace Episcopal Church in New York City — one of the most prominent evangelical Anglican parishes in the country — before being called to lead the Diocese of South Carolina. He was elected at a special meeting of the Diocesan Convention on May 17, 1980, and consecrated Bishop Coadjutor of the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina in a service attended by approximately 2,500 people at the Gaillard Auditorium in Charleston. The Rt. Rev. John M. Allin, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, served as chief consecrator. He became diocesan bishop in 1982 and served until his retirement in 1990. The Breaking Point: "Apostasy" A defining moment came during an Episcopal House of Bishops meeting at Kanuga, North Carolina, in his final year as bishop. The topic was "Why are we dysfunctional?" Allison named what he saw openly: Episcopal priests and seminary professors were proclaiming their faith in an ancient, erotic, divine spirit "older and greater" than the God of the Bible. He called it by its ancient name: apostasy. Other bishops expressed no difficulty with clergy testing the outer boundaries of Christian doctrine. After that confrontation, Allison returned to his pew and declined to receive communion with the assembled House of Bishops. It was a quiet, prophetic act. The Singapore Consecrations (2000) In 2000, Allison participated in the Singapore consecrations of two American priests — Charles Murphy and John Rodgers — as bishops serving parishes opposed to the ordination of openly homosexual clergy and the blessing of same-sex unions. While in retirement, he also took several actions that violated Episcopal canons, including celebrating the Eucharist with congregations that had departed or been forced out of the denomination. These actions were controversial within the Episcopal Church, though widely welcomed by those in the emerging orthodox Anglican movement. Joining the ACNA (2022) In 2022, Allison formally notified Presiding Bishop Michael Curry that he had been received into the Anglican Church in North America — a body recognized as valid by Anglican bishops across Africa, Asia, and the Global South, though not by the Archbishop of Canterbury or TEC's leadership. For many years, Allison and his wife Martha had attended Prince George Winyah Church in Georgetown, South Carolina — a parish founded in 1721 whose present sanctuary was built in 1755, which departed the U.S. Episcopal Church in 2012 with the rest of the conservative Diocese of South Carolina. Theological Writings Allison is a prolific and theologically important author. His works include Fear, Love, & Worship (1962), The Rise of Moralism (1966), Guilt, Anger, and God (1972), The Cruelty of Heresy (1994), and Trust in an Age of Arrogance (2009). His most scholarly work, The Rise of Moralism, traces how the early Anglican divines — Hooker, Andrewes, Donne, and Davenant — maintained the Reformation doctrine of justification by faith, while later Caroline divines such as Jeremy Taylor and Richard Baxter shifted toward a theology whose generating principle was morality. Allison argues this drift led directly to eighteenth-century Deism and twentieth-century secularism. The Cruelty of Heresy remains one of the finest accessible defenses of classical Christian orthodoxy produced by any Anglican bishop in the modern era. Trust in an Age of Arrogance, his final and many consider his best volume, was later selected as one of the top 100 Christian classics by Dr. Bob Yost in A Literary Bucket List for the Thoughtful Christ-Follower — placed alongside Augustine, Dante, Thomas à Kempis, Luther, G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, John Stott, Solzhenitsyn, Charles Colson, and Tim Keller. THE INTERVIEW VOL: Your Oxford D.Phil. and The Rise of Moralism were enormously revelatory works. Do you see the same drift from grace to moralism playing out today in progressive Episcopal theology? ALLISON: Yes. At that time when things were unravelling, Bishop Alex Dickson of West Tennessee was a grand and courageous companion through those years. He believed and was committed to the gospel as we watched it unfold together. VOL: What was it actually like in that Kanuga room when you said "apostasy" — and then sat alone in the pew? ALLISON: A certain sadness about the worldliness of the church at that time. VOL: What is your read on whether the ACNA has consolidated the realignment, or whether the fractures — women's ordination, GAFCON versus the GSFA — threaten its future? ALLISON: I think they will threaten its future. VOL: At 99, what do you most want orthodox Anglicans to understand — something you fear they may be missing? ALLISON: The doctrine of justification by faith. VOL: What was achieved at Pawleys Island following the Singapore consecrations? ALLISON: There has been astonishing growth at Pawleys Island. One man I recall is Thomas "T" Brown, a disciple of Chuck Murphy. He was an excellent preacher and witness to the gospel to hundreds of people through his classes. He served as Assistant Rector at All Saints Church in Pawleys Island, and later became Rector of St. Paul's Anglican Church in Greenville, which grew fabulously. VOL: Do you believe The Cruelty of Heresy has proven prophetic — that the heresies you catalogued in 1994 are now the operating theology of TEC's leadership? ALLISON: Yes, I do. It has been sad to watch it all decline. VOL: You wrote in Trust in an Age of Arrogance that Western culture has dethroned God and installed the self as the final measure of truth, morality, and meaning — what you treat as the essence of arrogance. Drawing on C.S. Lewis's image of "God in the Dock," you frame this self-centeredness as the root of personal and social breakdown, fueling everything from broken marriages to war and genocide. You read the Sadducees as stand-ins for today's secularists, who deny eternal accountability, and the Pharisees as stand-ins for religious moralists who reduce God to the size of their own self-righteousness. Has anything changed in seventeen years? ALLISON: Not much. VOL: What do you make of the current generation of Anglican theologians? Who gives you hope? ALLISON: My good friend Canon Chuck Collins. VOL: What was your relationship with the great evangelical Anglican scholars of your era — men like John Stott, J.I. Packer, and Michael Green? ALLISON: I had a deep relationship with them. I shared their theology and their commitment to Scripture. VOL: Who is your favorite theologian or church historian? ALLISON: Richard Hooker. He stands with Andrewes, Donne, and Davenant. Classical Anglicans such as Hooker and Ussher were united in affirming that in justification, Christ's righteousness is imputed to the believer — the believer contributes nothing to his own righteousness. VOL: Trinity Anglican Seminary Dean Bryan Hollon is reshaping the institution through a combination of institutional renewal, liturgical imagination, and strategic partnerships — and the evidence from recent reporting shows that his leadership is unusually creative and ambitious. Do you agree? ALLISON: I think he is the best Dean the seminary could have hired at a time when seminaries, even conservative ones are closing with many deans not knowing how to meet the new challenges of our age. VOL: Did you know or have contact with C.S. Lewis during your Oxford years, 1953 to 1956? He was still very much active at Oxford then. ALLISON: Yes, I knew him. He moved from Oxford to Cambridge during that period. He was deeply committed to the catholic creeds and the Reformation. I did not correspond with him personally, but I heard him speak on several occasions. VOL: Do you believe the 2003 consecration of Gene Robinson was the terminal moment for The Episcopal Church — or had the institution already died theologically decades earlier? ALLISON: The Episcopal Church died theologically long before Robinson's consecration. That event was simply a blatant exercise in self-righteousness. VOL: What do you make of Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe's leadership and TEC's accelerating numerical collapse? ALLISON: The Lord is not blessing his departure from Scripture and from the solid ground of biblical doctrine. VOL: Do you have regrets about actions taken — or not taken — during your episcopal tenure that might have better prepared the diocese for what followed? ALLISON: I was grateful for such leaders as Bishop Alex Dickson and Bishop John Rodgers as the changes were taking place. VOL: GAFCON and the Global South Fellowship of Anglicans represent the numerical and theological majority of the Communion. Do you see them as the future of Anglicanism? ALLISON: GAFCON and the GSFA are the future of the Anglican Communion. Our prayers are with them as they navigate what lies ahead. VOL: Canterbury has not recognized the ACNA. Does that recognition matter — theologically, practically, historically? ALLISON: Not so long as the American Presiding Bishop recognizes the woman Archbishop of Canterbury. VOL: How do you assess the ACNA's trajectory in the aftermath of Archbishop Steve Wood's removal from office? ALLISON: It will be very difficult to survive as a truly Christian witness. VOL: After nearly a century of life and decades of institutional conflict, where do you find spiritual sustenance and joy? ALLISON: There are still many faithful believers, and I find hope in their continued commitment to our historic faith. VOL: Is there anything you wish you had said publicly that you held back? ALLISON: Yes. I was a little late in proclaiming the historic faith. VOL: What do you want your epitaph to be — as a bishop, a theologian, a churchman? ALLISON: I am afraid I cannot look back without regret at our failure to maintain the faith once for all delivered to the saints. VOL: Looking at the whole of Anglican history — Cranmer, the Elizabethan settlement, the evangelical revival, the Oxford Movement, the twentieth-century collapse — where did Anglicanism go most fundamentally wrong? And is there a path back? ALLISON: We have followed the devices and desires of ourselves rather than the clear and principled gospel of our church. But I do believe that all is not lost. We can still flourish — with leaders such as Bishop Chip Edgar. VOL: You have been married to your beloved Martha for 76 years. What is the secret of a long and faithful marriage? ALLISON: A commitment to love and loyalty — to and for my spouse. VOL: Thank you, Bishop Allison. God willing, I will return next year when you turn 100. Legacy At 99 years of age, Bishop Allison stands as one of the last living links to the pre-revisionist Episcopal Church — a churchman formed by Oxford scholarship, shaped by evangelical Anglican theology, and tested by decades of institutional conflict. His quiet refusal of communion at Kanuga, his bold presence in Singapore, and his formal departure from TEC trace the entire arc of the Anglican realignment. His theological writings remain essential reading for orthodox Anglicans on both sides of the Atlantic. FOOTNOTE Bishop Allison's book Trust in an Age of Arrogance was selected as one of the top 100 Christian classics by Dr. Bob Yost in A Literary Bucket List for the Thoughtful Christ-Follower — a volume that includes Augustine of Hippo, Dante Alighieri, Thomas à Kempis, Martin Luther, G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, John Stott, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Charles Colson, and Tim Keller, among others. 100 Christian Classics: A Literary Bucket List for the Thoughtful Christ-Follower By Robert A. Yost Click to View

ADOTS & ADOMS delegates Tulsa, Oklahoma – June 18, 2026 – The Anglican Diocese of the South (ADOTS) celebrates the approval by the Provincial Council of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) of the application to establish the Anglican Diocese of the Mid-South as a new diocese within the Province. The historic decision was made during the Provincial Council meeting held at Cornerstone Anglican Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on June 18, 2026. Creating the Anglican Diocese of the Mid-South marks the culmination of nearly a decade of prayer, discernment, and planning. Since 2017, the Anglican Diocese of the South has intentionally worked towards this goal, recognizing the need for a more regional diocesan structure that can better support local congregations and advance the mission of making disciples of Jesus Christ. The new diocese, developed from the Mid-South Missionary District of the Anglican Diocese of the South, covers Missouri, Arkansas, West Tennessee, Mississippi, and parts of eastern Texas. As part of this transition, the Anglican Diocese of the South will release fifteen of its parishes to form the founding congregations of the Anglican Diocese of the Mid-South. For several months, the Steering Committee of the Anglican Diocese of the Mid-South, led by Dr. Steve Akeson from All Saints Anglican Church in Springfield, Missouri, has prepared for this milestone. A Committee for the Nomination of Bishop has been formed, and plans are underway to establish a diocese that is healthy, sustainable, and equipped to empower local churches to make disciples throughout the Mid-South region. Archbishop Foley Beach, Bishop of the Anglican Diocese of the South and Archbishop Emeritus of the Anglican Church in North America, stated: “This day is the fruit of years of prayer, discernment, and faithful labor. Since 2017, we have prayerfully worked toward establishing a new diocesan home for our churches in the Mid-South so that ministry can be carried out more effectively and missionally throughout the region. While we will miss these fifteen congregations as part of the Anglican Diocese of the South, we will release them with great joy and confidence, knowing that this new diocese will be a powerful witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We remain committed to supporting and encouraging the Anglican Diocese of the Mid-South as it embarks on this exciting new chapter.” The Anglican Diocese of the South stays committed to walking alongside the clergy and congregations of the Mid-South during this transition and looks forward with anticipation to what God will accomplish through this new diocesan family. The Anglican Diocese of the South invites all its churches to join in praying for God’s continued blessing on this work, and that through the ministry of the Anglican Diocese of the Mid-South, more people across the region will encounter the transforming love of Jesus Christ! END

COMMENTARY By David W. Virtue, DD I www.virtueonline.org I June 18, 2026 Contemporary evangelicalism has fixated on church plants, church revivals, church building campaigns. Multiply the campuses, multiply the capital drives, multiply the square footage. But what if that whole enterprise rests on a category error? What if the New Testament's center of gravity was never "the church" at all, but something larger, older, and far less manageable: the Kingdom of God? The Numbers Don't Lie The phrase "kingdom of God" — "kingdom of heaven" in Matthew's preferred idiom for a Jewish audience — appears roughly 120 times across the four Gospels, and in the overwhelming majority of cases it is Jesus himself speaking. Matthew uses it some 50 times, Mark about 20, Luke roughly 35, and John a mere five — though one of those five is the unforgettable exchange with Nicodemus about being born again. The kingdom was not a peripheral theme. It was the architecture of Jesus's entire public ministry. It governs the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount. It drives more than thirty parables that open with some version of "the kingdom of heaven is like...." It anchors his direct proclamations — "the kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe" — and it shapes every answer he gives about who enters, who is greatest, and how the age will end. Set that against this: in all four Gospels, Jesus mentions "the church" — ekklesia in the Greek — exactly twice, and both instances are in Matthew. The first is the foundational declaration in Matthew 16:18: "You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it." The second comes in Matthew 18:15–17, where Jesus describes the gathered community acting as a final court of appeal when a brother sins and will not listen. Mark, Luke, and John record no instance of Jesus using the word at all. That should stop cold anyone who has built a ministry — or a denomination — on the assumption that "building the church" was Jesus's chief concern. It evidently was not. Ekklesia in the Greek world simply meant an assembly; it carried no inherently religious freight until the church grew into the word. Jesus spoke of his church — possessive, singular, universal — before it existed institutionally. The two usages between them cover both the cosmic, universal church of Matthew 16 and the local, disciplinary function of the gathered community in Matthew 18. But the church was always the vessel, never the cargo. It was the community that would embody and carry forward the kingdom — not the message itself. Paul, writing after the resurrection, would go on to build a far more developed theology of the church than anything recorded from Jesus's own mouth in the Gospels. That theology came later, and it came from Paul, not from some divine mandate to plant and build. Ladd: A Kingdom Already Here, Not Yet Finished I first read George Eldon Ladd's slim, dense little book The Gospel of the Kingdom back in the last century — the good old days, when evangelical theology still wrestled with first-order questions instead of marketing strategy. Ladd's controlling thesis, drawn from the parables, the Sermon on the Mount, and the wider sweep of Jesus's teaching, is that the Kingdom of God is simultaneously present and future: already inaugurated at Christ's first coming, not yet consummated until his return. So what, exactly, is "the kingdom"? Ladd grounds the term in its Old Testament sense: God's reign, his active rule, not a territory or a realm with borders. Jesus's proclamation — "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand" — was the organizing theme of everything he said and did. His miracles displayed the kingdom's power. His parables illustrated what it looks like to live inside it. And when he sent out the Twelve, and later the seventy-two in Luke 10, he gave them a specific charge: announce that "the kingdom of heaven is at hand" — the identical message he himself preached in Matthew 4:17. He was not dispatching them to do good deeds in his name. He was extending his own kingdom proclamation through human agents. Jesus never instructed his followers to establish a church, build churches, or launch church plants. I was told recently of an Anglican parish in Texas that spent $12 million building a chapel to seat two hundred people. That would have been unthinkable to Jesus. That money belonged to the mission — to preaching the reign of Christ, to putting resources directly into the hands of people who would go and proclaim the good news. A building seats two hundred. The gospel, properly deployed, has no ceiling. The already/not yet framework is Ladd's signature contribution. The age to come remains future, yet we already taste its powers in the present. Something belonging to the future has broken into the present; the powers of the age to come have penetrated this age. The kingdom arrived hidden and unexpected at the first advent, and it will be consummated visibly and universally at the second. The righteousness of the kingdom, drawn from the Sermon on the Mount, is not external legalism but the radical inward transformation that only God's reign can produce. Entering the kingdom and possessing "eternal life" are, for Ladd, synonymous technical terms — a radical, costly, eternal decision for Christ, not a casual affiliation. The kingdom, Israel, and the church relate this way: in the proclamation of the kingdom, local churches made up of Spirit-born citizens of that kingdom come into being. The church is not identical to the kingdom. It is the kingdom's primary instrument and community in this present age — nothing more, nothing less. Neither optimism nor pessimism describes the posture Ladd commends. We are not rosy optimists expecting the gospel to conquer the world and establish the kingdom by our own efforts, nor despairing pessimists who treat the task as hopeless against the evil of this age. Christians live as people who know the outcome but have not yet seen it fully realized. The close of the age, per Matthew 24:14, comes only after the good news of the kingdom has been preached throughout the whole world. Ladd reads that as a summons: take seriously the commission to make disciples of every nation, and live in hope while doing it. It is a short, theologically dense book, and it remains one of the most accessible introductions to kingdom theology ever written — influential across evangelical, Reformed, and charismatic traditions alike. Scholars including N.T. Wright and Ladd himself have argued that virtually everything Jesus taught was either directly about the kingdom or presupposed it, making the kingdom not merely a frequent topic but the organizing framework of his entire ministry. Wright: A Kingdom for Earth, Not an Escape From It N.T. Wright pushes the same point further and sharper. The kingdom, he insists, is not code for "going to heaven." It is not about souls escaping earth for some disembodied elsewhere. It is about God's sovereign rule coming to earth — "on earth as it is in heaven," exactly as the Lord's Prayer asks. Jesus proclaimed the kingdom inside a thoroughly Second Temple Jewish framework: the long-awaited return of Israel's God to reclaim and restore his creation, not a timeless spiritual abstraction but a concrete historical event breaking into time. For Wright, the kingdom did not arrive merely through Jesus's teaching. It arrived in his person — in his actions, his exorcisms, his healings, his table fellowship with sinners. These were not illustrations of the kingdom. They were the kingdom, arriving. The crucifixion was no detour and no defeat; Wright reads it as the moment Israel's representative king absorbed the full weight of sin, death, and evil, winning the kingdom's victory through what looked, to every observer, like total failure. The resurrection then vindicates that victory and launches the kingdom publicly into history. Here too the kingdom is already and not yet — inaugurated but not consummated. The resurrection begins the new creation; the church lives in the overlap of the ages, bearing witness to what has begun and testifying to what is still coming. And here too, the church does not equal the kingdom — a confusion Wright considers one of the most damaging in modern Christianity. The church is the community called to embody, announce, and labor toward the kingdom's full arrival through worship, justice, and a life oriented toward new creation rather than away from it. Wright is relentless against rapture theology and any notion of cosmic annihilation. The kingdom's goal is the renewal of creation — heaven and earth joined, the New Jerusalem descending to a redeemed earth, not a discarded one. God redeems what he made; he does not throw it away and start over. Wright's larger charge against much of the church is that it has Platonized the gospel — turned it into an exit strategy from the world — when Jesus announced something far more earthy, far more political, and far more cosmically revolutionary than an escape hatch to the sky. So What Does This Mean for the Church Today? Pushing church plants in the current environment is, increasingly, a losing proposition. People are not going to church. They are not interested in church. Many are not even open to the idea of church. What they might respond to is something far less programmatic: one-on-one engagement, a helping hand, someone going out of their way to meet a need with no strings attached. Then, perhaps, they will ask why you did it. They will listen — and that might be the first step on a long road toward faith. The "come and hear" era is finished. "Go and tell" only works when it is backed by something visible, tangible, and costly to the one doing the telling. Some 15,000 churches will close their doors this year. Jesus never asked anyone to build him a building. He asked them to announce a kingdom, embody it, and let it loose in the world one transformed life at a time. The church that forgets this will keep pouring concrete for congregations that no longer come — and call it faithfulness while the kingdom moves on without it. David W. Virtue, DD is a theologically trained journalist. He blogs at www.virtueonline.org Virtueonline is the most widely read orthodox Anglican online news service in more than 100 countries. His Substack on the Middle East can be read here: davidvirtue2.substack.com

Canada’s House rejected a final attempt to stop Bill C-9, which threatens to criminalize quoting the Bible, including on homosexuality. Canadian Liberal Prime Minister Mark Carney Hilary Wardhaugh/Getty Images By Anthony Murdoch LIFESITE NEWS Jun 17, 2026 OTTAWA, Ontario — A final attempt to stop Bill C-9 was defeated, meaning that the bill, which threatens to criminalize quoting parts of the Bible, including on homosexuality, has officially passed Canada’s Parliament and will soon become law. On Wednesday, June 17, a majority of MPs voted down an attempt by Conservative MP Andrew Lawton to stop Bill C-9 “once and for all.” “The Liberals and Bloc Québécois voted down my motion to withdraw the divisive and toxic Bill C-9 to stand up for freedom of expression and freedom of religion,” wrote Lawton in an X post. Lawton thanked Green and NDP MPs for voting in opposition to Bill C-9, noting that “opposition to this bill has come from the political left and right, from civil liberties groups and a range of faith organizations.” “With the adoption of the Senate’s amendment criminalizing the noose as a hate symbol, Bill C-9 will soon receive royal assent and become law.” As reported by LifeSiteNews, Canadian senators voted recently to approve the Liberals’ Bill C-9 or “An Act to amend the Criminal Code (hate propaganda, hate crime, and access to religious or cultural places).” However, because the last-minute amendment adding the noose was made, the bill had to go back to the House of Commons before it was sent to the Governor General for Royal Assent to become law. As reported by LifeSiteNews, Canadian senators last week voted down a recent proposed amendment to Bill C-9 that would have criminalized “residential school denialism.” A ‘dark day’ for Christians One Conservative MP, Brad Redekopp, called the official passage of Bill C-9 a “dark day” for Canada and religious freedom and an “assault” on faith. “Today is a dark day in Canadian history,” wrote Redekopp in an X post. “The House has passed Bill C-9—an assault on religious freedom that removes longstanding protections for Canadians expressing sincerely held beliefs. Conservatives fought this bill every step of the way—and we will keep fighting until religious freedom is restored.” Canadian pro-life and faith groups, as well as a Catholic cardinal, sounded the alarm over the legislation. Indeed, in a recent letter to Canadian senators, Cardinal Frank Leo, the metropolitan archbishop of Toronto, said that while the Catholic Church recognizes “the importance of addressing hatred and protecting individuals and communities from violence,” changes are needed to the bill. Constitutional experts have blasted the bill, saying that it will allow empowered police and the government to go after those deemed to have violated a person’s “feelings” in a “hateful” way. The bill was introduced by Justice Minister Sean Fraser last year. Specifically, Bill C-9 would remove Section 319(3)(b) of Canada’s Criminal Code. This section protects the good-faith expression of a person’s religious views based on religious texts such as the Holy Bible. Campaign Life Coalition (CLC) previously blasted the passage of Bill C-9 in the Senate, saying that “God will not be mocked.” “This is a dark day for religious freedom and free speech in Canada,” said Jeff Gunnarson, national president of CLC. END